Chinese Nationalism

A veteran American China watcher assesses: "If they ever did have a free election here, the Chinese Communist Party would win 70% of the vote."

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A veteran American China watcher, fluent in the language, many years in the country, assesses: "If they ever did have a free election here, the Chinese Communist Party would win 70% of the vote." From universal abject poverty three decades ago, the Chinese government has delivered astounding wealth for a few (there are an estimated 300 billionaires in Shanghai alone), affluence for many (600,000 estimated millionaires), unthought of material comforts for the mass of the population (400 million cellphone users), and material sufficiency for just about everyone: famine has been banished and despite environmental problems, life expectancy is high and rising.

Obviously, I have no way to begin to gauge what "ordinary Chinese" think.

But here's a telling experience that tends to confirm the veteran's observations:

On our first day in Beijing, my traveling companion Ruy Teixeira and I joined an online internet chat at Hangqui.com, described to us as the country's 5th biggest political website. The site appeals to Chinese nationalists, and within seconds of the commencement of the chat, the board was lit up with angry anti-American questions. Why does the United States interfere with China's currency? Why do we sell arms to Taiwan? (My answer to that last: Why does Taiwan feel it needs to buy arms?)

It would be unwise to over-generalize from this experience. I'm reliably told that the government pays students, called "50-centers" because they collect half a yuan each time, to post pro-regime comments on websites. They get paid extra if they can post the first three immediately after an article appears, so as to shape the ensuing discussion. If true, this seems an unnecessary precaution.

At Macau University, in the autonomously run former Portuguese colony, the predominantly Mainland students expressed similar sentiments. Why did President Obama say that the United States would not accept second place status behind China - was he plotting to deny China's role in the world?

Arriving for a TV interview, we find our studio in use by an hour long special broadcast in Arabic. The host semi-ironically explains: "You see China's global ambitions."

I don't take the anti-Americanism very seriously as a challenge to the United States. It seems to flare brightest precisely on issues where blame would fall on the Chinese government if it were not somehow diverted outward: If the Chinese currency appreciated, domestic real estate prices would decline and young Chinese would find it easier to buy apartments and find wives; the main obstacle to Taiwan reunification is not American-purchased weaponry, but Taiwan's unwillingness to submit to one-party rule, etc. They blame the U.S. most where otherwise they must blame their own rulers.

But what is interesting about this reaction is precisely how eager the nationalists are to avoid blaming their own rulers. That's not fear speaking: so long as they do not publish them in a mass media form, young Chinese seem to feel no hesitation at all about saying whatever they like about any subject at all, including Tibet, Taiwan, and Falun Gong.

No, young nationalists hesitate to criticize their own government because (1) they share the widespread feeling that on balance, their government has done a good job improving their lives (China is on track to 12% growth in 2010!) - and (2) over-emphatic criticism would cost them their audience by pushing them far out of the mainstream of Chinese opinion.

I shared a meal here with a highly educated woman in the arts. American-educated, English-speaking, progressive-minded. We talked about the burden of censorship in the arts - and she bristled. 'If you offend the authorities, you are just stupid. Everybody knows where the lines are, why cross them? Our idea of freedom is different from yours, why can’t you accept that?" She was no apologist for the regime, but she couldn't bear to hear criticism from the outside. As a girl, she'd known what it was to be hungry. She lived now in a comfortable house in what had once been farmland where peasants pulled their own ploughs because they could not afford draft animals. Life for her now is as different from her girlhood as heaven is from earth. Go try to persuade her to vote against the incumbents!