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Characters followed before, but no more.
And I’m not talking about that bootleg copy of Adam Smith you bought on an overpass for ten kuai (down from fifty because you’re a guizi). I’m talking contemporary books, often with Western takes on China, translated into Chinese and published officially, on sale in Xinhua bookstores.
The answer is yes, as testified by the publication of this book* by the Oriental Publishing House (dongfang chubanshe) last spring - translated into Chinese by none other than Six contributor Jack. Jack worked on it for most of 2007, while still in full time study - I remember him asking me with great concern that summer if ‘council housing’ meant ‘parliamentary housing’ as he thought it did.
The Downing Street living conditions of Britain’s poorest rectified, Jack’s translation is thorough and faithful. But it’s no surprise, I guess, that the references to the 1989 student protests in the book are nowhere to be found. At the publishing house itself (hammer and sickle flag on the table right next to the communist stars), we were told this is because potential readers might not understand such references, or be offended by them, and therefore not buy the book.
This is of course complete rubbish if presented as the only reason for censorship. It was echoed again when I met up privately with a young Renmin University graduate who works at the publishing house: fear of losing profit was the motivation for cutting those bits out, not fear of political whiplash. She assured me there was no government interference at their editorial round table. She also repeated what her boss had said: that, “by the way”, the presentation of 6/4 in Western books tended to be very “bloodied”.
The publishing house also asked Jack to write a preface for the book. They clearly had in mind that he would distance their company from the ideas which were to follow. To this end, there are liberal reminders in the preface that the book is written “from the perspective of Western culture”, and Jack’s penultimate paragraph tells readers:
Many of the thoughts included in this book, it should be said, are relatively typical of the Western world, reflecting Western scholars’ outlook and their environment, and there are some points of view and statements that we cannot fully agree to. The translation and publishing of this book in China is only so that readers can open the window of understanding to the West, and to have a positive effect on advancing communication between the two sides.**
So the answer to my question is ‘yes’ but a cagey ‘yes’: Chinese translations of Western writings are the book, nothing but the book, but not necessarily the whole book. I gather that only very few Western books are actually banned from publication in China, including Bill Clinton’s My Life. [or that was what the publisher told me at the time, and turns out to be completely wrong, thus exposing my fact-checking nudity]
Still, in an ever opening China, it’s the ‘yes’ that counts and not its myriad qualifications.
*Update*: here’s an email from Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at UC Irvine and founding China Beatnik:
I’d amend [your post] a bit to say that almost anything can be published that isn’t specifically about China, with just some tweaks and cuts (and I’ve found it fascinating that for some time, Orwell’s work has been more readily available in China than tended to be in Central and Eastern Europe when under Communist Party rule). But as for books specifically about China, that’s a different matter. It is a hard thing to track, but certain subjects are off-limits, and sometimes it seems, a China specialist author is treated as non-suitable for translation no matter what he or she is writing about…
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* which, full disclosure, is written by my father
** originally: 本书蕴含的许多思想应当说在西方世界中是比较典型的，反映了西方学者自有的观角和他们的语境，有些观点和说法也是我们不能全面苟同的，翻译出版本书只是为读者了解西方打开一扇窗，对从方交流能起一定的促进作用。
Congratulations to Mary, just married. She met and got to know her groom to be - Adam, an American pastor in training - in Wenling, Zhejiang last year and they’ve had an internet relationship ever since. I always did wonder why she was online on Skype quite so much.
It was a simple Christian ceremony, held in a private restaurant room by an American priest flown up from Hong Kong - in Chinese (including translations of Christian hymns … Ni Zhen Wei Da! for How Great Thou Art!), presumably for the benefit of Mary’s parents and much to the chagrin of Adam’s mum who had to follow the bilingual program.
Mary and Adam are now off to honeymoon in Thailand before settling in Wuhan. I wish them every happiness, and wonder if they will still be living in China in six or seven years. This will be the last post on this blog about Mary.
Below is a new essay for 6 by Jack, with my thanks.
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The visits of US leaders to Beijing, including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Timothy Geithner, seem to show a fundamental change in Sino-American relations. As The New York Times put it:
China is growing more assertive on the international stage, and Washington is seeking to find ways to cooperate with Beijing on everything from economic reforms to climate change.
Washington is now showing the most kindness to Beijing, the only possible crutch in the eyes of American decision-makers to help the US out of the crisis. All of a sudden, the common model of past Sino-American engagement, that is ‘US pushes - China responds’, appears to be transforming with more weight on the side of China. In my opinion, the financial crisis has indeed heralded a period of transition for the balance of the two countries’ relationship, but a lot of questions are yet to be answered: what will be the result of the change? how long and how big will the change be? Facing such uncertainty, there is no room for complacency for the Chinese. On the one hand, within our capacity, we are facing a challenging task to find solutions to international issues. On the other hand, we should be fully aware of our own weaknesses and address them through deepening reform and opening-up.
First, the US, as well as other countries, expects more from China on the international stage. There are currently three hot issues between China and the US, namely, financial crisis, regional security and climate change. But it is very difficult for today’s China to resolve these problems.
On financial crisis, the US hopes that China could continue to buy its treasury bonds when Chinas large holdings of these assets are already on the verge of major devaluation. The US makes money simply by turning on its bank-note printing machine, while China is using the general public’s hard-earned money to buy them. This is not sustainable. But due to the close connection between these two countries, China will also suffer if the US economy collapses. China has proposed to strengthen the importance of Special Drawing Rights and accelerate the internationalization of RMB. How can we strike a balance between short-term and long-term solutions? This is a pressing issue for us to deal with.
On regional security, there has appeared a great uncertainty as DPRK withdrew from the six-party talks and Kim Jung-il identified his successor. In addition, ROK is having a big domestic problem after Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide. How much influence does China have over DPRK? What will happen in Kim Jong-uns DPRK? Can DPRK and ROK get together again? So many variables are looming before the Korean Peninsula could be denuclearized - daunting and complicated are the tasks for China.
On climate change, the US and China are trying to reach a common understanding before the Copenhagen conference late this year. Currently the 40% emission reduction goal raised by China seems to be too high for the U.S., while the mandatory reduction requirement proposed by the US is unacceptable for Beijing. The two countries are engaging intensively, and hopefully a deal can be brokered at the strategic and economic dialogue late July in Washington. There is an interesting point here. When calculating, China pays more attention to per capita figures while the US total numbers. Everything is small when divided by 1.3 billion, but big when multiplied by 1.3 billion. Based on total figures, China has become the biggest emitter, therefore should do more. However, when using per capita figures, every Chinese persons contribution to world GHG emission is very limited, so it is unfair and beyond Chinas capacity to shoulder the same responsibility as developed countries. A balance also needs to be struck here.
Therefore, in terms of the three biggest expectations placed on China by the US, we wish to do more, but we should not overrate ourselves when making commitments. A well-thought and carefully-crafted balance is badly needed between international responsibility and Chinas own interests.
Second, we should always bear in mind our own weaknesses. Thanks to reform and opening-up, China today has much stronger economic power than before. But we are still facing many difficult domestic problems, for example - at the macro level - to strengthen the rule of law and democracy, to carry out economic restructuring, to improve soft power; at the micro level, to address the very problems that the general public hates to see, including corruption, unemployment, and environmental degradation. Some of these problems, if not properly dealt with, may endanger what we have already achieved and destabilise our whole society.
Generally speaking, we cannot be more rational and down-to-earth. China is developing fast, but there is still a long long way to go. We are limited in our capacity and facing numerous domestic problems. China will never seek hegemony. This commitment is based not only on moral grounds, but also on realistic considerations. We should always work hard there is no room for complacency for the Chinese.
Over lunch with Mary the other day, she asked if Indian women really lead horrible lives. She’d read an article and seen some pictures along those lines … like this one:
Well, I’ve no idea of what life is like for women in India, but I think it’s interesting that that’s how they’re portrayed on a Chinese website - and how that view of Indian society filters through to Mary. Beijing-based journalist Pallavi Aiyar in her book Smoke and Mirrors talks about on-the-street Chinese impressions of Indian women being, in order: 1. surely they all sing and dance like in the films? 2. isn’t it very dirty there?
In any case, it got us talking about gender equality in China - the greatest legacy of the Mao era, after millenia of patriarchy. (Though there’s a Chinese proverb from way back in the day - yin sheng yang shuai - female strength/superiority over male.) I always thought that equality between the sexes was something admirable in modern Chinese society.
Then Mary told me of her job application last March to a coal mining engineering company. He had a strong CV, good experience etc. etc. But they told her outright that they didn’t want a girl. Their reasons were equally forthcoming: some kind of unease of sending women down the coal shafts, and also the other role was filled by a guy - meaning a separate dormitory had to be set up, at added cost to them.
She has a female friend who had almost exactly the same experience … and who has a boyfriend with exactly the same qualifications as them who got the job. So it’s depressing to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
With enough on our minds already about the day after tomorrow (and I don’t mean the film), here’s a little something on the day before yesterday. May 8th was the ten year anniversary of NATO missiles destroying the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, sparking big protests over here. For more, go no further than the China Beat’s reading list …
So I put three 10-years-on questions to Jack (whose previous essay on this blog has attracted some heated comments). If there were one sentence in the below I had to highlight, it would definitely be this one in his answer to question two:
On the economy, [the West] have been chanting free trade and free market all the time without recognizing Chinas full market economy status, but what they really like are protectionist policies and nationalization of banks.
So now it’s the West who are hidden communists?! How things change. Obama, you have your first Chinese criticism for being too left-wing…
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1. Do Chinese still remember and are offended by this bombing? (Also, do they believe now it was accident or intentional?)
Yes, we will always remember this bombing. In fact, it has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest humiliation to the Chinese people since reform and opening-up.
It was by no means an accident. In my opinion, it was masterminded by the military perhaps without the knowledge of the Clinton administration. Facts speak louder than words. In 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade, only seven bombs out of more than 5,000 missed their targets, and five of the seven were thrown at the Chinese embassy. The five bombs hit the embassy from different directions, destroying the compound. The pilot also paid special attention to the residence of the ambassador, with one bomb precisely hitting his residence. Fortunately, that bomb did not explode. The U.S. was claiming that they had the best pilot, the best weapon, and the best intelligence, so how could they make such a mistake? The explanation given by the American side was not convincing at all. They said they used an old map on which the Chinese embassy was not marked. But the truth of the matter is at that time the embassy was marked even on a tourist map of Belgrade. Anyone with a common sense would not believe in their explanation.
After the incident, President Clinton apologized for five times and wrote two letters of apology to President Jiang Zemin. So many apologies made some Chinese people think that maybe it was carried out by the military without the knowledge of top U.S. decision makers. The truth has not been revealed, and perhaps will never be. But based on facts, Chinese people believe it was absolutely intentional, and the only thing unknown is who was behind the attack.
2. What do you believe has changed now in the attitude of young Chinese (like those who protested 10 years ago against the USA) towards America?
Over the past decade, I think the young Chinese have gradually dropped their illusion of the U.S. and begun to view it more objectively.
After reform and opening-up, to be more specific in the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese people began to know more about the outside world. The prosperity of the west attracted the young people so much that all of a sudden everybody wanted to go abroad. At that time, we had a popular saying, Moon of the west is even more beautiful than that of China. Experiencing the sharp contrast between China and the west, many Chinese people became critical of China, perhaps in a cynical way.
However, when the Chinese embassy was bombed, many people began to think: is this the kind of democracy and human rights that we want to pursue? A number of other incidents followed suit, for example, the Iraqi war, Guantanamo Bay, biased report on 3/14 Tibetan incident, which compounded young peoples negative attitude towards the U.S. in specific and the west in general. Many young people tend to believe the west is very hypocritical and has its own weak links. On human rights and democracy, the West does not care about democracy and human rights in other countries at all, and what they care about most are their own interests, for example, oil, geopolitics. And they will bully the weak if the latter do not obey their orders. On the economy, they have been chanting free trade and free market all the time without recognizing Chinas full market economy status, but what they really like are protectionist policies and nationalization of banks.
Disillusionment aside, the Chinese have been fully aware of the strength of the west, especially in terms of science, technology and education. Today, still many young Chinese are going abroad for study. And more and more of them are coming back. China is short of qualified professionals. For example, recently the government has adopted a policy to build Shanghai into an international financial center by 2020, but one of the biggest bottlenecks is the lack of talents. Therefore, we still need to learn from the west for our own development.
Generally speaking, the young people in China have gradually turned to view the west, particularly the U.S., in a more objective way. We have become more aware of the hypocrisies and weakness of the west while better understanding their strength. I think this is one of the biggest changes over the past decade.
3. What might happen now if something similar happened again?
First of all, I think the probability of similar incident is very low at present given the higher recognition of China by the west and broader engagement with the west by China. This is a period of transition, from one that China was criticized on many fronts to one that China is expected to take more responsibility as a responsible stakeholder. It is vital for China to manage the transitional process by reducing misunderstandings, concerns, or even fears in the west, and it is equally significant for the west to adjust their attitude towards China and see China in light of its development.
If something similar happened again, the government and the public would respond in a resolute, serious and rational way. On the one hand, the government would use the diplomatic channel instead of military force. It might impose pressure on the U.S. government for apology and bringing those responsible into justice. It might also stop cooperation with the U.S. in some areas, such as trade, investment, foreign exchange reserve, and so on. Meanwhile, the Chinese government needs to strike a balance between giving the public some space to vent their anger while maintaining social stability and preventing the spread of nationalism. On the other hand, the public would become extremely angry and protest against the U.S., hopefully in a more rational way without throwing rocks at the embassy.
The following is an essay written by Jack, a Chinese friend of mine, who studies at Beijing’s Foreign Affairs University and will soon begin a career in China’s Foreign Ministry. He recently translated my father’s book Free World into Chinese (Ziyou Shijie) - which you can now find in Xinhua bookstores.
I will only preface the below with one comment. I believe that the majority of Westerners - even those with little to no knowledge of China - would regard Seeing Clearly’s comments not as seeing clearly at all, but as hyperbolic mouthing off. There are valid arguments on both sides of the fence to be made on the issues raised here, but loud minorities like Seeing Clearly (or his Chinese netizen equivalents) should most certainly not be the ones to make them.
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A China in the eyes of a Chinese
My friend Alec asked me to write an article on China. As a matter of fact, in this highly globalised world, there is still a lot of misunderstanding between China and the West. So I am writing this article to hopefully help our western friends know more about China.
About three months ago, the shoe-throwing incident against Wen Jiabao at Cambridge engendered a hot debate online. I followed the debate closely and read comments of some western friends who believed that they knew a lot about China. But their biased comments made me realize that the information they received was very distorted, thus giving them a wrong impression on China. In the following are comments made by a netizen called Seeing Clearly after the show-throwing incident on the website of Christian Science Monitor. His views are what I think shared by some other western friends. I have responded to them one by one with the purpose of showing a true China to our western friends.
Seeing Clearly has the following comments on China:
- To all those zealots so keen to rush to the defence of the Chinese leader, did it ever occur to you that in China anyone who attempts to protest either disappears or is stalked for months by the secret police there?
- Do you know that Google colludes with the Chinese government to censor internet content there?
- Do you know that Nike and other sportswear manufacturers contract out production of their goods to vast enterprise zones in China and other far eastern countries, where workers live in shacks or converted Pigstys, and have to work up to 16 hour shifts in vast temporary warehouses for a few cents/yen a day, because they are not allowed to have a union represent them?
- If they try to set up a union, all those involved are instantly dismissed, meaning theyre likely to become homeless and end up begging? If anyone persists in unionising, the contractor (i.e. the multinational making out the orders, whoever they may be), cancels the contract, dismantles the warehouse and goes off to another enterpise zone in another country, leaving the workers jobless.
- Did you know that any visitors to China wishing to do media coverage of the area have to get offical (Ed: sic) permission to do so, their coverage is vetted by the government and they are tailed wherever they go by secret police?
- Did you know that any Free Tibet protests within China are mercilessly crushed not only by the police but by the military, and anyone thought to be an organiser of said protests is imprisoned and tortured?
- Did you know that the religion Fulun (Ed: sic) Gong is outlawed in China and practitioners are persecuted?
- I have absolutely no gripes at all with the citizens of China, and I am no racist, but you have to face facts, Chinas goverment (Ed: sic) does not believe in free speech in the way that we do, whatever PR they happen to be putting out at the moment.
- In fact, my comment on this article in China would probably result in my arrest and disappearance.
As a Chinese, I really feel that our western friends should come to China and learn more about this country, instead of being misled by some questionable sources and materials.
To the questions raised by Seeing Clearly, which I believe show, to some extent, the biased views held by some western friends, I would like to respond one by one.
First, if we attempt to protest in China, we will not either disappear or be stalked for months by secret police. What matters is the way we protest. For those who take violent means like burning shops and hurting or even killing innocent people, they will be prosecuted in China, as in any civilized nation, simply because they violate laws. However, if we take civilized ways to make our voice heard, the government will listen to us and get the problem solved. For example, there was a famous incident in recent years, called PX incident in Xiamen city, where many Xiamen citizens organized a big walk in protest against a governments decision to establish a PX factory there, because that would be harmful to the environment. These people informed each other of this activity through short messages and internet bulletin boards, and walked together with slogans calling for stopping building this factory. As a result, the government listened to their appeals and stopped the factory which was expected to create billions of dollars for the locality. Many incidents like this have happened in China. The way that the Chinese government handles them has been changing for the better, and the civil society in China is also learning to carry out more acceptable and effective campaigns to express their views. As a result, the interaction between the government and the civil society is becoming better and better.
Second, censorship used to be, and to some extent is, a problem in China. But the Chinese government has been relaxing its regulation on the society and making itself more transparent. It would be a more reasonable and objective way to look at a country by taking account of its history, tradition, culture and status quo. As Wen Jiabao put it, we are encouraged to see China in the light of her development. Feudalist society was in place for thousands of years in this country, and regulating the idea of the public for the sake of social stability has been a normal practice for Chinese rulers, be it right or wrong in the eyes of western democracies. Recent years have witnessed dramatic changes in this aspect, particularly after SARS incident in 2003. Censorship has been relaxed faster than many Chinese expected. The coverage on Wen Chuan earthquake and Beijing Olympic Games was so transparent that helped China earn applause of the whole world. In addition, CCTV news at 7 p.m., which has been the official and most authoritative news for the Chinese people, broadcast the whole footage of shoe-throwing at Wen Jiabao at Cambridge. If we do some research, we will find out that every country has censorship. Governments ban contents that are in violation of laws in their countries. For example, the Chinese government has been banning pornographic websites and websites doing propaganda of Tibetan secession. This kind of censorship has won great support from the Chinese people. Freedom is not absolute or without limits, so the key point is to strike a balance. And this is the direction that we are moving toward.
Third, Seeing Clearly depicted a grim picture of the Chinese labor, but the fact goes in the opposite direction. On the one hand, labor-intensive industries are what China needs at the current stage, largely due to employment and education considerations. China has a population of 1.3 billion, and urbanization is an irreversible trend, meaning more and more rural residents are migrating to urban areas. But due to lack of educational resources, these people dont have high enough education, and many of them even havent finished high school. Labor-intensive industries could provide jobs to these less-educated people. When these people get jobs in cities, they need to start from the scratch, resulting in poor living conditions. And the government has been carrying out measures to accommodate the needs of the migrant workers, for example, setting up affordable residential areas for them and providing accessible education to their children. On the other hand, the Chinese government enacted a very strict labor law in recent years in an effort to eliminate acts harmful to the interests of migrant workers, such as delay of payments. As a result, some multinationals are leaving China, simply because the cost of labor in China has been unaffordable. We can find a lot of such examples in Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong, as well as many other provinces which used to be heaven for multinationals to build manufacturing centers.
Fourth, unionizing is a trend in China in recent years. For example, union members in Walmart negotiated with the company on their payment. Many companies in China are having strong unions to represent the interests of workers. In addition, the media and the civil society have been doing a better and better job to help the vulnerable and disadvantaged workers. For example, a group of university students from Hongkong revealed the bad labor conditions in Nine Dragons Paper company, a leading paper-making company in China. This company has been under severe criticism and forced to make changes.
Fifth, journalists dont need to get official permission to report in China, nor will they be vetted or tailed by anybody, according to a provision issued on Jan. 1st, 2007. If we ask our western journalist friends based in China this question, I believe they will tell us how big the changes are in recent years.
Sixth, on the question of Tibetan protesters, echoing my first point, we need to differentiate among the protests. Protests without violence are allowed in China, as in the rest of the world, for example, the Xiamen PX incident, Chongqing taxi incident. However, violent protests, as what happened in Tibet on March 14th, are outlawed, which is the same as the rest of the world. Criminals must be prosecuted, simply because they burned houses and hurt people, for example, some protesters even beat Jin Jing, a handicapped girl in wheelchair, to grab the Olympic torch during the relay in Paris. These people must be criminalized, because their acts are against human conscience and violate laws.
Seventh, Falun Gong is not a religion. Their leader Li Hongzhi used techniques to make fake pictures, in which he was sitting in a lotus like a saint. He didnt allow practitioners to take medicine, because practicing FaLun Gong would be enough to cure their diseases. However, records showed that Li Hongzhi himself went to hospitals when he was ill. Lies like these are numerous. Some practitioners even killed themselves in order to find the so-called Falun, meaning a sacred circle in Chinese, in their bodies. China bans cults that lead people to commit suicide and make them perverted, but we respect real religions. In China, there are over 100 million religious believers. As an Olympic volunteer working for the Kenyan team, I was able to see that even the Olympic village has a religious center, providing service for athletes and officials.
Last but not least, we will certainly not be arrested or disappear due to making comments. China recently adopted its Human Rights Action Plan, which clearly protects the right of comments.
Generally speaking, I admit that there is still a long way to go for China in all aspects. We welcome criticisms which can press us to move forward. But criticisms should be based on sources which reflect the real condition in this country. A big problem I am finding in western countries is that many western friends are criticizing China based on totally wrong information, and this will make our misunderstanding even worse. Dear Seeing Clearly, as well as other western friends who are holding similar views on China, you may not know as much as you thought or see as clearly as you expected. Please come to China and see this country with your own eyes, you will find that many of the views or images that you once held on this country have been wrong. And Im sure you will like the real China.
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