一诺：如何对老外解释中国？China in 2016: A Random Walk in a Confusing Time
题图: Fuling, the "River town" in 2013, from National Geographic.
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今天这篇文章是昨天我发给盖茨基金会同事的，一年来每两周一封的“Get Smart on China” 的系列邮件的最新一封的编辑版。有感于最近40天中国发生的各种事情， 和在这种环境下如何给向西方人解释中国。
This is an edited version of my latest email to colleagues at the Gates foundation, which is part of the bi-weekly Get Smart on China email series we've been doing since June 2015. I will also post them on Medium under "Bull in a China Shop".
This piece will not be an easy one to read, and will feel a bit like a random walk, so apologies up front.
For those who live in China or take an interest in Chinese society, the last 40 days in China have been a confusing, disturbing and depressing time. Several incidents took place, all involving the tragic deaths of ordinary people; all of them are saddening and have sparked huge public outcry. Although on the surface they seem unrelated to the professional work, I decided to write about them because they all in some way speak to China’s history, ongoing complexity and the journey it is on.
On 4/14, Wei, Zexi, a young cancer patient, died at the age of 21, after exhausting his poor family’s finances seeking dubious “innovative treatment” advertised on Baidu, China’s leading search engine. He posted a piece on Zhihu, China’s Quora, a couple of months earlier, which was dug out and went viral on social media, sparking widespread criticism of Baidu’s business model as well as the “Putian Hospital” practice, which is built on selling “hope” and dubious therapies to desperate patients.
On 5/7, in yet another high profile case of violence against doctors in China, Chen, Zhongwei, a 60-year-old dentist and former director of the stomatology department at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, was stabbed to death by a former patient seeking compensation for his discolored teeth. The significant strain on the healthcare system and the lack of a dispute system has left doctors as the target for grievances. Chen died following 43 hours of emergency treatment.
On the same day, 5/7 in Beijing, Lei, Yang, a 29-year-old well-educated researcher and the father of a two-week-young baby, died in police custody, prompting many to suspect police brutality and an abuse of public power, and leading to a deluge of articles, online comments and petitions calling for justice and investigation into the police system.
Then comes 5/12, the 8th anniversary of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, a sad reminder of the deadliest earthquake in the country since the 1976 Tangshan one. This earthquake killed close to 70K and injured almost half a million, leaving up to 11 million homeless.
Then comes 5/16, the 50th anniversary of the notorious Cultural Revolution, which lasted 10 dark years. It is arguably the darkest period in China’s modern history. Millions were persecuted in violent struggles that ensued across the country. It was a catastrophe against humanity and destroyed much of China’s social fabric, which is still on its way to restoration even today. Current President Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was among those persecuted then. The saddest part of these dark 10 years is the hundreds of great masters of the arts and sciences, among the best of their time, who committed suicide, unable to withstand the humiliation and torture.
Since 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping dismantled Mao’s policies associated with the Cultural Revolution, and in 1981, the Party declared that the Cultural Revolution was “a mistake made by the leader” and “responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic”.
There has been much discussion on social media about the Cultural Revolution madness (not yet enough to the taste of many), reminding people not to forget that stretch of history.
Then in sharp contrast, almost from a parallel universe, there was another piece of news:
On 5/16, Apple CEO Tim Cook came to Beijing, taking a ride on Didi Chuxing, Uber’s rival in China, after Apple made the bombshell announcement of its $1Bn investment in Didi on 5/13. Although the deal is met with controversies in US, if we just look at the size of the market, some numbers can be mindboggling. In 2015 Didi had 1.43 billion orders, twice that of the entire US market combined. In Beijing alone, the number of Didi orders is 6-7 times that of NYC’s total.
$1Bn is actually not so big, if compared to the $3.3Bn Beijing’s internet company Meituan Dianping raised in Jan 2016 in its round E financing, which put the company valuation at $18Bn. Meituan’s founder Xing Wang, is featured in this tweet by Dan Frommer written on 5/13:
After three weeks in China, it's clear Beijing is Silicon Valley's only true competitor - Recode from Dan Frommer’s Tweet
In this tweet he wrote : “ We pride ourselves on being fast in Silicon Valley, Chinese startups are faster.” “The argument that Chinese entrepreneurs are mainly cloning Western Startups is outdated” and “ A wave of innovation is coming from China”.
According to a report by Zhongguancun area management committee in Beijing, 352 companies in this area received PE/VC investment in Q1 2016 alone.
So how does this all fit together? The dark memory, the depressing reality, the public outcry; the visionary, the vibrancy, the vitality
The honest answer is I don’t know… they coexist in today’s China, and that’s it.
Therefore China is a difficult country to understand for many, including the Chinese.
But I do think there are a few things that can help make some sense of these at times. I’m in no way trying to provide an answer, only snippets of thoughts and reflections that at most scratch the surface of these profound issues. These few things are what I sometimes share with people when talking about China
History, History, History
One cannot overstate the importance of understanding the historical context, as small as analyzing a situation, or as big as analyzing a country. And this becomes even more important when it comes to China, which is arguably the longest continuous culture on earth. In a way it is amazing modern Chinese can read and understand much of what was written 3,000 years ago. I recently got to know a friend in China by the last name of Zhang, who has a family tree that can be traced back to Zhang Liang, a statesman and strategist in Western Han, who died in 186 BC…This is not to brag about the length of Chinese history (and length can very well be the result of many accidents in history), but to say that everything happens with its preludes.
One of my favorite recent Chinese authors is Lao She, who was one of the most significant figures of 20th century Chinese literature. He spent quite some years in my hometown Jinan, Shandong province and wrote many beautiful pieces about life and scenaries in Jinan. One of his most famous novels is Four Generations under One Roof, which has an abridged English translation The Yellow Storm. It described an ordinary family’s life and death in Beijing during the Japanese occupation in the early 1940s, with three chapters: the Bewilderment, the Ignominy and the Famine.
It ended with the death of the 4th generation girl Niuzi: “If a child’s eyes can reflect the horror of war, it is in Niuzi’s eyes”. She died at a time of famine when the Japanese seized all the food supplies in the city and gave its citizens “republic flour”, which is a little flour mixed with bran, sand and dirt. Niuzi was so starved her family had no choice but to feed her the “republic flour” mixed with water, and she died in her mom’s arms. I couldn’t hold back my tears when re-reading this passage, thinking of my own little girl.
Image from a TV drama based on the novel Four Generations under One Roof
This period of pain in a way explains why Mao could have that much support during the 1950s and 60s, as indeed, from the beginning of the first Opium War in 1839, China endured a century of invasion, humiliation and profound suffering. When Mao announced the establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949, the statement that “from today, the Chinese people can stand up on our own feet” resonated far and deep among people. China’s modern development is, in a way, a constant struggle to “stand on our own feet” and not return to that dark century, since these memories are still alive in many families.
This desire and fear, unfortunately, are also the basis for the massive support Mao had when launching the Cultural Revolution, as he claimed that “some forces from within are trying to overthrow us back to darkness again”.
This was a huge mistake and disaster… and it send chills down one’s back to think that millions of people responded enthusiastically and committed such collective crimes against humanity. But sadly enough, one thing led to another and these crimes were indeed committed, and they continued for a decade.
One of the many public persecutions of intellectuals during Cultural Revolution
Burning of Budda during Cultural Revolution. Numerous historial and cultural artifacts were destroyed during the the Cultural Revolution
Unable to make sense of the humiliation, Lao She was among the first to commit suicide, in August 1966, when he drowned himself in Beijing’s Taiping Lake, and this is only the beginning of a string of deaths of masters of the humanities.
When I look at current events in China in the social sphere, I do feel depressed. But on the other hand, I also have no choice but to remain hopeful, that history has taught China many painful lessons on directions it should not venture in again…
Beaware of the dominant narrative, apply critical thinking
While China from my perspective has many problems and issues, and many are deeply disturbing, the western view on China’s problems more often than not feels off the mark.
What I realize more and more, is that the difference between Chinese and English is not only language, it’s deep down a difference in the way of thinking, and even deeper down a difference in value system. There is no better or worse, right or wrong, it’s just different. However, this difference is seldom discussed, and therefore much of the western coverage and narrative on China is a western interpretation of China rather than actual China itself.
I’m impressed by the emphasis on critical thinking in American education, but on China related issues, I have to say there seems to be a vacuum for it. This, coupled with a lack of historical perspective – which often needs to be on the scale of centuries – makes it harder for people in the west to make sense of China.
China is often depicted as a frightening rival to the US, with ambitions of taking over the world. Yet if one studies China’s thousands of years of history, one will find few instances of its invading other countries. Also if you understand the “stand on our own feet” drive, you will interpret China differently. In the western context, the (brutally simplified) logic is as follows: county big in size -> wanting to be bigger in size -> wanting to eat others’ share-> dominance -> I win you lose
While the (brutally simplified) China logic often goes like this: big in size -> show off I’m big + mind my own business, take care of the burden of growing -> harmonious co-existence.
I’m no politician and have no interest in “defending” or “justifying”, but this “coexistence” is deep down in Chinese philosophy. During her talk at the China week we organized in Seattle in April 2016, Professor Deborah Brautigam described Zheng He’s voyage around the world in the 1400s (as one of the 7 he made total). Zheng’s treasure ship was 120m in length, compared to Columbus’s ship, at 26m. The trips were meant to show off the wealth of the Ming dynasty, send people gifts, and that’s it. After he returned, the ship was burned, end of story.
The Chinese name for China literally means the “central kingdom”. In the past it did have many “vassal countries” like the Vietnam, Korea etc., but the nature of this relationship is that they came to China to show respect by presenting gifts as tribute; China as the “central kingdom” then presented gifts in return (the return need to be more valuable than what is presented to it), as a way of showing its status.
This is because “ritual” (or ”relationship” as a narrow interpretation) is an important value in Chinese culture. People don’t stand on principle in China. The relationship is the principle, as touched on by McKinsey’s Jonathan Woetzel in his speech. Such value systems have apparent weaknesses – e.g. contractual agreements or laws were not honored in such a system, as relationships may overwrite them as the “higher principle”.
This system may seem strange to western eyes. But on the other hand, the rise of the west has really been in the recent 2-3 centuries, while such value system has been the foundation of China’s sizable and complex society for a much longer time.
One of the good English read explaining China’ social infrastructure then is “From the Soil”, published in 1947 by Fei Xiaotong, a pioneering Chinese sociologist and anthropologist.
This value system also stresses the importance of coexistence rather than the need to understand, which could partially explain the lack of progress in science throughout thousands years of history in China.
This is not easy to understand, highlighting the difficulty of real cultural awareness, but having this intellectual awareness is a good start.
Having this awareness, one could potentially understand that much of the value/practices established in the west are deeply foreign to the Chinese, and it has been a learning journey for China. And putting on a historical perspective, with the turmoil leading up to 1976, the learning really didn’t start till ~1980 with China’s open up, which is not that long ago.
This also explains the lack of the “China narrative” in the west, and why China is often the victim of media bashing. Because “narrative” and storytelling is a foreign thing to China as well, explaining why most stories about China in the west are one-sided. But there has been more and more attempts in the west to understand China deeper, this recently Brookings publication on “Myths about China in Kenya” is a good example
Do not start with the polity, start with the individuals
What always enlightens me is the stories told at an individual level. Some colleagues have shared with me that they appreciate the personal stories I tell. For me this is not a choice or rhetoric; rather I believe this is the only way to really understand a place/a culture/a situation.
Henry Kissinger is well known, and his Chinese counterpart, who played an important role in arranging Kissinger’s historic visit, was Qiao Guanhua, a legendary diplomat in China. Qiao also led China’s re-entry into the UN in 1971. Reading stories and experiences that Qiao shared is very enlightening about that period of time (not much in English unfortunately).
Biography of Qiao and his wife Gong Peng, written by their daughter Qiao Songdu
Henry Kissinger with Qiao Guanhua and Deng Xiaoping in 1974
Linking back to the point on history, although China feels like an ordinary country now, it didn’t come back to the UN till 1971 (and the majority of countries that supported China’s return were African countries). It also didn’t have any meaningful exposure to or experience in multilateral situations until the beginning of 1980s.
To understand China from the angle of the individual, one of the books I’d recommend is River Town by Peter Hessler, an American writer and journalist. It documented his Peace Corps teaching assignment at Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, Sichuan, which started in 1996 and lasted for two years. His wife Leslie Chang wrote the book Factory Girl in 2008, which is also a great read. It looked at the transition of the society through two girls’ eyes over the years.
One of the people Hessler touches upon in his other book, Oracle Bones, is Chen Mengjia, a brilliant poet and oracle bone scholar. He too, committed suicide in 1966, linking a circle back to the Cultural Revolution – how history and individuals connect, in an account by a westerner with a rare depth of cultural awareness.
I think I can end with a passage from a review of River Town, which somehow magically connects the random walk I’ve taken today:
“As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history: the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution; and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood the city and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.”
Yinuo
Below is one of many replies I received from colleagues, this one from Ritu Shroff, who is a senior program officer at the Gates Foundation:
I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing this note to us. I spent 13 years living in SE Asia, where there is significant Chinese influence, and an Asian way of thinking about the world permeates much of our day to day life, as well as much of our overall vision of ourselves and the world. I too, found that the way the west looks at SE Asia was often off the mark. Especially Vietnam, where I lived for many years. The narrative in the US about Vietnam is just really quite different from the way that the Vietnamese think about themselves, their country, their politics and their government. In fact, the way Vietnamese define nationhood, citizenship, governance (and intellectual engagement/debate, political discourse and debate and freedom) is so different. I had a friend who wrote about how rights are defined and seen differently in Vietnam than even the so called international declaration of rights.
I think the three points you raise below are critical. Just on the importance of history—so critical here. While living in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and working throughout, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the history—and the history as described by Vietnamese, Cambodians and Thai—for as far back as people were willing to remember. Identity is shaped by history. I also found that just because people talked about the past, it did not mean they were not future looking. Vietnamese people are on the whole, among the most future-oriented people I know, and they apply that thinking at a national level.
It is so great to share these perspectives. I also read River Town a long time ago and loved it—it reminded me of my own early encounters in SE Asia working with local governments at times!
Thank you!
Ritu
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