Few articles have riled me up as much as this one, which exemplifies the misguided conventional thinking regarding China. It is a microcosm of the wishful thinking that permeates the global community at the moment. Here are a few reasons why Paul Kane is wrong.

Geo-political
Taiwan is an old, old ally of the United States, with strong political and cultural ties. Taiwan sends a significant portion of its youth to be educated in the United States. To “ditch” them, as Kane suggests so casually, would severely damage U.S. credibility in Asia. Our other allies—Thailand, Japan, Korea—could not help but wonder that if they would be next. The U.S. is already witnessing a careful realignment of Asia as China flexes its muscles and other countries seek to balance China’s power. To ditch Taiwan would be to irrevocably damage U.S. standing internationally. We would be giving a sovereign, democratically elected government up to an autocratic totalitarian state. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Kane makes the completely unsubstantiated claim that writing off Taiwan “could pressure Beijing to end its political and economic support for pariah states” like Iran or North Korea. China’s firmly stated position is that domestic affairs are domestic affairs, and that no country has the right to interfere in another country’s internal affairs. As far as China is concerned, Taiwan is rogue province, not a country. That means that Taiwan is an internal affair, and not subject to international pressure. To them, the U.S. selling arms to Taiwan is like China giving missiles to Texas.

Ditching Taiwan would merely be an affirmation of China’s position that the international community has no right to interfere in other countries’ affairs. That would give them even more cover to deny, obfuscate, and stonewall on aid to Iran and North Korea. This is a position that they have held since the joint communique that opened China, and one that they have firmly held to since in vetoing intervention in Sudan, Syria, and other countries.

Economic
Let’s start with a few basic numbers. The U.S. debt is approximately 15 trillion dollars. Kane points out that China holds 1.14 trillion of U.S. debt. Guess who holds more than that? We do. As in, the Federal Reserve. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Federal Reserve Banks hold about 1.6 trillion dollars of U.S. debt. In essence, the government is paying itself to loan itself money. Sound screwy? Absolutely. While the normally fringe Ron Paul is crazy about a lot of things, one of the best ideas I’ve heard from him is to have the U.S. government forgive itself its own loans. So, in essence, we could reduce the deficit by more than that without having to throw anyone to the lions.

In addition, Europe holds more in U.S. treasuries, and Japan almost as much.

What’s more, if you adjust for inflation, the yield for 5- and 7-year treasures is negative. In essence, people are paying the U.S. to hold their money for them. If you want to talk about balance sheets, think about that. By having China purchase more U.S. debt, they would essentially be transferring their wealth to our balance sheets.

Thirdly, while much has been made about the supposed “power” that China yields over the United States due to its large holdings of U.S. bonds, that power is shaky at best. While some make comments about how disastrous it could be if China suddenly dumped all their treasuries on the market at once, that fails to account for how much damage that would cause to China’s balance sheet as well. Already, due to a sinking dollar and rising RMB, the real value of China’s dollar holdings have been dropping. So why does China continue to buy treasuries? Because there is nowhere else even remotely safe to park that much money.

Fourthly, Kane describes Taiwan’s growing economic ties with China and states that “the island’s absorption into mainland China is inevitable.” If economic ties meant that absorption was inevitable, Canada would be the 51st state. Taiwan is socially, politically, and economically distinct from mainland China. While integration is possible, it is in no way “inevitable.”

Military
Kane makes a point of talking about the power of the hard-line militarists, and argues that removing Taiwan as a wedge issue would reduce their power and influence. While he is indeed correct in estimating the influence of Taiwan, he misses the larger picture. Taiwan is a proxy issue where China sees its military interests most directly opposed with the U.S. However, the Chinese military sees all of Asia and the Pacific as its rightful sphere of influence. A withdrawal from Taiwan would merely shift the conflict centers to Korea, Japan, and Thailand in the east, and Pakistan and India in the west. There is absolutely no evidence to support the assumption that a concession on Taiwan would reduce Chinese military spending.

China is building a stealth fighter and an aircraft carrier. Taiwan is less than 100 miles away from China at the narrowest point. You do not need an aircraft carrier to militarily dominate Taiwan from the mainland. Nor do you need the world’s largest submarine fleet with ICMBs capable of reaching the West Coast. These projects would proceed unabated even if the U.S. were to abrogate its defense treaty with Taiwan because the goal is not Taiwan—it is to match U.S. capabilities.

Kane calls the U.S. Navy “China’s greatest military asset” because it helps keep the sea lane safe for shipping, a description that is hardly in keeping with the military expenditures I’ve pointed out above. Rather, China recognizes that the U.S. Navy is one of America’s greatest assets, and they want to be able to match it. Hence the enormous submarine fleet.

For me, the clincher to Kane’s ignorance on China is his statement that Taiwan is China’s “unspoken” top priority. For any veteran China watcher, that claim is absurd. China’s emphasis on Taiwan is broadly proclaimed and widely disseminated.

America’s national debt is a long-term problem, not a short-term problem. But betraying Taiwan will do little to help the national debt, and will only destabilize America’s position in the years to come.

The key to this proportional response comes from the government’s ability to apply direct and indirect pressure on offenders. They use a variety of enforcement methods to ensure cooperation from the subject.

The concept in China is called ruanjian (“soft prison”), perhaps roughly corresponding to house arrest in English. However, ruanjian is far more nuanced than simple house arrest. It can be as simple as an athletic young man in a crew-cut following you wherever you go and sitting in a car outside your house at night, to full-on imprisonment in a small rural cottage, surrounded by bright floodlights and blaring speakers, with no phones or visitors.

Denying travel permits or roughing up journalists are only part of the picture.

The practice of collective responsibility (which hearkens back to the Qin dynasty) also ensures that people peripheral to the issue may feel the need to get involved in order to protect themselves. Methods used can vary from banning visits to grandchildren, or putting pressure on companies to fire friends and relatives.

If this doesn’t work, exile is often practiced as a lesser form of prison, usually termed as Re-education through Labor. The offender is packed off to the distant northwest, to spend several years doing hard labor. No one is exempt, not even septuagenarians protesting during the Olympics.

The government excels at finding the best leverage to use against the offender. They tend to target the livelihood and reputation of the offender. Additionally, in order to maintain plausible deniability, rather than using emergency laws or vague charges of sedition, they typically find some other excuse that is not overtly political.

Some of the best examples recently are of Ai Weiwei and the Xinjiang 13.  Ai Weiwei famously had his million dollar studio demolished practically overnight by the Shanghai municipal authorities (ostensibly because of permitting issues), and was later arrested on tax fraud charges. While there was clearly a political motive behind those actions, the stated reasons provide a legitimate-sounding, banal cover that permits them to claim non-political motivations.

The Xinjiang 13 are another example.  They are 13 American professors who published a report on Xinjiang in 2004.  Disliking the tone, China has quietly blacklisted them and is not granting them entry visas into the country. American universities, afraid of pissing off the Chinese, have not made much of a fuss. Instead, they almost fired one of them because they couldn’t go to China. I daresay any prospective Xinjiang scholar from here on out will think twice before publishing something overtly critical of the Chinese government’s behavior in Xinjiang.

The government’s use of indirect coercive methods tailored to the offense and the offender are some of the strongest tools in its toolbox. Rather than dismissing the offender as a miscreant and throwing them in jail, they do their best to understand the protesters. Then, armed with this understanding, they have the power to truly hit them where it hurts.

By controlling the flow of information, they possess a strong ability to control the narrative of a given story. While it is not especially difficult to get around the Great Firewall, the question that most Chinese people ask themselves is: “Why bother?” China has successfully cast the media narrative as an “us vs them” situation, where foreign sources are automatically biased against China. The average Chinese person feels little incentive to seek out foreign sources of news for a different point of view.  Similarly, despite there being almost no barriers to access, not many Americans actively seek out Al-Jazeera for a second opinon on world affairs.

Most Western media reports focus on the most basic of censorship methods—like blocked searches for sensitive keywords, deletion of blog posts, or media blackouts on certain news items. However, far more insidious than that is the censorship that editors impose upon themselves.

The genius here is that the Chinese government does not provide any general policies or guidelines on censorship. Meaning that, since you don’t know the criteria for censorship, you can never know if you will be censored. Therefore, authors will subtly alter their writings in the hopes that it will be more acceptable to their censors. As Murong Xueqin memorably puts it,

I call this “castrated writing” — I am a proactive eunuch, I have already castrated myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel.

(His entire speech is priceless, read the full text of “Absurdities of China’s Censorship System.”)

Without an explicitly proscribed list, China allows censors the freedom to keep up with the zeitgeist and memes without allowing critics to say, “But this isn’t on the list yet!” It leaves writers with the hope that their work will be published, but with enough uncertainty that they will restrain their criticism.

Many of the more ridiculous directives, like the ban on time travel stories on television, serve a different purpose: discouraging people from playing the “What If?” game and applying it to the current government.

Much has been made of subversive internet language, as documented in the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon, and how it has evolved as a way to get around China’s censorship. How many of you understand the meaning of “watered weasel ape” or “Which work unit are you from?” Even most netizens don’t. These references are an in-joke among China’s netizens—precisely the ones who have benefited the most from China’s economic policies. They are primarily urban, well-educated, and affluent. In other words, the only ones who understand the subversive language are the ones who have the most to lose by subverting the system.

Many people underestimate the true subtlety of China’s censorship system. The genius is not in how effectively they censor what is already there. The genius is how they forestall people from putting ideas in the public space in the first place.

Brad Plumer over at Ezra Klein’s blog has a link to a Time article where researchers coded languages to see which ones were more information-dense—meaning they contained more meaning per syllable. English is fairly dense, with a score of .91.

Mandarin Chinese was the densest language studied, with a score of .94.

Japanese scored pathetically, scoring a mere .49.

Clearly this should be taken as definitive proof that the Chinese have the least amount of fei hua, useless speech, while the Japanese will talk your ears off but say nothing.

But wait, what’s that?

Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

Aw, nuts.

Humor aside, it’s an interesting article on how the spoken speed of a language will vary due to the information density, with the result being an equal amount of information being transmitted in the same amount of time.

The maintenance of stability in the Middle East and other countries, such as Russia or Venezuela, depends heavily on one thing: petrodollars. Generous government subsidies funded by oil or gas reserves help keep the population sedated—up to a point, as we can see from the Arab Spring. Others, like Cuba, depend heavily on a cult of personality built around the leader himself. But the largest authoritarian country in the world has neither vast natural resources nor a hypnotically charismatic leader. In fact, the opposite—China is resource poor, and its leaders are famously wooden-faced and stiff.

So how, then, do they maintain social order? Is it through the justness of their social policies? Is it through strong institutions? Or is it though respect for and commitment to their citizens? Anyone at all familiar with China knows that this is not the case.

Instead, social order is maintained through the one method in which Chinese government has surpassed any country in history in their level of skill, finesse, and achievement: repression.

China’s system is a far cry from the brute force “toss them in jail and throw away the key” approach that typically characterizes other repressive regimes. Instead, it is a multi-pronged, holistic, and responsive approach to unrest. It utilizes different levels of force depending on the subject, applying both direct and indirect pressure. It selectively makes examples of people, rather than attempting to punish all transgressors. The Chinese system is also far more responsive to events, showing both flexibility and ruthlessness in dealing with public response. In short, they have created the world’s most subtle repressive system.

In the weeks to follow, I will be detailing the many working parts of this system. In the meantime, I entreat you all to comment on the following question:

What is the most impressive/overlooked/effective feature of the Chinese internal security system?

The funny thing about crowd psychology that most people miss is the concept of diffusion of responsibility. Basically, it means that the more people there are, the less responsibility each of them feels for what is going on. It’s a simple but powerful theory that helps to explain behavior that might otherwise signify the end of morality—most notably the murder of Kitty Genovese. Thus, individually, each rioter feels little responsibility for the actions of their neighbors or for their own actions. After all, if you are just one of a dozen people taking things from a shop, and you weren’t the first to take it, then it’s not really your fault. Besides, if you don’t take it, someone else will.

The other extremely useful theory in explaining this phenomenon is the broken windows theory of policing. Simply put, it says that if one window on a building is already broken, then people do not feel that bad about breaking another, and another.

William Bratton, the American consultant brought in at the behest of David Cameron in the wake of the riots, is the most famous proponent of the broken windows theory. Using ideas garnered from this idea, he is credited with helping to make New York City safe in the 1990s by simply policing fare jumpers and graffiti.

You can see test this for yourself. Find a crosswalk where everyone is waiting politely for the light, then cross the street while it is still red. Most likely, people will start to follow you, even though the circumstances have not changed.

I think that the entirety of the London riots can be explained without recourse to moral explanations involving anarchism or consumerism. I find nothing mysterious about young people with good jobs and no prior criminal activity taking things from shops that have already been broken into.

I find the quote from the forensic psychologist Kay Nooney most apropos:

These people aren’t interested in tuition fees. In constituency, it’s most similar to a prison riot: what will happen is that, usually in the segregation unit, nobody will ever know exactly, but a rumour will emanate that someone has been hurt in some way. There will be some form of moral outrage that takes its expression in self-interested revenge. There is no higher purpose, you just have a high volume of people with a history of impulsive behaviour, having a giant adventure.

When a group of outraged people gather together, all it takes is a small incident to provoke violent behavior. The more people there are, the easier it is for that to occur. As much as you complain about the lack of moral education, as we see from the background of many of the rioters, many of the looters are not your typical consumption-obsessed poor youth.

There is, of course, a separate distinction to be made regarding the causes of the riot itself. Riot behavior is nothing new and easily explainable. However, the societal ills that she speaks about—cuts in social services, unemployment, etc.—are real. In truth, they are definitely contributors to the riot, but not in the way people normally think. The best way to prevent riots is to keep citizens satisfied enough so that there won’t be a large group of disaffected and angry people all gathered in one place. Because once they assemble, your options are limited.

The point is not how to keep people from looting once a riot starts.  The point is how to keep a riot from starting in the first place.  While many people are deploring the harsh sentences handed out willy nilly (like six months for stealing bottled water), they have one benefit that people are overlooking.

If the shield of anonymity is no longer there, then responsibility no longer diffuses.  The whole reason why countries like Japan behave so orderly even in the wake of such a massive disaster as Fukushima is the notion of collective responsibility held by the Japanese.  Holding as many people responsible as they can for these riots will do a great deal to ensure that in the future, people will think twice about taking something out of a broken store window.

My reaction? Yawn. Although some might object to the crass manner in which Mr. Sedaris points out certain facts about China, none of them are blatantly untrue. He has cherry-picked some of the more disgusting facts about China, but many of them are the very things that the Chinese deplore about their own society. I can’t recall off-hand any Chinese person who explicitly encourages blowing snot on the street—however widely it might be accepted.

One could easily point out some similar defects in the Japanese society that he so reveres. For example, squat toilets are still widely used throughout Japan, especially in public areas because they are considered more sanitary than sit-down toilets. Many sit-down toilets still come with signs instructing people not to squat on the toilet seat so clearly there are still people who do that. I’m also not sure that a country where elementary school kids will use an entire roll of toilet paper to wipe their butts with is an indicator of a healthier society than one that treats defecation as an ordinary part of life.

One might also note that Sedaris uses Chinese food as a foil to mock Western gastronomic over-delicacy.

All in all, there are a thousand reasons why many of the comparisons Sedaris makes are unfair or biased in some way. However, I don’t think that his essay was meant to be a fair and balanced look. It sounds to me like he was taken around by a bunch of old China hands to many “authentic” locations. Unfortunately, a streak of perverse masochism runs through China hands. The dirtier, the more disgusting the experience, the more we purport to enjoy it because it’s “authentic.” I still recall my favorite Peking duck restaurant in Beijing—a filthier, more decrepit restaurant I have never met. But I loved the food, and I loved the atmosphere. At the very least, Sedaris traveled widely, and experienced a lot.

In contrast, what I found more offensive was a book I saw while browsing the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. Titled “Yuck!” or something like that, it was written by someone who was purportedly a traveling food photographer. However, a cursory inspection found that about 70% of the “disgusting foods” were from one night market in Beijing. If you’re going to make a snap judgement about a country’s food, at least visit more than one place. By that standard, Sedaris passes.

—

J.R. Siegel

Every time an American President meets with a Chinese leader, there is an expectation that, this time, the Chinese will listen to us and change their ways. Yet the pattern remains the same: Americans offer advice, the Chinese listen, nod their heads, and ignore absolutely everything that the Americans have to say.

The Chinese define their national interest narrowly—the Communist Party does what it thinks it needs to do in order to remain in power. If it means rolling tanks out on the streets, the Party will do that. If it means keeping the renminbi (RMB) pegged to the dollar, the Party will do that.

The problem with the current pegging of the RMB to the dollar is that it’s bad for everyone. This “beggar thy neighbor” policy is taking low-level jobs away from other developing countries in the region and thereby making them more likely to tilt towards the U.S. than China. At some point, China will need to transition its economy towards more service-based industry and stimulate domestic demand—neither of which will happen if wages remain artificially low. In the short run, mercantilism seems like a good thing; in the long run, it will wreck the Chinese economy.

The irony is that, for once, the U.S. President is trying to help China. In order for the Party to remain in power, it will have to stimulate real economic growth—not investment in fixed assets—by letting the RMB rise and the market play a more prominent role. It is also true that, if Beijing wants to be perceived as a “peaceful and harmonious” global actor, it needs to start sharing some of the costs of global leadership. China cannot simultaneously distort the global economy, peacefully rise, and be perceived as a key international stakeholder.

Ignoring the advice of the U.S. was a strategy that served Beijing well for 40 years. If the Party continues to ignore this advice, it risks throwing away everything it has so carefully built.

George Ding

Obama’s main goal in China was the same as the trips abroad during his campaign: don’t do anything stupid. But this was not a simple fact-finding mission. Long before he arrived in the stately halls of Beijing, the American media was opining on his ability to thread the needle on issues like human rights, the two T’s, and climate change.

In a country where strong opinions are discouraged, the president did a laudable job of gently urging without haughtiness or condescension. The amazing thing was how much Obama said without actually saying it. In Shanghai he brought up issues like natural rights and freedom of information, framing them as a brief history lesson on America. It was suggestion disguised as exposition.

Obama’s trip also accomplished something else. By attending state dinners and visiting the quintessential places of Chinese culture, Obama gave Chinese leaders massive face. The only thing the Chinese government loves more than symbolism and pageantry is face, and Obama’s trip was a mixture of all three. Throughout his trip, Obama embodied a respectful America that earnestly wants to understand and work with China. This is political capital in the new era.

Only time will tell if Obama has ushered in a new chapter in U.S.-China relations or if the two countries will return to bickering as usual. The critics who say he has returned to America with no concrete accomplishments are right. But what he has returned with could be much more valuable: respect from the second most powerful nation in the world.

Fenwick Smith

If a President of the United States speaks in a closed, government-vetted forum, does he make a sound?

Obama in Shanghai displayed once again his abilities as a consummate public speaker. He certainly seemed to believe he was addressing China as a nation, but as any observer would note, the faces behind him, albeit youthful, had the fixed, stiff-necked half-smiles that denote Chinese Communist Party officials. There were few flickers of actual engagement with the content of the President’s address. The democracy agenda was pushed gently, but with a didactic tone far removed from the bullheaded rhetoric of the previous administration. His refreshing humility, more akin in tone if not in content to, dare I say, a Chinese politician than an American one, no doubt warmed his audience to him.

But did he make an impact?

The transcript of Obama’s Q&A has been sought out by Chinese netizens but those are not the people he needs to reach.  The Chinese government within minutes diluted and edited Obama’s speech using their own templates and enabled strict Internet and television controls to limit viewership. Enough encouragements of Sino-U.S. friendship were made to allow his remarks to penetrate into the public arena, but in a format “suitable” for the old hundred names. Essentially, by filling the studio with previously-vetted Shanghai students who were mostly Party members, the Chinese government has kept Obama’s “public” appearance isolated. The Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology was sealed off from the rest of the city, ostensibly “closed for maintenance,” keeping the general public in the dark about Obama’s presence until the last possible moment. Content was not screened live anywhere in China; the text of his speech containing remarks concerning an uncensored Internet were removed from Xinhua websites as quickly as they were posted. I doubt government officials were forcing these deletions—they were more likely an example of the Chinese media’s innate capability for self-censorship. A number of questions, particularly the “randomly selected Internet questions” were blatantly skewed in favor of the Chinese administration.

The President engaged well on a personal level with his questioners, and replied smoothly and candidly, but he was speaking to the Party, not the people, and thus the entire appearance felt—and indeed was—staged. Like a high-level Chinese tourist, or any of his predecessors, Obama was ferried from one photo-op to another, remaining a long way from the political and social realities of the nation he was visiting. And, in the corridors of power where the Internet is uncensored and knowledge unrestricted, the Chinese leadership will nod, smile and dismiss the visit as a publicity stunt well executed. Obama will go home with the feeling that the U.S. will have to continue to negotiate with China on China’s terms. Simply put, China is powerful enough not to listen, and the U.S. is no longer powerful enough to make China listen.

Yulin Zhuang

The key thing to take away from this procession is the lack of any sort of behavior that could be construed as inflammatory or provocative, even by hypernationalist Chinese netizens, whose paranoid frenzies are legendary for their lack of scruples. From declining to meet the Dalai Lama in October to promising that the United States does not seek to contain China’s rise, President Obama has shown a more nuanced understanding of diplomacy as practiced by the Chinese—in public, bland, uninformative, and undistinguished; in private—who knows.

But we can be certain Obama understands that saying or doing anything likely to set the Chinese off would merely be counterproductive to a meaningful dialog. China would be forced to spend its time elaborately posturing to “save face” and Obama would lose the chance to engage China’s cooperation on a wider range of issues. In the view of your average Chinese citizen, China will no longer be dictated to by arrogant foreigners. The orgiastic display of jingoistic pride that was the National Day celebration on October 1st merely served to reinforce this view among Chinese. Sino-U.S. relations may be headed the way of U.S.-French relations—two proud countries eager to put each other down.

Does this show sound surreal to you?  Well, frequently in the evening, that’s exactly the kind of show that’s on prime-time Chinese television—foreigners paraded on television for all to watch, showing off their skills in Chinese.

I’m sure the Chinese don’t mean to be condescending, but that’s often how these shows come across.  Chinese watch raptly and laugh, pointing and marveling at how these foreigners have gotten so good at Chinese.  ”Amazing, look, their accent is pretty good!  Where did they learn that idiom?  My, how clever they are.”

For all the supposed openness in the culture, despite having now had decades of contact with the outside world, Chinese culture remains insular in many of the most critical ways.  Smug and prideful of their cultural history and the difficulty of their language, Chinese people are incredulous that others who look and sound so strange could ever understand the subtleties of Chinese thought and expression.

If China wants to be taken more seriously in the world, they must adjust these attitudes of cultural superiority.  I am reminded of the stories about the White Man civilizing the Red Indians into living a Civilized Life, and how amazing it was that the Savage could be taught proper language and manners.  We in the West understand that cultural assimilation is not as difficult as it might seem on the surface, and one day the Chinese must also come to this realization if they are to fully open up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I didn’t get any pictures. The streets had been cleared of traffic beforehand, and the tanks badly disguised. Some sort of square, boxy tarp had been set up with clear plastic “windows” in front so the driver could see. However, the driver was definitely encased inside the front of a tank. Also, underneath the “skirt” of the covering were tank caterpillar treads.

Three of them rolled by today. A source who works nearby told me that the same thing had happened several days ago—only it was 7 or 8 tanks then.

Where the final destination for those tanks is, I can’t imagine—but they were heading towards city center. Perhaps Tiananmen Square? I last saw the tanks heading north towards Fuxingmen, which is a straight shot to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the events of 1989—perhaps the government is preparing early for any possible trouble? I can think of few other reasons why at least 3 tank platoons would be deployed in the center of Beijing.