Roh Moo-hyun's suicide: Chinese views

(Now that Blogspot is blocked in China, posting is more difficult, as even proxies don't work very well. So, if things look a bit patchy, I apologize!)

 

News of the suicide of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, who was, it seems, overcome by despair from the relentless investigation into corruption among his family, shook Korea and the rest of Asia, but drew relatively little attention in the US. The New York Times, after printing a very good overview of the political situation surrounding Roh's death, quickly moved on to other things. In China, however, the news of how he threw himself off a cliff after leaving a note for his family and supporters prompted cries of shock, empathy, and even some soul-searching in Internet forums and the press. The always dependable Chinasmack has translated several comments left by Chinese netizens about Roh's death. Many of the comments expressed admiration of Roh's honor in the face of corruption charges, standing as it did in sharp contrast with China's own miserable record on corruption. (My personal favorite: "If we here had this kind of conscience, I bet all of our cliffs would be filled up.")

 

And what of China's venerable editorialists? Before I started looking, I suspected that some mainstream publications would use the occasion as an indictment of Korea's democracy, and I was right. Lu Ning, writing in the Guangzhou Daily, argues that Korea's history of corruption problems and embattled presidents shows that it has too quickly embraced western-style democracy. Lu makes a point of placing Korea firmly within East Asian culture—it has ties of blood, village, literature, people—thus implicitly using its political situation as a guide for China. He does not mince words. Corruption is a part of the very soil in East Asia, he says, but more than that, a hasty embrace of western democracy is inappropriate for all countries outside North America and Europe: "We must face squarely the fact that it's not just South Korea. In East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and even all regions outside of North America and Western Europe, among all countries that indiscriminately copy and imitate western democracy and political systems … there is almost no example of [a country] that has made a smooth transition. Instead, their vitality has been sapped." (尤其不能不予正视的是，不仅仅韩国，整个东亚、东南亚、南亚、中亚甚至于北美和西欧之外的世界各国，那些照搬照抄西方民主政制模式的国家，不管其"脱胎"时间或长或短，其"换骨"的历史进程几乎没有顺顺当当的实例，而被弄得元气大伤的国家却比比皆是。)

 

Lu's opinion, however, is not ubiquitous. (A full description of the opinions expressed in China's countless Internet chat rooms, newspapers, and magazines is impossible, which is itself an encouraging thought.) In an editorial written by Zhou Yun and published in the Yangtze Daily, Zhou confronts Lu directly, accusing him of exaggerating the negative simply because it is so blatantly obvious. In fact, Korea's economy and society continued to develop rapidly after it became a democracy, argues Zhou, despite two financial crises and other problems. Roh's suicide will certainly damage the spirit of the Korean people, but it will not cause irreparable harm. Instead of focusing on corruption itself, Zhou emphasizes the fact that in Korea such dark practices are often brought to light: "[Korean politicians] are gradually realizing that in this kind of political system … it will ultimately be difficult to stop corrupt behavior from entering the court of public opinion." (他们会逐渐明白，在这种体制中受到的无处不在甚至"敌意"的监督下，任何贪腐行为最终都难以逃过公众的法眼。) Lu ends his editorial by pointing out that no political system is perfect, but people choose democracy because it has proven to be the best at advancing a country's economy and society, as well as curbing corruption.

 

Not too long ago, such bold views would not be permissible in a Chinese newspaper, and it's encouraging to see them published unhindered. What we are witnessing in this little editorial spat, of course, is not really about Korea. It is about China, and what path China's modernity should take. That is the dominant concern of modern Chinese intellectuals, and I wish them the best in figuring it out.

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Remebering the earthquake

Tuesday was the one-year anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, and memorial ceremonies were held throughout the country. For my part, I stumbled on a small one in front of the Shanghai Museum, attended almost exclusively by young people. It was organized, as far as I could tell from pamphlets that were handed out, by a group of students that used the Internet to spread the word.

A moment of silence:


Lighting the candles:


At another spot, after some discussion about which way was southwest, everybody stood in the proper direction and observed three minutes of silence:


Last year, Chinese nationalism stirred up by the earthquake merged with nationalism stirred up by the Olympics and the worldwide protests during the torch relay. The Tuesday ceremony was reminiscent of that phenomenon, as many people wore clothing intended to celebrate the Olympics and to proclaim one's love of China:


The girl with the megaphone led the crowd in several vows, such as vowing to love the motherland (zuguo) and to never forget the earthquake:

Fake doorways

It had to happen sometime. One of Shanghai’s most charming and interesting architectural features, the Shikumen, or Stone Entryway, has now entered the realm of the unreal.

A Shanghai Shikumen:


It really shouldn’t be surprising. Beyond its fake DVDs, fake Rolex watches, and fake Prada bags, China also has fake architecture, in the form of theme parks that recreate various wonders of the world, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids. China’s theme parks even recreate the country’s own tourist attractions. Too busy earning money in south China to make the trip to see the Great Wall? No problem: a theme park in Shenzhen has a miniature version, which not only is much easier to get to than the real wall but is easier to traverse as well, as it only comes up to your waist.

Still, my discovery of an underground reproduction of an old Shanghai street, complete with Shikumen, undated pictures of Shanghai in black and white, and, of course, shops selling fashionable clothes, led me to wonder exactly what the point was. Are people really too lazy to leave People’s Square, in the heart of Shanghai, to see some Shikumen? Are there any tourists who actually prefer cheap replicas to the real thing?

Most depressing of all is that, in the future, cheap replicas may be all we have. The current frenzy of construction and destruction in the lead-up to next year’s Expo is not an aberration in Shanghai’s recent history; it is simply an acceleration. This picture, which I took the same day I found the underground old street, has already been the fate of many of Shanghai’s wonderful Shikumen.

The Cultural Revolution in the world

An exhibit of photography by Solange Brand, a French journalist, taken during the Cultural Revolution, has been getting attention from prominent blogs recently, and yesterday I stopped by to take a look. I’m glad I did: on display were some of the best photographs I’ve seen from the period, and in color!

(Photos from the China Beat)


Too often the Cultural Revolution is remembered as a kind of surreal, almost dream-like event that doesn’t seem to really have happened. It is surrounded by a chilly silence here in China, usually punctuated only by fiction or personal memoirs that don’t see wide circulation. It is also often treated somewhat abstractly—part of the official “30 percent” of what Mao did wrong. That’s why these kinds of photographs are valuable: they bring what happened down to earth.


However, what I found especially interesting was how the exhibit’s curator, Jean Loh, chose to frame the events depicted in the photographs. A blurb about the Cultural Revolution written by Loh briefly discussed the events in China, then offered an unexpected quote from John Lennon: “The sixties saw a revolution among youth, not just concentrating in small pockets or classes, but a revolution in a whole way of thinking; the youth got it first and the next generation second. The Beatles were part of the revolution.”

Why did Loh put a quote from John Lennon alongside photographs from the Cultural Revolution? The Beatles preached love and world peace; the Cultural Revolution saw the destruction of the careers and lives of millions of people, the devastation of valuable artifacts and ancient structures, and the blind vilification of foreign and domestic enemies. What on earth could they have in common?

I think Loh was getting at an insight that is really very valuable: that the Cultural Revolution did not happen in isolation; that it was part of broad transnational forces; and that it was complicit—and is still complicit—in more than what we might at first believe.

When we think back with nostalgia to the 1960s, the Cultural Revolution almost never enters the picture. Indeed, when we do think of it in relation to the period, it is usually treated as a source of shame. Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film The Dreamers, for example, is about a small group of students that sequesters itself in an apartment in Paris in the summer of 1968, where they discuss revolutionary theory and, above all, cinema. Bertolucci portrays their affinity with the Cultural Revolution as a mere distraction, diverting his beloved young people away from what should be their real concern as 1960s students—mutual love and devotion to art, which Bertolucci treats as antithetical to the regimental priorities of the Cultural Revolution. Bertolucci’s 2003 portrayal of the 1968 movement in France absolves these students from any real involvement with the now discredited Cultural Revolution.

But is it really so easy to separate the two? Nowadays it’s almost taken for granted that the Cultural Revolution was a destructive, terrifying event; and indeed it was. But it was not simply that. It also served as an inspiration for millions of young activists around the world. Its origins were ugly, but the myth that it created became an important part of the sense of possibility and change that ran through the global movements of the 1960s, movements that fundamentally changed our world.

It is certainly not my intention to offer an apology for the tragic events that occurred in China during those years. But I do believe it is worth remembering that the Cultural Revolution was an event that informed radical movements around the globe, in a period that had sea-changing ramifications in world history. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to think of it, not just as “good” or “bad,” but also as a great historical force that had a significant influence on how we live today.

Daoism and conservatism

Just a quick plug for Sam Crane’s succinct dissection of American conservatives’ tendency to compare themselves to Daoists:

It's true that some Daoist sensibilities have some resonance with certain conservative ideas. Less government: the Daodejing moves in that direction. Just letting people do their things: to the extent that libertarianism is a part of the incoherent mish-mash that is contemporary conservatism, sure that's kind of like a Daoist orientation. But here's the big problem for conservatives: Daoism is not, and cannot, operate as a political ideology.

In general, I’m usually suspicious of attempts to relate ancient Chinese thinking, or any kind of ancient thinking, to modern issues. Such attempts tend to be overly simplistic and ignore the complex, and completely pre-modern, cultural, intellectual, and historical milieu in which such thinking developed. A character such as ren 仁, for example, is usually translated as “benevolence,” “humanity,” or something along those lines, but the ways in which we understand those words have been shaped by numerous historical factors that didn’t exist in ancient China.