Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China

by Jianying Zha

  And then a hai gui, a straight-shooting economist bent on “efficiency” and “logic,” was appointed to design the reform!

  “Zhang Weiying is a very nice person,” said a Beijing editor who didn’t want to be named. “But like a lot of science and engineering people, he may not be very sensitive to politics.” She has known Zhang for years but is also friendly with many of the humanities scholars who attacked Zhang’s plan. She said that as a neutral observer of the Beida debate, she was intrigued by its subtle psychological undercurrent: some of the prominent critics were already full professors but would like to appear as gallant defenders of their junior colleagues’ interests; others were privately sympathetic to the reform but didn’t want to publicly support it for fear of offending its opponents—after all, the reformers could lose, and they’d go on living on the same campus with the same colleagues, probably for the rest of their lives. “I don’t think Zhang Weiying could grasp such complex psychology. He is a bit han [憨].” (The word means something like gauche and thick.)

  I told Zhang Weiying that some people thought his ambition was aimed at an official career. Zhang looked insulted and a bit contemptuous. He responded with a Chinese proverb: “That’s like a petty person trying to imagine a gentleman’s mind. Why would I come to Beida if I wanted an official career?” He explained his involvement in the reform this way: “I’m like the goalie in a soccer game. Because our team has been doing so badly and can’t get the ball in [the goal], I feel so anxious I run across the field and try to help. But that’s really not my job.”

  Already he seemed to be missing the simpler life of being just a scholar. He is a popular teacher and enjoys wide respect at Guanghua. And in Chinese economists’ circles, Zhang Weiying is a big name. He was the first one in China to teach and edit a textbook on game theory. His books and articles on property rights and the theory of business enterprise and its relation to the government have been well reviewed and influential. He is a leading champion for private enterprise and a fierce critic of government’s interference in business. In 2002, he was chosen by CCTV as the “economist of the year,” the youngest to win the accolade.

  Being an official, he said, doesn’t fit his personality. You can’t talk freely, and you have to sit through long meetings. “There are so many VPs and other officials at a Beida meeting, by the time it’s my turn to speak, the day is over.”

  He was moved by the Oxford dons. “Their seminars had just a few students but very sharp debates, and they enjoy it so much. Zi de qi le (自得其乐), enjoy your own happiness. That’s the best thing I learned at Oxford: a scholar’s state of mind. It’s like the Chinese saying ‘getting one soul mate in a lifetime, that’s enough.’ ”

  8.

  By March 2004 the controversy finally cooled off. On February 14, when school resumed after winter break, Beida’s administration issued, quietly, the final document. There was no media fanfare, but the university made it clear that this was not something for feedback, debate, or comments. This was final: the document was the new official policy. And policy, of course, was to be obeyed and implemented.

  I had sensed this shifting wind months earlier when I heard about a speech by Beida’s Party secretary, Min Weifang. He was addressing the midlevel officials—Party heads, deans, and departmental chairmen—at a staff meeting. Of the lessons to be learned from the stormy controversy over the reform, Min said, a primary one was to avoid overexposure. He looked back on an earlier reform Beida did in 1999, which was also an attempt to stir up competition by evaluating all professors into nine grades and awarding bonuses accordingly. There had been a good deal of faculty complaint and grumbling about that, too. But the task was accomplished without any serious hitches because, in Min’s view, the midlevel officials had all been well-briefed and prepared. The administration had held a closed staff meeting off-campus and the officials had reached a clear consensus. No one was allowed to take the draft document home—the whole thing was kept secret while the officials got ready for the pressures ahead.

  This time, it would have been handled the same way but for the SARS scare; to avoid the risk of a face-to-face meeting, the draft document was sent to the midlevel officials, which led to its being leaked to the Internet. But Min said that from here on, “hyping” must be avoided: to accomplish reform we need to keep a sharp edge and “someone to take the brunt of fire,” but in our actual work we should be “low-key, practical, and steadfast.”

  Dismissing the critics’ charges as wujie (误解), or misunderstandings, Min reasserted the leadership’s resolve to carry on with the reform but told the officials that its fate lay in their hands. Min said the administration had been planning to give more power to the heads of colleges and departments. They had studied the first-rate foreign universities, Min said, and discovered that a powerful midlevel management was a common feature at great universities like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Beida would now take a step in this direction as well. But more power means more responsibilities. It would be against our reformist intensions, Min said, if you people end up using that power to promote a bunch of low-quality professors.

  I think that meeting set the tone. On December 4, I attended a Beida official press conference on the topic of “talent-breeding education.” Min and the entire corps of his “midlevel officials” were there. It was an impressive sight. Facing a roomful of reporters, Min was seated at the center of a long table, flanked by a long row of smart-looking men in smart suits and ties, each behind a microphone and a bottle of mineral water—a phalanx of China’s new, educated, well-dressed technocrats. And they certainly knew how to handle the media. Min gave the keynote speech. He talked about the importance of human talents if a country was to be competitive in the new age of globalization; he talked about Beida’s mission in breeding new talents for China; he reported Beida’s strategies and progress in this task—the reforms and experiments being made in admission policy, curriculum, graduate programs, and faculty systems. He quoted Beida’s legendary president Cai Yuanpei but also Jiang Zemin and Alan Greenspan. He talked about increased cooperation and exchanges with foreign universities (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc.), but also about the increased ratio of Party members among students (34 percent of recent graduates had joined the Party). He talked about promoting a “relaxed, lively” campus culture as well as efforts of “making the red flag fly on Beida’s Internet Web sites.”

  I must admit that I found this speech, like Min’s address to his midlevel officials, remarkable in its own way. I had heard that Min was arrogant, that he had a penchant for peppering his speech with English phrases. But here he was, speaking for half an hour without notes, in a curious lingo that mixed Party jargon with New-Age-speak. And it all flowed out smoothly, even with a touch of eloquence. The tone was confident but not arrogant. And no English. Here was a man who knew his audience and how to balance things.

  Min mentioned the faculty reform plan, but only briefly, and left right after he spoke—he was also attending a weeklong meeting at the State Council. Then the “midlevel officials” spoke one by one, and it was a long time before the reporters were invited to ask questions. Many asked about the faculty reform plan but received only pleasant, short, general replies. The officials were being “low-key, practical, and steadfast.”

  I had a brief chat with Min before the conference. A media official introduced me as “our Beida graduate, but she has lived in the States for many years and is now writing a new book about China in English.” Min shook my hands warmly and immediately chatted about his years in the States. He told me, in English, that his Stanford PhD was in “economics of education.” But this amicable exchange ended the moment I mentioned my interest in interviewing him on the Beida reform. It was subtle. I said I understood that he’d be very busy in the next few weeks attending the annual Beida Party Congress, but maybe after that? Min smiled and said: “Okay, just call my secretary. He will help you arrange it.”

  In the end I didn’t g
et the interview because Min checked into the hospital as soon as the Party Congress ended, but he probably wouldn’t have granted another interview on the touchy subject anyway. Then a piece of news about the Party Congress spread. As usual, the congress voted on the new members of Beida’s Party Committee. One of the candidates was Zhang Weiying: he received the lowest number votes. Everyone understood that Zhang had taken a fall because of the reform plan.

  I recalled a line in Min’s address: “Someone must take the brunt of fire” for the reform. Perhaps Zhang’s old friend was right after all: as the point man, the public face of the Beida reform, Zhang was now paying a price. He was being “sacrificed by the higher-ups.”

  9.

  Chen Pingyuan, the professor who had organized the conference on “Beijing: Urban Imagination and Cultural Memory,” was one of Beida’s best-known humanities scholars and one of the few who were critical of but also sympathetic to the reformers. His colleagues in the Chinese department were overwhelmingly opposed to the reform plan, and they found Chen’s attitude “evasive.” “You don’t know where he really stands,” one of them complained to me about Chen’s articles on the debate. “I suppose with Pingyuan’s stature he wants to be careful not to offend people.”

  I think it has less to do with stature than with temperament—Chen had always been a “gentle liberal.” Neither did I find Chen’s articles evasive. Rather, I sensed that his was a rare moderate voice in a cantankerous debate over complex issues where emotions ran so hot that highly intelligent people who were otherwise friendly to one another ended up in radicalized “positions” and “camps.”

  Chen Pingyuan had a different perspective. He was mindful of Beida’s complicated, volatile politics. He told me about a conversation he had years ago with a Beida vice president. At a meeting, Chen had been critical of the administration, accusing it of being too powerful. Afterward, the VP pulled him aside and told him: Beida is full of liberals and conservatives, rightists and leftists; the administration must keep balancing all sides in order to avoid bigger trouble. Chen has since learned to appreciate the toughness of such a job.

  To him, reform needs critics but also builders. “Everyone can only perform on a certain set historical stage. I sympathize with the reformers’ hopes and ideas, even though I don’t agree with their approach.” He thought the administration should have involved more humanities professors in drafting the plan; they might have offered more vision and delicacy and helped in winning broader support. But he endorsed the reformers’ general ideas like open search and hiring more hai gui. He admitted that inbreeding and overstaffing were a real problem, and that the present system made it nearly impossible to fire anyone no matter how incompetent he was.

  “My hope is that the final plan will be the result of compromises. There will be some changes in the area of hiring, promotion, and retaining graduates. And transition should be calm and steady.”

  The final document appeared to be exactly what Chen had hoped for. The essential features of the original were kept but were phrased in milder language, with room left to adapt to special circumstances. For example, the document announced that Beida would not hire its own graduates from now on, but used the phrase “in principle” to qualify it. It was also quite soft on the existing faculty: associate professors in the humanities would be given fifteen years to get their tenure promotion before they could lose their job. It also said that each department could “supplement certain details in implementation according to their own concrete circumstances.”

  The reaction was cool, even flat. Zhang Ming, an associate professor in the Chinese department and one of the most intense critics I’d talked with during the controversy, didn’t even bother to read the final document. “It’s over. Doesn’t interest me anymore.” He shrugged as we chatted in his new and freshly renovated apartment. “Anyway, whatever we say makes no difference.”

  Yung Ho Chang, the architecture professor, was equally passive. “I haven’t read it,” he told me weeks after the final document was issued. “It will affect us in the future, but anyway, our opinions don’t matter.” He said he has been too busy with other more pressing matters to think about this. (Chang would leave Beida a year later to head the architecture department at MIT.)

  This sudden loss of interest intrigued me. It is becoming a familiar trajectory of many local controversies: a hot debate, a media rush, then it bursts like a bubble and fades off. Before long, public attention moves on to the next “hot” topic, which won’t last very long either. Meanwhile, everyone is busy, busy, busy. The Chinese attention span seems to have grown much shorter than it was just a few years ago.

  But could it be that the final document has become so moderate that there isn’t much left to quarrel about? “I think people got relaxed because basically no one would be fired,” Liu Dong said simply.

  Chen Pingyuan’s wife, Xia Xiaohong, who is also a Chinese department professor, agreed. She had heard that some departmental leaders were already telling their faculty to rest assured: nobody will get fired. “Don’t you remember that saying? Shang you zheng ce, xia you dui ce (上有政策, 下有对策)—When there is policy from above, there is always a way of handling it on the ground.” She said that, like much else in China, these new rules could be managed and fixed as well.

  “It all depends on the wording of the document,” Xia said. “If it’s clear, hard wording, then it will be obeyed. But if it’s soft wording, then people will find ways to work around it.”

  Zhang Weiying himself said in a newspaper interview that this final document is “very conservative”: “I don’t think there is any other reform plan in China that is more gentle.”

  Zhang has remained gracious throughout the debate, but when the reporter asked how he felt about his opponents, a note of disappointment escaped him: “I’ve heard a lot. I am never afraid of debating with others.... But sometimes I felt a slight sadness. In such a great university, sometimes we lack basic consensus in a discussion. We lack even a common language. Why does a university exist? People have different understandings. We don’t have shared beliefs.”

  This reminded me of my conversation with Li Qiang, the hai gui political scientist on the reform plan draft team. Li was dismayed by the whole debate. He found some critics rhetorically high-flown yet mean-spirited. “They fight with literary style but it’s a kind of language violence. How can we have democracy in China if even our university professors lapse into personal attacks so easily in a public debate? I told Weiying maybe we were too Westernized—when we studied in the West we used to think: how nice is democracy! But it doesn’t work here. Deng Xiaoping was right: the best way in China is bu zheng lun (不争论), no debate. Why? Because our debate here descends to the lowest levels, and the winners are those who are willing to sink to the lowest to get the attention. Certainly a cabdriver good at street shouting matches will win any debate.” Li had predicted that the Beida administration would solve the controversy “conservatively” because Beida is “too sensitive a place” to allow any zhendang (震荡, shock) to happen. He was right. Nobody, not even the most vigilant critic, called Beida’s final document “shock therapy.”

  In the end, both Li and Zhang seemed wistful for the kind of enlightened, charismatic, and strong leader that was Beida’s old president Cai Yuanpei. Oddly enough, their critics share the same nostalgia. Standing in front of Cai’s bronze bust on campus, Liu Dong had told me: “He is Beida’s God.” And like a god, Cai was constantly cited, praised, and eulogized during the debate. Different sides used him for different purposes. Min Weifang and Zhang Weiying liked to recall Cai’s international vision: how he, a hai gui himself (studied in Germany and visited the States), embraced both Western and Chinese values; how he borrowed and copied many things from German, Japanese, and later American university systems in his days of reforming Beida; how he ruthlessly fired some incompetent professors and invited many hai gui to join. The critics, on the other hand, liked to remember how many g
reat humanities scholars Cai had hired (Cai himself had studied art and aesthetics in Germany) and how it was these humanities maestros who coined Beida’s golden image.

  But perhaps these contradictory views of Cai and the nostalgia for a strong leader like him reflect both the inner tensions within the idea of a modern Chinese university and a sense of helplessness at the present reality. Anyone who knows the history of Chinese universities would have to admit two basic facts: that traditional Chinese academies (书院, shuyuan), mentor-oriented private schools that focused on Chinese classics, were a long-gone tradition, and that the Chinese university as we know it today was a Western import that had arrived on the heels of China’s nineteenth-century military defeat. Beida was the very first such “modern” Chinese university, established by imperial decree and with funds from the Qing court, which reluctantly conceded that the Chinese needed some Western learning in order to handle the aggressive foreign barbarians. The desire and drive to learn from the West, therefore, was embedded in the very notion of the Chinese university. Yet stirring in its soul is also the deep yearning to somehow retain Chinese integrity and carry on the Chinese cultural heritage. This is especially powerful among the educated Chinese, since modernization for them has often been viewed as the means to regain Chinese glory. Today, after fifty years of copying the Soviets with disastrous consequences, learning from the West has returned with a new urgency. But so has the yearning for a strong Chinese identity.

  Meanwhile, as Zhang Weiying pointed out, Chinese universities had a very weak tradition of self-governance. Whether under the imperial court, the republican/warlord governments, or communist rule, with perhaps a few fleeting, minor exceptions, Chinese universities had never gained true autonomy. Even a legend like Cai Yuanpei was, in reality, far from being a real independent. The government appointed him and sponsored the university. In the ten years of his Beida presidency, Cai threatened to resign nearly every year, and often he was doing so to protest against some government policy or interference. This in itself showed how much the university had depended on the government back then. But at least Cai got away with it. He was not fired; more often than not, he got what he wanted.