http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newsroom/china_main en USC Center on Public Diplomacy Copyright 2005 2005-04-27T21:29:34+00:00 Two recent developments in China point to the tools of media and public opinion control available to the Chinese government and how they are used. Most recently, Japan-China relations have deteriorated on the heels of an old dilemma: How Japan handles history. In 1937-38 during the war between China and Japan, Nanjing was the scene of a genocidal slaughter of about 300,000 Chinese. It was hardly a secret. Many nations condemned the event. The Japanese, hardly beloved after their invasion of Manchuria in 1931, were reviled. What has come to be known as the Rape of Nanjing has never been acknowledged, much less repudiated, by the Japanese. It remains "an incident" in Japanese history. A new textbook written for school use in Japan where, as in China, the Ministry of Education gets to pass on all textbooks, continues the Japanese version of history. And that is what set off the most recent furor in China. The textbook isn't expected to sell well, but that has not made any difference. Other than permission to publish, the book does not have an official imprimatur from the Japanese government. But that hasn't made any difference either. In China, the history of more than a quarter of a million mutilated, beheaded and raped citizens raises this issue to a high level. So the Japanese textbook became a pretext for anti-Japanese demonstrations in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou - and those are the ones that we know took place. Demonstrations are generally considered anathema in China, unless they have been officially organized by or with the permission of the government. At first, there seemed to be no official sanction to these events. There was no coverage in any mainland newspaper or on the government-operated television or radio. There are no private media on the mainland. However, Hong Kong newspapers reported the demonstrations, and Phoenix TV, with official links, put an item about the demonstrations on its Web site. That only lasted a couple of hours, before it disappeared. The official word seemed to have come down: cool it on coverage. On the other hand, the demonstrations were not denounced. That was the first clear indication that there might be some official sanction. But in the oh so subtle world of symbols that is Asia, no one was certain - that is, until the first pictures appeared in Hong Kong showing police standing aside while the demonstrators marched on the Japanese embassy in Beijing and broke windows at the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai. But still no official word from the leadership. That was Sunday the 17th in China. Monday the 18th, nothing. Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, was on a visit and trade mission to India. No word from him or from President Hu Jintao. Nothing at the daily foreign office briefing. What demonstrations? What tension with Japan? Officially, it didn't exist. But it was real in Tokyo, and there was reaction from the Japanese government. Japan wanted an apology for the demonstrations in China and reparations for broken windows. The Japanese foreign minister scheduled a trip to Beijing for the following weekend to make the point live and in person. Tuesday, April 18th, Beijing used Chinese journalism as a means of diplomacy: Page one of that day's China Daily, "The National English Language Newspaper," the voice of government policy, featured a story just below the fold, under a two-column headline: SCHROEDER EXPRESSES REMORSE A one-column picture of the German Chancellor showed him with bowed head and a wreath of flowers he placed at Buchenwald concentration camp. Like his predecessors, the German Chancellor was acknowledging the horror of the Holocaust and giving his version of the Jewish mantra "Never Again." "We cannot change history, but this country can learn a lot from the deepest shame of our history," the Chancellor was quoted. Media as message, front-page story selection and layout to send the message. The meaning was unmistakable and direct. "We expect the same from the Japanese." Meanwhile the official Chinese rhetoric made it clear the country had nothing for which to apologize. In fact, it was the Japanese who must apologize. And yet there were still no stories of demonstrations or the building tension between Beijing and Tokyo in Chinese media. That changed the next day, Wednesday, April 19th, when the velvet gloves were off. Premier Wen Jiabao, still in India, got three columns and the front page editorial lead in the China Daily with the headline JAPAN TOLD TO FACE UP PAST By the following weekend there were more demonstrations. Shanghai had the biggest turnout, with reports of 20,000 marchers. Whatever the turnout, what was clear was that the police once again were watching and not interfering. And there was media coverage, but this time the coverage emphasized the government's plea for calm and an end to the demonstrations. The order went out: no more. And there have been no more demonstrations. Students on campuses nationwide were called to meetings where the word was underlined. No demonstrations. Cool it. The public tap had been turned off. The Japanese foreign minister met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing and made the requisite demand for an apology. In return he got a stern lecture on history and the need for the Japanese to "Face up to the past." He left empty-handed. The rest of the story has unfolded in public with an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi at a meeting of Asian leaders, a meeting that included the Chinese President. The problem remains. The apology took the same general form that Japanese Prime Ministers have used in the past couching events from 1931 to 1945 under a single umbrella of "we regret the excesses." The Chinese, along with other Asian nations want their specific pain acknowledged and repudiated. This one won't go away. But it was the handling of a story that really caught the eye. The other story you may not have read about, and certainly didn't see on TV, was a puzzler. Chinese Universities have an Intranet called BBS. It's what many of you may remember as an Internet bulletin board. BBS is a combination bulletin board, jungle tom tom, Matt Drudge and Liberty Radio forum. Everything is on BBS, information, misinformation, the latest gossip as well as "who was the pretty/handsome man/woman I saw you with last night?" This open forum has been around for years. Alumni and outsiders participate. BBS also operates between Universities. It is part of the modern communications infrastructure for young Chinese men and women. BBS in the two years I have been around has hardly been a source of revolutionary foment. There have been discussions, some criticism of government but mostly university policies, the usual complaints that students have everywhere about inept administrators and unfair treatment. Hopping on this free flow of chatter used to be easy. Log-on, usually with a pseudonym, and let your fingers fly on the keyboard. Students, alumni, and anyone interested could join the dialogue. Until now: the rules of access to BBS were changed - drastically. The door was closed. The only people with access to BBS were to be students and faculty who now must go through their university servers and long-on using their real names. No more outsiders, no more anonymity. It's not difficult to see the motivation for the restrictions, but it is difficult to see the rationale. BBS certainly had the means to foment trouble, but it had not been used to make trouble. No one likes criticism, and the anonymity of BBS provided cover for people who had some strong opinions, but usually on minor and parochial issues. The fact is BBS was a useful gauge of everything from the lovesickness of spring to who were the good and bad teachers on campus. There were occasional political flash points, but here to, the escape valve of BBS provided a forum to let the venom out and dispel anger and frustration. There was no public reporting of the new restrictions to access. Internal communications went out from university administrations to their students. A few correspondents from Western publications noted the change, but there was hardly a ripple. Fewer than a half dozen national universities had small demonstrations. Students expressed their anger, but also realized this was not a fight they could win - or that they needed to win. E-mail and short messages via mobile phone are alive and well. They are not anonymous, but in a nation of millions of university students and even more millions of alumni, the odds on being "overheard" or monitored are long. Some students started alternative bulletin boards, and there are likely to be other imaginative means of trading information and opinions. These will be more difficult to monitor than BBS. The curious part of the tale is: why? Why the change when a forum that wasn't a threat was actually a contained and easily monitored survey of the student pulse? 2005-04-27T20:29:34+00:00 In China there’s been a year’s worth of growth in the few months since my last dispatch. You name it, and it has grown in China. Some examples: the Chinese trade surplus, the Chinese trade surplus with the U.S., and the Chinese trade balance with the rest of Asia, which has gone from deficit to surplus. The numbers are staggering. Just a few months ago I wrote, “China herself is a debtor in much of the rest of the world. Particularly in Asia.” True then. Wrong now. About the only deficit remaining for the Chinese is with their Middle Eastern oil suppliers, and that is not enough to push China into a net debt column. It’s now surplus all the way. There has also been a shift in editorial interest in the U.S. The New York Times and the Washington Post now have stories from China on the average of every second or third day. I haven’t been able to keep up with USA Today and the Los Angeles Times to know whether they have increased their reporting from China, but the trends are clear. The traditional broadcast networks still treat China as if it were not there. Condoleezza Rice recently had her first visit to Beijing and barely a trickle made it onto American broadcast TV. The cable networks, particularly their Asian services covered the story more fully. One consequence of relatively thin coverage of China: My Western friends who make their first visits to the Peoples Republic are slack jawed after 24 hours. Their reactions are always the same “I had no idea.” “This is not the China I expected to see.” “This certainly doesn’t look very Communist,” was one recent reaction from a visiting television executive who came to teach media management in Nanjing. As we rode in from the airport I pointed out the symbol I thought China might consider adding to its bright red flag: the construction crane. Chinese construction cranes in all cities are like forests in the Pacific Northwest or northern Minnesota. Like most airports in China, Nanjing’s International Airport is located far from the city, a legacy of its original military origins, but now transformed into a gleaming new arched passenger terminal with fingers reaching out in all directions, designed for traffic yet to come. It’s a 40-minute ride into town, and we counted 134 construction cranes visible from the expressway. Multiply that by the other four approaches to the city and it’s a reasonable guess that Nanjing likely has more than 500 construction cranes at work. Apartment complexes in China do not go up one at a time. They go up in clusters. A cluster is often 20 and 30 buildings, each with from 15 to 40 floors. Apartment prices are around US$120 per square foot in China’s medium-size cities. (In China, a medium size city is one with a population of only five to seven million people.) Shanghai has plenty of apartments that cost US $1 million. Yes there is a real estate speculators bubble which regularly generates local stories that say the bubble will soon burst. But the prices keep going up. The municipal government in Shanghai recently tried to cool the speculative real estate market. A turnover tax was imposed on apartments that were flipped in less than twelve months. That’s hardly a page out of the textbook of Communist economics, but it’s a clear indication that China itself is now one nation/two systems - a political one-party structure and a free wheeling capitalist economy, but with socialist overtones. Don’t look it up in your Econ 101 Samuelson textbook; you won’t find this model or anything even close to it. On the other hand, if you are inclined to write a new Econ 101 textbook, this might be a good place to begin. P.S. “Flip tax” or no flip tax, the Shanghai bubble has continued to grow and apartment turnover has not seemed to diminish. One reason: Mortgage rates are low, and banks have a lot of cash to turn over. But those very same banks are also swimming in under- or non-performing loans, and that’s another of those cheerful contradictions in the Chinese economy. A lot of real estate investment is coming from, of all places, Taiwan. Back to Taiwan and the Chinese economy shortly, but first an update on politics: Taiwan has been the most difficult story of the last few months for the Chinese, especially after a piece of mainland legislation that backfired. The Communist Party Congress tried to encourage Taiwan to dampen talk of independence by authorizing the use of force if the island declared independence. This was taken as a call to arms by many western capitals. Beijing was stunned. The leadership apparently thought this was simply a wake-up call to warn Taiwan’s tough-talking President Chen Shui-bian to cool it. Western reaction showed there is definitely a cultural divide when it comes to interpreting the Chinese leadership. Beijing said the legislation was designed to encourage the Taiwanese to put aside dreams of independence and move toward the concept of one China/two systems. That is what Hong Kong and Macao are all about, and Beijing says: Why not Taiwan? 80% of the Taiwanese economy is already tied to the mainland. Economically there is now a de facto one China, two systems in place. But politically the rhetoric of President Chen Shui-bian is all about independence, and it drives Beijing to distraction. Both President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao do not mince words. Independent Taiwan is a non-starter. “Reunification” with what Beijing sees as China’s off-shore province, is what the future is all about. It is hard to imagine what Taiwan would gain from “independence.” The Vatican is one of the few states that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan on an ambassadorial level. Not much commerce there. It will be interesting to see if a new Pope modifies that position. Not likely. Conversely, what would Taiwan lose by moving toward one China/two systems? Acknowledging a de facto situation might give the island what little bargaining leverage it can muster against the mainland colossus. The U.S. and Japan have an interest in the status quo. Those two countries’ recent joint statement mildly criticizing what they interpreted as Beijing’s heavy handedness toward Taiwan was a signal. But a signal of what? Neither the US nor Japan are in a position to fight China if Taiwan were to play a military card or provoke the mainland into action. Meanwhile, tensions between Japan and China are rising by the day. The US has a treaty obligation to “defend” Taiwan. How serious is that obligation when the US is stretched as militarily thin as it is? Back to following the money: While politicians rattle hyperbole at one another, Taiwanese investment in manufacturing and real estate on the mainland are helping to fuel the dizzying growth the Chinese economy. So when you read or hear about a military solution to China’s Taiwan policy, reach for more than a few grains of salt, and perhaps a bit of hope as well. 2005-04-19T19:27:34+00:00 China, is an excellent example of the complexity of the American image abroad. U.S. China relations are intertwined at every level of politics, economics, and society and becoming more so daily. Let me put this in a factual context. China is now the seventh largest economy in the world. Within five years it is likely to be the fourth largest. China is already the third largest automobile market in the world behind the U.S. and Japan, having just passed Germany. But most important, and likely what you read about most is the debtor-creditor relationship between the U.S. and China. A vast imbalance that obscures an important fact. China has fallen into and out of international debt herself in the past few years. While the U.S. shortfall with China is expected to reach $ 57 billion in 2004, China's trade balance is expected to come in at only $ 3 billion. Why? That’s because China herself is a debtor in much of the world. Particularly in Asia. While many things in your home and the clothes on your back may say “Made in China,” all that manufacturing requires raw materials - materials that China has had to buy on the international market at rapidly inflating prices. As an example China's demand for oil this year has increased by 40%. She is the world's largest importer of scrap metal to make steel. (And most of that scrap metal comes from the U.S.) But the critical bottom line is that China has also become George Bush's banker. Every day, the Chinese and the Japanese combined buy 40% of the U.S. debt - American T bills. No single country - indeed, no two countries - even come close to these percentages. Without this daily flow of capital, the U.S. economy would suffer an instant economic earthquake. That one fact underlies much of the relationship between the two countries. For example, when President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan was making aggressive noises toward China during his recent Presidential campaign, Beijing was very unhappy. Chairman Hu Jintao made a long-scheduled trip to the U.S. and sitting beside the President in the White House listened with a smile on his face while the U.S. President chastised the Taiwanese President and suggested that the rhetoric be toned down. You don't believe President Bush would have volunteered that on his own if his banker had suggested the script? We all recently saw how important China is to the U.S. when it comes to North Korea. The President's insistence on multi-lateral negotiations with the North Korean, led by the Chinese and Japanese, permits the administration to try to keep a lid on nuclear proliferation while fighting its battles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine. And lest we forget, American troops are still stationed in the Balkans and will be needed in places like the Sudan. In short, the U.S. needs China's money and her clout. All this said what is the Chinese view of the U.S? China's position on Iraq is clear. "Wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," as someone recently said. But the Chinese press, radio and television are not beating up on the U.S. See for yourself: Chinese TV is now on cable and satellite television throughout the world, including in millions of households in the U.S. China Central TV's Channel 9, their International Channel in English which is a mix of news and information, has been playing the Iraq situation straight down the middle. The channel is the voice of Beijing and reflects Chinese policy, but these are not cold war times with cold war rhetoric. The reporting tends to be balanced. Spokespersons for the U.S. policy and view are seen and heard. Academics debate the Iraq war and other US-China issues. China is becoming a sophisticated media market, while still holding to a government and party-controlled monopoly. But inside the country, the truth is the average Chinese doesn't think that much about the U.S. The war in Iraq is not front page news every day or dinner table conversation every night. The U.S. political campaign was background noise in China. Meanwhile, the media monopoly game is changing: Within two years 400 million Chinese will have mobile phones. The country is already the world's largest mobile phone market. About 320 million Chinese have cell phones today, more than the total U.S. population. A billion data messages pass through the system every day, most of them short messages. Internet access is exploding, and while you read of monitoring activities by the Chinese government, that same government is spreading fiber and Internet access faster than you can count. There is a vast flow of information, albeit not entirely free. But any picture of China as a controlled information society is oversimplified and false. I don't know any educated Chinese who thinks the Iraq war was a good idea or that U.S. Middle East policy makes sense. If anything, the Chinese dismiss U.S. foreign policy as overly belligerent and hypocritical. U.S. insistence on the values of Human Rights pale in the face of Abu Gurayb prison. That story was as prominently displayed in China as it was around the world. No one I know of in China hates the U.S. or even less hates Americans. U.S. tourists come back from China with a lot of good feeling for the way they were treated. It is likely the U.S. traveler is more warmly received in China these days than he or she is in Europe. But the overall U.S. image here is not good. George Bush is not a popular president in China, though not as unpopular as elsewhere. His down-home, good-ole-boy Texas image doesn't fly in Shanghai, Guangzhou or Hong Kong. But the president’s image better is in Beijing, where the Chinese leadership knows it has a strong bargaining hand with Washington. Remember the banker relationship. Why do you think Beijing has been able to firmly, but politely, fend off all the pressure to revalue the Yuan? It’s because the debtor doesn't usually get to tell the lender how to run the bank. The Chinese mantra vis-à-vis the U.S. today is business. It’s far more important to the Chinese that they are now players in the WTO. The Chinese are now a member of the club. WTO doesn't mean much in the U.S. but is critical in China. Every Chinese seems to know the meaning of WTO. Try asking about WTO on Main Street USA. A recent meeting of the G-7 is a clear indication of Chinese economic clout. The Chinese came as observers and made it clear that they did not feel themselves ready to join the G-7. Remember, China is now the seventh largest economy in the world and growing. G-7. If the Chinese are seventh and growing, what's going on? Here’s what’s going on: China is still classified as a "developing" country, and gets enormous economic benefits from that categorization. Why give it up? And not incidentally, the Chinese are proud of their economic and social accomplishments. They want to be invited to the G-7, not have to ask their way in. To the extent the Chinese think about the U.S. they are puzzled about US policy abroad. The Chinese are not emotionally involved in the Israeli/Palestinian struggle. Their interest in the Middle East is their critical need for oil, along with the rest of the industrialized world. China’s focus now is more on India and Pakistan, the latter an ally, if not a client state. India is becoming a much more important player on the Asian and world stage. The U.S. seems to be blissfully unaware of the rapprochement between China and India. Two of world's fastest growing economies represent 40% of the world's population. India is finally taking steps to end its long-standing feud with Pakistan (and don't think the Chinese are not brokering help). Trade between these three behemoths will only accelerate their development at a time the U.S. seems to be becoming more and more mired in a narrowly focused war on terrorism. Terrorism is not a major threat in China. It is not even a minor threat. The irony is that China has become the bastion of free market capitalism. OK, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. The real issues for the Chinese are business issues. Will the new rules for textile imports to the U.S. hurt or help the Chinese economy? Will the U.S. obsession with the Middle East cause a recession and hurt Chinese exports? Will the U.S. obsession with national security close its borders to Chinese travelers? Those are issues that upset many Chinese. The Chinese middle class is the fastest growing sector of the society. Yes, it is equally true that rural poverty in China has been acknowledged by Chairman Hu as a major priority of his administration. And yet he has just as large a problem trying to keep his hot economy from overheating. The divide between rich and poor is a common problem in both the U.S. and China, and India for that matter. Most Chinese have never left China on holiday. It’s a big country with a lot to see and do. Anyone who traveled in China during the Autumn Festival knows the vast movement of people traveling home to their families or touring their country. But the growing Middle Class wants to stretch its legs and see the world. 25 million Chinese tourists flew abroad this year. That figure will double within three years, according to the travel industry. The U.S. gets only a drop in the bucket, because a U.S. visa has become more than hard to get: it is almost impossible to get. The U.S. tourist industry is suffering. Signpost up ahead: Chinese tourists went from relatively inconsequential in France to the number one tourist group during the summer of 2004. I know hundreds of Chinese graduate students who have been accepted to U.S. grad schools yet they cannot come because they cannot get a visa. The beneficiaries are Australia and the UK whose schools have opened to the Chinese. The European Union has issued Shengen visas to Chinese for the first time, opening 15 EU countries to Chinese visitors. Chinese students seeking graduate education abroad are among the best brains in China. The U.S. says it fears they will overstay their visas, so the U.S. doesn’t give them visas anymore. It doesn't make much sense to the educated Chinese when they run into policies like this. I expect it doesn't make much sense to American businesses that would like to have access to those brains. The number one exporter in the U.S. is Boeing. Those expensive aircraft account for as much as 20% of U.S. exports in a good year. And yet there are new Boeing aircraft sitting on the ground in Washington State because they cannot be delivered to the foreign airlines that have bought and paid for them. Why? The ferry pilots cannot get visas. The US has lost tens of millions of dollars in contracts to train foreign commercial pilots on American simulators because those pilots, too, cannot get visas. The Australians and the British have been taking up the slack, and they are delighted with the business. While the U.S. turns away business, the Chinese ethic has increasingly turned to: "How can I get a piece of this growing economy?" "Where is my better paying job going to come from?" And most important of all, "When will I have enough money to buy my first car?" 2005-01-14T22:56:00+00:00