Chapter 28 24. News reports that can be disclosed now
In the summer of 1943, Chiang Kai-shek's free China was greatly beautified by American war propaganda and censorship.Three American writers whose surnames begin with B—Pearl Buck, Hanson Budwin, and T.A. Beeson—punched the rose-colored balloon to report on the slack, corruption, demoralization, and division that actually existed in Kuomintang China , these three "B" were dismissed as saboteurs in Chongqing, but they were realistic and asked Americans to face up to China's existing problems.At the same time, Chiang Kai-shek asked his officials to have less contact with the Americans.Now there are two more "B"s: Fox Butterfield and Richard Bernstein, who also ask us to face unpleasant reality.
Just like 40 years ago, we are caught between Chinese and American cultures.Scandalous reporting (now called investigative reporting) is a public service to Americans.Americans need coverage of scandals every day because they think it's a form of democracy.But reporting scandals in China is seen as unfriendly or even rebellious and a threat to the existing order, because China depends to a certain extent on its good image to maintain its survival.As both China and the U.S. appear to be becoming ungovernable, the gap between China's ideals and reality is hot news in the U.S., regardless of their ideology; bad news.However, Beijing emphasizes "seeking truth from facts."Thus, we are faced with an old question: what is the real situation?
Butterfield and Bernstein began by examining China's special treatment of foreigners, arguing that journalists must move away from the fun car tours and hearty meals that make China's tourism industry so successful.The two journalists have a common advantage: they both have formal education in Sinology and history, and both are top-notch journalists.They are not as confused by the cultural differences between the two countries as ordinary tourists.Instead, they can compare China's present with its long history, as the Chinese do.
They are also the first batch of American journalists stationed in Beijing who can understand Chinese since the normalization of Sino-US relations in 1979.By 1979, modern-minded people who had been persecuted during the 10-year Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) were finally able to disclose without reservation their relentless persecution by teenage Red Guards and Maoists.Both journalists reported on the specific circumstances of the persecution of specific people.Although they have changed or concealed the names and identities of these individuals, their reports of heinous crimes are consistent with many recent reports.The most appalling thing is the persecution suffered by the patriotic overseas Chinese who returned to China from the United States. These overseas Chinese returned to China to help build a new China, but they were later suspected, charged, sentenced and imprisoned, and finally lost the ability to work.Their only crime was being influenced by the "bourgeoisie" (the United States).
In the book, Fox Butterfield provides people with a lot of materials about the current regime and society in China, which are hard-won.Butterfield began researching China in 1958, went on to study for a Ph.D., and studied in Taiwan for a while. While in Taiwan in 1969, he became a special correspondent for The New York Times. Ten years later, he was the paper's top reporter on China. In 1979, The New York Times established a bureau in Beijing.Butterfield is confident and charismatic.This enabled him to collect extremely detailed materials and witnesses during his 20 months in Beijing. The title of the book "The Rest of the Sea of Suffering" comes from a Buddhist adage, which means to survive in suffering.The book's chapters describe China's complex hierarchy and privilege, prosperity through personal relationships or surviving alone, social and environmental restrictions on love and marriage, homeless young people, an unstimulating and inefficient industry, journalism This is the most comprehensive report on China so far.Richard Bernstein conducted basic research on China for seven years from 1966 to 1973, and then became a correspondent for The New York Times in Hong Kong and China.His book is smaller than Butterfield's, but the individual passages in it are well thought out and therefore extremely insightful and persuasive.His discussion of living conditions in China, especially in Sichuan and Beijing, is intertwined with descriptions of people and events, and he also puts these people and events into a specific historical background for research.In his view, the daily life of Chinese people is monotonous, boring and restrictive.Bernstein said that every time he went to climb the Great Wall, he would think of the huge amount of manpower invested in its construction.Qin Shihuang built the Great Wall 22 years ago and invested a lot of manpower into national defense, just like us Americans spend a lot of money on national defense today.Therefore, Chairman Mao (who admired Qin Shihuang) also mobilized China's manpower in 1958 to try to solve China's industrialization problem, but the result was mixed.
Both books reflect the current Chinese backlash against the catastrophe of Mao's last decade.The great helmsman turned the ship of China back and sailed onto the reef.In his seventies, Mao developed a nostalgic desire to return to the simple life he had led in Yan'an.He did hate bureaucrats and intellectuals. China in the 1960s, like the United States today, desperately needed a more constructive and better government, not the other way around.But Mao invented a method of "getting rid of the government", which is "bombarding the headquarters" and "finding out the capitalist roaders".The fanatical Red Guards, thinking they were morally right, created a great upheaval.Amid the turmoil, work in some government departments has all but ground to a halt.No one calls this great upheaval Maoism, but the guerrilla thinking of the Great Helmsman is in some ways similar to Reaganism.For example, his distrust of the central government led him to flout the economic law of comparative advantage.He did not let some provinces produce cotton and some provinces produce grain to supply the whole country, but let each province become a guerrilla warfare base to achieve food self-sufficiency.As a result, cotton and rice production fell.He also abolished the Central Statistical Office, returning its former responsibilities to the provinces, resulting in statistical confusion.Of course, these regressive behaviors of Mao are not as popular as those of Mr. Reagan.Mao would never relinquish power either.
The disappointment with Mao that these reporters sent us from China seems to reflect something deeper.Mao's revolution went astray in the late 1960s and wreaked havoc.Behind this crazy destruction lies a more profound problem that the Chinese must face: from a sociological point of view, it is the dictatorial state that controls society.Before this century, successive Chinese governments relied mainly on indoctrination, surveillance and intimidation to maintain their rule.But at that time, these methods were basically implemented only at the highest level of government agencies, and the broad masses of peasants in the countryside were under the leadership of the Da Da family.These families are the local privileged class.There was a rough balance between the centralized and authoritarian rule practiced by the ruling dynasty in Beijing and the rural families linked together by the Confucian family system.Officials can resign and go into seclusion.
This balance between the central and local governments has now been broken.The party's dictatorship has replaced family dynastic rule and indoctrinates, monitors, and intimidates every household in rural and urban areas.The party's dictatorship was able to quickly mobilize the peasant masses from top to bottom to participate in the revolution and manipulate them in the movement, partly through telecommunications.However, it is difficult for farmers to find a way to reflect their opinions from bottom to top.Mao's mass line, in which the party must listen to the masses, was still based on paternalistic dictatorship.Officials know it all.For example, arresting you because they already know you are guilty.At one point, the brilliant Canadian journalist John Bernstein was arrested by security guards (who were in cars that followed his car).“Why did you come here? Think about it and tell us,” the police at the Beijing headquarters asked him. After hours in solitary confinement, he understood. "I was driving by looking at the map instead of the road, which violated the traffic rules." Then they said to Bernstein, "Yes, now you can go."
Butterfield describes the three-level control system—work unit, street committee, and study group—that is prevalent in China.The work unit exercised total control over the individual as the family had done in the past, as it distributed food and cotton rations, divided houses, arranged marriages and schools, and provided public medical care and entertainment.It also controls communications and travel.Street committees monitor all behavior and contact with the outside world, search homes at random, and monitor relations between husband and wife, including promoting fights and preventing unauthorized pregnancies.If you want privacy, you'd better squeeze into the crowd.At the same time, everyone's lifetime job is assigned by the state; it is extremely difficult to transfer jobs; the couple may be assigned to two different cities.All wives work as well as housekeepers.You can only speak your mind to one person at a time, without a third person present, because two witnesses can convict you of treason.This collectivist system is unprecedented and the Chinese have never experienced it.The despotism of the old government has infiltrated Chinese politics even more heavily, and this infiltration has been further exacerbated by another huge new reality: since 1949, China's population has doubled, creating horrific conditions in daily life. Shocking congestion.China has made some material achievements due to the use of electric water pumps and improved seeds, tree planting and land consolidation, as well as teaching villagers culture and providing them with medical services.In the 1950s, these achievements looked extremely promising; but the enormous growth of the population completely canceled out these material achievements.The revolution has achieved many economic achievements in the past; but the huge increase in population now makes all Chinese people have to fight each other to ensure their own interests.People have become selfish.Insufficient housing has made their living conditions unprecedentedly crowded, and it is impossible for one person to have one room.A marriage may be delayed because the other couple lacks housing.The modern revolution has been sadly forbidden in terms of sexual self-expression.Standing in line to buy groceries can take hours every day.Too many people per job, resulting in overstaffing.Human pollution reduces labor productivity and impoverishes countries.
Overpopulation also exacerbates bureaucracy and cronyism.The Cultural Revolution filled the ranks of the Communist Party with members with very low levels of education; these were opportunists and careerists, not fighters;Mao's reform campaign resulted in what he feared—a regime of cynical bureaucrats most concerned about losing their privileges.More than ever, the Chinese have to rely on personal connections and go through the back door to get ahead.Self-serving flattery has always been associated with corruption because the measure of one's success is not money but privileges such as housing, transportation, nannies, special shops and special schools .
What prospects can offset this disappointment?We know that, generally speaking, Chinese farmers are self-sufficient.The current situation in the countryside may be better than in the past, but it is still extremely harsh for the urban intellectuals who have been sent down to the countryside.We also know that the pollution, urban sprawl, and labor exploitation of early industrialization were terrifying to the people of many countries.Mao's revolution succeeded in enabling broad masses of the people to acquire culture and use communication devices, thereby arousing hope and expectation.But these hopes and expectations are elusive.Furthermore, each revolution drains its own energy.Mao held power for 37 years.Butterfield, Bernstein's friends, and their informants were mainly urban intellectuals, the people most concerned about their country and their people.To prevent misunderstanding, a general statement about 1 billion people needs a lot of explanation, but the disappointment, pressure and unhappiness of Chinese intellectuals in these two books are described by the two authors. They reflect a pervasive emotion that cannot be eliminated once one understands its origins.
The state of mind of the Chinese has a direct and real impact on us, and it can affect U.S. policy and our relationships.China has always been a big problem for Americans who support human rights as a secular belief.During the whole 100 years from 1840 to 1943, according to the unequal treaties concocted by the British, we enjoyed all kinds of privileges in China. These treaties also made Americans in China enjoy the protection of American laws. regarded as outright imperialism.It now appears to be tantamount to Americans demanding in China the civil rights we enjoy at home—the legal right to enjoy personal liberty, own property, and even express ourselves through missionaries.This civil rights is the belief of liberalism.The current situation in which the state and society control individuals in China clearly shows that China lacks a legal-free tradition.Those Chinese who were persecuted by Mao's revolution could only be judged morally by the masses said to be represented by the party organization, and could not demand a higher judgment.In this way, the entire intellectual class in China became an oppressor hated by Mao and his followers.I think this is partly because of the imperial examination system in the past, which connected the intelligentsia with the ruler.
Before we conclude that we face a struggle between two different social orders, the United States and China, we should remember (as our missionaries have learned during the 100 years of extraterritoriality in China) As you can see), the two societies of China and the United States have their own strengths and weaknesses, and neither side alone enjoys integrity, sanity, and high efficiency.China's current leader, Deng Xiaoping, was a major victim of the Cultural Revolution, and today he is a major survivor.We hope that Mr. Deng and his colleagues will take constructive steps and implement reform programs as the ancient Confucians and reformers often did.
At the same time, we have our own leadership problems.If we lower our respect for the People's Republic of China, it means that we forgive Mr. Reagan's campaign speech about improving relations with Taiwan, which will create unnecessary trouble.The current Deng Xiaoping regime is in great need of intellectual skills, which can be acquired through exchanges with the United States.Butterfield and Bernstein met many Chinese who wanted to escape the boring, same-day life at home.However, the American way of life promoted through television and word of mouth may cause both dissatisfaction with China's reality and a strong and unfavorable reaction against the United States.We may once again become enemies of the Chinese nation through our usual negligence.Mao's mobilization of the otherwise stagnant peasant masses into political activism sparked an anti-intellectual, anti-foreigner frenzy that still exists today.As Beijing moves forward, it has to take into account the masses and party intellectuals who grew up knowing that America is imperialist enemy number one.Perhaps, for Chinese patriots, the most irritating thing right now is that under Mao, the Chinese really stood up, and they were free to make revolution, only to then bring disaster upon themselves.This is indeed embarrassing, and it is undoubtedly self-deception to attribute all these things to the "Gang of Four".The Chinese did what Mao told them to do, and it was Mao who screwed everything up.People will one day discover that, like all great men, Mao was always at the forefront when leading the masses forward.Now, China must face a paradoxical reality: China was once a powerful country, but now it is poor.why?
In this case, we can draw at least one conclusion.For Mr. Reagan, an "escalation" of relations with Taiwan, undoing the normalization brokered by Nixon and Carter (by which the United States had official relations with Beijing and only unofficial ones with Taiwan), would only have Beneficial to Deng Xiaoping's potential opponents.Taiwan is doing well and has not suffered from Carter's normalization of relations with Beijing.The Taiwan authorities certainly welcomed Mr. Reagan's antiquated sentiments, despite the fact that the civil war ended in 1949, and still called themselves the "sovereign Republic of China."Taiwan has also launched an extensive public relations campaign focused on working with leaders of US states and cities to strengthen friendly relations by sending delegations, entertaining guests free of charge, holding meetings, and sending officials to visit.Taiwan sends more than 17,000 international students to the United States every year, double the number of students from the People's Republic of China.We try to be friendly with all Chinese and are sometimes naively happy to have close relations with both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.But Taiwan's closer relationship with the Reagan Republicans led Beijing to launch a counteroffensive.It should come as no surprise that Beijing feels the need to take issue with our arming of Taiwan.
If we do not check this tendency, there may be serious and unexpected mutual disappointment on both sides.If life in China has become as dire as Butterfield and Bernstein suggest, we should proceed with caution.The masses in China are not necessarily rational, they may be sleeping beasts.However, they may also feel the same way about us.How can we prevent this ominous prospect?
The idea of China and the United States resolving issues through friendly contacts was first suggested by a Beijing-based family of journalists.In One Billion: A Chronicle of China, Jay and Linda Matthews are both sympathetic and critical of China.This unbiased attitude undoubtedly reflects the experience of the two authors living together in China.Linda Matthews was the first female editor-in-chief and later earned a law degree.Eventually, she became the Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times.Jay Matthews was also a reporter for the "Harvard Crimson", but later turned to research on China issues, received a master's degree, and later worked for the "Washington Post", and finally became the newspaper's bureau chief in Beijing.They are married and have two children.Therefore, there is both cooperation and competition between them.Living in China as a family, they are well-positioned to explore every corner of the society around them.
The friendliness and impartiality they embraced first appeared in the structure of the book.This book is truly a journalist's (as far as I know, the best effort in this regard) effort to grasp that elusive and ubiquitous entity known as "Chinese culture."This entity is also what makes the Chinese run.The first part of the book emphasizes the sense of community and relationships that underlie Chinese behavior and the need to get everything done. “Being Chinese .Finally, they explain how Chinese people determine their status through their relationships, especially through their work units.This method of determining personal status is the crystallization of Confucius' five constant principles.The Wuchang is a means used by Confucius to bind individuals and their families together.
The three parts of the book first describe what the author calls "one billion", that is, the overcrowded life of the Chinese people; second, the "system" that organizes the lives of the Chinese people; subsistence pastimes.This structure allowed the Matthewss to discuss the daily lives of many urbanites; but they only spoke to a handful of very well-to-do country folk.They recorded many conversations and many people's experiences.In a chapter entitled "Work" they describe the continuing difficulties in motivating and stimulating people under socialism; the chapter "Language" talks about writing for reform and making it more effective.In the chapter on sexual relations, the author describes the lack of privacy and sexual knowledge in China.Typically, girls are afraid that kissing will lead to pregnancy.The revolution, they wrote, "reaches only the bedroom door."In this regard, China still has a long way to go.Meanwhile, the marriage itself remains fairly strong, well planned and virtually permanent.On the other hand, China's specialty in having children faces a new law: "One is enough," says a Beijing bulletin board.For the Chinese, this hurts their pride in being the world's only country with a population of one billion.
The chapter about the "system" in the book describes how the Chinese overcome this system by giving gifts and going through the back door.The news is monopolized by the government, but its distribution is restricted by tens of thousands of copies ((Reference News) publishes news from foreign news agencies. These news can "feedback information to the Chinese people". The examination system has been completely restored, and 5 million young people can participate One out of every 20 applicants can be admitted to a university. The 2 million college students (this figure has not yet been reached) only account for 0.2% of the population. As in the past, people with higher education are still a very small minority, the cream of society. Those in high positions enjoy many privileges.
The Matthews also describe how sensitive the authorities are to dissent. , they believe that the government needs the support of intellectuals and will be cautious in restricting intellectuals' freedom.However, the "law" is still as severe as in the past, and the most serious crimes are still punishable by death. “The whole (Qinghai) province (to the north-east of Tibet) can be described as a prison colony.” As in the Soviet Union, the labor camps provided the government with a reliable supply of “cheap labor that could be mobilized by the government at will within the country.”The new legal system is far from overcoming injustice.
The last part——describes a complex situation: crowding, bureaucratization, and police dictatorship are not only moderated by Chinese cooking, drama, calligraphy, painting, and seal cutting, film, music, and literature, but also by cricket fighting. , Gambling, betting, sports and other "entertainment" to alleviate.The two authors also describe in detail the jokes in cross talk (cross talk is another specialty of the country).The Matthews also report on the "pervasive struggle between people's strong desire for material gain and democracy and the stubborn repression of dissent by those in power (who can draw on the experience of centuries-old rulers in power")." .They believe that the Chinese have reached "political turmoil...collapse...the brink of despair, their self-esteem and confidence...reaching a critical point."However, they know how to survive the current system.The Chinese "hate some people consciously, and most people almost unconsciously) the suppression and interference of the government system, but would rather use skills to defeat the government than directly challenge it."
In short, the Chinese live under the rule of a restored bureaucratic state sanctioned by the collective spirit of the entire nation and enforced through modern technology.It is in this dilemma that the Chinese practice what we might call covert, small-scale individualism, the freedom of individualism to deal only with trivial matters that have nothing to do with the collective.What Westerners believe in is an overt individualism protected by law, and this overt individualism is currently manifested in our concern for human rights.This belief in overt individualism may be more attractive than Christianity to China's educated elite.But even they are at present compelled to put the good of the nation as a whole above the rights of individuals.As we Americans are trying to escape the grip of computers, we feel that we have something in common with the Chinese.
This review is of The Rest of the Sea by Fox Butterfield (New York, Times Press, 1982) and Reporting from the Center of the Earth: An Exploration of Chinese Reality by Richard Bernstein (Boston , Little Brown Press, 1982), New York Review of Books, May 27, 1982); Jay Matthews, Linda Matthews, One Billion: Chinese Chronicles) (New York, Random House, 1983), in The New York Review of Books, January 19, 1984.
Notes:
Notes: