tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina/576 2008-05-14T18:18:56Z Pomfret's China features China expert John Pomfret as he deciphers what's behind the latest news from China. Movable Type Enterprise 1.53 tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39185 2008-05-14T13:27:10Z 2008-05-14T18:18:56Z

A look at Wang Zhenyao, the man at the center of China's earthquake relief effort.

John Pomfret a story on Wang by Steve Mufson, who blogs on energy for the Post and who preceded me in Beijing: Born in 1954 in a village in Henan province, Wang's first political memory is hunger. Mao's economic program, the Great Leap Forward initiated in 1958, had failed spectacularly. Though Mao wouldn't admit that the economy was collapsing, in villages like the one where Wang grew up it was no secret. Fuel and cooking oil were in short supply. The cooking pots had been melted down to meet Mao's unrealistic steel production targets. To survive, Wang ate raw tree bark. "We ate it raw, right off the tree," he said. "For my generation, the first deep impression is hunger. We were very, very hungry." His area barely had time to recover from the Great Leap Forward when the Cultural Revolution began. In November 1966, at age 12, Wang spent two weeks in distant Beijing with his classmates to catch a glimpse of the revered Mao in Tiananmen Square. When Mao appeared in the square, he was greeted by Wang and half a million other screaming youths waving their little red books of Mao's quotations and chanting "Long live Chairman Mao." "My generation really believed we were red," Wang recalls. "We believed in Chairman Mao and that we should devote ourselves to Chairman Mao." ]]> A friend of Wang’s tells a story about Wang at Nankai. Wang was about 12 or 15 years older than I was when we went to school at Nankai together. He entered in 1977, two years earlier than I, although I was just a kid straight from high school. But we lived several dormitories apart for two years. At the time, he was still in PLA uniform but had a fecund mind for making trouble, a very active kind of guy. The authorities hated him and near graduation, they tried to discredit him by instigating his semi-paranoid wife from a rustic Henan village to come to Tianjin to "confront" him on an affair he was never in. He was pretty embarrassed by the scene his wife was making. The imaginary lover he was accused of having an affair with was also a PLA officer in the same class. It was such a farce, I remember. The lady is now operating a fancy cosmetics store in downtown Washington. When Wang was removed from his village democracy post and made director in charge of disaster relief, he told Mufson: “Disasters are no problem. They're not like democracy. They're not as dangerous." I wish him well but I think he’s probably changed his mind. ]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39174 2008-05-13T12:46:35Z 2008-05-13T12:51:33Z

Natural disasters in China mean more than they do in the West. Many Chinese hold a view if the earth buckles and shakes, it's a harbinger of political or social upheaval.

John Pomfret On July 28, 1976 at 3:42 A.M., an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale shook Tangshan, a coal mining town to the east of Beijing. Sixteen hours later another 7.8 trembler rocked Tangshan again. Chinese official sources say 242,000 died, making the Great Tangshan Quake the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century and the third deadliest of all time. To the Chinese, however, the Tangshan Quake didn't just spell disaster, it augured change. Six weeks later (on Sept. 2), Chairman Mao died, ending the Cultural Revolution and sparking a battle to change China won ultimately by Deng Xiaoping. Two other major Communist figures had already "gone to meet Marx" that year. Natural disasters in China mean more than they do in the West. Many Chinese hold a view that the government is responsible for maintaining the harmony under heaven. If the earth buckles and shakes, it's a harbinger of political or social upheaval. China's Communist government spent decades trying to stamp out superstitions and feudal beliefs such as these, but it has failed. The last two decades of economic reform have sparked an explosion of traditional beliefs and a renewed interest in Chinese Buddhist-like sects. In recent years, even senior Party officials embraced traditional creeds, the precepts of feng shui, and qi gong. (China's current president Hu Jintao talks about the creation of a "harmonious" society - a clear nod to Chinese traditional views.) I've met spiritual advisers to senior Chinese officials (Nancy Reagan and her palm reader, anyone?). I met one of them at a boozy evening in Beijing, introduced to me by a senior official in China's ministry of foreign trade. I still have the King of Clubs he gave me for good luck. So, now, we have the deadly earthquake in Sichuan. So far, at least 8,500 are believed dead. Six thousand soldiers from the People's Liberation Army have been dispatched into the area to help with rescue operations. And already I have notes from several friends wondering is this dynasty next. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39144 2008-05-09T04:00:01Z 2008-05-09T15:36:35Z

Its propaganda machine might sound shrill, but China's foreign policy has been hitting all the right notes.

John Pomfret met with representatives of the Dalai Lama. They've agreed to keep talking. No one expects this to go anywhere, but it's a whole lot better than yelling at each other via the media.]]> And Wednesday, the China Philharmonic Orchestra, joined by the Shanghai Opera House Chorus, performed Mozart's "Requiem" and Chinese folk tunes for Pope Benedict at the Vatican City. Pope Benedict gushed about the performance saying it "helps us to understand better the history of the Chinese people, their values and their noble aspirations." Translation: After almost 60 years of no relations, the Vatican and China are moving rapidly toward closer ties. It's interesting that press reports say the concert at the Vatican was added at the "last minute" and was apparently arranged with the help of Deng Rong, one of the daughters of the late Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's reforms. It's also interesting that the Chinese players performed the "Requiem," Mozart's last composition and long considered one of his darker and more spiritual pieces. There's no way the concert was really a last minute addition -- anything involving China and the Vatican is being vetted at the highest levels of both governments. But what it could mean is that China and the Vatican are ready to re-establish diplomatic ties, which means the Vatican would drop its recognition of Taiwan. Two key reasons: it looks like the Communist Party hacks who opposed better ties, like Ye Xiaowen, the chief of the Religious Affairs Bureau, and Bishop Fu Tianshan have finally been moved out of the way. Fu died last year and Ye is rumored to be stepping down. While the warming trend with Beijing is good news for Taiwan, losing the Vatican would be a blow. And it comes as Taiwan's foreign policy establishment - which staked its prestige on its ability to stop China's diplomatic juggernaut -- is in meltdown. On Tuesday Taiwan's foreign minister Jason Huang and Vice Premier Chou I-jen stepped down over a botched attempt to win diplomatic recognition from Papua New Guinea from China after $30 million "went missing." Ooops. Taiwan and China have long paid off various tinpot dictatorships around the world as part of their competition for diplomatic recognition. Taiwan is losing that battle. Now, only 23 countries -- mostly tiny ones -- recognize Taiwan, compared with 30 when Chen Shui-bian took power in 2000. So China's fiddling while Taiwan burns. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39116 2008-05-06T16:35:53Z 2008-05-06T18:39:52Z

Get used to it: trade with China is crucial to American interests.

John Pomfret Every election cycle, somebody likes to bash China. (Remember Bill Clinton accusing George Bush of coddling “butchers in Beijing”?) China is an easy target, and bashing it is fun because it’s so much simpler to blame foreigners for our troubles than to focus on our own issues. But more broadly, I think, making a case for relations with China is tough for politicians who feel the need to dumb-down their rhetoric and identify an enemy. Let’s take Hillary Clinton as an example. After mowing down NAFTA, Clinton has now turned her anti-aircraft heavy machine gun toward China. Here are a few snippets from her campaign: substantially against the dollar over the last year. In April, $1 bought less than 7 yuan for the first time since 1994. Over the last three years, the Yuan has appreciated more than 18 percent vis-à-vis the dollar. Yes, China is allowing the yuan to gain against the dollar for domestic reasons – because it might help lower China’s high inflation. But the point is that they’re doing it. In April, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson recently praised China for doing so, although he added that China should let the yuan appreciate more. On the issue of stealing U.S. jobs, again, China is an easy target but Clinton seems to be firing blind. First, manufacturers have been bleeding jobs in the United States to developing countries for decades. So any developing country is an easy target: Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, you name it. China just happens to be big – and Asian. (it all has the whiff of Japan-bashing in the 1980s). But trade goes two ways, and Clinton’s call to “get tough” with China ignores the fact that Americans profit from trade with the PRC. First, low-cost imports keep prices down – and that especially helps consumers living through a recession. And, second, all those imports means China has a lot of extra cash to buy foreign goods. And buying they are. The U.S.-China Business Council (you can tell by the name that they’re pro-trade) released a report on May 1 that shows that: 1) Almost all congressional districts (406 out of 435) registered triple-digit growth in exports to China between 2000 and 2007. 2) Nationwide, from 2000 to 2007, exports to China grew 301 percent to $65.2 billion. Worldwide U.S. exports grew only 44 percent. 3) Contrary to common perceptions, congressional districts in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, and Michigan also benefit from rapidly growing exports to China—and these exports include manufactured goods and machinery, computers and electronics, transportation equipment, and other high-end products. In North Carolina, where Clinton railed against Beijing, China is the state’s third most important export market. Last year, North Carolina exported almost $1.8 billion worth of goods to China, up 405 percent since 2000. As for Indiana, where Clinton has continued her China-bashing, exports have jumped 355 percent since 2000 to $758 million. Politicians seeking to look at China with a more textured view also get little love from pundits who, as one former U.S. official involved in U.S.-China ties said, “are more comfortable talking about American values than American interests.” A close relationship with China may not jibe with American “values” – human rights, the First Amendment, religious freedom – but it’s crucial to American interests. Somehow we’ve got to get used to that.]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39076 2008-05-01T04:00:01Z 2008-05-01T04:13:07Z

Mounting global criticism of Chinese policies, and China's response to criticism, spell an end to the country's effective projection of "soft" power.

John Pomfret Move over ugly American, make room for the ugly Chinese. In Seoul on Sunday, groups of Chinese students accosted protesters demonstrating against China's treatment of North Korean refugees and Beijing's policies in Tibet. The attacks by the Chinese occurred as the Olympic torch wended its way on its seemingly never-ending journey around the world. The South Korean government was justifiably angry. China, after initially denying the events occurred, has now taken steps to still the waters. But the damage has been done. China's angry youth - called "fen qing" in Chinese - are ruining their country's reputation around the world and spelling the end of a decade-long honeymoon that the world has had with China. The flare-up was the latest deeply troubling and profoundly weird event to mar the globe-trotting journey of the torch, which the Beijing government has dubbed "the sacred flame." (Remember, these dudes are officially atheists.) Before Seoul, we had Chinese cops in blue and white tracksuits manhandling demonstrators in Paris and London; we had a Chinese woman in the United States who participated in a pro-Tibet protest being identified on a listserv run by Chinese students; now her parents are on the run in China and her high school in Qingdao has revoked her diploma; and we've witnessed the incessant hounding of Tibetan and other speakers on US campuses by Chinese students. In cities around the world, the Chinese embassy has fanned the passions of the "angry youth" by encouraging them to demonstrate, handing out T-shirts and flags. While I have no problem with displays of patriotic feeling, the only thing these "angry youth" are accomplishing is turning the world away from China. And they are not alone in this ill-fated effort to get China's point across. China's propaganda machine is also seriously in need of repairs. For a few years there, the tone adopted by spokespeople of China's government was downright suave. Background briefings. Check. A quiet drink with journalists. Check. Even a bowling event without a government minder. Check. But these days, it seems like someone has disinterred Cultural Revolution propagandist and Gang of Four member Zhang Chunqiao and put him at the helm. After the March riots in Tibet, the Tibetan government proclaimed a "people's war" against "splittism" (somebody should really tell them to lose that word) and the party boss there called the Dalai Lama "a jackal clothed in a monk's robes, and a vicious devil who is a beast in human form." A few days later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "disgusting." And the amazing thing was the Chinese expected to be taken seriously. Finally, there's China's "ship of shame" - packed with arms for the government of Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe - on its own troubled journey to first South Africa and now Angola. In both places, dock workers refused to unload the weapons. It's a coincidence but also a bad one because China has been focusing a lot of diplomatic capital on improving its ties to Africa and the rest of the Third World. What does this all mean for China? To me, it means the end of an era of China's "soft power." book on it last year. In 2003, Jane Perlez of the New York Times wrote a series of pieces about the issue - her general thesis being that the Chinese were beating America at its own game. Public opinion polls among Southeast Asian nations earlier this year put China ahead of the Japan and the United States as the country currently considered the region's most important partner. But now across the globe China is dropping in the polls. And it's not due to lack of contact with the Chinese, people who are polled say, it's because we're getting to know them better. Even before the latest developments, a fear of China was rising in the West. Polls taken before the events in Tibet showed that 1) in Europe, China has overtaken the U.S. as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans and 2) in the United States, China has replaced North Korea as one of the top three U.S. enemies - after Iran and Iraq. All this should provide someone in China's government cause to ponder. At the very least, it has prompted some leading Chinese intellectuals and artists to speak out. Speaking in Sydney earlier today, Chinese artist and architect Ai Weiwei, who helped design the "bird's nest" Beijing National Stadium for the Olympics, criticized China's government for encouraging "nationalist sentiment." Ai criticized the nationalists as well. "It's blind; it's sentiment without a clear intellectual concept. It's crazy, what they're so excited about," Ai told reporters in Australia. It's sadly ironic that during a week that began with Chinese students rampaging through the streets of a foreign capital beating demonstrators, the man who gave the world one of the most incisive critiques of Chinese culture died. Bo Yang, the great Chinese philosopher, writer, former political prisoner and author of one of the most incisive critiques of Chinese culture, passed away on Tuesday in Taiwan. The native of Hebei-province long railed against the type of group-think evidenced by today's "angry youth." The title of Bo's best known work? "The Ugly Chinese and the Crisis of Chinese Culture." ]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39034 2008-04-25T17:07:56Z 2008-04-25T17:20:01Z

China agrees to talk to the Dalai Lama’s camp – but that probably won’t go anywhere.

John Pomfret not to deal with China. First, according to the official Xinhua News Agency on Thursday, China will be resuming talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama. Good news. And a smart move on China’s part that was taken, no doubt, because of substantial Western pressure. I’m doubtful it’s going to go anywhere; partially because of the Dalai Lama (more on that below), but the move shows something important to the “Chinese never respond to pressure” school of diplomacy, popular among some China buffs in Washington or around the globe. China does respond to pressure; obviously, it needs to be consistent, rationale, not shrill and focused. But China does respond. (For another example, look at China’s exchange rate. The greenback dropped below 7 yuan for the first time since the ‘90s earlier this month. The Chinese have quietly revalued their currency – again due to Western pressure. Now why wasn’t pressure supposed to work again?) ]]> not to deal with China. That is the totally bizarre scene of kowtowing held when French Senate President Christian Poncelet met with China’s president Hu Jintao on Thursday. Hu lectured Poncelet about demonstrations in Paris earlier this month that marred the Olympic torch ceremony in France. True to form, Hu wheeled out China’s favorite expression: the protests “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” Poncelet was contrite. His first stop was in Shanghai where he sought out Jin Jing, the wheel-chair bound athlete who was lionized in China after she fought off a pro-Tibetan protester as she carried the torch. During his meeting with Hu, Poncelet reiterated, according to Xinhua, that “all the previous and current French governments respected China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, holding that Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of China, and the affairs of Taiwan and Tibet belong to China's internal affairs.” The Chinese should be pleased. But the French aren’t finished here. More groveling is due this week with the arrival of former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, to be followed by Jean-David Levitte, a diplomatic adviser of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. This frantic fence-mending is exactly an example of how not to pursue relations with China. But France, as per usual perhaps, is trying to have its cake and eat it, too. Back in Europe, Sarkozy’s partners, British PM Gordon Brown and Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel, have already said they will not attend the opening Olympic ceremonies. Sarkozy has yet to make up his mind. Sarkozy, as one French TV commentator put it, “needs to keep in step with his European partners while not jeopardizing French economic interests in China.” The Chinese benefit greatly when the West isn’t united on these issues and one country is out there trying to cut a better deal. One French commentator justified the dispatch of all these current and former French bigwigs by saying that they, too, will apply pressure on the Chinese to open direct talks with the Dalai Lama. But I doubt it. Those messages can be conveyed from afar without giving the Chinese the opportunity to portray another group of foreign devils once again kowtowing to the PRC. As for talks with Tibet’s government-in-exile? Barring some incredible flip-flop, I think nothing’s doing. One reason is that the two sides can’t even agree on what constitutes Tibet. China defines Tibet to be the current boundaries of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama wants Tibet to include vast chunks of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai province as well – nearly doubling it in size. He wants those regions to be granted autonomy, too. The reason he won’t budge on that issue involves his constituency abroad. The exile Tibetan community is made up of many Tibetan refugees from outside Tibet. It’s a maximalist position and a major stumbling block to any potential breakthrough. Interesting screed in an Australian newspaper. This kinda proves my point from my last post on China bashing. ]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.39015 2008-04-23T17:52:07Z 2008-04-23T18:28:49Z

Boycotts of Carrefour stores by Chinese nationalists should worry Beijing, not the West.

John Pomfret Just how scary is Chinese nationalism? Just how serious are the thousands of Chinese about boycotting Carrefour - France's version of a big box store with more than 100 outlets in China? On May 8, 1999, hours after US missiles slammed into the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, I was out on the streets of Beijing near the US embassy as a line of buses disgorged hundreds, if not thousands of students. A Chinese researcher rode up to me on his bike. It's the Boxers, he said, referring to the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the 20th century. The Boxers killed their share of foreigners and believed that bodies hardened by lotsa kung-fu fighting could stop bullets. I laughed. Then a brick whizzed past my head. Still, I've never really been able to take China nationalism that seriously. It's like some of the comments on my blog. There's no shortage of passion but it's also curiously skin deep. It's often a foil for anti-government feelings, employed by Chinese who are actually fed up with Communist Party rule but aren't allowed to say it. Finally, it often masks deeper divisions in Chinese society. Whenever I read a Chinese blogger urging an anti-foreign boycott or some other type of joint action, I'm reminded of the telling saying that Chinese have about themselves. "A Chinese alone equals the power of a dragon, but three Chinese, nothing but an insect." Militant nationalism is a loaded term; it raises the specter of 1930s Germany and Japan. Scholars and pundits on all sides of the political divide in America like to toss it around when speaking about China. On the panda hugging side of the aisle, they invoke "militant nationalism" when they argue that we shouldn't be tough on China. "Don't push those Chinese because they might get ultra-nationalist on you," they warn, taking their talking points almost directly from friends in China's party-state. The right, too, loves to fan the flames of our fears. China's ultra-nationalists are coming, it warns, so we need to bolster our military forces, arm Taiwan, harden Guam, snuggle up even closer to Japan.... Both lines of reasoning are flawed, I think. Here's why. First, a healthy percentage of China's nationalists are basically patriots. (See what a difference a word makes?) These include the many thousands of Chinese studying at US campuses who have in recent weeks protested against Tibet, against the Dalai Lama and against people protesting against Tibet. Sure, their style is a little bizarre and they are unusually thin-skinned but cut them some slack. China is a new arrival on the global scene; most of these hotheads have never protested before; at the same time they are obsessed with "face" and are quick to take offense at perceived foreign depredations. You would, too, if you received a Communist education with your mother's milk. These people expect a kow-tow or two. Too bad they're not going to get them. The most interesting group are the nationalists inside China. There, nationalism is an anti-government movement using the cloak of patriotism as a flak jacket against government attacks. To be sure, China's government ginned up nationalism in the years following the Tiananmen Square crackdown with its various "Patriotic Education Campaigns" and its relentlessly anti-Western media campaigns. Nationalism was a natural safe-harbor for the party. With Communist ideology dead, the party turned to nationalism - and that big old growth rate - as the foundations of its legitimacy. But by sanctioning nationalism and nationalist demonstrations, China's party-state has created a potent potential enemy. I'll use a story to illustrate this. In 1988, I was in Nanjing covering massive protests that were touched off by a fight between African and Chinese students over a woman. The first day of the protest was an ugly racist march against what the Chinese called "black devils" stealing "our women." On the second day, however, somebody shouted "we want freedom!" and the whole tenor switched on a dime. Out came the placards calling for political change and, I might add, better food in the campus cafeterias. The same could easily happen around Carrefour stores today. It's all anti-French until the moment it isn't. Then it'll be anti-CCP. China's nationalist movement has already broached the question of whether the current government is sufficiently standing up for China - because of its slow response in Lhasa against marauding Tibetan rioters; that's just one step away from the broader question of whether the current government possesses the legitimacy to rule China. So to answer the question up top. China's nationalism doesn't scare me and shouldn't scare the West, even though it may cost Carrefour a few customers. But it definitely should scare the Mandarins in Beijing. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38952 2008-04-17T11:00:00Z 2008-04-17T12:17:30Z

In the streets, the polls and the latest suspense novels, the Chinese can do no right.

John Pomfret Americans have turned sharply negative against the Middle Kingdom. In that poll, China replaced North Korea (anyone remember the Axis of Evil?) as one of the top three U.S. enemies - after Iran and Iraq. And that poll was taken before Tibet was engulfed in protests and the Olympic torch relay morphed into a circus. But it's not just in polls where you sense the shifting zeitgeist. Even a casual peruser of the editorial pages of leading American newspapers - or shows such as CNN's The Situation Room where Jack Cafferty recently described Chinese products as "junk" and called China's government "a bunch of goons and thugs" -- can figure out that it's open season on China. Same holds true in a new crop of thrillers where Chinese villains have replaced old Soviets, those feline French and wild-eyed terrorists as the rogues du jour. Check out NY Times reporter Alex Berenson's "The Ghost War" or Colin Harrison's "The Finder," both published this year. It's not quite Yellow Peril time, but .... A few years ago, China's sizzling economy was viewed as an opportunity. Now, perhaps because we're flirting with a recession, it's a threat. In terms of a challenge from Asia, China circa 2008 is the new Japan circa 1980. On the military side, China is the new Soviet Union. A few years ago analysts generally pooh-poohed China's modernization. "The Million Man Swim" was how one analyst described a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan. Not any longer. China's military (which has been rewarded with double-digit budget increases every year except one since 1989) can now shoot satellites out of the sky and has begun to roam the high seas. When it comes to human rights, again, China is the new USSR. ]]> A few years ago, the Western media enthused about how Chinese were freer than at any time in their history. Remember the stories about how the Internet was going to set China free? Or village elections? Not anymore. These days the glass is definitely half-empty. Beijing obviously hasn't helped. Its human rights policies have taken a decided turn for the worse since President Hu Jintao took power in 2001. And on foreign policy, a few years ago, even a few months ago, Western media outlets had a load of nice things to say about China; Beijing was downright pro-American. China was aiding the U.S. in North Korea and Afghanistan; it had helped convince Sudan to accept U.N. forces. A New York Times piece in October (with the great headline: Look Who's Mr. Fixit for a Fraught Age) concluded that China had suddenly become a key to the resolution of trouble around the world. Not anymore, even though China continues to try to play that positive role. On Tuesday, for the first time, China hosted talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program in Shanghai. China's foreign policy has always been an often bizarre mix of pragmatism and perfidy. Months ago, we focused on the pragmatism; now it's the perfidy. So, how do you say Boris Badenov in Chinese? tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38924 2008-04-15T14:09:49Z 2008-04-15T14:38:26Z

The only territory in the world with the capability to teach China about democracy is Taiwan -- so it's good news that Taiwan is now pushing for closer relations.

John Pomfret A lot of ink has been spilled, and rightly so, on Tibet. But is it possible that the bigger story happening in Asia right now is what's going on between China and its other unruly relative - Taiwan? Is it also possible that the troubles in Tibet could be setting the scene for faster breakthroughs vis-a-vis Taiwan? I think so. Here's why. Over the weekend China's president, the purposely boring Hu Jintao, met with the purposely boring vice-president elect of Taiwan, Vincent "Smiling" Siew, in the purposely sleazy resort province of Hainan in southern China. The meeting amounted to the highest-level contact between officials from Taipei and Beijing, which claims that Taiwan is part of China, since 1949 - the year when China's Communists won a civil war and the defeated Nationalists scurried to Taiwan. More recently, the two sides have had no substantial talks in eight years. The Post briefed the meeting in our Sunday paper. The Times filed something on its website today in a piece that argued the planned dialogue won't amount to much because the Tibet situation would constrain China's leaders on any openings with Taiwan. Just the opposite, I think. The election last month of Siew and Ma Ying-jeou, the Nationalist candidate for president, in Taiwan means that after eight years of failed leadership by President Chen Shui-bian, who bungled the island's security and its economy, relations between Taipei and Beijing are likely to improve. Leaders from the two sides are finally talking about establishing direct flights. (It takes a day to get from Taipei to Shanghai, home to 250,000 businessmen, right now. If the flights were direct, it'd take an hour.) Pres-elect Ma has said he wants to end most restrictions on Taiwanese investment in China. (A recognition of reality considering Taiwan's businessmen have already sunk $100 billion or so in mainland factories.) This is good news, but not just for the economy of the region. It's also good news for those who care about the preservation of the world's only majority-Chinese democracy (Taiwan) and the prospect of political change in China. Why? For eight years, outgoing President Chen basically advocated that Taiwan declare independence from China. He couldn't say it openly because 1) China threatened to fire missiles at Taiwan if Taiwan took such an act (...not fun) and 2) the United States, which is obligated to (kind of) defend Taiwan under the very ambiguously worded Taiwan Relations Act, has told Taiwan that if it declared independence we probably wouldn't be overly eager to run to its defense. So Chen resorted to a policy of what the Chinese liked to call "creeping independence" which basically meant seizing every opportunity to enrage Beijing. In the end, however, Chen - and Taiwan -- didn't get bupkis. Taiwan failed to improve its security. And China had a strong argument against any kind of democratization. Look at Taiwan, Beijing's mandarins would say, they have democracy and they want to split the motherland! That's a powerful argument over there. So enter Ma, the Harvard-educated pretty boy of the National Party. He turned his strategy 180 degrees from Chen's. Needlessly antagonizing China, he's said, makes no sense. The keys to Taiwan's security and - critically - to the preservation of its full-throated democracy, he argued, are good relations with Beijing, not the constant tension Chen seemed to crave. This type of thinking upset some in Washington who frame dealing with China in a smart (and somewhat complex) way with Panda-hugging or collaboration with the godless Commies. But I think that Ma is right. The reason is that as long as Taiwan stops purposely pissing off China, most of the Communist leadership will be happy to let the whole issue of Taiwan's sovereignty float for decades as long as everybody is making money. That will boost Taiwan's economy, grant China time to change and decrease the possibility that the US will have to go to war to defend Taiwan. This peaceful interim will also give Taiwan time to push China's political system in the right direction. And that's a key here. The only territory in the world with the capability to teach China about democracy is Taiwan. It won't be Hong Kong, which was, is and will always be just a glitzy colony - whether to the old rulers, the Brits, or the new ones, the Chinese. It's definitely not the West. If there's anything the Tibet situation has shown it's that the gap in understanding between us and China is vast and growing bigger. But once China's propaganda czars can no longer paint Taiwan's democracy with the tar brush of "splittism" or "treason" (which they gleefully did while Chen was president), its political system will become a lot more attractive to the Chinese. Now, how does Tibet play into this? China's president Hu has already pretty much ruled out any major breakthroughs with the Dalai Lama. China's state-run media have reverted to propaganda from the Cultural Revolution with a 9/11 twist, describing Tibet's spiritual leader as a "jackal" in a monk's habit and a "terrorist." But Beijing is desperate for some type of international breakthrough to show the world in this, its Olympic, year. Why not Taiwan? Arguments that flexibility on Taiwan would be impossible because it'd be inconsistent with toughness on Tibet don't wash. When the chips are down (and they are down for China right now), expediency wins. Taiwan could be the beneficiary. And that'd be good news. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38879 2008-04-12T00:32:15Z 2008-04-12T00:33:51Z

Australia's prime minister wants to be China's partner, not its friend. He's on to something.

John Pomfret Geremie Barme unpacks Rudd's marvelous speech, given at Beijing University last week, in which he bluntly called on China to recognize its human rights problems in Tibet. Most Western leaders probably would have either punted or come on too strong. Rudd's tone, however, was pitch perfect. Rudd's brilliance in the speech involves turning the Chinese term "friend" on its head. Friend (pengyou in Chinese) and frienship (youyi) are two of the most distorted concepts in modern China culture. In modern China, a friend is someone who will do you favors and who expects favors in return. A "foreign friend" is someone the Chinese party-state expects will carry water for them and NEVER criticize them. Whenever a Chinese official called me "foreign friend" (waiguo pengyou), I knew some type of horrible deal would soon be asked or expected of me.]]> "To be a friend of China, the Chinese people, the party-state or, in the reform period, even a mainland business partner," Barme writes, "the foreigner is often expected to stomach unpalatable situations, and keep silent in the face of egregious behaviour. A friend of China might enjoy the privilege of offering the occasional word of caution in private; in the public arena he or she is expected to have the good sense and courtesy to be 'objective.' that is to toe the line, whatever that happens to be. The concept of 'friendship' thus degenerates into little more than an effective tool for emotional blackmail and enforced complicity." So what did Rudd do? He went back -- way back -- into Chinese history, to the 7th century AD, and used another word for friendship (zhengyou). "A true friend," Rudd said, "is one who can be a zhengyou, that is a partner who sees beyond immediate benefit to the broader and firm basis for continuing, profound and sincere friendship." "Rudd's tactic," Barme wrote, "was to deftly sidestep the vice-like embrace of [the current] model of friendship by substituting another. "A strong relationship, and a true friendship," he told the students, "are built on the ability to engage in a direct, frank and ongoing dialogue about our fundamental interests and future vision." This type of engagement could be a model for how the West interacts with China. Enough with the back door, private stuff that Western powers have relied on to engage with China -- private conversations that Chinese officials can then ignore. But at the same time, stop the screaming, with its hint of "Yellow Peril," racism and fear. Rudd got it right. It remains to be seen whether others can follow his lead. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38849 2008-04-10T17:15:16Z 2008-04-10T18:46:11Z

Chinese hero-worship of America is long gone -- but it's still not clear that the China offers a real alternative to the US model of national success.

John Pomfret participant in the student-led demonstrations in 1989 that led to the bloody crackdown on June 4th around Tiananmen Square. Lin’s posting captured for me an extremely important point about Chinese today that often goes unnoticed in the West. Basically, many Chinese are fed-up with hectoring from the Westerners.]]> not going to morph into America; it risked becoming Russia. 3) China's OK, I'm OK. China’s real successes since 1989 - a doubling, almost tripling of GDP and significant advances in individual rights (something almost totally overlooked in the recent coverage of China) - sparked a widespread sense of patriotic pride among the Chinese. (Note to skeptics: The biggest demonstration in Tiananmen Square after the ’89 crackdown occurred on July 13, 2001, when the IOC awarded China the Olympic games. And it was spontaneous.) And finally, 4) Get off my back, or what Alec called "collective ennui" toward Western "lecturing and chastising" about China. As the great Chinese blogger Hong Huang says: "I am tired of people treating me like I live in a concentration camp." This alienation has brought many Chinese in the elite to the conclusion that while their one-party system doesn’t deserve three cheers, it could, like ours, deserve two. And it's convincing others - in Africa and the Middle East - as well. But is this model sustainable?]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38835 2008-04-08T15:18:40Z 2008-04-08T15:30:29Z

One of the most interesting things in the anti-Olympic demos in London and Paris is the group of Chinese guys in blue and white track suits protecting the Olympic flame. They’re pushing and shoving everybody from cops to protesters to participants in the ceremony. Who are these guys?

Hal Straus
Unidentified runners carrying the Olympic torch near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on April 7, 2008. (Jacky Naegelen - Reuters) One of the most interesting things in the anti-Olympic demos in London and Paris is the group of Chinese guys in blue and white track suits protecting the Olympic flame. They’re pushing and shoving everybody from cops to protesters to participants in the ceremony. Who are these guys? According to the Xinhua news agency, the squad is called the Protection Unit for the Beijing Olympic Games Sacred Flame Relay and consists of Armed Police Academy cadets, with ranks. So basically Chinese soon-to-be cops. I wonder if they got law enforcement visas... ]]> tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38812 2008-04-07T09:00:00Z 2008-04-07T12:34:49Z

The runup to the Beijing Olympics is going a lot less smoothly than China's rulers may have wished -- but don't be surprised if that ends up strengthening the regime.

John Pomfret It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This year was supposed to be China’s grand coming out party. A par-TEH for The Party. Instead, it’s turning out to be most serious challenge to China’s Communist leadership since the student-led demonstrations since 1989. This doesn’t mean China’s (fortune) cookie is anywhere near crumbling. And it actually could mean that China’s regime will emerge from this stronger than before. Let’s review the events of the last few months. Starting in mid-March, Tibetans in five provinces rioted and demonstrated against China’s rule. A whopping 800 people have been arrested in Lhasa alone. That’s the biggest anti-Chinese uprising (and I think we can call it that by now, given the tens of thousands of security personnel dispatched to quell it) since Tibetans rose up against Chinese rule in 1959 during which the Dalai Lama fled China to India. The Tibetans aren’t alone. Now the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs, a mostly Muslim, ethnically Turkic minority) of Xinjiang province are restless, too. In recent weeks, they’ve demonstrated against Chinese rule in several cities in Xinjiang – most notably Hetian – famed for its carpets and stringy lamb stew. It’s obvious that people with a bone to pick with China’s leadership think the impending Olympics in Beijing are creating political space to air their demands. What’s next? Well, we haven’t heard much in recent months from Falun Gong, the Buddhist-inspired spiritual sect and the object of an ongoing brutal campaign of suppression by the Chinese state. No doubt they are going to pile on soon as well. Who knows, maybe smack in the middle of the Olympics opening ceremony. What about us unruly foreigners? We’re screaming at them about Tibet. We’ve been screaming at them about Darfur – and that’s only going to get noisier. We want them to allow the Yuan to float higher against the dollar. We want them to solve the North Korean nuclear problem; push Burma into the modern world and help convince Iran to shelve its program to build a bomb. The only bright spot in that arena is in Taiwan where, in late March, the Taiwanese elected Ma Ying-jeou as the next president. No doubt he’ll improve relations with China and will do a better job than his ham-handed predecessor Chen Shui-bian. So is this going to weaken China’s government? On the contrary. The more pressure the Chinese get from foreigners and barbarians – which are actually synonymous in ancient Chinese – the stronger the system becomes. Indeed, China’s system feeds off this kind of adversity. The Communist regime has a peculiar genius for turning these types of threats into opportunities. There are signs the troubles in Tibet and Xinjiang are already bolstering the regime. The Chinese blogosphere has erupted in a chorus of patriotic cheering as the People’s Armed Police have flooded Tibetan zones. When China calls the Dalai Lama a liar and a “jackal in a Buddhist monk’s clothes,” Americans cringe. To us it sounds like the Cultural Revolution all over again. But it rings true to Chinese ears. In China, most Han rarely if ever think of the guy; they generally view China’s minorities with a mixture of paternalism and despair. They have little patience for Tibetan or Uighur desires for more autonomy, much less independence. Crush them! the blogosphere says. Same goes for Mia Farrow’s campaign against the “Genocide Olympics.” The Foreign Ministry and China’s other propaganda organs have already framed these calls – for China to stop supporting Sudan, free its dissidents, negotiate with the Dalai Lama – as a foreign plot to weaken China. Again, to Western ears, that sounds goofy. But it resonates with the Chinese. With their mother’s milk, they’re nourished on a diet of resentful nationalism. For 150 years, China has been beaten down and oppressed by foreigners. Once again, the foreigners are at it. And what’s worse, they have picked this moment – China’s moment – to do it. Not only do they want to weaken China, the party’s propaganda organs crow, they want to make it do something even worse. They want to make it lose face. In front of 1.4 billion Chinese. So, keep this in mind when you see footage of workers providing the final gloss to China’s Olympic locales. China’s big year could be a lot bigger than the Party figured it would. But prepare for unintended consequences. tag:newsweek.washingtonpost.com,2008:/postglobal/pomfretschina//576.38559 2008-04-07T04:00:01Z 2008-04-04T23:56:11Z

Is China going to take over the world? Will it ever really become a superpower? Will the Communist Party ever engage in political reform? What do Chinese think of us? What's hot in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming? What are the Chinese reading? Is there hope for better relations between Beijing and Taipei? What's the best thing written this week about China? This blog will attempt to provide the broadest take on things Chinese -- in politics, culture, art, society, foreign affairs, economics and business. And who I am to bloviate about these issues? As a young "foreign devil," to use the Chinese term for foreigner, I first went to the People's Republic in 1980 and lived in a 10x15 foot room with seven Chinese guys for a year, played hoops and traveled across the country in packed railroad cars and rickety buses. After that it was 1988 and 1989 as a reporter for the AP, covering the student-led protests and the June 4 crackdown around Tiananmen Square. I returned in 1998 for another six years as the Post's bureau chief in Beijing. I bought a house in Beijing, wrote a book, "Chinese Lessons," and then decided to exile myself from my adopted "motherland" by moving back to Washington. My day-job? I edit the Washington Post’s Outlook section. I’ve been asked to close by telling readers what I hope they’ll get from the blog. Actually, I’d like to spin that on its head because I very much want this to be a joint effort. I want reaction, fulmination, criticism and maybe an occasional pat on the head. This won’t be fun without you. China is an amazing place; there are many stories to tell. I hope we can tell them together....

John Pomfret Outlook section. I’ve been asked to close by telling readers what I hope they’ll get from the blog. Actually, I’d like to spin that on its head because I very much want this to be a joint effort. I want reaction, fulmination, criticism and maybe an occasional pat on the head. This won’t be fun without you. China is an amazing place; there are many stories to tell. I hope we can tell them together.]]>