[Written for the Italian journal MicroMega's special issue on the Beijing Olympics, June 11, 2008; with minor modifications, Oct 7, 2008]
III. Changing Social-Political Landscape
The fact that Wu Lihong was honored in Beijing as one of the 2005 top ten national environmentalists itself indicates important social-political changes taking place in China. As the country moved from its previous practice of “socialist planned economy” to a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics,” the central government under financial pressure in the early 1990s got rid, first of all, of its social welfare obligations, in education and public healthcare in particular. Not surprisingly, with rising living standard and the emergence of middle class and urban new riches, issues concerning the society’s general well-being were the first to gather voluntary participation and gain government tolerance. In other words, social diversification, brought about by three decades of reform, has made it possible for a “society” to practically prioritize its interest over the interest of the “nation,” whereas the “state” is relatively neutralized and the Party itself is forced to take a back seat in this kind of contest for legitimacy discourse.
The best example of such structural alternation will have to be the almost spontaneous, nationwide mobilization in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. But the changes started much earlier, as can be seen in the 1999 prize-winning film, Not One Less, by Zhang Yimou. The credit roll at the end of the film includes explicit call for donations to support basic education in China’s poor rural areas. Shifting the burden of social welfare from the state to the shoulder of the society or even to that of foreign philanthropic organizations had not been a difficult transformation for the CCP government to adapt.
This is not to say that the State and the Party sat through these changes idly. From the start and up to this moment, they have been watching vigilantly. However, instead of mobilizing societal energy for the general good, their preoccupation has been predominantly against social organizations with political potentials. A careful look at the most-wanted lists issued immediately following the Tian’anmen crackdown will tell you that, in addition to influential intellectuals, most names there were previously unheard of at all, who became the top enemies of the state precisely for their direct involvement in organizing autonomous associations among students, workers and ordinary citizens. Similarly, Jiang Zemin, CCP’s former Secretary-general (1989-2002), launched severe persecution against the Fa-lun-gong sector after the religious group staged a surprise demonstration just outside Zhongnanhai, the housing compound of the CCP’s top leaders in central Beijing. Fa-lun-gong’s mobilization ability shown in the demonstration made it impossible for the CCP to give the crackdown a second thought.
The oppressive logic of the Party did not stop at mass organizations staging actual big demonstrations. Yang Zili, a young physics graduate from the prestigious Peking University, was sentenced to eight years for “subversion” in 2003, for the crime of writing critical political commentaries on his website and for organizing a small study group. Three of his comrades were imprisoned at the same time. Ironically, the name they chose for their little group was “New Youth,” exactly the same as the name of the iconoclastic journal run by the CCP’s founding general-secretary, Chen Duxiu, more than 80 years ago. The Party certainly knows its own history perfectly well - free political association could easily lead to mass mobilization and social movement, posing real threats to its hold of the state power. A few years earlier, the CCP views it as a must to crash on the dissidents who sought to establish a China Democracy Party in 1997; now, Beijing also sees it as necessary to punish young intellectuals like Yang Zili.
Not surprisingly, giving permission to NGOs to provide charity service to the society became delicately challenging at all levels. Similarly challenging are new communication technologies, such as the Internet, the mobile phone, and text-messaging. Together with the changing social-political landscape, described earlier, the society is opening up considerably for initiatives. Of all the issues, environmental protection seems to be the most powerful magnet, bounding together otherwise atomized city dwellers to fight against vested interests of developers, business owners, and government officials. When a big chemical plant with Taiwanese money was to start construction at the southeast coast city Xiamen and the municipal authorities announced tough rules against non-official mass rallies, the citizens text-messaged each other for “collective walk” in front of the city hall for three consecutive days last year. Under growing public anger, the project was eventually moved to a less populated rural setting (without further hearing on pollution threat to the rural community). Similar tactic was then adapted by Shanghai residents, in their fight against an unpopular infrastructure project with high-volume noise pollution possibilities. News about these events spread fast and wide on the Internet. “Collective walk,” thus, has since become a politically charged word for actions of civil disobedience.
As a matter of fact, environmental groups are mushrooming in Chinese cities, and so are volunteer associations of charity groups on various themes: rural education, basic healthcare, AIDS, homosexuality, natural disaster relief, and so forth. Many contributed at the earliest instance to the earthquake rescue and relief in May this year. Intellectuals and scholars working on rural problems have set up special training programs in selected countryside locations, recruiting college students to work together with poor peasants during school vacations. These new developments have loosened the nerves of the authorities so much that the Organization Department of the CCP’s central committee has launched a new program, starting from this year, to recruit 100,000 college graduates in five years to serve as local cadres at village level. It has no doubt helped to raise social awareness among college students.
Heightened social awareness among college students in recent years is also thanks to new trends in academic humanities and social sciences, hugely influenced by their American counterparts that emphasize cultural studies in themes and field-work in methodology. Urban wealth, commercial interest, tourism development, as well as increasing cultural exchanges, awakened general curiosity about China itself, its history, its geography, its many regional diversities in dialects, customs, cuisines, climates and cultural relics. One particular aspect of vibrant social life, benefited by cultural exchanges with outside world, is religious activities. Large number of college students now is Christian converts. Officially registered Christian churches claim more than 30 million members, but scholars’ estimations are about two or three times of that number. Increasing inter-communications with other East Asian countries have made equally important contributions to reviving interest in religion. Temples of Daoism, Buddhism, and other folk religions, built brand new or repaired from old ruins – possibly inflicted during the Cultural Revolution that vowed to sweep the world clean of all religions – in as many cities as villages, are receiving crowded visitors at traditional holidays, which often pose risk of stampede and required extra police force for safeguarding. According to the estimation based on two Shanghai professors’ research, China today has more than 300 million people who hold religious faith of one kind or another.
IV. The Tibetans
If the society is really so diversified, lively, and with high degree of social awareness, one might ask, why the Han Chinese reacted so strongly, uniformly, aggressively and rather chauvinistically (see below) towards the Lhasa riots in Tibet earlier this year? To understand this, we need to keep in mind a couple of points. First, growing social awareness, encouraged by economic development and tolerated by the authorities, is not exactly the same as political consciousness. Likewise, charitable work cannot supplant political demands from below. Distinctions such as these may be subtle, but they are never completely submerged into each other. It is the job of the cultural police to watch out that these boundaries are not to be crossed, on the Internet or on the streets. People need to feel good about themselves, a sense which charitable work could safely provide. Political questions, on the other hand, might easily make people uncomfortable just like the state could be challenged, probably unnecessarily. Talking about the rich-poor gap is ubiquitous by the Chinese nowadays, which is partly the bases for growing interest in charity work. Yet, talks about political rights for the poor are completely another matter. In this sense, the Chinese society has been indeed depoliticized to a considerable extent.
Second, similar to policy debates at the top, vibrant cultural life at the society level usually carries a trace of nationalistic rhetoric. As a young intellectual commented, the Chinese today believe that China is a “normal country” just like any other one, with its own distinctive cultural characteristics. We can do what other people are doing, but we prefer doing it our own way, be it charity work or Buddhism worshipping. Behind this thinking, anxiety over recognition by the “international community” is clearly visible. The fixed sight is on the West (or lesser partners of the abstract “West”), and the “China” or “Chinese culture” is to be defined by a collective “Chinese” that is, generally speaking, Han Chinese only.
Historically, the PRC did entertain the idea of Soviet-style ethnic republics, but for a very short period only. The same is true about ethnic equality in general. Before 1958, the PRC was actually very enthusiastic about identifying and developing minority nationalities within its territorial boundaries. Ethnographical teams were sent out and totally 55 ethnic “nationalities” were identified. At least 14 written scripts were created for 12 ethnic groups that did never developed one for themselves before, and many other scripts were reformed, regrouped, and experimented within the concerned population. These actions were generally halted by 1958 and further impeded by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, for the sake of “speeding up and running directly into communism” that would no longer acknowledge ethnic differences anyway. Economic recession, understandably, went much worse in minority ethnic areas than in Han regions, due to severe cultural and linguistic damage. There was indeed a short period of beneficial ethnic policy in 1977-1985, which, unfortunately, slowed down to almost complete stop in the nineties, due to the central government’s developmental position that focused on economic growth and almost nothing else. By official statistics in 2005, ethnic minority was 8.41% of China’s total population, but 45% of the total poverty population nationwide. Of officially identified “poverty counties” across the country, minority ethnic autonomous counties, once again, took up 45% of the total.
On the other hand, though ethnic minorities are less than ten percent of China’s total population, they occupy 64% of the PRC’s entire territory. A large proportion of the 64% is historically Tibetan inhabited areas. Tibet is also along a very long stretch of China’s 22,000 kilometers of inland border with other countries. These are the hard facts of the “Tibetan Question” today.
Has Tibetan areas been experiencing “cultural genocide” as the Dalai Lama claims? “Yes” and “no.” “Yes,” because official documents issued by the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) government are nowadays mostly written in Chinese, often without Tibetan translation at all; Most governmental meetings are conducted in Mandarin Chinese instead of Tibetan; Recruitment examinations for civil servant positions are mostly conducted in Chinese instead of Tibetan; Elementary schools for Tibetan children in Lhasa have adapted to using Chinese as first language and Tibetan as the second. The main reason for such phenomena is the PRC’s top official appointment practice. The CCP simply couldn’t trust any Tibetans to be at the top of the TAR leadership. Its Party Secretary, the real boss of the region, has been taken up by Han Chinese one after another for decades. They were often transferred in short notice from other regions and did never feel the pressure to learn the native language.
In addition, with Beijing’s unceasing assault on the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism – a faith followed in varied forms by the majority of Tibetan population – is agonizing with its fragmented identity. With his charisma and international standing, whatever happens to him in the future, the fourteenth Dalai Lama is bound to become another legend in Tibetan cultural memory, just in the same way as one of his predecessors, the sixth Dalai Lama, a romantic poet fondly remembered in Tibetan folklores. Beijing’s pragmatic-thinking top leaders apparently have not registered this possibility. It is generally believed that the Chinese government is patiently waiting for the day when a reincarnation procedure will have to be enacted under its control inside China, in order to choose a successor of the current Dalai Lama. With this thinking firmly in their mind, whenever social unrests taking place in Tibetan areas, the authorities would jump upon all Tibetans, forcing them one by one to make public denouncement against the current Dalai Lama. Amazingly, or maybe not by accident, the method is exactly the same applied to all of the Chinese in the PRC during the Cultural Revolution. By so doing, instead of turning the Dalai Lama into its own political assets, Beijing has created a formidable windmill for itself to busy fighting against eternally. The political reeducation sessions forced upon every Tibetan inside China have been the most humiliating experience to the young, educated Tibetans living in Han Chinese cities in particular. Many of them actually have some spoken Tibetan only, unable to fully express themselves in the written language, let alone to keep that language’s beauty in some living, rejuvenating forms for future generations. This deeper sense of national humiliation has been simply reinforced by Beijing’s crude and cruel tactics against their fellow Tibetans remaining on the Roof of the World.
On the other hand, with more than 80% Tibetan population still living as farmers and going to rural schools or Buddhist monasteries that teach Tibetan as first language, there is no immanent danger of Tibetan culture disappearing from the world. On the contrary, with commercialization and loosened political control in East Tibet in particular, there have been more Tibetan periodicals in China’s Tibetan areas than ever before, much more lively than Tibetan print culture in the exile communities in northern India. Growing tourism, encouraged by Beijing with preferable policies and extra investment, has brought many Tibetan youth into closer contact with their traditions than, say, thirty years ago. They are creating lively cultural life in Tibetan cities and towns not just for tourists, but also for themselves. Like their Han counterpart, what in need is formal political recognition and protection of their rights. Unlike their Han Chinese counterpart, the younger generation of Tibetans keenly feel the need, longing for greater freedom to develop their national identity. For them, the Dalai Lama is mainly in this sense to be an important political symbol. Also in this sense, we may say, Beijing has been playing foolishly for unable to fully grasp the depth of the Tibetan Question.
III. Changing Social-Political Landscape
The fact that Wu Lihong was honored in Beijing as one of the 2005 top ten national environmentalists itself indicates important social-political changes taking place in China. As the country moved from its previous practice of “socialist planned economy” to a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics,” the central government under financial pressure in the early 1990s got rid, first of all, of its social welfare obligations, in education and public healthcare in particular. Not surprisingly, with rising living standard and the emergence of middle class and urban new riches, issues concerning the society’s general well-being were the first to gather voluntary participation and gain government tolerance. In other words, social diversification, brought about by three decades of reform, has made it possible for a “society” to practically prioritize its interest over the interest of the “nation,” whereas the “state” is relatively neutralized and the Party itself is forced to take a back seat in this kind of contest for legitimacy discourse.
The best example of such structural alternation will have to be the almost spontaneous, nationwide mobilization in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. But the changes started much earlier, as can be seen in the 1999 prize-winning film, Not One Less, by Zhang Yimou. The credit roll at the end of the film includes explicit call for donations to support basic education in China’s poor rural areas. Shifting the burden of social welfare from the state to the shoulder of the society or even to that of foreign philanthropic organizations had not been a difficult transformation for the CCP government to adapt.
This is not to say that the State and the Party sat through these changes idly. From the start and up to this moment, they have been watching vigilantly. However, instead of mobilizing societal energy for the general good, their preoccupation has been predominantly against social organizations with political potentials. A careful look at the most-wanted lists issued immediately following the Tian’anmen crackdown will tell you that, in addition to influential intellectuals, most names there were previously unheard of at all, who became the top enemies of the state precisely for their direct involvement in organizing autonomous associations among students, workers and ordinary citizens. Similarly, Jiang Zemin, CCP’s former Secretary-general (1989-2002), launched severe persecution against the Fa-lun-gong sector after the religious group staged a surprise demonstration just outside Zhongnanhai, the housing compound of the CCP’s top leaders in central Beijing. Fa-lun-gong’s mobilization ability shown in the demonstration made it impossible for the CCP to give the crackdown a second thought.
The oppressive logic of the Party did not stop at mass organizations staging actual big demonstrations. Yang Zili, a young physics graduate from the prestigious Peking University, was sentenced to eight years for “subversion” in 2003, for the crime of writing critical political commentaries on his website and for organizing a small study group. Three of his comrades were imprisoned at the same time. Ironically, the name they chose for their little group was “New Youth,” exactly the same as the name of the iconoclastic journal run by the CCP’s founding general-secretary, Chen Duxiu, more than 80 years ago. The Party certainly knows its own history perfectly well - free political association could easily lead to mass mobilization and social movement, posing real threats to its hold of the state power. A few years earlier, the CCP views it as a must to crash on the dissidents who sought to establish a China Democracy Party in 1997; now, Beijing also sees it as necessary to punish young intellectuals like Yang Zili.
Not surprisingly, giving permission to NGOs to provide charity service to the society became delicately challenging at all levels. Similarly challenging are new communication technologies, such as the Internet, the mobile phone, and text-messaging. Together with the changing social-political landscape, described earlier, the society is opening up considerably for initiatives. Of all the issues, environmental protection seems to be the most powerful magnet, bounding together otherwise atomized city dwellers to fight against vested interests of developers, business owners, and government officials. When a big chemical plant with Taiwanese money was to start construction at the southeast coast city Xiamen and the municipal authorities announced tough rules against non-official mass rallies, the citizens text-messaged each other for “collective walk” in front of the city hall for three consecutive days last year. Under growing public anger, the project was eventually moved to a less populated rural setting (without further hearing on pollution threat to the rural community). Similar tactic was then adapted by Shanghai residents, in their fight against an unpopular infrastructure project with high-volume noise pollution possibilities. News about these events spread fast and wide on the Internet. “Collective walk,” thus, has since become a politically charged word for actions of civil disobedience.
As a matter of fact, environmental groups are mushrooming in Chinese cities, and so are volunteer associations of charity groups on various themes: rural education, basic healthcare, AIDS, homosexuality, natural disaster relief, and so forth. Many contributed at the earliest instance to the earthquake rescue and relief in May this year. Intellectuals and scholars working on rural problems have set up special training programs in selected countryside locations, recruiting college students to work together with poor peasants during school vacations. These new developments have loosened the nerves of the authorities so much that the Organization Department of the CCP’s central committee has launched a new program, starting from this year, to recruit 100,000 college graduates in five years to serve as local cadres at village level. It has no doubt helped to raise social awareness among college students.
Heightened social awareness among college students in recent years is also thanks to new trends in academic humanities and social sciences, hugely influenced by their American counterparts that emphasize cultural studies in themes and field-work in methodology. Urban wealth, commercial interest, tourism development, as well as increasing cultural exchanges, awakened general curiosity about China itself, its history, its geography, its many regional diversities in dialects, customs, cuisines, climates and cultural relics. One particular aspect of vibrant social life, benefited by cultural exchanges with outside world, is religious activities. Large number of college students now is Christian converts. Officially registered Christian churches claim more than 30 million members, but scholars’ estimations are about two or three times of that number. Increasing inter-communications with other East Asian countries have made equally important contributions to reviving interest in religion. Temples of Daoism, Buddhism, and other folk religions, built brand new or repaired from old ruins – possibly inflicted during the Cultural Revolution that vowed to sweep the world clean of all religions – in as many cities as villages, are receiving crowded visitors at traditional holidays, which often pose risk of stampede and required extra police force for safeguarding. According to the estimation based on two Shanghai professors’ research, China today has more than 300 million people who hold religious faith of one kind or another.
IV. The Tibetans
If the society is really so diversified, lively, and with high degree of social awareness, one might ask, why the Han Chinese reacted so strongly, uniformly, aggressively and rather chauvinistically (see below) towards the Lhasa riots in Tibet earlier this year? To understand this, we need to keep in mind a couple of points. First, growing social awareness, encouraged by economic development and tolerated by the authorities, is not exactly the same as political consciousness. Likewise, charitable work cannot supplant political demands from below. Distinctions such as these may be subtle, but they are never completely submerged into each other. It is the job of the cultural police to watch out that these boundaries are not to be crossed, on the Internet or on the streets. People need to feel good about themselves, a sense which charitable work could safely provide. Political questions, on the other hand, might easily make people uncomfortable just like the state could be challenged, probably unnecessarily. Talking about the rich-poor gap is ubiquitous by the Chinese nowadays, which is partly the bases for growing interest in charity work. Yet, talks about political rights for the poor are completely another matter. In this sense, the Chinese society has been indeed depoliticized to a considerable extent.
Second, similar to policy debates at the top, vibrant cultural life at the society level usually carries a trace of nationalistic rhetoric. As a young intellectual commented, the Chinese today believe that China is a “normal country” just like any other one, with its own distinctive cultural characteristics. We can do what other people are doing, but we prefer doing it our own way, be it charity work or Buddhism worshipping. Behind this thinking, anxiety over recognition by the “international community” is clearly visible. The fixed sight is on the West (or lesser partners of the abstract “West”), and the “China” or “Chinese culture” is to be defined by a collective “Chinese” that is, generally speaking, Han Chinese only.
Historically, the PRC did entertain the idea of Soviet-style ethnic republics, but for a very short period only. The same is true about ethnic equality in general. Before 1958, the PRC was actually very enthusiastic about identifying and developing minority nationalities within its territorial boundaries. Ethnographical teams were sent out and totally 55 ethnic “nationalities” were identified. At least 14 written scripts were created for 12 ethnic groups that did never developed one for themselves before, and many other scripts were reformed, regrouped, and experimented within the concerned population. These actions were generally halted by 1958 and further impeded by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, for the sake of “speeding up and running directly into communism” that would no longer acknowledge ethnic differences anyway. Economic recession, understandably, went much worse in minority ethnic areas than in Han regions, due to severe cultural and linguistic damage. There was indeed a short period of beneficial ethnic policy in 1977-1985, which, unfortunately, slowed down to almost complete stop in the nineties, due to the central government’s developmental position that focused on economic growth and almost nothing else. By official statistics in 2005, ethnic minority was 8.41% of China’s total population, but 45% of the total poverty population nationwide. Of officially identified “poverty counties” across the country, minority ethnic autonomous counties, once again, took up 45% of the total.
On the other hand, though ethnic minorities are less than ten percent of China’s total population, they occupy 64% of the PRC’s entire territory. A large proportion of the 64% is historically Tibetan inhabited areas. Tibet is also along a very long stretch of China’s 22,000 kilometers of inland border with other countries. These are the hard facts of the “Tibetan Question” today.
Has Tibetan areas been experiencing “cultural genocide” as the Dalai Lama claims? “Yes” and “no.” “Yes,” because official documents issued by the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) government are nowadays mostly written in Chinese, often without Tibetan translation at all; Most governmental meetings are conducted in Mandarin Chinese instead of Tibetan; Recruitment examinations for civil servant positions are mostly conducted in Chinese instead of Tibetan; Elementary schools for Tibetan children in Lhasa have adapted to using Chinese as first language and Tibetan as the second. The main reason for such phenomena is the PRC’s top official appointment practice. The CCP simply couldn’t trust any Tibetans to be at the top of the TAR leadership. Its Party Secretary, the real boss of the region, has been taken up by Han Chinese one after another for decades. They were often transferred in short notice from other regions and did never feel the pressure to learn the native language.
In addition, with Beijing’s unceasing assault on the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism – a faith followed in varied forms by the majority of Tibetan population – is agonizing with its fragmented identity. With his charisma and international standing, whatever happens to him in the future, the fourteenth Dalai Lama is bound to become another legend in Tibetan cultural memory, just in the same way as one of his predecessors, the sixth Dalai Lama, a romantic poet fondly remembered in Tibetan folklores. Beijing’s pragmatic-thinking top leaders apparently have not registered this possibility. It is generally believed that the Chinese government is patiently waiting for the day when a reincarnation procedure will have to be enacted under its control inside China, in order to choose a successor of the current Dalai Lama. With this thinking firmly in their mind, whenever social unrests taking place in Tibetan areas, the authorities would jump upon all Tibetans, forcing them one by one to make public denouncement against the current Dalai Lama. Amazingly, or maybe not by accident, the method is exactly the same applied to all of the Chinese in the PRC during the Cultural Revolution. By so doing, instead of turning the Dalai Lama into its own political assets, Beijing has created a formidable windmill for itself to busy fighting against eternally. The political reeducation sessions forced upon every Tibetan inside China have been the most humiliating experience to the young, educated Tibetans living in Han Chinese cities in particular. Many of them actually have some spoken Tibetan only, unable to fully express themselves in the written language, let alone to keep that language’s beauty in some living, rejuvenating forms for future generations. This deeper sense of national humiliation has been simply reinforced by Beijing’s crude and cruel tactics against their fellow Tibetans remaining on the Roof of the World.
On the other hand, with more than 80% Tibetan population still living as farmers and going to rural schools or Buddhist monasteries that teach Tibetan as first language, there is no immanent danger of Tibetan culture disappearing from the world. On the contrary, with commercialization and loosened political control in East Tibet in particular, there have been more Tibetan periodicals in China’s Tibetan areas than ever before, much more lively than Tibetan print culture in the exile communities in northern India. Growing tourism, encouraged by Beijing with preferable policies and extra investment, has brought many Tibetan youth into closer contact with their traditions than, say, thirty years ago. They are creating lively cultural life in Tibetan cities and towns not just for tourists, but also for themselves. Like their Han counterpart, what in need is formal political recognition and protection of their rights. Unlike their Han Chinese counterpart, the younger generation of Tibetans keenly feel the need, longing for greater freedom to develop their national identity. For them, the Dalai Lama is mainly in this sense to be an important political symbol. Also in this sense, we may say, Beijing has been playing foolishly for unable to fully grasp the depth of the Tibetan Question.
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