rolling china thread 2011

the long decline of hong kong into china's shadow is going to be sad to watch

re: li keqiang's visit

The Laguna City housing tour went well until a resident, Wong Kin, and his daughter ventured too close to police lines. Wong was arrested presumably because of the T-shirt he was wearing. On the back was printed in very large red and blue Chinese characters: “REVERSE THE VERDICT ON JUNE FOURTH; the Revolution Has Not Yet Succeeded; BUILD DEMOCRACY; Comrades Must Still Persevere” (Standard, photo, Sept. 2). June Fourth refers to the 1989 removal of protestors from Tiananmen Square, Beijing, after their movement was officially designated subversive. Hong Kong democrats’ favorite rallying cry is to reverse the 1989 verdict and remove the subversive label that justified the crackdown.
Wong was physically picked up and carried away by several plainclothes members of the VIP protection team. One of the men reportedly told the daughter that it was “rude” to wear such a shirt. Police later said they arrested the man because he moved in too close to their security zone, and then subsequently fined him for an old jaywalking offense. Police also prevented a TV cameraman from filming the whole scene (Apple, photos, Aug. 31). Later they claimed they mistook his camera for a “black shadow” and reacted instinctively.

re: china's virulent nationalism

http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/09/when_china_rules_the_world_well_see.html

One key difference is that China is not a nation-state but should be understood as a "civilization-state." Its identity was formed well before China assumed the status of a nation-state. What defines the Chinese, therefore, is not their sense of nationhood but their sense of civilization, a civilization frequently claimed to have existed continuously for the past 5,000 years. Another difference, says Jacques, is that China is increasingly likely to revert to an ancient conception of its East Asian neighbours as tributary-states rather than as nation-states. Until little more than a century ago, China was organised in relation to these other peoples. Yet another difference is that there is a distinctively Chinese attitude to race and ethnicity. Unlike the world’s other most populous nations, the Chinese do not acknowledge or seek a multiracial character. The Han Chinese, comprising a majority of some 92%, believe themselves to comprise a distinct race whose superiority, when a long view is taken, they regard as self-evident. In this view, Western ascendancy is a recent and brief anomaly, following which China will return to its natural position at the centre of the world. It is this latter point which gives rise to one of Jacques' most compelling concepts: the "middle kingdom mentality."

(can you tell I'm catching up on my google reader feed)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/09/chinas-iceland-moment.html

happy midautumn festival ya'll

that martin jacques book got a fair amount of attn here a couple of yrs ago

i guess it's useful that he calls into question the durability of the westphalian order but he does seem like an old trot axegrinder and probably not /that/ literate wrt to china

yeah wouldn't be surprised if the book was an attack on the_west w/ china as a useful vague placeholder threat/alternative

bestseller china books are shit and no one writing them is "/that/ literate wrt to china." martin jacques misunderstands chinese history and misunderstands contemporary ideological and cultural trends in china. i think.

i think this is worth reading:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:RG8GH6hRllIJ:docs.china-europa-forum.net/s12a_zhang_yongle_-_patters_of_chinese_thought.pdf+THE+FUTURE+OF+THE+PAST+wang+hui&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESggz1UE0tS5j_dbgDjNGenE7HPRAcYN5uuh8MTItC4oZ-hkoFi3sMX3w7__qxBSs4HD20BLVyv1kqxDrUUykcod_QJWuxHt-P8HeA7V0jRak9WpFTt7mXeZp5E5EfVgknnqSRVg&sig=AHIEtbS5EbMmd0cDwlStayZp02hLQM5tmQ

i noticed a while ago how many ppl write wrt to and now im doing it too oh well

it's a useful new prep. phrase and serves as a more intellectual signal than 'about'

dylannnn I'd be interested in hearing more about your criticisms of jacques (I haven't actually read his book, just thought the book review/summary raised interesting points)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

what would you say your stance is wrt wrt

there are lots of talking point china economy criticisms. but bestseller china books tend to ignore them: horrible horrible corruption, inefficiency and lack of innovation, an export oriented economy with household consumption consistently hovering around 30% of gdp, a fucked up relationship between china's banks and its state owned enterprises which has led to questionable investment and a lot of unpaid debt, the destruction of the country's air and water, the increasing inability to secure resources, a huge gap between rich and poor. china can't keep growing without heavy duty restructuring.

but beyond the economy. china is not building its growth on an ancient indigenous philosophy or a radically different view of modernity.

china's elite are reading neoliberal economists not mencius.

"confucianism" should be banned from discussions of china. it should be banned from all discussions. it is meaningless, except as vague shorthand for "traditional philosophy of east asia" by people that are unfamiliar with the traditional philosophy of east asia.

china's development will definitely follow its own unique path. but its current model is fucked and can never be successful in the long run. even now, there is widespread protest.

jacques is quick to point to the racial makeup of china, its strong nationalism. but china is not racially homogeneous and pushing the nationalist myth is a project that the central government spends billions on. where we see a big ol country called china, there has been 6000 years of warring competing states.

south korea is another place that's racially homogeneous and makes a big deal of it. south korea is pretty fucking nationalistic. south korea is culturally distinct from the west. south korea has its own unique cultural institutions. but it also has rule of law and democracy and cleaves to a vaguely western idea of modernity (if that matters).

yeah I do agree with a lot of that. but I am interested in how chinese people conceptualize china, and, if we're being real, how han people conceptualize china, because that's what counts right now right? like it's interesting to me that you ask any US citizen about the history of the US, they are probably going to start more or less in the 1700s - maybe some discussion of amerigio vespucci and all that but our conception of the US as a modern nation state nicely dovetails with the enlightenment. and if you ask any chinese person about the history of China, the rote answer is going to be that China has thousands of years of history - four thousand sometimes! and they're going to start talking about 秦始皇 and all that.

and yeah I totally agree with you about the nature of china's nationalist myth - but you can't deny that in today's age more than ever the chinese government has exactly the right tools and promulgation techniques to make sure that gets indoctrinated everywhere!

i guess i'd just argue that the average chinese people know very little about the ideological debates that really shaped china as it looks like right now, post 79. the 5000 years of grand chinese history conception has very, very little to do with what actually guides the nation. even if folky nationalism and qinshihuang are important myths. major disconnection between 老百姓 conception of china and elite level ideology. i guess similar to american grassroots rightwing people being disconnected with actual nuts and bolts ruling neocon ideology. i don't know if i phrased that in a way that makes sense to anyone but me.

yeah. thinking back I think it's probably enough to acknowledge that there is going to be a pretty big cultural gap between china and the_west, and it doesn't really matter what the cause of that gap is, and it's tough to talk about these subjects without accusations of essentialism. or to look to china's conception of itself might be turning over the wrong stone.

http://www.danwei.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/9-11-on-China-e1315963034827.jpg

on 9/11 of course

that guy otm

http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/13/china-cracks-down-on-gutter-oil-a-substance-even-worse-than-its-name/

"China consumes about 22.5 million tons of cooking oil annually, and as much as one out of every ten restaurant meals has been cooked in waste oil(..)"

that's why chinese food tastes better in china

Source: South China Morning Post (9/14/11):
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a
0a0/?vgnextoid=bfd67c5fe7662310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News

Brainwashing the only option, says writer
Agence France-Presse in New York

Banned Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, speaking in the United States for the
first time since fleeing his country, said on Tuesday his only crime was
to resist "brainwashing".

Liao, who spent four years behind bars for writing the poem "Massacre"
about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, said personal freedom in China
is only granted to those who surrender their spiritual freedom.

"In China, the biggest problem is brainwashing. If you don¹t have your
memory, or your conscience, everything is possible ­but you have to forget
about your personal stories," Liao told an event of PEN, a group of
authors active on human rights, at New York¹s New School.

Liao said he would have "lived a very good life in China" if he had
stopped trying to think independently.

The author of the newly released God is Red: The Secret Story of How
Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China said he is not a
political activist, but was persecuted simply for telling the stories of
ordinary people.

In his earlier book, The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China From the
Bottom Up, he recounted tales of people on the margins of the economic
superpower¹s deeply repressed society.

"I first started wanting to tell stories when I was in prisons. I was
locked up with unique people," he said, including traffickers, murderers
and thieves. "Gradually my brain was turning into a tape recorder."

"When I was first locked up I was a political prisoner. I didn¹t think I
had anything in common," he said, speaking through a translator.

"I felt like my brain was exploding. I couldn¹t even take their stories
any more. But it was like the only path for them: they wanted to tell
their stories to me and they wanted to tell me before they were executed."

"All the people I have interviewed, they have no interest in politics, but
they want the freedom to express themselves."

In his new book, God is Red, Liao explores the way that rural Chinese defy
official restrictions to follow Christianity.

Liao said that while he is not a Christian, he admires their determination
and faith.

Like other forms of self expression, all religions are permitted on one
condition: "First you have to believe in the Communist Party".

"If you are willing to pursue your freedom, seek out your freedom, then
you could be in trouble," he said.

Liao, who also played traditional Chinese instruments at the PEN gathering
and gave an intense recitation of "Massacre," is renowned for his
straightforward approach to his subjects, his quiet humour and courage.

Novelist Salman Rushdie introduced the Chinese writer on stage as one of
"the few people who are the real writers" around the world.

Liao did not discuss details of his departure from China earlier this
year, when he walked into Vietnam before making his way to Germany.

However, his more personal stories are becoming known through a prison
memoir, which has sold briskly in Germany, but has yet to be translated
into English.

He told the audience on Tuesday that he was known to other prisoners as
"the big lunatic" for his defiant gestures.

When a thief on death row asked him to organise for him "the same memorial
service as accorded to a senior Chinese leader, Liao obliged, writing a
eulogy that got him sent into solitary confinement as a punishment for 23
days. "That¹s why they called me the lunatic."

During his three days in New York, Liao said he had been stunned to find a
huge immigrant Chinese community in Flushing, an area of Queens. "I¹ve
never seen so many Chinese," he said to laughter, before describing how he
ran into "swindlers" trying to sell fake phones.

"It feels like that¹s going to be China without communism," he said to
more laughter.

China this year launched one of its biggest crackdown on dissent in years
in response to a wave of pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East.

Acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei was detained for nearly three months and last
year¹s Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, a writer and activist who has
been active in the Independent Chinese PEN Center, remains in prison.

Liao was barred from attending literary festivals in New York and Sydney
earlier this year prior to his self-exile.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/world/asia/china-sentences-four-uighurs-to-death-over-unrest.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world/asia/axe-wielding-farmer-goes-on-killing-spree-in-central-china.html

par for the course. thank god for china's strict ban on guns.

http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4520

the attitude expressed by the farmers here is so typical. ugh

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/world/asia/kinmen-seeks-to-evolve-as-china-and-taiwan-improve-ties.html?pagewanted=all

I had no idea that kinmen even existed! :O

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/16/world/asia/0917taiwan.html

lol how the hell is this still in Taiwan?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/16/world/asia/0917taiwan/0917taiwan-popup.jpg

yeah i tried to post the map and failed. it wd seem kinda difficult to defend no matter how many mines u laid down

100000 people live on that little thing!

I was v surprised to find out that this took place in the US

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/nyregion/couple-accused-of-stealing-food-money-from-red-apple-preschools.html

given that it seems every 3rd day a story comes out of china about some preschool principal feeding a class of 100 with 6 apples and pocketing the rest of the money

a lesser nation might see a conflict of interest in the directors of a chain of private preschools running a nonprofit school

smdh @ this as well

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-14/when-a-woman-dares-to-say-he-hit-me-in-china-adam-minter.html

In a Sept. 13 interview with China Daily, he said, "I hit her sometimes but I never thought she would make it public since it's not Chinese tradition to expose family conflicts to outsiders.”

fucking animal

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/asia/2011/09/09/ordos-boom-town-ghost-town

lol @ this

We ended up spinning around and around city blocks, searching for a store selling water. Eventually we found some - but not without the feeling we had gone on a treasure hunt. There is no major supermarket in Ordos, because not enough people live in the city.

This just seems nuts. I am neither an economist nor a dedicated, full-time financial reporter; but I do know Ordos is not habitable. The numbers might look good, but from a qualitative standpoint, there is a problem if you cannot buy bottled water around the corner. Something is just terribly wrong with this situation.

for reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h7V3Twb-Qk

ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

http://i.imgur.com/PaZcs.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Wikuo.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VVG2Q.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jVuPx.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6IfIN.jpg

...the new Harbin Pharmaceuticals Plant

not *so* infuriating when you realize that apple is doing the equiv

http://cdn.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1313264850-renderings-2-528x352.jpg

then again apple is the richest company in the world

http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=3791

lijia zhang responding to ai weiwei's beijing, plugging book

http://books.google.com/books/about/Streetlife_China.html?id=mN8Fn1w5VgwC

somehow reminded of this. i've liked this reader since i came across it. it halflooks like maximumrocknroll and half like a proper reader. good introduction and some of best writing on STREET LIFE in china. good stuff. check your local library.

haha, well she wasn't thrown into solitary confinement for 3 months! xp

I am picking this up from the library today

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520077966

gonna look for that streetlife book too

http://www.ted.com/talks/yasheng_huang.html

some older stuff

http://www.slate.com/id/2254176/

Even lesser disputes can lead to violence. My friend Wan Jia, a railway engineer, recently clashed with the workmen he hired to renovate his apartment. The contractor demanded an extra $1,000, and when Wan Jia refused to pay, he sent hired thugs to Wan Jia's office to intimidate him and follow him around. Wan Jia finally called the police.

But the police didn't care to get involved. They brought Wan Jia and the crew of thugs to the police station and left them alone in a room. "They said, 'It's your problem; deal with it yourself,' " Wan Jia told me. "As long as no one gets hurt too bad, the police don't care."

With no one to rely on but himself, Wan Jia called his wife and told a white lie about needing to take a last-minute business trip. He dug his heels in and stayed in the room for the next 26 hours. His opponents worked in shifts; at one point, Wan Jia found himself facing off against 10 men. But in the end, the contractor's general manager agreed to negotiate a new price—and Wan Jia was able to go home.

fucking crazy

has anyone read tom scocca's book "beijing welcomes you"? im intrigued by it cuz i love scocca's writing but i dont know anything about china/beijing

I don't know who that is but my friend recommended this book

http://site.whenabillionchinesejump.com/

dunno what he's like as a writer but it's supposedly super interesting from an environmental pov (for example, under a 'green GDP' calc China's GDP is actually decreasing per year)

reading an excerpt on slate and it seems pretty good

obv if you have no direct experience with a country you are going to be constrained to the lens of the person who's writing, could be good or bad

For some reason I couldn't imagine, deep deposits of broken eggshells filled the hollows in the dirt, along with broken bricks and burnt-out fuel cakes of pressed coal.

this is otm though, for some reason every refuse heap in china has a layer of broken brown eggshells on top, dunno why

I wonder if there are still de Tocqueville style "my first experience of America" books being published abroad

has anyone read tom scocca's book "beijing welcomes you"? im intrigued by it cuz i love scocca's writing but i dont know anything about china/beijing

― max, Sunday, September 18, 2011 9:17 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah been wondering too

you guys should read it, tell me what you think

most travel writing is just "man this place is really weird...and cool...and scary!" tho

well its not just travel writing, he lived there for a couple years during the run-up to the olympics. and iirc his wife is chinese, or chinese-american.

yeah but ~how much can you ever really know about someone else~