Kate Merkel-Hess and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: What Time Is It in China?
Foreign travelers often find it disorienting that every part of China is on the same time zone, that of the capital, meaning the sun can set at 6:00 p.m. on one day of their tour, 10:00 p.m. on another. Journalists and academics primarily interested in China take the uniform use of Beijing time in stride, but we’re sometimes affected these days by a different sort of temporal confusion. Namely, figuring out whether China should be seen as futuristic (it has the world’s fastest train) or at least keeping pace with the most modern countries (one of its astronauts recently took a walk in space)—or a reflection of its own, or some other country’s past.
Adding to the confusion, a case can be made for all sorts of different domestic and international historical analogies. Contemporary China can seem stuck in old Maoist grooves (the lead-up to the Olympics was sometimes like an old-style political campaign) or returning to the days of Chiang Kai-shek (when Confucius was celebrated, as he certainly wasn’t under Mao, but is again under Hu Jintao). Some commentators see parallels to South Korea and Taiwan circa 1988 in an East Asian authoritarian state going through economic boom times. Others see similarities to the U.S. circa 1900 in a rapidly industrializing nation with an energy that many admire but rough ways that draw criticism from more established powers.
Have the whirlwind developments of China’s all too eventful 2008 clarified the situation? Hardly. If the latest scandal involving tainted milk, for example, has shown us anything it is that several of the different temporal approaches to China just limned has something to offer. And it has also shown that each will mislead us if we go too far in embracing it. This is especially true if we fall into the trap of thinking that China is either impervious to change (as the stuck in its own past analogies suggest) or destined to follow in the evolutionary footsteps of another country, such as our own, with the coming of open elections being just a matter of time (as the “PRC is now like the U.S. once was” parallels, if treated too simplistically, can lead us to fantasize).
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao appeared on CNN on Sunday, Sept. 28, in an open-ended interview with Fareed Zakaria that only confuses the matter further. From his comfort of grieving parents in Sichuan after the May earthquake to his recent call for greater regulation of the food system, Mr. Wen has been unusually engaged this year in public discourse for a national-level CCP politician. So engaged that it seems fair to see 2008 as marking a turning point of sorts for the public relations efforts of the Communist Party. China’s leaders still do not need to stand for re-election, but some of them, most notably Mr. Wen, increasingly look and act like they feel the need to seek the support of ordinary citizens and want to advocate for and, incredibly, explain his country’s policies to the international community. The Premier’s nickname may be “Grandpa Wen,” but there’s more that’s au currant than old fashioned about his style, right down to the fact that he has his own official Facebook page.
Yet during his interview with Mr. Zakaria, Prime Minister Wen followed an old playbook in issuing denials and prevarications about topics that have been sticking points with the international community—such as insisting, ridiculously, that the government monitors the internet “for the overall safety of the country and for the overall freedom of the majority of the people.” That kind of talk sounds very much like the double-speak of earlier Communist leaders.
Similarly, the recent scandal over melamine in milk products resurrects competing notions of China as an anachronistic land of throwbacks. Worries over tainted baby formula have led, for example, to a surge of women offering their services as wet nurses to worried professionals with infants—though, bizarrely, this distinctively “pre-modern” seeming breast-feeding for hire is being advertised through the decidedly “post-modern” medium of the Internet. But above all, the scandal, which has taken a heart-wrenching toll on infants in China (several of whom have died, large numbers of whom are developing kidney stones), makes China seem like belle époque America on steroids. The combination of stories of tainted food coming a year after tales of factories using lead paint to coat toys calls up images of a dangerous land where workers and consumers need to both beware—reminiscent of the America that muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair exposed and criticized. We are seeing, it seems, the world of “The Jungle” transposed from Chicago to Shenzhen.
* * *
Again and again, this theme has emerged in 2008. China watchers—ourselves included—have made the point, when confronted by claims that the PRC is uniquely unregulated (as in the ongoing melamine scandal), uniquely cruel to ethnic minorities (as during the Tibetan riots earlier this spring), or uniquely polluted (as when discussing Beijing’s efforts to clear the air before the Olympics), that we have seen these situations before…in the U.S.
The rough familiarity of these situations to U.S. history, though, shouldn’t lull us into thinking that China will address those issues in the way that Americans chose to. We’d do well to remember how often in recent decades, there have been efforts to paint China as heading along a familiar course. And each time, these haven’t proved accurate, sometimes leading to an equally important analytical mistake: thinking that China, despite all appearances, just isn’t changing at all....
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Adding to the confusion, a case can be made for all sorts of different domestic and international historical analogies. Contemporary China can seem stuck in old Maoist grooves (the lead-up to the Olympics was sometimes like an old-style political campaign) or returning to the days of Chiang Kai-shek (when Confucius was celebrated, as he certainly wasn’t under Mao, but is again under Hu Jintao). Some commentators see parallels to South Korea and Taiwan circa 1988 in an East Asian authoritarian state going through economic boom times. Others see similarities to the U.S. circa 1900 in a rapidly industrializing nation with an energy that many admire but rough ways that draw criticism from more established powers.
Have the whirlwind developments of China’s all too eventful 2008 clarified the situation? Hardly. If the latest scandal involving tainted milk, for example, has shown us anything it is that several of the different temporal approaches to China just limned has something to offer. And it has also shown that each will mislead us if we go too far in embracing it. This is especially true if we fall into the trap of thinking that China is either impervious to change (as the stuck in its own past analogies suggest) or destined to follow in the evolutionary footsteps of another country, such as our own, with the coming of open elections being just a matter of time (as the “PRC is now like the U.S. once was” parallels, if treated too simplistically, can lead us to fantasize).
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao appeared on CNN on Sunday, Sept. 28, in an open-ended interview with Fareed Zakaria that only confuses the matter further. From his comfort of grieving parents in Sichuan after the May earthquake to his recent call for greater regulation of the food system, Mr. Wen has been unusually engaged this year in public discourse for a national-level CCP politician. So engaged that it seems fair to see 2008 as marking a turning point of sorts for the public relations efforts of the Communist Party. China’s leaders still do not need to stand for re-election, but some of them, most notably Mr. Wen, increasingly look and act like they feel the need to seek the support of ordinary citizens and want to advocate for and, incredibly, explain his country’s policies to the international community. The Premier’s nickname may be “Grandpa Wen,” but there’s more that’s au currant than old fashioned about his style, right down to the fact that he has his own official Facebook page.
Yet during his interview with Mr. Zakaria, Prime Minister Wen followed an old playbook in issuing denials and prevarications about topics that have been sticking points with the international community—such as insisting, ridiculously, that the government monitors the internet “for the overall safety of the country and for the overall freedom of the majority of the people.” That kind of talk sounds very much like the double-speak of earlier Communist leaders.
Similarly, the recent scandal over melamine in milk products resurrects competing notions of China as an anachronistic land of throwbacks. Worries over tainted baby formula have led, for example, to a surge of women offering their services as wet nurses to worried professionals with infants—though, bizarrely, this distinctively “pre-modern” seeming breast-feeding for hire is being advertised through the decidedly “post-modern” medium of the Internet. But above all, the scandal, which has taken a heart-wrenching toll on infants in China (several of whom have died, large numbers of whom are developing kidney stones), makes China seem like belle époque America on steroids. The combination of stories of tainted food coming a year after tales of factories using lead paint to coat toys calls up images of a dangerous land where workers and consumers need to both beware—reminiscent of the America that muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair exposed and criticized. We are seeing, it seems, the world of “The Jungle” transposed from Chicago to Shenzhen.
* * *
Again and again, this theme has emerged in 2008. China watchers—ourselves included—have made the point, when confronted by claims that the PRC is uniquely unregulated (as in the ongoing melamine scandal), uniquely cruel to ethnic minorities (as during the Tibetan riots earlier this spring), or uniquely polluted (as when discussing Beijing’s efforts to clear the air before the Olympics), that we have seen these situations before…in the U.S.
The rough familiarity of these situations to U.S. history, though, shouldn’t lull us into thinking that China will address those issues in the way that Americans chose to. We’d do well to remember how often in recent decades, there have been efforts to paint China as heading along a familiar course. And each time, these haven’t proved accurate, sometimes leading to an equally important analytical mistake: thinking that China, despite all appearances, just isn’t changing at all....