China Machete - Notes about the D word

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Notes about the D word

I was over the moon when my posts were recommended by ESWN last month. Visits to my blog skyrocketed upwards, especially when Roland (the owner of ESWN) recommended my post about the sexual fantasy of Chinese youths. Of course, anything with sex in the title is going to be a winner. Roland also recommended a couple of other articles – frying up a mess and Military Weekly goes tabloid. I have begun to wonder what kind of criteria Roland applies when recommending articles to netizens.

Roland does have his stock supply of favourites. Joel Martinsen from Danwei, Positive Solutions, Newspeak and the Mutant Palm are all regularly recommended. I basically believe that Roland wants his website to provide a bridge to Chinese culture. His website does very well in filling up the cavernous gaps that are left by the mainstream media in their reporting of China. From Roland’s translations and recommended readings, we can learn about his stance on China. He reports a lot on protests and murders that take place in China, things that are obviously not widely documented by the mainland media. In some ways, he actually portrays China in a more realistic way. A lot of foreigners feel that Beijing is much safer than other international cities. This is probably true to some extent, but it is accentuated by the lack of information about crimes that take place here. For example, the shooting of three people in downtown Melbourne was front page news in Australia last month. If three people were knifed in downtown Beijing, then it probably wouldn’t be front page news in the Chinese-language newspapers and it definitely wouldn’t be front page news in the English ones. This lack of media coverage gives people a false impression of Beijing and China.

I remember reading an article about Danwei founder Jeremy Goldkorn. He said that the difference between ESWN and Danwei was that ESWN was more political. With translations and recommended readings, it isn’t always easy to tell what Roland’s political stance is. To figure it out, you need to read between the lines. He seems to like recommending stories that are about democracy. He recently recommended a lot of articles about Hong Kong’s handover to China. This was obviously because it was the 10th anniversary on July 1 and also because Roland is from Hong Kong. With his interest in democracy, Roland probably regrets that Hong Kong is now in the hands of a ‘communist dictatorship’ (I recently overheard a Hong Kong man describe the Chinese government as such). His constant translations of various protests against the government would probably be viewed by the Chinese government as being anti-harmonious. Judging from these observations, I think Roland is probably a pro-democracy and anti-communist dictatorship kind of guy.

I am also a pro-democracy and anti-communist dictatorship kind of guy. I reckon anybody should be able to write anything and have it published on their blog or even in a newspaper. I reckon that the Chinese government should allow the establishment of independent trade unions. The problem is that those trade unions will probably quickly morph into an independent political party and threaten the Communist Party’s grip on power. It would probably end up being the Chinese Labour Party versus the Chinese Communist Party, which would be kind of strange because they’re both meant to be on the left. The Communist Party of course is more like a party on the far right that continually backs big business over the little people. The Communist Party should probably change its name to the Liberal National Party and it would all make more sense.

Despite the above sentiments, I do have some reservations about talking up democracy in China. It is probably because I am a bit on the conservative side and lack firm political views. It is also because I don’t want to sound like one of those judgemental foreigners who come to China and do nothing but criticise everything and everyone. It is a bit hard not to sound like a hypocrite. A criticism about corruption in the Chinese government sounds a bit funny when you take a sneak peek at the UN and the EU. Those Western institutions both have tons of elite bastards gorging themselves on taxes handed over by the little people. And it’s not like nepotism only happens in China – I am guessing that Paul Wolfowitz wasn’t the only high-ranking official in elite circles giving jobs to his girlfriend.

I know that articles harping on about democracy get quite a run in ESWN’s recommended reading segment. I have the feeling that posts and articles like these aren’t really helpful as a bridge to Chinese society because they are too judgemental. It is the Chinese people that everyone needs to understand, not the government. Governments are the same everywhere – they collect taxes and spend a fair percentage of that money on themselves. Improvements are needed but let’s give China some space and not use the ‘D’ word too much. The US harped on about the lack of D in Iraq for years and look what has happened now: a country lies in ruin because the US government used the implementation of the D word as an excuse to invade another country. I wonder who should be judging who.

Posted: 2:24 PM, 7/7/2007 in Blogging and the media

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The D word

When I was at BJ I had a few discussions about this with a friend who is very much a model young communist party member. I think for a lot of Chinese the C word (corruption) is more important than the D word, and in theory the attempt to establish at least grass-roots democracy is designed to improve accountability starting there. The problem is that this has very limited prospects of success while the top-down system of administration remains, because local authorities take their cue and get their protection from leaders higher up. Western liberal democratic theory is that you need the D-word to keep in check and ensure the L-word (ie: Law). None of this works, though, unless development of the S word (society, and, specifically, civil society) can keep up.

Posted by Anonymous at 9:38 AM, 8/7/2007

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Notes about "Notes about the D-word"

In some circumstances, talking about the d-word on ESWN or other translation blogs is more of an attempt to illustrate the dialogue that's going on in the Chinese-language media and internet than a politically-motivated act. "You can't talk about [some issue] in China" is a pretty frequently-heard refrain in some segments of western media, so to a degree, I think it's useful to show that people are discussing these issues.

You might say that this is a meaningless distinction, that the choice of topic shows bias - why choose the d-word when there are so many other topics that people are talking about that don't get translated into English. This may be true in many cases (see Xiao Shu's blast against empty posturing http://xiaoshu.infzm.com/space/index.php/85/action_viewspace_itemid_350.html for an example of frustration with Chinese d-word discussion), but I still think there's value in seeing how Chinese critics talk about democracy and what sort of democracy is being talked about.

Posted by zhwj at 4:56 PM, 8/7/2007

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