Dad called yesterday to tell me about his trip to China. He said:
Get this. I was watching the international CNN and they started to cover the protests against China over Tibet. Then, all of a sudden, the screen went black. I thought the cable was out! I switched to another channel. Nope, all of the other channels worked fine. Then CNN came back. Every time either CNN or BBC went to show protest footage against China, the screen blacked out. But it showed everything else.
My reply? You thought the cable was out? Boy, I wouldn't have for a minute. In fact, when you said they were actually showing the reports of protests and Western opposition initially, I was shocked they were showing it. Then when you said the screen blacked out I thought, Oh, ok, the government's still got it's game.
And my other thought: It's not exclusive to China anymore. When American TV reported on Don Siegelman, the screen blacked out in Alabama. Great, we're learning our tricks from China now.
As for my personal reflections on China, well, they are complex. I can't say I know enough about whatever's going on in Tibet to speak with any sort of authority on it. After visiting Beijing and talking to people there about events like Tian'anmen Square, I feel like I'd have to go to Tibet and talk to the people to get any sort of understanding of the issue.
That said, I do have a pretty good understanding of what the Chinese government has done in the recent past. The Cultural Revolution is still fresh in people's memories. Unlike footbinding (where the people who might have actually had bound feet are almost all dead now), the Cultural Revolution is a fresh memory. People my parents' ages participated and people my own age are still affected by it as well through their parents just as Americans my age hear stories of Woodstock and JFK's assassination from their parents.
A professor of mine summed up the Cultural Revolution in two phases. First, Mao mobilized the people in the cities. Young people became "Red Guards" and they ratted out even their parents as counterrevolutionaries and beat their teachers. When things got a bit out of control after a few years, Mao called on the young people to be "sent down" to the countryside to be re-educated by the peasants. By shipping out the young, eager, revolutionaries into the countryside, the cities were saved (to some extent) from the disorder they brought upon them.
One friend told me that his mom came from Shanghai and volunteered to be sent down to the countryside. She landed in Gansu province (Chinese equivalent of Wyoming or Montana) and met and married his Dad there. When the Cultural Revolution ended, they were not able to move back to Shanghai because his dad did not have a Shanghai registration.
The good working people of China and peasants didn't have it too bad during those years (1966-1976). The intellectuals and professionals did. They would be sent to labor camps for re-education or would be sent to the countryside for re-education by the peasants. If you were an intellectual, it wouldn't be uncommon for you to find yourself in a rural village carrying buckets of nightsoil during those years.
A Chinese man who was a guest speaker in one of my classes told us that he didn't have it bad then (as a kid) but his mom, who was a physician, was sent into the countryside for re-education by the peasants. He wasn't too bitter about it, since she was able to provide medical care to the rural Chinese - something they would have otherwise never had access to.
I don't want to make the Cultural Revolution sound less awful or sound like less of an upheaval than it was. I'm sharing the stories I've heard personally from Chinese people I have met, but that doesn't mean the truly awful stories aren't out there. They are.
After the Cultural Revolution ended, I've heard that the words "settle accounts" because politically explosive. (When you ask to "settle accounts," that's how you'd ask to pay the bill when you are at a restaurant.) Neighbors who had ratted out other neighbors as counterrevolutionaries received retaliations from those looking to settle accounts - the so-called counterrevolutionaries returning from whatever imprisonment or other consequences they'd suffered during the Cultural Revolution.
I wouldn't say definitively that this is the sort of thing going on in Tibet or even in China today. Perhaps it is. I don't know. All I can say is that it's not right to assume it would be going on now just because it happened under Mao. The government went through a full transformation after Mao died.
Mao died in 1976. In 1979, Deng took over and implemented what the Chinese refer to as the "gai ge kai fang" - reform and opening up. In the last 20 years of the 20th century, Deng Xiaoping took China into the capitalistic giant it is today. Sure, they are still ruled by the Communist party and the Communists control much of the economy... but come on, look at all the shit they contribute to our Wal-Marts. They say the have "Communism with Chinese Characteristics." I call that capitalism.
The crazy, awful movements Mao brought on are things of the past - Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Still, it's useful to know what was done to the Chinese people during those times and perhaps they give some insight as to what's going on in Tibet now. Even more pertinent is the Tian'anmen Square massacre because that DID happen under the post-Mao Chinese government. We know they are willing to commit brutalities to their people.
The point I'd like to make with this diary is not about what's going on. It's about how whatever's going on is perceived among the mainstream Chinese and how the Olympics might open their eyes a bit and cause them to re-examine the affect their government is having on Tibet and other parts of the world.
We've all met the Americans who have listened to Bush talking point after Bush talking point and believed them hook, line, and sinker. We're in Iraq to liberate them, we're building schools, the media just won't show anything good, we're creating a democracy in the Middle East which other Arab nations can emulate, bla bla bla.
Well, imagine being Chinese. It'd be the American equivalent of having no news except for Fox News, the New York Post, and the Washington Times. The Republicans who STILL believe Bush would be in good company because we'd ALL have no other source for news. That's approximately what the Chinese get from their government and media.
When you ask a Chinese person about liberating either Taiwan or Tibet, it'd be like asking an American if we should liberate South Dakota and give it back to the Native Americans who live there. They'd just look at you with a confused expression and say "Why?" And you can't point a finger and label them as a bad person. It's just not something that's ever been really proposed to them before or backed up with any sort of arguments.
What I found while I was there is that it's pretty pointless to start out by picking fights over these things. To someone who studied history in a Chinese school, Taiwan and Tibet are theirs, the Chinese Communist government is great, Mao is great, Deng is great, and China won the Korean War.
As for Tian'anmen Square, the Chinese PC version of the story I heard goes something like: The students were demonstrating but bad people infiltrated the students. The government cracked down to go after those bad people, and only attacked them, not the students.
It was only after I'd formed friendships and trust with people that we could talk about these things in more detail. My friend told me that her parents made her watch a few movies about the Cultural Revolution so she could know what it was like (kind of how a parent today might have their kid watch Forest Gump I suppose). If you're looking for some good movies, by the way, go for To Live and Xiu Xiu.
One day my friend, who was working for a magazine, came back in a state of shock. There were about four of us sitting around a table in my dorm and I was the only American. She told all of us what she observed that day. Beijing had been a finalist for the 2000 Olympics but it lost to Sydney. She heard how Beijing lost the bid.
China and Australia were each to give a presentation with their argument for why they should host the Olympics. China showed some video about how great Beijing is. Then Australia showed a video with footage of Tian'anmen Square. It was shocking to my friend how this was portrayed to the West and how much the West cared about it.
With that, I pulled out my China travel guide book and showed them all the page about Tian'anmen Square. They could all read English and they were pretty surprised. They had no idea that was what the West saw or thought about it. Finally, we were able to talk about serious topics like this without my Chinese friends getting on the defensive and repeating government talking points.
If you know something to be the truth and someone contradicts you (like a Republican convinced we're helping Iraq), you won't necessarily believe them. Particularly if you have no relationship with them. By first forming a trusting relationship with Chinese friends, then I was able to actually discuss things with them.
I am hoping that the Beijing Olympics opens up Chinese eyes to how the rest of the world sees them. I hope that they can form a dialogue with those who visit their country this year. I hope they also see these protests on TV although obviously there's as much censorship as the Chinese government can muster going on. Perhaps some of the westerners visiting this summer will tell the Chinese about what happened over here - or maybe they will go there and protest in China so the Chinese can see it themselves.
Still - just like a protest here can be virtually erased by a media that doesn't cover it or covers it but makes it sound 1/10th of its actual size, that can happen even more in China where there are over 1 billion people and the vast, vast majority will not see the protests first hand.
I think overall, this experience will be beneficial for China moving forward into the future and for the world learning a bit about their country. I look forward to going back there some day soon and when I do, I hope I can form relationships with some Chinese people again and speak openly with them about their government.
