by Guy Sorman
Chen Xin says his intention is not to launch an anti-imperialist tirade; he is simply stating facts. What, then, are his conclusions? He thinks that, in contrast to the Western model of development, China must adopt a model based on the Eastern concept of harmony. His words are almost heresy. At present, the Communist Party will not hear of any alternative to consumerism and globalization. Chen Xin clarifies: the Chinese should be given the choice between two ways of life—the Western way, the course that has already been charted in the eastern provinces; and the Eastern way, which could prevail elsewhere. For this to be a real choice, the state must invest massively in education and health care for the peasants and direct them toward more remunerative activities in order to end migration. Chen Xin says such a harmonious China would have to enjoy greater political freedom and managerial autonomy. His naturalist vision veers between the genius of India and utopian socialism.
Chen Xin thinks he found what he was looking for in Kerala, the social paradise of those in search of alternatives. The state boasts widespread education, gender equality, interreligious harmony, and high life expectancy. Better still, Kerala is politically correct, governed by the local Communist Party. Life is all the more sweet, as people don’t have to work very hard. Yet it is the remittances from workers in the Gulf and Great Britain that has made all this possible. Without them, the government would not be able to finance the education and health of its people. This is a point that people tend to overlook. And when these workers return, they are laden with all kinds of consumer goods, something the utopians chose to ignore. Indian harmony is not always based on asceticism.
The Kerala model, more mythical than real, is not easy to replicate. What makes it interesting is that a new generation of Chinese academics is turning to the state in their quest for harmony. Does this signal a shift in Chinese policy, or is it some new surprise? The economist’s search for harmony is akin to the educated classes’ desire for a value-based society and the religious fervor overcoming an increasing number of Chinese. But there is a red line that Chen Xin cannot cross: the dictatorship of the Party. The Chinese mind has been so conditioned by what is permissible and what is not that he thinks of harmony as independent from democracy. But without democracy, there can be no understanding of India.
Democracy makes all the difference
Democracy, and nothing else, inclines India toward harmony. And because it is not a democracy, China is driven by the quest for power. The Indian peasant has some hope of getting electricity, roads, schools, and dispensaries in his village. Villagers in China have no such hopes. The Indians vote, and the Chinese don’t. Elected Indian legislators cannot afford to ignore the demands of their voters. By contrast, the job of a local Chinese Communist Party secretary is to send as many villagers as possible to the industrial zones. Political power flows from contradictory legitimacies, which leads to divergent economic strategies. No doubt market forces are at work in India just as much as in China, pushing people out of their villages, promoting consumerism and a more materialistic way of life. But while in India, democracy tempers the market and the people are relatively free to choose, the Party does not believe in giving the Chinese real choice.
Indian leaders are not obsessed with the idea of resurrecting an imperial power that they have never known. Whenever power goes to leaders’ heads, the voters quickly bring them back to the reality of local issues. Thus, in 2004, the overly nationalist ruling party was ousted by a coalition that claimed to be closer to the people. In India, the poor constitute the political majority. Power changes hands frequently, and the press is free. Though this alone cannot wipe out corruption or the abuses of power, it never fails to reassert the primacy of the principle of harmony. Villagers can stay in their villages and make agriculture remunerative only because their elected representatives are obliged to support such initiatives. They may not add to India’s might, but they do improve the lot of the deprived. And it was Gandhi who said that India’s economic progress should be measured by the yardstick of the poorest of the poor.
Another major difference between the two countries is India’s preference for the service sector and information technology—decentralized activities—in contrast to the Chinese predilection for industry. Is this a question of national temperament, or does it have to do with political choices? Tradition does have a part to play, but policies tend to reinforce trends. The emphasis on industry is in keeping with the Communist regime’s ultimate goal of building national power. The people’s welfare is secondary. The 20 percent who have benefited materially—or morally, with increased national pride—constitute China’s “useful” population, the ones who can help China in its quest for power. The remaining 80 percent are human fodder.
There appears to be a relation, difficult to prove empirically, between innovation in computer technology, especially software, and political culture. The countries where creativity thrives happen to be democratic: America, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and the nations of Western Europe, versus Russia, the Muslim world, and China.
Clearly, it would be simplistic to say that India is all harmony and that China is driven solely by its desire for power. Likewise, the differences between the two countries cannot be reduced to the presence or absence of democracy. Nonetheless, if one fails to take these factors into account, it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain the differences.
In the Year of the Rooster, for the first time in its history, the Communist Party has introduced the term “harmony” in its propaganda lexicon. Perhaps the Party is anticipating social unrest. But the Chinese are not taken in. University students from Fudan University in Shanghai all tell me that “harmony” is simply another term for an old idea: no criticism of teachers and the Party. The Party can go on crying “harmony” from the rooftops. It lacks credibility and will remain forever captive to the logic of power because that is its raison d’être. The government will not transfer resources to the countryside, nor will it allocate funds for health and education. The Party may change its discourse from time to time, but its priorities will remain the same. It has condemned a billion hardworking Chinese, slaves of the power syndrome, to a life of drudgery, for power and power alone is the be-all and end-all of the Party.
Out to conquer the world
The Communist Party has made its choice between the two alternatives—a powerful China or the development of its people. Since the time of Mao Zedong, the Party has decided on a conquering China rather than on contented Chinese. From the outset, China has accorded the highest priority to the development of heavy industry and weaponry. Even in Mao’s time, the majority of the peasants had already been subjugated to fulfill this ambition. The goal has not changed; only the method has been perfected. Just as in Mao’s time, the Party’s has never tried to hide its intent. For those who choose to listen, it is the stated ambition of the Party, expressed in a specifically Chinese code. Thus, the resuscitation of Admiral Zheng He in the Year of the Rooster to send a message to the world!
In 1405, the Emperor Ming sent Admiral Zheng He on a naval expedition with a fleet of 300 ships and 30,000 sailors. The admiral and his men spent seven years sailing around the East Indies, India, and East Africa—whereupon the Ming dynasty decided that there was no need to explore any further and closed China to the world. The Zheng He saga got buried in collective memory, and China remained inward-looking until the West forced it out of isolation with the Opium Wars of 1840. Six centuries later, the Chinese leadership thought fit to revive the expedition and its brilliant commander, a Muslim eunuch from Yunnan promoted to the rank of admiral.
So in the summer of 2005, the Chinese National Museum in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square held an exhibit in commemoration of Zheng He. There was nothing, however, to display, the Ming dynasty having, for some inexplicable reason, destroyed all vestiges of his “remarkable saga.” In the absence of any relic, the organizers decided to construct a model of one of the ships, a good replica perhaps but not based on any recorded
historical evidence. There was also a desultory collection of recent photographs showing the places where the Chinese fleet must have cast anchor. To fill up the space were huge posters bearing the Party’s pompous proclamations. This was the real purpose of the exhibition. Visitors learned that Zheng He had set sail a hundred years before Christopher Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama, that his ship was three times longer than the Genoan ships, and that the Chinese fleet had transported “30,000 men in comparison to Columbus’s 88.” To dispel all doubt, a poster declared Zheng He to be the “greatest navigator of all times.” China had stolen a march on the West.
In addition to this technical superiority, Zheng He and the Ming dynasty showed the country to moral advantage. One of the posters said: “China was then the most powerful nation in the world. Without rival, it could have easily conquered, occupied, and colonized the lands on the route of the expedition. But it chose not do so and thereby harmed none.” As China had displayed such exemplary self-restraint in the past, there was no reason why it would not continue to do so. The objective of the exhibit was to give legitimacy to China’s new ambition and to emphasize the peaceful nature of its growth, a key slogan of the Year of the Rooster. The Party is faithfully keeping up the old imperial custom of rewriting history to suit one’s ends.
Of course, the exhibit obscured the real reasons for Zheng He’s mission. Such a large fleet could not have been sent purely to explore. The admiral’s brief was to reestablish China’s authority over tributary lands and to acquire fresh territory for the Empire. The Ming dynasty had only just come to power, and distant vassals were acting up. The “peaceful” nature of his mission notwithstanding, Zheng He had to wage battle in Ceylon, and ordered the king of Sumatra to be beheaded for not showing due respect to China. The commemoration did not mention this violence, no doubt inconsequential when compared with the extortion of the European conquistadors.
Was Zheng He any different from Christopher Columbus? Not really, for the Chinese were no less imperialistic than the Europeans. The Mings annexed Tibet; the Qings, Eastern Turkistan. Like the Westerners in their spheres of influence, the Chinese dynasties were convinced of their superiority over all other nations. There was one difference, however. The West exported Christian “values,” which it believed universal, but China only exported goods—silk and porcelain. Nothing has changed. Even today, Westerners persist in their attempt to spread human rights. The Chinese, who make no claim to universality, are content to sell their products (after Mao, they gave up trying to export revolution). Whether this is modesty or arrogance is hard to say. Perhaps convinced of the supremacy of their values, they consider them to be nontransmittable. In a pluralistic country, the commemoration of Zheng He would have generated debate about what the country had in common with other nations and what set it apart. But Chinese policy is to avoid anything controversial.
As one left the exhibition, one wondered why the naval expeditions were stopped. No sooner had the Ming dynasty stabilized than the mandarins put an end to any further adventurism. Perhaps they found such voyages too expensive; perhaps they feared the entry of foreign ideas. Who knows? The entire record of Zheng He’s seven journeys was destroyed, his prowess on the sea forgotten. The Beijing exhibition does not mention this.
What lessons should we draw from the story of Zheng He? Will China, which once surpassed the West, regain its preeminence? Will the renaissance be as peaceful as the expedition? Will China, as during the days of the Mings, seek only deference and profit? Will it withdraw into its shell once again? The odyssey of that extraordinary admiral presaged all these possibilities. Sadly, today’s China will never allow public debate about them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shadows of Democracy
Jiren is a Tibetan shepherd who owns a thousand yaks and has a wife decked with coral and silver necklaces. He does not understand the Communist version of democracy in China. Like the other 400 inhabitants of Chala, on the upper plateaus of Qinghai Province, he has been summoned to attend an electoral assembly. The Communist Party secretary convened this assembly in Chinese, a language that Jiren can neither read nor speak, which explains his confusion.
Qinghai is part of historical Tibet, but in 1965 the Chinese government divided it into several provinces in the hope of curbing the Tibetans’ pro-independence sentiment. This spring, even though the snow has begun to melt on the high plateaus, Chala shepherds obey the Party summons; some come on horseback and others, more fortunate, on all-terrain motorcycles. Not a single family is missing. If one happens to be a Tibetan in China, one has to heed the summons of the secretary. In this Year of the Rooster, Tibetans and Chinese are celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the supposedly “Peaceful Liberation” of Tibet—Communist Newspeak for colonization. Great celebrations are held to mark the event; the Tibetans, says the Party press, “were steeped in joy.”
Though the Party secretary, a certain Cairang, is Tibetan, he speaks Chinese, choosing to collaborate with the regional administration. For this, the Party has rewarded him with a bank loan to buy a deep freezer and a generator, so he sells his meat and salted butter at a better price than the other shepherds, who are at the mercy of Chinese intermediaries. For as long as Cairang remains the Party secretary and toes the line, the bank will not ask him to repay his loan. His story shows how the Party uses a mixture of carrots and sticks to deal with Tibetans. Actually, it metes out the same treatment to all Chinese—only with the Tibetans, it increases the doses of both reward and repression.
Tibetans: electoral puppets
Shepherds with their wives and children sit cross-legged on the wet grass in front of the Party headquarters, the only concrete building in the village. It is covered with white tiles, the hallmark of modernity everywhere in China. There is no village as such: shepherds live in tents and mud huts scattered over thirty kilometers. The Party, an energetic organizer, plays the Chinese national anthem over amplifiers, and the Tibetans, well trained, stand up. Cairang then launches into a long speech in Chinese. The shepherds comprehend little; they whisper to one another the few bits and pieces they do understand to get the gist of what is being said. Cairang tells the villagers that Chala has attained complete democracy, nothing less, and calls upon them to elect their local committee and village chief through a secret ballot. He shows them that the wooden ballot box wrapped in red paper is empty and can be locked with a key. Next, he brandishes the voting slips: yellow for the committee, pink for the village chief. The names of candidates—six names for five seats on the committee and just one for the village chief—have been printed in advance. For the benefit of the foreign observers and journalists who have come all the way to this remote corner of China, the secretary explains that the names of the candidates were decided through prior consultation among the villagers; the shepherds look at one another, bemused. Cairang goes on to explain how the secret ballot works. Some sort of a voting booth has been set up behind a mud wall that also serves as a urinal. He asks the voters not to sell their votes, thus implying that this happens rather frequently, and introduces the two policemen who have come from the district headquarters to arrest any miscreants.
As Cairang thunders in the manner characteristic of all Communist Party dignitaries, he senses that his audience is growing restive. Women begin to chatter, men draw on their cigarettes, and bottles of liquor are passed around. Cairang turns on some music, pop versions of Tibetan tunes, to keep them entertained. Women smile and flash their gold teeth, displaying their fortunes. The election campaign can begin.
Cairang introduces the candidate for village chief supported by the Party, one Caiban, also a yak breeder and the owner of the sole car in Chala. He, too, has a deep freezer bought on credit. Dressed in Tibetan robes, he is wearing a green cap of the kind worn by Chinese soldiers in the past. The audience looks at him enviously as a cloud passes overhead, making the temperature drop fifteen degrees. Speaking in Chinese, the candidate expounds his program at length, but with su
ch a pronounced Tibetan accent that the audience seems to understand him. He makes many promises: he’ll come down heavily on corruption (another way of saying that corruption is rampant), maintain accounts of all the public money he receives, pave the road that links the village center to the national highway, and do his best to settle boundary disputes, the main cause of acrimony among shepherd families. Finally, he swears to follow the line of the Communist Party, to fight poverty, and to make progress triumph. No one claps; they have heard all this countless times before. The campaigning is over; the Party secretary starts distributing the voting slips.
