The Cleveland of Asia: A Journey Through China’s Rust Belt [World Affairs Journal]
A lengthy account of a trip through China two years ago. There’s some interesting things that we don’t usually see in the US.
On politics:
Not that the Chinese I talked to were taciturn. They were forthcoming enough about their government, but they didn’t care much about the political theory of it. Tom said, “Their attitude is, ‘Shhh, politics is sleeping, don’t wake it up.’”
On the rule of law:
“Here’s where one guy threw a wrench at me,” Tom said as we climbed the tower to the blast furnace.
“What’d you do?”
“I tossed him down the stairs,” Tom said. “Rule of law is the cornerstone of capitalism.”
(When was the last time you heard an American use the phrase “rule of law?”)
On the secret police:
Mr. Feng, sitting next to me, spoke better English than I do anyway. He went to the London School of Economics. He was full of jokes about the government in Beijing, its muddles and its meddling. These sent the local Party functionaries into helpless laughter. Mr. Feng proposed ganbei after ganbei, pouring and emptying glasses of scotch. He had the kind of personality—both engaging and disarming—that could get you talking to him about anything, if you could get a word in edgewise.
[snip]
“Who is Mr. Feng?” I asked Tom. I examined the business card Mr. Feng had given me, printed with his vague title at a vaguely named trading firm.
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “But when there’s trouble with the government, with regulation, bureaucracy, or courts, you go to him. The problem disappears. I think he’s secret police.”
Pretty much the opposite of the usual role of secret police. Ever hear of the FBI getting the government to leave someone alone?
On Tiananmen Square:
When Mai and I were back in Hong Kong, I mentioned to Tom that the whole time we’d been on the mainland I’d hardly heard the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 mentioned.
“That’s no surprise,” Tom said. “Tiananmen Square is where the abdication of the last emperor was proclaimed in 1912. It’s where the student demonstrations, which led to the formation of the Chinese Communist Party, were held in 1919. It’s where the Japanese occupation government announced its East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, where Mao declared victory over the Kuomintang in 1949, and where a million Red Guards swore loyalty to Mao during the Cultural Revolution. When the Chinese see a bunch of people gathering in Tiananmen Square, they don’t go all warm and fuzzy the way we do. The Chinese think, ‘Here we go again.’”