THE CITY OF POLITICAL POWER
Early 2009. It’s a long Air China flight from Europe to Beijing. As I take my seat, I’m called to the front of the airplane. Nervously, I make my way. I’m informed that I’ve been bumped up to business class. I’m about to ask why, but manage to suppress my desire to find out the truth: what if they find out it’s a mistake? Sitting comfortably with my glass of champagne, I look at the menu, and I’m about to order the “Chinese-Style Specialty Beef Fillet” but I notice a footnote: “This entrée is specially created for senior government officials. Please accept our apology if your first choice is not available.”1 I wonder to myself: do other Chinese airlines, such as Air Shanghai or Air Shenzhen (not to mention the privately owned Hainan Airlines), have similar footnotes? I doubt it. Only a Beijing-based national airline would so publicly affirm the dominance of political power. I start reading Chinese-language material I had printed out from a Confucian website and my heart sinks when I come across an ad hominem attack by an elderly Beijing-based academic who argues that Confucianism must be interpreted within a Marxist framework.2 I’m not named, but clearly the attack refers to me. I know this same academic has caused political trouble for other Confucians. Time for more champagne.
When we land I have a splitting headache. I get a bit nervous when the customs officer takes a bit longer than usual, but things seem to be OK. I take a taxi home and sit in the back. Normally I’d sit in the front to talk with the driver, but I hope he’ll notice I’m not in the mood. He doesn’t notice, and launches into the usual Beijing political talk. My driver reminisces about old Beijing, and remarks that they were poorer but happier. Life was less stressful in those days, the city was less polluted, and the government wasn’t so corrupt. We’re stuck in a traffic jam because it’s the annual two-week meeting of the national legislature and advisory body and the streets are filled with the cars of government officials from around the country. My driver swears at a government car that speeds by the rest of us in a specially reserved lane.
A few days later, I fly to Shanghai to give a talk. I’m invited for a delicious lunch at the faculty club, and we’re seated around a Western-style rectangular table. In Beijing, I think to myself, we’d be seated around a more “harmonious” circular table. The Shanghainese tend to adopt the latest Western fashions, whether good or not. Don’t they care about the history of imperialism? Shanghai had the world’s highest proportion of prostitutes in 1930: one in 130 women engaged in the trade, many of whom were serving Western imperialists who didn’t have to submit to Chinese law. And what about the thirteen million pounds of opium that entered Shanghai in the 1870s (half of the opium imported into China during this period).3 Not to mention that infamous sign about dogs and Chinese not being allowed in Shanghai’s Huangpu park.4 My hosts provide a graduate student to show me around town. It turns out she’s a Communist Party member, but she doesn’t want to talk about politics. My guide says she loves Shanghai, though I think to myself that Shanghai-style civicism is often accompanied by contempt for the rest of the country. Somehow the circle of commitments in Shanghai goes straight from the family and the city to the (Western) world, largely bypassing commitment to the country. Anyway, my guide brings me to a modern art museum and provides insightful commentary. Then I’m on my own for a stroll. I get lost and ask for directions, and a kind pedestrian replies in broken English; in Beijing, they always reply in Chinese when I speak in Chinese. I don’t like the way the Shanghainese sweeten up to Westerners, though I’m supposed to be a beneficiary. I feel like saying that I’m from Montreal and I can’t speak English, but I just say thanks (in Chinese). I walk the pedestrian-friendly narrow and winding streets—quite a contrast to the large boulevards of Beijing—and notice the lack of morale-boosting posters and pictures. So many fashionable women with cool sunglasses: no wonder they call Shanghai the “Paris of the East.” In fact, the whole city seems a bit feminine compared to Beijing. I pass an adorable little girl in pigtails; she picks up a rock and throws it at a boy, who squeals and runs away. Here’s a small lane with old people playing cards and walking around in pajamas; but a nearby sign says (in English) “Benny Image Consultant.” Yes, I know it’s silly to search for “authenticity,” but the Shanghainese seem to revel in the world of appearances.5 Lots of young people wearing T-shirts with English-language slogans. Oh, here’s one in French: a young woman’s T-shirt reads, “Tu veux sortir avec moi?” (You wanna go out with me?), with drawings of two hearts over her breasts. Shameless. Plus there are so many mixed couples, with the Shanghainese women showing no restraint at all, holding the hands of their Western boyfriends, something you’d rarely see in Beijing. Don’t these people have any national pride, I think to myself? But then I remember that I’m married to a Chinese woman; how can I object to mixed couples in love? Maybe I’ve spent too much time in Beijing …6
Beijingers have a strong sense of civicism. But the city is full of national symbols, so being proud of the city also means being proud of the country. And being critical of the city also means being critical of the country. Either way, what happens in Beijing has broader political implications. Both top government officials and leading social critics live in Beijing. The first part of this chapter will discuss Beijing’s rise to political prominence. Beijing was the capital of Imperial China—the capital of the world, in the minds of its rulers—for more than five hundred years. China eventually realized that it was only one of several countries—and not the strongest among them—and the imperial system collapsed in 1911. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong, established the People’s Republic of China in 1949, with Beijing as its capital. Mao thought that China could free itself from its past and build a brand new communist future. But it proved to be an illusion that cost millions of lives.
The second part of this chapter will discuss the contemporary era. The CCP is now more Marxist, in the sense that it believes economic power is the key to political power. And the best way to build up the economy (and to hold on to power), in the government’s view, is to depoliticize people. However, it’s a mistake to think of politics just in terms of state-level power politics: Confucians remind us that the real sources of political power emerge from the ground up. In any case, Beijing is bound to reemerge as the site of major political change. What kind of change? Communism—an ideal that downplays the importance of the past and the moral obligations that come with it—is dead. As it should be. So people are (re)turning to history to think about the future. For some, it means being reminded of China’s unhappy history at the hands of imperial powers, and building up a strong state that can get its own way in the world, regardless of moral considerations. For others, it means building a more humane form of government that draws on the best parts of China’s past and inspires the rest of the world by means of moral power.
THE PAST: ERADICATING THE PAST
A friend who works for UNESCO comes to Beijing and has special tickets to visit the restoration site of the Forbidden City’s garden complex. According to the official story, it was burned down by eunuchs who wanted to cover up evidence of their looting, but our guide suggests that it accidentally burned down while the last emperor of China, Puyi, was watching a Charlie Chaplin film in his private screening room. In any case, the complex is indeed beautiful: pretty flowers and plants in harmony with the unobtrusive pavilions. But we’re told the complex will be closed to the public once it is restored. Only top state officials and their guests will have access to it.
Beijing has been the last and most enduring of China’s imperial capitals. In the tenth and twelfth centuries it was one of several capitals for regional Inner Asian empires, and it became the capital of all China under the Mongols in the thirteenth century. The underlying plan of the city is even older: “Elements of the city’s distinctive symmetrical layout had appeared in earlier imperial capitals at Changan (modern Xian), Loyang, and Bianjing (modern Kaifeng). Successive builders of Beijing drew on common precedents that reflected ancient beliefs and institutions, especially those that proclaimed the unique authority of the emperor. The long continuity in city planning and architecture in China’s capitals sprang from the close association of those traditions with the political legitimacy of successive dynasties.”7
To the untrained eye, it’s far from obvious why Beijing should have been chosen as China’s capital, and why it has remained so almost continuously for more than eight centuries. The weather can be harsh, with sandstorms every spring; the scenery is far from spectacular; and it is one of the world’s few large cities that is not located on a coast or major river. So why did rulers establish the capital in Beijing? The answer, not surprisingly, is the need to secure political power. Beijing is close to Mongolia and Manchuria, where premodern contenders for power in China often arose. These lands of Inner Asia produced the four non-Chinese dynasties that ruled from the site of Beijing: the Khitan Liao (916–1125), Jurchen Jin (1115–1234), Mongol Yuan (1279–1368), and Manchu Qing (1644–1912) dynasties. The Chinese Ming rulers (1368–1644) initially established their capital in southern Nanjing, but they moved it to Beijing after they realized they were too far from borders and mountain passes they needed to defend. They rebuilt the Great Wall that marked China’s northern frontier and the Grand Canal that supplied southern grain to the city. Beijing itself was designed to reflect the harmony of heaven, earth, and man,8 with the Forbidden City—the imperial palace complex—at the very center.
I’m lost somewhere in central Beijing and ask for instructions. I’m told to go west here, south there, then east a few blocks. But I’m hopelessly confused. How come Beijingers seem to have an almost supernatural sense of orientation? I wonder. The sun is no guide: it’s usually too polluted to see it.
The Forbidden City stretched for nearly one thousand meters from north to south and stood on the main axis of the city, which ran north from the Temple of Heaven complex to the north wall (the Olympic stadium was built on a northern extension of the traditional axis). Under the Ming, Beijing’s population reached one million—probably the largest city in the world in the fifteenth century—and it has grown since. Today it has twenty-two million residents, including eight to nine million non-permanent residents.
From 1928 to 1949, the Nationalist Party (Guomingdang, abbreviated KMT) established its base at Nanjing, and the key question is why the Communists returned the capital to Beijing after they came to power in 1949. After all, the Communist Revolution was supposed to sweep away the feudal remnants of the imperial past. It was also supposed to bring an end to the “century of humiliation” at the hands of colonial powers, dramatically symbolized by the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan palace in northwest Beijing that was burned to the ground by rampaging French and British forces in 1860. The main reason the Communist leadership—Chairman Mao Zedong in particular—selected Beijing as capital is that no other city could better symbolize political power and confer legitimacy on the new regime. Advisers had told Mao about three possible choices for a capital—Beijing, Nanjing, and Xian—but Nanjing was too closely associated with KMT rule, and the glory days of Xian were too far in the past.9
Like many Westerners of my generation, I first paid attention to Tiananmen Square in May 1989. At that time, it was occupied by more than one million prodemocracy student demonstrators. It was an exhilarating period, the people taking charge of their political destiny and pushing for political reform of an authoritarian system, with the whole world seemingly on their side. For me, it was an especially exhilarating time because I also met and fell in love with a young Chinese woman who would become my wife. As graduate students in Oxford, we participated in marches and demonstrations in support of the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Just about every overseas Chinese student joined the marches. But the whole thing came crashing down on June 4, 1989, when Deng Xiaoping ordered the army to violently crush the prodemocracy movement, killing hundreds of heretofore peaceful demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. It was state power at its most naked and brutal, and it plunged overseas Chinese students into depression. My wife told me she would never be able to return to China. And I had to give up my dreams of visiting the country. Or so we thought. In 2003, we moved to Beijing, and we’ve been here ever since. I teach political theory (including democratic theory) at Tsinghua University, the university that trains much of China’s political elite, and my wife works as chief counsel for a leading U.S.-based investment bank in China.
Moreover, Beijing was viewed as having played an important role in setting the stage for the triumph of the revolutionary forces. Tiananmen Square in particular had been associated with oppositional and mass movements in the twentieth century: “the demonstration on 2 May 1919 in protest against the Treaty of Versailles handing over Chinese lands to Japan; the patriotic march on 18 March 1926; the demonstration on 9 December 1935, which started the resistance against the Japanese invasion; the anti-autocratic movement during the Civil War on 20 May 1947.”10 So when Mao was presented with a plan, drawing on Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, that located Tiananmen Square as point zero—the center—of the new Beijing, Tiananmen Square was made the birthplace of the new People’s Republic. It was chosen as the focal image of the country’s insignia, with the five gold stars symbolizing the leadership of the CCP and the image of the unity of the revolutionary people.11
Mao personally decided to locate the government in the center of Beijing and rejected an alternative proposal by a group of conservation-minded architects led by Liang Sicheng and Chen Zhangxian to build an administrative center west of old Beijing, leaving the historical city intact. As Wu Hung notes, the failure of the conservation plan “was inevitable because it contradicted the basic tenet of the Chinese Communist Party at the time, which emphasized revolution, not preservation. To Liang and Chen, it was all too plain that great pressure would be placed on the old city unless the administrative center were set up outside, and that the destruction of historic Beijing was inevitable should it become the site of a growing number of modern buildings. But to Mao such concerns were irrelevant, because revolution meant destruction and transformation; it was only natural that Beijing should be remade when China was reborn.”12 The next few decades tell the story of that destruction. Mao personally ordered the destruction of the city wall—what Liang had called a beautiful “national necklace”13—which to him symbolized the rotten old society and the authority of the privileged ruling class that they had just defeated.14 The old city center was gradually redeveloped to adapt to the needs of growth, and radial and ring roads were built (today, there are six ring roads, with Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City as the symbolic first “ring road,” around which the others “revolve”). In 1958, CCP leaders decided to complete ten grand Soviet-style construction projects in Beijing as a visible demonstration of socialist achievements, including the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of Chinese History and Revolution on Tiananmen Square. That same year, the Monument to the People’s Heroes was completed at the center of the square and Mao ordered the expansion of the square to symbolize the destruction of the past and make Tiananmen the largest and most spectacular such square in the world. Mayor Peng Zhen required that adjoining Changan Boulevard be strong enough to allow the heaviest tank to pass through without damaging the surface of the road. The last permanent development on Tiananmen Square was the establishment of Mao’s Memorial Hall (with Mao’s own body eerily gazing at passersby) in 1977. Since then, Tiananmen Square has been basically frozen in time, perhaps the only part of Beijing not to be affected by new developments.15 What was once supposed to be a bright symbol of the New China has come to symbolize a bygone political era:16 a frozen political structure that is backed up by brutal force, if need be.
China is still officially a Marxist state. According to the formulation of the CCP, the current system is the “primary stage of socialism,” meaning that it’s a transitional phase to a higher and superior form of socialism, what Karl Marx called the “higher stage of communism.” The economic foundation, along with the legal and political superstructure, will change in the future. Most famously, Marx said the state will “wither away.” In communist society, there will be a material surplus distributed according to need, nobody would have to do unwanted work to earn a living, and society would be classless, and thus there would no longer be any need for a state that secures the interests of the ruling class. But how do we get to that kind of society, and when are we supposed to get there? It seems to me an important question to ask in an officially Marxist state. Not too long ago, I visited the Translation Bureau of the Central Committee of the CCP, the official Marxist Institute charged with translating Marx’s works into Chinese, in the hope of finding out more about what Chinese Marxists think about communism. The institute is flush with funds from the government, and its employees are relatively free to think about the appropriate conditions and mechanisms for the implementation of communism in China. But I came up empty. I was handed beautifully packaged translations of the Communist Manifesto, and the people I met spoke about the need to deal with the problem of economic inequality in contemporary China, but they seemed puzzled by my questions about China’s communist future. Let’s deal with the present problems first, they said, before worrying about the long term.
The Communist Revolution has failed. More precisely, Mao’s hopes of realizing communism in his day failed (and I’ve yet to meet anybody who seriously thinks it can be brought about in the near future). Perhaps Mao himself never really hoped to realize communism? Why else would the Party advertise itself with the slogan “Long Live [literally: ten thousand years] the Great Chinese Communist Party!” which can still be seen on the façade of Tiananmen? That seems to contradict the aspiration that the state (and party politics) should eventually wither away. On the other hand, Mao clearly hoped to realize some form of a communist society, and the endless mass political movements were meant to bring about that end. But whatever he had in mind, Mao himself recognized that the historical reality had failed to live up to his expectations: in his groundbreaking visit to China in 1972, the U.S. president Richard Nixon attempted to flatter Mao with the claim that his writings had “moved a nation” and “changed the world.” Mao replied, “I have not been able to change it. I have only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Beijing.”17 Perhaps Mao was being unduly modest—on the plus side, the revolution had substantially increased life expectancy, promoted equality between men and women, and built China into a great power that would no longer be subject to control by foreign powers; on the minus side, his political campaigns had plunged the country into turmoil and chaos—but few would dispute that the aspiration to sweep away the past with a brand new communist future has failed.
So why did it fail? There are several reasons. Mao himself seemed to become increasingly fanatical and delusional as he grew older. Perhaps he had a taste for cruelty and cared more about personal power than nation building, a thesis put forward by his severest critics.18 Another reason lies in Mao’s hostility toward Confucianism. The Confucian emphasis on family ties is so deeply rooted in Chinese culture that any attempt to emphasize ties to the state over those to the family was bound to fail. Similar arguments can be made about the attempt to replace the Confucian value of education with political passion. Instead of identifying with China’s anti-Confucian king of Qin (who assumed the title of First Emperor), perhaps Mao should have drawn the lesson from the emperor’s relatively short reign (221–206 BCE): that centralizing power and rule by fear is at best a short-term strategy for coping with chaotic times, not a recipe for long-term rule. Mao could also have drawn the lesson from Edmund Burke’s critique of the French Revolution: that totalizing projects for utopian change can only breed terror and violence.
The teaching of political theory in Beijing is surprisingly free (publication, in contrast, is tightly controlled). In more than seven years, I’ve faced only one restriction: I was warned not to teach too much Marxism. Democracy and human rights are fine, but if my interpretation of Marxism deviates too much from the official line, I might get in trouble. Over the years, however, I’ve taken some liberties, and I’ve taught a few lectures on Karl Marx’s thought. Once, I delivered a lecture on Karl Marx’s theory of history to a group of undergraduates. In my view, I concluded, Deng Xiaoping had a better understanding of Marx’s theory than Mao did, because Deng recognized Marx’s point that communist societies need to go through a capitalist phase to develop their economies. My students seemed really surprised, so I asked the class, “What exactly have you been learning in your compulsory classes on Marxism?” One cynical student replied that official Chinese “Marxism” can be summarized in one slogan: obey the Party.
But I would argue that the main reason for the failure of Mao’s communist vision is that he fundamentally misunderstood Karl Marx’s theory of history.19 Mao seemed to carry to an extreme the Leninist idea that a society can move straight from being poor, undeveloped, and quasi-feudal to entering a bright communist future.20 The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to industrialize within the span of a few years, mainly by means of revolutionary energy, and the result was the death of tens of millions of people. Marx himself would have objected on the grounds that poor countries must go through capitalism on the way.21 Here’s why: The capitalist mode of production treats workers as mere tools in the productive process and puts technology to use for the purpose of enriching a small minority of capitalists. But it does have an important virtue: it develops the productive forces more than any other economic system. The reason is that capitalists compete with one another to make a profit; hence, they have an incentive to develop new, ever more efficient means to produce goods, creating a large material surplus without which communism would not be feasible. If communism is implemented without developed productive forces (advanced technology and the knowledge to make use of it) that underpin material abundance, it won’t work for long. Without an “absolutely essential material premise,” as Marx and Engels put it in The German Ideology, “want is merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities would begin again, and the old filthy business would necessarily be restored.”22 That’s why Marx supported British imperialism in India: yes, it would be exploitative and miserable for Indian workers, but it would lay the foundations for communist rule.
So that’s the main cause of Mao’s failure: he should not have attempted to skip capitalism and move on to communism by relying on political exhortation and mass mobilization alone. Perhaps millions of lives could have been saved if Mao had been more serious about his studies in Marxism.
THE PRESENT: THE POLITICS OF DEPOLITICIZATION
Today, Beijing continues to symbolize the political power of China.23 The language spoken in Beijing sets the standard for the rest of the country. The same goes for Peking opera, which is viewed as the national form of opera. And Tiananmen Square is still the sacred political space that it was for much of the twentieth century. It is the site for national day parades and the highly symbolic changing of the flag. But there hasn’t been any demonstration there since the last one was crushed in 1989. The reason is obvious: demonstrations would threaten the political legitimacy of the ruling party. Hence, any hint of a demonstration is nipped in the bud by the ever-present security officers before it happens.
But the rest of Beijing—the rest of China, I’m tempted to say—has been radically depoliticized. That is, the state has loosened its hold over society. The Chinese state still engages in political repression, but it is no longer a totalitarian state. The state’s control over the economy has been eroded, and free market reforms have led to two decades of double-digit economic growth. The majority of Chinese have personal freedoms almost unimaginable thirty years ago: students are no longer assigned jobs by the government when they graduate; there are far fewer constraints on religion; people can marry and divorce as they see fit; they are free to travel abroad, so long as they have enough money; there are bars and discos for all types of people, including members of the gay community. In fact, most people are basically free to do what they want, so long as they leave politics to the seventy-eight million members of the CCP. But is it really that simple?
For one thing, there are thousands of social and political demonstrations every year—according to official figures, there were fifty-eight thousand “mass incidents” (strikes, street protests, roadblocks, and other forms of mass protest) in the first three months of 200924—suggesting that all is not as well as it seems. China’s widening income gap is approaching Latin American levels and threatens to divide the country into separate classes. Religious freedoms are severely curtailed in Tibet and Xinjiang. The state’s call for a “harmonious society” can thus be viewed as an implicit recognition that things are not so harmonious; but unlike in Maoist days, today the CCP says that conflicts must be resolved peacefully, not through violent class conflict.
As a twelve-year-old boy, I took great pride in the fact that my home city, Montreal, was hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics. This meant that Montreal was affirmed as a city of global importance. The beautiful (if unfinished) Olympic stadium took my breath away when I first entered it: I felt at once tiny and grand. To my everlasting disappointment, however, the Canadian athletes did not do so well. For the first time in Olympic history, the host country did not win any gold medals.25 When Greg Joy, the Canadian high-jumper, missed his chance for a gold in a tight finish with a Polish competitor, I plunged into depression for several days. Going outside after the event, I could not understand how Montrealers could put on happy faces. It seemed disrespectful and disloyal. And later, it became somewhat upsetting to realize that the Olympics had not really succeeded in transforming Montreal into a global city. The rise of the proindependence movement led to an outflow of monolingual Anglophones, and Montreal was soon replaced by Toronto as Canada’s financial capital and largest city in terms of population. Today, Montreal is a cool, laid-back, bilingual city, but its glory days may be over (see the chapter on Montreal).
In 2008, I was also cheering for China. I was proud to show visitors the stunning Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium off Beijing’s fourth ring road. I applied by lottery for Olympic tickets using the Chinese IDs of my wife and parents-in-law, and managed to secure tickets to many events. Although I was a bit dismayed by the foreign coverage of the Beijing Olympics, which seemed to relish every bit of bad news, it didn’t stop me from enjoying the sports. And yes, I confess, I was cheering for China to overtake the United States in the gold medal competition. I viewed it as an appropriate symbol for a more desirable multipolar political future, where no one country has the power to invade another in defiance of global opinion. And I think the Chinese fans and athletes did not arrogantly display their new power; they were usually kind and friendly to visitors and athletes from other countries.26
Here’s how Machiavelli opens chapter 21 of The Prince: “Nothing enables a ruler to gain more prestige than undertaking great campaigns and performing unusual deeds.”27 He goes on to praise Ferdinand of Aragon, then the king of Spain, for pursuing campaigns of conquest that “kept the minds of the barons of Castille occupied with that war, so that they would not plan any revolts.” The king “continued to make use of religion, resorting to a cruel and apparently pious policy of unexampled wretchedness…. Thus he has always plotted and achieved great things, which have never failed to keep his subjects in a state of suspense and amazement, as they await their outcome. And these deeds of his have followed one another so quickly that nobody has enough time to be able to initiate a revolt against him.” We can call such tactics the politics of depoliticization. The ruler consciously engages in political activities that have the effect of turning the subjects’ attention away from political issues.
Sporting activities like the Olympics can also be viewed in this way. In the same chapter, Machiavelli advises: “At appropriate times of the year, he [the ruler] should keep people entertained with feasts and spectacles.” A spokesman for the Chinese government claims that “politicization of the Olympic Games is not compatible with the Olympic spirit,”28 but that claim can’t be sincere. It’s obvious that the Olympics had a political function: to showcase China’s remarkable progress over the past decades under the stewardship of the CCP and, yes, to divert attention, at least temporarily, from China’s social and political problems. And it worked. Other than a few social critics, most Chinese took great pride in the Olympics and opposed efforts to rock the political boat during the Olympic Games.
Is that a bad thing? It depends on the means employed to achieve glory for the state. Machiavelli’s praise for bloody invasions and “unexampled wretchedness” points to a moral compass that’s seriously out of whack. The same goes for Legalist “Machiavellians” in the Chinese tradition, such as Han Feizi, who praises the use of cruel punishments for keeping people in check and increasing the power of the state. But the Chinese Olympics are different. Yes, the Chinese government has (indirectly) supported awful governments in Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Burma. But it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that the Chinese government’s misdeeds could have justified a boycott (in my view, there might have been a better case for boycotting the U.S. team in response to its country’s invasion of Iraq). It also depends on what the government is doing at home. If the Olympics were used to prop up and glorify a racist regime, as with the Berlin Olympics in 1936, that would certainly justify a boycott. But the oft-made comparison between the “genocide” Olympics of Beijing and the Nazi Olympics of Berlin is dubious at best. Yes, there is repression in Tibet. But did anybody seriously believe that China would carry out genocide or launch a world war after the Olympics? And where’s the official racism that was so central to Nazi ideology? I’ve yet to see a single statement by the Chinese government to that effect. Quite the opposite, in fact: the former minister of culture Wang Meng gave a brilliant speech to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee in which he not so implicitly criticized the Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang for claiming that his gold medal (during the 2004 Olympics) shows that “yellow people” can also run fast. Wang added that “we can’t always talk in the bitter manner of a bullied concubine,” and he praised the black athletes who, shortly after losing the race, went to congratulate Liu Xiang for his victory.29 Here in Beijing, the government bent over backward to encourage athletes, spectators, and citizens to be kind and civil to people from other countries during the Olympics.30 Yes, the government may have used some harsh tactics, such as displacing people from their homes without adequate compensation in order to make room for the Olympic venues,31 but I haven’t seen the kinds of evils that would have justified boycotts.
Ultimately, it may come down to a dispute between those who love competitive sports and those who don’t. The indifferent ones will suspect that spectacles such as the Olympics are ultimately political tools used by governments to confer legitimacy and detract from opposition. Sports, for them, is really about politics. Those who love sports will say that the critics have it backward: the point of politics is to provide the conditions for the good life, and the good life includes sports. So politics is really about sports. If a government does a good job staging an international sporting event and people enjoy themselves, the government is doing what it’s supposed to do. So long as no gross evils are committed in the process, it’s fine to take pride in the spectacle and we shouldn’t agonize too much over the morality of the whole thing.
Shortly after it opened in late 2007, I attended a musical performance at the egg-shaped National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, located right next to Tiananmen Square. I marveled at the structure, which seemed to be floating above an artificial lake. Inside, the acoustics were nearly perfect and the hall felt quite intimate, even though I was sitting in the last row. After the show I took a taxi, and the driver immediately launched into a tirade against the new building. He complained that it was designed by a foreigner (the French architect Paul Andreu). I replied that in the past, many of China’s famous buildings, such as the Yuanmingyuan (the Old Summer Palace), were designed in collaboration with foreigners. I asked him if he was against the new Olympic stadium, also designed by a foreigner, and he replied, of course not. I noted that the Grand National Theater’s roof has the yin-yang symbol, perhaps the most common symbol of Chinese culture. Then the driver said that the real problem is that the building is not harmonious with the buildings that surround it.32 I tried to make a joke, replying that the other buildings are so ugly, why should it try to conform to their style? He didn’t laugh. Then I tried the Confucian line about harmony being different from conformity, but he said there still has to be some continuity of style and meaning. He pointed out that the nearby buildings have political meaning; Tiananmen Square is the center of China’s political structure and the buildings around it should have political meaning. I asked about the Beijing Hotel, on the other side of Tiananmen Square: it’s not a political building. So what’s wrong with an opera house? He replied that the hotel serves a political function because the members of the National People’s Congress stay there during their annual meeting.33 I said they could also go to the opera when they’re here. The taxi driver shook his head and said, “That’s just entertainment.”
National Center for the Performing Arts, Beijing. Photograph © Sunxuejun. Courtesy of Shutterstock.
Confucianism, the main political tradition in China, is basically a philosophy of social responsibility: we should strive not just to develop our individual characters but also to be other-regarding to the extent possible, and those in positions of power should rule in a competent and compassionate manner. Yet one passage in the Analects of Confucius—the “mother of all texts” in the Confucian canon—seems sharply at odds with the Confucian emphasis on social responsibility. The passage, perhaps the longest in the whole text, seems to lend itself to an apolitical (or antipolitical) interpretation. In this passage, Confucius is sitting with four of his students, and he asks them about their different ideals (11.26). The first student, Zilu, says that he wants to run a state with a thousand chariots and within three years he would defeat foreign armies, conquer famine, and imbue the people with courage. Confucius responds with a skeptical smile. Ranyou then says, more modestly, that he could govern a smaller state, but it would take an exemplary person to promote higher civility and music. Zihua then says, even more modestly, that he could serve as a minor protocol officer. Zengxi, the final student, initiates perhaps the most puzzling exchange when he says that he would like to bathe with his friends and then return home singing. Confucius responds with approval. Yu Dan, author of a best-selling book on the Analects, takes this passage to mean that personal attitude is more important than commitment to politics. She invokes the authority of the great Song dynasty scholar Zhu Xi to argue that Zengxi’s ideal seems minor in comparison, but that it’s actually superior to the others because Zengxi aims to develop his inner attitude and self-cultivation rather than having concrete plans. Later on, she again discusses Zengxi’s ideal, using Daoist language to point to the importance of appreciating nature and then mentioning Zhuangzi’s idea of “individual contact with the forces of the universe” to explain Confucius’s approval of Zengxi’s ideal.34
But it would be odd if the passage were really about pursuing individual happiness, harmony with nature, and individual contact with the universe. What would that kind of view be doing in a book that stresses the importance of social relations and political commitment? In my view, the passage is about political commitment, but Confucius means to stress that political commitment isn’t just about governing the state. Consider the end of the passage, where Confucius, conversing with Zengxi, explains his reaction to Ranyou and Zihua. Confucius says that they’re still thinking about important forms of social and political commitment even though they’re not pulling the highest levers of state power (Yu Dan cannot make sense of this further discussion; if her interpretation is correct, the passage should have ended with Zengxi’s ideal; no need for anything further). What about Zengxi’s ideal? It makes sense in the context of other passages in the Analects, where Confucius points to the importance of singing and informal social interaction among intimates as crucial for forging the bonds of trust that underpin social harmony. What Zengxi describes—singing and playing with friends—contributes to the social trust (social capital, to use the language of contemporary social science) necessary to sustain the harmonious society. Confucius endorses that activity because it’s foundational, the necessary context for “higher” forms of morally defensible political activity. Zilu thinks he can govern a state and change it just by the force of his personality and correct policies, but he ignores the necessity for social trust in rendering those policies effective, and that’s why Confucius is most dismissive of his ideal. If we interpret Zengxi’s ideal (and Confucius’s response to it) that way, the passage as a whole makes more sense: political commitment involves everything from governing the state to informal interaction among intimates, and the latter is, in some sense, more foundational.
Does this sound implausible? Not to some tyrants who set out to destroy political systems. The smart ones know they have to go after the social foundations. Hence, when Aristomedus overthrew the government in Cumae in 534 BCE, he not only massacred the senate but also systematically broke up the gymnasia. In those days, the gymnasium was the setting for institutionalized pederasty, and the social bonds forged in gymnasia strengthened and underpinned bonds in society at large. By closing the gymnasia and forcing all youths reared in the city to wear long hair and dress in the fashion of girls, Aristomedus sought to discourage a “noble and manly spirit” and to atomize those inclined to restore the old ways.35 In other words, limiting the freedom of association and preventing traditional social gatherings is key to undermining the ancien régime. Put positively, seemingly apolitical activities such as singing and swimming with friends are what really create social harmony and political stability.
So that’s what I would have said to the taxi driver, had I thought of it at the time. Politics is about music, too.
October 1, 2009. On the sixtieth anniversary of the “liberation of China” by the CCP, I’m invited to discuss educational and social trends on national television. The city is in lockdown mode to prepare for the massive military parade, and I’m asked to spend the night in a hotel close to the television station. I go out for a stroll, and the streets are deserted except for security personnel and an elderly man taking his caged canary out for a walk. I’ve been told what the show will be about and I’ve also been asked to say ahead of time what I’ll talk about. The show is live and there is no room for uncertainty. I do object to one segment where the hard-rock singer Cui Jian is presented at the “representative musician” of the 1980s. Cui is a talented musician and an exciting performer—I’ve seen him live at a small club in New York—but I don’t think he was representative of that era. The Taiwanese songstress Deng Lijun was more popular among students, and she also appealed to different segments of the population. Deng’s sweet and melodious songs—inspired by Tang dynasty poetry—are still popular today. So I change the script and make the case for Deng on live TV. I worry a bit that I’m trampling on political sensitivities—Deng was a lifelong anti-Communist, who never visited mainland China—but hope it will be OK (after all, my eighty-four-year-old father-in-law—a veteran of three wars and one of the last Communist true believers in China36—is a big Deng fan). No major damage is done, it seems: I’m invited back on the show at a later date to talk about the new Confucius movie.
Early Chinese rulers sent envoys out among their people to listen to, record, and report the types of songs the people were singing. If their songs were joyful or happy, the people were contented and the king was secure. If their songs were mournful and resentful, they were dissatisfied and the king was in jeopardy.37 But music was used not just as a kind of polling device to gauge the political mood of the people. Rulers were also encouraged to improve people by promoting the right kind of music. Once again, the Confucian formula is diversity in harmony. According to the Record of Music, a text said to have been compiled by Confucius himself but edited and reworked by various scholars of the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), “In great music, there is the same harmony that prevails between heaven and earth.” The music will vary from place to place, but the moral effect will be the same: “In the whole world, there is the same feeling of love…. The styles of music will differ, but the feeling of love [that they promote] is the same.” And the music itself will embody the ideal of diversity in harmony: “When the notes are varied and elegant, with frequent changes, the people are satisfied and happy.” Such music elicits feelings of joy and may stimulate the physical body into motion: “When signs and cries are not enough, before one realizes it, one’s hands begin to dance [in accordance with the music and the singing] and one’s feet begin to step in time.” Most important, the moral point of promoting the right kind of music is to protect the weak and vulnerable members of the community. If people’s desires are not regulated by harmonious music, society will be disorderly, with the result that “the strong will prey upon the weak, the many will oppress the few, the smart people will take advantage of the dull, the courageous will make it bitter for the timid, and the old, young, orphans, and solitaries [those without the protection of social relations] will be neglected.”
Of course, the flip side is that we should worry about music that produces morally bad effects. The new music of two thousand years ago was particularly problematic for the ancients:
Today’s music is not as joyful as old music. [In the past, the performers] advanced and retreated in unison, [and the music] was harmonious, correct, and powerful…. The character was cultivated, the family was regulated, and peace and fairness were secure throughout the whole kingdom…. But now, [the performers] advance and retire chaotically, the music is corrupt to excess, and there is no end to vileness. Among the players there are dwarfs like monkeys, the girls and boys are mixed together, and nobody knows about the distinction between father and son. Such music cannot be talked about, and it certainly doesn’t accord with the way of antiquity. This is the fashion of new music. What you ask about is music but what you like are mere sounds!38
In the Analects, Confucius was quite explicit that morally harmful music should be banned: “Banish the songs of Zheng…. The songs of Zheng are licentious” (15.10). But he also argued that rituals (with appropriate music) are more effective at changing people’s hearts than the strong arm of the law (2.3). So perhaps the conclusion is that the state should not prohibit music, but it needs to be careful about choosing the right kinds of music in public ceremonies and in schools for the young. As much as one may like Cui Jian (or the Clash, my favorite punk band), it’s not the business of the government to promote that kind of music.39
THE FUTURE: REVIVING THE PAST
One of the pleasures of living in Beijing is that people do not judge others (mainly) by how much money they have. Those who do have money like to show their culture, and they often interact with people from different social settings, such as politicians and artists (in comparison, Hong Kong is much more money driven and people tend to stick to their own social class). And the same person often does different things. There are often two or three different answers to the question, “What do you do?” As for myself, I’m an academic who’s also in the restaurant business: I helped to start a restaurant where I store my books and meet friends for conversation. The restaurant, called Purple Haze, is run mainly by two other shareholders, my Chinese friend Ah Wen and her Swedish husband, Tobi. Ah Wen has an air conditioning business on the side, and Tobi is a musician who plays with a jazz band in Beijing.
What exactly is communism supposed to look like? Unfortunately, Marx himself said very little about social life in communist society. In the forty plus volumes of his works, there are only a few lines devoted to communist society. The most famous is a line in The German Ideology, written in 1846, when Marx was a young man: communism would make it possible “to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”40 Perhaps Marx just meant to say that people’s choices would not be determined by an economically necessary division of labor. But the examples are odd, because communist society would be characterized by developed technology (necessary for the material surplus that would free people from unwanted labor), and it’s unlikely that people would choose to engage in pastoral activities such as rearing cattle. Perhaps Marx refrained from further speculation about the nature of communist society because he realized that technology would lead to developments impossible to imagine in his own time (could he have imagined the Internet?). But the downside is that he left the door open for all sorts of romantic visionaries (such as Mao) to impose their own crazy dreams on the ideal of communism.
More sober academic interpreters of Marx have also tried to articulate what communism might look like. Terry Eagleton’s The Meaning of Life is an erudite critique of various possibilities, and he finally gets to something positive about his ideal in the last few pages. It’s a society where each person could realize his or her individual talent in a way that allows and encourages the flourishing of other people. What might that mean, more concretely? Here Eagleton borrows an image from the Marxist political theorist G. A. Cohen: the jazz group. It’s worth quoting in full:
A jazz group which is improvising obviously differs from a symphony orchestra, since to a large extent each member is free to express herself as she likes. But she does so with a receptive sensitivity to the self-expressive performances of the other musicians. The complex harmony they fashion comes not from playing from a collective store, but from the free musical expression of each member acting as the basis for the free expression of the others. As each player grows more musically eloquent, the others draw inspiration from this and are spurred to greater heights. There is no conflict here between freedom and the “good of the whole,” yet the image is the reverse of totalitarian. Though each performer contributes to “the greater good of the whole,” she does so not by some grim-lipped sacrifice but simply by expressing herself. There is self-realization, but only through a loss of self in the music as a whole. There is achievement, but it is not a question of self-aggrandizing success. Instead, the achievement—the music itself—acts as a medium of relationship among the performers. There is pleasure to be reaped from this artistry, and—since there is a free fulfillment or realization of powers—there is also a sense of flourishing. Because this flourishing is reciprocal, we can even speak, remotely and analogically, of a kind of love.41
That’s a moving account of the communist ideal, but it also exposes what’s wrong with communism: it downplays the importance of history and the moral obligations that come with it. In the real world, no matter how much money I have, it’s not just a matter of realizing my talents in community with others. I also have obligations to people by virtue of roles I’ve occupied in the past, continue to occupy in the present, and will occupy in the future. History matters. That’s basically the key insight of Confucian morality. My parents devoted years to caring for me as a child and I owe them something when they get older, infirm, and in need of care. I can’t just improvise within a freely chosen community if my father is ill.42 I need to care for him even if it impinges on the sorts of things I normally like to do. My actions are and should be constrained. It needn’t be “grim-lipped sacrifice”—in fact, it would hurt my father if I presented my caring as such—but it is a kind of sacrifice.43
Beijing University has a proud history of social commitment, and its students often led political movements in twentieth-century China.44 A few months ago, I took a leisurely walk through the campus with my wife. We passed a monument to students who were killed in a struggle against warlords in the 1920s. My wife commented that some day there will be a monument to students killed on June 4, 1989.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in China, it’s the need to be patient. Yes, political reform will happen, but it may take a while. One of my most embarrassing mistakes was predicting a constitutional convention on political reform on June 4, 2007, after the government had apologized for the June 4, 1989, killings.45 As I write, it is now 2010 and we’re nowhere near substantial political reform or an apology for June 4th. There will be substantial political reform one day, but that day may be far away. In February 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao said that China must stick to the current development guidelines for one hundred years. The reformers are more optimistic. A research report edited by the reformist scholar Zhou Tianyong published after the Seventeenth Party Congress in 2007 argued that China would need at least sixty years (starting from 1979) to transition to a modern market economy and a high level of political democracy. The last phase, from 2021 to 2040, would involve developing the framework of an improved democratic political system and the formation of a “medium-developed” mature democracy and the rule of law in a modernized state.46 Elections are not specifically mentioned.
One of my books discusses the revival of Confucianism in politics and everyday life in contemporary China. A friend suggested that an appropriate cover might be a (doctored) photo that replaces Mao’s picture on Tiananmen Square with that of Confucius. It seemed like a great idea, though I realized it might be politically sensitive (two students who splashed red paint on Mao’s portrait during the student demonstrations in 1989 were jailed for lengthy terms). I discussed it with my editors, and we thought of another possibility: putting a portrait Confucius next to that of Mao. Eventually, we decided to nix the whole idea. The unstated assumption is that such a cover might endanger my position teaching political theory at Tsinghua University.47
In retrospect, I wonder why Westerners like me wholeheartedly supported the student movement in 1989. I didn’t know anything about China; how could I have been so sure the students represented China’s future? Perhaps it was a form of narcissism: I supported the students because they aspired to be like me? And perhaps the student movement itself was somewhat naïve. Of course the government was wrong to shoot peaceful protesters and they will eventually have to apologize for it. But it doesn’t follow that the students were on the right side of history. They had an idealized view of democracy unsullied by any experience with it (hence, democracy could represent their wildest fantasies, similar to Mao’s ideal of communism). Now that many students go abroad and that world news is more widely available in China (the Internet is less constrained than the published press and international news is relatively free compared to the tightly controlled national news), educated people in China tend to have more informed views of the pros and cons of democracy. For one thing, the invasion of Iraq has discredited the democratic model in the eyes of many Chinese: the United States seems to stand for hegemonic power politics rather than democratic ideals. And the economic rise of China has led to a new confidence in China’s own traditions. There will be more political demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in the future, but the galvanizing symbol won’t be the Statue of Liberty.
June 2009. Following an interdisciplinary conference on Confucianism in Beijing, the great Confucian scholar Jiang Qing stays at my home for a couple of days. To his critics, Jiang is a “Confucian fundamentalist” who seeks to turn back the clock of history. To my mind, he is an original thinker who seeks inspiration from the rich and diverse Confucian tradition for thinking about political reform in China while also remaining open to the influence of other traditions. His proposal for a tricameral legislature—with a People’s House chosen by democratic means, a House of Exemplary Persons chosen by meritocratic means, and a House of Historical Continuity composed of representatives of China’s diverse cultural traditions—has been the subject of much intense discussion.48
We visit the Confucian temple first built by the Mongol conqueror Kublai Khan in 1306, and about fifteen young Confucian scholars are waiting for Jiang. They treat him with great respect. We make our way to the main hall to bow to the statue of Confucius, and Jiang is asked to lead the ritual. Somebody questions whether I’m supposed to join the ceremony, and Jiang forcefully objects to the narrow nationalism underpinning the question. Confucianism, Jiang says, is for tian xia (all under Heaven). Then we go next door to the Imperial Academy, the highest seat of learning in Imperial China. Tens of thousands of students passed through the doors of the academy to take the final stage of the imperial examinations that would lead to political fame and power for the successful candidates. We are shown a platform where the emperor himself would come each spring to lecture on the Confucian canon, with the emperor’s words transmitted by human speakers to the three thousand students in attendance. Jiang says that’s not right. He refers the seventeenth-century Confucian social critic Huang Zongxi, who proposed that the emperor should sit among the ranks of students while the rector of the Imperial Academy—to be chosen from among the great scholars of the day—questioned him on the administration of the country.49
There are two kinds of nationalisms in China today. One is a closed-minded, resentful nationalism that owes more to Chinese-style Legalism than to Confucianism. Those nationalists seek to make China into a strong military and economic power that can “say no” to the rest of the world,50 whatever the moral considerations at stake. The other is a more humane form of nationalism that takes pride in China’s cultural traditions while remaining open to other influences. Those nationalists creatively reinterpret traditional values so that they fit contemporary circumstances and answer the needs of present-day and future generations. They dream of a people who share a culture that is based on moral ideals rather than ethnicity or race, and their political aim is to build a country that secures the well-being of its people and inspires the rest of the world primarily by means of moral power.51 It’s too early to predict the winning side. But we can be sure that the political drama will be played out in Beijing.