Most of the usual haunts haven’t changed too much from last year. The hipsters are out and about on Gulou, the touts energetically try to pull people into the electronics malls in Zhongguancun, and the craft beers flow abundantly down at Jing-A and Great Leap. Beijing seems its hot and sultry and bustling self this July.
The hutongs are quieter after the city government swept through this past year to close down so many marvelously motley shops and cafes and bars and to chase away unfortunate out-of-towners lacking the all-important Beijing residence permit. But the jumble and throng of the city remains. The incongruous combination of overlarge boulevards and undersized alley-way streets (undersized, at any rate, for the number of cars barging in), and the sheer mass of 20-odd million people, impose a particular and inexorable logic to this urban sprawl. However hard the planners try to make this place over in their controlled and antiseptic vision, multitudes of Beijingers will ignore their decrees and bring out their plastic stools in the evening, fire up the barbeque, sit with friends and family, and make their best lives.
On one level, there appears to be a certain middle class satisfaction about this city. The myriad commodities on sale allow for a wide range of material self-expression. People, young and old, create unique lifestyles though their clothes, their hair, their online profiles, their look, their stuff, to suit themselves. There is a familiar kind of social and cultural freedom.
We shouldn’t make too much of t-shirts, but it’s hard not to notice those that seem to press for greater personal autonomy. Here are some I’ve noticed in the past few days, all in Beijing, all in English:
“Democracy”
“Feminist”
“Girls don’t dress for boys”
“Girls can do whatever they want”
“Thought is free”
“Make your own rules”
Yes, “democracy” is a Socialist Core Value but I can’t help but wonder if the person wearing it might be thinking somewhat differently.
The feminists messages – another was “the future is female” – could indicate support for the emergent #MeToo consciousness here. It is a “consciousness” and not a “movement,” not yet at least, because the party-state is so determined to block any larger-scale overt political organization around this or any other message outside of the ideological orthodoxy. But the t-shirts suggest a different story.
Refreshingly, a critical eye is also cast on the US, as this message made clear:
“Elect a clown, expect a circus”
There is a fair amount of respect for Trump here, an assumption that he must know what he’s doing and that he has a fully developed foreign policy strategy. Perhaps Chinese folks have to presume that the man behind the developing trade war is somehow smart and capable; they have to try to discern a clear pattern of behavior in order to formulate their response. But there are obviously those who realize that the US has, indeed, elected a clown and we all just have to hold on tight until the democratic cycle shuts down the circus.
All of this, the messaging for personal freedom, is not unusual. Over the past five years, during my annual July sojourn to teach Chinese undergraduates at a university here, I’ve encountered similar aspirations, not just on t-shirts but also in conversations with students and faculty and friends. It does not add up to a significant challenge to the regime’s power or even the policy directions of the government. There isn’t enough political space. Whatever the dissatisfaction, it does not seem to run deep enough to motivate overt resistance. The material wealth, though unequally distributed, together with the diversity in social and cultural expression, are still sufficient to counteract the political and ideological constraints. Although this is an incredibly competitive society, you can make a fairly good life – xiaokang as the Party line would say – if you stay away from oppositional politics.
The horrors being inflicted on Uighur people in Xinjiang are kept out of the public eye here and, even if the news of “re-education camps” circulated more widely, it is unlikely that middle class Han Chinese would rise up to defend Muslims in the far west. The state-sponsored narrative of “terrorists” and “splittists” and “radical Islamacists” vitiates the recognition and understanding that must proceed rage and action.
And so the Beijing summer unfolds.
Yet there is something different this year, an underlying anxiety that has not found its full political or social articulation. The economy is sputtering. Official figures report continued healthy growth but official figures have been faked before and there is reason to question whether rosy GDP numbers truly reflect the real economic situation. The stock market is down, despite state efforts to prop it up; the currency is weakening; and debt is growing. The developing trade war with the US further adds to economic uncertainty.
A journalist friend, who works for a Chinese financial magazine, told me the other day that people here are increasingly worried about near-term economic prospects. Everybody knows the official numbers are fiction; everybody can see the need for some sort of policy change. But Xi Jinping is not exercising the leadership that he has claimed since he rose to power. Economic reform is required but all that is happening is economic drift.
And the recent vaccine scandal has only heightened public skepticism toward the powers-that-be.
Small political signs are starting to emerge, suggestions that people are questioning the power and wisdom of the supreme leader (lingxiu). Some could be people at the top of the hierarchy, those who encouraged the recent Xinhua article, since taken down, that reminded us of how former Chairman Hua Guofeng once apologized for creating a personality cult. In discussing Hua, the writer allegorically raises questions about Xi.
A few rungs down the power structure, a law professor at Tsinghua University, Xu Zhangrun, has just published an essay in which he warns of the revival of a personality cult - 个人崇拜 – and a “return to totalitarianism” - 极权回归. He doesn’t mention Xi by name, but we all know what he is talking about.
Xu clearly crosses the lines that have been established in the past few years for how much criticism of the leadership will be tolerated. He even calls for a reversal of the verdict of the June 4th Beijing massacre, taboo for the past twenty-nine years. Either he is just personally fed up with the tightening political climate of the Xi years and is willing to risk his career and livelihood, or he has some powerful backers who have promised to protect him if he comes forward and starts a broader effort to rein in Xi’s power. Whatever the case, his intervention is extraordinary. Does he reflect a broader public mood?
When political power is highly centralized into the hands of a single leader, that person can claim the credit for all of the apparent successes of national development. But the supreme leader could be held responsible for the failures, too. My journalist friend speculated that perhaps Xi is letting things drift because he knows just how precarious the economic situation is. He knows that if the system no longer delivers the goods, political legitimacy could be undermined. He knows that the authority he has amassed since 2012 could work against him when the going gets rough.
And everyone knows this. The out-of-town visitors to Beijing, the people who come from the provinces to see the sights and stores, to wander up and down Nanluoguxiang and gawk at the boutiques and nibble on the Taiwanese snacks, they all know. They know that life is pretty good just now but that could change rather quickly. They know, maybe as Hua Guofeng learned, that whoever is on top one day could find himself out of luck the next.
Lovely blog post title. Good tone and accurate representation.
Pray for peace and unity in the East and wisdom and sobriety in the West.
Posted by: Kevin 7 | August 18, 2018 at 02:06 AM