I won’t go so far as some commenters have as to call Philip Cunningham a paid CCP shill. But I do have to wonder. The very first time I saw him on CCTV-9 some 2 1/2 years ago I was struck both by his obvious intelligence and the more obvious chip he harbors on his shoulder against the US. He always seems determined to demonstrate that no matter how bad some say the CCP is, the US government is as bad or worse. Tragically, Bush has given Cunningham plenty of grist for the America-bashing mill, and many of the points he makes about Bush can’t be argued (well, they can, but not successfully). But there’s more to America than George W. Bush, who is merely a pimple, an aberration on the face of US history.

His latest piece, an “open letter” to Hu Jintao, is literally loaded with snark and brazen anti-Americanism. I visualized Cunningham experiencing multiple orgasms as he wrote his cunning little screed, which is filled with a child-like glee. Now, I too am quick to point out Bush’s foibles, hypocrisies and sheer idiocies. But Cunningham’s letter is a bit more insidious, actually bearing the message that there’s no difference between the atrocities of the CCP and those of the US government. That’s where I draw a fairly thick line. I despise our president while continuing to love my country, no matter how difficult Bush tries to make it. I fear that Cunningham, deep inside, really does hate America and has fooled himself into believing China is a better place. Bush has damaged America and made me feel at times embarrassed to be an American, but the little Texas guttersnipe can’t erase America’s greatness or neutralize the incredible opportunities this great country offers. And Cunningham should know this (and, I strongly suspect, he does.)

Read the letter and see what I mean by snark and cynicism and America-hating. (And if you can’t access it in China, please let me know and I’ll post the whole thing.)

Oh, and Philip, there is no such word as “irregardless,” and to use it in a printed article reveals a certain intellectual uncouthness. (Sorry, couldn’t resist the snark.)

From Martyn….

Here in China, it’s been almost impossible to escape the recent run up to the 60th anniversary of China’s victory in the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” during World War II. 60 days of commemorative events culminated, last weekend, in an extravaganza of mass rallies and spectacular events in Beijing. The run up to the anniversary provoked a government-sanctioned media frenzy, including television documentaries and newspaper articles galore detailing the experiences of Chinese heroes of the Anti-Japanese Struggle. Even the most progressive of Chinese newspapers, the Southern Metropolitan News, changed its usual format and printed a special anniversary edition commemorating the defeat of Japan, as the Asia Times Online reports:

Even in the remotest of China’s provinces, TV channels have been jam packed with documentaries, dramas and other programming focusing on what is frequently described as “the most brutal war in human history” and semi-officially referred to as the “World Anti-Fascist War”.

Even casual viewers could not escape being moved by highly emotive programming largely consisting of graphic documentaries and gripping war-related drama series. The tear-jerking testimony of elderly women who as young innocent girls were forced to serve as Japanese sex slaves and the depiction of Chinese suffering and humiliation during the occupation have strengthened the already strong sense of national resentment about Tokyo’s wartime actions and the need for genuine remorse.

China has been producing wartime dramas and documentaries for decades, but this year has released a far greater volume. Several of the TV dramas have masterfully captured the almost unimaginable degree of human misery Japanese troops inflicted on ordinary Chinese people. After watching such gut-wrenching productions it is hard not to come to the conclusion that even today Japan is honor-bound to show the deepest remorse for its past actions as a prerequisite for good relations with the Middle Kingdom.

Saturation Chinese media coverage of the 60th anniversary along with a host of regional events and national ceremonies have ensured that the full tragedy of the historic milestone has been vividly imprinted on the Chinese national consciousness. Awareness of the terrible acts committed by Japan during its brutal occupation has probably never been greater, creating a potentially volatile atmosphere for bilateral ties. The significantly heightened level of anti-Japanese sentiment makes it imperative for Japanese leaders to tread carefully, something Koizumi seems reluctant to do.

However, despite a recent Japanese opinion poll in which showed that a majority of Japanese people disapprove of the visits, Prime Minister Koizumi further renewed speculation that he will continue to visit the controversial Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. Needless to say, the announcement immediately sparked outrage, particularly in China and South Korea. Commentators have already predicted that Koizumi’s expected landslide victory in this Sunday’s general election and expected visits to the shrine will plunge relations between Asia’s two largest powers to new lows:

Chinese anger about what is perceived to be the Japanese leadership’s lack of genuine remorse over Tokyo’s wartime invasion was one of the main driving forces behind a series of ugly anti-Japanese protests that swept China in April.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have both personally told Koizumi not to go to Yasukuni during the sensitive 60th anniversary year, a request he has so far observed. However, at the weekend, buoyed by polls that suggest he will win the Lower House election, Koizumi strongly hinted that he would probably visit the shrine this year, risking a fierce Chinese backlash.

Since he has visited the shrine every year since taking office in April 2001, his comments seemed to imply he intends to visit the shrine again this year if reelected. Such a pilgrimage would set him on a collision course with the Chinese leadership, deeply anger ordinary Chinese citizens and probably lead to another series of anti-Japanese demonstrations.

Koizumi also said during weekend TV appearances that it was inappropriate for foreign powers to try to influence his personal decision to pay tribute to the Japanese war dead at Yasukuni.

From Martyn…
This article, from a staff writer at The Christian Science Monitor, does an excellent job, in my opinion, of describing the general feelings of the average Chinese citizen towards the US. Put simply, an extremely complex love-hate relationship with the US that is sometimes so full of glaring contradictions as to render it almost incomprehensible to many non-Mainlanders:

As President Hu Jintao represents a country whose popular understanding of America has become more diverse, yet whose negative impression of the US as a “bully” and “rival” continues to deepen, particularly among young people.

The US is seen by urban Chinese through a complex love-hate relationship, and through a lens shaped both by official propaganda and a greater number of personal impressions. In recent years, views on the US have intensified as many Chinese feel more pride about the rise of their nation, say experts and ordinary people.

Many Chinese still feel a century-old sense that America is young and flexible, a “sunshine society,” a place of wealth and generosity where laws are made to protect people, as one Beijing scholar here puts it. At the same time, more Chinese describe the US as trying to keep China poor, say it is trying to block China’s rise as a world power since the US is weakening, and argue that the US media is more critical of China and Chinese leaders than it is to its own society and leaders.

“Most Americans are very kind,” says Luo, a philosophy student whose comments were typical. “But now [after 9/11], the Americans don’t care about the rest of the world, what is happening in other places, except when it concerns their own lives.”

“What I hear is, ‘I want my kids to go to school in the US, I want to go there on vacation,’ ” says a Western diplomat. “But at the same time [Chinese say] America is acting like China’s enemy.”

For college student Li Zhao, America is the California coast that actor Dustin Hoffman drives in “The Graduate,” her favorite US film. For engineer Wang Yue, it is a grinning, gun-toting soldier wearing desert camouflage. For Yi, the US is a picket-fence neighborhood with lots of dogs, where “everyone says hello in the morning.”

Chinese attitudes towards America have definitely progressed over the last decade as China has developed economically and raised its status and importance in world affairs. In addition, the view of the US as a the “world bully” responsible for “trying to keep China down” has, arguably, received active government support:

Current popular anti-American sentiments are almost a complete reverse of feelings in the 1980s, scholars say, when US-China relations were warming. “We thought the US was our future,” says one.

This friendly sense peaked after the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, when, in the words of one European diplomat, “The general sense of the Chinese people was that the US government was more a friend to them than their own government was.” Chinese leaders were so concerned about this sentiment that an aggressive propaganda policy was pursued to reverse it.

Increasing hostility towards the US has been largely fuelled by recent events such as the bombing of China’s Belgrade Embassy bombing, the US spy plane incident; the Iraq War, the increasingly close relationship with Japan and the continued support of Taiwan and the Taiwan Relations Act.

“Anti-Americanism is building, and getting bigger,” says a graduate student who did not give his name. “This feeling used to be due to propaganda. But now so many Chinese feel it, that no propaganda is needed.”

Perhaps propaganda is not needed. But it is not as if Chinese have a choice. State-run media in China is an arm of the central propaganda department, and no paper dares to run material on US-China relations that is unapproved.

The Chinese “unofficial” position is constantly mixed with the view that America is constantly undermining China. An American college student in Beijing recently read a Chinese textbook stating that Martin Luther King Jr. never had the sympathy or help of white Americans, and that blacks in the south are hated by whites. “It wasn’t even entirely true in the 1950s civil rights movement period,” commented the student, who hails from Atlanta, Ga.

From Martyn…

Only about one-third of China’s economy still remains under government ownership through state-owned enterprises (SOEs), largely concentrated in the strategic defence industry and utilities sector. However, according to the Economist Magazine, the world faces a new danger: the aggressive international expansion of China’s corporations:

The real scaremongers assert that the Chinese state is a single—and single-minded—entity with a master plan to reclaim China’s rightful place at the centre of the world. China’s companies are thus mere tools of an expansionist policy propagated by Beijing’s leadership. More subtle are the fears that, because it is impossible to untangle the ownership of most Chinese companies, foreigners cannot be sure to whom they are selling. When the ultimate authority could be the Communist state, that is a worry.

The Chinese government certainly wants to create globally competitive firms and it is pushing some to secure strategic resources, like oil and metals, overseas. The Chinese state also still has a broad influence over business. But the chaotic way this power is exercised contributes to the weakness, not the strength, of Chinese firms. “It is not a plausible argument that China Inc can take a co-ordinated Long March overseas,” argues George Gilboy, a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It can’t even manage that domestically.”

The article cites the Infighting between the disparate and competing parts of the Chinese government bureaucracy, evident in the death of US aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas after the company ‘backed the wrong government horse’ in the 90s. It also mentions how, in the energy industry, some foreign investors have recently quit in disgust, causing unnecessary power shortages. Also in the media sector, where long-promised joint-ventures have been suddenly and arbitrarily scrapped by the government.
Friction between Chinese central and local government officials is as old as China itself. During the last couple of decades of reform for example, Guangdong Province was notorious for going ahead with economic initiatives long before receiving official approval from Beijing.

Unhappily, the resulting chaos is also hurting the most promising two-thirds of the economy that is in private hands. Private companies are often beholden to state banks for capital and to local officials for favours and contracts. Since private enterprise was not even acknowledged until 1988, entrepreneurs had to bring state investors aboard as political protection, becoming so-called “red-hat” companies. Yasheng Huang, a professor at MIT, says that the results can be disastrous: “Government shareholders may be passive at first, but once a company succeeds, they interfere. Countless Chinese firms have been driven to bankruptcy or failed to grow big because local governments decided to exercise their legal claims on ownership.”

Now, worryingly, something similar may threaten Haier, China’s leading white-goods maker, which recently failed with a bid for Maytag, an American rival. Admired globally for its efficiency and innovation, Qingdao-based Haier is the creation of Zhang Ruimin, China’s most famous entrepreneur, who transformed a company so demotivated that its workers used to urinate on the factory floor. Yet Mr Zhang has just lost a long fight to reward his managers with shares via a Hong Kong listing. Late last year SASAC ruled that Haier was owned by the Qingdao government and that management buy-outs at big SOEs were forbidden.

The article concludes on a dire note:

Fears that Chinese firms are acting as the commercial arm of an expansionist state are thus belied by a more complicated and disorderly reality. The real reason to fear China’s overseas expansion is quite different. Because Chinese firms have grown up in an irrational and chaotic business environment, they may export some very bad habits. As Mr Gilboy puts it: “when Japanese companies took over American ones, they mostly made them better. If the Chinese run foreign firms like they operate at home, driving prices down, misallocating capital and over-diversifying, that is genuinely something to fear.”

One difference between Japanese companies in the 80s and Chinese companies now is that Japanese companies tended to buy, for example, US assets and hire Americans to manage them – while watching and learning from them. To date, Chinese companies have not, apart from exceptions like Lenovo, followed the same pattern and, perhaps arrogantly, have shown little interest in appointing or listening to local managers. The recent scandal in Singapore involving China Aviation Oil, where Mainland Chinese managers lost more than US$550 million on derivatives trading, is a good example.

From Martyn

Further to an earlier post on this site regarding the possible rehabilitation of Hu Ya0bang, today’s unlinkable South China Morning Post reports that the Chinese authorities plan to spend over 40 million yuan to commemorate the 90th birthday of the late reformist in his hometown in Hunan Province. Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po (pro-Beijing newspaper) also reports that CCTV will even televise the 20th November celebrations live:

The expansive activities in the remote village of Cangfeng in Hunan province will be held alongside an unusual ceremony at the Great Hall of the People on November 20, seen as a move by The money would go on repairs to Hu Yaobang’s childhood home in Cangfang as well as building an exhibition hall, a 3,000 square metre plaza and a road connecting the village with the city of Liuyang , relatives said. Villagers in Cangfang were eagerly preparing for the commemorative activities, after 16 years of silence since Hu Yaobang passed away on April 15, 1989.

Hu Dezi , Hu’s nephew and director of the Hu memorial home, confirmed yesterday that the central and Hunan provincial governments had together provided more than 40 million yuan for the project. He said that with builders working around the clock, the exhibition hall, designed by architects from Tsinghua University, was expected to open on November 20. “I still insist that my uncle did not make any mistakes. I stress that the 90th anniversary of his birth is not a ceremony about redress, but a celebration of rehabilitation.”

Earlier reports this week from Reuters said that President Hu Jintao had decided the government would officially mark the 90th anniversary of Hu Yaobang’s birth on November 20 in Beijing.

However, the government has also made clear the official verdict that the TS protest was carried out by c0unter-rev0lutionaries will not be changed.

And open thread for those who labor…or labour…and yeah, I know it’s May 1st in the rest of the world. But I thought I’d share the holiday joy…

From Martyn…

Premier Wen Jiabao was responsible for the best headline of the day on Monday with “China’s Wen says moving toward dem0cracy” from Reuters:

China, where the Communist Party has enjoyed a monopoly on power since 1949, is moving surely toward dem0cracy, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Monday.

“China will press ahead with its development of dem0cratic politics, that is reconstruction, in an unswerving way, including direct elections,” Wen told a news conference ahead of an EU-China summit.

“If the Chinese people can manage a village, I believe in several years they can manage a township. That would be an evolving system.”

China has introduced direct elections for village chiefs in more than 660,000 villages, and many of those elected are not party members. But it has dragged its feet on expanding suffrage for the election of officials at higher levels.

Wen has in the past defended the delay, saying China is a vast, populous, underdeveloped country and levels of education are inadequate.

Beijing’s limited experience with dem0cracy, observing its effects in the former British colony of Hong Kong, leaves it far from convinced that the system is effective.

The Communist Party fears that if it were to allow full, direct elections in Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, dem0cratic winds would blow toward the mainland and one day the people would vote it out of power, analysts say.

Whenever I read about Chinese officials talking about how China is a “vast, populous and underdeveloped country” and therefore not ready for more political representation (I honestly don’t think that full dem0cracy is realistic) I always think about how the CCP managed to register everyone into a Hukou (household registration) system decades ago and establish a solid method of bureaucratic control over a largely agricultural society.

As many Chinese people have told me before, with the system of literally millions of village and neighbourhood committees established throughout the country, China never needed the Soviet equivalent of the KGB to control the population. Therefore, you’d think that the bureaucracy involved with the representation of townships wouldn’t be out of the government’s grasp.

Nevertheless, despite the excuses, it’s not that the people aren’t ready for local political representation, it’s that the government isn’t ready to allow it.

UPDATE: As Blair leads the EU-China summit in Beijing, the infamous UK tabloid newspaper The Sun has also picked up on Wen’s above d3m0cr@cy speech. Imagethief covers this entertaining report in detail, complete with his own write-up and links.

From Martyn…

Late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s famous comment “There are no trivial matters in foreign diplomacy,” has proved accurate this week following President George W. Bush’s decision to postpone President Hu Jintao’s visit to America in light of Hurricane Katrina. It has also caused a great deal of speculation with regard to other possible reasons behind the postponement as well as bringing to the surface all sorts of wider diplomatic issues.

We have the simple ‘inappropriate during Katrina’s aftermath’ version, from the unlinkable South China Morning Post:

Yu Wanli, of the American Foreign Relations Study Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said yesterday it would be inappropriate for Mr Hu to make a state visit while the US was recovering from the disaster.

“As a guest, it would just not be good timing for President Hu to visit when President [George W.] Bush and his team were busy coping with the aftermath,” Mr Yu said.

Mr Yu pointed out that given the extensive preparations required on both sides to arrange such a visit, the schedule would be changed only in special circumstances. “But [Katrina] is like September 11,” he said, referring to the terrorist attacks in the US four years ago.

We also have the alternative version concluding that it is a worrying sign of discord between Beijing and Washington:

The postponement of the visit and helped mainland authorities save face. “While Hu Jintao was about to visit the United States, the two sides had different opinions over whether his trip was a state visit (America didn’t want it called a state visit, China did). So the postponement actually gives them more time to resolve their differences,” said Professor Chen, of the university’s Institute of American Studies.

However, Hong Kong-based political commentator Johnny Lau Yui-sui was skeptical the meeting was cancelled because of the hurricane.

“[Under the original plan], President Bush was to spend just half a day with Mr Hu. [I don’t see] how that would have affected Mr Bush’s relief and reconstruction schedule,” he said.

Mr Lau suggested Beijing had used Katrina as an excuse to cancel the meeting because officials were unable to resolve their differences over issues ranging from the status of the visit to China’s trade disputes with the US. He said Mr Hu may have wanted to use the added time to pressure the US and win more concessions.

“Hu’s personality is different from his predecessor, Jiang Zemin ,” he said. “Hu would rather wait than give in [to US demands], but Jiang would just do whatever he could to please the US.”

As President Bush grapples with the aftermath of Katrina, the White House has promised that both leaders will meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly later this month in New York.

However, it’s clear that that both sides have lost an opportunity to talk about difficult bilateral issues such as the Yuan, trade disputes, energy, China’s military build up, hum@n rights and Taiwan. Some mainland analysts have even gone as far as to say that the cancellation is a sign that Washington does not rank its ties with Beijing as importantly as it should.

Perhaps as a sign that the visit would not go down well among Americans at a time of increased tensions with China, Washington purposely played down Mr. Hu’s visit by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge it as a formal state visit. However, Beijing demanded full honours with all of the ceremonial trappings. The last-minute compromise involved a 21-gun salute for Mr. Hu and a welcome on the White House south lawn but no formal banquet.

The contracts prepared by Beijing, rumoured to be worth over US$15 billion, to buy US goods (including dozens of Boeing planes) will now be put on hold just as the politically-sensitive China-US trade deficit continues at a whopping 32% higher than last years already record-breaking figure.

Unfortunately, earlier predictions that Mr. Hu’s visit would bring bilateral ties to a new level have now been replaced with concern that China-US relations are becoming cooler than ever.

from Other Lisa, cross-posted at the paper tiger…

Supergirl!
Originally uploaded by Other Lisa.

It’s Supergirl! Or, more accurately, it’s “The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest.” Jim Yardley of the NYT asks if this knock-off of American Idol presages greater dem0cr@cy in China’s future:

The enormous public fascination with the independently produced show has stimulated a nationwide online discussion on issues ranging from dem0cr@cy to standards of beauty to whether Li is a lesbian. In a country where it is illegal to organize many types of public meetings, fans formed booster clubs and canvassed malls to court prospective voters. There were even accusations of voter fraud, as rabid fans circumvented the rule limiting each person to 15 votes.

“It’s like a gigantic game that has swept so many people into a euphoria of voting, which is a testament to a society opening up,” a social commentator, Zhu Dake, told state media.

No one is saying that the frenzy surrounding the show represents a threat to the ruling Communist Party or foreshadows the emergence of meaningful elective politics in China. But the degree to which the show resonated with people seems to have unsettled the government’s propaganda leaders. There is already speculation it will be canceled next year.

Not only that, the winner, Li Yuchun, stands in marked contrast to the typical “model worker models” usually seen on CCTV:

Tall and gangly, with a thatch of frizzy hair, the adjectives most used to describe her in the media were “boyish” or “androgynous.” Some commentators speculated that her fan base consisted of young girls who considered her to be their “boyfriend” because of her appearance.

Some speculate that the show also resonated with viewers because the contestants were recruited from the provinces, as opposed to the big city types more typically found on network TV.

Wow. Candidates representative of the people. Individualism over prefab beauty. Who’d have thought that would catch on?

UPDATE Laowai points out that “American Idol” is itself a rip-off of Britain’s “Pop Idol.” Of course, he’s right…I and Jim Yardley stand corrected.

From Martyn…

Reuters claim that two independent anonymous sources in Beijing confirm that Hu Ya0b@ng, the ex-Communist Party chief whose death sparked the 1989 TS protests, is to be officially rehabilitated by the Chinese leadership. The party may have been emboldened by the low-key death of Zh@o Z1yang earlier in January and its failure to spark off even the merest semblance of anti-government protests:

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has decided to rehabilitate a predecessor, whose death sparked the 1989 TS protests, two well-placed independent sources said, a move that may burnish Hu’s dented reformist credentials.

The Chinese government has not publicly commemorated the birth or death of Hu Ya0bang since he died on April 15, 1989, lest publicity reignite the democratic spark snuffed out on J*ne 4 that year when the army crushed the student-led dem0nstrations. State media rarely mention his name.
Hu Jintao decided recently that the party would officially mark the 90th anniversary of Hu Ya0bang’s birth on November 20 at the Great Hall of the People, said a source close to the family and a second source with knowledge of the commemorations.

But the party would not overturn its verdict that the TS protests were “c0unter-rev0lutionary”, or subversive, said the sources who requested anonymity.

One of the sources reports that that some of the current Politburo Standing Committee will attend the commemoration and that Hu Jintao wishes to play the Hu Ya0bang card to inherit his political resources and work on improving his ‘reformer’ image after a number of crackdowns on liberal intellectuals, the media, the Internet and non-governmental organisations and further restrictions on basic freedoms.

Hu Ya0bang resigned as party chief in 1987 over a wave of student unrest after party hardliners had accused him of allowing “bourgeois liberalism” — Western values — to spread unchecked. But he retained his seat in the party’s elite Politburo.
Hu Ya0bang was popular among ordinary Chinese for rehabilitating millions, including landlords, rich farmers and intellectuals purged during the 1957 Ant1-R1ghtist Movement. He gave victims of the chaotic 1966-76 Cu1tural Revo1ution their lives back and reopened schools suspended for a decade.
A diminutive man with the common touch, he liked to shock — once proposing that the Chinese stop using chopsticks and adopt knives and forks instead.

All during the 90s commentators speculated that Zha0 Z1yang’s eventual death under house arrest could well spark new anti-government protests and social unrest. However, his, albeit low-key and very under-reported, death in January produced hardly even a glimmer of interest from the general population. It clearly highlighted how much Chinese society had changed from the late 80s. Indeed, the possible rehabilitation of Hu Ya0bang also serves as a reminder of the confidence of the CCP in the face of a truly apolitical populace and also highlights how successful the communist party has been in crushing all opposition within China.