I like the Chinese. Maybe I need to qualify the remark by acknowledging that I have never met China’s rulers or secret policemen. What is happening in Tibet is repugnant.
China is a tyranny, in which personal rights and freedoms are non-existent. Yet, having visited the country several times lately, most recently in January, I feel a goodwill towards its people that makes me unwilling to join the chorus that wants this summer’s Olympics to prove a fiasco.
China has suffered so much for so long — from nature, Western barbarians, the Japanese, Mao Zedong — that it seems overdue for some good fortune.
During my last trip I met several academics who are bitterly critical of the Beijing government. Yet not one advocated a Western boycott of the Olympics. Most suggested that the games might be a force for at least some small good.
Although China remains a tyranny, since the 1970s it has become a significantly less brutal one. Li Datong, a journalist who was sacked last year as a magazine editor for crossing the low threshold of political criticism that the government will tolerate, said: “We have progressed. For instance, it is possible for you to meet me, which could not have happened in Mao’s time. This is still a dictatorship, but it is much less violent and cruel.”
The scale of repression has moderated. Though the Beijing regime professes indifference to world opinion, it is increasingly sensitive to it. Huge numbers of Chinese are being educated abroad. They return home keenly aware of how others do things and eager to share their freedoms. This must influence China’s future.
Beijing invests massive resources in efforts to control the internet, but the monitors are swamped. In the 1960s Shanghai residents were kept in ignorance of events in Beijing and vice versa. This is now unthinkable.
Educated people know much more about what is happening in their own country and abroad.
A wise economist, Mao Yushi — a 74-year-old who has taught at Harvard — suggested to me in January, with some prescience: “This could be a year of troubles for China. The [Communist] party concentrates so much on its own self-interest that it tries to ignore the host of contradictions which have accumulated in this country.”
Yet he welcomes the Olympics as a historic milestone. He is heartened by progress, albeit at snail’s pace, towards acknowledging China’s past. It is still forbidden to avow the horrors of the great famine of the 1950s, or of the cultural revolution in the ensuing decade. But Mao Yushi says: “I think we are approaching the time when we shall be able to talk about Mao Zedong and the enormous damage he inflicted upon China and the Chinese people.”
He thinks it is right to encourage foreign criticism of China’s absence of human rights, but argues “blame should be tempered with praise when something improves”. He cherishes hopes that the example of Hong Kong, where the rule of law more or less prevails, will extend elsewhere in the country. More and more people, he said, understand that law is indispensable to progress.
Mao Yushi’s relative optimism about the future is founded on the fact that he has been around a long time and has lived through China’s bloodiest decades. He says: “Mao’s regime maximised pain. Now we maximise money. The real gulf in Chinese society is not between rich and poor; it is between those with power and those with none.”
Some Chinese take a bleaker view. Professor Qin Hui, of Tsinghua University, argues that before the Tiananmen Square massacre there was more freedom and greater hope than there is today. He expresses scorn for Western intellectuals who, in the 1960s, regarded Mao as an enlightened despot and supposed that the cultural revolution was a bracing spiritual renaissance.
Do not allow yourselves to be deluded twice, urged the professor. He is appalled by the plight of millions of migrant workers, some of whom are building the Olympic facilities. They possess only slave status, he said bitterly.
Li Datong said China’s rulers exist in a permanent state of terror about losing control and sometimes it happens. Disasters occur without any conscious act of will by the politburo; in 1989 nobody in Beijing, he said, believed troops in Tiananmen Square would be so stupid as to fire on protesters. Yet he is still hopeful: “Give us another 30 years, which is nothing in the span of Chinese history. You will see big changes.”
China was ghastly when I first visited, in 1971 with a BBC crew. Open dialogue was impossible. At Beijing University the government paraded before us an elderly professor, who spoke perfect English. He parroted a script about how the experience of being sent to labour in the fields had made him understand how much he needed to learn from the peasants. During a break, the producer and I found ourselves beside the old man and unobserved. “You can’t really believe all that nonsense,” we demanded. He looked at us with an expression of infinite pain and muttered: “You don’t understand how things are here.”
That exchange sharpens the contrast with 2008 when, as a foreigner, I could listen to Chinese people expressing their hopes and fears with frankness and often wit. China is still ruled by clumsy, ruthless apparatchiks, but beneath them is a vast hive not merely of industry, but also of ideas and imagination. It is hard to believe that the politburo can hold down a lid upon the ferment indefinitely.
I am not foolish enough to anticipate China’s emergence as a liberal democracy, smiling upon the West. But its people are remarkable and inspire sympathy, not least for their pride in having come so far so fast.
There still seems a chance that the Games in Beijing will force China’s rulers to behave a little better, rather than merely serve as a showcase for the success of repression.
Beijing bans construction to cut pollution
China this week unveiled ambitious plans to improve its capital’s heavily polluted air in time for the Olympics, including halting construction and heavy industry.
Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau laid out a range of tough measures to cut back pollution, such as closing numerous petrol stations and even banning spray-painting.
The bureau’s deputy director, Du Shaozhong, warned that even more “strident” measures would be taken if the weather was unfavourable by the time the Games begin in August. The month is regarded as one of the worst in terms of pollution in the city because the air is humid and often stagnant.
Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. But the authorities say they have invested £8,6-billion to tackle the city’s infamous smog — an unpleasant combination of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter of which much is produced by the building industry.
Since March some types of construction work have been banned on windy days. From July all digging and pouring of concrete on sites will be suspended for two months.
Production will be stopped at cement, concrete mixing and cement grinding plants in south-east Beijing.
Nearby quarries will also cease to operate.
About one in 10 petrol stations will be closed at the end of next month, while many more will be fitted with devices to reduce the level of fuel fumes they produce. Outdoor spray-painting will also be banned during the period, as will spraying or painting with “harmful solvents”. — Â