China – Epilogue

I’ve got a lot to say about China, so feel free to skip this post.

Before I jump in, I want to say up front that I found China to be a friendly, progressive, and fascinating land. The below is pulled together from my observations and conversations, and is not in any way intended to offend or speak ill of this amazing country.

I spent a lot of time talking and listening to Alan, our guide. He was very patriotic, but also very open. He was also extremely learned, smart and funny:

No lie. I’m Buddhist. I’m Buddhist now… not this morning. I had pork bun this morning. But now I Buddhist again.

Alan, 2019

China is a land of contradictions. There is an inherent tension between civility and law, as the country is rapidly moving from Developing, to Developed. A good example is in the driving, which feels like a 3rd world country with lethal abandon, but is being forcibly constrained by modern roads, signage and regulations. These contractions extend to its politics, religion, economics. So much of China is foreign, and much, I suspect, unfathomable to the likes of me.

We were told up front that this is a very safe country. And it is, at least from crime. I met a chap at the airport who had just spent a year in China. He said that he once left his phone in a gym and didn’t return for a couple of hours. It was still there, untouched. The penalties for breaking the law can be extremely severe, so few break it.

• Smoking on a train – Fine, and if you can’t pay, travel ban for 5 years.
• Murder – Execution by shooting
• Possession of over 50g of heroin – Execution by shooting
• Men using Prostitution – Y5,000 fine, 1 week in prison, wife must collect offender from jail at end of sentence (deterrent)

During the 2008 financial crisis, exports collapsed from China. To intensify growth, China introduced a new policy to invest 4 trillion yuan (£444bn) into infrastructure and real estate development. The construction crane quickly became known as the national bird of China. The Communist Party of China (CPC) relaxed its policy around private ownership, with government loans offered for property (albeit the land remains owned by government). This seeded the way for the adoption of capitalism within the existing communist system. Alibaba, now the world’s largest company is privately owned. But this jars with the Communist ideals of equality and parity for all.

It is unclear how China will reconcile these conflicting ideologies, which seem so at odds with each other. The opening of trade and rise of capitalism has led to rampant commercialism and consumerism; the streets of Shanghai are testament to this with wall-to-wall Gucci and Prada. With this vast and fast increase in wealth and comes wealth inequality.

When you open the door to personal wealth and the trappings and lifestyle it affords, greed and self-interest aren’t far behind. How do you then prevent corruption taking hold, without the checks and balances of an elected government? Alan said that punishment for corruption in government is extreme, with life-time jail sentences imposed, but in an unelected one-party system, how do you ensure this is enforced? The President, Xi Jinping, is also the General Secretary of the CPC and the General Commander of the military. While 8 other parties exist to help provide input to this system, there is limited challenge to the highest echelons of power. Term limits were removed from Xi’s office in 2018 – the office is now for life.

China studies the rest of the world with rigour. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people work and study abroad, but few stay; most come back to China. There is great interest in the west’s economic, domestic and social policy, and the Chinese are students of politics to a far deeper degree than I’ve seen in the UK.

However, despite this deep knowledge, the Chinese people don’t appear to crave or demand democracy and the freedoms it offers; but neither are they ignorant of it. There is a real love for the system of government that Mao introduced, bringing the people out of poverty and starvation and ensuring every Chinese citizen has a home (homelessness is uncommon here, and where it exists, it is mainly by choice). We heard that there remains 75% support for the CPC.

Naturally we consider that those living under an autocratic regime must be brainwashed into supporting its ideology. There must be truth in this, but discussing this with our guide, I’m minded to think that this also applies to those of us in the west and our belief in the absolute truth of democracy. As Alan put it, our democratic system has allowed for the rise of populism and identity politics. We have Trump in power; we’re Brexiting. How is this the mark of an effective political system? Perhaps democracy only works when you control the inputs. And in an age of unfettered mass communication, and where freedom of speech is no longer limited by natural censorship of idiots, our democracy is challenged. Certainly the Chinese people do not see it as any sort of ideal.

At the core of the Chinese system of governance is the greater good; the good of the betterment of the country as a whole, and not the individual. In a land of 1.4 billion people, the way to effect large scale and consistent change is through strong government. Infrastructure projects, pollution reduction measures, mass-housing are examples we observed. However, these come at a cost of liberty. People are disposable, sovereignty is not.

Much of what we hear in the west about China is the rhetoric of state control, enforcement, oppression and human-rights abuses. Alan’s view is that much of this is misinformation, or western propoganda. He was very alive to past abuses of power; Tiananmen Square and the 1,000’s of missing students; the one-child policy, but many of the current sensitivities of today’s China he was able to explain, from the Chinese perspective.

Take for example claims of sovereignty over Tibet, Taiwan, the Indian border, the South China Sea. All claims are based on pre-colonial land borders. China don’t recognise international treaties signing over lands by what they consider to have been illegitimate governments. At the time these land borders changed, China was in a weakened state and didn’t have the strength of government to defend the People’s Republic’s rights.

Positing the argument that the destiny of a people should be self-determined; if the people of Tibet/Taiwan/Hong Kong want freedom, is this not their choice? The response was perplexed. That isn’t how China works. The state is sovereign. The depth of history, one of the few surviving ancient civilisations; this must be protected and defended.

In addition to this, there is a real feeling of western hypocrisy. US foreign policy is replete with contradictions and double standards. From US interference through their ‘Peaceful Transformation Strategy’; US policy to target socialism across Europe and Asia, to the US placing nuclear weapons in Guam but claiming Chinese aggression for performing military manoeuvres in the South China Sea (the Chinese map has the Chinese border encompassing the SCS. International maritime law was signed by China in 1982 on condition of the law not changing existing territory which China had previously laid claim to – this was changed by The Hague in 2002). And more recently, the targeting of Huawai and the arrest of one of their executives in Canada.

To this day, sanctions remain in force against China around technology and weaponry, and the bombastic Mr Trump is stirring trade wars and heightened tensions from recent Iranian sanctions. There is a perception of great restraint within China, where diplomatic resolution is apparently still the primary international policy of the government. Peace is economically beneficial, and civil war would be internationally catastrophic with an unparalleled refuge crisis. However it’s unclear how long this will last, with Beijing becoming more forceful around the unrest in Hong Kong, could this lead to a flexing of muscles around other long-running tensions?

And with this pace of economic development, domestic power and self-sufficiency, it is no wonder that the US is acting like a cornered animal. Unlike the rest of the developed world, China cannot be bought, and cannot be controlled through the free market. The might of the dragon is fearsome and fascinating. We need to embrace this beast from the East.

As Shona quoted to me: “Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world” (Napoleon Bonaparte).

Well, she’s most definitely awake, and I feel a rumble…