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globeandmail.com: Life after Deng
As I was casting about for some way to sum up the 30 years in China since the start of the open-door policy, George H..W. Bush saved me the trouble. In a recent interview with the China Daily, an official newspaper, he said: "I think it's not even questionable that people have more freedom than they used to have. Now some people [in the United States] don't understand that. They still regard the Chinese as a bunch of communists."
This is the sort of thing an old guy who doesn't care just blurts out. But it's also true; Western perceptions of China are quite skewed. Moreover, it appeared in a Chinese newspaper. Okay, the China Daily is an English-language paper of small circulation, but the fact that the quote made it into print shows how far China has come since Mr. Bush first set foot here. It was certainly a communist country then. What is it now?
Thirty-four years ago, Mr. Bush came to head up the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, an outcome of Richard Nixon's opening to China and a precursor to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. It would be four more years before things really began to change.
The event marking that watershed moment — arguably as big a moment as the Communist revolution of 1949 — was the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It concluded in December of 1978, 30 years ago this month. Few grasped that the cardboard speeches of that plenum would change not only China but the world.
By then, Mao Zedong had been dead for more than two years. A power struggle had raged. In the end, Deng Xiaoping prevailed; the tectonic plates of Chinese politics had shifted. The open-door policy was born.
Other things happened that month. The United States and China announced the resumption of diplomatic relations; Boeing sold its first airplanes to the People's Republic; Coke said it was going into China.
Thirty years on, we know what Mr. Deng set in motion. By now, we can almost recite the gee-whiz statistics: the world's third-largest economy, 40 million new Internet users every year, 600 million cellphones, $2-trillion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange holdings and — my own favourite — the planet's biggest consumer of cement. This country has seen the greatest poverty-alleviation effort in history. Yes, yes, we've heard it all. But somehow, knowing this does not quite do this place justice.
I arrived in China seven years after Mr. Deng's triumph, in the fall of 1985. I was employed by a Chinese "work unit." My local colleagues lived in cold-water flats they didn't own, rode ancient bicycles and looked forward to the annual train ride to see their parents in another province. Getting a passport was next to impossible, and you needed permission to read certain papers containing foreign news. Now they own their apartments, many have cars, and they go online to book their holidays abroad. Most surprising, they don't seem to find this transition, in less than a generation, the least bit jarring.
China's rise exhibits many interesting phenomena. One is the often skewed view of China beyond its borders, which is equal parts awe, greed and fear.
Awe, because it's so vast and so old and so storied; China has an enduring mystique (which its tourism promoters hope never fades). The greed comes from thinking that there's something in the China miracle for us: Can we sell them resources, can we produce more cheaply there, can we tap that supposedly bottomless consumer market? And finally fear: What if they not only want to buy our oil and minerals, but also the companies that produce them?
The self-contradictory attitude towards China is now at a peak because of the financial crisis. The Economist asked a few weeks ago: "Can China save the world?" It was an economic basket-case 30 years ago, but we're now counting on China's engine to keep the global economy ticking over. Its recently announced four-trillion-yuan ($720-billion) stimulus package has everyone hoping.
Despite the saturation coverage that China gets, what I hear from most first-time visitors is "I had no idea." That normally refers to China's pockets of affluence, its stunning infrastructure and just what a simply cool place it can be. For whatever reason, after 30 years of China's open door, people don't fully get it unless they've been here.
Part of the problem is the nature and tone of the coverage China gets in the international media. The other day, CNN carried an item on Chinese golf schools.
Halfway through, up popped those hoary old images of communism so beloved by the cliché machine: a grainy Movietone News-style clip of Mao Zedong, inspecting something or other. The voiceover said ominously that the bourgeois indulgence of golf was once banned in China, and that recently there have been renewed calls for limiting course construction. Well, that's probably true; they banned everything fun, we all know that. Buit in the clip, Mao wasn't anywhere near a golf course, and the reasons for wanting to limiting them these days are quite prosaic: Golf eats up farm land and uses too much water. That's it.
China has an image problem, and that old communist tag doesn't help. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party runs the place, but it could just as easily be called the Chinese Pragmatist Party these days. Old-school congresses with waves of clapping delegates are still de rigueur, as are the stars and hammers and sickles. It all makes for great photo ops — and perpetrates the myth that today's China bears any resemblance to our Cold War-forged notions of communism.
Of course, China has many deep-seated problems, too. For starters: a paucity of human rights, a growing gap between rich and poor, the environment, Internet censorship, a crumbling social-safety net that isn't being repaired quickly enough. Pretty much anyone you talk to in China these days will frankly acknowledge all these points; that's the difference between now and when I arrived in 1985.
China is a place of contradictions and contrasts; it was a contradiction, after all, that set this chain of events in motion. What used to be called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," that hybrid of communism and capitalism, is what sparked this place to life. Its architect, Deng Xiaoping, was a contradictory character himself. His vision created the freer China of today, but he was a disciplinarian — and the Tiananmen debacle happened on his watch.
Politics and economics are the two areas where there's the greatest disconnect between foreign hopes and Chinese reality. For 15 years, various commentators have been saying China is ripe for political change. It hasn't happened. In any event, China is not going to be a liberal democracy in our lifetimes and whatever system does evolve here will probably never suit Western tastes. Get over it.
As for economics: Just what is China's system, and why has it managed to create such vast wealth in such a short time? The combination of authoritarian politics, state capitalism and a frenetic private sector has been a potent wealth-creator. China is at the same time highly entrepreneurial (the private sector accounts for up to 60 per cent of GDP now, depending on whose numbers you use) but also very state-directed.
There are far fewer state-owned enterprises in China today than a decade ago, but they are leaner than their predecessors, have healthy balance sheets and, importantly, are profitable. Many have been partially privatized through stock-market listings, but the central-planning hand remains strong.
This makes people outside China uncomfortable. They picture backrooms full of cadres scheming about world domination. What they should be picturing is boardrooms full of suits, scheming about their companies dominating the ones down the road. These are big, strong companies, some of which want to play on the world stage.
If you want to play with them, you have to come to terms with the government factor, because it isn't going away. It's been amusing to watch the waves of paranoia that have rippled out every time China Investment Corp., the sovereign wealth fund, has raised an eyebrow about an acquisition. This is a passive equity investor just looking for a place to park cash; it's not Dr. Evil. (So far, CIC has taken a bath on the likes of Morgan Stanley and Blackstone stock; they are not seers.)
So here we are, 30 years into Mr. Deng's complex and often fraught experiment. Look at it this way: China has now been longer in the Deng mode than it was in the Mao mode. Is this communism? Yes, but let's call it Communism 2.0. That separates it from those days when Mao banned golf — and leaves open the tantalizing prospect of the upgrades to come.
As I was casting about for some way to sum up the 30 years in China since the start of the open-door policy, George H..W. Bush saved me the trouble. In a recent interview with the China Daily, an official newspaper, he said: "I think it's not even questionable that people have more freedom than they used to have. Now some people [in the United States] don't understand that. They still regard the Chinese as a bunch of communists."
This is the sort of thing an old guy who doesn't care just blurts out. But it's also true; Western perceptions of China are quite skewed. Moreover, it appeared in a Chinese newspaper. Okay, the China Daily is an English-language paper of small circulation, but the fact that the quote made it into print shows how far China has come since Mr. Bush first set foot here. It was certainly a communist country then. What is it now?
Thirty-four years ago, Mr. Bush came to head up the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, an outcome of Richard Nixon's opening to China and a precursor to the re-establishment of diplomatic relations. It would be four more years before things really began to change.
The event marking that watershed moment — arguably as big a moment as the Communist revolution of 1949 — was the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It concluded in December of 1978, 30 years ago this month. Few grasped that the cardboard speeches of that plenum would change not only China but the world.
By then, Mao Zedong had been dead for more than two years. A power struggle had raged. In the end, Deng Xiaoping prevailed; the tectonic plates of Chinese politics had shifted. The open-door policy was born.
Other things happened that month. The United States and China announced the resumption of diplomatic relations; Boeing sold its first airplanes to the People's Republic; Coke said it was going into China.
Thirty years on, we know what Mr. Deng set in motion. By now, we can almost recite the gee-whiz statistics: the world's third-largest economy, 40 million new Internet users every year, 600 million cellphones, $2-trillion (U.S.) in foreign-exchange holdings and — my own favourite — the planet's biggest consumer of cement. This country has seen the greatest poverty-alleviation effort in history. Yes, yes, we've heard it all. But somehow, knowing this does not quite do this place justice.
I arrived in China seven years after Mr. Deng's triumph, in the fall of 1985. I was employed by a Chinese "work unit." My local colleagues lived in cold-water flats they didn't own, rode ancient bicycles and looked forward to the annual train ride to see their parents in another province. Getting a passport was next to impossible, and you needed permission to read certain papers containing foreign news. Now they own their apartments, many have cars, and they go online to book their holidays abroad. Most surprising, they don't seem to find this transition, in less than a generation, the least bit jarring.
China's rise exhibits many interesting phenomena. One is the often skewed view of China beyond its borders, which is equal parts awe, greed and fear.
Awe, because it's so vast and so old and so storied; China has an enduring mystique (which its tourism promoters hope never fades). The greed comes from thinking that there's something in the China miracle for us: Can we sell them resources, can we produce more cheaply there, can we tap that supposedly bottomless consumer market? And finally fear: What if they not only want to buy our oil and minerals, but also the companies that produce them?
The self-contradictory attitude towards China is now at a peak because of the financial crisis. The Economist asked a few weeks ago: "Can China save the world?" It was an economic basket-case 30 years ago, but we're now counting on China's engine to keep the global economy ticking over. Its recently announced four-trillion-yuan ($720-billion) stimulus package has everyone hoping.
Despite the saturation coverage that China gets, what I hear from most first-time visitors is "I had no idea." That normally refers to China's pockets of affluence, its stunning infrastructure and just what a simply cool place it can be. For whatever reason, after 30 years of China's open door, people don't fully get it unless they've been here.
Part of the problem is the nature and tone of the coverage China gets in the international media. The other day, CNN carried an item on Chinese golf schools.
Halfway through, up popped those hoary old images of communism so beloved by the cliché machine: a grainy Movietone News-style clip of Mao Zedong, inspecting something or other. The voiceover said ominously that the bourgeois indulgence of golf was once banned in China, and that recently there have been renewed calls for limiting course construction. Well, that's probably true; they banned everything fun, we all know that. Buit in the clip, Mao wasn't anywhere near a golf course, and the reasons for wanting to limiting them these days are quite prosaic: Golf eats up farm land and uses too much water. That's it.
China has an image problem, and that old communist tag doesn't help. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party runs the place, but it could just as easily be called the Chinese Pragmatist Party these days. Old-school congresses with waves of clapping delegates are still de rigueur, as are the stars and hammers and sickles. It all makes for great photo ops — and perpetrates the myth that today's China bears any resemblance to our Cold War-forged notions of communism.
Of course, China has many deep-seated problems, too. For starters: a paucity of human rights, a growing gap between rich and poor, the environment, Internet censorship, a crumbling social-safety net that isn't being repaired quickly enough. Pretty much anyone you talk to in China these days will frankly acknowledge all these points; that's the difference between now and when I arrived in 1985.
China is a place of contradictions and contrasts; it was a contradiction, after all, that set this chain of events in motion. What used to be called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," that hybrid of communism and capitalism, is what sparked this place to life. Its architect, Deng Xiaoping, was a contradictory character himself. His vision created the freer China of today, but he was a disciplinarian — and the Tiananmen debacle happened on his watch.
Politics and economics are the two areas where there's the greatest disconnect between foreign hopes and Chinese reality. For 15 years, various commentators have been saying China is ripe for political change. It hasn't happened. In any event, China is not going to be a liberal democracy in our lifetimes and whatever system does evolve here will probably never suit Western tastes. Get over it.
As for economics: Just what is China's system, and why has it managed to create such vast wealth in such a short time? The combination of authoritarian politics, state capitalism and a frenetic private sector has been a potent wealth-creator. China is at the same time highly entrepreneurial (the private sector accounts for up to 60 per cent of GDP now, depending on whose numbers you use) but also very state-directed.
There are far fewer state-owned enterprises in China today than a decade ago, but they are leaner than their predecessors, have healthy balance sheets and, importantly, are profitable. Many have been partially privatized through stock-market listings, but the central-planning hand remains strong.
This makes people outside China uncomfortable. They picture backrooms full of cadres scheming about world domination. What they should be picturing is boardrooms full of suits, scheming about their companies dominating the ones down the road. These are big, strong companies, some of which want to play on the world stage.
If you want to play with them, you have to come to terms with the government factor, because it isn't going away. It's been amusing to watch the waves of paranoia that have rippled out every time China Investment Corp., the sovereign wealth fund, has raised an eyebrow about an acquisition. This is a passive equity investor just looking for a place to park cash; it's not Dr. Evil. (So far, CIC has taken a bath on the likes of Morgan Stanley and Blackstone stock; they are not seers.)
So here we are, 30 years into Mr. Deng's complex and often fraught experiment. Look at it this way: China has now been longer in the Deng mode than it was in the Mao mode. Is this communism? Yes, but let's call it Communism 2.0. That separates it from those days when Mao banned golf — and leaves open the tantalizing prospect of the upgrades to come.
