Is the most surprising thing about China how much it has changed in recent decades, or how little?
The sound bites and punditry on China are shaped by a sort of bipolar disorder, oscillating continually between accounts of the dizzying pace of change (cue photo of Shanghai skyscrapers) and of the stubborn hold of old ways (cue shot of the giant portrait of Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square).
When the Chinese economy makes headlines, the emphasis is likely to be on breaks with the past.
While Mao Zedong was alive, who thought capitalists would be welcomed into the Communist Party and Big Macs sold in Beijing?
If political issues are the focus, the emphasis is likely to be on how deeply China remains stuck in old ruts. Here, again, the logic is obvious and not just because party congresses and national day parades give China followers a sense of déjà vu.
Consider the case of dissent, as exemplified by Liu Xiaobo, a scholar and human-rights activist jailed for 11 years on trumped-up charges of “subversion” last Christmas. He had already been imprisoned for participating in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. His latest incarceration highlights the fact that the government still clings to the “big lie” narrative that treats the Tiananmen struggle as a “counter-revolutionary riot” handled with restraint, rather than what it was: a popular upheaval crushed by a massacre.
In addition, Liu’s imprisonment has disturbing echoes that go back to the Democracy Wall Movement of the late 1970s. He drew the state’s ire most recently by helping to draft and circulate “Charter 08”, a bold online call for increased civil liberties. Though inspired by the Czech Charter 77 movement associated with Vaclav Havel, Charter 08 also fits into the same indigenous tradition of calls for change as a poster demanding greater political freedom that earned Wei Jingsheng, a Democracy Wall leader, a 15-year prison term 30 years ago.
Some Chinese bloggers, noting the parallels between the treatment of Wei and Liu, ask rhetorically: Does China’s “progress” from 1979 to 2009 just mean spending four less years in jail for speaking your mind?
But there are serious problems with both the “everything’s different, just look at the economy” and “nothing’s changed, just look at politics” views.
For example, although entrepreneurial activity of a sort that was fairly insignificant in Mao’s day has contributed to China’s rapid growth, state-run enterprises haven’t disappeared. On the contrary, they continue to be major players in the economy, particularly in parts of China located well to the west of bustling eastern seaboard cities such as Shanghai.
And although Liu himself may have many traits we associate with both Chinese and Czech dissidents of the late 1970s, other inspiring figures working for change are quite different. They are individuals, such as crusading lawyers, who spend much of their time trying to work within the system.
Often, they start out with limited grievances and become involved in struggles with limited aims. They are angered by specific abuses of power or passionate about particular issues, from discrimination against those with Aids to environmental degradation or shoddy building practices by corrupt developers with close ties to officials.
They are uninterested, at least initially, in questioning features of Communist Party rule though, when they end up being harassed by the state anyway, this can radicalise them.
Another political contrast with the past has to do with modernisation. Wei insisted that China needed democracy to overcome obstacles to economic growth.
Many protesters now, by contrast, worry about the way their quality of life is being threatened by China’s pull-out-all-the-stops development programme. Hence the rise of “not in my backyard” protests by homeowners who want to stop the building of noxious chemical plants nearby or high-speed trains from running beside their neighbourhoods.
This suggests that one should refuse to choose between the “no change” and the “sea change” scenarios. Focus, rather, on the continuities in areas that seem most transformed and the ruptures in areas that seem most resistant to transformation.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know