Kind: captions
Language: en
The following is a conversation with
Jeffrey Waserstrom, a historian of
modern China. This is the Lex Freedman
podcast. To support it, please check out
our sponsors in the description. And
now, dear friends, here's Jeffrey
Waserstrom. You've compared Xi Jinping
and Maong in the past. What are the
parallels between the two leaders and
where do they differ? Xi Jinping of
course is the current leader of China
for the past 12 years and Ma Dong was
the communist leader of China from 1949
to
1976. So what are the commonalities?
What are the differences? So the biggest
commonality of them is that they're both
the subject of personality cults and
that Mao was the center of a very
intensely felt one from 1949 to 1976.
Then when he died you know there was
tremendous outpouring of grief even
among people who had objectively
suffered enormously because of his
policies. Xiinping is the first leader
in China since him who has had a
sustained personality cult of the kind
where if you walk into a bookstore in
China the first thing you see are books
by him collections of his speeches. And
when Mao was alive, you you might have
thought that's sort of what happened
with Communist Party leaders in China.
But after Mao's death, there was such an
effort to not have that kind of
personality cult that there was a
tendency to not publish the speeches of
a leader until they were done being in
power. I I was first in China in 1986
and you could go for days without being
intensely aware of who was in charge of
the party. you would know but his face
wasn't everywhere. The newspaper wasn't
dominated with stories about him and
quotations from his words and things
like that. So with Xiinping you've had a
a throwback to that period in Communist
Party rule which seemed as though it
might be a part of the past. So that's
that's a key commonality and a key
difference is that Mao really reveled in
chaos in turning things upside down in a
sense that um you know he talked about
class struggle which came out of Marxism
but he also really his favorite work of
Chinese popular fiction was the monkey
king about this legendary figure who
this this monkey king who could turn the
heavens upside down. So he reveled in
disorder and thought disorder was a was
a way to improve things. Xiinping is
very orderly is very concerned with kind
of stability and
predictability. So you can see them as
very very different that way. And Mao
also liked to stir things up like to
have people on the streets um clamoring.
So Xiinping even though he has a
personality cult it's not manifesting
itself. He doesn't like the idea of
people on the streets in any anything
that can't be controlled.
So you can, you know, there are a lot of
ways that they're they're similar, a lot
of ways they're different. They're also
different and this fits with this
orderliness that
Xiinping talks positively about
Confucious and Confucian traditions in
China. Um, and Confucian traditions are
based on kind of stable hierarchies for
the most part and sort of clear
categories of superior and inferior.
Whereas Mao liked things to be turned
upside down. He thought of Confucianism
as a feudal way of thought that it hold
held China back. So you can come up with
things that they're similar and you can
come up with things where they're really
opposites, but they both clearly did
want to see China under rule by the
Communist Party and that's been a
continuity and that connects them to the
leaders in between them two as well. So
there's some degree as you said that Xi
Jinping is possesses the ideas of
communism and the ideas of Confucianism.
Uh so let's go all the way back. He
wrote that in order to understand the
China of today we have to study its
past. So uh the China of today
celebrates ideas of Confucious, a
Chinese philosopher who lived 2500 years
ago. Can you tell me about the ideas of
Confucious? First of all, we we don't
know that much about the historic
Confucious. He's he's around the same
time as you know figures like Socrates.
And like with Socrates, we get a lot of
what we know about him or think we know
about him from what his followers said
and things that were attributed to him
and dialogues that were written
afterward. So, you know, you can have a
lot of you can have a lot of fun with
these sort of axial age thinkers and
what they had in common. Another thing
that connects these axial age thinkers
is they were trying to kind of make a
case for why they should be able to
educate the next generation of the elite
and sort of had a way of promising that
they had philosophical ideas that helped
keep decide how you should run a polity.
Confucious lived in a time where there
were these waring kingdoms in a
territory that later became became
China. But what he said was that there
had been this period of great order in
the past. That the lines between
inferior and superior were clear and
there was a kind of synergy between
superior and inferior that kept
everything ticking along really nicely.
He thought that hierarchical
relationships were a good thing and that
the trick was that both sides in a
hierarchical relationship owed something
to the other. So the father um and son
relationship was a key one. And the
father deserved respect from the son but
owed the son care and benevolence and
things would be fine as long as both
sides in a relationship held up their
end. And he had a whole series of these
relationships. The husband to the wife
was again an unequal one of um the
husband being superior to the wife but
him owing the wife care and her owing
him deference. And he had the same
notion that then the emperor to the
ministers were these were all parallels
and there were no egalitarian
relationships in Confucianism. Even
something that in the west we often
think of as a kind of quintessential
quintessentially egalitarian
relationship between brothers. In um in
the Chinese tradition of Confucianism
there was only older brother and younger
brother. There was no brotherhood was
not an ealitarian relationship. It was
one where the older brother took care of
the younger brother and the younger
brother showed respect for the older
brother. So stable hierarchy Yeah. was
at the core of everything in society. It
permeated everything including politics.
Yeah. And he and there was even a sense
that it it connected the natural world
to the supernatural world. So the
emperor was to heaven this kind of
non-personified day deity like the
emperor was to the minister. So all of
this had these relationships. So the
emperor was the son of heaven. And um
you know for confucious he said so we
should study the texts. we should study
how the sages of old um behaved that
there that society was becoming
corrupted and was going away from that
sort of purity of the sages when the the
relationships were all in order. So
Confucianism was a kind of conservative
or even backwardlooking thing. It wasn't
trying to it wasn't arguing for
progress. It was arguing for reclaiming
a pure golden age in the past. So it was
also a kind of conserve. So in all kinds
of ways you know it's irreconcilable to
many things about Marxism and communism
which is all about struggle and all
about actually um a progressive view of
history moving from one stage to the
next. So that's the interesting thing
about Xi Jinping and the China of today
is there is that tension of Confucianism
and communism where communism Marxism is
supposed to you know let go of history
and Confucianism there's a real
veneration of history that's happening
in China of today so they're able to
wear both hats and balance it. Yeah, you
could say that in many points in the
20th century, there was a kind of a kind
of struggle between different competing
political groups over which part of the
Chinese past to connect with. Was it to
the Confucian tradition or to the kind
of rebellious monkey king tradition
which was what Mao connected to? um
Xiinping and before him to some extent
you know Hu Jun Tao we saw this a little
bit at the Olympics it was more this
kind of mix it all together view
anything that suggested greatness in the
past could be something that could be
fused together so Xiinping says that you
know Mao is one of his heroes or one of
the people he looks to as a model but so
is Confucious and there's really you
know they had so little in common but
But they both in his mind and the minds
of others suggest a kind of uh power and
greatness of the Chinese past. Yeah. So
this platonic notion of greatness and
that you could say connects that's a
thread that connects for Xi Jinping the
great history multi,000year history of
China. Yeah. And it involves smoothing
out all kinds of internal
contradictions. you had, you know, the
first emperor of China, jumping forward
a bit, you know, in 221 BC, he um is
anti- scholars. He's he burns books and
he he doesn't venerate these kind of
rituals and things. Um so he's very much
against the things that Confucious stood
for. But and Mao in a sense of having to
choose between Confucious and the first
emperor, he said, "Well, maybe the first
emperor had the right idea." uh you know
scholars can be can be a pain. So he
said like if you have to choose between
Confucianism and that but Xiinping I
think
continually is kind of not choosing and
if he wants to say well look at the
great wall look at this wonderful in
fact that was a symbol of kind of
strength and domination related to the
first emperor who by the way didn't
build anything like the great wall you
see today. He built walls and they were
fine. You know, they were good. But the
great wall itself didn't come into being
until many centuries later. But still,
this idea of anything that suggests a
kind of greatness is something that as a
in many ways a nationalist above all
else. Xiinping is a a supporter of the
party and single party rule. That's
something he clearly believes in. And
he's um a nationalist. He wants to see
China be great and acknowledged as great
on the world stage. Boy, so many
contradictions always with Stalin. He
was a communist but also a nationalist,
right? That contradiction is is is u
also permeates through through Ma all
the way to Xiinping. But if you can
linger on Confucious for a little bit,
you write that one of the most famous
statements of Confucianism is the belief
that quote people are pretty much alike
at birth but become differentiated via
learning. So this sets the tradition
that China places a high value on
education and on meritocracy. Uh can you
speak to this
uh Confucious's idea of
education and how much does it permeate
to the China of today? Sure. So there's
an optimism to this. There's an optimism
in the sense of a ability that people
can be good and when exposed to
exemplary figures from the past, they'll
want to be like those exemplary figures.
So it's a form of education through kind
of emulation of models and study of of
past figures and past texts that were
exemplary. And it and it was it did have
this this idea a relatively positive
view of human nature and the sort of
changeability of humans through um
through education. And I think that that
shows through in all kinds of things.
even the fact that while there were lots
of killings by the Chinese Communist
Party and other groups, there was often
an idea that um that people could be
could be remolded potentially and and
China was one of the few places where
they didn't kill the um the last
emperor. You know, the last emperor the
idea was that he could become anybody
could be kind of turned into a citizen
of this or a subject of this a good a
good member of this polity through the
kind of um education often it was a very
kind of forceful form of education but I
think that's a carryover from con from
the confusion times and
um over time this confusion idea led to
the creation of uh one of the early
great civil service exams. An idea that
bureaucracies should be run not by
people who were born into the right
families but ones who had shown their
ability to master these fairly intensive
kind of exams. And the exams were things
that could make or break your career. A
bit like at some points in the American
past, passing a bar exam, a really
intensive thing, could could set you on
the road to to a good career. in China
you had the civil service exam
tradition. So I think this kind of
emphasis on on education and on
uh valuing of scholarly
pursuits but then Chinese leaders
throughout history including up to Mao
and Xiinping have also found scholars to
be uh tremendously difficult to control.
So there's an ambivalence to it or
contradiction again there. But uh to
which degree this idea of meritocracy
that's inherent to the notion that we
all start at the same
line. There's a meritocratic view of
human nature there where if you work
hard and you uh learn things you will
succeed. And so the reverse if you
haven't succeeded that means you didn't
work hard and therefore do not deserve
the spoils of the of the success. uh
does that carry over to the China of
today? There's such a challenge in all
these forms of meritocracy because you
know you had the civil serv exams but
the question was who if you if you had a
really good tutor if you could afford a
really good tutor you had a better
chance of passing the exams. Um, one
thing that happened there was families
would would pull together resources to
try to help the the brightest in their
group to be able to become part of the
official and this kind of pooling
together resources to help as a family
was was an important part of that
structure. But there also was a kind of
um there was always a tension of that um
so what if you don't succeed some of the
leaders of rebellions against um against
emperors were failed examination
candidates
and
you know this this you you had this
issue and then it became something well
the system was out of whack and it
needed a new a new leader and and also
there was a there was something built
Then it was not so much Confucious
himself but one of his main um main
interpreters early interpreters.
dementious had this idea which can be
seen as a
crude justification for rebellion or for
a kind of democracy to say that even
though the emperor rules at the the will
of heaven
if if he doesn't act like a true emperor
if he's not morally upstanding then
heaven will remove his uh heaven will
remove its its mandate to him and then
there's no obligation to show deference
for a ruler who's not behaving like a
true ruler. And there it sort of
justifies rebellion. And the idea is
that if it's if the rebellion isn't
justified, then heaven will stop the
ruler from being killed. But if heaven
has removed his uh support, then the
rebellion will succeed and then a new um
a new ruler will be justified in taking
power. So it's a it's an interesting
sense that the the universe in this
confusion view has a kind of moral
dimension to it but it also um it's when
things actually happen that you see
where the side of morality is. Okay. So
it's meritocracy with an asterisk. It
does seem to be the case maybe you can
speak to that that in the Chinese
education system there seems to be a
high value for excellence. Uh hopefully
I'm not generalizing too much but from
the things I've seen there are certain
cultures certain peoples
that you know it's just part of the
value system of the culture that you
need to be a really good student. Is
that the case with the China of today?
there's been a lot of emphasis on um on
education and sort of working really
hard and excelling at at some subjects
and having um you know there isn't the
civil service exam but there is um the
gaow an exam that really can determine
where you get what kind of um
institution you get into. And I
think, you know, getting back to this
idea of of meritocracy, which which is
strong in a lot of um in a lot of
tradition, it also a kind of um what it
opens you up to is when there is a sense
of unfairness and who's getting ahead
and how the spoils are being divided.
This leads to a kind of outrage. And
some of the biggest protests in in China
have been about this sense of
nepotism which really seems to subvert
this whole
um idea of kind of meritocracy and the
the 1989 protest at Tiana even though
kind of in the the western press in
particular was discussed as a movement
for democracy but a lot of the first
posters that went up that got students
really angry were criticisms of
corruption within the communist party
and nepotism and this sense that people
despite all the talk I mean despite the
fact that most people seem to be having
to study really hard to pass these exams
to get uh good positions in universities
that some of them were being handed out
via the kind of back door and that led
to a kind of outrage not I mean that's
true in in in many places but I think it
gives a special a special anger against
nepotism because of that um the way in
which so much emphasis is put on kind of
the standard exam way of of getting
ahead. I hope it's okay if we jump
around through history a bit and find
the threads that connect everything.
Since you mentioned Tianaan
Square, you have studied a lot of
student protests throughout Chinese
history throughout history in
general. What happened in Tianaan
Square? So in 1989 this massive movement
took place. the story of it largely
suppressed within China and largely
misunderstood um in other places in part
because it happened around the same time
that communism was unraveling and ending
in the the former Soviet block. So I
think it's often conflated with what was
going on there. Um, and so I think one
of the key things to know about the
protests in 1989 was that they were an
effort to get the Communist Party in
China to do a better job of living up to
its own stated ideals and to try to
support uh the trend within the party
toward a kind of liberalizing
um liberalizing and opening up form uh
that that had taken shape after Ma death
and in a sense the student generation of
' 89 and I was there in ' 86 when there
were some sort of warm-up protests there
was a kind of frustration with what they
felt was um a half-assed version of what
they were talking about that the the
government was saying the party was
saying we believe in reforming and
opening up we need to liberalize we need
to give people more um more control of
of their fate And the students felt that
this was being done more effectively in
the economic realm than in the political
realm. And that there were a lot of sort
of partial gestures that that suggested
um the party needed to be pressed to
really really move in that direction.
And it it's it'll seem like a very
trivial thing, but I found it
fascinating in '86 when I was there in
Shanghai in late
'86 and students protested and this was
the first time that students had been
really on the streets in significant
numbers since the cultural revolution or
at least since ' 76. And the students
were inspired by calls for democracy and
discussions of democracy by this um this
physicist Von Leur who was a kind of um
often thought a Chinese sacarov um he
was a liberalizing intellectual. But one
of the things that students in Shanghai,
which where some of the most intense
protests of that year took place, were
frustrated about was a rock concert of
all things that um Jan and Dean, the
American surf rock band, which was kind
of like the Beach Boys, only not as big.
And they were um touring China. And it
was the first time in Shanghai that
there'd been a rock concert. And the
students were really excited about this
because this fit in with what they
thought the Communist Party was moving
toward was letting them be more part of
the world. And for them that meant being
more in step with pop culture around the
world. And at the concert some students
got up to dance because that's what they
knew you were supposed to do at a rock
concert. And the security guards made
them sit down. And for the students in
Shanghai, this sort of symbolized what
was, you know, a faint toward openness
that really didn't have follow-through.
We're going to give you rock concerts,
but not let you dance. And so the the
protests went on for a little while in
'86. And um posters went up. The
officials at at um university said, "No,
this is out of hand. We had chaos on the
streets during the cultural revolution.
We can't go back to that." And nobody
wanted to go back to that. So there were
posters I saw that said this is new red
guardism and and the students didn't
want to be associated with that. So it
wound down pretty quickly and they they
they thought you know we're not like the
red guards. We don't want to make chaos.
We also are not fervent loyalists of
anybody in power. The red guards had
been you know passionate about Mao. The
the the analogy partly sort of scared
them and also it meant that the
government was really serious about uh
dealing with them. So then in 1989 this
protest the protests restart and there
are variety of reasons why they can
restart they the space for them students
are thinking about doing something in
1989 it's a very resonant year 200th
anniversary of the French Revolution
people are thinking about that but more
importantly it's the 70th anniversary of
the biggest student movement in Chinese
history the May 4th movement of
1919 and the May 4th movement had helped
lay the groundwork for the Chinese
Communist Party. Some member leading
founders of it had been student
activists then. It was an
anti-imperialist movement, but it was
also um a movement against bad
government. Um and so the students
thought, you know, the anniversary of
that movement was always marked,
commemorated in China and people took
the ser the history seriously. people
were reminded of what students did in
the past. And so there there were sort
of there were a lot of reasons why
people were itching to do something. And
then um a leader Pu Yao Bang who was
associated with the more kind of
reformist more liberalizing
um group within the Chinese Communist
Party. He had been stripped of a very
high office, demoted after taking partly
taking a fairly light stance toward the
8687 protests. And so he was still a
member of the government, but he was not
as high up in power. He had been very
high up. He had been sort of Dang
Xiaoping's potential successor. And he
dies unexpectedly, and there has to be a
funeral for him because he dies still as
an official. And the students take
advantage of the opening of there having
to be um having to be commemorations of
his death. And they put up posters that
basically say the wrong people are
dying. Uh Hu Yaoang was younger than
some of the more conservative members.
They said so some people are dying too
young. Some people are don't seem like
they're ever going to die. And they so
they begin these sorts of protests. This
is in April of '89. And the government
tries to sort of get the protest to stop
quickly and they use the sort of same
technique of they issue an editorial in
People's Daily that says this is
creating chaos which is a code term for
take us back to the cultural revolution.
And this time the students say no you
know we're just trying to show our
patriotism. We believe that there's too
much corruption and nepotism. there's
not enough support for the more
liberalizing um wing within the party
and so they keep up the protests and
there's a lot of frustration at this
point. There also economic frustrations
at this point. Um the economy is is
improving because of the reforms but it
seems that people with good government
connections are getting rich um too
easily and so it's there's sort of a
sense of unfairness. The students are
also really frustrated by the kind of
macro managing of their private lives on
campuses. So the protests at Tanaman
Square and in plazas all around the
country and other cities as well become
this mix of things. It's an
anti-corruption movement. It's a call
for more democracy movement. It's a call
for more freedom of speech movement. But
it's also a kind of um has some
counterculture elements that are like
there rock concerts on the square. the
most popular uh rock musician, Sue Jen,
comes to the square and is um celebrated
when he's there. There's a sense of kind
of a variety of things rolled into one.
Um and I I I brought up how it sort of
gets conflated with the movements to
overthrow communism in the Eastern
Block. It was actually in many ways, I
think, more like something that happened
in the Eastern Block 20 years earlier.
It was more like Prague Spring and other
1968 protests in the communist block
which was about moving toward socialism
with a human face. More like trying to
get the parties to power to reform
rather than necessarily doing away with
them. So there was a kind of disjuncture
happened at the same time as moves to to
end communism. But of course I said
there was a possibility when all the
protesters were on the square. seemed
that for a time that this might be seen
as an acceptable kind of movement
movement to just have a kind of course
correction but then there's also an
internal struggle within the communist
party leadership and clearly the people
who are more political conservatives
even if they believe in economic reform
are clearly getting the upper hand and
there this is not going to be tolerated
and the students stay on the square when
s signals are given to try to get them
out. Students from around the country
are pouring into to Beijing to join this
movement. They don't want to end the
movement when they've just arrived. So,
it's actually one thing that keeps it
going is new new um participants are
coming from the provinces and even if
some moderates want to leave the square,
people want to stay and then workers
start joining in the movement as well
and form a independent labor union. And
that really the the Chinese Communist
Party to a certain extent they might put
up with student protesters, but they
know from past experience that sometimes
student protests lead to to members of
other social classes joining them
because they look up to students as sort
of potential intellectual leaders of the
country and admiration for scholars is
part of this that turns people turn out
when students protest. something very
different from the American case where
there's a kind of often suspicion of of
student activists being necessarily on
the same side as as everybody else. But
in China, there had been from the
history of the 20th century a sense of
students as potentially a vanguard. So
once there are um labor activists
joining the movement then troops are
called in and there's a massacre near
Tanaman Square um on middle of the night
of June 3rd and early uh June 4th and
the the army just moves in and begins
behaving very much like an army of
occupation which is something the
people's liberation of army is is
supposed to be the one that saves China
from foreign aggression and they're
acting like an invading force. So this
is where famously the tanks roll in. The
tanks roll in. And I think also you have
that famous image of the man standing in
front of the tank. That's a banned image
within China. And I really think the
reason why it's so considered so toxic
by the regime is because it just shows
the People's Liberation Army looking
like an invading force, not like a
stabilizing force. Can we talk about
that? who's now called the tank man. The
man that stood in front of the row of
tanks. This was on June 5th in Tianaan
Square. What do we know about him? What
do you think about him? The symbolism.
It's a it's an amazing symbol. Um, you
know, he's on this boulevard near the
square with this long line of tanks and
it's unquestionably this act of
incredible bravery. And there's some
interesting things about it, some that
are forgotten. One is that in the end he
climbs up on the tank. Mhm. And the tank
swerves, you know, it doesn't run him
over. And the Chinese Communist Party
initially showed video of this and said,
"Look, the Western press is talking
about how vicious we were, but look at
the restraint. Look at this. He wasn't
mowed down." And they tried this whole
story with Tanaman initially of saying,
"Look, the students were out of control.
This everybody should remember what
happened during the cultural
revolution." And the army showed
restraint and there were a small number
of soldiers who were actually burned
alive in their in their tanks during
once the massacre began. People got
outraged and they attacked the soldiers.
But by selective use of of footage, the
communist party could say, "Look,
actually look at this. The the heroes,
the martyrs were these soldiers."
And they try for the first months after
it to to try to get this narrative to
stick. They talk about Tanaman a lot.
They talk about these things. They show
images of the Tankman. The problem with
it is that lots and lots of people
around Beijing had seen what happened
and knew that in fact there had first
been the firing on unarmed civilians
with automatic weapons and then and
there had been many many
people some students but a lot of
ordinary Beijing Beijing residents and
workers who were just mowed down. So
lots of people knew somebody who had
been killed. So that story just didn't
work. And then I
think the the the claim had to be made
to try to try to suppress discussion of
the event and particularly to dis to
repress that visual imagery that was
that image of the man in front of a line
of tanks. Whatever the tanks did to him
or not, the main takeaway from it would
be this idea that there were lines of
tanks in a city. that was um that the
the image was of the government as
having lost the mandate to rule and they
really didn't want to have that image um
out there in the
world. Yeah, we're watching the video
now. He's got what like grocery bags in
his hands. It's such a symbolic I've had
enough like that kind of statement.
Yeah. And it's probably not a student,
you know, it's often described as a
student, but he probably was um a worker
and it is it is a powerful powerful
image of
bravery. And you know, I brought up the
1968 parallel for Eastern and Central
Europe. There was actually a very
powerful photograph of a man bearing his
chest in front of a tank in Bratislava
during um what we think of as Prague
Spring. That was a famous image of
bravery against tanks. And in
1968 in Czechoslovakia, then still
Czechoslovakia, the tanks that rolled in
were Soviet tanks sent down there. And
so, not that people would know, but that
was an image, you know, what was so
powerful in that was saying, "We're not
going to put up with this invasion."
Again, I think you have the people's
liberation of army army looking like an
invading force and that's what um that's
what the Chinese Communist Party in a
sense
can't can't deal with now even though
sometimes they could tell a story about
1989 and they do tell a version of this
and some people believe this I think is
that in
1989 China went one route of not um not
having the communist party dramatic ally
change or relinquish control and the
Soviet Union and the former Soviet
states went another and you could say
well look and after 1989 the Chinese
economy bmed life got better for people
in China life got really terrible for a
lot of people in the former Soviet
blocks maybe we actually maybe this was
the right way to go and you can make
that kind of argument but if you show
the tanks and the man in front of the
tanks you you you just have a different
kind of image of heroism It's one of my
favorite photographs or snapshots ever
taken, videos ever taken. So, I
apologize if we linger on it. Sometimes
you don't understand the symbolic power
of an
image until afterwards. And perhaps
that's what the Chinese government
didn't quite understand. They lost the
information war, the meme war. So, I I
have to ask, what do you think was going
through that man's head? Was it a heroic
statement? Was it a purely primal
guttural like I've had enough? It's so
interesting to just speculate and we
just don't know because you know he was
never able to be interviewed afterwards.
But I think your emphasis on patriotism
is really important because one of the
students main demands
was then I think it might have been the
thing that would have gotten them to
leave the square would have been to say
you we want this to be acknowledged as a
patriotic that our goals are patriotic.
We're not here to to take China back
into the cultural revolution. We're here
we're here to express our love for the
country if it goes in in the right way.
So will you admit that? And you you
mentioned about the power of the image
and I do think the Chinese Communist
Party learned something to have taken to
heart the power of the image after that
because we saw this in um but when there
were protests in Hong Kong, the
government on the mainland really wanted
to tell a story there of you know crowds
out of control. And initially there were
in 2014 and again in initially in 2019
there were very orderly crowds and it it
it had trouble with that story. So they
tried very hard to ban images of
peaceful protests until there were some
incidents as there almost always are of
uh violence by crowds and then they
would show those images over and over
again. They also worked very hard when
Hong Kong protests began in the 2010s to
try very hard to avoid any use of
soldiers to repress them. It was all the
police and they tried very hard and
managed to success because the the
western press was often saying will this
be another tian men? Will there be a
massacre or will there be soldiers on
the streets?
The movements in Hong Kong were
suppressed without the use of um of
shooting to kill on the streets. They
were shooting to to wound. Um there was
bean bags shot. There were rubber
bullets. There was enormous amounts of
tear gas. There was even tear gas left
let fly inside subway stations in 2019.
And all these things are really
brutalizing, but they don't make the
kind of images that sear in the mind the
way something like the Tanaman tankman
image or the image of a Vietnamese woman
being burned by Napal young woman that
became another of the iconic images
during Vietnam War. Those images really
can um have an extraordinary power and I
think the Chinese Communist Party is now
aware of that. There are no really
gripping. There are very few photographs
allowed of the Shinjang um extralegal
detention camps. There very little very
little photo the there is an awareness
of how much uh power a photograph of a
certain type can have. So nobody knows
what happened to the tank man? No. What
do you think happened to the tank man? I
assume he was killed. Killed? I assume
he was just disappeared. It's
interesting because very often figures
are made an example of in one way or
another. I mean Leo Shao wasn't uh was
imprisoned and not allowed to you know
get enough medical care so you can talk
about him having you know died earlier
than he should have. But
there there's been relatively few of
like for political crimes recently
sentencing to death and things like
that. It's much more just remove them,
imprison them. But the tank man, there
was never a trial. There was never even
a trial that was a was one that you knew
what the result would be, which there
was for Leo Shao and others. Not even a
hidden trial, but simply simply
disappeared. And there's been somebody
who's like another figure like this
who's disappeared. Um a couple of years
ago in Beijing there was a lone man who
put up a banner on a bridge uh Satong
Bridge in Beijing and it was
extraordinary. It was it had
denunciations of the direction Xiinping
was taking the country. It was
denunciation of of co policies but also
of dictatorial rule and the banner
somehow he managed to have it up and get
it long enough to be filmed and to draw
attention and the film to circulate.
Again, another image of the power of
images and he's disappeared and there
hasn't been a show trial or even a
secret trial. And again, you know, we
don't know if he's still alive, but
these are cases where I think the
Chinese Communist Party really doesn't
want a competing story out there. They
don't want somebody to be able to answer
what he was thinking. How much
censorship is there in modern day China
by the Chinese government? So, you know,
there's a lot of censorship. My favorite
book about one of my favorite books
about Chinese censorship, Margaret
Roberts, where she talks about there are
three different ways that the government
can control the stories. And she says
there's fear, which is this kind of
direct censorship thing of like banning
things. But there's also friction, which
she says she has three Fs, fear,
friction, and flooding. And she says
they're all important. And I think this
is true not just of China but in other
settings too. So what friction means is
you just make it harder for people to
get answers or get information that you
don't want them to get even though you
know that some people will get it. You
just make it that the easiest way the
the first answer you'll get through a
search. Mhm. So, a lot of, you know,
techsavvy or globally minded
um tapped in Chinese will use people
will use a VPN to jump over the
firewall, but it's work. The internet
moves slower. You have to keep updating
your VPN. So, you just create friction
so that okay, some people will find this
out and then flooding. you just fill the
airwaves and the media with versions of
the stories that you want the people to
believe. So all those kind of exist and
in operation and I think the the fear is
the easiest side to say of what's
blocked. So I'm always interested in
things
that it's things that you would expect
to be censored that aren't censored. Um
you can read all sorts of things in
China about totalitarian. You can read
Hannah Rant's uh book on
totalitarianism, which would be the kind
of thing you just, you know, you're not
supposed to be able to read that in a
somewhat totalitarian uh state or a
dictatorial state if anything, but it's
not specifically about China. And
so censorship is most most restrictive
when it's things that are actually about
China. Things about leaders of the
Chinese Communist Party, there's intense
kind of censorship of that. um and
certain events in that way, but a sort
of like something through allegory,
something through
um imagining a place that looks a lot
like a communist party ruled state so
that people are going to read it. There
were things that were banned throughout
up until like the very last period of
Gorbachev's rule. Bathing's banned in
the Soviet Union that are available in
Chinese bookstores. You can buy 1984 in
a Chinese bookstore. you've been able to
since 1985.
um you can buy again it's not about
China and actually for some people
within um China in the mid1
1980s where they focused on the part of
1984 that's like the two minutes of hate
these rituals of denunciation of people
for some people in China it seemed like
it was about their past not about their
present and then by the '9s 1984 is a
very bleak culture of scarcity a place
where people just aren't having fun and
people said like you could read Some
people would read 1984 and say, "Look,
this is this is the world we're living
in. It's a big brother state." But
others said, "Well, that has some
similarities to us, but you know, he
wasn't talking about a country like
ours. Look, we've got supermarkets, we
got McDonald's. I mean, this is not, you
know, we got fast trains, we got things
are we're living so much better in some
ways than our grandparents did. And this
isn't like that bleak world he was
imagining." Yeah. You've actually spoken
about and described China as more akin
to the dystopian world of Brave New
World than
1984, which is really interesting to
think about. I think about that a lot.
I've recently reread over the past
couple years. We read Brave New World a
couple of times and also 1984. It does
seem that the 21st century might be more
defined to the degree it is dystopian
any of the nations are by Brave New
World and by 1984. There are mixed
elements. I think there are moments when
it can seem more more one than the other
and there can be parts of the same
country that seem more one than the
other. I think um and if we just think
about control through distraction
and playing to your sense of pleasure
and one thing that people forget
sometimes or don't know is that Aldis
Suxy who wrote Brave New World taught
Eric Blair who became George Orwell when
he was a student at Eden and they were
sort of rivals and in fact in 1949
um Orwell sent his former teacher a copy
of 1984 and said, you know, look, I've
written this basically, it's kind of
almost a little edible, like I've
written this book that displaces yours.
He didn't say that. He just said, I
wanted you to have this. But he had
criticized Brave New World and reviews
as
like not having having imagined a world
of capitalism run wild like before
realizing the kind of totalitarian
threats of the middle of the 20th
century. But Huxley wrote Orwell a
letter in October of 1949, same month
the Communist Party took control in
China. Not that he mentions China, and
he just said, you know, it's a great
book and everything, but I think the
dictators of the future will find less
arduous ways to keep control over the
population. Basically saying more like
what was in my book than in yours.
I have to say I think
Huxley might be really on to something
there. truly a visionary. Although to
give points to Orwell, I do think as far
as just a
philosophical work of
fiction, 1984 is a better book because
uh Brave New World does not quite
construct the philosophical message
thoroughly because 1984 contains many
very clearly, very poetically defined
elements of a totalitarian regime. Oh,
and the dissection of language is just
so amazing. No, I think you've got a
point there, and I went back and reread
Brave New World, and it's it's
fascinating, but it it's very it's very
messy. Yeah. I think there's a clarity
to to Orwell's 1984. There's a clarity
to Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.
Similarly, the the the construction of
the elements, and she was a big fan of
both um 1984 and Brave New World. So it
there there's a way they they go
forward. But you know there was a kind
of it's not exactly a sequel but or
Huxley did write something called Brave
New World Revisited. Yes, he did. In the
50s and he kind of said actually it
seems and he mentions China there. He
says that in Ma's China they're kind of
combining the two things of this. And I
I'm really fascinated by that because
they published in China um on the
Chinese mainland. It was published in
Taiwan and Hong Kong too. It's called
the dystopian trilogy and it's a box set
where you have Ziaten's Wii who in that
inspired both Orwell and Huxley to some
extent. Uh that's one book and then
there's Animal Farm in 1984 is a second
book and then the third volume is
Huxley's Brave New World and Brave New
World Revisited and it was published in
complex characters. You can buy You
could buy it in Hong Kong, but I
compared it to the book you can buy on
the mainland. And it's all the same
except the parts in Brave New World
Revisited that refer to China are
scalpled out. And this, I think, shows
the subtlety of the censorship system.
You can buy these books and you can read
about them, but the parts that's that
that in that really show you how to
connect the dots that gets that's taken
out. And I do think the brave new world
side of things I I think with China I
was feeling it was definitely moving
more toward brave new world except Tibet
and Shinjang being more the crude boot
on the face 1984 style of control. But
then during the COVID lockdowns when
people were being so intensely monitored
and controlled, even places like
Shanghai that it seemed much more the
brave new world kind of style had their
Orwellian moment. So you have it now I
think it's you know there are more 1984
more Brave New World parts of the
country and there also more Brave New
World more 1984 moments. I see why it
could give a sense after you've
thoroughly internalized the fear that
you have complete freedom of speech.
Just don't mention the government. So
you could talk about totalitarianism,
you could talk about the darkest aspects
of human nature, just don't you can even
talk about the government in a sort of
metaphorical like poetic
um way that's not directly linkable, but
the moment you mention the government,
it's like a dumb keyword search. It's
yeah it's and and I think it's like one
of these really good examples of how you
know China's distinctive but it's it's
it's not unique. You have other settings
where you have these like no-go zones
that you learn. And one example is in
Singapore you know there was this so
National University of Singapore has a
world-class history department but no
Singapore historian in it. nobody who
focuses on the history of Singapore
because you know it's incredibly wide
ranging what you can what you can do
analyze but when you're actually talking
about the family that's been most
powerful in Singapore then it gets to be
touchy in um Thailand which I've been
working on recently you have this bl
majeste um laws that make it very very
dangerous to say certain kinds of things
about the king. And so you in all of
these settings you have to figure out
ways to to work around it. And there's a
um um there's a way in which you can say
at the international the foreign
correspondence clubs in different parts
of Asia, you can have an event that's
about the country one over that you can
say basically anything you want, but if
when it gets to the things in the place
where you are, um you're you're it's
touchy. I should give credit for that
insight. Uh Shabbani Matani, who's
written um uh co-wrote a very good book
on Hong Kong among the braves, um she
was talking about that that in Singapore
at the foreign correspondence club, you
could have an event on Hong Kong that
could say all kinds of things that you
couldn't say at the Hong Kong foreign
correspondence club. But at the same
time when I saw her in Singapore, she
said there was a Singapore refugee, a
political refugee in Hong Kong who was
giving a talk at the Hong Kong foreign
correspondence club saying kinds of
things that he couldn't say in
Singapore. And in Thailand, I gave a
talk at the foreign correspondence club.
And then I went to hear a talk there
because I was just curious about like
what the culture in this foreign
correspondence club. And there was
somebody talking about human rights
abuses in different parts of Southeast
Asia, saying things very directly and
then said, "And there are things going
on in
Thailand that we're not going to talk
about." And there was this kind of yes,
self-censorship can be a very powerful
thing. One of the things
I learned about all of this which is
interesting I want to learn more is
about the human psychology. The ability
of the individual mind to
compartmentalize things. It does seem
like you could not live in a state of
fear as long as you don't mention a
particular topic. My intuition would be
about the human mind. If there's
anything you're afraid of talking about
that fear will permeate through
everything else. you would not be able
to do great science, great exploration,
great technology. And that that idea I
think underpins the whole idea of
freedom of speech why you don't want in
the United States, you don't want to
censor any even dangerous speech because
that will permeate everything else. You
won't be able to have great scientists.
You won't be able to have great
journalists. You won't be able to have I
don't know. And I mean I'm obviously
biased towards America and I think you
do need to have that fullon freedom of
speech, but this is an interesting case
study. Um, and that's actually something
that you speak about that Mao if he were
alive today and visited China would be
quite
surprised. Uh, can you give the uh Ning
bookstore as an example? Can you just
speak to this? If Ma visited China,
let's let's go with that thought
experiment. What would he recognize?
What would he be surprised by? So I I
wrote about I wrote about imagining a
revivified Mao, you know, going to
wandering this really cool Nanjing
bookstore in the early 2000s and just
being amazed at what you could read
there and you know what what books were
for sale and I I thought about how he
he'd be like what what's going on, you
know, is the Communist Party not in
control? I mean, I've he talked about
how art and politics needed to in some
ways go together and you've got all
these kind of things. He'd also be he
also would have been shocked by all
these there were all these books about
like how to start your own cafe and bar
and sort of celebrating
entrepreneurship, how to get into
Harvard. It's like, you know, all of
these things just wouldn't compute from
his time. Although I said it would
actually maybe make him nostalgia for
the time of his youth in the 1910s. He
was a participant in the May Fourth
Movement, which was a time of reading
all over the world looking for the best
ideas circulating. So he might say,
"Well, the teenage me would have really,
really loved this." So some of the
coolest bookstores, the things that I
just was amazed could exist in the early
2000s. So, you can still read, you can
still buy copies in 1984 and you can
still get um some of these other things,
but that was a time when more and more
of those things were being translated
fresh. I'm not sure you get permission
to translate some of those things. Now,
there's more of a sense of caution.
And when some of those bookstores would
also then hold events that would talk
about the kinds of ideas that then take
them to the next level and talk about
the applicability
uh to the situation in China. Some of
those bookstores have have closed or
have had to become kind of really
shadows of what they were. And one of
the best ones, not the one I wrote about
in Nanjing, but a s