Quick question that may present interesting discussion: is it bad form to discuss politics in the PRC? I ask because during my trip I raised politics three times received some interesting responses.

First time was with a stall vendor who was selling posters. She was extremely talkative, as her job requres and she kept pressing that she had what I wanted if I would just tell her what is was. It so happens the previous day at the antiques market there were assorted old political posters of China and the USSR crushing the West. I regretted not buying them there so I asked after them here. She didn't know the word political so she handed me a English-to-Chinese dictionary. I showed her the translation entries for political and propoganda and she showed me the exit from her stall. She was silent but her face communicated unintended anquish.

Second and third are variations on a theme. After Biggestbopper told me his experiences with English students approaching him in Japan at a coffee house, supported by other postings here and the comments of a concierge at the hotel, I became more comfortable with being approached during the later half of my trip with offers of conversation so long as it was away from Wangfujing. Two seperate students, one at a Starbucks, one at a noodle shop, sat with me to talk. In each I asked them how they felt about the changing political and economic landscape and if they thought change was good. One, a girl who said she was from the "country," got very quiet very fast and only after the longest of pauses (and an apology from me) did she ask how I knew so much about China. Within minutes she was gone. The second, a young man, was much more polished. He said that the government was very good to his parents' generation, especially in helping them find places to work and live, but the recent changes, while making some aspects more challenging, were part of the government's plan to make a stronger China and it was his obligation to assist. He too took his leave shortly thereafter.

Anything noteworthy here?

Discussing politics in China is a difficult thing.

Firstly, very few people have a level of English ability that actually enables them to discuss the topic on anything but a superficial level.

Secondly the education system has instilled into most people a pretty fixed view of things. Opinions tend to be memorised from a (government approved) book rather than formed.

As an example may I quote the gist of a recent a recent exam in a Chinese school:

The socialist ecomonomic system is ________ to the capitalist one.

A: superior
B: supervisior
C: improved
D: bigger

The 'correct' answer is, or course, 'A'. You're obvioiously a bit buggered if you think the capitalist system is better.

And it extends to all aspects of society. My local bar has a dart board. It's in the form of a toilet seat with a picture of the Japanese premier in the middle. Top marks if you get him on the nose. Such are Chinese history lessons.

Ask those students you met what China will be like in 50 years and you are pretty well guaranteed to get answers along the lines of 'powerful' and 'glorious'.

Sure you can talk about politics. Its just that very few people who grew up in China have interesting things to say on the subject. I'm sure you'll get great responses about the glorious 5000 years of history or changing china's peaceful rise and don't get them started on Japan or even better Taiwan...its amazing in a country of 1 billion almost everyone I talk to has the exact same view on these topics, sometimes word for word.

The absolutely top notch, best educated, well traveled people can be interesting to talk to about politics, as can the extremely uneducated, they are the only two groups I've found who are willing to express opinions different from CCTV. Also in the south people are much more expressive and open about these things than they are in the north.

Cabbies in Beijing are famous for being opinionated politically, and eager to share their views. This culture has somewhat cooled down lately, so it seems.

I've had lively and open conversations on politics with a wide spectrum of people. It is important--for all parties--to be open minded, sufficiently informed, and cogent. It's true that much of the locals may have very similar views on topics like Taiwan or Japan. It is equally remarkable how much congruency there is among the view points of those foreigners who don't speak the language and confine their local experience to hotels.

One young manager from the Chinese company I am presently advising/associated with came up to me one evening in the office after others had left. He basically wanted to know if I knew something on China the government is withholding from him, or "dark news" as he put it.

I responded that it's not what I came here for and that I consider news to be manipulated by lobbyists and spin doctors ( have them in the family ) no matter where. Most journalists I know have big egos and are like spoiled brats because they know how much damage it's possible to do just with one article or TV report.

Oh, and in China and Korea I've heard journos are happy to ask for money on the spot without too much hesitation. Pay up and you will receive.

The only real taboo subject seems to be Mao, btw. Not many friends to be won if you bash him.

I find people more willing to discuss politics in China than in Singapore .... at least when it comes to "domestic" political criticism. In Singapore, you often get a feeling (even with senior government officials) that they think they are being monitored constantly.

In many places, if discussing domestic politics is in "bad form", international politics is "ok".

In spite of the fact that what follows doesn't really relate to your post, I'm quoting you because I agree with the idea.

As for the topic at hand, I never engage in political discussions unless they are forced upon me in an annoying, or especially adolescent manner; for example: "Japanese people are worthless," "North Korea is an American problem," or "Your country is evil." (The "Taiwan Problem" is equally foolish, as far as I'm concerned, but I usually let it rest unless I'm in a particularly bad mood.)

Changing gears for a moment, I purchased a Chinese high school history textbook a few years ago just so I could figure out exactly what had been pumped into their brains (e.g. China won WWII by dessimating the Japanese into the submission).

The knowledge I picked up from reading that book, in conjunction with my own superior education (I'm not trying to brag -- in fact, I readily admit that the typical Chinese college admit is far smarter than myself -- but, good US schools are leaps and bounds better than Chinese universities in terms of their ability to impart knowledge and analytical skills), has given me the capacity to (decisively) win all of the ho-hum arguments in a matter of minutes.

Hey moondog, thanks again for all your help in BJ.

To this point, I'm currently reading Mao, The Untold Story, by Jung Chang. I'd be amazed if it's available in China, as it's a "revisionist bombshell" as one of the blurbs on the back cover reads. But it's fascinating in its revelations of Mao's machinations and treachery, most of which are still unknown in China.

My son and I went to the Chinese People's Revolutionary Military Museum, where one wing of an entire floor is devoted to the Japanese occupation and the subsequent birth of the PRC in 1949. According to this book, most of the official story displayed there is complete fabrication.

It's a common foreign prejudice that someone with a Chinese face, resident in China, must have a more information, and more accurate information, than outsiders. But even the Chinese have sayings about the opposite being true, and they are themselves hampered by the limited single-point-of-view education that is forced upon them. travelinmanS has it just right.

Indeed it's often said by foreign teachers in China that those who missed out on middle school see things much more clearly than those who've been through the propaganda mill.

I never bring up politics in China and for the same reasons mentioned by others, but I do find that in many cases Chinese (on trains, in taxis, on buses) bring it up with me after a little chat about other things. I've found several times of late they've heard that legal systems are fairer overseas, and want to ask about that. On being assured that while they have their problems legal systems in developed nations are generally fairer, they sometimes fall back on, "Oh well, we have more culture than you do." And that's a bit of a conversation stopper, unless, like Moondog, I'm in a bad mood.

It's rarely profitable to talk about politics, but in general it's just better to let others bring up politics than bringing it up yourself. And in general it's better to let the other party be critical before making any comparisons in which China comes out unfavourably. Remember that it's little more than 20 years ago or so that talking to foreigners was still a dangerous thing to do, and let the person you're speaking to decide on their comfort level. But very few who speak frankly, and who turn to the topic first, have anything good to say about the Party, and the proposition that the Party couldn't care less about the laobaixing (ordinary people) almost never meets dissent.

People will often ask how you know so much. And if they put forward a proposition about modern Chinese history ("Tibet has always been an inalienable part of the motherland"), which you then counter with a different proposition, may observe that your sources are no more to be trusted than you say their own are. There's nowhere really to go with that, except to point out that you have access to every point of view on the issue, including theirs, whereas they have access to none except that provided by the government, and let them draw their own conclusions from that.

But beware those who buttonhole you while there's some hot issue around, as they are often only interested in bludgeoning you with their own ignorance and prejudice, and not in having any kind of real exchange at all. There's certainly no shyness about talking politics in these cases. Being in China at the time of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was certainly entertaining, for instance. The response ranged from someone shouting "Sha! Sha!" (Kill! Kill!), to another stopping me in the street to shout "F*** you NATO," to yet another shouting, "Beiyue pengyou, ni hao?" (Hello, NATO friend!) and giggling. But several rather saner exchanges took place as part of casual conversations with others, and certainly friends wanted to know what the foreign opinion on it all was.

Peter N-H

This book is definately not available in China - though i have managed to smuggle one in! The thing is that most Chinese, even younger generations still revere Mao and cannot fathom that he had his flaws. I have factories in Southern China and interact regularly with some of my labour force (have lunch with them in the canteen etc) and basically many of the older ones will love to talk politics with you and extoll the virtues of Mao's philosophy. They have no concept of some of the things that happened such as the Great Famine etc.

I showed my secretary some of the pictures in the book and she was shocked!

By the way its true that you will never see a picture/painting/photo of Mao with his mouth open in China.....you'll have to read the book to find out why.

Another interesting experience with regards to Politics that i had was in Beijing. I think people in BJ are more opinionated and more open to learning more. Out in the bar street, i would regularly be approached by groups of university students who wanted to share a pitcher of beer with me whilst talking about various political topics. They wanted to know about everything from goings on in the Middle East to why the Falun Gong is allowed in Hong Kong and not in China (though those conversations were very hush hush - we even had to use codenames for the Falun Gong!) - and they had their own strong opinions about all these issues.

One observation i have is that the further you get away from Beijing, people tend to talk less about politics and more about the economy.

Given the humbug that surrounds Mao, the meaningless official position in China that he was 70% right, 30% wrong (tell that to perhaps 70 million dead), and the leftover sanctity in Western tradition resulting from the writings of Edgar Snow and later toadies, it's hard not to welcome a book that sticks the knife in to one of the world's greatest monsters.

But given that the case against Mao is so easy to make, it doesn't do to undermine it by embellishing it. Doing so simply hands the knife to those who claim that the legitimacy of their own rule is derived from that of Mao, and invites them to stab back.

Much as it's fun to revel in stories that Mao was an opium grower and drug dealer, that his contribution to defeating the Japanese was largely inconsequential, and so on, the book is so utterly one-sided, so lacking in balance and depth, and so full of open hatred, that it's merely China Daily in reverse. There are no shades of grey: Mao was utterly and completely black, and absolutely any mud that can be made to stick is thrown. As several scholars have pointed out, much of the evidence for many of the attacks is flimsy and unverifiable. Although there planks, even entire wooden rafts all around them to offer support, the authors constantly clutch at straws.

In short, this is a book to be read with care, and certainly not with credulity. I found the continuing open bile to be an insult to the intelligence, and I've never been able to complete reading the thing although, as I say, it's long past time that Mao's monstrousness got more publicity. But much of this is simply anti-Mao propaganda.

Historian Andrew Nathan's review in the London Review of Books tackles many of the problems:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/nath01_.html

Here's a key section:

It is clear that many of Chang and Halliday�s claims are based on distorted, misleading or far-fetched use of evidence. They state, for example, that the Chinese Communist Party �was founded in 1920�, and not, as is usually said, in 1921 � a point they think important because Mao wasn�t in Shanghai in 1920. The two sources they cite, however, merely confirm that early Communist cells were founded a year before the First Party Congress met in Shanghai in 1921, something not contested by historians. They claim that the Kuomintang politician Wang Jingwei was the hidden �patron� of Mao�s early Party career, which appears to be a misreading of the fact that Wang, who served briefly as head of the Nationalists, appointed Mao as well as other Communists to KMT posts during the time of the KMT-Communist united front.

Chang and Halliday cite four sources to support their statement that Mao amassed �a private fortune� during the Jiangxi Soviet period of the early 1930s. One is an anonymous interview which cannot be checked. The second source is a book in Chinese by a writer called Shu Long, which says that Mao ordered his brother, Zemin, who was president of the Communists� state bank, to disperse money from a �secret treasury� to the various Communist military units when a gathering enemy offensive threatened the money�s security. The third is The Long March by Harrison Salisbury (1985), which says similarly that Zemin took part in hiding the Red Army�s money and treasure in a mountain cave for two years until it was removed shortly before the Long March and divided among the Communist armies that were about to set off on the March. The fourth source is a file in the Harrison Salisbury papers at Columbia University. However, the citation is garbled, so the file Chang and Halliday used cannot be located in Columbia�s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (nor can the correct citation be reconstructed from the information given).

In the chapter subtitled �Chiang Lets the Reds Go�, Chang and Halliday say they have �no doubt� that Chiang Kai-shek allowed Mao�s army to escape from encirclement in 1934 so that it could threaten the warlords of Sichuan and Yunnan, who would then have to capitulate to Chiang to save themselves. It�s true that the Red Army escaped, but most scholars attribute this to Chiang�s incompetence. Chang and Halliday�s clinching evidence is a published reminiscence that Chiang told his secretary: �Now when the Communist army go into Guizhou, we can follow in. It is better than us starting a war to conquer Guizhou. Sichuan and Yunnan will have to welcome us, to save themselves.� Although the quote is accurate, it does not prove the existence of a strategy. The source � who is not the person to whom the remark was allegedly made, Chen Bulei, but a lower-ranking staff member, Yan Daogang � himself explains Chiang�s remark by saying that he first made every effort to prevent the Red Army from entering Guizhou, and only after this failed decided to pursue the Reds there despite the opposition of the local warlord. In any case, one would expect a complex, long-term strategy of this kind to leave more than one fugitive piece of evidence.

Jonathan Spence's review in the New York Review of books (available as a paid download) covered much of the same ground, and remarks generally:

Mao: The Unknown Story contains many other examples of "secret" conversations between the top leaders of China which somehow have made their way into the memoir literature and thus become "sources." It is rare that the authors show the candor that they do on one occasion, where, citing some remarks about foreigners' sexual habits made by the wife of the guerrilla leader Zhu De, they comment that her "information reflected the gossip of the day."

For a more general overview, also see:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/b...icle224522.ece

The book has served a useful purpose in starting conversations about Mao's horrific record, but many would wish it to be a better, fairer book. Surely we expect some semblance of balance in our histories and biographies, and there's none here. The causes of Jung Chang's hatred for Mao are set out in her earlier Wild Swans, a book with many distortions of its own, and which is best treated as a novel. But histories are supposed to be a different kind of book altogether.

But you are very unlikely to meet anyone in China actually able to make an informed and reasonable contribution on this subject either.

Peter N-H

Agreed. I'm about 300 pages into it, but it was clear very early on that much of the substantiation for many of her points was a real reach.

I've read several...what can I call them?..."semi-autobiographies/semi-novels" written by Chinese expats and there's a lot of bitterness in most of them. One has to wonder how that taints their recollections.

We have a fairly big Chinese population here in Chapel Hill, including several Chinese neighbors. My son has also been studying Chinese for a couple of years and has a tutor from Beijing. As you would expect, most of these folks are highly educated and all of them recall Mao with a lot of contempt for what happened to their (again, mostly highly educated) families during Mao's various "programs."

Can you recommended a more balanced and historically accurate account of Mao's rise to power?

And to keep this on topic, we did not discuss politics with any locals in BJ. And we were amazed at how long the line was to get into Mao's mausoleum; clearly there is still a lot of awe about Mao, whatever the reasons might be.

Due to their proximity to the government, Beijing people have the opportunity to take in oodles of news that never gets reported. The events of MCMLXXX1X are, perhaps, the best example.

My company's lead counsel was a student at Peking University then and, while he did not take part in the protests themselves, was close enough to the action to provide vivid accounts. Some of the main takeaways:

-what occurred then was far worse than the info that made into the western press
-EVERYONE who was in Beijing at the time has a pretty good grasp of the real story
-strong incentives were put in place to prevent their accounts from spreading beyond the capital

Contrast the above with my experiences in Nanjing. When I was living in there in 1995, I taught an English class (first and last time dabbling in that field) and showed my students the pictures (of the afforementioned events) in the middle of Johnathan Spence's, In Search of Modern China. They took the position that the pictures must have been fabricated in order to make China look bad.

I think people in the provinces are much better informed today, thanks to the internet and a growing command of English.

I'm not disputing your narrative of this particular situation, but others thinking of discussing politics in China (or just about anything else) need to be aware that very frequently people will tell you the exact opposite of the truth with an entirely straight face if it is more convenient for them to do so. Admitting to recognising the pictures might be dangerous, especially if it might be necessary subsequently to comment on them, which could be especially dangerous with informants around.

Graduating in China is about keeping a clean record as much as it is about actually showing up for classes or getting high marks for exams (and many a foreign teacher has found his or her marking ignored or simply not required because who would pass or fail had already been decided on political or financial grounds). I don't think I'd put a class in such a difficult position by confronting them publicly with such pictures, but of course I wasn't there and don't know the circumstances.

But to come back to speaking truthfully about political events, a recent documentary by a British film maker called The Tank Man (shown on PBS in the states, but watchable in full on the PBS website--although doubtless not from behind the Great Firewall) highlighted both the desire of the West to draw certain conclusions about modern understanding of the Tian'an Men Square events, and provided a prime example of lying to camera, without the film maker understanding what was going on.

Having built up the man who stood in front of the tanks to some kind of indelible symbol of democratic freedoms, interviewed journalists who saw the incident, and repeated reviewed the footage, he gets three or four Bei Da (Beijing University, which has a new fashion for calling itself Peking University now, or PKU) students into a classroom somewhere, and after chatting to them about this and that, hands them each a blow-up of the man standing in front of the tank.

The point he is very keen to make is that modern-day students, a mere 20 years later, have no idea whatsoever what this event is. But there are a number of obviously very fake elements to the way this is done.

One boy on the left leans towards the girl next to him and whispers something we can't here, but the voice-over translation tell us in English is, "June 4" or similar--I'm not going back to the site to get this word perfect. The camera closes in on the girl looking confused and very uncomfortable, with the film-maker commentating in voice over that she looks completely blank. And then she gives a little speech about how she can't be sure what the image is but perhaps it's a military exercise or parade (or something like that), but stresses she's only guessing. She really can't say.

Her lead is followed by the others. Sound of trumpets: director gets to make point about internal suppression of information on the events of June 4, 1989, how it's been wiped out of history, how everyone these days has their eyes on the money, etc., etc.

Problems:

1. We've heard that the boy has an inkling at least of what it might be, but is scared enough only to whisper. This rather weakens the director's position. We'll come back to why he might want to whisper in just a moment.

2. In the second between the interpreter's voice-over translation of the boy's whisper and the film-maker's voice-over comment on the girl's confusion, she actually replies to the boy, and can be heard quite clearly on the film. She says, "Haoxiang si!", which means roughly, "It seems so," or "Looks like it." In other words, she very clearly also recognises if not the image itself, then what it is about, or when it was taken. The manipulative film-maker's point vanishes in a puff of cordite. But note also that although the girl knew something about the picture, she lied fluently to camera, as did the others including the whispering boy, and convinced the gullible film maker, who, had he spent longer in China might have understood these matters rather better. Some things are just better not said unless entirely amongst close friends.

3. To anyone with any familiarity of China, and in particular of the controls under which the foreign media operate there, it should be blindingly obvious that no film-maker gets to enclose an entirely randomly chosen set of Bei Da students (or any other students) in a classroom to ask them random questions. The students will of course have been hand-picked for their reliability. (Jonathan Dimbleby's ridiculous staging of the political discussion programme Question Time in Shanghai, which he claimed as a breakthrough because only half the audience were cadres (sic), simply failed to discover that the other half was hand-picked too since the authorities controlled who was handed an application form, and took them round to reliable journalism students, for instance, telling them to apply. There's nothing more gullible than a foreigner in China, and nothing worse than a journalist briefly in China and looking for glory.)

4. Were there just cameraman, sound, producer, film-maker/director, interpreter, and the students? Of course not. There was a minder, as well, sitting off-camera. And who would be likely to speak up in front of him? There will always be a minder in these situations, but in this case he actually gets a mention later in the documentary, and in an interview (also viewable on the PBS site) the director discusses how he tried to lull the minder by boring him with a period of absolutely anodyne questions before pulling the photo stunt.

But then what student would be insane enough to start talking about June 4 on camera anyway? Once the documentary was aired his or her remaining days at Bei Da would be numbered.

The question was a farce, and the replies were a farce. The entire scenario was fake and the film-maker either too ignorant to spot it, or he had his own agenda as a ground-breaking director-journalist to push, and was willing to mislead his audience.

Essentially all conversations about politics in China that take place in circumstances in any way public are false, and you might as well not have them at all.

In many other cases there's a concern to give you the best possible view of things Chinese regardless of facts to the contrary known to the speaker and perfectly obvious to everyone but the outsider, until you believe the astonishing proposition that China is little different from the West, and that your position on this is unassailable because someone in China told you so.

Sometimes denials of the truth can reach ridiculous heights. One of my favourites is the account of the author of a review of China's better museums, who commented about museum directors who swore that there were no fakes/replicas on display (most Chinese museums contain more replicas than real items, although these are rarely marked as such), only later to take her into the store room where the real items were kept, and without turning a hair. In China you simply don't remark on such things, but just go along with them.

I was touring the "underground city" in Beijing when an attendant-guide asked me about the book I was carrying. It was an English translation of Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, published after the author had become the first Chinese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I explained what the book was, who the author was, and his significance, and the guide said, "Oh yes. He's Taiwanese." "He's not," I said, "He's a mainlander but he's a political exile so your government won't tell you about his achievement." The guide then buttonholed a colleague with some English and showed him the book, "Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature" clearly written on the front. "He's from Taiwan," said the colleague. Starting to get angry (which is stupid of me) I showed him the biography inside the cover. "Born in 1940 in Jianxi [sic] Province in eastern China." "No," he said smugly, "he's from Taiwan."

Such real political conversations as there are take place between you and one or two other individuals who know each other well, and without any extra ears around. In those circumstances there can be a positive eagerness to express criticism, gratification that there's a willing listener, and the desire to make a good narrative can take over just as it would the rest of us.

Well, Philip Short's biography of Mao is probably that, but it could do with a bit more Jung Chang in it, and it's a bit of a dull read. Although a foreign correspondent in China for a while, I don't think that Short ever quite got the feel of the place. But this with Li Zhisui's slightly questionable but more verifiable account of his time as Mao's doctor would make a good combination.

Jonathan Fenby, former editor of the South China Morning Post, never quite gets China either, but his Generalissimo, a biography of Chiang Kai-shek, covers much of the same period and shows Chiang to be every bit the corrupt little thug, and equally as incompetent as Mao, but in the end unluckier perhaps. This is a rather better read.

For a general history from the late Ming to the mid-80s, Jonathan Spence's The Search for Modern China, is hefty but readable. Going from the broad view to the detail, Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker is an account of cannibalism in China during two of the great famines Mao caused (and contrasts cannibalism to avoid starvation with revenge cannibalism amongst Red Guards--triumphing over their enemies by eating their livers). It's repellent, but very well done and hard to put down. His The Chinese is an excellent single-volume overview of modern China, and although starting to date as any commentary on modern China will the moment it is published, ought to be read by all foreigners planning to visit China, and ought to be compulsory for all those who come back spouting tour-guide-like platitudes.

Peter N-H

I'd like to second Peter N-H's comment about many mainland Chinese lying directly to your face. It is amazing how many times this happens, not just with politics but in almost any everyday situation. The delivery guy who is "waiting for the elevator at the bottom floor" who shows up 1 hour later, or the hotel clerk who has "no more rooms available" when the hotel is empty. This is one of the most fascinating things I've found about life on the mainland. I have no idea where this comes from either as other Asian countries have the "face saving" concept but don't have this sort of outright lying that is accepted. I can understand why you might be coy about politics but about the fact that you are going to be an hour late...duh, I'm gonna figure that one out even if you say you're still waiting for the elevator!

Also, the best book I've read about Mao is Li Zhishui's "private life of chairman mao" The Mao book by Jung Chang was on the same level as a book called "Mao, man not God" which I picked up at a Xinhua bookstore and was supposedly written by one of his bodyguard. They came from totally different viewpoints but both struck me as a whole lot of B.S.