I was interviewed for an article in Beilinbao, Lin Da’s student newspaper. The underlined words are my (”mispelled”) name, He Bosen. (The middle character should be 何.)
They loved America. They hated America. I wondered if the whole nation was schizophrenic.
Each morning in China Daily, top-level Communists denounced the evils of American trade law, American human rights abuses, American support for Taiwan, not to mention all-in-all Americanism. One might believe only the world consisted of only two nations, China and America — the ceaseless infractions of the one drawing ceaseless rebukes from the other.
Simultaneously, other China Daily articles bragged about joint ventures between American and Chinese corporations. The Chinese seemed to obsess over economics even more than Americans did, so insatiable was their appetite for business news. Yearning to come alongside America, they celebrated every new business partnership.
The only newspaper in English, China Daily towed the party line closely enough that I felt I was eavesdropping on what the Chinese read in their own newspapers. Still, I wondered. At subway stations, vendors hawked fifteen or twenty newspaper titles in different sizes and print colors — a surprising display of journalistic liberty.
“Which newspaper is the best?” I asked my students.
“What do you mean?”
“Which newspaper do you trust the most? Which one do you read?”
They waved me off. “No no no, they are all the same.”
“The same? No, there’s about two dozen newspapers.”
“Yes, the stories are the same. Even the pictures are the same.”
So much for journalistic freedom. Perhaps producing multiple publications that all said that same thing was the Communist way of providing employment to many while preserving one-party rule.
I read China Daily religiously, partly for the stream of contemporary English, and partly for the intellectual exercise of guessing at the larger world through the thick screen pulled over it. I was especially vigilant for one headline: Deng Xiaoping Dead. Word had it his health was failing, and my teaching organization warned that if this occurred, pro-democracy demonstrations might erupt again, prompting another crackdown. Only four years earlier, the Tiananmen Massacre had caused American teachers to evacuate. Deng Xiaoping rarely made public appearances that year, and secretly I wished I could witness so historic event as his passing (Communist leaders are long-lived; since the 1949 revolution, China has had only four).
The paucity of recent news about him convinced me Deng Xiaoping had already died, and was being kept under wraps while the Communist Party resolved internal power struggles. My speculation was based on the evident one-upmanship of the two leaders beneath him– Premier Li Peng and Prime Minister Jiang Zemin. Li Peng was the intellectual who’d lost his temper on live television during the Tiananmen demonstrations; Jiang Zemin was a good ol’ boy with deep Communist Party connections. They reminded me of Snowball and Napoleon from Orwell’s Animal Farm. If Li Peng had read that book, its warnings escaped him, for when Deng Xiaoping finally was declared dead (in 1997, three years after I left), Jiang Zemin, the intellectual inferior, had little difficulty consolidating power and running off his adversary. Once one of the three most powerful men of the most populous nation on Earth, Li Peng still lives in relative obscurity.
I made my own appearance in a Chinese newspaper – the student rag at Beijing Linye Daxue, when an undergraduate asked if she could interview another foreign teacher and me. During thirty minutes of questioning she took zero notes. I supposed her to have a powerful memory until six weeks later, when her article hit the stands.
I learned the article had been published when students began bombarding me with kung fu questions: “Why didn’t you tell us you were interested in kung fu? How long have you trained? Did you come to China to learn?”
Somewhere in all those characters I was quoted as saying my interest in China began by watching kung fu movies. Had I said this? No – and I had no idea what gave the reporter such an impression.
Ahh, what things are lost in translation!
* * * * *
A smattering of China Daily headlines from 1993-1994 allows a glimpse into what was on the nation’s mind during that time period:
Arts
Arts, culture grow with economic reforms
Li strives to preserve China’s musical wealth
Painter promotes China abroad
Weaving a fashion future
Writers profit from columns to bestsellers
‘What’s up Doc?’: Time to reanimate the cartoon world
Where dining out is a religion
Business
Honesty is the best sales policy
Money-losing State enterprises must shut down
Rules aim to improve free market efficiency
Shoppers call hotline for quality
Crime/Calamity
Capitol police uncovered 740 major criminal cases
Court rules in case of babysitter
Public security reports rise in crime in 1993
Weather disasters exacting heavy toll
380 dead in floods since July
Culture
Ethnic languages protected
Life in an ‘urban’ village
Rules set to protect minority nationalities
Education
Cheating on tests a problem
Colleges have to refine credit system
Complaints over cost of university education
Don’t motivate kids with cash
Exam changes often confuse
Plan to wipe out illiteracy by 2000
Project aims to teach children about harsh realities of life
School of hard knocks teaches self reliance
University plan targets nation’s top young talent
Family
Children lead parents into age of computers
Children take their parents to court
Not easy being a gifted kid
The trouble with kids today
Growth
Balanced growth required in all regions
Fair competition the only way to ensure efficiency
Money fever becomes epidemic in China
Moving on in search of space
New roles give nuclear industry a fresh glow
Party accelerates reforms: CPC forges policies for socialist market economy
Quality of life rising steadily
Rules aim to improve free market efficiency
State to cap TV satellite dishes
Health
Fresh strategy aims to clean up pollution
Nation should control sales of tobacco
Navel might be path to easing heart disease
Parasites infect most of nation’s population
Pollution crisis can’t be ignored
Politics
Americans more positive about China
Deng visits Shanghai for Spring Festival
Deng’s selected works: Guide to a decade of reform
Government fights to make itself more efficient
Party accelerates reforms
February 21, 2008 at 7:05 pm
!! What kinds of abuses do they talk about?
February 22, 2008 at 11:47 am
Propaganda doesn’t just deflect, it also counterattacks. Therefore, in contrast to China’s own shining example on human rights, we Americans have an abysmal record on our treatment of criminals and our provision for the unemployed and homeless. Plus, as evident in Waco, freedom of religion in America is an illusion — our government persecutes, even kills the religious.
Those were the major themes in 1993-1994. By this point I would expect regular diatribes against our country’s pollution, public health crises, election fiascoes, and government deception and coverups. Basically, any area where America is strong in comparison to China is a target for aggressive propagandistic counterattack so that our calls for human rights reforms in China are viewed as manipulative, denial-fueled hypocrisy.
February 22, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Interesting; it would seem to me that Americans look at China and see a persecution of the noble and educated, and China points at the “human rights abuses” of our disenfranchised. Or maybe the distinction is this: we see China abusing human rights, because they are quashing individuals who are struggling to obtain what we perceive as human rights. But our disenfranchised, just by virtue of being disenfranchised, doesn’t look like human rights abuse to us, because we are not actively suppressing anything?
February 22, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I believe the Communist Party viewed our government as abdicating, allowing capitalists to actively suppress individuals. They might argue the very need to struggle is the human rights abuse here. Given their system of a guaranteed job (no matter how boring) for everyone, it’s understandable how Communists might see our own system of self-reliance as barbaric.
Considering that, in the midst of our current gas price crunch, Exxon just posted the highest quarterly and annual profits ever for a U.S. company, the argument that America throws individuals under the tread of corporate behemoths isn’t entirely without merit.
Liberals say we need protection from corporations, conservatives say we need protection from big government. Personally, I don’t trust either.