The last emperor

I was still getting used to being in a new country when I watched The Last Emperor.  The couple of Chinese graduate students that I talked to did not want to discuss the movie with me.  I had lots of questions, because a good chunk of the finer details of the movie was all new to me.  But, they didn't want to entertain me and my questions.

Now, China is on the verge of a new emperor. Xi Jinping.

Source

Francis Fukuyama is concerned about the return of China's "bad emperor" problems:

The last bad emperor that China had was Mao Zedong. Mao liberated the country from foreign occupation but then went on to trigger two enormous catastrophes: the Great Leap Forward starting in the late 1950s and the Cultural Revolution starting in the late 1960s. The latter set China back a generation and scarred the elites who endured it. Collective leadership emerged as a direct reaction to that experience: Deng Xiaoping and other senior leaders of the party vowed that they would never let a single individual accumulate as much charismatic power as Mao.

Xi is well on his way to becoming the next Mao.

Did the West see this coming? 

As usual, the pundits in the “West” misplaced their bets on China, writes Pankaj Mishra:

Let there be no doubt: The world was a dangerous place long before Xi became China’s supreme leader and Donald Trump started to boast of winning trade wars. Its perils weren’t recognized because of the ideological intoxication and historical amnesia induced by the collapse of Soviet and East European regimes -- the blind faith that history had no choice but to move inexorably towards a terminus of Western-style capitalism and democracy. Xi’s power grab is simply another reminder that it’s time to put away such childish fancies and to reckon with the world as it is.

Thankfully, we in the US have the 22nd amendment to the Constitution that will protect us from emperor trump!

One bastard versus another bastard!

When Bret Stephens wrote his first column for the NY Times, there were protests online.  A few wrote about canceling their subscriptions altogether.  If you need a refresher about that episode, click here to read his first column.

Today, he showed yet again that he knows how to pick and choose in order to advance his argument.  First, what was his column about?  To some extent, Stephens has a legitimate point, like with this one:

Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?

I have written about this, too.  (What have I not blogged about, eh!)  In this post, for instance, I wrote:

Che's use of violence to achieve his version of utopia is no different from how Osama bin Laden didn't find anything wrong in killing civilians. Yet, while no rational person would walk around wearing an Osama t-shirt, thousands all across the world, including here in the US, think it is cool to wear a Che t-shirt. ...
I wish the world would stop applauding Che and making a saint out of this killer and, instead, remember him for what he was

Che was a secular jihadist.

And when Fidel Castro died, the title of my post says it all: Ding dong. The dictator is dead!

So, yes, I agree with Stephens that we should denounce Lenin and Mao and Castro, with as much loudness as we demand the removal of confederate monuments.

But then, Stephens resorts to quoting the big time empire-building white supremacist bastard, winston churchill.

Oh please, churchill was not all that better than Castro.  churchill was the guy who intentionally let millions of people in Bengal die.  churchill was a passionate defender of the British right to rule over the brown-skinned even when there were plenty around him who were increasingly uncomfortable with the brutal colonization.  churchill's rhetoric was all about saving the white skin; the browns be damned!  He openly said things like this:

I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.

As Shashi Tharoor says, churchill has as much blood on his hand as hitler does.  I wish people would stop making a saint out of churchill.  Fuck churchill!

Let's not cherry pick our way through; instead, let's be honest and admit that evil comes in all flavors--not merely the communist type.

The murderous insanity that began fifty years ago

I lucked out with having the radio on when this program was aired.  It was a re-broadcast of a two-decades old interview with the Chinese activist Harry Wu. He died recently at age 79.  I listened to it.  I started tearing up.  Do not read the transcript there--listen to the interview and you, too, will get emotional.

The interview ends with Wu saying this:

My parents, my brother, they are still over there and many, many of my inmates, my friends they are over there. I cannot stop thinking about them. The nightmares always come back to me. I am lucky. I survive. I want to enjoy my life in a peaceful land. I'm a very normal person. I want to be loved. I want to love. But I cannot turn back on these people, these nameless, voiceless, faceless people. Forget means betraying. I cannot do that.

Chairman Mao was one of the worst humans ever in recent memory.  He killed his own people by the millions.  He starved to death tens of millions.  And crushed the spirits of many who lived. 

Fifty years ago, on May 16, Mao Zedong unleashed an attack aimed at smashing his own Communist Party apparatus from top to bottom, having concluded that it was going capitalist. “Bombard the headquarters!” he urged the masses in a famous People’s Daily article. Millions of young zealots responded, becoming Mao’s Red Guards, his fanatical foot-soldiers. Thus began China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a period of murderous insanity that ended only with Mao’s death a decade later, in 1976. 

One of Mao's crazy plans was to "rusticate" the Chinese youth.  The "cultural revolution" features in this essay, whose author, Sheng Yun, is the only child of parents who were sent to the countryside:

Once at a family dinner, my parents were reminiscing about their time among the farmers: six or seven years in my mother’s case, around two in my father’s. I had just read The Lost Generation: The Rustication of China’s Educated Youth (1968-80) by Michel Bonnin. I interrupted: ‘You were sent to the countryside because there were too many of you in the city, and there weren’t enough jobs for you.’ I still remember the expression of shock, disappointment and hurt on their faces.

How do people not get angry at such things?  Am I the only person walking around with a great deal of corked-up anger?  Why don't people yell and scream "fuck you" at Mao's giant portrait at Tianamen Square?  Oh, yeah, that's right--they can't!

The author narrates a part of the family history:

My maternal grandfather was a literary critic and actor. In the 1930s and 1940s he went underground as a member of the Communist Party, writing in support of the cause. He had seen the corruption of the Kuomintang regime, and believed that Mao was the saviour of the Chinese people. In 1954, the famous poet Hu Feng wrote a 300,000-word letter to the Bureau of the Central Committee, describing the difficulties writers faced. Mao saw this as defiance on the part of the intellectuals, and a literary argument rapidly turned into a political purge. More than two thousand people were punished, 78 of whom were described as members of the Hu Feng Counter-Revolution Group, including my grandfather. He was sent to Jia Bian Gou (the labour camp in Wang Bing’s 2010 film, The Ditch), located in the remote province of Gansu. Jia Bian Gou, sometimes called the Chinese Gulag, was probably the worst of the labour camps for dissidents. While he was not close to Hu Feng, and had only met him a few times, he had remained an admirer. 

After 25 years in the Chinese Gulag, the grandfather returned home.  

His mother opened the door to a hump-backed, pigeon-chested old man whom she failed for a moment to recognise as the handsome young man she’d last seen in the 1950s.

Seriously, how come people aren't angrily shouting "fuck you" and defacing Mao's portrait?  Oh, yeah, that's right--they can't!  Especially when the current leader embraces Mao's radical legacy:

China’s current leader, Mr. Xi, will not stand to see Mao denigrated, even though his own father, Xi Zhongxun, one of Mao’s top lieutenants, was purged in the Cultural Revolution and a half-sister killed herself. Mr. Xi himself was one of 18 million urban youths banished to the countryside to learn from the peasants.
He has declared that it is just as unacceptable to negate Mao’s 30 years in power as it is to speak critically of the 30 years that followed under Deng. He has set side-by-side, on equal footing, a period marked by spasms of mass killing and destruction and an overwhelmingly peaceful era that saw the greatest economic progress in human history.

Xi is on a mission:

Mr. Xi’s “China Dream” depends to a large degree on silence, secrecy and propaganda about the Cultural Revolution, which traumatized some 100 million Chinese. Authorities won’t allow open discussion of that era for fear that it would discredit Mao and undermine the party’s legitimacy.

That Wall Street Journal report ends on this note:

The Cultural Revolution lives on.

How awful!

Violent guerilla group threatens stability across India

For The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010 04:38PM
Appeared in print: Thursday, Dec 30, 2010, page A7

India’s Maoist guerillas have held monthlong celebrations in December to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army. Yet another surreal feature of India’s landscape!

If the name of the guerilla group sounds oddly familiar, well, it is only one word removed from the name of China’s military force — the People’s Liberation Army.

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the leaders of China’s Communist revolution, were ardent proponents of guerilla warfare. Mao deemed such violence a necessary component of a revolutionary war, and he described this warfare as “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”

India’s guerillas are keen on following Mao’s preaching, despite the fact that his demise paved the way for the reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping, which have transformed China in rapid fashion into a global economic powerhouse.

According to the Maoists, the base force of about 30,000 guerillas have all been trained in the technical skills needed for making and planting improvised explosive devices — the notorious IEDs that Americans face in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Maoists are not fighting for imaginary reasons. Easily identifiable pockets of poverty and deprivation are home to millions of people in India, including members of tribal groups.

The traditional home of many of India’s tribal groups is also rich in various minerals, such as bauxite and iron ore. The guerillas contend that the disadvantaged tribal groups are being forced to relocate without adequate compensation and then become unskilled contract workers in a new economic system — which further increases their insecurity and severely threatens their traditional ways of life.

For the reborn Maoist guerilla groups in India, also known locally as Naxalites, the Indian government is the principal enemy.

State support for industrial activities then results in the government apparatus and its employees becoming targets for the guerillas.

Even tribal groups are targeted if the guerillas deem that they have worked with the government and businesses.

Maoists are estimated to have a presence in more than half the state of Orissa, where I am attending an academic conference in its capital city.

Recently, the Maoists blew up an abandoned police station using land mines. An IED blasted an ambulance in a remote forest road in the hills, killing five people, including two women and two children.

Over the years, the Indian government has been fighting fire with more fire. There are allegations that the government has even sought, and received, advice and training from Israel because of its experience with fighting terrorists.

In a controversial article earlier this year, noted writer and social activist Arundhati Roy described the government’s response as war.

Roy asked: “When a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its borders, what does that war look like?”

The war, by all accounts, has been bloody. But despite its superiority in numbers and technology, the Indian government is nowhere near a significant victory over the rebels. It is no surprise that the highly focused guerillas are able to outmaneuver the government’s paramilitary forces.

We Americans know this all too well from our lengthy and costly engagement in Afghanistan and the earlier experience in Vietnam, where our military superiority was negated by the opponent’s ability to merge into the local geography.

Perhaps realizing the futility of such a war, the Indian government recently announced an “integrated action plan” through which significant resources will be committed for a “quick resolution of problems concerning health care, drinking water, education and roads” in 60 districts — equivalent to American counties — where the Maoists are a significant presence.

In 2010-11 alone, the 60 districts combined will get the equivalent of $350 million from the Indian government.

The government’s renewed effort to address the economic insecurity of the poor is certainly a move in the right direction. Of course, it is only a proverbial slip between the cup and the lip.

I wish for a quick and peaceful resolution of these problems in India. And I am all the more thankful for my serene life by the Willamette River.

The ‘other’ India fails to get much attention from the West

During the last presidential primaries, Sen. John Edwards, who has since disappeared from the political radar, constantly referred to “two Americas” — one America that struggles to get by and lacks political clout, and another that has plenty of everything, including the ability to shape government policies. While this duality is subject to debate, such a schism is certainly visible all the way across the planet — the “First World” India of commerce, call centers and high technology, versus the poor and backward millions of “Third World” India.

After being ignored by successive American governments all through the Cold War, India now gets considerable attention. We have now had three successive, and successful, presidential visits by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. Of course, the economic and geopolitical angles are what interest the United States, and it is this “First World” India that we are increasingly familiar with. It is also thanks to such a familiarity that NBC now features a sitcom, “Outsourced,” whose context is India and its call centers.

And when the media report about the world’s first billion-dollar house, which will be home to the family of India’s richest individual, Mukesh Ambani, we are certainly impressed — and perhaps made a little insecure, too, by rapidly growing prosperity in a country that for years did not rank that much higher above Ethiopia in our mental impressions of poverty on the planet.

However, poverty has not really gone away; it is, unfortunately, alive and well in “Third World” India.

While it is true that rapid economic growth has lifted quite a few million Indians from poverty, the poor are by no means an insignificant minority. A multidimensional poverty index used by the United Nations Development Program counted 421 million people living in acute poverty in eight Indian states, exceeding in sheer numbers the 410 million in the 26 poorest African countries combined.

This is a staggering number of poor people, a number that does not show up in our calculated economic and geopolitical interests in India. Even those skeptical about the accuracy of the UNDP estimates will not find it difficult to imagine that the number of poor in India will be in the hundreds of millions.

Over the years, this parallel existence of an India that is poor has also resulted in a growing radical and violent movement, whose members are referred to as Maoists. Yes, Mao — as in China’s Mao Zedong, who has been pushed aside ever since Deng Xiaoping opened the Chinese economy in 1979 and declared that “to be rich is glorious.”

It is no surprise that India’s Maoists are active in the same states that are home to the vast numbers of poor tallied in the UNDP study of poverty. Decades ago, in a much poorer India, Maoist “rebels” were present in other states, too.

During my childhood, the adults in the family often spoke in hushed tones about a much older cousin of mine who had suddenly dropped out of college and gone “underground.” As a kid who only knew the literal meaning of the word, I didn’t understand then that “underground” meant that he had joined the radical, and often violent, communist groups.

But now, such groups are almost nonexistent in the southern parts of India that I visit — these states boast of homegrown multinational computer and automobile corporations. Maoists have long exited these regions, which have experienced economic growth and prosperity, and where governments offer considerable support for the economically and socially disadvantaged.

It is also not a mere coincidence that this cousin later on completed his college education, had a successful banking career, and is now a retired grandfather.

It is time for my next trip to India, and it includes spending a couple of days at a conference that will be held in one of those eight states with high poverty — Orissa. The focus of this academic conference is on rural laborers who, without land, property and political weight, find themselves in precarious economic situations.

Through the conference papers and a little bit of traveling, I hope to understand this “other” India, even as I spend most of my time in the successful “First World” India and report as your correspondent.

For The Register-Guard

Published: Monday, Nov 29, 2010 05:01AM

Quote of the day: Wang Meng on China

With per-capita G.D.P. still so paltry, the country is a paper tiger.  The slightest stir of the wind and grass makes the government nervous. ... If only China gets to develop in peace for another twenty years, the the situation will be different.  But now? ... Well, at least it seems we won't go back to the Maoist age.

Sums it up well, right?  That is the Chinese author/intellectual/politician Wang Meng in a wonderful profile-essay by Jianying Zha in the New Yorker (subscription required.)  It is a fantastic essay that provides insights into how intellectuals fit in (or don't) with the Chinese government and politics.  I had no idea about Wang Meng until I read this ... it is difficult to judge an intellectual's social and political role from outside the Chinese system, and the essay makes it clear that there are many opinions of him both within China and outside.  But, one thing for sure: I want to check out some of his stories.

Kashmir: the word's most dangerous place

Thus writes Pankaj Mishra, and notes that:

In one sense at least, the faltering dialogue between India and Pakistan resembles the ‘peace process’ in the Middle East: by the time any ways to proceed are agreed upon, usually with much acrimony, peace seems even further away.
Last week’s talks in Delhi most likely came about because of pressure from the United States. The Obama administration seems to have decided that it cannot do without Pakistani assistance in fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and that Pakistan has its own strategic interests in Afghanistan. Pakistan has rewarded this overdue acknowledgment of its concerns by arresting senior Taliban leaders who have long been living in its territory. In return, the Obama administration has pressed India to be more conciliatory over Kashmir.

Thanks to honest analysis by a few like Mishra, the world outside (and perhaps within India, too) gets at least a little bit of an understanding of not only issues like Kashmir, but also about the state of democracy in India.  With every visit to India, I grow less confident about the treatment of minorities and the poor there.  Even as a kid I had always wanted to go India's northeast, particularly to Nagaland and Mizoram.  Now, with a foreign passport--and an American one--I understand I will even have to get official clearance before I can go there!

One of my criticisms about Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" presentation is that to the uninformed American it further presents an absolutely misleading portrayal of India.  It is no wonder then that American politicians are stupid enough to think of America having to compete against India.  Such a narrative misses the troubling aspects of India's socioeconomics, including the following that Mishra notes:

There are, as the political scientist Sunil Khilnani recently warned, grounds to fear the emergence in India of a “military-industrial complex”—especially while the Indian state, as Khilnani points out, is at war with its own people in Central India: the Mao-inspired guerillas who have organized India’s traditionally disadvantaged tribal communities and low-caste peasants into a militant movement spanning 20 of India’s 28 states.
The apparent failure of an ambitious counterinsurgency campaign called “Operation Green Hunt” has recently forced the Indian government to propose ceasefire talks with the “Maoists.” As politicians and columnists frequently point out, “they are our own people.”