The Fat Years

by Koonchung Chan

  A number of groups are, however, missing from The Fat Years. From the urban population, these are the many professors, lawyers, and other professionals who are actively working to change the dictatorship. Also missing are the urban working class and peasant workers (migrant laborers) who toil in the harsh working conditions of mostly foreign-owned factories (owned by American, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Hong Kong consortia), and who by 2010 acquired the unfortunate habit of committing suicide as a way out of their misery. Missing also are the other eight hundred to nine hundred million Chinese who live in rural China. Although, as the fictional CASS scholar Hu Yan says, their aggregate income has indeed increased in the last thirty-two years, they are certainly not enjoying the “fat years” that some, but not all, Chinese urbanites enjoy. Missing, too, except for Wei Guo’s ineffectual fascist cell, are any detailed descriptions of the special People’s Armed Police, the military, and the thugs who maintain the party-state’s stability by routinely harassing anyone who balks at having his or her house demolished, or farmland stolen as part of party-state real estate deals, or who calls for any sort of liberal democratic reforms, including genuine implementation of the existing constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

  Many people interpret the China of this novel as a dystopia, but I do not believe it presents China as a dystopia. Dystopia is thought of as “an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one, the opposite of utopia.” That is an accurate description of the state presented in Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 that was modeled on Stalinist Russia. It would also describe China under Mao Zedong, especially from the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution, 1956 to 1976. The former occasioned the greatest man-made famine ever in world history in which some forty-five million people perished, and totally destroyed almost every aspect of China’s social, cultural, economic, and environmental infrastructure; the latter did more or less the same, except for the famine; fatalities in the Cultural Revolution were usually the result of intellectuals and teachers being beaten to death by young Red Guards, suicide, murder, or civil warfare.

  China today and for the foreseeable future is not a dystopia, nor is it a utopia; it’s not even trying to be a utopia. It is a Leviathan-like Leninist party-state that is, by the Chinese Communist Party’s standards, a great success, a putatively “harmonious society” that aims to give everyone a “moderately decent standard of living.” Some people call it a fascist state, but if it is, it is a truly successful fascist state. A fascist state, however, has to have an ardent ideology and a Great Leader, but China today has neither. The semifascist ultranationalists, like Wei Guo in the novel, are a minority, and their passion does not extend to the nine men of the Politburo Standing Committee who actually govern China—Party Central, represented in the novel by one of its secretaries, He Dongsheng.

  China is a party-state in which the Communist Party is both the state and the government and controls every institution in the society. Since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party has achieved tremendous economic successes by abandoning any residual socialist or communist ideals, and by becoming the director of a capitalist economy without the rule of law, a capitalist society claiming to be a dictatorship of the proletariat that rules for the people and in their interests. With the Communist Party at the center of everything, this modern Leviathan works by attracting direct foreign investment, selling to foreign consumers, and buying off most of the professional urban class, and many of the peasants, while brutally suppressing any dissent and treating the entire population as a “reserve army” that labors for the benefit of the Communist Party and its party-state apparatus.

  The Party leaders have no dream of utopia, only a dream of amassing more wealth and power for themselves and their dependents while suppressing all malcontents in the name of national stability. In this, they still resemble O’Brien’s Party mentioned in Professor Lovell’s Preface. In a recent interview, CASS professor Yu Jianrong, an outspoken advocate of individual rights, makes an interesting comparison between the “stability” of Taiwan and that of China. His comments on the two different kinds of “stability” are that, in his view, “when judging stability in Taiwan the criterion” is “whether or not the situation will influence the stability of the law,” while the standard for judging stability on the mainland is mainly “whether or not the situation will influence the stability of the Chinese Communist Party regime … In order to consolidate its regime, the Chinese Communist Party views every action that might remove their pressure on the people to be a destabilizing element … In order to eliminate all the destabilizing elements, the Chinese Communist Party then continuously practices suppression, i.e., takes suppression for stability … I believe that the core belief of the Chinese Communist Party is not economic development. There is only one goal of everything it does: the exclusiveness of its political power. Without realizing this, one cannot really understand the Chinese Communist Party … It has long since become a party without belief, a party of pragmatism. The only thing that will influence it is the pressure of reality.”

  The only vision the Chinese Communist Party has is the overall vision of coming world hegemony, related in The Fat Years through He Dongsheng’s lengthy monologue. Some readers may regard this as a tedious “soap box monologue” lacking in drama, but they would be mistaken. Most liberal ethnic-Chinese scholars living in China and abroad regard the last section of the work as very dramatic and the most important part of the book. Important both in He Dongsheng’s manner of delivery, and in the content of his monologue.

  The way He Dongsheng talks to, or rather lectures at, his kidnappers is exactly the way the Party leadership talks to the 1.3 billion Chinese. It is how “President” Hu Jintao addresses the ordinary people, while Premier Wen Jiabao seems to have tried to imitate the so-called populism of Mao’s behind-the-scenes hatchet man Zhou Enlai (a performance that has been criticized by the dissident Yu Jie, in a book published this year in Hong Kong). Several Chinese intellectuals and reporters from the popular liberal paper Southern Weekly (itself mentioned in the novel) who visited Taiwan in November 2010 witnessed the way President Ma Ying-jeou interacted with the ordinary people and with other officials. Then they publicly lamented the fact that no dialogue of that sort could possibly take place in the People’s Republic.

  Reality has already caught up with He Dongsheng’s monologue, and many of the plans he describes have already been fulfilled, especially China’s buying up of much of the world’s natural resources to fuel its economic behemoth. Everything else, except for the genuine fantasy of an alliance with Japan, is in preparation or in progress. All these plans are intended to fulfill the goals of a China that its leaders and many of its people believe is in ascendance and destined to become the main power in the world.

  This idea that the U.S.-led West is suffering an unstoppable decline while China is enjoying an unstoppable rise is why in 2010 Chinese foreign policy became exceedingly aggressive and, as a result, China antagonized much of the world and drove all its neighbors either to increase their defense budgets or seek a rapprochement with the United States for protection. As political commentator Stephen Hill points out, “Beyond economic and ecological indicators, the hallmark of a great power is when other nations want to emulate you … But no one is banging down doors to get into China, and only the poorest countries aim to be like the People’s Republic.” Some nonpolitical Chinese scholars do return to China to work, even after obtaining their getaway pass in the form of permanent residency or citizenship in the United States or some other democratic country; while most of the poor nations that want to follow the Beijing model of development are ruled by unscrupulous dictators out for the main chance.

  Further evidence of the realism and relevance of this novel has just appeared. As I write these pages, two autocratic regimes have fallen in the Middle East due to popular protests, and some others are in danger of falling. The rea
ction of the Chinese Communist party-state was to mandate a ban on independent media reports on the Middle East and on any local disturbances; the government called for increased control of the Internet, cell phone messages, Twitter, and microblogs, and made preparations for a complete Internet shutdown; it also stepped up police detention and harassment of all known democracy advocates. This is all of a piece with their treatment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, whose wife is presently under house arrest.

  In The Fat Years, even those chic intellectuals like Lao Chen may become uneasy about China’s potential to become frightening in the future; all they can do about their unease, however, is what the 2000 Nobel Prize–winning novelist Gao Xingjian advised—escape. The reality of geopolitics demonstrates that it will probably be a long time before He Dongsheng and the Chinese Communist Party’s dream of Chinese world hegemony is fulfilled, if ever. But the question remains: would this hegemony be the free, just, and civilized power that so many of its concerned citizens hope for? In the meantime, The Fat Years provides the most interesting and enlightening way for us to understand both the possible future of China and what it is like for many urban Chinese to live in the belly of the Chinese Leviathan.

  I would like to thank Josephine Chiu-Duke for her thoughtful suggestions concerning the interpretation of this novel and for considerable help with the translation.

  MICHAEL DUKE, FEBRUARY 2011

  TRANSLATOR’S ENDNOTES

  Master Chen: The literal translation would be “Teacher Chen,” but this is not a recognized form of address in English.

  The sweet smell of books in a literary society: A common Chinese saying, as in “a whiff of refinement.”

  Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern tour: After Deng Xiaoping formally retired, he still remained in power. His “reform” policies were threatened after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, so in 1992 Deng took a long tour through southern China and made several speeches announcing his continued support for economic reforms. At this time he may or may not have said “to get rich is glorious.” Deng’s reforms continued under the new leader, Jiang Zemin.

  Ji Xianlin said the twenty-first century is the Chinese century: Ji Xianlin (1911–2009) was a celebrated Chinese linguist and Indologist.

  This year is the year of my zodiac sign, and a lot of strange things are bound to happen: The Chinese believe that the year of a person’s zodiac sign, coming once every twelve years, is unlucky, and so one has to be very careful throughout that year.

  They treat the Taiwanese like their little brothers: China’s party-state government has long regarded Taiwan as a renegade province, and the 85 percent of Taiwanese on the island (as opposed to 15 percent of mainlanders) are considered of lower status than mainlanders.

  The Tiu Keng Leng refugee camp: Also known as Rennie’s Mill, this was a special settlement created by the Hong Kong government for Nationalist (Kuomintang) soldiers and supporters after they lost the Chinese civil war in 1949.

  Chen Yingzhen: A Taiwanese leftist writer and political activist (b. 1936) who spent several years in prison in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

  ethnic conflict was growing increasingly acrimonious: This is a reference to the feuds between the Taiwanese and the mainlanders. Chen Shuibian, president of Taiwan from 2000 to 2008, pressed for independence for the island, causing fears that the Chinese would invade.

  I loved to watch those post-1949 Chinese films: All the films from 1949 to the 1980s were Communist propaganda for any campaign that was running at the time. They are now known as part of China’s “Red Legacy.”

  The Three Years Natural Disaster: A Chinese Communist euphemism for the greatest famine in world history, which resulted from Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward policies and led to the death of some 45 million Chinese.

  Politburo: The Chinese Communist Party is organized on the Leninist model created in the old Soviet Union. The twenty-five-member Politburo, short for Political Bureau, is its second-highest organization. Only the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee have more power. Both groups are announced at Party congresses held at least every five years (cf. three Party Congresses, following note). For details, see Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, Harper, 2010.

  three Party Congresses: A Communist Party congress is held every five years. The next congress is due in 2012. At these congresses, the new top level of leadership (the Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee [nine members who are the heart of Chinese rule], president and premier) is presented to the nation, having been chosen in secret by the outgoing leadership in fierce factional infighting.

  Party Secretariat: The Secretariat of the Communist Party of China Central Committee is the CCP’s permanent bureaucracy. There are several secretaries and they manage the work of the Politburo and its Standing Committee.

  feichengwuraook: A genuine URL, but actually a phishing site designed to harm your computer.

  monsters and demons: A phrase made popular by Mao Zedong to attack specialists, scholars, and other so-called class enemies during the Cultural Revolution. On June 1, 1966, the People’s Daily published an editorial entitled “Sweep Away All Monsters and Demons.” Soon after, the Red Guards went on the rampage for victims.

  1983 crackdown: During the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in late 1983 to early 1984, some factions of the Chinese Communist Party tried to stamp out the influence of Western liberal ideas and cultural practices coming into China due to the “Reforms and Openness” policies that began in 1979. It was a short-lived and largely ineffective campaign, but it did involve many public executions, often of young people, in Shanghai and other cities.

  the trial of the Gang of Four: The name given to a powerful radical leftist faction of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution. They included Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife, and Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. They were imprisoned shortly after Mao’s death in 1976 and given a show trial in 1981 that resulted in prison sentences ranging from twenty years to life, and a death sentence for Jiang Qing that was commuted to life. Jiang Qing was famously defiant at the trial, claiming with considerable correctness that she was only carrying out Chairman Mao’s orders. She committed suicide in 1991. For details, see Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, Harvard Belknap Press, 2006.

  Rightist status: Under Mao Zedong’s rule in China, Communist Party members who disagreed with Mao’s policies were frequently branded as Rightists. Some seven hundred thousand or more people were so labeled during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in the late 1950s because they disagreed with the collectivization movement later known as the Great Leap Forward that led to Mao’s great famine. Deng Xiaoping played a prominent role in carrying out this persecution. In the 1980s, these people began to be rehabilitated, many of them posthumously.

  Public Security Bureau: The PSB is the main arm of the Chinese police; they operate under the Ministry of Public Security. China also has a very powerful People’s Armed Police Force, a uniformed paramilitary group that is in charge of internal security, crowd control, crackdowns, etc. Many ad hoc groups of mercenaries, sometimes referred to as thugs, also perform similar duties in local areas.

  Reforms and Openness: The current reform era in China began in 1979 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Known in China as “Reforms and Openness,” it refers to the policy of reforming China’s economy into a putatively market economy, so-called “market socialism” or “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” and opening up to the world to allow an influx of foreign investment and cultural influences.

  I present the strict facts and employ reasoned arguments, and I argue exclusively from the point of view of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. This infuriates them, and they all attack me: This summarizes the activities, and their consequences for him, of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to thirteen years in prison for more or less the same things Little
Xi does in this novel, only in concert with others and at a more intellectual level.

  It was then that I was abducted at the railway station and taken to do slave labor in an illegal brick kiln in Shanxi Province: This part of Zhang Dou’s story is based on the 2007 Chinese slave-labor scandal, also known as the Shanxi Black Brick Kiln Incident, in which it was revealed that thousands of Chinese, children included, had been forced to work in illegal brick kilns, where they were tortured. Local Party officials were complicit in this activity.