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 similar one, Shanghai
one, which was literally an underground
bookstore. It was in a metro station and
it had really freewheeling discussions
of liberal ideas in the early 2000s and
early 2010s, but then it just got less
and less space to operate under um under
Xiinping when things started narrowing
and it then had to close in Shanghai and
it's just been reopened in um DC as JF
Books and it's becoming this really
interesting cultural hub and I'm I'm
really delighted It's where I'm going to
hold the launch for my next book um when
it comes out in June. This book on the
Milk Tea Alliance um about struggles for
change across East and Southeast Asia,
including in places that are worried
about the kind of rising influence of
Beijing. And it seems just perfect to be
um to be holding it in the kind of place
that can't exist in Shanghai. So places
like that, they they stopped being able
to exist on the mainland. Then they
could still exist in Hong Kong, but now
in Hong Kong, one of the coolest
bookstores has had to close up. It just
didn't feel like it could continue
operating and tightening control there.
And it's reopened in upstate New York.
So you have this phenomenon of
bookstores. There's also a few
bookstores called the Nowhere bookstores
that opened in Chiang Mai and Taipei and
the Hague. And I heard one is maybe it's
going to open in or is open in Japan
too. Uh my sometime collaborator Amy
Hawkins uh who covers China for the
Guardian wrote a great piece late last
year about this overseas bookstore
phenomenon sort of carrying on the
conversations that people thought they
might be able to have in China and then
couldn't and imagine someday being able
to hold in China but maybe can't.
So, first of all, boy, do I love
America. Uh, and and second of all, it
makes me really sad because there's a
very large number of incredible people
in China, incredible minds, and maybe
I'm romantic about this, but books uh is
a catalyst for brilliant minds to
flourish. and without that. So I guess
maybe this is a good time to mention
something that I I do think about and
sometimes people would will think
because of censorship and that there's
an idea of sort of brainwashing within
China population with control and I
periodically will get students from the
mainland and I have a lot of students
from the mainland in my classes. I teach
Chinese history and I feel like okay now
I'm contradicting the version of the
past that they've that's been drumbe
into them but I'll still get students
who are incredible freeth thinkers who
have come through that system and it
just it just doesn't hold or there are
limits to it
and this is kind of I mean some of them
are people who just got curious by
something and it is a poorest system
even you know it's it's it's more porous
than a North Korea things like that. So
there are even if there's that like
fear, friction and flooding which you
know um Roberts talks about that ends up
keeping lots of people on the same page
as the government. There's still people
who take the time to go over the
firewall or get intrigued or they see
they see an
image sent by a friend of theirs on
social media, you know, we'll share them
uh something on um you know on on WeChat
that it doesn't it doesn't get picked up
by the sensors but they look at it
carefully and they say oh well wait a
minute that under that contradicts what
the official line is so there is there's
still ways in which that you know
creativity and freedom of thinking
persists. I mean that's that's really
beautiful to hear. I mean fundamentally
the the human
spirit is curious and wants to
understand and in some especially the
young people as we mentioned are
suspicious of authority in the best kind
of way and so they're always asking
kinds of questions but we always have
the child the young person inside us
always asking like
uh that maybe I'm being lied to in all
these kinds of ways but still it's sad
because it there is um if you're not
deliberately doing that or if there's
not a spark of possibility that comes
before you as just a regular citizen of
China. You might never really ask maybe
a whole there's a whole different
perspective on history on world history.
To be fair, I think United States is is
often guilty of this very United States
ccentric view of history. I mean similar
with Europe. Europe has a very Europe
sense of history. I often enjoy talking
to people from different backgrounds
from different parts of the world,
talking to them about World War II
because it's like it's clear that the
emphasis you've read certain chapters of
the story a lot of times and not the
other chapters of the story, the Western
Front in Europe and the Eastern Front in
Europe. And then Japan and China's role
in World War II and the history around
that before and after World War II of
China is not often talked about in the
United States. And I'm sure if I can
venture a guess that the opposite is
true in China. I certainly know the
opposite was true in the Soviet Union
and even in Europe that directly
experienced France, Great Britain,
Germany, Italy, they all have very
different ways of speaking and thinking
and reading about World War II. And the
same goes um across all of history and
all of culture. So yes, it's always good
to sort of question the mainstream
narrative in your country and looking
outside. is just harder to do in China
based on technological based on all the
reasons you've mentioned. And if I can,
I just want to give a shout out. Thank
you. I'll I'll look at her work,
Margaret Roberts. The the fear, the
friction, and the flooding her ideas. I
can already tell there's a lot of
brilliance here. Uh fear, this is the
most traditional form involving overt
threats and punishments for accessing
and sharing s sensitive information.
However, Roberts finds that fear-based
censorship is used selectively, mainly
targeting high-profile individuals such
as journalists or activists. For the
average citizen, the risk of punishment
is relatively low, and fear alone is not
the main deterrent. She goes on to
describe the the friction and the
flooding.
The friction is attacks on information
access and flooding is less visible in
fear or friction but is a powerful tool
for shaping the information environment.
Flooding one scares me more and more.
Flooding one is the brave new world.
Yeah, it is. And I think it's a whole
kind
of the world of short attention spans
and social media and how this all works.
And um Chinese Communist Party leaders
were I I brought up Singapore and Dang
Xiaoing and some of the other leaders
were like looking at that and they're
looking at you know there are all kinds
of things
that it
both going to Singapore
um can sometimes make you feel like
you're you're in this futuristic setting
in terms of a lot of things that I that
eventually came uh to other parts of the
world would would be tried out there and
and I think the seductiveness is that
some of these things are are really they
both add to convenience at the same time
they strip away. They're collecting
information about you which can be also
something that can make your life easier
at the same times it's stripping you
away of I mean we talk about the siling
of information and targeting of ads and
targeting of news and um so two things
come to mind to to mention one is um
Christina Larson very bright journalist
uh friend of mine who's now working on
other things but was working in China
and she wrote wrote about this in MIT
Technology Review. She said, "You need
to think about China as having the best
as well as the worst internet experience
in the world." And you know, you think
about it with you think of the worst is
easy. You know, the great firewall, you
try to search for what happened. You
search for the tank man, you won't get
it. You search for information about
Dalai Lama and you get all these lies
about him. Search for things about
Shinjang and it makes seem like it's a
place where people are happy rather than
massive. um extraleal detention camps
and where your life can be ruined by um
by by things you have no control over.
But she said like on other ways when it
comes to like consumer playing to your
your pleasures and things it was it was
really advanced. A lot of things that
then come out of the place are tried out
there and in massive numbers. And I
remember after I around the time that I
had read that I was in Shanghai and
somebody was explaining it to me. They
were talking about like going out to
eat. Like I said, oh, we've got such and
such. And I said, "Oh, that's like
Yelp." He said, "Well, yeah, but Yelp
just tells you the overall rating for a
restaurant over time. We've got one that
can tell you who's which which part of
the restaurant you want to sit in
because there's a waiter that's in a
really bad mood and people have posted
enough information to do this or, you
know, what the best dish there is in the
last week. forget about these sort of
slow and you had a lot of things you
know that that were like okay you smart
city and controlled you can learn things
about ease of movement and Singapore had
some of these things tested too you had
way before you move you go into an
underground um parking lot now in the US
and you find out whether there are any
empty spaces on um on a on a floor that
was something that was years before in
Singapore for and you don't use you used
money less often there because you had a
kind of transponder that would
automatically pay for your parking and
things and it it was something that can
be very seductive. So the other line
besides best and worst internet I always
like is William Gibson who wrote one of
the other important dystopian novels of
the present neurommancer he wrote a rare
non for him non-fiction piece about
Singapore where he referred to it as
Disneyland with the death penalty.
And you know there are times when I
shouldn't laugh there but it is it's a
powerful
he's not welcomed in Singapore let's
just say but he he talked about how when
he wanted to try to he went to Japan a
lot in the 1980s at a time when Japan
was a place where you sort of got a
sense of what the future might hold. So
the the dark side of this, the
surveillance state at its worst, which
we're seeing we see in Shinjang in
places and there again it may seem like
I'm just obsessed with um science
fiction and there there it really is
minority report. It's this kind of like
you do certain kinds of behaviors and
we're seeing this other places too. um
you know we're seeing versions of it in
the US as well where it's like oh we can
tell from a pattern that you're the kind
of person who might do X and so in
Shinjang they were when they were
starting to round people up there's this
great book by a weager poet he talks
about how people were just starting to
disappear off the streets and they were
being accused of being uh radicalized
and being um potential terrorists and
the cues could be something
like somebody giving up smoking or not
drinking alcohol because that was seen
as something that sometimes went along
becoming with becoming more um more
devoted to Islam and more devoted to
something a particular version of it. So
he talked about how a group of the poets
when they would get writers would they
get together they would whether or not
any of them drank they would make sure
there was a bottle of alcohol on their
table because it was simply a way of
trying to stay ahead of this system of
looking for these kind of clues. So you
really have this dark side of um
Shinjang is is this example in Tibet
also with incredible um tight control
and there's more of that kind of push on
personal life in other parts of China as
well.
Um, but I think the question of whether
we give up too much and who can abuse
what we do give up is something that is
being asked in the United States now
about big tech companies as well as it's
asked about governments, but it's also
act asked about about big tech and what
you have as a trade-off. And I hadn't
thought about it till this conversation,
which I can tell is why people find it
uh stimulating to have these extended
conversations because you have set
lines, but then you kind of the
conversation goes and you think in a
different way. So what I used to always
say about China after
1989 was the Chinese Communist Party
wanted to stay in power and they
realized that the Soviet Union, Soviet
block was dis was falling apart. They
knew that one reason why people and this
is like the simple way of one way I
think you have to understand why
communism fell in Eastern Europe was
partly about ideals and thirst for
freedom and that but also people knew
that people East Germans knew that West
Germans were having more fun and having
getting better stuff. And when some East
Berliners got over the wall, one of the
first places they went to was this
department store to see if the images of
better food and more choices were
available there. And it and it was true.
And I think this is a human as human as
the desire for more freedom. So one of
the things that the Chinese Communist
Party, they never articulated this way,
but how can we try to get to a stage
where we don't have things like tanment
again? Well, what if we tried to make a
deal with people? We'll give them more
choices in their daily life. We'll give
them better stuff. We'll give them more
choices at the store. We'll give them
more choices about what to read to cuz
you know, we'll give them more choices
in consumer goods and intellectuals,
consumer goods they want or to watch the
movies and read the books that other
people like them around the world are
reading. So, we'll give them more
choices. we won't open the floodgates
completely, but we'll give them more
choices, but not give them more choices
at the at the ballot box or in
politics. And this was the new kind of
new social compact. Allow us to keep
ruling and we'll make sure that you're
living better than the last generation
in terms of choices and in terms of um
material goods.
Now, one of the things that's happening
now is the Chinese Communist Party, the
economy isn't booming the way it was
before. The sort of sense of clearly
we're living better materially than our
the generation before. It's it's it's
not as easy an argument to make when you
have slower growth rates and things like
that. But the Communist Party makes
different kinds of arguments now about
the rest of the world is in chaos and
we're more stable. But but the thing
that I I hadn't that I now I'm going to
think about differently is the argument
was we'll give you more choices and
you'll have more sort of more of a
private life more of this. But now in
the period we are
globally now there's a new kind of
suspicion about the degree of any kind
of private choices. I mean there was an
idea that the post tiana men generation
was promised to have a little bit more
space away from the prying eyes of the
state
and now globally we worry about the
prying eyes of whether it's the state or
whether it's tech companies. It's it's a
different moment. What does it mean to
say you have more choices? It's almost
like you have two knobs. One is 1984 and
one is Brave New World. At first they
turned up the Brave New World, more
choices, and now they're uh turning up
the 1984, keeping the choices, but
turning up the 1984 with more
surveillance. So the choices you make
have to be more public. Do you have a
sense
that the thing we've been talking about,
the increase in
censorship, does that predate Xi
Jinping? Is Xiinping a part of that
increase in censorship? Like what is
that dynamic? What role does Xi Jinping
play in uh what China has gone through
over the past uh let's say a decade and
a half? That's a really great question.
I was I was actually just writing a
review of two books. One is called the
Xiinping effect which was just a bunch
of
scholars an academic volume sort of
looking at take this topic and that
topic how much is Xiinping as a person
really affected it and it they come up
with all kinds of answers but there's a
book I I really like um Emily Fang of
NPR has a new book out called um let
only red flowers bloom
and what she talks about the changes in
China as she was covering it from the
mid2010s on was and I think this really
is Xiinping's one of his impromachers on
the country is there's a narrowing of
spaces available for variations of ways
of being Chinese within the country and
this goes against the grain of a pattern
in the sort of post Tiana men period of
allowing more space for sort of civil
society but also allowing sort of way
Muslims felt that they didn't have to
choose between being you know their
Muslim identity and their Chinese
identity that there's more and more of a
kind of um we see this in Xiinping being
becoming impatient with Hong Kong where
there was a way of which okay this is a
city that's part of the PRC but it
really operates very differently he
seems to
be uncomfortable with difference I guess
is and he's not alone in strongman this
way of sort of wanting to impose a kind
of singular vision of what Chinese
identity means, what loyalty to the
status quo means. And so there's been a
kind of tightening of controls over all
the borders and even things one thing
she reported on was Mongolia in Mong
Inner Mongolia. it it's been seen as an
unproatic kind of frontier area and who
cares if there was some revival of
Mongolian language but under shei
there's been a there's been a less
patience with with those kinds of
difference he's been uh it's been a
there's been more of a resurgence of
patriarchy all kinds of things have
happened under him but how much is it
just him or how much is it
also a kind of mood or group within the
party. Some of these trends I think
began before he took power in late 2012.
I think really my own feeling going to
China fairly often from the mid 1990s
till about
2018 was that until 2008 the year of the
Olympics year each trip it would feel
like oh there's just more space there's
more breathing room for uh you know it's
not becoming a liberal democracy but I
would notice things that felt like I'm
surprised that that that happens that
there just felt people felt less worried
about what they were saying and what
they were doing. Um that kind of trend
line up until about 2008. But from the
Olympics um and then the financial
crisis after
that the Chinese Communist Party felt I
guess more it's still insecure but it
felt cockier in some ways. and you had
like okay maybe we can start asserting
more control over things. So I think
that's been stronger under Xiinping's
time in power and he was already the
designated successor by 2008. He was in
charge of um he was in charge of
security for the Olympics. And the
Olympics was supposed to be a moment
possibly of more opening up because when
Seoul hosted the Olympics, South Korea
became a less tightly controlled
right-wing um dictatorship and move
toward democracy and some people were
hoping the Olympics might move China
that way and it went quite the opposite.
You mentioned that you we don't know the
degree to which this change has to do
with Xi Jinping or the party apparatus
and that question going back to
Confucious of hierarchy and how does the
power within this very strict one party
state uh work? What can we say? What do
we know about the
structure of this communist party
apparatus? Uh how much internal power
struggle is there? How much power does
Xi Jinping actually have? Is there any
insight we have into the system? So
James Palmer who worked in Beijing as a
journalist and now is an editor foreign
policy wrote an important piece few
years ago about just we should really be
straight about what a black box the
Chinese elite elite politics are and
really not try to pretend we know more
than we do. We did used to have more of
a sense of these kind of ideological
factions, but also partly about
different views of how much tinkering
there should be with the economy and
things like that. And they were also
basic partly based on personalities and
personal ties. But we did have a sense
you could sort of map out these kinds of
rival power bases and things. And we
just have much less of a sense of that
under Xiinping. It's very hard to know
other than the sort of small group
around him how it works. We don't have a
major defector who says yeah this is how
this is how Xiinping we we have
Xiinping's
self-presentation and a lot of things
that are then um said about him. There
were some false expectations about him
that some people thought oh he's going
to be a reformer because his father was
a liberalizing figure and you know that
doesn't work that way. He does seem to
care about orderliness. he does seem to
care about certain things. He wants to
present himself as a kind of scholarly
figure in touch with China's deep past.
Um we know he's a strong nationalist and
a kind of cultural nationalist as well
as um political nationalist, but beyond
that we don't have that much of a sense
of what makes him what makes him tick.
we get little hints. Um, you know, there
was a secret speech where he talked
about that leaked out that he talked
about how the Soviet Union had collapsed
because people didn't the leadership
didn't pay enough attention to ideology.
And he also said that none of them were
manly enough to keep control. So
he I imagine if he and he and Putin ever
have a kind of heart-to-heart
conversation, they'd one thing they'd
find to agree on is this sort of
distaste for Gorbachev. This feeling
that Gorbachev was that was the wrong
way to do things. Not manly enough.
Yeah. And two not strong enough about
you know really keeping control. And you
know for Putin it would be that it led
to the Soviet Union to the loss of an
empire. But for Xiinping, it's there is
a bit of being haunted by what happened
to the Soviet Union. And we're not I'm
not going to be the leader who sees the
diminishment of
this land mass that was in a sense
rebuilt over time for Mao and then Den
Xiaoing. You know, you have the the
story a very powerful story about the
Chinese past that the Chinese Communist
Party makes a lot out of.
But that Shanghai the nationalist party
who was Ma's great rival also made a lot
out of and it has a partial basis in
fact was that from the middle of the
19th century to the middle of the 20th
century China which had been this strong
force in the world got bullied and
nibbled away at by foreign powers and
it's important to realize there are
elements of that story that are very
true and the answer they had is that
under my watch that's not going to
happen and the reason why my party
deserves to rule is because it can
reassert China's place in the world. And
both the nationalist party and the
communist
party predicated themselves on this kind
of nationalistic story of being in a
position to prevent that from happening
again. This is a a bit of a tricky
question, but is it
safe for
journalists, for folks who write
excellent books about the topic to uh
travel to China? I think there are all
kinds of different things about safety
or not. I think until recently at least
the people who were most vulnerable were
um people of Chinese descent uh people
originally from China who had gone
abroad and coming back or even people
who were um you know Chinese Americans
who went there there was a higher sort
of expectation that they should be on
board. So you had early cases. My friend
Melissa Chan was an early person kicked
out when she was working for Alazer and
reporting on Shinjiang. So that's one
kind of person who was vulnerable
because of this expectation that they
should be somehow more loyal. Another
kind of person who was vulnerable or
this case more likely to be blocked from
China. They there's a the communist
party is particularly concerned about
people from outside of China who are
amplifying the voices of people within
China or exiles from China who the
government would like to to silence. So
the Dalai Lama you had scholars who
worked on Tibet and had connections to
Dalai Lama were early people to have
trouble going to the PRC. Then scholars
who worked on Shinjang and were
connected to weaguers. But there also
were people who were sort of personally
connected to dissident or exiles who
would amplify their voices would
translate their work would would promote
them that then it wasn't about
necessarily danger if you got in China
but you were more likely to be denied a
visa if you were the kind of person who
was doing that. So, I wrote critical
op-eds about the Chinese Communist
Party. I published them in some
high-profile places. I've written a lot
about Tiana, wrote about human rights
issues, all that. And I kept getting
visas to go to China. I testified to a
congressional executive joint committee
on China, about the Tiana protests on
the 25th anniversary of it. And some
people said, "Oh, that's the kind of
thing that would lead to you not getting
a visa." I got a visa right after that.
Uh now I think it might be different.
Now some of these expectations have been
changed. There have been people who've
been very surprisingly gotten in
trouble. These two Canadians who were
clearly it was a kind of tit fortat
partly because of tech maven's relative
being held in Canada. So it was kind of
there. It was also not picking a fight
with Americans. But there were certain
kinds of things that you could map out
what was the riskiest thing to do. And
so I went in the 2010s having written
you know forcefully about Tanamean and I
didn't feel dangerous. I mean I felt
there was an awareness in some cases of
what if I was giving a public talk there
was awareness of what it was. There was
sometimes
um you didn't want to get your
host who had brought you to a university
in trouble by saying something that
would get them in trouble. I think it
was often that the you were more
vulnerable if you were within China or
you were connected China in different
ways. For me, it's been confusing these
last few years. I wrote one piece about
this about I'm I'm not going to any part
of the PRC for the time being, but I
always thought that Hong Kong was a
place that I'd be free to go even if the
things got difficult. I didn't get a
visa for the mainland. You didn't need a
visa for Hong Kong.
But with Hong
Kong, with the mainland, I had kept a
kind of distance from the dissident that
I was writing about. With Hong Kong, I
felt that these rules kind of didn't
apply and I was more connected to them,
um, more friends with some of
them. And then with this crackdown
that's come on Hong Kong and they're
exiles from Hong Kong who have bounties
on their heads. And so now I feel that,
you know, it's not necessarily that
anything would happen to me if I went to
Hong Kong, but I feel I would be very
closely watched. And so I wouldn't want
to meet with some of my my friends there
who aren't this highprofile. So I don't
want to go to a place
where I would feel that I was toxic in
some way, right? One, you're walking on
eggshells, and two, you can get others
in
trouble. That kind of dynamic is
complicated. So it's fascinating that
Hong Kong is now part of that calculus.
So, I've gotten a chance to speak to a
bunch of world leaders. Do you think
it's possible that I would be able to do
an interview with Xi Jinping?
If you do, I would I would be very
pleased because I could watch that
interview and get some insights about um
she which have been very hard to get. I
mean, it's been they're really
difficult. There have been very few
um very few discussion. He doesn't meet
with he doesn't give press conferences.
There's variety of things and this is
this is different from some of his
predecessors. Um Jang
Zamin famously was interviewed by
Barbara Walters and asked about Tanaman
and he tried to make out that it wasn't
a big deal. You know there the variety
of things but he had relatively
spontaneous conversations. I was going
to say I he's the only Chinese leader
I've met but I met him before he was a
major major leader. he was the um party
secretary or mayor of Shanghai. And it
matters because the party secretary is
the more important role. But anyway, he
just met with a group of um foreign
scholars who were going over to Shanghai
in ' 88 for a conference on Shanghai
history. And just to show you the limits
of anybody who thinks they can predict
what's going on in Chinese politics or I
mean predictability is just very hard in
general in the world. But I think the
consensus among us and these were some
of the most knowledgeable foreign
scholars on China was this was somebody
who really had probably topped out
because he was meeting with us. You
know, he must not be heading anywhere up
and then after Taname he becomes uh the
top leader in China. But he he had a
kind of you could pick things out from
being in a room. He he liked to kind of
show off his kind of cosmopolitanism.
Xiinping talks, gives these speeches
about all the foreign authors he likes
and has read, but it's all very kind of
scripted, at least in his his own head,
too. It's very carefully done to present
a certain image of himself. And we
really don't get many senses of what
he's like in unguarded moments or has
them. And um sometimes we get the
illusion of them. like there was an
image of him and um Obama in their shirt
sleeves at uh the Sunnylands meetings
and and the photo would show
them walking and talking and but there's
no translator in the image and so like
how are they talking what are the what's
what language are they using how is this
or is it just a kind of I mean there are
of course there are exchanges with top
leaders and you know Trump will say
they're friends or these kinds of things
or there's a language
Xiinping can talk about somebody or some
country being friend but we don't have a
sense of these kinds of the the what
makes him tick as a person. So, so maybe
you should ask him about Ernest
Hemingway and see if he really gets
excited about him because the in the
kind of generic things he talks about
all these you can feel him sort of
ticking things off about oh yes I'm glad
to be in England the country of
Shakespeare and this and he goes off
these set things but
Hemingway there's some sense that you
know he had some special feeling which
fits in with some of the macho side that
would be interesting he doesn't meion
Orwell is one of his favorite British uh
authors as much. He says he likes Victor
Hugo a lot and that became a little
tricky because Do you hear the people
singing from lay miserable became one of
the really um one of the protest songs
in Hong Kong and how do you get in this
position where you you know you and
actually Victor
Hugo is a a rare western author who's
had a pretty steadily positive image in
um China even under periods of um
criticism of like all western authors
problematic because Victor Hugo famously
wrote a statement
denouncing the European destruction of
the old summer palace in Beijing in 1860
at the end of the second opium war. He
said, "How can we claim to be civilized
when we've destroyed one of the great
creations of civilization?" So that kind
of made him a kind of long-term friend
to the Chinese nation. Mark Twain has
had a pretty good reputation because he
was a critic of American imperialism.
So, uh, but anyway, I think if you if
you do get to talk to Xiinping, talk to
him about Ernest Hemingway and, um, and
Victor Hugo and I'll be curious to see
if those were the ones who really
resonated. One of the things, and it's a
strange thing that I've become aware of
having spoken with world leaders, I'm
distinctly aware that there's a real
possibility that the black box we
mentioned that the Communist Party of
China
will listen to the words I'm saying now.
And so I have to wonder how much that
affects my possible uh touristlike trip
to China because there's a difference
between sort of an influencer that does
fun things, plays video games and goes
over to China and somebody that actually
covers China to some degree uh whether
critical or supportive or nuanced or any
kind of way in the full spectrum of
ideas you can have about China including
Chinese history whether that's going to
be seen
uh uh carefully analyzed carefully and
uh get have repercussions when you
travel. So that's and because of the
blackbox nature and because it's for me
personally just a culture that's very
different than anything I'm familiar
with it uh makes me a bit nervous. It's
certainly gotten harder for journalists
to operate in China that there was a way
in which
now journalists will look back to, you
know, the early 2000s and it was really
quite extraordinary what they could do.
Well, you have a lot of you have a lot
of listeners. I mean, I think there
isn't that tight a watching of what an
academic writes about the Chinese
Communist Party, but there are certain
things that that clearly are are kind of
tightly policed. And one is um
discussions of the private life of
Chinese leaders and their their families
and issues of kind of really following
money trails for corruption and things
like that. So there was the case of the
Hong Kong book sellers who were
kidnapped and one of them is still in a
Chinese prison. He would be a good
example is Guay Minhai, the kind of
person who was vulnerable. He was born
in China. He was actually a Swedish he
is a Swedish citizen and he was spirited
out of Thailand into the mainland. And
the reason why he was um on the on the
radar of the Communist Party was cuz the
publishing house in Hong Kong that he
was connected to was publishing works
about the top tier of the Chinese
Communist Party and contradicting the
kind of vision of them as a certain kind
of moral exemplars. And that's different
from writing things about China has a
bad human rights record or something
like that in ways like I did. These were
books that were exposees uh or sort of
some some of them kind of gossipy and
lightly sourced, some of them much more
serious, but they were about something
that the Communist Party leadership
wants to make a no-go zone. And I've
thought sometimes that Xiinping seems to
have lays majesty envy. I don't think
it's kind of general
criticisms of the Chinese Communist
Party as a authoritarian
um structure or place that doesn't
deserve to rule in kind of very general
terms. I don't think that's something
that they then pick you up at the border
and say, "Oh, no. We can't let that
person in." cuz people are let in. It's
and it's not rational. It's not a
rational process. There are people
who've been denied visas. It seems
pretty
inexplicable. There are things that now
I think the the rules are changing very
quickly all over the world for kinds of
what's what's safe to say and do. Well,
either way, I do know that the Communist
Party and likely Ci Jinping himself
watched
uh my conversation with Prime Minister
Modi. They responded to it and uh I do
hope and I will definitely go to China
and I hope to talk to Xi Jinping. It's a
it's a fascinating historic ancient
culture and is the major player on the
world stage in the 21st century and it
would be fascinating to understand the
mind of the leader of that great
superpower. Speaking of leaders, what do
we understand about the relationship
between Xi Jinping and our current
president of the United States, Donald
Trump? Is there really a human
connection? something approximating a
friendship as they spoken about or is it
just purely
uh real politic
maneuvering world leaders playing a game
of chess or is it a bit of both? There's
a degree to which I think there's some
confusion about a couple things. I mean,
one is when um when there's a sense that
that um Trump is sort of uniquely tough
on the Chinese Communist Party, he has
periodically said things about praising
Xiinping as a leader, even sort of
having praising Xiinping's strength and
things. So I think for some ways for the
personality cult of
Xiinping, some of this is kind of useful
because um
the story that the Chinese Communist
Party they need to tell a story about
why they deserve to keep ruling and one
of their stories is that because the
world is a dangerous place and there's
not a lot of respect enough respect for
China. So when there's very tough talk
uh about China coming out of the White
House, that's useful. And then the other
part is about Xiinping being uh just the
right person to have at the helm and
when there are discussions when there's
praise for him and is showing toughness
that also works well. So I think the the
argument among at least some China
specialists is to say the Chinese
Communist Party likes predictability and
Xiinping seems to like predictability in
particular and
um Donald Trump clearly isn't a
predictable figure. So there might be a
way in which this is
unsettling. But I think the other part
of it is the Chinese Communist Party
wants under Xiinping. Xiinping wants
to gain more allies around the world to
be seen with more respect around the
world and at the moment is in a position
where he can say he can present himself
as an orderly, thoughtful, gradualist
figure. In some ways, I think as much as
there is tension between um between the
two capitals, there's a way that um
things are going in a way that that
benefits um Xiinping and can can seem
good. That doesn't explain what their
personal relationship is and how they
actually see each other when they're in
the room together and whether that
matters or it's a part of the calculus
at all because after all, they are
leaders of superpowers. I think for
Trump it matters. Personal relationships
matter. But of course we see a lot. We
know a lot about Donald Trump. We know a
lot about the White
House. And for actually let me just say
as a tangent for whatever you think
about this particular White
House, one of the things I really
like is that every single member of the
cabinet is willing to talk for many
hours every single week, talk about what
they think, how they see the world. Uh
explain Donald Trump's
approach. You know, it doesn't matter if
you disagree with what they're saying.
Maybe you say they're dishonest, maybe
we're misrepresenting, but there's a lot
of information. That's something we
don't have with China. And it make as a
fan of history for me. And as a fan of
sort of deep political analysis of the
world, I um it makes me sad because it's
a very
asymmetrical amount of information.
But anyway, let me if I can lay out this
particular complexity we're in now this
trade war between us and China. Now
you're not an economist. Uh in fact so
you think deeply about history of
peoples and history of China. You think
about culture, you think about protests
and the movements and so on. And there's
some degree to which this trade war is
less about the economics. Now that that
layer is also very important and we
could discuss it. Uh but there's
also a deeply
cultural standoff almost happening here
which would be interesting. So in April
as people know Trump escalated a trade
war with China using tariffs raising
them on Chinese imports to 145%. Xi
Jinping then responded by raising
tariffs on US goods
to
125% and suspending exports on certain
rare earth minerals and magnus to the
US. Uh the Chinese government also
indicated it would limit the import of
Hollywood films and restricted certain
American companies from operating in
China.
Now after that, Xiinping broke silence
on April 11th and again on April 14th
and since basically saying that China is
not backing down and uh positioned
himself and China as the quote
responsible superpower that promotes as
you were saying uh that promotes sort of
the reasonable multilateral global
trading framework and a stable global
supply chain.
He said, quote, "For over 70 years,
China's progress has been built on
self-reliance and hard work, never on
handouts from others, and it remains
unafraid of any unjust
oppression." Also, he said, "There are
no winners in a trade war, and going
against the world will only lead to
selfisolation." This was all said as
part of a tour of Southeast Asia. and he
was calling on China and the European
Union to defend international rules
opposing quoteun unilateral
bullying. At the same time I saw that
China's escalating internal propaganda
including interestingly it would be uh
nice to talk to you about it the the use
of the ma dong 1953 speech during the
Korean War where he says we will never
yield. My question is with this
standoff, who do you think will blink
first? Where does this go? So, I think
one persistent there there's a lot to
unpack there for of a historian, too. I
mean, I think that
the reference
to being bullied by a foreign power is
something that comes up periodically and
plays to this kind of notion of the
hundred years of national humiliation
that's been talked about by generations
now of Chinese leaders to talk about
that period from the 1840s to the 1940s.
There were a group of foreign powers who
were involved in bullying China in one
way or another. And you can selectively
pick one or another. So there is a way
in which this can be and if Xiinping
gives that kind of speech in Southeast
Asia, he's speaking to a place where
there is knowledge of times of the past
when the United States was a you know
aggressive force there. It's also a part
of the world where there have been times
when China has been uh that. So it's
there is a way of
positioning visav other parts of the
world that is crucial part of this that
I think I guess it's you know I'm
circling around it but there's a
tendency in discussions of USChina
relations to think about it in terms of
a
bilateral discussion or dispute even
though time and
again we realize
that places other than the United States
are key variables in these these things.
So the US and China being at odds under
in the Mao
era, what changed things dramatically
for that wasn't so much even a change in
um I mean yes Nixon was the one who went
to China, but what made it possible for
Nixon to go to China was that the Sinos
Soviet split happened that actually it
was tensions between China and the
Soviet Union that altered equations for
the United States and China. And another
I was I happened to be in China in 1999
when NATO bombs hit the Chinese embassy
in Belgrade and three Chinese citizens
died and there was tremendous discontent
about that, anger about that within
China and there were some rare protests
that the government allowed to happen
but students were worked up about it and
there were protests outside the American
embassy and the British
embassy and that happened and then in
2001 there was a spy I plane incident
that happened and and so there was a lot
of discussion that the next decade was
going to see USChina
tensions being the major force in the
world. 9/11 happened. It was a dramatic
reset for the trajectory that the US and
China were on which is these are two
totally different things. The Sinos
Soviet split and 9/11. In both cases, no
matter how careful you were at parsing,
what was likely to be the next 5 years
for USChina relations get dramatically
changed by something that happened that
wasn't the US and China. And during in
the current situation, the trade war, I
know that it will be very important that
China can increase try to increase sales
of consumer products to Europe. This is
something and
that Europe's view about the United
States is changing right now. These are
all kinds of variables that are outside
of simply Washington and Beijing as
being the two actors. And sometimes
Beijing can't control what's happening
outside. And sometimes Washington can't.
And so I guess this is simply saying
that when you're watching and you're
trying to keep the eye on the ball, it
matters a lot what India's relationship
to
um China and the United States is. So
all of these are happening there. So I
think that's it that it's it's both
tremendously important um what's going
on between China and the United States,
but it's important to remember that
they're not the only players in this uh
in this dynamic. Also on top of
this, how how much cultural will is
there to sort of not surrender to
bullying? How much of that is there? So
like you said, the century of
humiliation both for Xi Jinping and the
Chinese populace like willingness to go
through some short-term pain to not be
humiliated. the story that's been
intensively told about the past is
something that that provides the
possibility for this for this to matter
a lot that it's something that's just so
um it's so much a part of the
legitimating story of the Chinese
Communist Party and then you have to
look at are there things that are
happening that aid the Chinese Communist
Party story. So the rise of
um of what can seem like or is
anti-Chinese sentiment within the United
States can feed that propaganda story.
And so certainly, you know, during um co
there was a way
that if you're if if you're the Chinese
Communist Party and you're saying we get
a disproportionate amount of blame for
whatever happens in the world, then if
there were things you could point to in
the foreign media or from foreign
governments, then that helps you. So I
think you know there is a setup here
where certainly for Xiinping I think the
desire to not be seen weak is crucial.
Sometimes I wonder how much of these
leaders operate on pure ego because
politically and on a human level they
don't want to come off as
losers in a
standoff versus coming to a economic
win-win for both nations.
And I worry that there is a real pride
here that the center of humiliation has
deeply saturated the populace, the
communist party this idea where they're
not they're just not going to back down.
And that I think will cause tremendous
pain in the short term for United
States. I think for China and the world
because it completely
uh transforms the supply chain of
everything. We just there is a global
nature. There is a multilateral nature
of all the economic partnerships that
are formed throughout the 21st century.
And this kind of uh protectionist
nationalistic kind of ideology
uh goes in the face of all of that and
it's going to create a huge amount of
pain like for regular
Americans. But also I worry that this
increases not decreases the chance of a
global war or conflict of different
kinds. Do you see a hopeful possibility
for resolution for deescalation here?
It's it's a it's a hard time to to
figure out what what you can to to sort
of hopeful hopeful angles. I mean, I
guess what's hard to even balance these
things out. So, one of the things that
I've thought about when you talk about
rising chances of war that often Taiwan
comes to mind with with China. And one
of the things that I've thought of is
that
for for Xiinping
that military action against Taiwan
would be increased by um a sense of
desperation, a sense of losing
popularity or a sense of um not having a
good story to tell about why he and the
party deserves to lead. So then there's
a kind of way of playing to the national
sentiments of some part of the
population. So then in a sense it's
hopeful that I think in some ways right
now
Xiinping is not looking desperate in the
eyes of the world. You know, he can if
he can focus on
potentially being seen more
positively in other parts of the world
by seeming like a kind of force for
stability, seen as somebody who's
supporting rather than challenging some
elements of the global order. That
might lessen the chances of a rash
action toward Taiwan. That would be a
kind of desperation move. The
complicated thing here
is that if he gives
in, he can come off as the responsible
person who cares about the world or he
can come off weak.
if he doesn't give in and even escalates
the tariffs. although I think he said no
more escalation on the China front.
uh then he comes off strong but also the
unre the equally unreasonable person who
doesn't care about the world who only
cares about uh the his own ego and maybe
some aspect of the communist party
maintaining power because just like with
Tiana Square and the tank man you don't
know once you make the decision how the
world will read that decision what kind
of things will become viral memes
about the telling of that
story. And of course, in part, I think
Donald Trump's reach is much wider
because he's constantly out there. And I
think there's a more reserved, less
messaging out of Beijing. So, it's a
really chaotic environment in which to
make strong
decisions. But since you brought it up,
we'll talk about Hong Kong, but let's
let's talk about Taiwan and maybe
there's some parallels there.
uh given Chiinping's emphasis on the
great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation
and the unification with Taiwan
uh being a a crucial part of his vision
for
China, what do you think are the chances
and how willing is he to use force to um
annex to forcibly gain control over
Taiwan in the coming years? I'll frame
it in a way that I think does lead into
talking about Hong Kong because I think
these are connected issues. In 1984 when
the year, not the book this time. Um
that's when a deal was struck basically
between London and Beijing over what
would happen to Hong Kong. So Hong
Kong, you Hong Kong Island was became a
British colony at the end of the first
Opium War, the 1840s. And then Cowoon
Peninsula near there became a British
colony in the 1860 after the second
Opium War. But then there was a large
amount of territory of what we now think
of as Hong Kong that called the New
Territories that became under British
control in
1898, but was not a colony. It was a
99-year lease. So 1997 was this kind of
expiration date for the lease of this
large amount of territory of what we now
think of as Hong Kong. It's a large
amount of territory that the rest of
Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Island and Koon
depend on for energy, water, and food.
So, it would been very hard to just give
back, give those parts, transfer those
parts to the People's Republic of China.
So, a deal needed to be struck of what
would happen in 1997.
And
um the deal was about transferring
sovereignty of all of Hong Kong, all
these parts to the People's Republic of
China. And I carefully say transfer
sovereignty, not give it back to the
People's Republic of China, because it
never belonged to the People's Republic
of China. It was part of theQing Empire,
which was a different country, a
different state that then anyway. Um but
this needed to be transferred and the
deal that was struck was that you know
the the London side wanted to do
something to protect what was going to
happen to the people there. And remember
this is not what usually happens to
colonies. Colonies usually go from being
part of an empire to being some degree
of self-governed.
And because of that, the Chinese
representative at the UN insisted that
Hong Kong was not a colony and Macau was
not a colony because then they would
have to be decolonized and go to
independent. But so anyway, there was an
understanding that something would have
to happen in 1997 and London wanted some
protection for the people uh in Hong
Kong who they knew
were living in a very different way than
people lived under Communist Party rule.
there was a different kind of rule of
law. Um there was there wasn't democracy
but there was some degree of input in
governance. The colonial authority in
Hong the power most powerful person in
Hong Kong was appointed by London. After
1997 the most powerful person would
probably be have to be somebody who
could work with Beijing. But in this
negotiation, something was come up with
called one country, two
systems. And Hong Kong would become part
of the People's Republic of China in
diplomatic terms. It wouldn't have its
own military, but it would have its own
system for 50 years was the idea from
1997 uh till
2047. There was a tension from the
beginning over what that other system,
what what was going to be the part that
was going to be separate. And clearly
everybody agreed would need to have a
different economic system. It had
capitalism. So people agreed on that.
But there was tension from the start of
well what about legal? What about pol
cultural and other things? And things
were written into this deal which would
be overtime Hong Kong people would
govern Hong Kong. But Beijing thought
they would govern Hong Kong but it would
be a Hong Kong person who
Beijing played a role in choosing. But
the reason why Taiwan is relevant to all
this is in
1984 as they were discussing this the
Chinese Communist Party said and we'll
come up with this arrangement and people
in Taiwan should pay attention to it
because it could provide a model for
what could happen with them being
absorbed into the People's Republic of
China. So the idea was Beijing said,
"Hey people in Taiwan, watch what
happens to Hong Kong after 1997 and
think about it as a model for what could
happen with you." Saying like, "Watch
how smoothly it will
go." Over time, people in Hong Kong,
people in Hong Kong started saying,
"Well, wait, Beijing keeps sort of
nibbling away at chipping away at these
things that make us separate." And
especially after
2008, especially a I mean there were
reasons why Beijing went especially
light on Hong Kong early 19 after
1997. They wanted to join Beijing wanted
to join WTO. They wanted to host the
Olympics. A big move against Hong Kong
then could have endangered those things.
Also at that point the PRC was dependent
heavily dependent on economics in Hong
Kong, the Hong Kong economy. Also just
something cuz I'm a university person.
In 1997 when Hong Kong became part of
the people's republic of China, Hong
Kong then Hong Kong universities were
the only universities in the PRC that
were considered totally worldclass. Hong
Kong University and Chinese University
of Hong Kong were highly rated
institutions. And at that point peing
university, Beijing Beda and Shing Hua
were not yet considered world-class
institutions because they didn't have
the kind of econom academic freedom and
humanities that was at that point needed
to be higher ratings. Over time, that
difference started to go away because
global ratings of universities stopped
caring as much
about academic freedom and things like
that. And Beijing universities surpassed
Hong Kong once. So by the 2010s when you
started to have these protests in Hong
Kong pushing back against what was
called mainlandization and sort of
clamping
down, Hong Kong protesters in 2014 put
up a a banner at the time when Beijing
was holding the line against Hong Kong
people wanted to have real elections to
choose the chief executive rather than a
kind of one where there were elections
but only people who Beijing approved of
basically could
run. Hong Kong activists put up a banner
saying, "Hey, Taiwan, look at Hong Kong.
Taiwan, beware. Hong Kong's today could
be Taiwan's
tomorrow." So, basically spinning the
one country, two systems argument and
saying, "Yeah, Taiwan, you should watch
what happens here."
So, one way to think of um Chinese
leaders since Mao is that Mao and those
after him wanted to make China bigger
territorially than it had been to try to
reclaim
land. Under
Mao, Tibet, which had been not part of
of China, was became part of the
People's Republic of China. Mao offered
something a little bit like one country,
two systems to it. Um Isabelle Hilton
who writes wonderfully about Tibet has
talked about the parallels with the Hong
Kong system and some Hong Kong activists
saw parallels as well. Tibet was
supposed to go its own way as part of
the People's Republic of China in the
1950s and then by
1959 the center got restless tried to
interfere more local people push back
against it and a workable what seemed
like it might work out somehow against
all
odds explodes and the Daly Lama goes
into exile. the Daly Lama who before
that had thought maybe he and Mao could
work together that didn't
work. Hong Kong a new version of the
experiment happens and it becomes clear
in the 2010s that it's not really
workable that the center is less patient
needs Hong Kong less the Hong Kong
people feel it's more of a sort of now
or never period to push back. You could
say that Dang Xiaoping oversaw the deal
that got Hong Kong and Macau to become
part of the People's Republic of China.
He could could point to that even though
he died right before 1990 in during
1997. But he had achieved that kind of
deal.
Xiinping could argue, you could argue he
finished the deal of making Hong Kong
fully a part of the People's Republic of
China doing away with this degree of
difference. And you could say that that
then is a stepping stone toward Taiwan.
Or you could say that that and the South
China Sea islands build
up might be enough for him to put his
stamp on having been the kind of leader
who expanded Beijing's reach. He
probably wants both I mean you know he
probably to the extent he would like
Taiwan to become part of the People's
Republic of China which has never been
but the hope was it could happen through
a kind of more gradual absorption and
people in Taiwan being willing to think
of that and yet in part because of
what's happened to places like Hong Kong
there's a fiercer a stronger sense of
Taiwan identity now than there was at an
earlier point and less
parties that are more willing
to try to negotiate some kind
of tighter connection with the PRC are
often doing badly and elections there
because of this of this
mood. 2047 is 50 years from the 1997
handover that you were talking about
with Hong Kong. On top of that,
2049 is 100 years from now taking power.
It feels like at that moment China could
take Taiwan because it does seem that
there's a kind of u value for history in
China and they they take these dates
very seriously. On the other hand, as
you have studied, there is some tensions
and displeasure and
protests, some of the biggest in human
history in Hong Kong. And so like put
all of that together and so many
possible trajectories of human history
can happen here. Yeah. I mean I'm
particularly interested in youth
movements
and one of the things about I think
generation is such an important factor I
mean people know that generation is
important but
somehow sometimes people think that you
know if you divide people up into
economic groups you divide people up
into racial or ethnic class that that
groups that that somehow is more
tangible but I think with things like
the Hong Kong protests that there was a
process
of what was seen as mainlandization, of
Beijing just moving
to make the things that were really
distinctive about Hong Kong less
distinctive and minimizing the
differences. And this process sped up
dramatically after the 2019 protest. And
there was just partly with the
distraction of COVID and uh the
distraction of the world, there was this
imposition of this national security law
that basically did away with the
differences. And you had some people in
um in the city of an older generation
saying like why couldn't they have just
been more patient? Why did why did these
protests force the hand of the of the
people in power? And but I think that
age has a lot to do with it. That if
there was this kind of gradual erosion
or there was going to be this process of
doing away with the things that made
Hong Kong really special and that people
loved passionately about it, including
this sort of freer I mean freer press or
just freer associational life and things
like that. If you were 17 in 2019 and
people were saying
by by 2047 it will all be gone or maybe
it'll even all be gone in 10 years then
you're talking about living most of your
life in a Hong Kong that isn't the Hong
Kong you really love whereas if you were
80 you were like why not be p why why
can't they be patient and people in
between had all kinds of other things
this is one thing that leads to often
kind of logic ally there's a rationality
toward younger people being more
militant about certain kinds of things.
I think we see the same thing with with
with climate change with climate
activism. You're talking about whatever
projection is of when things are going
to get worse further down. The younger
you are, the more of your life is going
to live in that that scenario. And
there's a logic for um more of that kind
of impatience. There's also a sense of
frustration with an older generation not
having done enough to sort of resolve
issues. These these are things with with
Hong Kong with climate change with
Thailand, the place that I've been
working on lately. One of the slogans in
2020 when there was a push for Ber
democracy was let it end with this
generation which again expressed this
kind of sense
of gradual solutions are fine but we're
carrying more of a burden of what we're
going to live with there that so with
2019 also the protests I mean some of
the things that were being chipped away
at by Beijing in 2012 there was an
effort to impose mainland style patriot
IC education saying like, well, who
cares how civics is taught, but actually
that has a lot to do with the larger
kind of political story. And the
protesters that year, young people stood
up and actually got the government to
blink. The local authorities back down
on that, bringing in mainland style
education. 2014, the protest was to try
to get full voting rights for the chief
executive. The government didn't blink
on that. That was something where they
held the line. It was a big colorful
exciting protest, but in the end it hit
a dead end. 2019 there even bigger
protests and at first it
seems like surprising what the issue
was. The issue was an extradition law
that would have people potentially who
committed crimes in Hong Kong being
tried for them if the mainland wanted
them on the mainland. Now, the
difference, they're really different
court systems. Hong Kong never had uh
democracy under the British, but it did
have a stronger rule of law and more
independent courts. Courts that
sometimes decided things that went the
other way than what the government
wanted. And the mainland doesn't have
that kind of court system. 98 99%
conviction rate. In Hong Kong, if you're
put on tri if you're arrested even for
before 2020, if you were arrested even
under a kind of politically related
charge, you were out on bail and giving
interviews with the press on the
mainland that didn't happen. So I think
in 2019 having even having lost the
battle over
voting this idea that okay we've really
got to take a last stand to defend the
rule of law and a kind of degree of
separation of powers that doesn't sound
like a clearly obvious thing for slogans
but it is something that I think we've
realized
um in this country and in other
countries as well is something that can
really be definitive about where things
are uh politically. Well, well, I should
also say I mean this it's more dramatic
than it sounds with extradition because
it gives power
uh to mainland
China to imprison sort of political
activists and then try them in a very
different way. So, it's not just even a
different system. It it it gives another
lever and a powerful one to punish
people that speak against China. And you
know, I mentioned the Hong Kong book
sellers who were spirited over the
border and one of them was still in
prison for having published things in
Hong Kong that it was supposed to be
okay to publish in Hong Kong but not on
the mainland and yet they ended up Yeah.
being charged. So yeah, there was a
clear sense that
if if they didn't protest then would
they be able to protest later? So this
was one of maybe the biggest protests in
history
percentage-wise, you know, because what
I'm what the reason why I kind of make
that claim because there were a million
to two million people in the biggest
protests and this is a 7.5 million
people. So if you think about what that
means, it's it's just enormous. I mean
yeah there were some very daring
protests around that period the Hong
Kong ones and the year after that you
there were protests in other play but
protest in Barus where again there was a
very you know is taking big risks and
people but if people have a feeling that
it's a kind of last moment so yeah these
were these were giant and the protests
kept growing and I think they kept
growing in part and this happens why
protests
It's always hard to figure out, but in
the case of Tiana Men and the case of of
Hong Kong
2019, if people feel that the sort of
protesters have the moral high ground in
one way or another, and what what tipped
it that way in Hong Kong, I think, was
really that the police were using really
strong armed methods and the government
was never apologizing or never saying,
"We need to investigate that." And I
think what really kept the protest going
was they became a they became a
referendum on the right to protest
itself. And the what I think the
government hoped and what Beijing
certainly hoped was that some of the
protesters would start doing
um militant actions, violent actions
that would alienate the populace from
the
protests. And the protesters did do some
of those things, but they tended to
attack that was violence was often
against property. And when there were
occasionally violence against people,
people within the movement would
apologize or try to distance themselves
from that. Meanwhile, the government was
never apologizing or distancing itself
from the police. And that created a
dynamic where they had these enormous
numbers of people who were previously on
the fence about things turning up for
these protests and leading to them being
giant. Even people and this was a city
that sometime had the reputation
misunderstood reputation as being one
that where people didn't care that much
about politics. They just focused on
living a good life. But there was a
sense that they wouldn't have that
possibility if you had a police and the
police used to be really highly
respected in Hong Kong. But it lost
that. Maybe you can speak to some of the
dynamics of this. First of all, you were
there in the early days as I understand.
How does a protest of this
scale explode as it did? Like it starts
with small groups of students of the
youth. like maybe you can speak to in
general from all the studying of youth
protests. How does um maybe anger, maybe
um ideological
optimism, maybe the desire for
revolution, for better times amongst a
small group of students. How does that
become a movement and how does that
become a gigantic protest? So protests
were one of the things that um
uh some of the the most impressive books
I've been reading and about other places
have been
emphasizing is that protests are often
preceded by other protests that may seem
like dead ends but actually provide
people with the kind of skills and
scripts and repertoires to then carry
out things on a larger scale after that.
So you often get we we get captivated by
a moment that seems to come out of
nowhere but it often doesn't. It's been
the ground has been laid by it can be by
an earlier generation that passes on the
stories about it or it can be just a few
years before and sometimes a new
generation will say look at what they
did that was exciting but we want to put
our mark on things by generation. So in
there were these 1986 protests that sort
of fizzled out that helped lay the
groundwork for the 1989 ones. Um in Hong
Kong there were the 2012 and
2014 ones that laid the groundwork for
2019. Some of the times it was the same
activists out on the streets again. But
sometimes it was a younger generation
said yeah okay but that failed so what
can we do differently? And we see this
in in cases in the US and we see it
around the world of this kind of the the
percolating of things that happen
sometimes in conversations that continue
that happen. Um and sometimes you
know failures can seem like dead ends
but over a long period of time we see
them as as as um as succeeding. And it
can seem irrational. It can seem
irrational to try to do something after
the last three times people have tried
to do it have failed. But then
occasionally history shows that the the
third time or the fifth time or the 20th
time actually does succeed. There's
enough countervailing. You know in
Eastern Europe you would say like in
1956 there was a rising it was crushed.
In ' 68 there were rising was crushed.
Poland 1981 it's martial law imposed. in
1989, what were East German protesters
thinking when they poured out onto the
streets? And then it happened. And then
but this time it wasn't. So I think
there's a way in
which social movements are fundamentally
un unpredictable and there are just
times when against all seeming odds
something that seemed like it would be
there forever just no longer is. And
that's the case you make for when when
the odds seem
impossible, it's still
worthwhile. You know, it's it it doesn't
mean that it will it will work. It
doesn't mean that will work. But I think
history has enough examples of things
that you thought I mean this is you know
and it it it explains why certain
figures are so inspirational for
generations of activists that you know
people read there's a reason why people
talk about Vaklov Havl whereas if Vakov
Havl had died in
1988 people would have said oh maybe he
was maybe he was a great writer but his
political project he didn't live to see
uh come but then he lives to 89 and
becomes you know against all
expectations. So Rebecca Snith, she's
got a new book, No Straight Road Takes
You There: Essays for Uneven
Terrain, and she's talking about taking
a longer view of some struggles that
seem
um that seem that achieve things after
the point when people might have
imagined that they had run into dead
ends. And she's talking about keeping
your eye on the gains that happen even
even incrementally. and the ways in
which the need to take a longer term
perspective on some of these things. And
I think it's it's a strange thing
because there's also often an impatience
in movements of people wanting kind of
immediate results. But as a historian
looking at looking at situations, I
mentioned sort of Eastern Europe and
Central Europe,
but Taiwan was a was a right-wing
dictatorship under sort of a version of
martial law for decades. And at each
stage, it would seem that people
struggling to change it um were on a
quicksotic impossible kind of mission or
South Korea was in a similar situation.
And then in the late 1980s, you start to
have those things unravel. And it's
partly because of a kind
of steady resistance. It's partly
because something in the world changes,
but there's often a combination uh of
those things. So, I'm I'm interested in
that whole, you know, we we know that
what happened in Hong Kong in the short
run didn't didn't work, and I don't see
a way in which the national security law
is reversed or anything like that.
But that doesn't mean
that it
was a completely impossible effort even
though we know the result in that case
was to have this this failure. So the
protests are generally worthwhile. I
mean they do give uh as as I look at the
description of the migratory routes
ideas
take they do seed ideas in the minds of
people and then they live with those
ideas and they share those ideas they
deliberate through those ideas they
might travel to different places of the
world and then those ideas return and
rise up again and again and again uh
there's two parts of the world that I
think are fascinating
and unpredictable. Uh so one is
Iran which the trajectory that place
takes might have a completely
transformative effect on the Middle
East. Then the other one is China or the
protests whether it's in Taiwan or Hong
Kong or maybe other influential parts of
China. those ideas percolating up and up
again might have a completely
transformative effect on the world. So
maybe this is another case where so the
Chinese Communist Party people leaders
in the Chinese Communist Party they do
know about history and they care about
history and one history they know is the
Chinese Communist Party was almost
destroyed in 1927. I mean, it was uh if
you were taking odds on what are the
chances that this rag tag sort of group
that's being pursued
um by Shanghai to try to determine and
yet over time they somehow manage to
ride it out and eventually come to
power. There's there's a an awareness of
the ways in which the seemingly
impossible can happen. It doesn't mean
it will. I mean this is why I think you
know it's and and one of the really kind
of tragic or heart-rending things is you
can have situations in
which
movements that seem to be pursuing a an
impossible end result. they achieve that
result and then after another period the
country goes into another really
difficult period or the it seems that
the the successes are being rolled back
and um my new milk tea alliance book
that I've just written dedicated to two
people who've lived through a variety of
these things. One is a Burmese activist
who was involved in a failed uprising in
1988. He then was an exile who didn't
know whether he could ever see his
brothers who he loves back in in Burma.
And then something magical kind of
changed and in 20 the 2010s it seemed
that there was a kind of democratization
that turned out to be a false dawn. He
was able to go back and then and now
he's again when there's been a a coup
and a crackdown, he's now again cut off.
And at one point I was asking him about
his you know how he feels about this
when he's still trying to sort of raise
awareness globally about what's
happening in Myar and he
said I feel helpless but not hopeless I
think how does somebody maintain hope in
that and the other person I dedicated to
Miklas Sarashti as a Hungarian friend of
mine who was an activist before ' 89 and
saw the um this amazing thing happen
with communism a communist party rule
ending. He was part of the process that
came and he was friends with Havl and
Havl's there and Poland's changing and
all of this exhilarating moment but ends
up being a critic of Orban and following
a tightening of control of rolling back
of many of the things that were
victorious then. But this this kind of
the no straight road, you know, that
actually there's something
about it's it can be disquing when these
unexpected things are blows to what you
where you thought his direction history
was going. But history just shows you
that history doesn't have a direction.
That's not there isn't a straight road.
Yeah. And there's, you know, the
idealism of youth can lead to things
like the Russian revolution and then you
get Stalin, we'll call it a war and the
purges and all of that entailed. So a
successful protest and a successful
revolution might
uh have unintended consequences that far
overshadow whatever ideals and dreams
you had fighting for the working class,
whatever it was in that particular case.
that can cause immeasurable
suffering. So, it's there is no
direction to history. Uh there's just
some lessons we pick up along the way
and we try to
hopefully try to uh help humanity
flourish and we barely know what we're
doing and now we have nuclear weapons.
And some of it is also though people
sometimes the people who I find really
admirable. It's not about trying to
create totalistic change but they focus
on trying to do what they can with for
the things they believe in within
constrained
circumstances. And in Thailand they've
sort of hit a roadblock now again over
kind of trying to bring about electoral
change. a party that did really well was
then disqualified. And the activists I
know are focusing
on local efforts to improve a
neighborhood to keep a neighborhood from
suffering from a kind of unthinking
gentrification. They're thinking small.
They're thinking sometimes about just
what can we do to improve the life of
people within certain how can we build
how can we contribute to the kinds of
social groups
that might make some kind of incremental
improvement to being the kind of world
that we want to live in. People do that
on in all kinds of all kinds of ways.
What kind of parallels can we draw
between Taiwan and Hong Kong? What do
you think are the people of Taiwan are
thinking looking at Hong Kong? Well, I
think I think the way that things
developed in Hong Kong have undermined
the kind of trust in any kind of story
coming out of Beijing
that that there's a place within sort of
Xiinping's version at least of the
People's Republic of China for a place
where people live very different kinds
of lives and I think a lot of people in
Taiwan think of them feel they're living
a very different kind of life than on
the mainland. So in that way I think
Hong Kong was an
important example that way and there
were connections between there was a
Taiwan protest in 2014 before the big
protest in Hong Kong by people who were
young people who felt the government
then was moving toward too much toward
working together with Beijing. So there
is there they've been interconnected
stories and I think we sometimes miss
how people within a region are looking
at what other people in the region are
doing and are taking clues from it about
sort of how
to how to agitate for the things they
care about what the risks are what the
dangers are autocrats within different
parts of the region are looking at each
other too as well as globally in part
because there's a great dependence in in
the United States on TSMC and in that
way on Taiwan for different supply
chains for electronics for
semiconductors for a lot of our economy.
Uh there's been a lot of nervousness
about
Taiwan. What are the
chances that there is some brewing
military conflict over this question of
Taiwan in the coming decades and how can
we avoid it?
It's a it's one of these really
worrisome issues that there isn't a
there isn't an easy I think any I think
experts
who tell you they know what x y and z
about this is are are deliluding
themselves probably there's so many
variables maybe you could just elaborate
the
possible possible clues we have so with
talking to people in Taiwan and from
Taiwan there are a couple things that
are um clear. One is
that daily life in Taiwan is not people
waking up each morning living their life
based on the fact that there's in such a
perilous kind of predicament that it's
life goes on and a lot of people are
um you know feel very very fortunate to
be in Taiwan. You know there are many
reasons why it seems like a great place
to live in many ways. So even though
this is hanging but that but at the same
time there is an awareness of things
that increase
precariousness and there was a lot of
concern
um with the invasion of Ukraine and
watching
how how the response to that was and
there was a sense of it being analogous.
there was a sense that Xiinping would be
watching the response to Putin and
seeing what he would do then. And so
then there was a sense of relief I think
when there was
as unified a um western NATO including
the United States
response and then there's a concern you
know there's a concern about
um the Trump presidency because of
Ukraine at the same time they're mixed
signals so people are there there I'm
sure there are people there who are who
are both
saying Trump is going to be tough toward
the Chinese Communist Party and others
are going to say but if he's not
supporting if he's not as supportive of
Ukraine what does that say
for the defense of of so they're not
they're not the same situations but all
people have in a sense sometimes with
with unknowable situations is to look at
things that have any degree of parallel
connections in other places. Do you
think Xi Jinping knows what he's going
to do in the next 5 10 years with
Taiwan? Or is it
really like there's um there's a loose
historical notion that Taiwan should be
part of
China with with Xi Jinping and the
Communist Party. Believe that that loose
idea was accepted. Shank Kai-Shek and
Mao both thought that these two places
were part of somehow destined to be the
same was just under that period Shankai
thought how long until I take over the
mainland and it all becomes the Republic
of China. This is not now something that
any leader in Taiwan is believing. uh
there is a degree to which
um that remains a kind of sense within
the Chinese Communist Party leadership
as a
eventuality. I don't think there's a set
I don't think there's a set plan. Um in
part because I think it is also
dependent on what the kind of costs in
in various realms would be of doing
that. I think it still does.
Um I think it
still one scenario would be possibly a
sense of becoming strong enough to not
have to worry about consequences. I
think another I still think to some
extent more would be a sense of weakness
or procarity
of maintaining power domestically and
needing to do something to distract. And
uh another complexity about this is it's
not always so clear the line between um
no conflict and conflict. So there's a
lot of grayzone tactics of nonviolent
pressure that that China could exude. Uh
so it could do uh non-military
violence. It could then escalate that to
nonviolent military
intimidation. And all of this has
consequences for the United States
because there's a messaging thing going
on here. And then of course that could
then go to a full-on do as you're told
actions that come at a high risk of a
hot military conflict. So basically just
roll don't do military violence but just
fullon pressure ordering Taiwan to do
things. And there it it's it's like in
order the only way to respond is with
violence. You're completely trapped. If
you're saying no, you have to say no
with with with a military force behind
it. And then what do you do? And at
every step in this, it's such an
unstable nonlinear dynamical system
where anything could just unintended
consequences can happen and it could
just escalate in a matter of days if not
hours.
And so like this is
where um this is where I think it's
really important to find mechanisms and
tax tactics and strategies for
deescalation. Uh which is why this trade
war that's happening one of the nice
things of being so connected by trade is
it creates a
disincentive for any of this kind of
posturing because I do agree with you.
But I think it will start as these
things often do as a kind of mil
military sort of early steps posturing
in order to maintain power
internally. So that's that's that's
China will just create military
conflict, conflict of different kinds in
order to distract. But then how does
that escalate? As if all that wasn't
complicated enough, Taiwan isn't just
one place or one island. There are also
there islands that are closer to
mainland Jinmen and the degrees of
integration and anyway, so it's it's a
but but your your comment
about integration of trade and sort
of having being a check on kind of
violence. There's a um there's a Chinese
writer um who fascinating guy Han Han
who was a race car driver and a
filmmaker and a bad boy novelist.
Anyway, in his heyday, he was an
interesting kind of blogger who was
testing the edges of things and he had
this um blog post where he was talking
about this was this was in the early
2000s. He was talking about how um China
was building the massive three gorgeous
dam project this and he said some people
are saying
um building these dams it would be so
easy for the Americans to just
um you know just just bomb them and and
destroy our country and because it would
be a massive flood. And he said, "But
that's really silly. That's a really
silly argument because Americans know
that down river from there what will be
flooded out was the place where their
iPhones are built and you know and they
want their iPhones. So that's what you
know." So this kind of notion, you know,
he's making through a humorous point the
way in which
interconnectedness can um can be a check
and interconnectedness can be in all
kinds of ways. the flows, people between
places and um having people from from
one place living in another, traveling
to another, studying in another, that
can actually be something that helps to
um to stabilize the world. And I think
that's an important thing to keep in
mind. Since you mentioned the the long
march and the unlikely
uh coming to power of the Communist
Party, let's go back. We began comparing
Xi Jinping and Mao. Let's go back to
Mao. How did Mao come to power? The road
to Mao coming to power. We need to first
say that China was under rule by
emperors until 1911, overthrown by an
upheaval that was partly by people who
wanted to change China into a republic,
but also some people who wanted to get
rid of the last dynasty was a was a
group of Manchu ruling families. So they
saw them as ethnic outsiders. So it was
a strange combination of kind of uh
ethnic nationalists who wanted China
back under the control of
Hanchinese, other people who thought the
time for rule by emperors was over and
wanted to establish a
republic. And Sunaten became a first
president, provisional president of this
newly formed Republic of China. But then
he got nudged out of power by a military
strongman. And then there was a period
where the country was really divided.
Republic of China didn't have a strong
government. But there were then two
groups. One rallied around uh Sonia Sen
had founded something that became known
as the nationalist party. And then there
was a small group of people who formed a
communist party. Mao was one of them.
These were intellectuals who were part
of the May 4th movement of 1919. They
were inspired by Marxist ideas, but they
were also just inspired by the Russian
revolution. Russia was nearby. It seemed
good to think with. It had a largely
rural population. And
somehow it seemed to be getting strong
in the world. And there was this
interest in sort of what how China could
do that. And the newly formed Soviet
Union did something very important.
There were a group of foreign powers,
including Tsarist Russia, that had
gained big um concessions out of China
when in 1900 the Boxer Uprising had
taken place and then um been crushed by
a consortium of foreign powers who had
gotten um privileges and indemnities out
of that. And the newly formed Soviet
Union renounced those said, you know,
that was the old order, that was
imperialism.
And
so Marx's ideas were
were attractive to some some Chinese
thinkers, but Lenon was very attractive
because of his combination of
anti-imperialism and his notion of a
vanguard party leading a country
forward. So there was a small communist
party, a bigger nationalist party. They
were involved in these protests against
warlords and against imperialists.
And while Sunyats Sen was alive,
Sunyatsen got the two parties to work
together because Sunyatsen wasn't a
Marxist. He didn't believe in class
struggle, but he admired Lenin and
Leninism. And so he said that actually
the Communist Party and the Nationalist
Party may have had different views of
the path forward for China, but they
agreed on who the enemies were. And the
enemies were the warlords who were
keeping China weak and too willing to
compromise with Japan and foreign
imperialism. So China needed to get rid
of the warlords and become a stronger
country and then they could sort it out
of um what road to take. Syen dies in
1925 and his successor Shang
Kaishek is initially keeps the alliance
going with the communist party but in
1927 he turns against the communists and
tries to carry out a purge against
Communist Party members. He's the head
of the the nationalists. He's the head
of the nationalists and he has some very
different he's he's a kind of culturally
more conservative figure. Um but what's
important in part about this is there
are some members of the Chinese
Communist Party who accept the basic
ideas of Marxism of revolution comes
from the cities but
Mao has this idea that actually he's
he's partly he loves this idea of
peasant rebellions in China's past is
driving history forward and he starts
writing about how well maybe in China's
case actually the peasantry farmer s can
be a radical force. And so the communist
part is on the run. It's being pushed
around, but the nationalists are trying
to exterminate them. But eventually um
and it the nationalists and the
communists all lie again after Japan
invades China in the 1930s. They form a
what's called a second united front. But
during this period, Mao is emerging as
the taking leadership in the Chinese
Communist Party and his idea of a
different kind of vision of communist
revolution that has um the revolutionary
vanguard somehow being um the
peasantry in after World War II after
the two parties have brokered a truce
and sort of worked together against
Japan. There's a civil war between the
nationalists and the communists and
against all odds the communist party
wins. The communist party gets support
from the Soviet Union. The nationalists
get support from the United States.
Um even though neither of them are quite
doing things the way that their backer
would like them to. But there also is a
way in which the and this is something I
think the Communist Party leaders
remember. There's a feeling that the
nationalist party doesn't really believe
its own rhetoric that in fact all it
cares about is having power and that
it's internally corrupt. Shanghai
himself isn't viewed as sort of
personally corrupt
but family members and there's there's
all there's an idea that there's just a
small band of people that are benefiting
and um there's a kind of disgust with
the leader with the the the
nationalists. the nationalists end up in
retreat in Taiwan. That's why Taiwan
then becomes the Republic of China. Um
there's an uprising there that
Shanghai's people um the nationalists
repress and there starts being from the
late 1940s on this long period of
martial law on Taiwan and there becomes
then this period where the mainland's
under the control of a Leninist party
believes in one party
rule and believes that it was a bad very
bad period in Chinese history when um
when China was unable to stand up to
imperialists. Taiwan's controlled by an
Leninist party that believes in one
party rule, limits on participation,
believes that there's a bad time when
China was being bullied by imperialists.
What distinguishes Shanghai? Shankai has
a personality cult. Mao has a
personality cult. They have a lot in
common, but one clear thing that makes
them different is Shanghai says that
what's wrong with the Communist Party is
they've abandon Chinese traditional
values of
Confucianism and Mao says that on the
nationalists what's really bad is they
are still wedded to these traditional
Chinese values of Confucianism. So,
cycling back to where we began with Mao
and Xi, you could actually say Xiinping
in some ways is like living out the
dream that Shanghai had of one party
rule and also kind of celebrating
Confucianism. Yeah, there's
elements you've spoken about the
elements of Shanka and Mao that Xi
Jinping kind of combines. You've also
mentioned an interesting, you know, if
we had, you know, $100 to talk about.
There's another interesting side
effect similarity that you talk about
where
Xiinping's
wife is out there, a known entity, a
part of his public image. And same was
the case with uh Shank Kai-shek. Yes.
And both of them, right, they had
high-profile wives who were
uh sort of celebrity figures and and
made
um a good impression globally and were
more like kind of first um first
ladies. But both Shanka and
Xiinping were oversaw a period of of
emphasizing more traditional patriarchal
values in China. And one of the things I
didn't mention before, Xiinping has been
very um in this idea of trying to do
away with difference within PRC, he's
been pushing against feminist any kinds
of feminist movements. So going back to
Confucious. Yeah. Yeah. In some ways, I
mean there are people who will argue for
a less patriarchal Confucious, but it it
fits with that mode. So now that gets us
close to Mao consolidating power.
Then the story after 1949 with with Mao
is there's there there were divisions
within
um within the communist party over sort
of Mao was impatient. He wanted to
transform the country quickly. He had a
utopian streak. He thought just as the
peasantry could sort of you didn't have
to stick to the traditional pattern of
moving slowly to socialism and then to
communism, he tried to the great leap
forward was this disastrous policy of
his that imagined China outdoing um the
west in a kind of quick
industrialization in a move like this
and it was just a it just didn't it just
didn't work and all kinds of things were
wrong and that would be a whole there'd
be a we'd need a whole another session
to do the great leap forward and the
cultural revolution. But one of the
simple ways to think about it is Mao
made these kind of disastrous moves and
then was partially sidelined and then
wanted to get back to power.
And there was this struggle between
people who are more gradualists, more
let's try to work more kind of
rationally and the more utopian side
with Mao. And both the great leap
forward and then later the cultural
revolution were Mao's efforts to
um to do things dramatically even at the
risk of chaos even at the risk of um of
of undoing a lot of the kind of slow
building of of um of state building
going on. And then there were other
figures who were more concerned with um
kind of incremental moves. And then
after Mao's death, one of those figures,
Deng Xiaoping, ends up being the next
long-term uh paramount leader. He led to
decades of economic progress. His
economic reforms led to record-breaking
growth for China and so on. But I got to
linger on um the great leap forward a
bit, enough to understand modern day
China. So um as people know as I'm sure
I'll talk about in other
episodes the great leap forward this uh
agricultural collectivization and rapid
attempt to ind industrialize u has have
killed 30 to 45 million people. It's one
of not the greatest atrocities in human
history. How could
Mao be so catastrophically wrong on the
policy of
collectivization and be so unwilling to
see the atrocity and the suffering he's
causing and enough to change course. So
with the great leap forward which caused
this incredible famine um the just
incredible devastation. One of the one
of the things that happened was getting
very bad information. There was a sense
that there was people officials were
afraid that if they gave bad news, if
they if they if they admitted that they
were failing to meet these giant targets
that were being set, that would be seen
as a political mistake. So it got it got
to be a survival mechanism to pass on
unrealistic reports on what was going.
So some of it was um a culture of fear
around a great leader that led to not
getting um not getting accurate
information. So that was one part of the
dynamic. Ego was a big part of it.
There were all kinds of things that were
unmed um when early in the Chinese
Communist Party history and power there
was the connection to the Soviet Union
and Mao and Stalin had a connection
after Stalin's death. Mao was haunted by
the move toward
dstalinization and the moves by Kruef
and thus laid the groundwork for the
Sinos Soviet split. But there was also
this kind
of obsession with doing things
differently
um that Mao had in that case as well.
And you have factional struggles. You
have all kinds of things that are
happening uh simultaneously. Uh there's
something I learned about called Gray's
law which states any sufficiently
advanced incompetence is
indistinguishable from malice. So I
would say when 30 to 45 million people
die, it doesn't really matter what the
explanation
is. That's a longer discussion, but the
interesting discussion that connects to
everything we've been talking about is
how is Mao seen in modern day China?
What what has
Xiinping said about Mao? So before
Xiinping, there was this this kind of
assessment of of of Mao as having been
uh early in the in the early 80s of
being 70% right, 30% wrong. I guess Ma's
own analysis of
Stalin was that Stalin was 70% right and
30% wrong. Uh and so they apply the same
kind of logic there. Yeah. Mathematical
analysis to Mao. Yeah. But Xiinping has
had a different way of talking about
this and he's talked about the first 30
years of the People's Republic of China
and the second 30 years and says that we
should not use the successes of one to
criticize the other. That we need to see
where we are today
as benefiting from both those first 30
years and those second 30 years which
implicitly or he sometimes talks about a
new era. suggests that in many ways he
sees China as now in a post-reform era.
We can think about a third stage and
there are people who write about it in
that way. Um, and so he
clearly there's always been a way of
trying
to separate out a kind of Mao of the
periods when things were not going
horribly and I think Xiinping would
think that Mao having managed to fight
the Korean War to a standstill which is
how things are are how the the history
of that period is described in the PRC
said look you know you had you had so
many different forces of the more
developed world fighting on one side and
that war did not end in a defeat for um
for North Korea and for the Chinese
side.
Um, so yeah, Xiinping I think wants to
be seen as an
inheritor, an inheritor of Mao, a
continuer of one side of the Mao legacy,
but clearly circling back to where we
began, not the Mao who liked to stir
things up, not the Mao who believed in
mobilizing youth onto on the streets,
not the Mao who let things get out of
control, but the Mao who was responsible
for strengthening the nation.
Can I ask you about the 1953 speech? Let
me just watch it real quick. This
particular speech is about uh in 1953 at
the end of the Korean War saying China
will not
surrender. Well, let's actually just
listen to it. The speech reads, "As to
how long this war will last, we're not
the ones who can
decide. It used to depend on President
Truman. It will depend on President
Eisenhower or whoever will become the
next US president. It's up to them. But
no matter how long this war is going to
last, we will never yield.
[Applause]
We'll fight until we completely triumph.
Yeah. So this is
uh the version of Ma that you're
speaking to that is still celebrated uh
today and from the Chinese perspective I
guess they could tell the story about
that particular proxy war that they
triumphed. What do you think about that
speech about these performance? I don't
know how many uh how many how much
you've listened to Mao speeches. Well,
he had a he had a really difficult
accent to um make sense of and people
people native speakers of Chinese could
have trouble with with his um his his
speech. Uh that one was less less hard
to follow than um than some of them.
What explains the accent? Well, he's
just from from Hunan and he he had a had
a heavy accent and he this is another
complicated side of of Mao. He he was
both anti-intellectual and very
intellectual. He liked to write poetry
and to fashion himself as that. But he
also liked to be seen as incredibly
earthy and um critical of the u of of
intellectuals and if he had an animous
toward you know wanting to even though
he came even though he was
intellectually he had that
anti-intellectualism but no I think
what's interesting about that speech in
part is how
um in even the the the depiction of the
Korean war as being the war against
America and resist America and support
Korea. I think it fit with his idea that
his that it wasn't just about China, it
wasn't about China working in
self-interest, but siding with other
siding with the underdog countries
against the hegemonic ones. And that was
another part of Mao's um Ma's desire to
see China as representing the kind of um
a a third world and a sort of the
um the countries that had felt the brunt
of imperialism of uh western imperialism
and Japanese imperialism and trying to
find one or another
um one or another country's imperialism
to focus. us on at that point he was
focusing on America which is something
that can have it have particular
resonances. Now um Mao could alternate
certain points he thought there should
be an alliance with or he said that
China should be able to work with Japan
because um I mean he said it at one
point he said well without Japanese
imperialism the communist party wouldn't
have risen because we wouldn't have had
this ability to unite the people.
Um, we have seen
in the postmile period some leaders
playing on sort of anti-Japanese
sentiment because of the history of
Japanese aggression or there can be
anti-American sentiment because of of of
the history of American roles in
imperialism or it can be played in a
different way. the United States
certainly tried that the United States
didn't have formal colonies in um in
Asia the way that Britain and France did
and tried to present itself differently.
So these things are but these things are
also kind of in in flux and now we're in
this very unusual uh influx period. the
beginning of the um the imposition of
tariffs there were leaders of China,
Japan and Korea all to South Korea all
together in photo ops which was not
something that I mean being on the same
side. So I think this is also just a
kind of broader lesson to not not assume
that configurations will always stay if
you look out into the 21st century.
What are some of the best possible
things that could happen in the region
and globally with China at the center of
the world stage? What are the possible
trajectories you could see
culturally, economically,
politically in terms of partnerships and
all this kind of
stuff? It's such a such a such a hard
moment to be imagining these things. I
mean, I've all I've long wanted to
see a return of China to this path
toward a more kind of
um yeah, I wasn't one of the people who
imagined
that there would be this convergence of
sort of where China's emergence into
evolution into a liberal capitalist kind
of country. But I'd love to see a return
to that more kind of tolerance of
diversity within China, variations
within China, of more space for civil
society. And it's it's a hard time to
even imagine that because Hong Kong kind
of
represented
that place that was somehow within it
was it was an amazing thing. I think
looking backward sorry rather than
forward I think it's really
extraordinary how much leeway was given
to Hong Kong for a period there that was
really special no communist partyrun
country had ever had a city within it
that had as free a press as Hong Kong
had then as much tolerance for for
protests and and I think it was it was a
I mean I hope it can be seen by some at
least within Beijing as a miscalculation
too. The people of China wanted soft
power and Hong Kong films were admired
around the world. This industry it was
there was a way in which creat
creativity flour flourishing. So I guess
it would be just the hope for
more spaces where that kind of um
creativity and openness to where things
can can flourish. I' I'd love to think
that there there actually are variety of
things in Taiwan that if those could
become broader
norms. Um not not that Taiwan's perfect.
It has its own internal problems, but
there there are many really attractive
things about it right now, things
different kinds of things that flourish.
Um so maybe uh maybe
a setting in which Taiwan and in its
post
martial law post Leninist incarnation
um would be something that we could
think of more. Yeah, and you're right.
Taiwan and especially Hong Kong are
these it's a truly special place is a
case study. It doesn't make sense that
that would happen but it happened. I
mean history is full of wonderful things
like this. And I guess can you clarify?
You think the protests of 2019, like the
protest in
20 mostly a failure? Is there still a
possibility that Hong Kong like rises
and its way of life, its way of being,
the democrat democratic ideals, not
necessarily full-on democracy or this
kind of thing, but would actually uh in
a
sense um permeate China, not the other
way around. So that that was a hope
early on and there were ways in which
some parts of Hong Kong style even sort
of permeated across the border. I think
it's hard to see it now with how Hong
Kong has changed, but I hesitate to I
mean an awareness of the
unpredictability of things who there's
no way to know what kind of thing there
would be for Hong Kong later. I do think
there are things about Hong Kong that
even in the failure of the movement have
been have
had repercussions that are not uh not
all negative. I think the Hong Kong
spirit which is being kept alive in
diaspora
communities around the world is really
interesting. There are there are things
that are um spreading. I think Hong Kong
represented a vision of a different way
of being Chinese, a different notion of
Chineseeness. And I think that is
something that exists. Um and there have
been protesters in a lot of other parts
of the world. Barus to I used to say
from Min Minneapolis to Minsk because in
2020 there were protests in the US and
in Barus where there were activists who
were talking about the Hong Kong idea of
sort of trying to focus on um be water
more flexible protest tactics or
something. And clearly in Thailand,
there were people who looked at things
to learn from Hong Kong even in defeat.
There's a New Zealandbased China
specialist Jeremy Barme who talks about
the other China which can exist within
China, physical China or elsewhere which
is this um equally attached to Chinese
traditions but thinking of those
traditions as including not just
Confucianism but Dowoism, not just
hierarchy but also openness to
cosmopolitanism, not just nationalism
but cosmopolitanism.
And I think there are some
um there are some elements of that that
even in failure the Hong Kong movements
the Hong Kong protests of the 2020s were
a last flourishing of that and we can
see some elements of that in um in we
can think of Taiwan elements of that as
another China as well. Um and I think
recovering not allowing the particular
version of Chineseeness that the Chinese
Communist Party under Xiinping wants to
make people think of as the essence of
Chinese. Chinese there. China has
multiple cultural strands, multiple
traditions that people can um tap into.
And it's something richer and um more
admirable, I think, than this narrowed
down version. And I hope for a future
where both Hong Kong and uh Beijing have
bookstores that carry 1984, Brave New
World, and all of your books.
And uh I can't wait to visit
them and enjoy the intellectual
flourishing of incredible people. What a
beautiful world we live in. The Chinese
people, all the people I've met is just
so
great to interact with a totally
different culture. You can feel the
roots run deep through ancient history
that are very different. And it's
amazing. It's like amazing that earth
produced Chinese people, Indian people,
the Slavic people. There's just all
kinds of varants and we're all have our
own weirdnesses and quirks and so on.
Everybody has brilliant people. We all
start with each other every once in
a while. But I I hope now that we have
nuclear weapons and I hope now that we
have technology that connects us, we'll
actually
uh we'll actually collaborate more than
we fight each other. And thank you for
being one of the people that shows off
the beauty of this particular peoples.
It's uh of the entire region really of
Southeast Asia. And it's it's an honor
to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on. Thanks for
listening to this conversation with
Jeffrey Waserstrom. To support this
podcast, please check out our sponsors
in the description. And now, let me
leave you with some words from
Confucious. When anger
rises, think of the
consequences. Thank you for listening
and hope to see you next time.