Any visitor to China is overwhelmed by the contradictions inherent in its helter-skelter progress. During a journey in any direction, but particularly from the rich coastal provinces into the hinterland, you cover in the space of a few hundred miles every stage of economic development–from high-tech industrialization to primitive subsistence agriculture. Yet even in China’s richest provinces there were pockets of severe underdevelopment and backwaters of tradition–reminders of how difficult it must be to govern a country so extreme in its diversity.
Naturally, any visitor is impressed by the changes in China’s physical landscape. The transformation of Shanghai since my last visit 13 years ago was astonishing. But the changes that most excited me were more personal. There was, first, the candor with which people talked about their own experiences during China’s darkest days of revolution and tumult. There was the sight of a packed cathedral, with more than 1,000 Shanghai Roman Catholics gathered for Good Friday services. There were the 500 or so young students at Fudan University throwing questions at me about human rights, Tibet, Taiwan and other subjects that might previously have been thought taboo.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. Is this now a country that takes its cue from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville? Hardly. There are still terrible human-rights abuses. Capital punishment is meted out with mindless frequency. Too many of China’s most thoughtful dissidents have been sent into exile. The treatment of the Falun Gong betrays the nervousness of a regime that remembers too well the dramas of the last Chinese dynasty.
I will grant China’s skeptics these points. But even when you’ve thrown into the balance the country’s hemorrhaging banks and creaking social services, you still haven’t, in my judgment, won the argument for the pessimists. Why? Because China crackles with energy. The young people I met and spoke to can no longer be sequestered from the rest of the world. The implications of economic development and modern communications–including the Internet–for the political system seem to me ineluctable.
Many historians doubt that China can manage political change peacefully. They point to the bloody history of the last century as a harbinger of things to come. And their doubts are reinforced by the modern problems that crowd in on China’s leaders. But I do not believe that we have no choice but to watch nervously as events unfold. We should, first, make clear that we regard China’s success as good for all of us, and encourage China to take its full place in global institutions.
All the same, we must continue to talk about human rights and the rule of law in China. These are not topics to be ignored. We do China no service when we blow hot and cold on these issues. Better for us to raise our human-rights concerns consistently and openly–regardless of our passing convulsions of commercial ambition.
I have long argued that it is impossible to open up any society–even China–in economic and social terms while indefinitely keeping an iron grip on politics. Whatever the ambitions of today’s party leaders, it is difficult to believe that many of the new generation who are climbing the ladder of power really believe that political progress can be stalled forever.
Challenged once for being an optimist, Winston Churchill replied that there didn’t seem much to be said for spending one’s life in the opposite camp. That’s a pretty good way of approaching China, too, it seems to me.
title: “Don T Worry Be Happy” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Christopher Benitez”
Any visitor to China is overwhelmed by the contradictions inherent in its helter-skelter progress. During a journey in any direction, but particularly from the rich coastal provinces into the hinterland, you cover in the space of a few hundred miles every stage of economic development–from high-tech industrialization to primitive subsistence agriculture. Traveling from Shanghai through Jiangsu province last Easter, I was amazed by the pace of economic change. Yet even in China’s richest provinces there were pockets of severe underdevelopment and backwaters of tradition–reminders of how difficult it must be to govern a country so extreme in its diversity.
Naturally, any visitor is impressed by the changes in China’s physical landscape. The transformation of Shanghai since my last visit 13 years ago was astonishing. But the changes that most excited me were more personal. There was, first, the candor with which people talked about their own experiences during China’s darkest days of revolution. There was the sight of a packed cathedral, with more than 1,000 Shanghai Roman Catholics gathered for Good Friday services. There were the 500 or so young students at Fudan University listening to and apparently understanding a no-holds-barred speech in English, and throwing questions at me about human rights, Tibet, Taiwan and other subjects that might previously have been thought taboo.
Now please don’t misunderstand me. Is this now a country that takes its cue from Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville? Hardly. There are still terrible human-rights abuses. Capital punishment is meted out with mindless frequency. Too many of China’s most thoughtful dissidents have been expelled from incarceration at home to exile abroad. The treatment of the Falun Gong betrays the nervousness of a regime that remembers too well the dramas of the last Chinese dynasty.
I will grant China’s skeptics these points. But even when you’ve thrown into the balance the country’s hemorrhaging banks and creaking social services, you still haven’t won the argument for the pessimists. Why? Because China crackles with energy. The young people I spoke to can no longer be sequestered from the rest of the world. The implications of economic development and modern communications–including the Internet–for the political system seem to me ineluctable.
Many historians doubt China can manage political change peacefully. They point to the bloody history of the last century as a harbinger. And their doubts are reinforced by the modern problems that crowd in on China’s leaders. But I do not believe that we have no choice but to watch nervously as events unfold. We should, first, make clear that we regard China’s success as good for all of us, and encourage China to take its full place in global institutions.
All the same, we must continue to talk about human rights and the rule of law in China. These are not topics to be swept under the carpet. We do China no service when we blow hot and cold on these issues. Better for us to raise our human-rights concerns consistently and openly–regardless of our passing convulsions of commercial ambition. I have long argued that it is impossible to open up any society–even China–in economic and social terms while indefinitely keeping an iron grip on politics. Whatever the ambitions of today’s party leaders, it is difficult to believe that many of the new generation who are climbing the ladder of power really believe that political progress can be stalled forever.
Challenged for being an optimist, Winston Churchill once replied there didn’t seem much to be said for spending one’s life in the opposite camp. That’s a pretty good way of approaching China, too.
