This Generation (19 page)

Concerning this incident in Taixing, there has been a clampdown on news coverage. Not only were these children born at the wrong time, it seems they died at the wrong time too. From the point of view of the powers that be, this incident is a distraction from all the festivities marking yesterday's opening of the Shanghai Expo. All we know is that there were thirty-two people injured; the hospital and the government keep repeating that there were no fatalities. But unofficially it is reported that a number of children died. So whom should we believe? Maybe we're inclined to believe the government, but then why is it that parents are prohibited from seeing their children? So far, the hospital and the media remain muzzled, with no pictures or video of the victims. And if a man goes on the rampage with a knife and manages to inflict wounds on thirty-two people but not one of them dies, one has to wonder: Was he trying to kill people, or perform medical procedures on them? He seems to have been way too careful. Maybe we're inclined to believe the rumors, but rumor is always prone to exaggeration, and without further documentation we cannot place credence in it, either. So I conducted an online search for “Taixing,” and all it gave me was a
news report dated April 30: “In Taixing Three Happy Events Coincide.”

What really surprises me is that the Taixing government, by muzzling the hospital and suppressing news and blocking the media and prohibiting visits and distracting attention and so forth, has so successfully converted everyone's anger with the assailant into anger with itself. This is quite unnecessary. You might think there is some special motive behind their secretiveness, but actually there isn't—apart from wanting to provide the ideal backdrop to the Shanghai Expo (and its paean to harmony), it's all just inertia, it's the government's ingrained habit when dealing with this kind of incident, the same old ritual in seven stages. Every time something happens when you're halfway through the feast, you:

conceal,

sequester,

expel,

ban,

spin,

compensate,

and cremate

—then back to the food and wine. Their way of handling issues is not much more refined than that of the slasher, and it's no wonder that one can now see posted on the Internet a couplet commemorating this incident:

Looking for the source of the grievance you want to vent?

Go out the door, turn left, and there's the government.

In just over a month, there have been five cases of killings in schools; in just one week, there have been two: on April 29 in Taixing, on April 30 in Weifang. I don't propose to examine here all the underlying social causes, all I want to say is: A man bursts into
a kindergarten in Taixing and wounds thirty-two children, but this cannot be properly reported. If you add the kids' ages together, it comes to only a hundred years or so, but there's no place for their story in the papers, because a hundred miles away there's a big bash going on, where just the fireworks alone cost a hundred million yuan, and at the same time in their hometown they're getting ready for the International Tourism Festival, Commerce Talks, and Recreational Park Opening Ceremony, three happy occasions all at the same time.

Don't you see, children, you're spoiling grandpa's fun?

Poor children, it's you who are poisoned by the tainted milk powder, you who are harmed by the faulty vaccine, you who are crushed by the earthquake, you who are burned by the fire. Even if it's in the adults' world where things are going wrong, you're the ones on whom an adult seeks to exact vengeance. I hope it's true that, as the Taixing government claims, you are only injured and none of you have died. Your elders have failed in their duty, but I hope that when you grow up you can do better, not just protecting your own children but making society protect
all
its children.

May 7, 2010

Interviews with foreign media are
different from those with domestic media, even if they sometimes ask the same questions and I give the same answers: What actually gets printed in the paper differs considerably. Foreign reporters' questions are relatively more direct—sometimes so direct as to be unanswerable, because if you were to ever answer them, my guess is that you'd only ever be speaking to foreign reporters from then on. If so, I tell them honestly, “I can't answer that question. It's not that I won't, it's that I can't. To answer that question would exact too high a price, one that's not worth paying—at least, not now. At the same time, I'm not willing to lie, so I'm just going to choose to keep my mouth shut. But you don't need to delete your question, for it's a good one. Just say that the interviewee dared not answer. Please excuse my weakness.”

To be frank, I tend to be more expansive when responding to questions from Chinese reporters, because I know that however much I say and even if it's just me and the reporter having a chat, since the transcript undergoes the reporter's self-censorship there's nothing that will get into the paper that is not aboveboard. Faced
with a foreign reporter, I will talk more in terms of my hopes for the future. An interview I just had with a Canadian journalist is a rather typical example, so here I'm going to quote some exchanges from it, with a few minor changes.

Q. Do you miss Google? If so, why?
²⁵

A. No, I don't miss Google at all. Google is like a girl who one day tells you out of the blue, “I'm leaving you.”

“Oh no, darling, don't do that,” you say. But she goes ahead and dumps you all the same.

Then you find, however, that you can actually have her whenever you want her. The only difference is that when you had her at your beck and call before, she would give you a carrot if that's what you asked for, and now when you say, “Where's the carrot?” she does a disappearing trick.

Q. If you had the chance to live abroad—in Canada, for instance—would you make the move? Why or why not?

A. If it was just a short-term arrangement, for a holiday or a race or business, that's something I'd be happy to do, but I am not interested in settling abroad permanently. Canada is a beautiful country with a comfortable lifestyle, a good ecological balance, and a high per capita GDP. My country has a high GDP but low per capita GDP, severe pollution, and corrupt officials, and sometimes it takes one step forward and two steps back, but I fully intend to remain where I am, watching my country progress or helping it along a bit—it is my homeland, after all. Another reason is that in my native land it's natural enough to be surrounded by corrupt Chinese officials, but if I move to another country only to discover that
I'm still rubbing shoulders with corrupt Chinese officials, that will really push me over the edge.
²⁶

Q. How should other countries, including Canada, view China's growing strength and its more prominent role in international affairs?

A. That's really a question you should ask our officials and our leaders. But what I can tell you is this: all you need to do is have a look at how they responded to that kind of question when other people asked it, and you've already got your answer. To find out their position on other issues of interest to you, just follow the same procedure.

Q. How do you account for China's hypersensitivity?

A. That's very hard to do. All I can say is this: Only an independent judiciary can be a true judiciary. But in our country, the judiciary cannot be independent, because that would be out of line with our national circumstances. What does “national circumstances” mean? They mean that making money is all that matters. What's the best guarantee of being able to make money? Power. Judicial independence will limit power. If you limit power, how are those people with power—and their families—going to be able to make so much money? So you see, judicial independence isn't the right fit for China.

Q. What kind of country would you like to see China become? (This question came from a Japanese reporter.)

A. A country that doesn't resort to land sales and real estate and low-end assembly production to achieve high GDP—and high per capita GDP. A country where good people don't
have to jump over the wall and where bad people end up in jail.
²⁷
A country whose culture has an impact on the world, whose literature and art other nations imitate. A country that has as clean an environment and as free an atmosphere as other places, where you can enjoy the spectacle of seeing power confined inside a cage, where you can talk freely, wine in hand, and say everything that's on your mind.

May 14, 2010

Recently, Fujian Province has come
up with ten principles for institutions of higher education. The most eye-catching of them is No. 2: “Those who in the course of educational work circulate erroneous views that violate the Communist Party's line, strategy, or policies, or the Party's basic theory, or the state's laws and decrees, and who create an adverse environment for instilling in students correct ideals, beliefs, and political allegiance, will be subject to veto power and dismissed from their appointments.”

What's comforting is that as I was reading the first part of this long sentence, I was anticipating that it would culminate with the words “will be shot,” but actually it is just a case of being “voted out” of office, so this counts as a big improvement over the days of Mao Zedong. As for who has the power to cast this vote, that is not an interesting question—what concerns me is that it's next to impossible to grasp this “line,” “strategy,” and “theory,” for although those in power expect us to have unified thought, they themselves
are often unable to do so. I seem to recall that there was a discussion about the tripartite division of powers in my high school curriculum, and both my politics textbook and my politics teacher said at the time that the division of powers is a good thing, but these days I keep reading official articles and speeches which insist that the division of powers is an erroneous concept. You know that I am someone with only a middle school diploma, and I dropped out of school before I could take my studies of politics any further, but I just feel perturbed—I feel anxious about the fate of those politics instructors and textbook editors who have disseminated erroneous thought. All along they have been regurgitating materials that the leaders gave them, only to find that if they handle things improperly they will be disciplined by the leaders, because those scripts reflect the way the leaders thought last night and this morning the leaders had a different idea when they got out of bed.

I saw somewhere a neat description of that phenomenon, and the gist of it was: A man gets into his car and immediately activates the right-turn indicator, drives forward a few yards, only to turn left. That wouldn't be so bad, but then he makes a complete U-turn. So, if you're run over by this kind of driver, you can only curse your bad luck.

When a journalist ferrets out the truth, when a history teacher lectures on the patterns of the past, when a writer presents things honestly, when a film director depicts real life, at best they will have committed an ideological error and at worst they will have perpetrated a crime. And when someone offends in this fashion, others will indulge in speculation: He has been “invited out for a coffee,” he has been banned, he has been arrested, when actually in the end he may not get into so much trouble and all that may happen is that the evidence of his crime is purged from view, but people still don't feel relaxed—rather, they feel all the more anxious on their own account, suspecting that it's only because the guy is quite famous that the government has hesitated to take action—maybe the government won't have any scruples about taking action against me?
It has to have taken a lot of reinforcement to build up that level of instinctive anxiety.

In any era, even when brainwashing becomes as routine as washing vegetables, there are bound to be a few scallions that don't get rinsed clean. In the old days people would have hacked away and discarded those dirty leaves, but with the changing of the guard these unclean scallions are asked simply to keep to themselves as they grow. However, if they try to share their thoughts with the other onions, they will be immediately be squashed flat by the ones who insist on playing dumb.