I've just finished reading a slender volume by historian Jonathan Spence about life and its troubles in China's Shandong Province during the 1670s, "The Death of Woman Wang."

I folded a corner for future reference:

"He knew from experience that gentry could not be treated like commoners when it came to tax collection: commoners would usually pay out of fear, if pressed hard enough, but with gentry there was always delay and the danger of making them lose face if one pushed them too hard; this could lead to local antagonisms and even to appeals over the magistrate's head to other officials, or else to harassment of his staff."

The sentence reminded me of a couple recent articles about China's elite and their complexities. There was an excellent story in The Wall Street Journal this weekend, which journalist Jeremy Page began with a description of the sort that fans outrage among average Chinese in a nation with wide disparity in both wealth and privilege:

"One evening early this year, a red Ferrari pulled up at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Beijing, and the son of one of China's top leaders stepped out, dressed in a tuxedo.

Bo Guagua, 23, was expected. He had a dinner appointment with a daughter of the then-ambassador, Jon Huntsman.

The car, though, was a surprise. The driver's father, Bo Xilai, was in the midst of a controversial campaign to revive the spirit of Mao Zedong through mass renditions of old revolutionary anthems, known as 'red singing.' He had ordered students and officials to work stints on farms to reconnect with the countryside. His son, meanwhile, was driving a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and as red as the Chinese flag, in a country where the average household income last year was about $3,300."

Another story, last week in Bloomberg Businessweek, looked at the issue from a different angle: "China's Super-Rich Buy a Better Life Abroad."

"What began as a trickle a decade ago ... has become a flood as China’s new rich seek foreign passports or residency permits (commonly known as green cards in the U.S.) largely from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. More than 500,000 Chinese have investable assets of over 10 million yuan ($1.57 million), according to a joint survey released in April by China Merchants Bank and Bain & Co. The study says almost 60 percent are considering emigrating, have begun the process, or have emigrated."

While the piece emphasized that China's rich aren't permanently fleeing their homeland, instead seeking things like real estate and better education for their children, it did point out examples such as: 

"One émigré in Boston (who asked only that his last name, Yang, be used since he still owns a factory in China) points out that the Chinese government spent more money on internal security (549 billion yuan) than on defense (534 billion yuan) in 2010. He says that if things got ugly, the rich would be targets not just for being rich but for their close connections with the government."

To get a sense of why the issue of China's elite is a sensitive one these days, it's helpful to consider the experiences of those who are faced with frustrating living conditions. Earlier this year, I was in Shandong Province (the setting of Spence's book), to report about the gold industry there. 

A scene from the family of a man named Teng, who was killed in a mine fire last year:

"After being turned away from the mine, Teng's mother and his wife drove to the hospital just in time to see bodies being carried into the building. After his mother collapsed amid loud sobs, she said, she and her daughter-in-law were driven to a hotel by a group of men and held there for four days until they signed a contract agreeing to accept 514,000 yuan in compensation, about $80,560.

'They said that if we didn't accept it, we would get nothing,' said the mother, who alternated between kneading a tissue in tight circles in her hands and lifting it to wipe away tears. 'After we signed the contract, his body was cremated and we got his ashes.'

Teng's 31-year-old wife, in a black cotton dress with a white flower print, said she didn't bother reading the agreement.

The mine bosses had made it clear that they didn't have to answer for what had happened.

'They never gave us an explanation,' the widow said."

A story in China Daily jumped out at me yesterday: Terminal Three (T3) of Beijing Capital International Airport recently lost part of its roof. 

The English-language state newspaper said that a section of T3's roof was ripped apart on Tuesday evening by "a strong wind." 

As this has happened twice now in the past year, China Daily reported, there are "increasing doubts on the landmark building's resilience."

I'll note for the record that Beijing did not suffer any tornadoes this week. China Daily quoted airport officials as saying winds "moving at a speed of 24 meters a second, lifted some of the metal plates on the roof of the terminal's D section." Google tells me that: 24 (meters a second) = 53.686471 miles per hour.

We might assume that most $3.8 billion projects are meant to withstand far greater speeds.

In fact, the Associated Press interviewed a lead architect involved with T3 who said the problem was not in its design but most likely with building supplies or installation. 

The story is about more than whether inferior roofing tiles were installed.

For first-time travelers to Beijing, T3 is a statement about where the country is headed. When I first visited China in August 2009, I was immediately struck by the difference between the dingy airport I'd left in Moscow and the gleaming, soaring walls of the Beijing airport.

As a piece of public architecture, with its undulating roof like a dragon's back, it reinforced the notion of an emerging superpower. Upon landing, I could almost hear the words "double-digit GDP growth" floating through the air.

Of course, a few patches of roof getting blown around in the air doesn't mean much in the larger view. And China's economy, today, looks like a better bet than any other large market in the world.

But with each new infrastructure debacle -- such as loose screws on the world's longest sea bridge or a bullet train crash -- I revisit my initial sense of confidence about China's future, and wonder about the details.

(For discussion about China's overall economic health, click here for a summary of a recent debate between people who know far more than I do. A broader take by one of the panelists is here. I spotted the links via Bill Bishop, whose blog is indispensable and be found here.)

Mao Zedong, 1956: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend"

That now infamous Mao slogan and its encouragement of freer expression led Chinese intellectuals to publicly criticize Communist Party policy. After things got a bit too close to the bone for comfort, those who'd spoken up were silenced with a harshness typical of Mao's reign. Faced with the apparent contradiction of both sparking the 100 Flowers movement and then crushing it, Mao later explained that it had all along been a ruse meant to lure bad elements out of hiding.

Few, if any, would draw parallels between 1956 and today. But an item carried by the state Xinhua news wire yesterday had language that was strikingly similar. Reporting a speech by President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People, Xinhua said that: 

"In his speech, the president called on Chinese writers and artists to persist in the principles of 'Serve the People and Serve Socialism,' 'Let All Flowers Bloom Together' and 'Let Hundreds of Schools Contend.' 

He advised them to get close to the realities and lives of the masses, uphold the spiritual torch of the Chinese nationality, and produce a greater number of excellent works that live up to the history, the times and the people."

(The full text of the article, which I learned of via a Tweet by Danish correspondent and friend Kim Rathcke Jensen, can be found by clicking here.)

After recent talk at the highest levels of the Communist Party about the importance of culture, and rising political star Bo Xilai's emphasis on "red culture", the speech by Hu had a certain resonance. Of course, there are questions about how much of the current rhetoric reflects a serious ideological thrust, versus more shallow political maneuvering.

With all of this in mind, I refreshed my memory of the 100 Flowers movement by looking through a couple of history books. One of them, the Penguin History of Modern China, had a line about the crackdown that followed 100 Flowers and the reasons for it.

As much as anything else I read this evening about China's recent history and the politics of today, I thought it offered a sound explanation: "The rock of the regime -- the Party -- had to be preserved..."

The Global Times is a state-run tabloid with a reputation for nationalism and feisty rhetoric.  But today, it posted an editorial describing the rules of online civility. The outer limits of good taste, apparently, stop at the personal cell phone number of Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin.

Ai Weiwei, artist provocateur and critic of the Chinese Communist Party, on Sunday publicly posted Hu's digits along with others he deemed emblematic of the "wu mao" -- 50 cents, the amount allegedly paid to Chinese state propaganda operatives for each online posting.

The Global Times did not think this was funny. In a column headlined "Lack of ethics is ruining Chinese Web," the paper said of Ai that: "he should be cautious about his behavior, by invading the privacy of his criticizers because of criticism against him, he negated the expectations of those around him."

To get a sense of how strange the experience of reading propaganda in China can be , let's pare this down. We'll put aside discussion of the censorship regime used to choke domestic access to corners of the Internet that don't meet with Beijing's approval. We also will not delve into past Global Times editorials that attacked Ai. Nor will we contemplate the $2.4 million tax bill handed to him by Chinese authorities.

Instead, bear in mind just this one fact: Ai Weiwei was earlier this year held in an undisclosed location for 81 days. He simply disappeared into the hands of state security for almost three months. You'll have to remember it, because as the Global Times complains that Ai's posting of peoples' phone numbers made "them suffer from many prank calls," it does not once acknowledge his confinement:

"Artist Ai Weiwei published the private cell phone numbers of several people on the Internet November 20, making them suffer from many prank calls. The editor-in-chief and an editor of Global Times were among the victims. This is a prominent case in which political dissent drives people to take immoral activities. Unethical political struggles are more active in China's microblog sphere now and even many intellectuals and social celebrities are involved. This should not happen in a rational society. 

The staff of Global Times have no personal grudge against Ai. Global Times has published several commentaries concerning Ai's case since April but has made no personal attacks against him. Besides, these comments were conducted against the background of Western media and foreign governments meddling in Ai's case. Global Times' response is normal work for a newspaper. 

Personal enmities also do not exist between intellectuals and journalists who abused each other online. Differences in political values caused this friction. To overwhelm the other side, they even adopted extreme means that violate laws and morality. 

In the modern history, ideological debate has seldom had a legal platform in China as it was too caught up with real life-and-death political struggles. Chinese society did not develop the tolerance to different opinions. Since the reform and opening-up period, a diversified society has gradually been formed and the rise of the Internet, including microblogs, has provided an unprecedented platform for the expression of opinions. It should be a good opportunity to enhance social communications. However, as many microbloggers try to attract more followers, their posts veer radical, which causes violent opposition online and brings out more negative influences on Chinese society. It is not teaching people how to accept dissent and be tolerant to each other, but is demonstrating how to become prejudiced and assert dominance.

Fierce disputes on the Internet mirror the cruelty of political struggles in China's history through the ages. This also reflects that establishing proper rules to regulate debate among different schools of thoughts and ensuring they contribute to China's progress is rather hard to achieve. 

Nowadays, many intellectuals and celebrities all speak out on the Internet. They should bear the responsibility to enhance a diversified society. Take Ai Weiwei, he should be cautious about his behavior, by invading the privacy of his criticizers because of criticism against him, he negated the expectations of those around him. 

All games have their rules and so does the political game on the Internet. If China refutes any regulation of the online world, its social morality will be damaged. The Chinese government should take measures to regulate the online order and curb the increasingly rampant violations on personal rights, including invasion of privacy and death threats. The relevant authorities should take actions to crack down on these illegal acts while safeguarding the freedom of speech."

Two readings and a video

I.

The headline in today's The New York Times certainly got my attention: "How China Can Defeat America." The author, a leading Chinese foreign policy analyst and thinker, considers a lot of things -- competition to the point of war between the two nations, ancient Chinese political theorists and the limits of economic might in global relations. The column was written by Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, and is worth reading in its entirety, which you can do by clicking here. 

Yan is a controversial figure, criticized by some for his hawkish, realpolitik read of world affairs. Putting those issues aside, this was the section that resonated with me:

"How, then, can China win people’s hearts across the world? According to ancient Chinese philosophers, it must start at home. Humane authority begins by creating a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad.

This means China must shift its priorities away from economic development to establishing a harmonious society free of today’s huge gaps between rich and poor. It needs to replace money worship with traditional morality and weed out political corruption in favor of social justice and fairness."

Anyone who spends time scrolling through the various Chinese state press outlets has read a variation of those lines many times. You hear it in editorials, feature pieces and quotes from senior officials: China must address the interwoven problems of corruption, income inequality and social injustice. But the frequency with which those notes are sounded is paralleled by an absence of any systemic change. 

II.

Shortly after reading that piece I flipped through the back of Sunday's China Daily and saw a review of a stage adaptation of Jin Ping Mei, or The Plum in the Golden Vase  (also translated as The Golden Lotus) . The 16th-century Chinese novel, which I've not yet read, is famous for its depictions of sex and corruption. The Princeton Library version describes the protagonist as a "corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town." To say the least, persons matching that description are still making trouble in China.

China Daily, an English-language state newspaper, sent a reporter to interview the choreographer, Wang Yuanyuan.

Toward the end of the article, a quote from Wang stuck out:

"Jin Ping Mei was written against a background of a decaying society and Wang says that phenomenon is very similar to what is happening now.

'Maybe society today is even worse than what was depicted in the book. People these days are lured by money, and they will do anything to get what they want, without a moral bottom-line,' she says."

During the period between my reading the story this morning and sitting down to write a blog this afternoon, the link seems to have gone bad. It's always difficult to know why these things happen, and it could just be a blip. In the meantime, I'll pass along a screen grab of the page:

III.

The Wall Street Journal has a video up today in which two topics are discussed: 1. The relationship between the rising price of very expensive pink diamonds and Chinese consumer demand for the same. 2. The ongoing saga of Ai Weiwei, an artist provocateur and, increasingly, a symbol of Beijing's crackdown on political speech. The experience of watching one after the other says much about today's China.

Ok, I started to say, yet more Internet weirdness in China, because sometimes it really does feel a bit like taking a trip down the rabbit hole. Forbes has an interesting column on what may be another thrust (or parry, who can keep up?) in efforts to target Virtual Private Network subscriptions that create virtual tunnels around China's online censors:

"In recent months, administrators of services with encrypted connections designed to allow users secure remote access say they’ve seen strange activity coming from China: When a user from within the country attempts to reach a server abroad, a string of seemingly random data hits the destination computer before he or she can connect, sometimes followed by that user’s communication being mysteriously dropped.

...

China’s internet service providers may be testing a new system that, rather than merely block IP addresses or certain Web pages, attempts to identify censorship circumvention tools by preceding a user’s connection to an encrypted service with a probe designed to reveal something about what sort of service the user is accessing."

(The full story can be found by clicking here.)

It all sounds a bit obscure. But bear in mind that China is not only home to one of the world's most sophisticated web censorship regimes, it is also the largest Internet market in the world. (More than 500 million users as of September, according to a report carried by the state Xinhua newswire.) 

I just finished reading "The Vagrants" by Yiyun Li. Like the book I read before it, "The Corpse Walker" by Liao Yiwu, the plight of many characters involved was both depressing and familiar in theme, if not content. Looking over a shelf of China books this morning, I realized that most of them have that in common. 

Then after lunch today, I read a Spiegel interview of Liao, who fled China earlier this year. (His account of literally walking out of his homeland is here.) His newest work, just published in Germany, is about his time in Chinese prison. It was pretty dark. A partial description from the Spiegel piece: "He (Liao) was kept in a cell near the latrines, and from there taken to his interrogations. The guards beat him with electric batons, one time delivering 100 blows in a single interrogation, another time for 20 minutes without pause."

At the end of making my way through descriptions of Liao's mistreatment, I felt more than a little bit down.

I told myself: There are 1.3 billion people in China, and these are just a handful of stories. Most Chinese people are not dissidents and have normal lives in which intimidation by state security is not a feature. The past few decades brought tremendous gains to China. More than half a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. And so on.

Still, the stories by people like Liao stuck. 

I turned to a video I'd seen recently by Jordan Pouille, a French journalist and a friend of mine. The clip begins with the portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square and a dreary cityscape from the back of a taxi. It's a journey that any Beijing resident could describe.

He rides into the diplomatic neighborhood where both our offices are located, and watches as a group of People's Armed Police (either starting or ending a shift of standing guard outside foreign embassies) walk by in lockstep, beneath the gold of gingko trees. Then the crush of the Beijing subway and the tired look on a woman's face. 

But Jordan turned from that point to a broader field of vision, what he describes as "my Beijing, my city, with sorrow and happiness, with colors and grey, with dust and glitter, with concrete and old stones, with work and laziness, with wealth and poverty, with shopping frenzy and spirituality."

It was just what I needed:

My Beijing from jordan pouille on Vimeo.

Followers of China news have been presented with two disturbing images in the past 24 hours. Both say something about a facet of today's China. Before considering them, a question: How angry or helpless does an individual have to feel before they commit to setting their own flesh aflame? 

First, there is the photograph of a man who set himself on fire in Tiananmen Square, his body flat against the ground and covered with fire extinguisher foam. First reported by Peter Foster of The Telegraph, the self-immolation in the dead center of this city of some 20 million people happened on October 21, but was not made public until yesterday.

More than the fact that the man, surnamed Wang, was able to light himself on fire in the middle of a dense security cordon at Tiananmen, I am astounded that the news was unknown to the world for so long. Is this due to massive government efforts at suppressing information about unrest? Or did no one in the crowd, other than a random British tourist, happen to snap a photo and then pass it on?

Police have said that 42-year-old Wang, of Hubei Province, was upset about the outcome of a civil court case. This is a familiar refrain among petitioners who come to Beijing seeking justice.

Photo from a BBC report on Wang

The second image is a video that recently surfaced via Radio Free Asia. I have to warn you, it is gruesome. In fact, I didn't watch all the way to the agonizing end.

The short clip is reportedly of an ethnic Tibetan monk named Tsewang Norbu. The 29-year-old monk lit himself on fire in August in apparent protest of Beijing's policies toward Tibetan culture and religion. The video captures the monk's charred, smoking body.

The advocacy group Free Tibet has described Tsewang Norbu's death:

"Tsewang Norbu drank petrol, sprayed himself with petrol and then set himself on fire. He was heard calling out: 'We Tibetan people want freedom', 'Long live the Dalai Lama' and 'Let the Dalai Lama Return to Tibet'. He is believed to have died at the scene."

I was recently in the north edge of China's Sichuan Province, where 11 Tibetan clergy including Tsewang Norbu have committed self-immolation in the past year. But interviewing people about the rash of fiery protests and seeing the aftermath are two very different things. As this video makes clear, it is a profoundly disturbing thing to witness. 

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China sent an e-mail yesterday concerning a survey of its membership about the visa process here. The results of that effort, and some additional research by the Club, are worth noting:

"Over the past two years 27 foreign journalists have been made to wait more than four months for approval of their applications for visas to be resident correspondents in China. 13 of them have been waiting more than six months and are still waiting. Three requests presented in 2009 have not received a response, which in practice means they have been denied.

A further 28 permanent postings or reporting trips have been cancelled since 2009 because applications for the required journalistic visas were rejected or ignored by the Chinese authorities, the survey found.

In six cases, foreign reporters say they were told by Foreign Ministry officials that their bureaux’ visa applications had been rejected or put on hold due to the content of the bureaux’ or the applicant’s previous coverage of Chinese affairs.

...

Such threats and unreasonable delays in issuing journalist visas are inconsistent both with the Chinese authorities’ repeated pledges to offer 'all conveniences' to foreign correspondents and with international practice."

The Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid controlled by the state, has put its finger on the core of Greece's problem in an editorial today. It's the D word. And that doesn't mean Default.

Though the piece never uses the word, it refers to Democracy.

Titled "Greece's oldest legacy may be its downfall," the essay is instructive in a number of ways and is worth a read:

"Greece's decision to hold a referendum over the EU's rescue plan jolted the markets on Tuesday throughout Europe and the US, a signal that investors are worried over the country's fiscal future and the prospect of the euro.

The referendum, scheduled for next January, may not be hard to predict. Public polls suggest over half of Greece sees the second EU rescue package in a negative light.

The second rescue plan garnered some hope of saving the eurozone from the abysmal crisis. If the plan was voted down by the country's citizens, foreboding bankruptcy of Greece, it would deal an unfathomable blow to the eurozone.

The rescue plan and austerity policy may be difficult for the public to swallow. Greece has already staged the largest scale street protest over budget cuts. Rendering the decision of the country's fate to the public, which may concern their immediate life more than the country's long-term prospects, is only delaying the necessary choice.

A long-time welfare package, realized on government debt and not on productivity, has exhausted Greece's fiscal ability and triggered the euro crisis. The final solution is to cut government spending, extend work hours, and lower salaries and welfare standards.

But welfare has often turned out to be an explosive subject for elected officials. And even at this critical moment now, the government may still be wavering between the public's demand and the country's long-term future.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, though initially expressed welcome to the EU's second rescue plan, later announced the decision for a referendum.

The hole is getting bigger. If the rescue decision had been made and taken a year ago, the loss would have only been one-fifth of what the amount is now.

At a time of economic difficulty, the government needs to demonstrate more determination to go against popular will.

Whether Greece can pull through the disaster will largely hinge on whether the government can confront public opposition, and not easily bend to violent street demonstrations, while sticking to its budget cut plans."

The editorial can be found by clicking here.