Aftershock (唐山大地震, Tángshān Dàdìzhèn) is a 2010 Feng Xiaogang feature film about China's devastating 1976 Tangshan Earthquake that saw over 240,000 people perish. After watching the movie trailer, I swore to myself that I would see it:

Wouldn't you? Come on, there's a little girl in there, waking up in the rain, surrounded by dead bodies. She's all alone, literally shell-shocked, oh-so-lost, with rescue workers rushing by her, in the most depressingly gray world of rubble and death...and then, "Oh schnap!", there's this Schindler's List-esque red highlight, of blood mixing with the pooling rainwater. You know she's looking around, for family, but you know you suspect they're all gone, and as you're thinking to yourself, "Man, that must fucking suck...", a lone PLA soldier appears and notices her. He wraps her in his coat, as any decent grown-up man ought to do, and as he asks her where she lives, where her parents are, if she has any relatives left, you're screaming in your head, "no, you bastard, can't you see?! They're all gone, they're all gone!!!" As she breaks down and begins crying, your heart breaks into a million itty-bitty pieces.

Because you're human.

Unfortunately for me, I was away in the United States for two months over the summer, flying out of Shanghai right before the movie came out in China's cinemas. Would the film still be in theatres by the time I got back? I wasn't sure. Fortunately, my girlfriend said it was still playing when I got back on August 10th and suggested we go watch it that very Friday. I was doubly lucky because she had previously threatened to go watch it without me. Why? Let's just say she has strong reservations about my propensity to cry like a little bitch in any movie that involves oh-so-sad subject matter. She claims that just as she's about to squeeze a few tears out of that chunk of ice she calls a heart, I'm already shaking and convulsing beside her, a stream of tears dripping off my chin. She claims.

Now that I've seen it, I have a long post's worth of bemused observations and impressions I need to get off my chest. Before anyone misunderstands, do know that I had purposefully avoided reading reviews of the movie up to this point, fearing spoilers. However, I did know quite early on that the earthquake scene was near the beginning, isn't that long, and that most of the movie would be about the lives of the characters.

WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS BELOW!

So, Aftershock tells the story of a mother, Yuan Ni, and her daughter and son, Fang Zeng and Fang Da, and how their lives are forever changed by a historic early morning earthquake in 1976.

It begins casually enough, with the father driving a factory truck, with the two kids riding beside him on their way home. As the kids hop off the truck, they're carrying a new family possession, an electric fan to combat the heat of summer. Before the father turns to head to factory, they beg him for some money to buy ice treats, which he obliges like the good father that he is. The children exchange their coins with the roadside peddler, and the father drives away. What do you know, some local bully comes by and swipes the slightly younger brother Fang Da's treat, turns and walks away confident that no one is going to step up to him. That dick.

However, being the good slightly older sister, Fang Zeng charges over and pushes the bully down, knocking him flat on his face and the stolen treat now in the dust. If her brother can't have it, no one will, dammit! Then, of course, the two little kids high-tail it out of there, the bully in hot pursuit, lest they get their asses seriously whupped. They make it home, escaping the bully, safe, and with the electric fan. At this time, Fang Da swipes a freshly washed tomato, leaving none for his sister, though their mother promises to wash her another one soon. All of this is critical for magnifying the sense of unfairness that will factor into the trauma Fang Zeng carries with her for much of the movie.

The earthquake hits early in the morning, as the children are asleep at home, and their parents are at the factory, taking a break and fooling around -- literally -- about to in the back of the factory truck. As the world they know crumbles around them, with gratuitous chunks of building crushing scores of unfortunate people in every scene¹, Mom and Dad rush home in hopes of rescuing their children. Just as Yuan Ni is about to run into their residential building as its coming down, her husband pulls her back and runs in instead, only to be crushed, but saving her life.

As day breaks, Yuan Ni is alone, mourning the loss of her husband, asking why he did what he did, and searching for her children. Rescuers find them buried and trapped in the rubble. With a large slab on them both, Fang Da's arm is caught and Fang Zeng is unable to speak, only able to pound a rock on surrounding rubble as a signal of her being alive. The rescuers eventually conclude that only one child can be saved, that to save one would crush the other, and the mother must make an impossible choice but a choice nonetheless. Respectably, she agonizes forever, insisting that at first that both be saved, but as the rescue workers get tired of waiting for her to come around to reality, and are called to go help rescue others, she decides and chooses her son. Fang Zeng, still alive, still conscious, but unable to say anything with the slab of concrete crushing down on her, overhears.

Well...that sucks.

If you're like me, part of you is thinking that because you can put yourself in Fang Zeng's shoes² and another part of you, the part of you that is at least vaguely aware of the historical preference for sons over daughters in Chinese society, is thinking "...'well that was predictable!"³. The movie doesn't actually go on to question or explore the possible whys behind the mother's ultimate choice, as that'd be kinda silly since everyone already has good ideas for why. Instead, the choice is accepted and the movie goes on to focus on the lasting repercussions of that choice on the psyches of them all as they grow up and grow old.

Yuan Ni opts to stay in Tangshan, becoming a single mother raising her son Fang Da all by herself. When we next seen Fang Da, he's become a teenager, a young man, and the entire audience audibly notes that they actually found a real one-armed actor to play him. His mother pressures him to do well in school, so he can get into college, knowing that a crippled son like his has fewer manual labor options in life in which to make a living. He, of course, insists on disobeying her, often skipping school to do odd jobs, ostensibly to help around the house, and eventually sits out the college entrance examinations entirely. Soon after, he and his boys from the 'hood decide to leave their hometown for some bigger city in search of greater opportunities. His mother is left behind, and she never remarries⁴. Fang Da is seen starting his career as a one-armed pedicab driver but eventually elevates himself to become a big boss driving around a fancy BMW with a cute wife and enough money to buy brand new apartments for his mom. To his consternation, though, she refuses to move, telling him that if she moves, his dead father and sister won't be able to find their way home. Aw shucks.

Fang Zeng, the daughter left for dead, is taken away from Tangshan by that PLA solider in the trailer. She is soon picked out and adopted by two PLA soldiers who lovingly raise her as their own. For awhile, she remains mute but eventually opens up, though claiming to not remember what happened during the earthquake. She excels in her studies and eventually gets accepted to a university to study medicine. On her first day there, she meets a boy and some hilarity followed by tragedy ensues. You see, they get together, do the nasty, and he impregnates her. When she refuses to get an abortion, he goes to play basketball⁵. Properly shamed, he goes looking for her but we're left to assume that it never amounted to much. Next we know, she has apparently become a single mother and lousy English teacher at the same time⁶. That is, until she gets married to a much older Canadian man, played by the most rigid and creepiest foreign actor ever.

As you can tell from the plot summary above, the movie not only follows the life of these survivors but also employs a number of arguably cliche plot devices, even tempting viewers towards certain maxims about life, such as hard work and scrappy determination overcoming disability and disadvantage, or the perils of being a fertile woman where unexpected pregnancies can throw everything you worked so hard for down the drain...you know, things of that nature. Speaking of cliches...

The movie comes full circle with the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. This is dramatically but awkwardly shown to audiences with Fang Zeng living in Canada as her husband barrels down the driveway, rushing home from work, as the ominous bearer of the bad news. You get the feeling that you, as the viewer, are supposed to think he gives a shit because he knows profoundly how traumatic the Tangshan Earthquake was for his wife -- and, you know, her people -- when in reality, if he really did give a shit, the movie never did a good job of establishing that. Instead, he just looks creepy. Watching the news on television, she decides she has to go help and so she does, becoming one of many empathetic Tangshan survivors who have volunteered to help the Sichuan rescue efforts. Surprise surprise, her brother is there too and they are reunited in a fashion not befitting the highly coincidental nature of their meeting.

The next and final chapter of the movie goes about resolving all of the internalized pain and resentment that spawned from the decision the mother Yuan Ni had to make at the beginning. Fang Da brings Fang Zeng back home to their mother. Just as you're expecting the mother to break down and rush out to embrace the daughter she had thought dead for 32 years, she instead points her to put down her things and continues washing vegetables or something. Yeah, a little unexpected, but when you think about it, probably not that unrealistic of a reaction, what with all the overwhelming emotions and thoughts one must be consumed with. If not that, you'll notice that in watching the movie, the mother has all sorts of somewhat quirky behaviors and responses that, again, are not all that odd when you think about them just a bit longer⁷.

But yeah, you're readying yourself for a showdown at this point, waiting for Fang Zeng to lay into her mother, to tell her mother she had overheard her decision, and pour out all of the pent-up bitterness she has over it. You're thinking, "All right! Let's do this!" And then they kinda do it but not really, or at least not really for someone as vindictive as myself, who was expecting much more catharsis than director Feng Xiaogang was giving me. There wasn't enough narcissistic score-settling and guilt-tripping put on the table. There wasn't enough wailing. It wasn't satisfying.  The mother got off easy. Bitch.

Wow, good thing I wasn't born a girl abandoned by her mother following a devastating earthquake, eh?

So, now that I got all of that random expletive-laden commentary of the movie's plot out of my system...

Let's get down to exactly why I found the movie ultimately disappointing. The movie has a lot of really heartbreaking, tear-jerking moments, and that's good because good movies tend to bring about strong emotions in people whether it be sadness, mirth, or contemplation. However, these moments were more heart-breaking and tear-jerking because of the audience's willingness to identify with them from their own life experiences than with the film's story-telling planting and fostering such emotions⁸. Just about the only scene that was powerful directly due to the filmmakers' efforts was the scene in the trailer. Almost every other scene might touch a nerve but only because that nerve was already exposed before walking into the theatre.

Aftershock takes us through different stages of the characters' lives but in a somewhat disjointed, even irrelevant, way. Just like my commentary on the plot above, each successive chapter of the story gives you a sense of "and then this happened", but not a strong sense of it meaningfully contributing to some overarching narrative. You end up wondering what was the significance of this or that scene, wondering just how this or that scene is helping build up our understanding of the characters, and how that then plays into the final climax, the final reunion, the final reckoning between the characters and their coming to terms with the marquee tragedy in their lives, the Tangshan Earthquake.

True, if you get creative, you can craft all sorts of symbolism and import into each scene and every plot device, all befitting a university student graduating summa cum laude with a major in Interpretive Film Studies. Sure, maybe Fang Zeng not getting an abortion was because she didn't want to abandon her child like her mother did to her. Maybe her eventually marrying a much older foreigner and emigrating abroad is meant to echo how she was adopted and moved away from Tangshan. Whatever, I can do this all day, but seriously? No.

Too many scenes were just kinda there. I won't say they didn't contribute anything, but the string of docudrama vignettes seemed to take away from the ultimate story of unfairness, abandonment, resentment, reunion, and reconciliation that the movie very clearly begins and ends with. It begins with the daughter feeling screwed by her mother and ends with her realizing just how much her mother loved her and feeling genuinely remorseful for how much her daughter was screwed, all catalyzed and framed by a historical disaster. That's great, but there was too much screen time wasted on telling us how each person's life unfolded. We get that such a traumatic event is going to have consequences or "aftershocks" on the lives of the survivors, that all those scenes showed moments in their lives shaped by what happened as a result of the earthquake but...meh, they often felt underdeveloped, sometimes even forced, sometimes even like random bits of social commentary incongruous with the heartbreaking narrative we're supposed to be sniffling over.

Overall, the movie was fine and it had its moments but it it was indeed disappointing next to the expectations I developed from watching the trailer. The movie starts with a strong premise and eventually follows up on it at the end, but the middle, well, the middle just felt like a lull. We know the movie is meant to be something of a tragedy, but it just doesn't have the right timing, rhythm, or even momentum. You walk away feeling that certain lines really moved you to tears, but not the characters and much less the movie overall. Certain moments were sad. Not the movie. Certain moments were good. Not the movie.

Is the movie worth watching? Sure. Is it epic? No. Could it have been? Yes...but it wasn't.

"Aftershock (Tangshan Earthquake) Movie Review: Disappointing" is a post from china/divide

The following post is being reposted from China Hearsay. Stan’s VPN isn’t working and he couldn’t get on c/d, because we’re still blocked by the GFW. - Kai

You’ve probably seen the news on this nasty hostage incident by now:

In the face of growing Chinese anger, Philippine officials acknowledged failings in how the police handled a 12-hour hostage standoff on a tourist bus, which unfolded on live television and ended with the deaths of eight passengers from Hong Kong and the armed captor, a former police officer. (NYT)

There are several things swirling around out there about this incident. First, you’ve got family and friends of the victims who are grieving. To the extent possible with this sort of very public crime, it would make sense to leave them alone and let them get on with what they need to do.

Second, there are zillions of folks in Hong Kong and the Mainland who are ”angered” or ”outraged” or whatever other sort of word you want to use to characterize the emotion being expressed on microblogs and BBS sites everywhere.

Third, there is the bilateral dialogue going on between China/Hong Kong SAR and the Philippines. A lot of coordination needs to happen when foreign nationals are killed overseas, so this is certainly understandable as well.

As usual, though, folks are taking this a bit too far. Sure, emotions are running high, and this sort of thing tends to bring out he inner nationalist in a lot of people. More’s the pity. A tragic event takes place, and certain individuals take that as some sort of an affront to them, their country, their race.

As usual with this blog, I run the risk in writing this post of coming off as an insufferable, insensitive prick. Not my intention. The basic message I’m trying to convey here is not that folks should not be upset, but that ultimately our response needs to be reasonable. This was, after all, a criminal act perpetrated by a nutjob, and the response was bungled by the cops.

For some reason, though, some people want to turn this into more than it was. Look at this Global Times article, “Chinese Demand Answers in Killing.” Really? Perhaps the Hong Kong government, or the families involved, but ”The Chinese?” Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?

A wave of mourning and anger washed across China Tuesday over Monday’s cold-blooded killings of Hong Kong tourists in the Philippine capital and from what many people are calling incompetence by police in handling a volatile hostage situation.

I think everyone agrees that this was indeed incompetence on behalf of the police, and the way the media acted over there is contemptible. However, the imagery of “A wave of mourning and anger” washing across the entire country seems like going over the top. I’ve already seen some BBS posts that imply that the reason the police screwed the pooch was not incompetence, but indifference, due to the fact that the passengers were Chinese.

Additionally, I always wonder why these types of incidents, which obviously require dialogue between the two countries, end up in the press with one nation pitted against the other. Why do Netizens commonly look for ”bilateral tension” and a worsening of the relationship? Why do we get this sort of nonsense from the Global Times (this one is at least an Op/Ed, not news)?

In order to make sure the hostages were safe and not to cause diplomatic disputes, the authorities could have easily accepted the gunman’s request, or at least given him some promise to calm him down.

Second-guessing the police decisions? Sure, go for it. But assuming that when an incident like this goes bad, there is automatically a diplomatic incident? Why?

Does it make us feel better to blame an entire government when a criminal act is bungled by police officers? Must we second-guess police funding decisions, anti-terror campaigns, even Philippine foreign policy in order to assess sufficient blame?

Here’s more from the Associated Press:

There was anger in Hong Kong. At the Philippine Consulate, several dozen protesters chanted: “Strongly condemn the Philippine government for being careless about human life!”

Many Hong Kong newspapers printed mastheads in black out of respect for the victims, and flags in the territory flew at half-staff.

“Filipino police incompetent,” Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily News said in a front-page headline.

The South China Morning Post called the killings “a wake-up call” for the Philippines to boost security and take gun-control measures.

Protesting at a foreign consulate due to the incompetent actions of some police officers? Maybe I’m just being an insensitive asshole, but that seems way out of proportion. Aquino did not order a military strike against that bus.

And does that SCMP advice make sense? The Philippines had 138 of these hostage situations last year, and 56 so far this year. I don’t think they need a wake-up call, just better government policy and competent police. Despite the fact that foreign nationals were killed, aren’t these questions a matter of domestic policy?

Let’s hope that this does not devolve into the usual chest thumping and boycotts.

UPDATE: This doesn’t look promising. From Bloomberg:

The Philippines appealed to Hong Kong people to refrain from taking out anger against Filipinos following the deaths of eight of the city’s residents in a tour bus hijacking in Manila.

The Philippine government recognizes the “backlash” caused by the deadly siege and is “doing everything” it can to contain it, Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino, said today.

“Philippines Hostage Standoff: Toning Down the Rhetoric” is a post from china/divide

It’s 1974, and you’re a factory worker in the Former Yugoslavia.  You’re a highly skilled mechanical engineer, no less: a member of the the intellectual and trained elite.  The clock on the factory floor strikes 11 am and you go down to the cafeteria to grab some musaka, a swig of yogurt and smoke a few cigarettes.  The foreman’s called a lunch meeting, which means you can just sit there, smoke and listen.

Minutes later you’re in your seat at a round, blue metal table.  Your chair is made of aluminum and upholstered with some sort of brown polyester material.  Everyone has food in front of them, and every three people share an ashtray.

“Our country,” the company foreman starts, “is not like any other country in the world.  Everyone else is evolving, but here we practice negative selection.”

Everyone around you, all men and women with advanced degrees in engineering and the hard sciences, turns in the direction of a private room on the far side of the mess hall.   You turn, as well.  It’s the big bosses door, a room apart from everyone else.  Inside it sits a round, snot nosed, and communist-magnolia red adult man who has no idea what this company even does.  He has a potted fern in there.  You saw it through the crack of the door once, and there’s whispers about him harboring a huge collection of French porn in his desk. Nobody knows for sure.  Usually, you only see him a few times a year when he parades other, higher-up communist officials around your factory.  Otherwise, the only way you know that red-faced pig is even at work is if you walk by his car on the way home.  His car is parked inside the factory gates.  You and the rest of the factory employees have to walk much farther to the official factory parking lot.

That fat fucking pig. What a waste of life, you think.  He hasn’t even finished  high school but because his father was a high falutin party member,  that asshole got to become the company manager.  Your cousin’s wife in America talks about their being a glass ceiling for immigrants and women.

“At least, Krushka” you’ll tell her next time, ” in America you can see and touch the ceiling.  Here the factories have no ceiling to touch, and it’s hard to simply find room enough to walk forward a few steps without poking into a sharpened sickle or slamming into a locked door that smells of stolen money and pig shit.”

What a waste. You turn back around.

“The reason our car industry can’t get past the Yugo,” continues the foreman “is because our dumbest people are the ones we put into leadership positions.  Here we make electric motors for industrial machines, and that cunt-lick over in that room doesn’t know his Teslas from his Jules.  But he’s the one who decides how many people we get for a job, and how much time we get to do it.”

You feel the urge to interrupt.  You’ve been listening to this crap for years now, off and on, about various bosses that have sat in that one-fern, French pussy covered room.  When you were younger, you were surprised to have a boss who was incompetent and who no one respected.  But with each successive asshole you’d accepted that things just worked that way.  Corruption, nepotism, thievery.  Who knows.  But today, it’s different.  You’ve been here for fifteen years now, and it’s struck you that you really want to know.

“But let me ask you something,” you say.  “Why do people like him get to do it?  Who controls this negative selection?”

You expect the answer to be nothing more than brush off.  Usually the foreman only pretended to complain.  Good policajac, bad policajac, the Americans call it.

“Well, it’s actually very simple,” the foreman says, without much delay.  “The people in control.  They are the ones who control negative selection.  Because the only way to assure that they keep control is to assure that those more capable don’t rise up along side them where a comparison can be readily made.”

“That makes sense,” you say, surprised to hear such a straightforward answer.  “You know, maybe we should all just try to get visas to go to America.  I have a cousin and sister-in-law there.  They say that things work differently there.  Engineers, at least, are highly respected.”

“Yes, in America, everything is different,” he says.  “But you might as well try to go to Mars.”

Ah, there it is.  The brush off was simply delayed.  Damn.  Break over.  Time to get back to work.

Fast forward thirty-six years to today.  You’ve been in America since 1982 when you finally stopped listening to anything anyone had to say.  That and you got passed up for promotion three times because you weren’t red.  Not even a little bit.

You’re much happier now.  Downright content, in fact. You don’t have kids, but you don’t care.  Kids are overrated.  You’ve saved all that money you would have spent on diapers and college to buy this condo.  You were even able to sell your old property before the Bush recession.  You’re now sitting on the porch of your condo, smoking a Marlboro light and telling a former co-worker, who’s still working at your old place of employment, about that day in 1974 when you decided to come to America.

You finish, and he takes a big swig of the whisky you poured for him, looking somewhat downtrodden.

“Well, shit, ” he starts.  “That sounds a lot like what I have to put up with at work today.  This stupid woman with a masters in marketing from some third rate school came over with the company that bought us out two years ago.  I was open minded and gave her a chance, but now she thinks that I’m hers to command. Recently she’s been trying to tell me how to spice up my research.  I’m the director of the research center for Pete’s sake! And, she couldn’t distinguish an environmental health hazard from her own ass.   Stick to what you know, right?  But, just because her parent company bought us and she has lunch with our idiot CEO every day, she thinks she’s qualified to tell me how to write about environmental science.

Even worse, they’ve given the company journal’s editor slot over to some schmuck with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, who’s made big promises about ad sales.  He’s taken the opportunity to write his own editorials.   This journal goes out to scientists.  We’re going to become a laughing stock.   Negative selection.  That’s it.  It’s the only thing that can explain it.  The dumbest people in American go into management and marketing, and they’ve taken over the economy.”

“Ha, that’s funny,” you tell him. “The reason I told you the story I did is because I saw this cartoon in the newspaper earlier today.”  You go inside to get the Sunday newspaper, then come back and slap the relevant page in front of him.

He laughs.  “Damn.  I guess I’m not the only one thinking these things,” he says.

“Well,” you say. “If it gets much worse, you can always move back home.  Isn’t your president an engineer?”

Your friend, a Chinese-American glares at you with feigned consternation.  You’ve been joking with each other in this way for years.  Both of you are naturalized American citizens, though he was naturalized at sixteen and has no trace of an accent: both of you are trained engineers : and both of you share a certain cultural predisposition for irony.

“Just because I look Chinese doesn’t mean I am automatically Chinese,” he says.

“Yes, but you sound like Chinese,” you reply.

“My English is much better than your English,” he says.  He stops talking and takes another swig.  “I would never go to China though.  It would just be more of the same shit, but for even less money.  My dad was an engineer, and he fled here as soon as he got the chance.  Plus, I’d have to use that shitty Baidu internet service.”

“Negative selection has gone global, my friend” you say.

“Negative selection has probably always been global,” he says.

You both take a drink.

“Short Story: Negative Selection Has Gone Global, My Friend” is a post from china/divide

When I agreed to chime in on DeWang of Hidden Harmonies’ discussion about “breaking the mold on Western media bias”, I consciously wanted to avoid getting into any larger discussion of Western media bias, its existence, or how dangerous it is. I tried to be succinct in laying out that it exists and can be dangerous, before going on to give my opinion that DeWang was overzealous in the particular incident he shared. We all have our moments, and I’ve been criticized for such myself.

DeWang posted a response to my opinion. Since it goes straight for a larger discussion of Western media bias, I figure I might as well share some of my reactions, responses, and thoughts in another post, should they be of any interest to general readers. I’ve reposted most of DeWang’s response below with my comments mixed in:

I think there is a big gap in my post I failed to address for people who do not accept that the Western media is so biased in a way that is dangerous for our world.  Everything in my post hinges on that premise - that there is agreement the bias is egregious and dangerous.

Again, I agree that there is such a thing as Western media bias, especially when it comes to certain contentious topics and issues (though not all). I agree it can be egregious and it can be dangerous. Where I think DeWang and I may differ is in how quick we look at Western media through those particular lenses. Its like single-issue politics.

Bias does not define the Western media, but it certainly afflicts it like it afflicts any media anywhere. Why? Because it is an extension of the humans behind, within, and before it. It is dangerous because it is influence. Anything of influence can be dangerous. Influence is control and control is power.

Regarding “systematic conspiracy” - I am not arguing one way or another, and to me it’s irrelevant.  For example, racists don’t need to conspire to be racists.  The extent of their “conspiracy” is that their public display emboldens one another.  Likewise, media bias in one outlet reinforces the same behavior in another.

Overall, I feel DeWang is begging for the Western media, individually or as a whole, to exercise more restraint against what he sees as them indulging in their own biases. That’s a wholly understandable sentiment, but its problematic because it is essentially impossible to define and establish some standard of objectivity or fairness for everyone to adhere to. Your “fair” can easily be someone else’s “bias”.

The idea behind a free and private press/media is the marketplace of ideas, the competition of ideas. “Fairness”, to the extent humans can approximate it, lies not in having others say what you want them to say but in being free to say something different -- in disagreement or dissent -- from them. You dictating what is “fair” reporting to the media is hardly different from someone else dictating a different kind of “fair”. In this world, “fair” is only as “fair” as those who behold it and agree to it being “fair”.

As such, the media outlets we may consider “biased” may not be so to others and -- more importantly -- may not be so to themselves. Yes, media bias in one outlet can reinforce the same behavior in another, just as one person can influence another, but it isn’t necessarily that both sides know its “wrong” and indulge in it using each other as an excuse. It could very well be what they genuinely believe to make the most sense. So if it doesn’t make sense to you or others, if it isn’t “fair” to you or others, then it falls to you guys to find a way to influence them away from it. When you do so, expect some people to call you “biased” and “unfair”. Welcome to the game.

I am seriously trying to find an “answer” that could prevent that lack of “competition” in the U.S. media which resulted in the last Iraq invasion - for example.

Eh, there was competition, but one side lost. The question is, how did the winners win? By co-opting the U.S. media? How did they do so? Why was the U.S. media so willing to be co-opted? Why were American voters so willing to be co-opted? The answer to why America invaded Iraq is not as simple as “oh, the U.S. media helped deceive everyone”. Part of the answer is that those in dissent, the losing side of the competition, failed. They failed, perhaps, not just at that critical moment, but in every moment leading up to it. That is the failure of every “losing” side in history everywhere. It is universal.

The U.S. media is not some amorphous entity separate from American voters that necessarily “knows better” and thus somehow failed in its paternalistic duty to propagate “truth” to its charges.  The U.S. media is fundamentally an apparatus of amplification. While it has influence, it is also susceptible to influence. Again, it is because it is an extension of humans, of fallible creatures. That has been the underlying reason for every failure of every organization and human-reliant system on Earth.

Westerners understand the value of “check and balances.”  Why not extend that to the world stage?

They do. It’s called geopolitics. Those who get checked and balanced against will always think it is unfair.

In my post, I talked about asking Professor Noam Chomsky how do we move towards a world that is less “power” based, and his response was that it depends on the “actions the public willing to take.”

The actions the public is willing to take depends on the appeal of the choices they are aware of.

Yes, the U.S. wants Iraq oil, but should it be allowed via an invasion?  That’s what I mean.  Of course, if you don’t accept the premise that the U.S. media biased the U.S. population into this WMD threat and this bringing of “freedom” to the Iraqis, then my argument to people with the position you have taken is really moot.  We need to step back and debate about how egregious and how dangerous it is with the bias.

Well, let’s see, those who invaded Iraq for oil probably don’t care whether they should or shouldn’t, just whether they could or couldn’t. What I don’t accept is the premise that the U.S. media, and the people in it, uniformly intended to deceive everyone it could influence and then set out to systematically do so. I accept that there is bias, and influential bias can become dangerous. However, I don’t think “bias” itself can be eliminated, a solution I feel DeWang is searching for. Instead, I think we can only combat the instances of bias we identify and persuasively arguing our cases. Most people can agree on bias itself being potentially dangerous and, yes, even egregious, but identification and shaming by itself isn’t very practical. We need to compete with the ideas we prefer to be out there, those ideas we consider to be less “biased” or more “fair”.

Chomsky’s response to me was that the main “check” for the U.S. power is the American public.

So what’s the main check for the American public?

“just as there are anti-U.S. narratives in China” - we would have to look at how “unfair” it is on both sides to know truly how dangerous it is with one side vs the other.

I’m afraid someone would say DeWang’s opinion of how “truly” dangerous anti-U.S. narratives in China are versus anti-China narratives in the United States will be “biased”. What then?

Regardless, my point is that biased narratives exist everywhere and recognizing that should help us better understand how they come to be and why they persist. I genuinely feel that going down this avenue of thought will get us closer to combating biased narratives, to achieve an approximation of “fairness” closer to our own subjective desires, than trying to argue who is more biased and whose bias is more dangerous. I mean, seriously, what can we do by arguing the latter?

“American media bias is more dangerous because it is tied to the world’s most powerful military!”

“Well, Chinese media bias is more dangerous because it is tied to the world’s largest population of disaffected young men!”

I’m being facetious, but it really isn’t hard to find all sorts of seemingly reasonable and persuasive “reasons” to argue how one must be more dangerous than the other. The “with great power comes great responsibility” Uncle Ben talk only works when they know they are doing something wrong, willfully indulging in irrational, unreasonable, or unethical biases or deceptions. There needs to be guilt before there can be restraint.

If there isn’t guilt, then what?

That’s a good question, isn’t it? I already gave my answer earlier.

Anyways, forgive me, I didn’t want to go down this path of discussion - to proof media bias.  I am not on a crusade looking for more converts - Noam Chomsky has a sufficient following.  If you read the Chinese blogs within China, you will know they simply take Western media bias as a fact.  Chomsky was invited to talk to the General Assembly recently.  So I suspect that view is global.

I’m not surprised many Chinese blogs within China take Western media bias as a fact. Many Western blogs with the West take Chinese media bias as a fact too. They’re even! Better yet, there are Chinese blogs within China that take Chinese media bias as a fact and Western blogs that take Western media bias as a fact too!

There’s less of a need to prove media bias than there is a need to show media bias wherever and whenever it appears. Do the latter well and the former will follow. There are people who do, like Glenn Greenwald (for -- mostly American -- politics) or The Last Psychiatrist (for potpourri mindfucks). What we’re after is growing individual skepticism towards the influences of mass media and fostering individual research and critical thinking. When we give evidence for “Western media bias”, the emphasis should be on “media bias” rather than “Western”. Be careful of arguing for “Western” as the cause instead of just some identifier. That’s playing to identity politics, a bias in of itself.

The U.S. is a hegemon and the political culture that has formed in the international arena is dominated by “power” - that’s well documented, and that view has been successfully advanced by people like Tsinghua Professor Yan Xuetong.  The “check and balance” is crucial for world peace, and the “actions the public willing to take” and the media “fairness” seems to be the only solution.  How we get there is really my question.

I don’t think we can ever get away from “power” but we can aspire to power being checked and balanced by power. This arguably cynical view is premised upon my understanding of human fallibility. I don’t think there can be an objective “fairness”, only the “fairness” that the majority can exact from the whole. We will thus get what effort we put in, what “power” we can command. It comes full circle in a way, doesn’t it?

“Response To How Egregious & Dangerous Western Media Bias Is” is a post from china/divide

I just got an email from DeWang of Hidden Harmonies asking me to chime in on his recent blog post, one featuring an email discussion had with a certain Rosa Sow of Newsy.com, "a multi-source online video news site that monitors, analyzes and presents the world's news coverage". I'm not sure how much I can say but I'll throw in a few cursory thoughts.

The conversation begins with Ms. Sow recommending a video from her site to DeWang after reading one of his posts about Japan apologizing to Korea for its past colonialism. It quickly became a lengthy back and forth revolving around DeWang's criticisms of Western media bias. To illustrate his criticisms, DeWang uses another Newsy video, one reporting on the International Energy Agency claims that China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest energy consumer. This video, he argues, is an example of how "Newsy seems to be suffering from the same immoral and propagandistic behavior that is so typical of the Western media":

"So typical"? How so? DeWang cites that there was no mention of how China compares to the United States in per capita energy consumption terms:

Of course, everyone knows, a metric that is critically important for populous countries like China and India are the per capita figures. Compare to American consumers, the Chinese consumers are saints. Certainly, it’s important to look at a country’s total consumption. But it is also equally critical to consider the per capita angle. That angle is missing from this Newsy video. So, the problem with Western media is their self-touting virtue of supporting fairness and these various values. When its fairness for others, they go out the window. And, best of all, the media can do it in a way that Americans are completely oblivious.

That then leads to Americans feeling entitled to an out-sized proportion of the world’s resources.

I'm going to chime in on DeWang and Ms. Sow's arguments over the above video itself¹. Off the bat, I'm not quite sure I see the immorality and propaganda in this particular Newsy video, and I don't agree that the per capita figures are "critically important" for what this video set out to report.

The video report is pretty straight-forward. You have a summary of the news item of the day, that the International Energy Agency says China has surpassed the United States as the world's largest energy consumer. China itself disputes this, citing its own data, and says it is still #2. Then five other news sources are presented with the following summarized perspectives that are related but tangential to the news item itself:

1. The Wall Street Journal: China doesn't like being #1 because it doesn't want the world to think they're a "developed" nation when they see themselves still as a "developing" nation.
2. The Telegraph: China isn't the "villain" on climate change, and is investing heavily in "green energy".
3. Forbes: China's energy consumption suggests shift in its geopolitical influence.
4. France 24: China will influence how energy is used in the future.
5. Treehugger: China should "own up" to the title and the responsibilities of that title, should not enjoy "lax treatment", and is no longer "really" a developing nation.

Newsy wraps up its video report with this final question to the viewer:

"So what do you think? Do you believe China has become the world's largest energy consumer and what does it mean for its responsibility to the rest of the world?"

As an aside, I don't really care if China is the largest or second largest. It's up there and its responsibility, to me, ought to be commensurate with its expectations of continued survival and development in a resource-limited world. The people that really matter in this discussion already know how significant or insignificant it is being the "largest energy consumer" country. They know the per capita figures and yadda yadda yadda. DeWang knows this too, but he, like the Chinese government, do also care how the average person in the world interprets this news.

Why?

Because, quite unfortunately, there really are a lot of idiots out there who don't immediately progress to the next level of thought and realize that China probably uses a lot of energy because its quite a large and populous country with certain understandable goals to achieve. These people, again unfortunately, influence others and people in aggregate influence governments. It's politics. DeWang argues that the omission of a comparison of per capita energy consumption figures between the United States and China may contribute to a growing "Red Scare"² in the United States:

I disagree the per capita angle is ancillary. The main narrative in the U.S. is that the rise in Chinese energy consumption means a lowered consumption by Americans. The predominant “view” in the U.S. of that news is as a threat. So, the question of fairness is out the window. That way of reporting (via omission) predisposes Americans into a more unfair (or belligerent) stance with the almighty U.S. military.

Now, DeWang isn't being clinically crazy here about how certain news and issues relating to China are being packaged for the American masses. There certainly are people and organizations advancing anti-China alarmist narratives out there, just as there are anti-U.S. narratives in China. I can empathize with him on this.

However, I do think he is being unfair to Newsy here. There's a difference between a report that says "China is a threat to us, look at how they're consuming energy more than us" and one that says "China now consumes more energy than the United States". It isn't fair to project the first statement onto the second statement, nor is it fair to ask someone giving the second statement to change their statement to counter or balance against the first.

...which is what I can't help but feel is what DeWang is after, and he's too quick to ascribe some sort of conspiratorial guilt of "unfairness" if they didn't do so.

I don't know if I've misunderstood or misrepresented DeWang here. If anything, though, I do think this was a battle poorly chosen. There are better examples of Western media bias to argue and this Newsy video wasn't really one of them.

That said...

What do you think?

Do you feel the Western media has made such a big deal about China surpassing the United States as the world's largest energy consumer where enough people out there are being mislead into an alarmist reaction towards China that explicit media reminders of per capita stats would put everyone back in whatever place they should be?

"Chiming In On Hidden Harmonies’ Criticism of Newsy" is a post from china/divide

Last week, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health published a study based on data from the 2008 National Health Services Survey of China, which found that falls in the home are the leading cause of injury among elderly in China.

The findings in of themselves are not the kind of thing that will make the front page of a major newspaper, but the study is an example of quite a remarkable trend.

To wit, China’s demographic data was simply not complete enough a decade ago to lend researchers the opportunity to discover trends as minute as how and where the elderly are most likely to hurt themselves.  The better we understand a society’s ills -- how her people eat and live, how they die -- the better we are able to contextualize the impact of governance systems and political regimes.

Just thinking out loud now…for all the talk of a Twitter revolution in Iran last summer, the power of 140 characters is only strong enough to continue fanning the flames of an already stoked fire.  A lasting movement -- whether it be one of moderate ideology or something more akin to revolution -- needs the power of deep-seeded ideas, and this is best done by increasing knowledge in a society.

Knowledge of healthcare is particularly well suited to the task of bringing about positive societal change.  There is the immediate benefit of such knowledge to empower individuals, families, and communities to make choices that will improve their well-being and, in some cases, considerably lengthen life.  The less obvious benefit is that developed healthcare systems and increased public awareness of public health lead to a shift in the nature of political discourse.  Regimes - democratic, tyrannical, or what have you - are forced to change because the stated and expressed priorities of the people are also now changed.

We are seeing in today’s China how a population more in tune with their healthcare needs is placing ever-louder pressure on the government to create better hospitals, clamp down on corruption in the medical fraternity, and even make the environment a littler greener.  This is not being done through a network of foreign NGO’s or through the editorials of foreign newspapers.  It is happening from the within private homes, and through dialog within Chinese families.  Knowledge has been and always will be the truest catalyst of change.

“Healthcare Knowledge As Catalyst For Change In China” is a post from china/divide

A new post on Hidden Harmonies discusses the recent overturning of California Prop 8, a state law banning same-sex marriages, by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker. It does almost entirely to segue into what it describes as "the real problem": Democracy allows irrationality to trump facts, science, etc. and yet there are still "advocates" for democracy as a political system of governance.

You have heard this argument before from the “Democracy Advocates”:  Let the People decide for themselves, (especially applied to China).  Who cares if the People are irrational or uneducated in delicate matters, let them decide for themselves.

What happened here is that the People decided with their usual gut feel for the issues.  Morality is more important, who cares about facts, let’s get on in ignorance and prejudice.

But Democracy is being judged EVERY DAY by the world, whether in a US court or in the world opinions, whether with facts or with religious morality.

A different verdict lies here, that whether this democracy can stand by the facts and the laws, or will it stand by its own version of religious morality much like in Iran?

My guess is the PEOPLE will likely be irrational, even when given such a clear choice.

Unless I've misunderstood the implications being made above, the author seems upset that a democracy enacted a law against homosexuality despite the "facts" and in accordance with "ignorance and prejudice" and is thus questioning the desirability of democracy as a system of governance itself. There's probably an element of annoyance with "democracy activists" too, "especially" those who harp on China for not embracing democracy and still persisting in single-party authoritarianism.

Here's the thing: There's a bit of conflation going on here, on multiple sides. The concept of democracy does not promise any adherence to facts or science or whatever, only popular opinion. So don't conflate the efficacy or desirability of democracy by measuring it against such criteria. True, some advocates of democracy get ahead of themselves, sometimes oversimplifying and thereby misrepresenting democracy as some sort of cure-all for all of society's ills that ensures that only good things will result. They deserve getting called out for it, no disagreement there.

However, suggesting that "Democracy" (with a capital "D") is "being judged EVERY DAY by the world" ostensibly because of how often laws enacted by a democratic government fail to reflect facts and science is:

• One part overeager rebuke of overeager pro-democracy activists (who probably have to be in support of equal rights for homosexuals), and
• Two parts melodrama that doesn't really get us closer to understanding when democracy becomes preferable for wherever it is recommended.

There's some good discussion about majorities vs. minorities or checks and balances in "democratic" republics, but I'm not too sure this Prop 8 episode contributes much to the world's "judgment" of democracy itself.

"Court Overturns Same Sex Marriage Ban, World Judges Democracy?" is a post from china/divide

Just saw this new post about catharsis on You Are Not So Smart. Catharsis is the "purging of emotional tensions". In other words -- more relevant to readers of this site -- it is willfully making racist comments about China and the Chinese on some website like chinaSMACK or forum like the Beijinger each time you're frustrated by something or another. In other words, it is also like me writing a long rant on this blog whenever I read something I consider patently offensive if not inexcusably ignorant. Catharsis, of course, is not limited to anger. It can include you masturbating furiously in the shower after leering at your secretary all day long. It can even be breaking down and bawling your eyes out after staying strong throughout a late loved one's battle with cancer. The initial China examples were just me making this immediately recognizable to those who know me.

Succinctly, the key points of the You Are Not So Smart post:

The Misconception: Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family.

The Truth: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.

[...]

If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting.

It’s drug-like, because there are brain chemicals and other behavioral reinforcements at work. If you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it.

The more effective approach is to just stop. Take your anger off of the stove. Let it go from a boil to a simmer to a lukewarm state where you no longer want to sink your teeth into the side of buffalo.

[...]

If you get into an argument, or someone cuts you off in traffic, or you get called an awful name, venting will not dissipate the negative energy. It will, however, feel great.

That’s the thing. Catharsis will make you feel good, but it’s an emotional hamster wheel. The emotion which led you to catharsis will still be there afterward, and if it made you feel good, you’ll seek it out again in the future.

Video games, horror movies, romance novels – all fun, but no psychologist would prescribe these outlets as a cure for anger or fear or loneliness.

Flailing in a mosh pit or screaming along to death metal doesn’t release your demons, it prolongs your angst.

Smashing plates or kicking doors after a fight with a roommate, spouse or lover doesn’t redirect your fury, it perpetuates your rancor.

If you spank your children while infuriated, remember you are reinforcing something inside yourself.

Common sense says venting is an important way to ease tension, but common sense is wrong. Venting – catharsis – is pouring fuel into a fire.

Hm. Now what am I going to do?

Sorry for the lack of updates on china/divide lately. Now that I'm back in Shanghai from my 2 month trip to the States, I hope updates will be more forthcoming.

"Venting Doesn’t Help With Your “Life In China” Frustrations" is a post from china/divide

Some of Zhang Mingbao’s Handiwork

It’s been a year now since Zhang Mingbao, driving with a blood alcohol content five times the legal limit, lost control of his car and ended the lives of five people in Nanjing. The horrific accident spurred the police department to implement a ‘get tough’ policy on drunk drivers, the results of which were recently released to the public. Does the incident and its aftermath offer any valuable lessons?

It was only natural that an accident of this kind was given so much attention by the media:

At 8:15 pm Tuesday, a car driven by a drunk driver lost control on a busy street in Jiangning district of Nanjing, and hit nine passersby and six other vehicles.

Three people died at the scene and two died later in the hospital, including a pregnant woman. Local media reported that the woman’s unborn baby also died. Four others were injured, Nanjing traffic police said.

[…]

Tests after the accident showed that Zhang’s blood alcohol content was 381 milligrams per 100 milliliters. A person is considered drunk when his or her alcohol content is 80 milligrams per 100 milliliters[.]

In addition to the grim facts themselves, extremely graphic photographs of the accident scene were published by the media. This not only fueled outrage from the public towards the perpetrator of the crime but also prompted severe criticism of the police in charge of the crime scene, who were accused of not treating the deceased victims (including body parts) with sufficient respect.

Everything Is Under Control

What happened next? You don’t need to watch an episode of The Wire to understand how municipal governments respond to public outrage.¹ They immediately implemented a new, tough “zero tolerance” policy against drunk driving.

There are arguments to be made for and against this kind of government response. Critics can point out that drunk driving had for years been a significant problem in Nanjing that was virtually ignored by the police. In 2007 and 2008, drunk driving cases in Nanjing totaled 6,020 and 8,878, respectively, and in 2009, prior to the incident with Zhang Mingbao, the number of cases was 5,054.

Indeed, Zhang Mingbao’s case itself was evidence of a serious enforcement problem. As discussed at China Car Times:

Zhang has been in trouble with the law for his ‘crazy’ driving before, totaling 80 various different violations within 3 years. Zhang received his C1 license in April 2006, and by April 2009 he had a total of 80 driving violations, which included speeding and running red lights.

Why did the police wait until the public forced their hand?

Additionally, the initial anti-drunk driving campaign began the day after the Zhang Mingbao accident. Granted, this was a temporary, 100-day initiative, and not a comprehensive policy. However, to respond to an extremely important public health and safety problem with a knee-jerk, hastily put together plan within hours of an accident seems extraordinarily irresponsible.

On the other hand, one can credit the government for responding quickly to a significant problem, even if that response was a bit too hasty. Despite the fact that drunk driving had been a problem for some time in Nanjing, even critics of the foot dragging would have to admit that the government policy was “better late than never.”

The initial 100-day campaign turned into a longer term plan for the city, and the police force in the past year have emphasized enforcement of drunk driving laws. A recent release of pertinent statistics trumpeted the following numbers:

• Four hundred police officers have been detailed to fight against drunk driving. (One wonders whether this includes traffic and beat cops who were told to “keep an eye out” for drunk drivers, and then counted as participating in the new project.)

• There have been twenty-nine special crackdowns, whereby city-wide networks of checkpoints, using 800 individual police officers, were established to catch drunk drivers. These generally coincided with special events such as holidays.

• In the second half of 2009, the number of drunk driving violations totaled 2,655 (including 51 government officials), of which 338 individuals were arrested.

• In the first half of 2010, the number of drunk driving violations totaled 2,203 (including 21 government officials), of which 203 individuals were arrested.

That’s a lot of activity, and by the unwritten metric of bureaucrats worldwide, the crackdown has been a success. Whether the policy is adequate to address the drunk driving problem in Nanjing is a separate question, the answer to which may not become apparent for several years.

The entire incident, from the accident to the crackdown, provides a lot of food for thought. First, it is yet another reminder that public opinion in China is extremely powerful, and in many instances sufficient to motivate the government to act. In this case, the public outcry was not specifically channeled into a call for a drunk driving crackdown, but the implementation of a new plan the day after a well-publicized incident must have been motivated in part by the possibility of a public backlash.

Second, I suspect that the entire tale of Zhang Mingbao and the new drunk driving crackdown, including local political pressure and the subsequent policy choices, could have been told not only in almost any city in China, but in a majority of major municipalities worldwide. Horrific crimes engender fear, and the public naturally looks to local government to protect them. This dynamic happens everywhere in the world. Whether a nation is authoritarian or democratic, socialist or capitalist, some things don’t change. In the immortal words of Quentin Tarantino:

[T]hey got the same shit over there that we got here, but it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.

Third, what kind of marks should we give the Nanjing government on this issue? It seems unlikely that “better late than never” is an acceptable performance standard. Moreover, do we really want our local governments responding to these incidents with hastily thrown together, panicky crackdowns just because they are afraid of public opinion?

The public appears to have the ability to force action at the local level in some cases, but only after a crisis (a single horrific event, or perhaps a deluge of more minor incidents). Is this system of accountability acceptable, or is local political reform the inevitable solution?

“Drunk Driving in Nanjing: One Year Later” is a post from china/divide

I want to preemptively acknowledge how broad the subject matter of this post will be, but it is the only subject that I’ve come across recently to somewhat pique my interest for discussion. Quite a few articles and blog posts concerning Christianity in China have caught my attention over the past week. Just as my younger brother started his missions/missionary trip to China exactly one week ago, Danwei posted a translation of an interesting essay by Hu Shi (1891-1962) written in 1928 that criticized foot-binding and praised Western missionaries for bringing different ideas to China. An excerpt:

“Turn women into beasts of burden.” This phrase doesn’t do enough to describe the cruel treatment of women in China. It isn’t enough for us to turn women into beasts of burden – we must chop off two of their hooves and force them to suffer hard manual labor!

Looking at the rest of humankind, one is unable to find a second country with such a barbaric system!

Our virtuous sages and ancient classics offer absolutely no help. Confucian scholars have spent every day of the last one thousand years discussing benevolence and justice, and yet never spoke up for the inhumane suffering of their grandmothers, mothers, and sisters.

Suddenly, missionaries arrived from the West. Besides religion, they brought over some new customs and points of view. They also gave us quite a few lessons on morality, the most important being that women should be treated as humans.

A few days later, Danwei published a translation of another essay, this time written in 1929, concerning children in China. Again, an excerpt:

The other day, a friend told me something rather profound: “to see how civilized a country is, you just have to examine three things: First, look at how its people treat children; Second, look at how they treat women; Third, look at how they spend their free time.”

These three standards are straightforward. It’s disappointing that China fails at all three. No matter which of the three we choose, we find that our country is the most barbaric. How do we treat children? How do we treat women? How do we spend our free time? The country is filled with fools boasting about our intellectual and ideological development, yet not one of them has reflected on these three issues.

Hu Shi goes on to criticize how children were delivered, reared, and educated (or instead of being educated, had their feet bound). Many of these criticisms are clearly outdated, warranted at the time for the practices that were norms at the time, contrasted by Hu Shi against what he admired in the West¹. Of course, certain things like gender equality have persisted, albeit to a generally lesser degree.

Here’s the money quote:

We should deeply thank the imperialists for waking us up from this dark and evil dream. We should thank the Christian missionaries for bringing over a little bit of Western civilization and humanism. We should thank them for telling us that the way we treat children is inhumane and barbaric. With all our hearts, we should thank the so-called “cultural invaders” for promoting the “Natural Foot Society,” the “Anti Foot-Binding Society,” and for building new schools, hospitals, and maternity hospitals.

A lot of Westerners are experiencing a massive erection at this point, like most of the commenters at chinaSMACK. The Chinese fenqing at the nationalistic Chinese discussion forum Tiexue are probably convulsing in rage though.

Unfortunately for both groups of people, C.W. Hayford of Frog in a Well responded to Danwei’s first post by adding some perspective on Hu Shi’s views of Christianity in China:

Hu, a Columbia University PhD, won a poll in the early 1920s as the most admired “returned student” in China. But his surprising words of praise for the YWCA need to be balanced against his views on Christianity’s future in China. He elsewhere disdained the run of Christian missionaries as uneducated and narrow. They came to China because they could live well for little money, he said, and mission boards were far less careful in selecting China missionaries than Standard Oil was in selecting China salesmen and executives.

Published in a North American journal, The Forum, Hu Shi wrote:

The future of Christianity in China is a question which should be considered apart from the question of the past services rendered to China by the Christian missionaries. The part played by the missionaries in the modernization of China will long be remembered by the Chinese, even though no Christian church may be left there. They were the pioneers of the new China. They helped the Chinese to fight for the suppression of opium which the pirate-traders brought to us. They agitated against footbinding, which eight centuries of esoteric philosophizing in native China failed to recognize as an inhuman institution. And they brought to us the first rudiments of European science. The early Jesuits gave us the pre-Newtonian astronomy, and the later Protestant missionaries introduced modern hospitals and schools. They taught us to know that there was a new world and a new civilization behind the pirate-traders and gunboats.

Many of the Protestant missionaries worked hard to awaken China and bring about a modern nation. China is now awakened and determined to modernize herself. There is not the slightest doubt that a new and modem China is emerging out of chaos. But this new China does not seem to promise much bright future to the propagation of the Christian faith. On the contrary, Christianity is facing opposition everywhere. The dream of a “Christian occupation of China” seems to be fast vanishing, – probably forever. And the explanation is not far to seek.

So altogether, Hu Shi gave credit where credit was due, focusing less on the source of good things as he did the actual things he considered as “good” against those he thought as “bad”. Sounds like a good, practical man.

Excerpted from NPR:

Official Chinese surveys now show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious, an astonishing figure for an officially atheist country, where religion was banned until three decades ago.

The last 30 years of economic reform have seen an explosion of religious belief. China’s government officially recognizes five religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Daoism. The biggest boom of all has been in Christianity, which the government has struggled to control.

Marx would be pissed. Mao too, but for different reasons. Hu Shi was wrong, in a way.

Personally, I’m not sure what to make of this “one in three” claim regarding the prevalence of religion in China, especially as juxtaposed with China being officially atheist and religion having been “banned” only decades ago. I mean, how do we define religion or being religious? How do we describe a religious person? Someone who merely believes there is a higher power? Someone who adheres to certain religious practices? How strongly do they have to adhere to them for them to be designated as religious?

Has there been an explosion of religious belief in China? I’m not sure. Part of me believes many “religious” (and superstitious) beliefs or practices were merely keep quiet during times they were frowned upon by the powers that be, powers that could send you to be reeducated. Another part of me believes that organized religion naturally expands absent environmental restrictions and controls, adding to their ranks of believers and followers. This is because people in China are like people from anywhere else, with the same human insecurities and uncertainties about their place and purpose in the world. They’re just surviving and thus susceptible and amenable to beliefs in higher powers or organized ideologies that give them comfort in an often tough and unfair existence. Ideology, whether religious or atheistically socio-political, is ideology, a worldview to be proselytized and subscribed to for people to make sense of things. If communism isn’t working, and communism isn’t threatening you with a stint to a labor camp, its easy to be receptive to alternative and competing ideologies.

The question I have is: Is any increase in religion and religious belief in China good or bad?

Click the cover to read the comic. Communists and Chinese in the second half.

With China and Christianity, a religion or faith that openly seeks converts, we specifically have a volatile intersection of pre-consisting contentious views and values. You have the people who genuinely believe they are doing something good, that they are saving lives and souls. Then you have the people who doesn’t really believe that, seeing it more as cultural imperialism, a desire to “civilize” the uncivilized, to “enlighten” the unenlightened. Some think of Christianity, like any religion, as an opiate, something to lull adherents into acquiescing to and thus perpetuating the injustices of the present world for some promised reward in the next, to pray to God instead of petitioning their grievances. Others encourage religion to bring spiritual fulfillment to a world too obsessed with materialism and the competitive acquisition of wealth, as a way to be at peace with a world that we cannot always change. One person says these people do good works. Another says they do good works to buy an opportunity to proselytize.

But even if we replace Christianity with something else, like Tibetan Buddhism, is religion something that will help or hurt China, for itself, and for its interactions with the rest of the world? What’s your ideology for China?

“As Christianity Booms, Is Religion Good for China?” is a post from china/divide