张看·五
After taking several hours of high-speeded dynamic inter-cities train from Hangzhou, I arrived Nanjing in the late afternoon. Not difficult to take on the subway to the Gulou (Drum Tower 鼓楼) North Station, where the hostel is just nearby. Thanks to some of my friends from PLA (People’s Liberation Army 人民解放军), I could have free accommodation by living in some military unit hostels. A Mongolian dancing student treated my first dinner in NJ. Different to her ethnicity, She is major in modern dance, rather than the folk dance. She invited me to her hometown inner Mongolia some days later. After some walks at the midnight, we said goodbye at the cross of the main street.
I had no plan to visit NJ, at first I would like to take a slow train to Huangshan but I was sure I didn’t have good preparation to there I longed for. I just chose NJ randomly and even I didn’t expect here will be my final point of my mainland adventure. And because of such kind of no planning, I tried to be a normal local in this old capital.
NJ is claimed to be the capital of six dynasties in Chinese History, which was the love of the constitutional rebels. Dr. Sun Yat-sen of KMT and Hong Xiuquan （洪秀全）, a heterodox Christian and the king of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom（太平天国）. Located in the Yangtze River Delta and never can be peaceful with power struggling and wars. One day before night, I dawdled to go through the residential area and visited the Xuanwu Lake （玄武湖） Park. I walked along the old city wall and just crossed the Xuanwu Gate （玄武门） and its Lake. The old vestiges on the wall liked to tell the stories not only wars, but the modernization of recent China in 19 century and the New Imperialism of European countries and Japan.
“Strong ships and powerful armament” (chuanjianpaoli 船坚炮利) was the fundamental goal of the “self-strengthening movement” during he late Qing Dynasty. “Chinese learning as essence and Western learning as function” (Zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong 中学为体，西学为用) or the “Total Westernization” （全盘西化） dominated the century-long discussion among the elites and intellectuals, from methodology to ideology, about how China to be modernized. About a hundred year ago, China involved in an international argument of Treaty of Versailles and led to “May Fourth Movement”（五四运动）. Facing unfair treaty and being colonized, the scholars and youth were struggling which way China should go, neotraditionism or westernization, and these kind of doubts made the statesmen felt uncertain. Although these kinds of doubts still in the heart of some Chinese people, people will not believe that zero-sum is the best way to respond the rapid development of their country and the effect of globalization. In other words, nobody can walk with one leg.
Have stayed in NJ for eight days, I did not plan for any sightseeing, but just took a visit of Confucius Temple （夫子庙） and Qinhuai River（秦淮河）. When I was young, I had read a lot of poems and fictions about the nightlife of the river and the history behind. Several centuries ago, brothels were everywhere and the intellectuals (or were called as the “emperor’s students”天子門生) would have boating with prostitutes, where the venue of imperial examination for the whole country was just next to there. The centre of night life was not only some business to provide hospitality to the examinees from all parts of the country, but also another kind of emotional support to the elites who failed the exam. Scholars who had good knowledge and literary talent would write poems to celebrate the good time, to express the hard feelings of career failure, or mock the corruption of the government. The decadent scene was never brought down the curtain, instead of a more kitschy and tumultuous night market with many western chains of fast foot or coffee shops. I took my dinner at a Chinese fast food shop with some so called NJ little dishes. The unfriendly waitresses seemed like to tell you this tough day would only ended unless you finished your last order.
Before I left Qinhuai River, I would like to take a walk to the Black Gown Lane （乌衣巷）, where the mansions of notable families from Eastern Jin Dynasty is still here. Famous poet Liu Yuxi （刘禹钖）of the Tang Dynasty had written a sad piece when he visited the Lane. Now the dark and short lane was just a backstreet to this flourishing night market, and it seemed to reflect my silent towards the prosperous People’s Republic of Capitalism.
In the daytime, I used to walk around the streets of the hotel. There is an open market near there, with dozens of stalls with hawkers on the both sides along a long avenue. It was not that crowded and noisy before sunset, some residents were driving back home to their apartments. It was the season for harvest of watermelon, and you could see small pyramids were built by round, green-skinned balls everywhere. Yes, It was summer, a hottest summer which I was redundant. I lost my feeling to everything and just liked being exiled from my home. At that moment, I was there in NJ as a stranger, a stranger speaks and writes the same language with the local but you are always a outsider. Loneliness liked a hard beat from my back all the times, especially you were missing someone. According a small board at the dark corner of the front of the avenue, here was a high residential area which living with the high-ranking officials and majors of KMT before 1949. However, there was only a old house still here which belonged to a famous painter Fu Baoshi（傅抱石）. I had studied about his works when I took a course of Chinese modern arts during my undergraduate.
Anyway, bygone is bygone and I am easy to lost my focus when I am thinking about the history behind. Every night in NJ, I also picked the small restaurant in the open market. You can easy to find these kind restaurants called “Sha county’s snacks” （沙县小食）everywhere in China, that is claimed that the snacks are from a small county called “Sha” in Fujian. These restaurants are owned by sole traders but not only with their names, but the menu and the food are the same. You can imagine that some wholesale systems are running behind in the whole country and you can order the materials and have the setup. It is not some kind of joint business but you can easy to find the same standard of foods in every shop. I liked to order a soup with black chicken and Chinese medicine’s herbages, a bowl of small dumpling (huntun 馄饨) and a bowl of soup noodles. Cheap but good taste and you will feel satisfied and happy for the rest of the day.
In this trip, I got flu every time I arrived a new city. The temperature difference between day and night is great here, maybe it is an inland area. You will be sweating at noon but an afternoon drizzle will bring with cold air and wet in the night. I had a raincoat and a cap in my backpack but I don’t like any belonging when I am having a causal walk during the trip, even a long walk for the whole day. One day, I was on the main work in the district of the hotel near the peak hours after work. Suddenly, it was a heavy rain and I didn’t have my raincoat, so I needed to wait at a bus stop with a shelter. Office Ladies, or may be some securities from shopping malls, high schools’ students, middle-aged workers from the factories were all staying there, waiting the bus coming. I examined every faces with rain drops, the faces of ordinary people of the country I belong to, the statesmen that their previous generations, contributed to the modernization of the country, or suffered with the hard time in wars and political struggles, I felt so close, but also faraway. It doesn’t sound like la-di-da or affected, but you can only feel when you are the one within.
In the first stage of globalization during age of the discovery and later on, to the West, a story of China began with the tea leaves and the fine white porcelains with blue drawings. Different kinds of wars, unfair treaties, colonizations or civilization and ethnic destructions, which fueled and speeded up the modernization of the West. No empire or republic in the West was not relied on colonizing new founded lands or shipping slaves to suzerains as a free manpower. And during the Industrial Revolution, effect of overproduction had been offset by new search of raw materials and forcing open markets of the colonies, and sustains capital accumulation later to boost the capitalism and modernization of the West. Falling behind for a hundred years in the recent century, China can see as the biggest nation which was just a dependency of all developed countries. The recent 30 years after the open-door policy of China, the real modernization belongs to the well-being of the statesmen, which we can claim that the only modernization of great nation in the world human history, has a clean sheet that, without relying on colonization and foreign slaves.
The “peaceful raising” could be proven when we studied the history carefully, with no bias. However, the old powerful states of the developed world are in doubt, especially the neighbors of China and the US, which some people and politicians are still in the mindset of Cold War system. In the last decade, the Western Governments manipulated “democracy, human rights and legal reform” as the hegemonic discourse in the relationship with China. These three elements commonly claimed by the west as universal values that are shared by the global community, but the interpretation of the discourses should be seen as heterogeneous for different states’ situations. Thanks to the sustain development of globalization, prosper global trade and the financial crisis, the rules of game has been changed. The Lenovo’s Thinkpad and the Geely’s Volvo, China is becoming a talent game player of the global free market, or the system behind, capitalism.
The Washington Post had an interesting article which was published during the State Visit of President Hu to US this month. The article was not questioning what President Obama should raise in the concerns of democracy, human rights, legal reform and currency policy during the meeting with Mr. Hu, nevertheless, the author quoted the public speeches of Ms. Hillary Clinton in these years about the concerning of human rights in China, and tried to criticize the inconsistencies in Obama-Clinton administration’s approach. Ms. Clinton had many tough addresses about this issue, from the Google’s dispute with China to Noble Prize of Peace of Liu Xiaobo. But when Mr. Hu landed US, Ms. Clinton said on January 19, 2011,
“What I believe is that the United States must always stand for our values, and therefore we must raise human rights [with China], which remains at the heart of American diplomacy. But we cannot say that that’s all we’re going to be talking about, or the fact that we disagree there eliminates the need for us to work together on climate change, North Korea, Iran and so much else.”
But what exactly is the human right that remains at the heart of America diplomacy? Let’s see what Mr. Obama answered during the press conference with Mr. Hu, on January 19, 2011,
“…I absolutely believe that China’s peaceful rise is good for the world and it’s good for America. First of all, it’s good for humanitarian reasons. The United States has an interest in seeing hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty. We believe part of justice and part of human rights is people being able to make a living and having enough to eat and having shelter and having electricity.”
Making a living, having enough to eat, shelter to live and electricity. I miss Prime Minster Wen, and his famous words to answer the hopes of the statesmen, “having enough to eat and wear” (wenbao 温饱) and “feeling peace and dependable in heart” （xilitashi 心里踏实) My thought towards the different views of East and West about human rights doesn’t mean it is a non-issue. The trip to mainland I could see the poor, suffering, confused or depressed mass. I had spent few hours in Shanghai to visit one of the famous hospitals in the country, which I also did once in Beijing many years ago. I was not a patient but would like to understand the health system there. I also did these even in Hong Kong, so that you just take a seat in ER or outpatient clinic, you can see many stories.
Mr. Wen often mentions in front of the media that there are three difficulties to the citizen, especially for the rural area, going to school, having medicine care and employment. The huge population and the lack of infrastructure of the rural area should be the key reasons. Even in 2002, the government introduced “New Rural Co-operative Medical System” (NRCMS 新型农村合作医疗制度）and now covers the whole country since last year. With the central and provincial subsides and a contribution by the patient, the scheme hopes to cover 70-80% of the bill by the subsidies. However, the scheme is on voluntary based and we can still see the thousands cases that the poor has financial problems to have appropriate and instant treatments. The ill peasants usually travel thousands miles to the city-level hospital, looking for better consultation. But when they make this decision, they already had spent a lot of money, even in debt, in the town-level hospital.
Same case in the basic education policy, even the central government has increased billions dollars every years to the local budget, but stories about families with no money for their children to go to school still can be seen in the media. What is the problem exactly? The township and the county governments of the rural area are poor in governance. The local issues in the townships, counties and villages seldom bear in the heart of the officials. The central government abolished the 2,600-year-old agricultural tax in 2006 and provides aid to the state assistance to the central and western rural area. Such move may see as reducing the burden of the peasants, but as the agricultural tax has a crucial role in townships and villages which is one of the major income for the budget and there is lack of other income source or other tax bases to cover the local spending. The local officials need to seek for income and investment from other sources. Corruption and misappropriation of land lead to illegal seizure of land. According to the Development Research Centre of the State Council (国务院发展研究中心）, 80 million peasants lost their homes from 1996 to 2006.
Hundreds or more of stories have been reported or posted online about illegal seizure in recent years. “The death of Qian Yunkuai” （钱云会之死） should be the most discussed and concerned case on the internet and mass media in 2010. Mr Qian was the elected officer of one village in Yue Qing, Zhejiang （淅江乐清）. The case started in 2004, a power plant and other related construction had illegally seized the farmland of Mr. Qian’s village. Mr. Qian was a responsible officer who was chosen through the only democratic election in China, the village-level of election. He opposed through “Petitioning” (xinfang or shangfang 信访／上访 ) , which is the administrative system for hearing complaints and grievances from individual in PRC’s law. He was jailed five times during petitioning and last Christmas, he was killed in an accident by a construction vehicle mysteriously, and the vehicle belongs to the developer in the case which Mr. Qian took issue with.
Some photos had been posted online, which Mr.Qian’s body was under the wheel of the vehicle. Millions of posts were discussing about the mysterious death of Mr. Qian and most of the people believe that Mr. Qian was murdered. Many local media also reported this event and questioned the reason of death. Although the township and the city police claimed this was a normal accident, but this only fueled the anger of the mass. Major social media and portal sites have special page to keep concerning this case and already hit the nerve of the central government. On 26 January 2011, the state-controlled TV station CCTV aired a news report to investigate the case with interviewing different parties like Mr. Qian’s son, the eyewitnesses, the police and the related persons of the developer. The TV program was trying to revisit the case and ask the audiences to be rational. It also criticized the local media and the social media exaggerated (chaozuo 炒作) the case, although the tone was calm and warm.
We don’t know what will happen next to the case and the real reason of the death of Mr. Qian, but here we can come across what the West asks for towards China, “democracy, human rights and legal reform”. The case is related to several issues for the modernization and development of China in the future. How democracy can be implemented and extended further to township level, county level and prefecture level (地级市）, or NGO and legal personality can be empowered (like neighborhood property-owner committees 居委会）?law has protected the right of the elected person or the voters, even the normal people? These three issues are questioning and answering the requests from the West, and these three items are correlated as showing in the case of Mr. Qian.
For democracy, many comments stated that Taiwan is a good model of democracy in Chinese society. However, I believe the Taiwan’s model is not appropriate for mainland in two reasons. First, the traditional culture and values of Chinese somehow was destructed in a great extent during the Cultural Revolution, and these have a great different to the Neo-Confucianism which KMT and Chiang Kai-shek persevering protected and indoctrinated in Taiwan. The Confucian view of state system violates the original spirit of socialism. Another reason is the ideology of independence in Taiwan distorted the current election system and its operation.
To the West, the Great Depression in the last decade like no intention to end, and the collapse of economics only shows the governance crisis of the democratic politics, or the welfare states. Great deficits, inflexible bureaucracies and investment policies only tell the narrow competitions between 2-parties politics in major western countries are the elections for the relatives “not the worst” to run the countries. To this point, I am not a Leninist for supporting one-party state. I can say I am a new leftist, believe the Progressive Politics, or Progressivism. The society can be changed, reformed and better by empowering individual rights and responsibility (or legal personality) or the election reforms like proportional representation. It is hard to achieve and I never underestimate the complication to process “Everyday Life Democracy” This is what I reflect to the question I have asked, how democracy can be implemented on the level of local government, and how the empowerment to build up a civil society. As the biggest one-party state, these relatively are easy goals that can be achieve.
For human rights, I still agree with Mr. Wen, reform the welfare system, improve living standard and increase in the household’s income. However, Mr. Wen also warned “China’s economy and national modernization process would be jeopardized if the country failed to undertake systemic political reform.” [1] in last summer. In the case of Mr. Qian, we can see the risk which Mr. Wen worried.
The goal of modernization, which declared by the latest three generations of the CCP’s leadership and started by Deng Xiaoping, is China has to build “a Moderately Prosperous Society” in 2020. Deng asserted that China’s GNP per capita has to meet US$800 in the late 20 Century. For “a Moderately Prosperous Society”, One of original concepts is from old master piece of Confucianism “Book of Rites” ( Liji礼记）,
“[Rulers] secure the display of righteousness, the realisation of sincerity, the exhibition of errors, the exemplification of benevolence, and the discussion of courtesy, showing the people all the normal virtues. Any rulers who did not follow this course were driven away by those who possessed power and position, and all regarded them as pests.”(The Conveyance of Rites, li yuan 「禮運」)
“The exhibition of errors” is still not far from perfect as “showing the people all the normal virtues”, even the economic target now has been doubled, or further, which Deng expected. Economic growth cannot benefit to all classes of the society and such rapid development will lead to different class conflicts and social problems. Nevertheless, CCP’s leadership never underestimated and aggressive policies have been introduced to the different classes within the urban, or the gap between urban and rural, southern and western. Exhibiting errors seems still a sensitive issue to the CCP. IN the Confucianism major piece “Analects of Confusions“（论语）, a line can capture the hearts of Chinese, even now,
“I have heard that the lord of a state or a family concerns himself not with scarcity, but rather with uneven distribution, not with poverty but with discontent.” (Charter 16, Chief of the Ji Clan 季氏十六)
The uneven distribution and discontent is relied on the independent law system which judges for fairness and justice, and how the court and related law enforcement officer to interpret and execute. You will hard to imagine with a huge population, China has some 170,00 lawyers and thousands of law professions. A terrible insufficient only weaken the right of the statesmen, as John Locke said about civil society in his “Two Treatises of Government”, he stated “those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another” ( Chapter VII, “Of Political or Civil Society”) .
When the CCTV’s reporter asked Mr. Qian’s son, whether he believes his father’s death was an accident, or murder, his son said “I cannot say” (「我不好说」）. As you can see, how common for the original people in China that don’t believe the law and they have the right to appeal for injustice and unfair through the law. Even you believe in it, but the ending will be a tragedy at last. (赵连海) is an activist for parents of children harmed during the 2008 Chinese milk scandal. He used to work for the Food Quality and Safety Authority of China and his son became ill as a result of tainted milk. In 2010 he was sentenced to 2 1/2 years imprisonment for ‘disturbing social order’. [3] In this event, the plaintiff became a defendant and his lawyers faced different threats when they just took their duties. The rights protection (weiquan 维权) movement requests not only the legal reform, but the increase of law professionals and lawyers, the right is protected and nobody can threaten others to exercise their right.
The afternoon shower finally blew by the wind and my trip ended here in NJ. I left as a statesman, sharing glory and disgrace with my country. A piece of Byron is always remembered and I leave it to my love,
“Farewell, my young Muse! since we now can ne’er meet;
If our songs have be languid, they surely few:
Let us hope that the present at least will be sweet -
The present - which seals our eternal Adieu.” (Farewell to the Muse, 1807).
[1] ‘China’s Dilemma’ by George J. Gilboy and Eric Heginbotham, foreignaffairs.com October 14th 2010
[2] ‘China Court Jails Tainted-Milk Activist, Amnesty Says’, —Editors: Frank Longid, Douglas Wong, Matthew Brooker. businessweek.com, November 10th 2010
