Bloomberg reporter William Pesek has a great column in BusinessTimes warning of the dangers of getting sucked into the euphoria over China’s booming economy. His comparison with the Internet bubble is perfect:

There’s no denying China’s potential – an economy growing by 8 per cent and powered by 1.3 billion people hungry for capitalism. Multinational companies are seeing dollar signs when looking at maps of China, and big ones at that. So are Asian governments as economies ship more and more goods there.

The emphasis in all of this has to be on the word ‘potential’. Though China could indeed be the biggest economic success story in modern history, much could go wrong with its move from socialism to capitalism, not least of which are tens of millions of job losses as the economy is opened. There’s no guarantee.

Investors should keep that in mind. So should US President George Bush, who this week meets Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Washington. While China is an important economy, its true influence is far more about tomorrow than today.

China is the economic equivalent of Internet companies during the late 1990s. Investors and corporate executives have no time to discuss the risks. Such a ‘China.com’ is run by geniuses and it’s all good. It’s Asia’s New Economy and anyone who doesn’t see that is a fool.

Do you remember when we were told by the analysts on CNBC that there was a “new economy,” an age of perpetual low inflation and near-zero unemployment, when stocks would always be high and kids in t-shirts would chart the couse as venture capitalists dumped staggering amounts of cash down the toilet?

Then think about China. There is a perception of a booming China that will provide the world’s engine of growth for generation after generation. It is unstoppable. It is a juggernaut. It’s The Next Big Thing. It’s the sure bet, just like eToys was.

It really is booming, at least relatively, but for now, so much is about the future. So much of it is investment money being spent by companies that want to be there when the floodgates open. And I really hope they do; I want the people there whom I love to succeed and be happy.

But when I see all of the businesses rushing in as though it’s a sure thing, when I see people speculating, people neglecting to do research into the fate of most foreign traders who’ve tried throughout history to tap The World’s Biggest Market — when I see the irrational exuberance, I can’t help but wonder about the foundation on which all these hopes are based. Just like the dot-coms.

We’re all smart people, we know what profits are and basic business plans. Yet a lot of us got sucked in. And a lot of us are getting sucked in again, failing to consider that China just might not be quite the miracle it appears.

I wrote about this topic on Living in China [note: I think the link may be dead – sorry] a few weeks ago and will soon do a follow-up. I want to believe otherwise, but this just may be a story of mass hypnosis on an almost unimaginable scale — just like the dot-coms. Like tulips in Amsterdam. We humans are certainly capable of falling for this sort of thing, and it almost inevitably disappoints us.

With his usual diplomatic tact, signature gentility and elegant diction, Conrad sweetly calls Wen Jiabao to task for his claims that Taiwan is “abusing democracy.”

As always, Conrad’s writing is instilled with a tender subtlety, a soft-spoken sense of caring, infinite patience and a scholar’s grasp of the Westerner’s need to look at China today within the context of its glorious 5,000-year history.

Oh, and it’s the funniest fucking thing I ever read.

I don’t necessarily agree with all he says (it is kind of extreme) but he sure makes his point.

This fascinating book review by the WaPo’s John Pomfret looks at the banned-in-China biography, Zhou Enlai’s Later Years, by Gao Wenqian, a former CCP researcher for more than a decade prior to emigrating to the US.

He depicts Zhou as a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who was so imbued with a Confucian sense of duty that he did almost everything Mao asked him — including signing the arrest orders for his own brother and a goddaughter.

The book challenges the view that Zhou tried his best to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution, portraying him instead as an eager participant in the ultra-leftist campaign during which hundreds of thousands of people were dispatched to the Chinese gulag.

“Party documents show that Zhou only protected people after first checking with Mao, his wife Jiang Qing, Mao’s no. 2 Lin Biao and others,” Gao wrote. “If Zhou sensed any opposition to protecting someone, he would drop his protection.”

Even though Zhou died 27 years ago, criticism of him is taboo in China because, officially, he never made a mistake. “In a society troubled with corruption and facing a moral vacuum, Zhou is the last good Communist,” said Gao. “This book takes him off his pedestal. I criticized what should never be criticized.”

I have to admit, for years even I got sucked into the myth of Zhou as the pearl among the swine, and I’m sad to see the destruction of the romanticized image of the kind-hearted friend of the people who subtly tried to influence Mao to be a bit less awful.

But reading about China’s history over the past year, I knew this was sugar coating; Zhou was an enthusiastic supporter of the Great Leap Forward, and while he may have saved the Forbidden City from destruction during the Cultural Revolution (another myth?), he was not divorced from all that was going on around him.

According to Pomfret, who obviously gives the book a good deal of credence, Gao shatters one myth after another:

Gao also challenges a long-held belief that it was Zhou who brought Deng back into the Chinese leadership in 1973. Deng later rose to become China’s paramount leader in the late 1970s, and held onto his position until his death in 1997. Deng’s official biographers have used what they have called his special relationship with Zhou as a way to bolster his prestige.

Gao wrote that Mao actually brought Deng back from official oblivion as part of a plot to ensure that Zhou did not become too powerful. Gao cites as proof Deng’s participation in several sessions organized by Mao to criticize Zhou.

“I wanted to write a book about a personality that had been distorted by the Communist system,” Gao said. “Zhou was such a man.”

I remember watching film clips of all the weeping Chinese people as Zhou Enlai’s funeral cortege passed by. It was as though a part of them had died with Zhou. They believed so deeply in him, that he was saintly, that he loved them and fought for them. Was it just one more of history’s cruel jokes? How sad.

Unfortunately, the book is currently available only in Chinese. I’ll be the first buyer when the English version is out.

This exhaustive article tracks Time’s 1996 Man of the Year Dr. David Ho as he fights to convince the Chinese government to acknowledge and respond to its festering AIDS crisis.

The article focuses on Ho’s efforts in Yunnan, where he’s initiating trials of an AIDS vaccine for those most likely to become infected, mainly injection drug users and sex workers. Every step of the way, Ho has to struggle with the government and the effects of its stigmatization of AIDS:

“They desperately want help,” he [Ho] says of the doctors he met in Wenlou. “They obviously have the data on AIDS patients but are afraid to show us.”

That fear is well founded. Adding to the stigma surrounding AIDS in these villages is the role that local leaders played in the blood-buying program. “Many government officials made a lot of money,” says the patient advocate who calls himself Ke’Er. To protect themselves, they wrapped their villages in the cloak of state secrecy, effectively sealing off AIDS patients from foreign aid groups as well as health officials from other provinces. AIDS-care centers still won’t put the word AIDS on their doors, opting instead for such intentionally obscure labels as “home garden.”

To their credit, the authors also note how helpful some of the health officials are being to Dr. Ho, as their alarm at the magnitude of the crisis grows.

The article includes the usual horror stories of China’s AIDS victims and their children (200,000 of whom are now parentless in Henan Province), and the maddening attempts to move officials to action. It also gives us reason to hope as it chronicles Dr. Ho’s successes in pushing the boulder up the mountain.

More than anything, the article is a tribute to Dr. Ho, whose patience, perseverance and dedication make him one of the greatest heroes of our time. How ironic, that he is forced to play a David-and-Goliath scenario when he is trying desperately to save Goliath from death and destruction.

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

I just read one of the strangest and most outspoken posts yet on the current debate about Taiwan and cultural “misunderstandings” and the Falun Gong now floating around our regional blogosphere. I mean, this is really strong stuff.

In regard to “Understanding China”:

What do you think is so special about your so-called culture (5000 years) that makes it impossible for a white-faced, big-nosed, hairy barbarian to understand? Plenty of foreigners understand China, you just mistake their complaints for misunderstandings. I think a lot of Chinese behaviour is stupid, racist, ignorant, and backward. I understand it, but I don’t like it. When I say the concept of face is dumb, and you say, “You just don’t understand Chinese culture,” you’re actually saying that you don’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. I didn’t say, “I don’t understand this interesting, ancient, exotic, inscrutible concept of face, could you please educate me?” The underlying assumption seems to be that if the rest of the world could just understand China, we would all see that they’ve been right all along. Like green tea against cancer, an understanding of China could break down all barriers to world peace.

Can you tell us how you really feel, Brad?

I don’t agree by any means with all that Brad says, especially how it is impossible to change anyone’s mind on anything related to China. (Hell, my own mind got changed, and fairly quickly, after witnessing the CCP’s sins during the SARS debacle.) But he has an excellent point when it comes to those who would argue the onus is always on the Westerner to “understand” the Chinese, and that the Chinese are absolved of any responsibility to meet us half-way, let alone to understand us.

So I repeat, I don’t agree with all that Brad says. But I’m glad I read it. He definitely got me thinking, and from a purely stylistic perspective, I am impressed.

I had such a great time in China last week. Too bad news like this forces me to remember there is still trouble in paradise:

CHINESE Internet dissident Yan Jun, 32, has been sentenced to two years in prison on a subversion charge for posting essays online calling for change, including a free press and free expression, his family said today.

The Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him this morning on a charge of “inciting subversion”, his mother Dai Yuzhen told AFP.

“The court took no more 20 minutes,” Dai said by telephone from Xi’an in Shaanxi province.

Family members and Yan could not understand the court’s decision, Dai said.

“I can’t accept this verdict. Just because he wrote a few essays, he’s going to jail? I can’t make sense of it,” Dai said.

What a shame. Such a robust country, such an ambitious people, still reigned in by good old-fashioned totalitarian terror.

UPDATE: The families of four cyber-dissidents sentenced to unbelievably harsh sentences have now appealed to Laura Bush for help. This is another must-read for those who think things are getting better in terms of self-expression. These guys range from 28 to 32, and their prison sentences range from 8 to 10 years. Those are very, very long sentences.

Rushed post: Reporters without Borders (RSF) is taking a much more pro-active stance against the Western firms behind the Great Firewall of China. Especially Cisco.

The RSF sent letters to the CEOs of Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Thomson, Nortel, HP, Logitech, Oracle, NEC, Samsung, Sun, IBM, Yahoo!, and Alcatel. The letters expressed the fact that the government of China has continued to crack down on Internet users it considers to be political dissidents, and that these companies have aided the Chinese Communist Party in that endeavor. Specifically, the group mentioned that Cisco Systems supplies the government with special online spying systems, and Yahoo!, in 2002, agreed to assist in the filtering and censoring of Internet content via its search and portal services in exchange for more access to Chinese markets

It’s great that they are doing this, though how much difference it makes remains to be seen.

This is a bit of a bombshell and perhaps the harshest and most pointed criticism I have ever seen of China in the mainstream media.

Robert L. Bernstein, founding chairman of Human Rights Watch and former chairman of Random House, is speaking today to the World Press Freedom Committee, and the Washington Post has published the speech in advance.

Bernstein assails the media for continuously sugar-coating news about China, turning the “China is changing” line into a cliche, and failing to report the rising number of Chinese citizens killed by the police.

This guy holds no punches.

China, the last big totalitarian government, is brutalizing its own people. It limits and distorts information, keeping them ignorant on many critical subjects, and gives harsh prison terms to those who publish information the government would rather have suppressed.

[….]

Xu Wenli has been out of prison since Dec. 23, 2002. He served 16 years, four of them in solitary confinement, for writing down his thoughts on the need for a more open China. News of these types of convictions and harsh sentences reach Human Rights in China every week. The press and the public need to be reminded that there are many others still in prison for the peaceful expression of their views. Human Rights in China has provided information on well over 2,000 cases — people currently imprisoned for their ideas or beliefs.

And here’s a subject that the press simply has not covered, despite reliable information that is available: Outside every major Chinese city is a virtual “slave” camp. About 2 million to 3 million Chinese citizens live in some 800 of these so-called custody and repatriation camps. Can you imagine a story like this going unreported if such a camp existed outside a major Western city? People are put there for not having proper residence permits, and they are worked hard from early morning until nighttime.

I have taken Human Rights in China’s report on these camps to top editors of numerous publications with no results. Many reporters say they can’t do the story because they can’t get into the camps. But now is the time to insist on access.

I remember how at lunch one day my colleague in Beijing told me about the slave labor camps, and I found it impossible to believe since I never saw it in writing. Now I believe it.

Bernstein compares the media silence in China to a similar phenomenon in Iraq under Saddam, and says that in both cases there is no excuse, that it goes smack against what journalism is supposed to do.

Just about every word Bernstein say is worth citing, in bold, but for economy’s sake here are two more money quotes:

My experience as co-chair of the organization known as Human Rights in China has taught me that the international press in Beijing also has been “managed.” Tyrants throughout history have understood that information is power, and denying information to its own people or disseminating propaganda to the rest of the world have been China’s trademarks for years.

[…]

It has become almost a cliche to talk about the fact that China is changing rapidly, and therefore doesn’t require the kind of pressure that was needed with the Soviet Union. But to the thousands who are locked up in prisons and in mental institutions for their beliefs, that is cold comfort.

Sounds like me talking.

[Updated, 18.50 Singapore time]

Another Update: Conrad chimes in as well, and you think I’m outspoken…. (And I should have patented the phrase “Evil Empire,” which he shamelessly lifts from an earlier post of mine.)

A commenter pointed me to an article by Xiang Dong, senior producer with BBC World Service. It’s an important story because right now it seems to many that China has finally wised up about AIDS and is being open and responsible on the issue. But is it true?

I had hoped that China had learned some lessons after the outbreak of Sars, but reporting on or talking about HIV and Aids in China remains both difficult and dangerous. The situation is still very sensitive and journalists – whether foreign or local – asking questions are routinely prevented from reaching the areas where people are dying.

Even the outspoken Aids activist Dr Gao Yaojie was concerned. When I telephoned her in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, where hundreds of thousands of people contracted HIV through selling their blood, she told me that her telephone was bugged and that she was being watched to try to stop her revealing the true picture of the HIV/Aids epidemic. I know that many other journalists have been harassed, detained and even expelled from the province.

So much for the new transparency on AIDS.

The article focuses on Xiang’s attempt to interview AIDS victims in a village in Henan province. The level of government harassment against any “outsider” who tries to reach these people is intense, and the locals who assist them are arrested. But the saddest part of the story is how the victims are still treated as second-class citizens, and how any attempt to improve their lives is challenged by local officials:

The following evening we began the 11-hour train journey to Henan. On board, my guide introduced me to two other volunteers and explained that he was setting up an orphanage for children whose parents had died from Aids. He told me of the difficulties he faces in dealing with the local authorities. Local schools won’t accept any of the children so he has been forced to set up the orphanage in a local mosque.

In the wake of World AIDS Day and all the noise China has made regarding its new openness on AIDS, it’s time to see the hype translated into action. Most of the efforts to stop AIDS must ocur at the local level. If this example is systemic, then we’re still pretty close to square one.

Related post: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

Hailey Xie has a great post on World AIDS day and what it meant for her. It begins:

I have a red silk ribbon. I carefully put it at the place where I could see it every day. It’s red. It’s made from silk, and it’s a ribbon. But it’s RED SILK RIBBON, which stands for love, stands for our genuine love to all the unfortunate AIDS victims and HIV carriers, stands for our passion to bring fairness to them, stands for our hearts, stands for the determination that we are going to conquer the war against AIDS.

Read the whole thing; it will give you some hope.