China Hands
25 UNDER 25: RISING STARS IN US-CHINA RELATIONS Features, p. 16
IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA’S STOCK MARKET CRASH
INTERVIEW WITH NEIL SHEN
Economics & Business, p. 24
Opinion, p. 44
VOLUME 4 ISSUE I
FEATURES
China Hands EDITOR IN CHIEF Teddy Miller, Yale ‘16 MANAGING EDITOR Jean Young Koo, Yale ‘17
FEATURES EDITOR Lillian Foote, ‘17
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sherril Wang, ‘17
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY EDITOR Alexander Herkert, ‘17
WEBMASTER Janice Poon, ‘17
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS EDITOR Ian Spear, ‘17 LIFE & CULTURE EDITOR Qi Xu, ‘18
ILLUSTRATORS Christina Zhang, ‘17 Zishi Li, ‘18 Catherine Yang, ‘19 John Lee, ‘18
OPINION EDITOR Jacob Faber, ‘18
MARKETING DIRECTOR Chuhan Zhang, ‘18
ONLINE EDITOR John Lazarsfeld, ‘17
OUTREACH DIRECTOR Yi-Ling Liu, ‘17
EDITORS-AT-LARGE Erwin Li, ‘16 Christian Rhally, ‘16
BUREAU CHIEFS Zara Zhang, Harvard University, ‘17 Emily Schell, Brown University, ‘16
2 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015 Cover Illustration by John Lee
Table of Contents 4
Words from the Editors
Features
ASHLEY RIVENBARK
F 5
Politics & Diplomacy
NATHAN WILLIAMS TING WEI TAI ZHEYAN NI JOCELYN SU
P 8 10 12 14 F 16
Features
WILL MAGLIOCCO PHILIP ABRAHAM RYAN LEONARD
24 26 29
APRIL DAN FENG
31
LILLIAN CHILDRESS
34 38 39 40 42
JEAN YOUNG KOO ALEX HERKERT ALBERT CAO JOSHUA EL-BEY
44 ZARA ZHANG 45 ZISHI LI 46 RACHEL LENG 47 ANDI WANG
Stories of Resilience
Marching On? Finding Friends on the Other Side Accountability and Control The Battlefield of Ideology
25 Under 25: Rising Stars in US-China Relations
Economics & Finance A Change in Fortune? Why Not China? Growing the Net
Features
Violence Generated by Fear
Life & Culture
Preserving Culture Demographic Shift or Continued Control? Baijiu Abroad Reform and Opening Up of Sexual Climate Hosting the World
Opinion
Operation Borderless--Interview with Neil Shen The Illusory Success of Chinese Schooling Big Fish Vs. Monkey King The Future of the Chinese Script
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE  3
WORDS FROM THE EDITORS
Dear Readers, As China Hands releases its sixth issue, we continue to reflect on our mission and seek to improve our quality. As editors, we never cease to be amazed by the standards of the student submissions we receive, which affirm our belief that some of the most important insights on China today are being formed by our own generation and deserve a platform. By focusing on original reporting, we strive to provide a unique perspective on important issues facing China and the future of US-China relations. This academic year, we have worked to foster a greater sense of community on campus here at Yale. We have initiated a series of weekly dinners, where board members, writers, and friends of the organization come to talk about the magazine and discuss recent general events regarding the broader US-China sphere. We have also invited guests, primarily young professionals working in US-China relations, to a number of our weekly dinner sessions, including formerly Shanghai-based reporter for Bloomberg News Liza Lin and Yang Zhang, a former civil servant in the China People’s Political Consultative Conference in Tianjin, both of whom are current M.A. candidates at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. China Hands has also sought to expand on previous partnerships and develop new opportunities to work together with other like-minded groups and organizations. We used our ever-growing social media presence to promote the Asia Society’s China Straight Up, a multimedia project aimed at making different unique aspects of Chinese culture engaging to young Americans. China Hands also helped better connect Foreign Policy Magazine to Chinese students who are currently studying at US universities, in an effort to better understand their experiences abroad. The pitches that came in from our writers this semester spanned a wide range of topics, many at the fore of the larger conversation regarding US-China relations. Flip through the pages, and you will notice that all our Features pieces—from Lillian Childress’s first-hand experience with the Chinese food industry to Ashley Rivenbark’s discussion of experiences of Chinese migrant workers and possibilities of hukou reform—cover stories from one end to another, from domestic to international, and from the daily lives of the Chinese people to the inner workings of their government. In our Politics and Diplomacy section, we discuss China’s 2015 Military Day Parade and evaluate the strengths of the People’s Liberation Army. In Economics and Business, we examine the co-evolution of the Chinese and American health systems and the implications of China’s recent stock market crash. Our Life and Culture section tracks changes in Chinese society that have influenced its culture—the impact of the two-child policy on family structures and the coming of baijiu, traditional Chinese liquor, to the West. Finally, in the Opinion section, we have an interview with Neil Shen of Sequoia Capital and a book review of Beyond Sinology: Chinese Writing and the Scripts of Culture by Andrea Bachner. As always, we are also immensely grateful to our wonderfully talented design team for bringing these pieces to vibrant life with their work. We hope you enjoy our issue.
Yours Truly, Teddy Miller Jean Young Koo Editors of China Hands 4 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
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STORIES OF RESILIENCE ASHLEY RIVENBARK details the experiences of Chinese migrant workers and highlights the possibilities for hukou system reform.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE  5 Painting by John Lee
FEATURES
I
am sitting in a restaurant by the Beijing Zoo, staring in anticipation at the waitress seated across from me as I wait for her to answer my question. When she answers me, it is in heavily accented Mandarin. Her name is Min Guangdeng, and she is from the small town of Kaixian in Sichuan Province in southwestern China. While the deep sibilance of her consonants are difficult to understand, the warmth of her smile radiates from across the table. She is a migrant worker, and she tells me that she came to the city to earn money and learn new skills. I ask her if she feels that there is a stigma attached to being a nongmingong, or a rural worker living in the city. Her smile disappears. “Let me give you an example,” she says. “Older Beijingers, usually around 50 years old, will come here to drink. When they are done, they will shout, ‘Half price, half price!’ The price will be￥145, but they will only give 100. When they speak to us, they are very rude.” •
I
spoke with Min Guangdeng and other migrant workers living in Beijing in the summer of 2013. My goal in having conversations with these extraordinary men and women was to better understand their motivations for joining the historic influx of China’s rural residents into the country’s urban centers. I wanted to share a glimpse of the intricacies and complexities that underlie their varying experiences. To better understand the tension that weaves through each conversation I had with a migrant worker in Beijing, though, it is important to first look at the seed from which all these experiences grow: China’s hukou system. Mao Zedong’s implementation of the hukou or household registration system in the late 1950s tied rural Chinese to their lands in an attempt to avoid a mass exodus to the cities. While the hukou system has prevented typical third-world urbanization effects, such as the appearance of extensive shantytowns and urban slums, this system has also barred migrant workers and their families from accessing basic necessities for a full and prosperous life.
“MIGRANT WORKERS ARE CONSIDERED LOWER CLASS,
If a migrant worker’s hukou is in Kaixian, for instance, and BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOME he or she moves to SMELL ON THEIR SHIRT OR Beijing, then health care, educational SOMETHING, AND THEN THEY opportunities for his GO ON THE SUBWAY OR THE or her children, job BUS AND NO ONE LIKES THEM.” options, good housing, insurance, and legal protection are generally inaccessible. With the denial of these necessities follows increased social discrimination, which adversely affects personal development and the ability to secure employment.
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Yet, despite the existence of the hukou system, China’s 2010 census reported that over 261 million Chinese migrated from rural communities to major cities. This mass exodus of workers and their families continues to this day and constitutes the largest human migration in the world. •
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o why do rural residents make this journey despite the odds against them? Mr. Zhou and Ms. Xu, owners of Beijing’s Eastern Health and Prosperity Pedicure and Foot Massage Parlor, provide the standard answer given in most of my discussions. As he sits hunched over on their stools, fervently massaging two patrons’ feet, Mr. Zhou looks up at me and says, “Our salary wasn’t enough in the city of Harbin, so we came here to take the jobs that no one else wanted.” Underneath the umbrella of increased economic opportunities are individual, nuanced reasons for migrating to Beijing—proving that there is not just one narrative that captures the entire migrant experience. For example, Mr. and Ms. Wang, owners of a convenience store on Wenxing Street in the western part of Beijing, care deeply about financing their children’s education. “We came to Beijing because you can’t save very much money from doing farm work in the countryside, so there was no certainty that our kids would be able to attend school there,” they say. However, since members of the Wang family do not have a Beijing hukou, educational opportunities for their children continue to be limited. “Our daughter goes to school here in the city,” said Ms. Wang, “but she is only allowed to attend the ones that aren’t very good. If we wanted to send her to a good school, we would have to pay a lot of money.” For Dong Fen, who came to Beijing from the village of Sanbao in China’s southern Yunnan Province, the journey was about discovery. “Around the time that I left my village,” Dong Fen explained, “there was not a lot of information and the culture was very traditional. I really wanted to change something, to do something different.” While waitressing in the city, Dong Fen discovered Hua Dan, a Beijing-based nongovernmental organization that uses interactive theater and community workshops to improve confidence and soft skills of Chinese migrant women and children. She became more and more involved in their programs and, after several years of involvement, rose to the rank of General Manager of the organization. For Dong Fen, migration to the city opened a door to new possibilities. “When I went outside of my hometown, I found a lot of differences. It opened my eyes, changed my view of the world, and I knew I could never go back.” Despite differing motivations for migration, the consequences are nearly universal. When I ask twenty
FEATURES
first-year students at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University what they believed the biggest drawback of migrating to the cities was, they all chimed in a unanimous chorus, “Discrimination!”
in the largest metro areas lagged behind.” However, as Daga keenly noted in his article, “the reform policy doesn’t touch on cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where a third of the population are non-urban hukou holders.”
“[Migrant workers] are considered lower class,” explained one student, “because they have some smell on their shirt or something, and then they go on the subway or the bus and no one likes them.”
Additionally, many migrant workers resist hukou reform because it would mean losing their rural plot of land. As Dong Fen explained, “Because I have a rural hukou, I have land in the countryside, unlike a city hukou which has no land. It’s really small, but I have it. I’m okay with keeping my farmer hukou because when I go back, I will have land.”
The story of Wen Qiang, a migrant worker who shared her experience in Hua Dan’s “Dumpling Dreams” community theater performance, illustrates the harmful effects that arise from these prevailing stereotypes. While serving as a sanitation worker on Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road, she recalled an interaction that left a painful impression on her.
So what is the solution? According to one of the Tsinghua University students I spoke with, the answer is simple: “Give more social services to the countryside, just the same as the cities.” Gaurav Daga seems to agree with the sentiment behind the student’s suggestion, despite the added financial burden that it CHINA’S 2010 CENSUS REPORTED entails. “One way the Chinese government can THAT OVER 261 MILLION CHINESE tackle this problem,” he writes, “is by separating out the link between household registration MIGRATED FROM RURAL and welfare benefits within the hukou system,” COMMUNITIES TO MAJOR CITIES. allowing these benefits to be focused on the THIS MASS EXODUS CONSTITUTES urban poor, including rural migrants.
THE LARGEST HUMAN MIGRATION IN THE WORLD. “One day, I was carrying out the trash when the owner of the building I was working in emerged from the elevator in front of me. He immediately covered his nose and said, ‘How foul! Let me through now, you lousy sanitation worker, don’t block my path. It stinks to death in here!’ With a heavy heart, I blurted out, ‘Who are you calling a lousy and smelly sanitation worker? Who do you think is the one who throws away these dirty and smelly things? Not me! I have a name, and if it wasn’t for the hard work of us sanitation workers, do you think this place would look so nice?’” •
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en Qiang’s experience with discrimination is representative of the large-scale mistreatment of migrant workers in Chinese society, which is why in July 2014, Xi Jinping’s administration announced its intent to reform this outdated system by switching to a pointsbased method. According to an article by Gaurav Daga, a public policy analyst for The Diplomat, points are achieved by meeting certain criteria, such as previous educational and professional experience, which lead to greater government benefits. However, the system only applies to younger migrants in second-tier cities, which consist of provincial capitals and special administrative cities in China. This initiative appears to be a step in the right direction for new migrants seeking improved economic opportunities. According to a 2015 study by the Brookings Institute, “over the past five years, the 10 fastest growing economies [in China] have all been from this second-tier of metro economies,” while “growth
As policymakers sift their way through the maze of possible solutions, it is critical that they recognize that this system and its repercussions are ultimately centered on migrant workers and their unique narratives. Their stories and motivations cannot be lost in the entanglement of economic discussions and policy reforms, and as Mrs. Wang demonstrated to me during our conversation, their resilience should not go unrecognized. “Beijingers can’t bear hardships like we can,” said Mrs. Wang, eying the mattress squished against a cash register, a makeshift bedroom for a family without access to affordable housing. “Look at us. We wake up at 5am to open our shop and we close at 12 am. People from Beijing are not hardworking like that.” After my conversations with each migrant worker, I thanked them for their time and willingness to share their stories of hope and heartache. Yet my farewell with Dong Fen was different. As I began gathering my belongings to leave, I looked up to find her staring at me with a piercing look of purpose. “Every person in the world has the power and responsibility to care about these issues,” she told me, her voice filled with persistence. “Some people may say, ‘I come from China, you come from the US, they are different countries,’ but the world is just one world. You need to support anyone if you can, help anyone if you can.” ASHLEY RIVENBARK is a Master’s in Management candidate at the Wake Forest School of Business and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Contact her at aprivenbark@gmail.com.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 7
FEATURES
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY
Illustration by Zishi Li
MARCHING ON? NATHAN WILLIAMS discusses China’s 2015 Military Day Parade and evaluates the strength of the People’s Liberation Army.
8 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY
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n September 3, 2015, tanks from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled across Chang’an Avenue in the Forbidden City. Their purpose was to commemorate China’s victory over Japan during the Second World War. However, unlike the tanks used by China during its war against Japan, these new tanks were no Soviet handme-downs or cheap European tanks in disrepair. Instead, the PLA showcased its latest military hardware, much of which China now produces domestically. From modern fighter jets to well-disciplined infantrymen, the PLA today bears more resemblance to its Western military counterparts than to the ragtag mass of untrained peasants that comprised China’s Communist forces throughout the 1940s. Nevertheless, the parade was far more than a simple commemoration. Despite the parade’s peaceful nature, it is no secret that China used the occasion to display its newfound military might. Unsurprisingly, many American military leaders find China’s growing military strength threatening. According to US Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift, China continues to “claim territorial water rights that are inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” thereby jeopardizing peace in the Pacific. However, in order to properly assess whether the PLA could one day threaten US military supremacy, one must analyze the PLA itself. Although September’s parade was aimed at presenting China’s increased conventional military capabilities, it left China’s most formidable weapon—cyber warfare—out of the picture. The US military draws most of its strength from its technological superiority, enabling US commanders to shape the battlefield as they see fit. However, cyber warfare enables China to potentially eliminate American technological superiority through targeting US military hardware that, for the most part, remains vulnerable to cyber attacks. Already PLA colonels have concluded that a cyber attack against a US carrier strike group could cripple “command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data links to the degree that the vessels would be rendered highly vulnerable to conventional attacks by PLA forces.” Thus, cyber warfare may provide the PLA with the perfect tool to level the playing field in the Pacific. As a result, the PLA does not need to match the US in its spending on conventional naval capabilities to present a significant threat to US naval power. US war planners already know how to deal with conventional naval warfare. However, cyber warfare presents a completely new strategy, meaning US military leaders have had little time to develop any sort of comprehensive plan to address the new threat. China, on the other hand, has ample experience dealing with cyber threats. China’s extensive censorship network, as well as independent internet servers, provide China with a sophisticated defense from cyber attacks.
However, technological prowess is only one characteristic of a capable military. From France’s infamous defeat in Algeria to the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, history is full of modern armies defeated by technologically inferior foes. Only when coupled with experienced troops and a disciplined chain of command does advanced weaponry create an unstoppable military force. As of now, the PLA has limited, if any, combat experience. The last war fought by the PLA was the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979, during which 80,000 PLA troops were pushed back by a smaller, yet battle-hardened, Vietnamese army. Chinese leaders severely overestimated the ability of PLA forces, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary PLA casualties. Unless PLA leadership has changed dramatically since the Sino-Vietnamese War, the PLA will continue to remain in the shadow of modern Western militaries. Unfortunately for China, even if the PLA worked harder to gain combat experience, its leadership remains plagued by incompetence. Communist Party officials often promote officers based on their own political agendas. As a result, excellence is the exception, not the standard, amongst the PLA’s most highranking officers. In July 2014, Gu Junshan, Deputy Head of the PLA General Logistics Department and Xu Caihou, the former Vice-Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, were both implicated in one of China’s largest corruption scandals. The two had promoted hundreds of officers based on bribes, thereby undermining the PLA’s already inexperienced chain of command. China’s lack of competent military leaders, paired with the absence of PLA combat experience since the Sino-Vietnamese War, prevents the PLA from matching the professionalism and expertise of most Western militaries. Due to the development of China’s conventional as well as cyber warfare capabilities, the PLA may hope to one day match US military strength on a technological level. However, despite technological progress, the PLA lacks combat experience and leadership necessary to fully overcome US military superiority. In the end, the question of whether the PLA will present a significant threat to United States comes down to the choices PLA leaders make. Should China crack down on corruption within its military’s ranks and continue to invest in the development of unorthodox military technology, the PLA may stand one day to match Western military power. Nevertheless, until these changes are implemented, the PLA will remain confined to doing what it’s best at: parading up and down Chang’an Avenue. NATHAN WILLIAMS is a sophomore at Harvard University. Contact him at nathanlukewilliams@college.harvard.edu.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 9
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY
FINDING FRIENDS ON THE OTHER SIDE TING WEI TAI highlights China’s shifting attitudes towards North and South Korea.
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n August 20, 2015, troops in Pyongyang fired artillery shells over the Demilitarized Zone, prompting their counterparts in Seoul to return fire and evacuate nearby residents. The next day, China’s Foreign Ministry stated that it was “paying great attention to the situation” and “willing to work with all parties toward the peace and stability of the peninsula.” Despite the neutrality of its official response, China’s long-standing alliance with North Korea has recently encountered many difficulties. At the same time, the country’s bilateral relationship with South Korea is steadily improving. Is China currently making a move to shift from the North to the South? The alliance between China and North Korea dates back to the Cold War. During the Korean War, China sent its army to fight against the United Nations Command, accepted North Korean refugees and students, and assisted Pyongyang in post-war reconstruction. The two countries signed the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty in 1961. Today, it is still in force and binds them to defend each other if either nation is attacked. North Korea also has close economic ties with China. Sino-North Korean trade has been steadily increasing over recent years, growing by more than 10 percent to $6.5 billion from 2012 to 2013, according to Forbes. While China has embraced free market reforms and opened up the country to the rest of the world since the eighties, North Korea has continued its policy of isolationism. The estranged relationship that North Korea shares with the rest of the world has also resulted in heavy dependence on China as an ally. Lately, however, Sino-North Korean relations have been severely strained. Professor Adam Cathcart, lecturer at Leeds University and editor-in-chief of the website SinoNK, has described the bond as “very much a residual alliance—and a very distrustful one.” North Korea’s decision to launch a third nuclear test in February 2013, defied China’s requests not to risk open confrontation and spurred China to pass new trade sanctions, reduce energy supplies and call for denuclearization talks. In a particularly remarkable instance of public criticism, Xi
DESPITE THE NEUTRALITY OF ITS OFFICIAL RESPONSE, CHINA’S LONG-STANDING ALLIANCE WITH NORTH KOREA HAS RECENTLY ENCOUNTERED MANY DIFFICULTIES. 10 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
Jinping implied that North Korea was creating regional instability for “selfish gains.” Since his succession, Kim Jong-un’s approach to North Korea’s relationship with China has been less cordial than his father’s. In contrast to Kim Jong-il’s regular visits, Kim the younger has not yet visited Beijing and even declined an invitation to this year’s 70th anniversary celebration of the end of World War II in China. In turn, Xi Jinping has reversed the usual customs of Chinese state leaders travelling to North Korea before South Korea. He visited Seoul in 2014, but is yet to visit North Korea. Nevertheless, Yongmin Lee, analyst at Sino-NK, notes that although Kim Jong-un did not attend the 70th anniversary, he did send a senior ranking member of the Korean Workers’ Party, Choe Ryong-hae. Similarly, China also sent a high-ranking member of the Communist party, Liu Yunshan, to North Korea for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North Korea Worker’s Party in October, 2015. Clearly, high level diplomatic relationships have been maintained. There has been a significant discussion within China whether its commitment to North Korea as an ally is even in its national interest. In a late 2013 report, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a group directly controlled by the State Council of China, publicly disavowed the idea that China would continue to support North Korea under any circumstances. Among the Chinese populace, negative views on North Korea’s influence (46 percent) outnumbered positive views (20 percent) in a 2014 BBC World Service Opinion Poll. So what has caused the Chinese people and their government to question the alliance with North Korea? To start, Pyongyang’s value as a communist ally against the capitalist bloc has diminished with the end of the Cold War. Moreover, under the helm of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, China abandoned rigid adherence to communist ideological orthodoxy. As a result, “China now places more value on national interest, over alliances blinded by ideology,” writes Jaewoo Choo for the Council on Foreign Relations, an assistant professor of Chinese foreign policy at Kyung Hee University in South Korea. In this regard, China may not even choose to stick to the terms of the 1961 Treaty strictly, if forced to make a decision. “China conceives itself to have the right to make an authoritative interpretation of the “principle for intervention” in the treaty,” adds Choo. The economic situation also differs greatly from the Cold War era. While China has experienced dramatic prosperity and growth after Deng’s reforms, the North Korean economy has languished in stagnation under its command economy. Beijing is North Korea’s biggest trading partner, as China constitutes over 60 percent of total trade volume and provides its northeastern neighbor with most of its food and energy supplies. North Korea also accounts for about half of all Chinese foreign aid. Though North Korea remains heavily dependent on China, the converse is not true in any way.
On the other hand, China enjoys a thriving and mutually beneficial economic relationship with South Korea. China has surpassed the United States as South Korea’s largest trading partner, and South Korea is also one of China’s top five trading partners. “Both China and South Korea are faced with economic reality,” argues Yongmin Lee. There is more for China to gain in cooperating with South Korea’s dynamic and competitive economy than with North Korea, which poses a significant economic burden in its constant requirement for aid.
IN A PARTICULARLY REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF PUBLIC CRITICISM, XI JINPING IMPLIED THAT NORTH KOREA WAS CREATING REGIONAL INSTABILITY FOR “SELFISH GAINS.” On the political front, Pyongyang’s regime has also proven to be more unpredictable and erratic as an ally than Seoul’s. In May 2013, for instance, North Korea seized a Chinese fishing boat and demanded a ransom payment of ￥600,000, forcing the Chinese government to step in. In December of the same year, Pyongyang executed Jang Sung-taek, Kim Jong-il’s uncle, a leading reformer who advocated Chinese-style economic reform and an important liaison with Beijing. Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University, described this as “a very ominous signal” in the New York Times, for Jang was “the man China counted on to move the economy in North Korea.” Since Beijing is Pyongyang’s primary backer, its antics have also had a reputational cost that Chinese officials have been increasingly reluctant to bear. Roger Cavazos, a former US Army intelligence officer who is now at the Nautilus Institute, says, also in the New York Times, that Chinese academics are concerned that Mr. Kim is “more and more out of control.” In comparison, South Korean President Park Geun-hye has been adept in managing relations with China. She attended the aforementioned anniversary celebrations, and, in March 2014, she facilitated the repatriation of 437 Chinese soldiers from the Korean War in an official ceremony at the Incheon International Airport. This was a powerful symbolic gesture of historical reconciliation. As Professor Cathcart explains, “It’s been an easy decision to work with the Koreans that will work with them … [the Chinese] trust the South Koreans not to start an incident with the North, they don’t trust the North Koreans—and are very suspicious of North Korean military adventurism.” Another force that helps to explain improving ChinaSouth Korea relations is Shinzo Abe’s rightwards shift in Japan’s foreign policy. Having been invaded and occupied by Japan during the Second World War, both China and South Korea share fears of an emboldened and militarily strengthened Japan. Both countries, therefore,
have been perturbed by what they perceive to be Japan’s inability to come clean regarding its military past as well as Abe’s push to increase military expenditure and remove legislative constraints on military action, as seen in new security legislation passed in September 2015 that permitted Japan to deploy troops overseas. This worrying trend has inadvertently strengthened relations between China and South Korea by heightening perceptions of a common threat. In a survey conducted from April to May 2015 by Genron NPO and South Korean think tank East Asia Institute, 36.8 percent of South Koreans surveyed viewed China as a military threat whereas 58.1 percent viewed Japan as a military threat, up from 46.3 percent last year. “South Korean people have an image of Japan as being a militaristic country based on their historic memories of the war and Japan’s colonial rule. Prime Minister Abe’s recent foreign policy is enlarging that image of Japan,” said Jeong Han Wool, executive director and senior researcher at the East Asia Institute, in the Japan Times. Does this mean that China will change its approach to North Korea anytime soon? That depends on what China perceives its strategic interests to be and how it should achieve them. First, it aims to have a stable and peaceful Korean Peninsula. Any turmoil, be it war between North and South or the implosion of Pyongyang’s regime, could potentially unleash a massive refugee influx across the North Korean border, something China is keen to avoid. Second, to the extent that South Korea remains a strong US ally and that the US succeeds in implementing its vision of a Japan-Korea-US security triangle in East Asia, China will prefer a North Korean buffer against South Korea. As Darcie Draudt, assistant editor at Sino-NK and non-resident fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS says, “different preferences for regional alignment, especially over the US-ROK alliance, preclude large changes in China’s foreign policy toward South Korea.” However, this situation has been disrupted by Abe’s aggressive right-wing foreign policy. In the not-too-distant future, South Korea may be sufficiently alienated such that it perceives Japan as more of a security threat than China. For the moment, China is likely to continue its alliance with North Korea, albeit in a significantly weaker form than the Cold War era. China will continue to face the difficult situation of having the most leverage in pushing for North Korea’s denuclearization compared to other countries, but being unable to exercise it without destabilizing North Korea and endangering its own interests. It is likely to continue to play a mediating role in the Korean conflict as it has done in the Six Party Talks, urging Pyongyang to return to the negotiation table in yet another familiar cycle of military provocation, nuclear brinkmanship and political bargaining.
ting wei tai is a freshman at Yale University. Contact him at weitai.ting@yale.edu.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 11
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY
ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL ZHEYAN NI compares the ramifications of China’s responses to the two disasters on public opinion.
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n August 12, a massive explosion rocked the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, leading to over 170 deaths and nearly 800 injuries. The incident shocked the entire nation. It also created many challenges for the Chinese government. The Communist state has a history of responding to national disasters by examining accountability and controlling public opinions. By comparing its responses to the Tianjin explosion and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we can see that despite the many situational differences between these two incidents, the government reactions to these disasters and their social ramifications are quite similar. ACCOUNTABILITY The magnitude-8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 caused approximately 70,000 deaths. Since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed over 240,000 people, China requires that new buildings have the capability to withstand major seismic disturbances. But in the case of Sichuan, over 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed, mostly in rural areas, reportedly leading to the death of nearly
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5,000 students (though some parents believe the real figure is twice the officially cited one). Questions were raised about how rigorously construction codes have been enforced during China’s epic building boom. Liang Wei, Executive Vice President of the Urban Planning Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University, claimed publicly, “any building that collapsed instantaneously must have failed to conform to civil planning standards.” In Tianjin, the power of the explosion was equivalent to that of a magnitude-2.3 earthquake, causing extensive destruction in and around the blast site. Apartment blocks two kilometers from the site sustained shattered glass, ceiling damage, and the displacement of thousands of people. The cause for the disaster is believed to have been the mishandling of toxic and flammable chemicals stored at the warehouse station of the Port of Tianjin. The warehouse is owned by Ruihai Logistics, which the government officially recognizes as a hazardous chemical storage facility. Safety regulations requiring that public buildings and facilities should be at least one kilometer away were apparently not followed. Within one kilometer of the explosion site, there are three large residential blocks with over 5,600 residents who had little idea of the danger before the incident. On social media, injured local residents reported that the government did not fully compensate them. A local resident, who was seriously injured, opined on Weibo that the government failed to provide a reasonable amount for housing damage and medical care. (The original post has now been censored.) Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, assistant editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, commented, “If there had been
Photo from The Telegraph
POLITICS & DIPLOMACY
any residential protection associations in Tianjin, they could have warned local people of potential danger of living close to the chemicals storage site or could have lobbied for higher compensation from the authority.” CONTROLLING PUBLIC OPINION The policy failures that led to these national disasters invited anger from the public and pressure on the government to make concrete changes. Nonetheless, utilizing many powerful state mechanisms to mitigate or cover up social discontent, the government has been able to keep public criticism under control. Before the 2008 Wenchuan earthquakes, school construction issues were widely reported through conventional media channels such as local newspapers and the Partyauthorized Xinhua News. Such news reports could be easily censored and forbidden from circulation. In addition, affected families predominantly came from underdeveloped regions of Sichuan province, where the lack of economic or political capital prevented them from raising their voice on a nationwide scale. Moreover, since the damage of the earthquake was severe, more energy was directed to rescue and recovery than to blame and well-deserved criticism. This allowed the government to redirect public attention from scandals to heroic acts, courage and love, all of which could serve the CCP’s grand agenda of social harmony and national unity. For example, stories were published to praise a female policeman who breastfed infant orphans and a nurse who suffered from miscarriage after helping transport patients from hospitals to safe areas. They were named the “Most Heroic Individuals” of the year. In the case of the Tianjin explosion, Weibo became the major platform for voicing public opinions. As of August 13, there were over 700 million clicks on the article hashtagged “Tianjin Tanggu Explosion” and over one million relevant posts. On Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of the question-and-answer Quora, witnesses of the explosion posted pictures and descriptions of the blast site. Unlike victims of the Sichuan earthquake who were not used to self-reporting on smartphones, witnesses of the Tianjin explosion mostly came from urban, tech-savvy middle class families. Their narratives of the accident were unaffected by Party-sanctioned tones and perspectives, and were thus arguably more authentic. Soon after the explosion triggered discussions on social media, the government began to censor critical comments. A freelancer,
Wu Jing, reported on Weibo that some injured residents of Tianjin were arrested for protesting on the street and asking for higher compensation from the government. This post was quickly taken down.
been towards a stronger state and a smaller society. This “small society” is marked by diminishing channels for civic engagement in political and social matters. Accompanying the enforcement of stricter safety regulations and anti-corruption laws is the imposition
THE GOAL OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT AFTER THE TIANJIN EXPLOSION WAS TO PUT DOWN ANY POLITICAL UNREST AND CREATE A FORCED SOCIAL HARMONY. The official news report also refused to acknowledge any environmental ramifications of the explosion. According to International Business Times, after the first rains following the initial explosions came on August 18, white chemical foam covered the streets. Citizens complained of burning sensations and rashes on skin after coming into contact with rain droplets. However, Tianjin’s environmental authorities said pollution in air and water remained at safe levels, while the Environment Protection Board advised against exposure to the rain due to traces of cyanide dust reacting with water. It is important to note that just days after the explosion on September 3, a massive military parade would come to celebrate the “Seventieth Anniversary of Victory of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.” Therefore, the goal of crisis management after the Tianjin explosion was to put down any political unrest and create a forced social harmony. CHALLENGE OR OPPORTUNITY Disasters, whether natural or manmade, repeatedly reflect bureaucratic ills of China’s ruling power. Beyond rescue and recovery, citizens also demand improvement and correction of the current economic and political model.
of more rigorous censorship of speech and regulation of NGOs. Allen-Ebrahimian commented on this phenomenon that “the ongoing crackdown on civil societies and grassroots associations can damage their role as watchdog of law enforcement issues, but social media will remain a powerful tool for people to learn what’s happening and to voice their first-hand experiences.” According to Robert Zoellick, former President of World Bank and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, preservation of the CCP ruling legitimacy has become Xi Jinping’s primary goal. So far, the “stronger state, smaller society” strategy has benefited this objective. Public opinions of Xi Jinping remain largely positive. Many praise his determination to cleanse the Party as well as the polluting air. Hardly anyone would blame him for blocking Gmail or censoring Weibo speech. Xi is taking charge of China at a particularly delicate time when the government needs a strong-willed leader to deal with social discontent. Utilizing his personal charisma, Xi might be able to turn a disaster from a challenge of legitimacy to an opportunity to impose more governmental influence in operation of the society in the name of social harmony and national unity.
ZHEYAN NI is a recent graduate of Wesleyan One way to respond to this request, without University and a current Princeton in Asia jeopardizing the authority of the CCP, is fellow in Hong Kong. Contact her at to enhance governmental regulation on zni@wesleyan.edu. economic activities. For instance, on January 1 this year, the government released a new Environmental Protection Law. From January to July, legal enforcement authority has processed 348 cases and issued fines totalling ¥282 million. On October 1, the government enacted new food safety regulation with heightened enforcement measures. The trajectory of political development during Xi Jinping’s administration has
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Illustration by Zishi Li
THE BATTLEFIELD OF IDEOLOGY JOCELYN SU evaluates the Chinese Communist Party’s recent efforts to strengthen nationalism. 14 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
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his summer, the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress passed the sweeping National Security Law. The scope of the new legislation is broad, addressing not only traditional security concerns but also including threats to “cultural security.” According to the new law, the country must defend against malignant culture by “deepening the education of socialist ideology and increasing propaganda efforts.” Passage of the new national security law contributes to a broader ideological campaign President Xi Jinping launched upon taking office in 2012 and also raises questions among American government officials, business leaders, and China scholars about rising anti-Western sentiments in China. Xi Jinping’s concern with the nation’s ideological climate first attracted Western media’s attention when an internal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) document, commonly known as Document 9, was leaked to the public in April 2013. In it, the Party identifies seven problematic ideological trends and activities that warrant greater attention, including advocating for Western democracy, rule of law, civil society, and freedom of press. The document urged Party members to be vigilant in identifying these threats and to maintain full control over the direction of China’s ideological development. While control of ideology is not necessarily new to the Chinese public, warnings against Western values have certainly surged under Xi Jinping. At an education conference in March 2011 before Xi took power, Education Minister Yuan Guiren dismissed any concerns with importing Western education materials. He argued that since Chinese abroad are not influenced in capitalist countries, they therefore would be influenced by Western ideals in their homeland. Shortly after his statement, however, the Party and the State Council issued a joint document urging universities to strengthen propaganda thought work. Minister Yuan shifted his attitude in response to the new document and warned against allowing education materials that propagate Western ideology into Chinese classrooms. In this past year alone, Chinese civil society, identified in Document 9 as a problematic ideological trend, has endured harsh crackdowns. The detainment of five women’s rights activists in March, the interrogation of dozens of human rights lawyers this summer, and the arrests of Chinese Christians who refused to take down church crosses have all drawn condemnation from international watchdogs. The 2015 Human Rights Watch report on China noted the ideological campaign, stating that the authorities have cracked down on civil society “with a ferocity unseen in recent years.” Tim Cheek, a historian on Chinese intellectual life, in an interview with The Guardian, noted that in Chinese academia, liberal scholars are “going into campaign mode, which is to keep your head down, keep out of the way, don’t let stuff get into writing.” These concerning developments contrast starkly with the government’s official rhetoric. Two weeks prior to the passage of the new national security law, at this year’s annual China-US High-Level Consultation on People-to-People
Exchange in Washington, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong encouraged more American students to study abroad in China. Chinese state media lauded cultural ties that bind the United States and China and hoped “the tree of people-to-people exchanges between our two countries will grow bigger and bear even larger fruits.” People-to-people exchanges certainly serve as a more effective instrument to influence ideology than education materials. Beijing’s continued call for greater people-to-people exchange at a time of tightening ideological control mirrors its inconsistent attitude toward American and a greater Western influence. The ideological campaign, however, is not aimed to be an anti-Western effort but a defensive measure to help the Party maintain political stability. Buttressed by its promise of economic welfare, the CCP is increasingly at risk for losing its legitimacy as China’s economy undergoes tumultuous times. The influence of foreign ideas—or any idea that seeks to change the society’s status quo—is a potent political threat at a time when the population is restless and discontent. Thus, controlling the direction of Chinese ideological development helps the Party identify early signs of cracks in the system. In a speech that Xi Jinping gave on his trip to the southern China in 2013, he asked, “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken.” Given this understanding of the Soviet dissolution, Xi has made great efforts in correcting the nation’s ideological climate to avoid becoming China’s Gorbachev. On the offensive front in the battle of ideology, Xi Jinping engenders nationalism and cultural identity among the people as a mechanism to garner greater political support. Instead of simply aligning Chinese ideology with MarxistLeninist thought, Xi uses national pride as a counterforce strategy to counter the influence of foreign ideology. It is evident in Xi Jinping’s emphasis on the idea of the “Chinese Dream” since he rose to power in 2012, a term that has spread like wildfire over Party documents. It refers to prosperity and improvement in people’s livelihood but places greater emphasis on national rejuvenation. This rhetoric has both been successful in contributing to the rising nationalist sentiments within China and helping Xi gain popularity among the Chinese people. A 2014 Harvard polling report reflects the effectiveness of this strategy: Chinese respondents rated Xi Jinping a nine out of ten on his performance, more favorable than the rating other domestic constituents gave their heads of states. By elucidating what needs to be protected, the National Security Law is yet another step to define state sovereignty and strengthen nationalism at home. It is not surprising, then, to find Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream, “realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” embedded in the first clause as one of the many goals of the new legislation. JOYCELYN SU is the Deputy Director of Duke-UNC China Leadership Summit and a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Contact her at su.joycelyn@gmail.com.
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TYLER BRENT PAUL HORAK BENJAMIN JACOBS EMILY FENG YIHAO LI LOGAN MA BEN UNDERWOOD DANIEL LIMON QIFEI ZENG JOHAN VAN DE VEN LUCAS SIN MASON JI ZHIYI (JOYCEYLN) SU JIUN-RUEY HU CHRISTOPHER MIRASOLA JENNA COOK PETER LOFTUS BENJAMIN HERST SUNIL PTICEK-DAMLE ELEANOR FREUND NANCY TANG REAGAN THOMPSON BENJAMIN LEE ANGELA LUH MOLLY MA
25 UNDER 25 RISING STARS IN US-CHINA RELATIONS
16 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
In 2013, China Hands became the first magazine to profile 25 young individuals and their outstanding contributions to US-China relations. This year, we are humbled and excited to present you with the third edition of “25 Under 25: Rising Stars in US-China Relations” featuring an entirely new list of honorees. Always mindful of our goal to promote mutual understanding and exchange, we hope the narratives of these 25 students and young working professionals will inspire our readers not only to endeavor to strengthen the US-China relationship through their own work but also to think critically about all US-China related issues in today’s world. This past summer, China Hands began soliciting nominations for its third list of rising stars in the areas of China studies and US-China relations, regardless of field or endeavor. As the title “25 Under 25” suggests, all applicants were required to be 25 years of age or under as of the cut-off date of January 1st, 2015. By late August, we received more than 80 nominations, which were initially screened by the magazine’s editorial board and then forwarded to our esteemed judging panel for a final evaluation. Candidates were assessed on their academic achievements, extracurricular and professional experiences, and demonstrated leadership (a strong indicator of potential capacity to make an impactful contribution to the US-China relationship). For their judging efforts, insightful commentary, and words of advice, China Hands expresses its gratitude to: President of the 100,000 Strong Foundation Carola McGiffert, Pulitzer Prize-Winning New York Times Shanghai correspondent David Barboza, Director of the China Program at the Carter Center Yawei Liu, Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University, and China Hands Advisor Jessica Chen Weiss, and author, actor, and former host of the Golden Horse Awards Jeff Locker. We would also like to thank Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society, for contributing to the project in an advisory role. Our 25 honorees hail from all over the globe, including places as diverse as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Massachusetts. Their educational histories represent 22 higher education institutions. They are activists, scholars, and entrepreneurs. One has founded a food waste conversion business in China. Another is researching Chinese domestic adoption policies and the experiences of Chinese-born adoptees raised in the US. We hope you enjoy reading about these rising stars in US-China relations as much as we have enjoyed learning about them.
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YIHAO LI
A land policy consultant at the World Bank, Yihao Li is committed to making China’s urban transition more efficient, inclusive and sustainable by providing policy-makers with cutting-edge policy research and analysis on land reforms. Li was a contributing author of a World Bank urbanization report that informed the decisions at the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress. By generating knowledge on land reforms, Li hopes to help the English-speaking world better understand the greatest urbanization in human history, thereby facilitating their engagements with China. Li’s current work benefits from his award-winning senior honors thesis at Tufts University. It suggests specific mechanisms the World Bank can maximize its influence in China’s economic reforms and offers insights on China’s participation in the US-led Bretton Woods Institutions. Outside of work, Li serves as Trustee of Global China Connection, a China-focused non-profit.
TYLER BRENT
Tyler Brent currently works as a Media Liaison for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, DC. He began studying Chinese when he was awarded the State Department’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth Scholarship to spend a gap year in Shijiazhuang, China. After interning with the Confucius Institute and the US Embassy in Beijing’s American Employees Association, Brent worked with Ping Pong Productions in Beijing to bring the LA-based theater company The Actors’ Gang, directed by Academy Award-winner Tim Robbins, to perform Shakespeare in Beijing and Shanghai. After a summer volunteering with the Beijing LGBT Center, Brent wrote his senior honors thesis about cooperative marriage and LGBT rights in China. On weekends, he can be found giving tours of Washington, DC in Chinese to groups from the State Department’s Office of International Visitors.
BENJAMIN JACOBS
Benjamin Jacobs is dedicated to improving US-China relations through both academic research and grassroots exchange. As a student at Wesleyan University, Jacobs received a Davenport Grant to examine Chinese history education through textbooks, museums, and interviews with students and teachers. The questions and conversations that emerged during this fieldwork resulted in an award-winning thesis exploring historical narratives and cultural memory of the People’s Republic of China. Since graduating from Wesleyan, Jacobs has been researching Chinese higher education reforms as a Fulbright Scholar in Wuhan. Collaborating with Chinese students, professors, and administrators at China’s top universities, he submitted a report to the Hubei Provincial Department of Education detailing strategies for improving international exchange. In Wuhan, Jacobs also cooperated extensively with China Endangered Culture Protectors—an organization committed to addressing cultural challenges arising from rapid urbanization. Jacobs intends to continue researching China’s socioeconomic development and aspires to create new spaces of trust for US-China exchange going forward.
PAUL HORAK
Having graduated from Duke University in 2013, Horak is now a researcher at Yale’s Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, where he is working with an international team of physicianscientists to investigate cardiovascular health in China with collaborators at Fuwai Hospital, China’s National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases. His passion for China has been shaped by a number of educational and professional experiences, including leading two Duke delegations to Peking University (PKU), Fudan University, and the New Duke Kunshan University. Horak also served as President of the Duke East Asia Nexus and completed a one-year research fellowship at PKU’s National School of Development, where he headed a team of 30 to investigate hospital management practices with collaborators from Stanford, Harvard, and the London School of Economics. Horak, an aspiring academic physician, is currently conducting research on hospital readmissions after acute myocardial infarction as well as mHealth utilization in China.
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For Emily Feng, the empowerment of others through education and dialogue drives her commitment to the US-China sphere as much as any career goal. “If I'm being totally honest,” Feng says, “a good part of my interest [in US-China relations] came from my cultural heritage, from the simple fact that I was born Chinese American and was blessed with growing up hearing family stories of how Chinese history was experienced from the perspective of my various family members.” Since moving to Beijing after graduating from Duke University earlier this year, Feng has worked to teach lessons of empowerment through education to traditionally marginalized groups in China, including women and migrant workers. Feng currently serves as Chief Education Officer of Three Guineas, an organization she also co-founded, and leads design and implementation of academic programs and events that “cover everything from writing a good essay to debate to feminism in China.” In her role at Three Guineas, Feng has also enjoyed marketing through social media, meeting with potential
LOGAN MA
clients and partner organizations and “building up a community around feminism.” Although Feng will be departing from the organization she helped form this year, she will continue to provide a voice for others to share their stories through working at the New York Times in Beijing. Journalism, according to Feng, “is one important part of [her] overall approach to leadership and empowerment,” because, as she puts it, “you need powerful reporting and writing so you have the necessary information” to create “a community through discussion.” Feng believes that “information can be very powerful” and even “give disempowered people a voice,” something that attracted her to the profession initially. As made clear over the past few years, however, foreign journalism in China is not without its difficulties, a fact of life Feng is prepared to face as she enters the field. “Good journalism,” as Feng describes, “takes a huge investment of time, training and research,” making it “hard to find that continuous mentorship and employment,” especially in such a dynamic environment. Differing dialects,
Though American by birth, Logan Ma spent his childhood summers in southwestern China, where his passion for working in US-China relations took root. As an intern for the US Consulate in Chengdu, Ma spearheaded a public diplomacy project that opened a window to US-China cooperation during the Second World War. His past experiences include stints at the American Institute in Taiwan, the Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and the World Resources Institute’s Beijing Office. Ma is a recent graduate of the University of California, San Diego, where he earned a degree in International Studies and led the Prospect Journal of International Affairs. He is now conducting advanced studies in Mandarin at Tsinghua University’s Inter-University Program and intends to enroll in graduate school next fall to continue pursuing his desire to strengthen US-China relations.
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EMILY FENG bureaucratic writing, and issues with finding credible information are just a few the aspects of journalism in China that make it so taxing, according to Feng. “It’s daunting sometimes to get out the door and just start,” she says. Despite taking on such a challenging lifestyle head-on, Feng has also found the time to explore some of the peculiarities of Beijing and its surrounding areas. She has “gone to some pretty bizarre places and gotten into some absurd situations,”
BEN UNDERWOOD
including a bar where you can practice archery and chase after a resident piglet, a Cultural Revolution-themed restaurant, and a medieval-themed bar, where you could rent armor and joist in in the courtyard. Feng has been particularly impressed with Beijing’s outdoor opportunities, including a biking trip to visit the famous Liyuan Library and climbing abandoned sections of the Great Wall. “All in the blistering smog,” of course.
Ben Underwood grew up in Yellowstone National Park. He grounded his undergraduate studies in Bennington College’s Public Action Program, which showed him that addressing climate change is imperative, but also fun. In 2012, the Nepali social entrepreneur Anil Chitrakar introduced Underwood to biogas infrastructure, which converts organic waste into clean energy and fertilizer. Upon graduating, Underwood won a Davis Projects for Peace Grant, moved to Kathmandu, and developed five urban biogas projects. Next, he founded a development company Ripe and went to China as a Fulbright scholar in Kunming. There, he researched the financial and institutional underpinnings of a project to convert seven universities’ food waste into fuel for public buses. His vision moving forward is to use biogas projects as a platform to introduce US firms’ abundance of financing and procurement expertise to Chinese firms’ appetite for mass deployment.
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QIFEI ZENG
Qifei Zeng, after studying International Political Economy at Peking University, is now working on her Master’s at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. She has conducted extensive research on China’s political and business environment. The Headmaster Foundation of Peking University, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Freemen Foundation have all funded her research. Zeng has expertise in risk analysis and policy matrixes regarding US-China Relations through her experiences working in renowned institutes, including the Carnegie Endowment, National Development and Reform Commission, and Control Risks. Currently, Zeng is a part-time consultant at BowerGroupAsia, navigating government relations in both countries. Zeng is also a frequent commentator of China’s political, economic, and social issues. She was the contracted writer for Tony Blair Foundation and has led the Asian International Model United Nations, inviting delegates from more than 20 countries to discuss the pressing issues facing China.
LUCAS SIN
Lucas Sin is the Chef of Junzi Kitchen, a Northern Chinese fast food restaurant. Upon the fast food platform, he works towards building a genuine cultural translation of underrepresented Chinese cuisine for the American palate. The first location in New Haven is built as a space for collaboration and a medium for cultural diffusion: a first step towards building a global fellowship of eaters. During his time at Yale University, Sin studied narrative in the Cognitive Science and English. On campus, he founded the student-run restaurant incubator Y Pop-up and opened nine restaurants under his dorm. Beyond, Sin has worked in kitchens in the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong, where his home is. Recently, his stories and research on Chinese food have appeared in Lucky Peach, Cleaver Quarterly, and China Hands.
“In 2012, I decided on a whim to study abroad at Peking University—it was my first time in China,” says Daniel Límon as he accounts how he was serendipitously thrust into the world that would become the focus of his work. He goes on, “I found the country a vivid case study of Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities: flourishing, rich, young and abuzz, yet also wrestling with DANIEL LIMON its own growing pains.” This initial observation is perhaps the common node in Límon’s work with respect tech companies’ struggles in China.” As a liaison to China—the idea that it is a country deep in officer at the US State Department and an assisthe tumultuous throws of development. That, tant to the former Secretary of Defense William although there is volatility and confusion, there Perry, Límon also gained experience working with East Asia coordinating high-level dialogues exists something much greater: possibility. With this in mind, Límon, a graduate of and communications. But for Límon, the private sector is his current Stanford University, founded DLR Ventures—an focus. He states, “I chose to work on US-China incubator for Chinese and American entrepreneurs, primarily in the tech industry, to start startups because it is one of the few areas where companies in the US-China space. Since the I feel unencumbered to dream up and build company’s founding, Límon has taken on projects deployable solutions that can affect cross-border ranging from e-education to online Chinese slang change from day one. I don't have to go through communities. In selecting ventures, he notes, “A approvals or red tape or bureaucracy to make good idea factors in what the market wants. A things happen—I just make them happen, and great one factors in what the market and Chinese that is awesomely rewarding.” Such an opportuleaders want. Chinese leaders are clever and nity is indeed a fortunate one, especially given capable people…oftentimes they'll tell you where the complicated interplay between the US and Chinese governments and the often-frusthe great opportunities are.” Before founding his incubator, Límon gained trating pace at which cultural interplay seems the expertise to make such insights through his to move. The opportunity is not lost on Límon. work in academia and public service. His thesis He concludes, “Technology and China are my and research at Stanford’s Graduate School of twin passions, and being able to combine them Business sought to “identify some of the major by working on startup projects in the US-China ‘failure factors’ that have contributed to American space is truly a privilege and responsibility.”
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MASON JI
Born and raised in United States, Mason Ji learned to speak, read, and write Chinese at a native level at a young age and, thus, was simultaneously exposed to the disparate worlds of the US and China. In 2012, Ji won first place in the International Chinese Knowledge Competition and with it, an opportunity to meet then Vice-President Xi Jinping. This was a formative event for Ji since he realized that he could take advantage of his bilingual background to help bridge the cultural gap between the US and China. With this inspiration, Mason began his career at Yale, where he currently studies Global Affairs and Political Science, with a concentration on East-West relations and multilateral affairs. Ji has worked at the United Nations throughout his time at Yale,
where he serves as a delegate to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and as an adviser to the Republic of Seychelles delegation. At the UN, his main focus has been in helping to foster greater consensus-building and cooperation on the issues of climate change, nuclear disarmament, and human rights negotiations. His main contribution to US-China relations so far has been on the multilateral stage, where he serves as a mediator concentrating on US-China affairs. In addition to his general duties at the UNGA, Mason is also a delegate to the UN working group on the Law of the Sea and Continental Shelf Preservation, where his work has helped foster understanding. Mason’s experience is wide-ranging: he was the first Yale student to directly enroll in Peking University, and during his time
abroad in China, he implemented a UN comprehensive waste management system in Haidian District, Beijing. In the future, Mason aspires to become an American diplomat who helps in the development of better foreign policy that will aid China’s integration into the existing world order. He believes that one of the largest pitfalls confronting US foreign policymaking is the lack of comprehensive understanding for other nation’s narratives–why they think and approach issues in the way they do. Mason hopes to improve US foreign policy by creating an environment in which policymakers are more cognizant of Chinese perspectives, which would, in turn, help the two nations take steps towards future cooperation on global issues.
JENNA COOK
Jenna Cook graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a degree in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. For her senior thesis, Cook interviewed 50 Chinese birth parents who had abandoned daughters in the wake of the one-child policy. The original research won numerous awards, including the Yale John Addison Porter Prize for outstanding thesis or dissertation. Aside from her academic scholarship on China and gender issues, Cook has been committed to supporting the community of Chinese international adoptees living in the US. While at Yale, she organized and led monthly culture classes for local Chinese adopted girls to learn about Chinese history, culture and language. She also served as a primary subject in an award-winning documentary film about US-China international adoption and traveled to speak with audiences nationwide. Cook is currently researching Chinese domestic adoption policy and practice while on a US-China Fulbright Fellowship.
JIUN-RUEY HU
Jiun-Ruey Hu is a third-year M.D. candidate at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Coming from an immigrant family, Hu addresses issues of health disparities faced by Asian-American, Pacific Islander populations. As the Chief Operating Officer of the National Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association, Hu has developed tools that support health screenings and education initiatives across the country. A graduate of Princeton University, Hu majored in Molecular Biology with certificates in Chinese Language and Culture, Neuroscience, and Applications of Computing. Passionate about US-China issues, he has written for Foreign Policy, studied in Beijing, led several civic action trips, and spoke at the 2012 US-China Youth Summit. His community engagement was recognized by the Spirit of Princeton Award and the Santos-Dumont Award for Innovation. His current research uses artificial intelligence techniques in risk prediction modeling to help liver cirrhosis patients in the US and China. 20 VOLUME 4 ISSUE I | Fall 2015
CHRISTOPHER MIRASOLA
Most recently at the Naval War College, Christopher Mirasola focuses on US-China tension in the Asia-Pacific on disputes in the South and East China Seas. Mirasola wrote on these issues for the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Center for Strategic International Studies and has a paper forthcoming on historic rights in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This work builds on experience at the State Department’s DPRK desk analyzing interstate relations in East Asia. Mirasola became interested in China as a Research Fellow at Johns Hopkins and therefore wrote an undergraduate thesis on grievance resolution mechanisms in China’s countryside. He deepened his understanding of the Chinese judicial system at International Bridges to Justice, where he designed trainings for Chinese criminal defense attorneys. In addition to studying Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African Studies and CET Beijing, Mirasola volunteered as an English teacher in Changsha, Hunan.
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SUNIL PTICEK-DAMLE
Sunil Pticek-Damle is a co-founder of Mentorverse, an educationtechnology startup that virtually connects Chinese students aspiring to study in the United States with US-based mentors. Leveraging its innovative online model, Mentorverse aims to democratize information flows and access to human capital for Chinese students who have traditionally been served by unethical application agencies. His team’s long-term goal is to create a community of cross-cultural exchange that serves to strengthen US-China relations. Pitcek-Damle has been actively involved in China studies since studying in Beijing during the Fall of 2011. He previously worked in US-China commercial relations at the American Chamber of Commerce in China and wrote his award-winning senior thesis on transnational social movements in Tibet and Xinjiang.
PETER LOFTUS
ZHIYI (JOYCELYN) SU
As a Singaporean native who spent ten years living and studying in Shanghai, Zhiyi (Joycelyn) Su understands and believes in the special role that people-to-people relations play in building cross-cultural understanding. She is especially interested in US-China educational exchange and how it transforms the perspectives of its participants. This led her to organize a public briefing on the importance US-China educational exchange during her internship at the US-Asia Institute, which was widely attended by Congressional and Embassy staffers, scholars in think tanks, and business leaders. Her research experiences span from studying the impact of foreign-educated returnees on the Chinese economy at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics to investigating the implications of the Chinese stock market volatility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Su facilitates dialogue and the exchange of ideas among students and scholars through her position as the Deputy Director of Duke-UNC China Leadership Summit.
For Peter Loftus, joining the military was not only a professional choice but also a deeply personal one. The son and grandson of men who served in the Air Force, Loftus was inspired by his father’s service at a young age. “I started thinking, ‘How can I do a similar thing? How can I contribute to my country and serve something that’s greater than myself?’” Loftus found his opportunity to contribute through his passion for learning foreign languages. Recognizing that the U.S. government was in need of officers with a strong background in Chinese, he began to intensively study Chinese as a student as UMass Amherst. Loftus seized every opportunity to strengthen his Chinese language skills and increase his understanding of Chinese culture, embarking on several study abroad experiences in China, including one funded by a Fulbright-Hays Grant in which he conducted research on China’s anticorruption campaign and one-child policy. Applying his knowledge of China to US-China military affairs, Loftus worked in the Pentagon for Air Force International Affairs, offering input to the China desk on topics like China’s actions in the South and East China Seas. While there he also founded a group called US Military China Hands, a select coalition of junior military officers united in their goal of becoming China experts. “The idea is that as we get more experience and exposure to China… We’re going to be missionaries in a sense.
We’re going to try to spread this knowledge, both of our personal and academic experiences in China, to the rest of the military,” he explained. It is this component of sharing knowledge that Loftus finds crucial to increasing mutual understanding between the US and China on the security front. “Not everyone [in the Air Force] has a very thorough understanding of the Far East,” said Loftus, but the two countries’ increased exposure to each other can fill knowledge gaps that would otherwise lead to a miscalculated military approach from either China or the US. “If we’re going to be successful in the Pacific rebalance,” he reasoned, “then we should definitely have a very thorough understanding of what China is, what [it] desires, what [it] aspires to be, and also find ways to be more proactive about taking a cooperative and mutually beneficial approach.” Loftus is pursuing a Masters in International Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies with concentrations in China Studies and International Economics. He is currently spending two semesters at the HopkinsNanjing Center, where he is taking classes on China in Mandarin Chinese. Equipped with knowledge of China acquired from both his personal experiences and studies, he hopes to play an important part in facilitating joint US-China security initiatives in the future, seeing great potential for the two countries to come together on counter-terrorism efforts.
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FEATURES
BENJAMIN HERST
Benjamin Herst currently leads communications for the Paulson Institute, a "thinkand-do” tank working to advance economic and environmental opportunities between the US and China. His work has played a role in conserving China’s natural treasures through a national parks system, convening the world’s largest companies to foster sustainable urbanization, and strengthening commercial ties between the two nations. As an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, he has studied in Beijing and undertook an internship in the green technology division of a large Chinese firm in Hangzhou. His thesis on US-China cybersecurity relations received highest honors from the University’s Department of Political Science.
NANCY (YUN) TANG
Nancy (Yun) Tang, a current JD candidate at Yale Law School, cares passionately about social justice, especially gender justice. A member of the young Chinese feminist community, Tang is an aspiring public interest lawyer. In 2014-2015, Tang was a Junior Fellow in Southeast Asia Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, where she researched political economy and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific and contributed to the Nikkei Asian Review. She has also written extensively on civil liberty and women's rights in China for Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, and Feministing.com. Her senior thesis on gender injustice in Chinese population control won the Rose Olver Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies Prize at Amherst College. Tang enjoys TV drama with strong female leads, and tweets from @NancyYunTang.
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ELEANOR FREUND
Eleanor Freund is a Research Assistant at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She studies US foreign policy and security issues with a focus on US-China relations. Previously, Freund was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC and a student at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. She co-authored Conflict and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region, a report commissioned by the US Department of Defense on America’s future in the Asia-Pacific, and this year helped organize a Track 1.5 crisis management conference for American and Chinese participants in Beijing. Freund is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and after graduate studies, she hopes to pursue a career devoted to navigating a peaceful relationship between the United States and China.
When asked how she first became interested in US-China relations, Thompson answered, “Growing up in the DC area, I focused on politics early on.” To no surprise, Thompson has been actively involved in China-related projects in the US government, as she has worked at the US House of Representatives as a Foreign Affairs Committee Graduate Fellow and at the US Department of State Bureau of East Asian Pacific Affairs. She aligns her vision with such work, as she “[has] been struck with the incredible dedication and skill of U.S. diplomats and representatives” since “they are able to advance American interests while balancing both our domestic political priorities and the delicate position the Chinese government is often in.” Beyond the political workings in Washington DC, Thompson has developed a personal interaction with China in various layers. First is by studying in three different nations—Stanford University in the US, Peking University in China, and the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom, but about China in all three places. She believes this global
exposure allows her to be “a better student of foreign policy and now practitioner.” She was also personally engaged with China through her first-hand experience in the Rural Education Action Project. Thompson notes that being in Beijing and the chance to volunteer in rural villages allowed her to “understand the perspective of the average Chinese citizen and… contextualize many of the decisions the Chinese government is making.” Through exposing herself to Chinese culture by dancing with minority grannies in Qinghai, hiking the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and mingling with the Chinese public on the subway, Thompson was able to better connect with China. Pulling these political and personal aspects together, Thompson ultimately wishes “to help focus the foreign policy dialogue on China” as she believes US-China relations is critical to the future of the US to depend heavily on China as China serves as an American ally in America and will contribute to “rebuilding [American] military and standing up for [American] values in the region.
FEATURES
BENJAMIN LEE
Benjamin C. Lee graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2015 with highest honors in Chinese and International Studies. During his junior year, Lee, as a Boren Scholar, studied abroad in Taiwan, where he focused on crossStrait relations and Taiwanese politics. As a senior, he wrote an honors thesis that examined how democratization in Taiwan and South Korea affected cross-Strait relations and inter-Korean relations, respectively. In November 2014, Lee participated in Strait Talk, a week-long conflict resolution workshop at Brown University and represented the US to propose policy recommendations regarding cross-Strait issues. Lee has also been a Yong Global Leader and a Publications Intern at the National Bureau of Asian Research, where he prepared and participated in a policy table on "The Future US-China Relations: Partnership or Adversarial?" with former US Ambassador to China, Gary Locke.
MOLLY MA
Molly is dedicated to studying and raising awareness on US-China relations. As an undergraduate at Yale University, she organized and moderated a panel featuring the longestserving US Ambassador to China. She was an executive member of Global China Connection, through which she organized speaker events on topics relating to the US and China. For three years, she was involved with promoting Teach For China (TFC) Fellowship to Yale seniors and managed publicity campaigns for TFC across multiple college campuses. One summer and once after graduation, Ma traveled throughout China and Taiwan and blogged about her political, social, and cultural observations. She is currently studying at Harvard Law School, focusing on international law and conflict resolution.
JOHAN VAN DE VEN
Johan van de Ven is a graduate student at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he focuses on public international law and EU-China relations. Getting his start in China as a four-year old in Beijing, he attended middle school in Nanjing, studied abroad in Beijing, and worked in both Beijing and Dalian. During his undergraduate studies at Oxford University, van de Ven interned at Danwei, a Beijing-based division of the Financial Times’ research division, co-edited bilingual current affairs website China Current, and developed a passion for Chinese football, which resulted in him writing about the trials and tribulations of Beijing Guo’an and the Dalian teams for Wild East Football. After graduating, van de Ven returned to China to intern at China Policy, where he researched reforms to China’s football administration, before moving to Dalian to work in event management. After Fletcher, van de Ven hopes to work in EU-China relations.
ANGELA LUH
Angela Luh’s area of focus is energy and economic development. Her first experience in China was in 2013, when Shanghai reached its highest recorded AQI. The event spurred her interest in energy policies in China. In 2015, Luh graduated from University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where her honors thesis examined Sino-Russian energy trade. At UCSD, she received scholarships to study at Fudan University and Nanjing University and co-founded the International Studies Student Association. She has interned as a China policy researcher at the Center for American Progress and an education consultant at Prestige Only in Shanghai. She was a delegate to the Association of Pacific Rim Universities’ Conference at the Nanjing-Hopkins Center and Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford. Luh is currently a China-Program Associate at the Energy Foundation in San Francisco, where she works on policy strategy and analysis in China’s energy markets.
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ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
CRASH: BURSTING THE BUBBLE BUT COMING OUT UNSCATHED? WILL MAGLIOCCO looks at the impact of the Chinese stock market collapse.
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hen asked by one of his disciples what a government should do once a state has many people, Confucius said, simply, “Make them rich.” For four decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done just that. From 1981 to 2010, China’s economic growth has pulled 680 million people out of poverty. For the uninformed observer, it seemed this summer that China’s miracle may have abruptly come to an end. The Shanghai-Composite Index fell 43 percent from June 12 to August 26. The government’s efforts to halt the decline by preventing large shareholders from dumping stock only exacerbated the situation. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that such efforts showed that Chinese policymakers “have no clue what they are doing.” On September 3, four days after the market stabilized, the CCP held a massive military parade down Chang’an Avenue in Beijing, past Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Party called the celebration “The Commemoration of the Seventieth Anniversary of Victory of the Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.” But to anyone outside the People’s Republic—and probably many in it—the parade seemed like a clear effort to find some semblance of national unity after a summer in crisis. American media outlets echoed a narrative of doom and gloom. Forbes proclaimed the beginning of China’s “hard times.” Even The Economist, not known for sensationalizing, could not resist an illustration
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of a downward-trending Great Wall on its August 27 cover under the title, “The Great Fall of China.” However, the situation was not quite as dire as it seemed. The stock market crash, long since ended, did not indicate that the Chinese economy is in crisis. Stephen Roach, Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, argues that China’s stock market performance is more disconnected from its economic health than the stock markets of other countries. Indeed, China’s market represents the actions of a relatively small group of investors, constituting roughly 7 percent of the population. Amateur trading on the markets spiked in the year before the crash: 14 million new accounts had been created on China’s stock market in the past year. According to a survey conducted by Professor Li Gan of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, roughly two-thirds of these new investors did not graduate high school. Over the course of a year, amateur traders fueled a massive bubble in which stocks across the market sold at prices far higher than their actual value. Few experts were surprised when the market finally corrected itself. Limited in its impact or not, the stock market’s rough summer has brought increased public scrutiny to the health of the greater Chinese political economic system. While the impetus for alarm was new, alarmism itself has been a fixture of Western analysis of China for decades. Perhaps the most infamous example of Western pessimism was Gordon Chang’s 2001 book, The Coming Collapse of China, in which Chang, a lawyer, assuredly proclaimed, “The People’s Republic has five years, perhaps ten, before it falls.” As China’s GDP growth began to tail off in 2010, the doubters emerged in force. More recent concerns hinge on China’s unsustainable, export-driven, high-investment economy and the necessary transition to a system that relies on a more robust domestic consumer base. In a 2013 Washington Post interview, Patrick Chovanec, Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs explained China’s conundrum most succinctly. Chinese manufacturing, he wrote, relied too heavily on global demand. “This model works well for a developing economy, but when you become the secondlargest economy in the world, it’s very difficult for the rest of the world to absorb
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
those imbalances.” In other words, as China’s economy gets larger, it cannot rely on global consumption to fuel such rapid growth. As a result, China must scale down investment, boost domestic consumption, and build a more robust domestic market for services. Experts are in consensus regarding China’s economic challenges and their long-term solutions. Even the CCP has recognized the necessity for a shift to an economic model that can support more normalized growth. In 2003, former premier Zhu Rongji remarked that his greatest fear was “an overheating economy.” In 2011, China decided to address this worry publically for the first time. The CCP’s twelfth “Five-Year Plan,” published in 2011, stated outright that China had to “have a clear sight of the imbalanced, incompatible, and non-sustainable elements within China’s development.” In the West, the Communist Party’s ability to address such concerns has come under serious doubt, fueling the suspicions of commentators who have long-held China is on the brink of collapse. Yet many in the West do not fully grasp Chinese policy itself and the conditions Chinese policy makers face. One example lies in media coverage of China’s “ghost cities.” These newly built, massive, uninhabited real estate developments have been heralded as a sure sign of China’s impending economic catastrophe. Yet, several experts have argued that the ghost cities are not actually the byproduct of an oversaturated real estate market. Instead, they are a solution to a pressing domestic problem: the mass migration of rural Chinese to cities in search of economic opportunity. China’s developed cities are overflowing with poverty-stricken, undocumented migrant laborers, many of whom must leave their young children and elderly parents at home to fend for themselves. Says Stephen Roach, “Rural urban migration is still running between 15 and 20 million people per year, and China is building new cities to address that need. When Sixty Minutes does an exclusive on ghost cities, they do not follow up with a sequel to show that the ghost cities they warned of are now fully occupied.” Data corroborates Roach’s explanation: a Standard Chartered study found that occupancy rates in three large-scale development projects—Zhengdong’s New District, Zhenjiang’s Dantu district, and Changzhou’s
Wujin district—more than doubled between 2012 and 2014. Urbanization is expected to continue in China for the next two to three decades. The argument over China’s real estate bubble speaks to the difficulties that arise when judging one country’s policies by another’s standards. Any government whose policy is to finance the construction of whole cities and wait for them to fill up is bound to raise eyebrows in a nation built on free market economic principles. But China is still a central command economy and its response to internal migration and urban overcrowding issues reflects a commitment to those principles. Of course, China, in many ways, continues to support capitalism as well. “It’s an absolute contradiction,” says Orville Schell, Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. “State command, centralized economy on the one hand and a marketized free-enterprise system on the other. You can make a judgment on the basis of either systems and it would be both true and wrong at the same time. It makes it very hard to discuss intelligently.” As China plods along through a messy economic transition, questions about the competence of CCP leaders and the ongoing viability of China’s hybrid economy, not to mention its authoritarian politics, are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Predictions of the Chinese economy’s—or the regime’s— imminent downfall are equally unlikely to disappear. But for a regime that has staked its reputation on bringing economic prosperity for nearly four decades, the inevitable growth slowdown is bound to come with uncertainty. This summer’s stock market crash, far from being a harbinger of the coming meltdown, tested public perception of the Party’s absolute control: the market bubble popped and stocks continued to plummet for nearly two months after government intervention. As it has done for four decades, the Communist Party with its unorthodox policies and hybrid economic model lived to see another day. WILL MAGLIOCCO is a sophomore at Yale University. Contact him at william. magliocco@yale.edu.
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ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
WHY NOT CHINA? PHILIP ABRAHAM studies the TransPacific Partnership and its significance for the future of US-China relations.
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magine a new Cold War raging between China and the US—containment, ideological propaganda, cultural antagonism, and proxy conflicts all over the world as these giants vie for superiority. In accordance with the horror of this possibility, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and its non-inclusion of China spur worries that this policy could cause US-China relations to deteriorate. The TPP is a free trade agreement, passed in early October of 2015, between twelve countries around the Pacific Ocean. However, the treaty excludes China. As China is the world’s second largest economy, the US’s largest trading partner, and the foremost economic power in the Pacific, its absence from the US-led partnership raises some eyebrows. The primary concern is that the US deliberately excluded China, signaling the beginning of a political and economic counterbalancing that could deepen bilateral tension. The secondary concern is that regardless of the intentions of the US, China will perceive the TPP as a threat or form of containment and respond aggressively. While the tariff reductions by the TPP will certainly cut into China’s exports by lowering the price of goods from TPP nations, China’s exclusion from the TPP was not intended to be malicious. It is difficult to say that the US intentionally excluded China from joining the TPP. Rather, China’s constraining economic conditions prevented itself.
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Many experts on the subject agree that the TPP does not represent American containment. Rather, they argue that China’s closed economy and domestic politics precluded China from joining the partnership and that the requirements and provisions of the trade were incompatible with China. China’s economy could not accept limitations on the number of state-owned enterprises, the permission of workers to unionize and bargain collectively, and the attack on digital censorship and localization provided for by the TPP. Even the much freer economy of Japan had to undergo massive changes to accept the TPP. Professor Graham Webster, a Fellow at the Yale Law School China Center, noted that Japan had enormous difficulty in being admitted to the TPP in 2013 because it refused to reduce its heavy tariffs on rice to accommodate the treaty’s existing provisions. Given Japan’s history, he remarked, “[China] would have to have been ready to sign on to those areas of the TPP that would have been settled.” Chinese lawmakers were not prepared to sign onto the existing articles in 2013 because doing so would require radical changes to the Chinese economy. China, Webster argues, was not excluded—it simply was not ready. One of many intentions of the TPP could be to incentivize China to free up its own economy so it could partake in future free trade agreements. “China is [a] hugely vibrant and growing economy,” explains Webster. It would be counterproductive for the US and other TPP members to try and use economic containment against such large economic and trading power in the region. A major win would be scored by the American economy, particularly American imports, if China allowed for a freer trade. The TPP seeks to nudge China to freer trade without provoking it. “The balance [will not] be upset,” says Webster. This notion, though, does not matter to Beijing. Currently, the Chinese Communist Party has issued very little except neutral statements with regards to the TPP. However, the opinion of public and media seem to be more charged with opinion. Tony He, a Chinese student at the Yale School of Management, believes the TPP is bad news for China. He remarks, “Some articles target China and… [they are the ones that the CCP] would disagree with.” The effect, he
Illustration from Accuracy.org
remarks, is a higher barrier to enter the TPP. He points specifically to the articles on freedom from censorship and the elimination of state-owned companies of the TPP. If China feels excluded, regardless of American intentions, the TPP can only have backfiring consequences. If China truly feels that the US is balancing against it, it could try to contain the American economy—propelling the world into a second Cold War as the US and China continuously try to usurp the other’s economy and global influence. China could hurt American trade by using other trade organizations it has been planning, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with other Asian nations. China has also been planning the One Belt, One Road program, which seeks to create a modern silk road with land and maritime trade routes by building railroads through Central Asia into Europe and building trade posts along the Eastern Coast of Africa into the Suez and the Mediterranean. This initiative would allow China’s economy to penetrate the European market. The TPP seems to have nudged China towards striving for a freer economy, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Although Beijing has issued no official statement concerning the TPP, Edward Wittenstein, Director of Yale’s International Relations and Leadership Programs states, “A lot of the reforms China is planning, in terms of its domestic economy, would gradually make China’s economy more compatible with international trade groupings.” Even joining the TPP is a strong possibility for China. Webster speculates that a bilateral treaty between
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
INFORMATION TRANSPARENCY SIYUE PENG explores the role of startups in increasing prospective students’ knowledge about US colleges.
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he increasing interest among Chinese students in studying abroad is no longer news. In the early stages of this trend, both Chinese parents and students lacked reliable and comprehensive information about foreign higher education institutions. As a result, annual college rankings, provided by reputable media such as Forbes and US News, were the most significant, if not the most commonly used “official” references that distinguished among the 4,706 degree-granting institutions in the United
the US and China is possible by 2020, given the right conditions. Beijing has also renewed negotiating many Free Trade Agreement Partnerships (FTAPs) with countries all over the world. These FTAPs could significantly hinder American exports and signal Chinese rebalance, but they more aptly show the TTP’s effect in incentivizing China towards freeing its economy to reap in the benefits of an uninhibited global trade. “The gravitational pull of China’s economy is greater than any trade organization,” sums up Webster. Even if ratified by the US Congress, the TPP will not erode US-China relations in the future because both nations stand to lose too much by containing each other. Chinese economy will not be shut by the TPP. Regardless of the circumstances, it is a core trading partner for all the members of the TPP, especially with the US. While strong US rhetoric might mislead many people into thinking that China’s exclusion from the TPP is a strong power move to contain China and preserve the economic reign of the US, the more direct reason that China could not join the free trade partnership is its relatively less free economic system. The TPP has a possibility to strengthen the economic ties between the US and China if China frees its economy as planned, ushering in not another Cold War, but a period of warm cooperation between the two global powers. PHILIP ABRAHAM is a sophomore at Yale University. Contact him at philip.abraham@yale.edu.
States. Prospective Chinese students explore the United States with only limited available information about the college application process. To solve this information asymmetry, in recent years, some rising startups such as Amigo and IvySpace have been working on establishing an efficient online platform for information exchange between prospectives students and students currently studying abroad in the US. Their founders’ awareness of this issue and the motivation to improve the accessibility of information are beneficial for these prospective students. While a considerable number of Chinese students who desire to study abroad choose to work with an education consulting agency, not all the available consulting agencies in the market are licensed or well-regulated. It took no more than successfully sending a few students to highly ranked institutions for an early-bird consulting firm to acquire a local reputation, and simply airing well-designed advertisements quickly lent these firms authority among local students and parents. Over time, consulting service firms institutionalized themselves to accommodate the explosion of demand, prompting the companies to provide end-to-end application services for clients. Unsurprisingly, this reduced student involvement on their own applications, minimizing their own role in perhaps one of the most important decisions of their lives. “Those students
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are usually not as proud of their institutions as their American classmates because of their lack of involvement in the application process,” said Christopher Chau, the co-founder of Ivy Space. Furthermore, many Chinese students’ lack of attachment to their future colleges might reflect that the issue of information asymmetry still has not been resolved—often, their universities do not meet their initial expectations or imaginations. In an era in which electronic business and information technology are influential, many start to form serious concerns about information asymmetry. Technological advancement has become one of the most effective and accessible ways to deal with it. A considerable number of websites have emerged that serve the students who decide to complete the application process on their own. Online forums also provide students and parents an opportunity to share information with many others in the same position. However, article-based websites and online forums are not without drawbacks. For instance, communication is not always efficient since many users do not check these forums on a regular basis unless they are urgently waiting for a response. Moreover, information is not always reliable as sources are often unidentified. Consequently, a couple of entrepreneurs have decided to create applications on mobile devices to establish more efficient online platforms. Amigo and IvySpace are two of them. “Amigo uses the latest mobile information technology and concepts to effectively change the information asymmetry, allowing the students with authentic experiences to help prospects students have a comprehensive understanding of their life in a foreign country.” The founder of Amigo, Lin Bo, defines Amigo as a bridge that connects students. It allows verified users to communicate immediately at an affordable cost. “Amigo does not necessarily intend to revolutionize or overturn this industry by any means. Because we believe that the structural optimization within an industry is a natural process, and all we want is to focus on gradually increasing the information transparency, which is our incentive of creating Amigo,” Xu Ke, the CTO of Amigo says. Sharing a similar incentive with Amigo, Christopher Chau agrees that promoting information transparency is crucial. In the interview, he claims that certain interest groups intentionally kept studying abroad in the United States at a distance from students and over-complicated the application process for their own benefits. Furthermore, Chau notes that, since Chinese parents are so eager and willing to provide better education for their children at all costs, they sometimes fail to recognize that the best judgment cannot be made without sufficient information from reliable sources. With an increasing number of students studying and living in the United States, American education is no longer a distant dream exclusively for elite families or adventurous explorers. The accessibility of relevant
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information has improved through startups like Amigo and IvySpace. Though not yet nationally well-known, they indeed have built a tangible space for active information exchange, as well as have resolved information asymmetry to some extent.
IT TOOK NO MORE THAN SUCCESSFULLY SENDING A FEW STUDENTS TO HIGHLY RANKED INSTITUTIONS FOR AN EARLY-BIRD CONSULTING FIRM TO ACQUIRE A LOCAL REPUTATION. Prestigious institutions in large Chinese cities have encouraged American universities to hold information sessions for prospective students. Through these opportunities, students and parents can more easily access information about American education and reach out to other, more experienced students. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case in many smaller cities. Many families in second-tier cities also need information, but they are more likely to seek help from agencies rather than from the educational institutions themselves. According to Joseph Luk, who referred to a survey conducted by the National Association for College Admission and Counseling in 2011, 60 percent of Chinese respondents answered that they used educational consultants when they applied to American colleges. Since having consultants does not always resolve information asymmetry, companies like Amigo and IvySpace have enormous potential to grow. Does increasing access to information transparency translate to an increasing number of Chinese students in the US? Data from 2013–2014 suggests a relationship: total international student enrollment in the United States was 886,052, and 31 percent of them were from China. The percentage of students from China studying in America increases considerably every year. Students and parents feel more comfortable and confident about taking such a crucial step when they have more reliable information available. The determining factors of a prospective student’s experience in the US are not limited to his or her academics or institution’s rankings, but also include social life and cultural adjustment, which will greatly affect whether or not their journey is an enjoyable and meaningful experience. After all, the United States is a country that encourages the necessity of cultural inclusiveness and respect for diversity. With the increasing number of resources available to prospective students, especially through new online platforms, prospective students receive the benefit of having more access to more information to aid them in their college application process. SIYUE PENG is a sophomore studying Political Science and Economics at Davidson College. Contact him at sipeng@davidson.edu.
ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
GROWING THE NET: HEALTHCARE PAYMENT REFORM IN CHINA AND AMERICA RYAN LEONARD examines the co-evolution of the Chinese and American health systems.
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ver the past six years, the world’s top two economic powers have committed to transforming how their citizens pay for health care services. Foundational to China and the United States’ respective roads to reform has been the expansion of coverage to protect the uninsured and an effort to curb out-ofpocket spending. Yet, while their initial tactics share similarities, the two nations face unique challenges from consumers with limited understanding of health economics and from businesses scrambling to respond to the details of new legislation. Citizens of both nations can expect significant changes to the way they pay for and access health care, as governments and private players— including new entrants to the industry—take significant gambles to implement revolutions in health care payment. In the decades that followed China’s 1978 economic reforms, a once affordable and equitable health care system—bankrolled by the government and maintained by minimally-educated farmers known as barefoot doctors—rapidly privatized, leaving individuals with few safeguards against profit-seeking hospitals and physicians. To reverse this reality, in 2009 China’s central leadership pledged to invest ¥850 billion ($125 billion) over the subsequent three years to fund an ambitious five-point health care reform plan. At its heart was a demand-side approach—to expand basic coverage to 90 percent of the population via existing social health insurance schemes for rural residents under the Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission, urban residents, and urban workers via the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and
Illustration by Christina Zhang
Social Security. Known as Basic Medical Insurance (BMI), this was the first step on the road to universal health insurance by 2020. Yet expanding coverage did not eliminate the excessive out-of-pocket spending borne out of the 1980s and 1990s. Despite 95 percent penetration of public health insurance by 2011, according to the now-defunct Ministry of Health, out-ofpocket spending held strongly at 35 percent of total medical expenditures. Increased funding to expand coverage has done little to protect consumers against costs from acute and catastrophic events. Clear coverage
gaps in China’s public insurance might signal opportunities for the private insurance industry, a $24 billion market divided into lump-sum products, BMI supplementary plans known as BMI+, and high-end indemnity-style health insurance products. Annie Sun, Shanghai-based consultant at Latitude Health and author of two books on China’s mobile health industry, knows that behind this apparent opportunity lies significant challenges. “Insurers still don’t get the chance ... to take actions on hospitals when they find improper treatment.” In other words, private insurers in China are giving away carrots minus the sticks; without
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ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
the clinical partnership or legal framework to provide more than administrative services, payers are left with few ways to manage risk and control costs.
to health care accounts for 17.4 percent of its GDP in 2014. But how does one make health care’s cost curve bend? President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 A more insidious problem is what Sun immediately placed strict regulations on calls a “deformed” pricing structure at the business of private health insurpublic hospitals, which undermines ance, with the aim to expand affordable the service value of Chinese physicians. coverage to the uninsured. The law made “The registration fee [co-payment] is having coverage mandatory for all US only￥¥10 to ¥17…the average outpatient citizens, expanded the Medicaid program fee at a Tier 3 hospital is around ¥250 for the poor, and eliminated limits on per encounter…what is the rest of the individual lifetime costs. Individuals with amount? Labs and drugs! Chinese incomes up to 400 percent of the federal patients are used to paying high for drugs poverty level could select from a menu but low for services,” he says. Such low of private health plans, including new players such as Silicon Valley favorite Oscar IN CHINA, THE QUESTION OF HEALTHCARE ACCESS IS RESOLVED, BUT Health, on the newly created State Health STRONG PAYERS TO SHIELD PATIENTS Insurance Marketplace. In FROM HIGH OUT-OF-POCKET SPENDING 2015, 11.7 million people were enrolled in the HAVE NOT EMERGED. Marketplace. Under the co-payments reflect how Chinese society ACA, payers did not disappear; their job values the role of physicians in the just became much harder. healthcare system. Whereas telemedicine in the United States is touted as an Bracing for the flood of new, potenopportunity for improved access and tially high-risk lives into the health care cost control, Sun notes that cities like market, health care players responded Guangzhou are providing these services to the passage of the ACA with several for free. rounds of rapid consolidation. From non-profit regional hospital systems, Shifting the perception of health such as North Shore-LIJ Health System, consumers to see the value in these the New York metropolitan 21-hospital services could catalyze industry-shaking behemoth, acquiring smaller community change. Just this month, Ali Health, hospitals and administering their own the pharmaceutical arm of tech darling in-house health plans, to billion-dollar Alibaba, announced a strategic partPBM mergers such as CVS Health and nership with ride-sharing app Didi to Omnicare, health care organizations of bring physicians to the doorsteps of all shades moved to achieve economies consumers—a kind of Uber-ZocDoc of scale and integration. Nowhere is this hybrid. Such a model might help change clearer than in health insurance. This lingering perceptions of Chinese physiyear alone, the five largest players, have cians as profit-seeking drug dispensers now consolidated to three—Anthem, to legitimate providers of professional United Healthcare and Aetna. services. China needs this kind of rapid experimentation to push health care With all the major players expanding in forward, but as Sun concludes, “Pricing size, the burden of protecting health care restructure and a payer to support the consumers’ financial interests weighs restructure is the key to everything.” heavily on the private insurance industry, historically maligned for its cost-cutting The same could be said for the United managed care practices. The need for States, five years into implementation of a strategic pivot is in part a reaction its own health care reform plan to curb to the ACA’s cap on payer profits via the growth of health care’s oversized slice medical loss ratio, which sets a mandatory of the economy as the budget allocated percentage of revenue spent on medical
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care and quality improvement activities. Simply put, the more consumers spend on health care services, the more difficult it is for payers to keep their doors open. Private payers in the United States have responded by implementing new valuebased payment models. These datadriven payment arrangements incentivize primary care doctors to keep their patients healthy, maintain quality of care, and lower overall health expenditures over time. Paying providers short-term bonuses to reduce long-term costs is similar in spirit to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, a product of the ACA that rewards integrated care delivery systems to hit quality targets and avoid unnecessary procedures. In April 2015, The Wall Street Journal featured the industry’s largest value-based payment program at Anthem, which netted 3.3 percent total cost of care savings that amounts to near $100 million in the first twelve months. The success of shared savings models will play an increasingly important role in shifting health care payment from volume-based to outcomes-based. To date, the massive, independent efforts of China and the United States to reshape their health care systems have had mixed results. In China, the question of access is resolved, but strong payers to shield patients from high out-ofpocket spending have not emerged. In the United States, health spending continues to increase, but health care as a percentage of GDP appears to be flattening. Henry Kissinger might call this a time of co-evolution for Chinese and American health systems. In a world that increasingly demands governments and businesses to deliver social impact, crossover collaboration in technology and analytics merits particular attention. As different as Chinese and American markets are, when it comes to deciding how to pay for health care, the world’s greatest economies could use some fresh perspective. RYAN A. LEONARD is a manager at Anthem, the health insurance company. The views expressed in the above article are his own.
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VIOLENCE GENERATED BY FEAR APRIL DAN FENG studies the May Fourth Movement and the enduring concept of renzhi.
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Photo by April Dan Feng
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“PETITION IS A COMMON POLITICAL BEHAVIOR IN ANY COUNTRY. NORMALLY, IT SHOULD NOT CAUSE DEATH, BUT WE ALL KNOW THAT CHINA IS AN EXCEPTION… SOCIAL CHANGES ALWAYS INCLUDE BLOODSHED, BUT BLOODSHED DOES NOT NECESSARILY BRING SOCIAL CHANGES...” – LU XUN, 1912
O
n the morning of May 8, 1919, four days after the May Fourth Movement, Cai Yuanpei, then president of the renowned Peking University, announced his resignation and left for his beloved students and colleague one perplexing sentence from Fengsu Tongyi, a book written 1,800 years ago: “It is the people who are cheering for my horse that ultimately kill it.” For years, scholars have been trying to understand what Cai, a great scholar well-versed in both the traditional Chinese culture and modern Western philosophies, really wanted to say. The May Fourth Movement took place in 1919 in Beijing. It was an anti-imperialist movement that grew out of student demonstrations. Students from Peking University and other institutions of higher education gathered at Tiananmen Square and demanded that the government refuse to sign the Treaty of Versailles, which entailed that Shandong Province, the birthplace of Confucius, be governed by Japan. The Movement marked the first time in Chinese history that students, as an independent political power, participated in public petition regarding state issues. The protest remained peaceful until the angry demonstrators marched into the residence of Cao Rulin, one of the three officials accused of collaborating with the Japanese, destroyed all of Cao’s furniture, burned down the entire house and beat Cao’s friend Zhang Zongxiang almost to death. With a desire to understand more fully one of the most crucial moments in Chinese history, I began a project on the May Fourth Movement. After conducting field research and reading historical documents in Beijing, Shanghai, Shaoxing and Hunan, I discovered a historical pattern underlying Chinese public movements and mass petitions: when a social group develops fear of being perceived as vulnerable or powerless, an insecurity perpetuated from thousands of years of renzhi (rule by the people, as opposed to rule of law, fazhi), violence or the threat of violence is identified as the only choice to claim power and make demands. •
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M
y experience in Hunan Province gave me a taste of Chinese people’s fear of being perceived as powerless. In Changsha, the capital of Hunan, I listened to the story of a taxi driver, Xiao Liu, which seemed to confirm and shed a new light on my supposition. Last year, Xiao Liu got stopped by a policeman for speeding. He refused to accept the ticket, and the policeman beat him out of anger. “All of sudden, I felt the serious threat of being looked down upon. I had to fight back. I had to show him that I was not someone that could be bullied!” Xiao Liu called up all his taxidriving friends, planning revenge to reassert their power. The next day, four hundred taxi drivers drove their cars to the Hunan provincial government building and encircled it. For four hours, nobody could get in or out. The city of Changsha became dysfunctional. “Nobody can look down upon us,” Xiao Liu said. “If you do, we will make you suffer.” “But you should not be speeding...” I remarked in a low voice. He replied, “Oh, come on! You are too young and too naive. The society is ruled by people! Only those who have hard power can survive. We are afraid to lose our power. We cannot lose our power.” According to Xiao Liu, there are six thousand taxi drivers in the city and all of them belong to one of four gang-like groups. “With the strength of the large groups on our back,” he said, his voice shaking from a combination of pride, excitement and agitation, “nobody dares to bully us, not even the government!” I detected a sense of a fear of being perceived as powerless in Xiao Liu’s narrative and heard echoes of the May Fourth Movement in his story. Though I could empathize with Xiao Liu about his fear, I was perplexed by his proposed solutions to ease this fear--a series of behaviors damaging the city business of Changsha. Xiao Liu’s last comment, “if you [look down upon us],
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we will make you suffer,” even frightened me a little bit. To him, fear and violence seemed to be so naturally connected with one another. There must be some special social mechanism in China that twists fear to violence like this. •
I
nside the Museum of Peking University in Beijing, I encountered many informative yet disturbing accounts told by the student leaders of the movement and began to see an aggregation of a shared political condition, one that is unique to Chinese culture: renzhi (rule by the people). Under renzhi, the fear of being perceived as powerless can easily turn someone to violence, and the May Fourth Movement was an example. When the students first learned that the incompetent Beiyang government, in an effort to maintain its internal rule over China, would sign the Treaty of Versailles and sacrifice yet another territory of China’s to a foreign state, they immediately organized to protest. At first, they agreed that the protest would be non-violent. However, the attempts at peaceful persuasion failed, and most students’ pleas were ignored. Even after hours of student sit-in protest and patriotic speeches on Tiananmen Square, no official explanation was made. Qing dynasty officials simply refused to meet the students. Not satisfied with the results, students turned south and headed to the foreign concessions area, where they were stopped by soldiers and were denied entrance to Dong Jiao Min Xiang, a region where many foreign embassies were located. They finally realized that they were perceived as powerless by both the Chinese and foreign governments, that knowledge, patriotism, and reason did not have bargaining power. Their only method of catching attention and regaining power was resorting to violence.
Liang Shiqiu, one of the student protestors, remembered the event after several years: “...People had an anger, but did not know where and whom to express [it to]. We hated the government for being incompetent and the officials selling our country. We did not know where to express this anger, so we could only burn down cars and buildings on random streets.” In a society ruled by the people, there is no objective social law to lean on when people require their rights or demand changes. Therefore, the fear of being perceived as powerless becomes wild. •
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fter the May Fourth Movement, afraid of the students, the government released those arrested without punishing them for their violent behaviors. According to Luo Jialun, there were many students who even refused to leave prison because the longer they stayed in prison, the more bargaining power they would appear to have. At one point, the government officials even prepared cars and fireworks to motivate them to leave the prison, but the students still refused to do so. In the end, high-ranking officials kneeled down, called the students fathers and begged them to leave, informing that they were already famous outside the prison walls. “They [were] afraid of us,” Luo Jialun said, “because now we have power.” It seems that the students were the ones that finally obtained power. However, at the same time, violence became the publically recognized and accepted way to ease fear and acquire bargaining power.
Since the May Fourth Movement, the tradition of renzhi in China has not changed. Young students sacrificed their lives for patriotism. Soldiers shed blood obeying orders and protecting the regime. Even during peaceful times, people are willing to resort to violence to ease their fear of being perceived as powerless. Xiao Liu’s words still ring in my head, “Remember this, it sucks to be nobody in China. In a society with renzhi, you need connections. You need social status. People like us taxi drivers have none of those. We are afraid of being WE HATED THE GOVERNMENT FOR BEING bullied or being seen as powerless. INCOMPETENT AND THE OFFICIALS SELLING OUR COUNTRY. WE DID NOT KNOW WHERE TO EXPRESS We have no choice but to fight back, violently enough to make them realize THIS ANGER, SO WE COULD ONLY BURN DOWN that we also have power. Or maybe...” CARS AND BUILDINGS ON RANDOM STREETS.” he looked at me from the rear view mirror, “you can change it when you grow up.” The students took a turn from Dong Jiao Min Xiang and started heading to the residence of the three APRIL DAN FENG is a sophomore at the University of officials accused of collaborating with the Japanese. Notre Dame. Contact her at dan.feng.13@nd.edu. According to Luo Jialun, the leader of the Movement, all actions from that point on became irrational and unorganized. They beat one of the three officials, Zhang Zongxiang, violently with iron bars. One of the students carried a bloody red silk blanket, tore it apart, and waved a piece in the air, shouting victoriously.
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Illustration by Zishi Li
PRESERVING CULTURE LILLIAN CHILDRESS explores the fading tradition of Chinese pickling.
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T
he pungent smell of pickles pervaded the air of the shop, piercing to the point of producing tears of the sort that chopping an onion might unleash. The customers seemed able to go about their business unhindered by the aromas, bustling from vat to vat of pickles of every type, occasionally turning to large urns with dried plants inside. It was 2 pm on a Tuesday and the pickle shop—Jing Guan Pickle Store of Hangzhou, one of the “four great pickle stores in China,” as a stone plaque outside of the shop proudly proclaims—was packed with the kind of activity one might see at a midwestern Wal-Mart before a snowstorm. I took my place near the cool ventilation of the windows, observing my fellow pickle-shoppers. My mind danced with questions. Is that a pickle or an insect? Is it okay that that vat of yellow pickles is being swarmed by flies or should I alert somebody? Is it weird that I am just standing here watching everybody or should I feign activity by moving about? And inevitably, the pressing, ever-pervasive: why am I here? The ostensible reason for my presence was my investigation of the sustainability of traditional Chinese pickles through a fellowship dispensed by the Yale Sustainable Food Program. I wanted to see if the traditional culture of eating and making pickles in China was being lost to the advent of refrigeration and mechanization, and, were that to be the case, if I could collect the recipes of great-grandmothers and grandmothers that would very soon be lost to time.
“No recipes. A truck brings the pickles here in the mornings,” he sternly replied. I asked if the factory had a phone number that I could call, to which the answer was also a firm no. Finally, I managed to convince another worker to fish out a cardboard box from the closet with a phone number printed on it that may be a phone number I could use to call the factory. I walked out of the shop, having completed my first research expedition of the month-long journey I had just embarked on. I had yet another question in mind: are people really this disconnected from where their pickles are coming from? •
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ack in July 2014, an article called “What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming?” caught my eye in the New York Times Magazine. In the article, author Nicola Twilley expertly chronicles the history of modern refrigeration in China and its associated environmental implications. Over the last two decades, Chinese domestic refrigerator ownership has grown exponentially. In 1995, around 7 percent of Chinese urban families owned refrigerators. By 2007, that number had jumped to over 95 percent. Twilley makes clear, however, that these advancements have come at a cost. The natural corollary to this shift towards modern food storage methods is that more traditional procedures like fermentation will be lost. For thousands of years, the Chinese have relied on traditional fermentation practices to preserve foods, such as the production of tofu, the salting of meat and fish, and ground storage of salted fruits and vegetables. In fact, it was not until the 1970s—around the time of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and opening up initiative—that the first refrigerators appeared in Chinese homes. Now with the total number of Chinese households owning refrigerators standing around 88 percent, the shift away from traditional fermentation practices truly began to take place.
PICKLES WERE A CRITICAL CORNERSTONE OF CHINESE CULTURE, AND THE DECLINE OF PICKLE EATING, ESPECIALLY AMONG YOUNGER GENERATIONS, WAS A SYMBOL OF A MUCH LARGER CULTURAL COLLAPSE. In the spirit of such objective, I approached one of the workers in the shop, who was sitting on a pile of burlap sacks and eating a bowl of rice. “Where in the shop do you make all of these pickles?” I asked. He stared at me with the wide eyes of someone who is not expecting a foreigner to ask a question in Chinese, much less one about pickles. “We don’t make them here. They come from a factory,” he finally answered. “Do you have any of the recipes?” I ventured.
Combined with the emergence of large supermarkets, this all means that people are now spending much less time on making fermented products. Not only can they preserve things by keeping food cool in a refrigerator, they can also satiate their taste for pickled foods by purchasing such food items in a supermarket. Even my host grandmother during my stay in Hangzhou said that
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she rarely makes pickles anymore and could only remember the recipes from her childhood. During one of my first weeks there, she helped me set up a number of home visits with elder friends of hers in the same apartment complex. One family made pickled mustard greens, and another made sun-dried radish. Yet the message they conveyed to me was largely the same: if I wanted to learn about pickles, I should go to the countryside. Their home pickle-making was largely born out of nostalgia. My conversation with a graduate student at Zhejiang University painted an even bleaker picture. He and his peers were seldom consumers of fermented vegetables, and when he did eat them, it was in extremely small quantities, usually mixed in with his morning rice porridge. At first, a decrease in pickle consumption seems merely another way in which modern Western culture is eroding the traditional cultural practices of the East. Which is a problem in its own right, to be sure. Something larger is at play here, though. The shift from traditional preservation methods to refrigeration comes at great cost to China’s environment. A typical home refrigerator in China accounts for around 16 to 41 percent of annual energy consumption per household. Fermentation is fundamentally sustainable: fermented food does not require refrigerators to keep it fresh. Fermentation is also a good way to use fruits and vegetables efficiently, because fermented fruit can be kept in jars or pots for years. In recent years, in large part due to the emergence of the home refrigerator and large-scale cold supply chains, fresh fruits and vegetables are thrown away the moment any disfigured spots appear. This contributes to a global food waste problem as the UN estimates that roughly 30 percent of food produced globally is never actually eaten. Additionally, home fermentation reduces greenhouse gases produced by the transportation and packaging associated with large supermarkets. Lastly, eating fermented and pickled foods encourages and enables people to eat locally year-round. Pickled green beans, for example, can be eaten long after green beans have gone out of season in a particular area. Homemade pickles are also very simple to make. The basic procedure is to rub vegetables with salt,
THE SHIFT FROM TRADITIONAL PRESERVATION METHODS TO REFRIGERATION COMES AT GREAT COST TO CHINA’S ENVIRONMENT. A TYPICAL HOME REFRIGERATOR IN CHINA ACCOUNTS FOR AROUND 16 TO 41 PERCENT OF ANNUAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION PER HOUSEHOLD.
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pack them in a jar, add extra salt brine if needed so they are completely submerged. The salt-watervegetable mixture will naturally grow lactic acid bacteria, which lowers the pH level of the mixture to the point that other “bad” bacteria are essentially wiped out. While the pickles can be eaten in a few days, I was told to keep them fermenting for at least twelve days, at which point the sodium nitrite concentration will be almost completely depleted, a compound that some have linked to negative health effects. While I had braced myself for the discovery that elder members of the community were gradually losing their pickle-making abilities and knowledge, I was much more surprised to learn that the pickle vendors I talked to in the markets and even the well-known Jing Guan Pickle Store got almost all of their pickles from a factory. The only holders of a deep knowledge of recipes and techniques within the community, therefore, were the factories. How were the mechanized techniques of picklemaking different? Were the factories cutting corners to make the fermentation process faster and more cost-efficient? After many phone calls, half-English, half-Chinese conversations with a Zhejiang University professor and an acquaintance with a UC Berkeley food science student, I was granted a visit to a pickle factory in Xiaoshan, an administrative district of Hangzhou. The Hangzhou Xiaoshan Dangshan Jiangcui Company is one of five pickle factories in Xiaoshan, and according to all involved, was the best pickle factory of the five (When I pressed further about what “best” meant, it was amended to “most sanitary.”). The owner of the factory, Ma Gulong, greeted us with a round belly, a full-toothed smile, and free copies of his recently published book, A Bite of Pickle Culture, which features his smiling face on the maroon cover. Ma emphasized that that pickles were a critical cornerstone of Chinese culture, and that the decline of pickle eating, especially among younger generations, was a symbol of a much larger cultural collapse. “It’s too easy for them to buy their own pickles,” he said of young people. “There aren’t enough benefits to making them on their own.” The actual making of pickles, according to Ma, is very easy. All of the techniques used at the factory were in fact the same ones that regular Chinese people employ in their homes. Radishes were still dried in the sun, and pickled mustard greens were still kept in large, salty vats until it was time to package them. Traditional knowledge was not leaving the community; it was just being concentrated into the hands of those who could make a profit from it.
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Photos by Lillian Childress
However, the way pickles are made in factories still is not exactly the same as a grandmother would make them in her own kitchen. The pickles made in factories are subject to a narrowing homogenization that is necessary for any standardized product, not to mention the greater environmental cost they accrue through large volumes of plastic packaging and longdistance transport. Towards the end of our meeting at the factory, Ma asked me the question it seemed he had been burning to all along: how could he expand into the American market? I ventured, “Well… you could sell the pickles in Chinatowns in different American cities?” This seemed much too small scale for him. I struggled to explain that the American palate may just not be ready for snack-sized portions of pickled mustard greens or sun-dried radish. I told him that perhaps if he marketed pickles as a health food, particularly playing up the probiotic benefits, he might be able to attract a wider customer base. Ma’s question was particularly biting since a part of my ultimate vision for the research project was taking the fermentation methods I had learned in China back to the US. In speaking with Ma, though, I realized that there may be more of a reluctance than I had originally supposed among American consumers to branch out into something as pungent and visually striking as Chinese pickles, in addition to a certain untrustworthiness as to whether they are safe to make in the home.
While homemade pickles are extremely simple to make, there seems to be great misunderstanding of the chemistry behind the process, which leads to magnification of distinct American fears of germs and bacteria. Pickling with salt is a triedand-true method that has been used for centuries, yet it seems that both Chinese and American youth alike really are unaware of where our pickles are coming from.
“IT’S TOO EASY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE TO BUY
THEIR OWN PICKLES. THERE AREN’T ENOUGH BENEFITS TO MAKING THEM ON THEIR OWN.” It is time that the knowledge pickling leaves the hands of just the factory owners and re-enters both the American and Chinese kitchens. By pickling in own kitchens, we can eat locally all year long, use less refrigerator space, and reduce food waste. Moreover, we can reap the health benefits of probiotic bacteria and increased bioavailability of certain nutrients that the pickling process brings out. Sometimes, there is hidden wisdom in tradition that we do not fully realize until it is almost lost to us. LILLIAN CHILDRESS is a junior at Yale University. Contact her at lillian.g.childress@yale.edu.
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LIFE & CULTURE
DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT OR CONTINUED CONTROL? JEAN YOUNG KOO asks, what are the implications of the two-child policy?
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ast October, the Communist Party of China issued a statement that changed the one-child policy to a two-child policy. The intention of this adjustment was to tackle the problem of a graying Chinese population, as the birthrate has fallen drastically from 6.16 births per woman in 1965 to 1.66 in 2012. George Remisovsky, a Master’s Student at the Council of East Asian Studies at Yale University, notes, “Low fertility is an issue faced by almost all highly industrialized societies, and so the Chinese government will have to develop policies to deal with its aging population regardless.” This two-child policy is just it. Many news agencies reported on projected immediate changes to family structure and population breakdown ensuing the enactment of the two-child policy. For instance, Xinhua News was fast to point out that “China will… need to bolster its education, medical treatment and housing supply to cope with the expected baby boom.” The Guardian issued a similar viewpoint by quoting a family planning official who said that China will need to act fast to “address a major demographic challenge facing the nation.”
THE CHANGE IN CHINA’S POPULATION POLICY ONLY MAKES A MARGINAL DIFFERENCE IN INDIVIDUAL CHINESE PEOPLE’S LIVES. In reality, however, one might not expect this shift away from a one-child policy to bring substantial changes to the Chinese population. Even when the one-child policy was in place, it most recently only applied to such a small segment of the population that many families already had two children: rural families, minority groups, or couples in which both parents are only child were legally permitted to have two, sometimes even more, children. Deborah Davis, a professor of Sociology at Yale University and a China specialist, comments, “Now that people can have a second child, the question is who previously could not have? [Only] when both partners were not single children.” As such, the number of people who are going to be impacted by this change is relatively minimal. Even for those who are strictly limited to having one child per family, it is very possible that these individuals will make active choices not to have a second child. The cost of having a child in China is already at its peak
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and only expected to rise further. According to Credit Suisse Group AG, the cost of raising a child from birth through the age of eighteen stands at $3,745 per year, which constitutes 43 percent of the average household income in China. Anne Ewbank, a Master’s Student at the Council of East Asian Studies at Yale University, comments, “It is very expensive to raise more than one child, so that will probably continue to be the status quo for many families. I don’t see there being much of a baby boom.” The change in China’s population policy only makes a marginal difference in individual Chinese people’s lives. By continuing to have a limit on the number of children that the Chinese population can have, the government is still dictating control over family planning. Deborah Davis states, “The [Chinese] government is slightly reducing its control over fertility, [but it] is still saying it has the right to dictate the number of children. If you have more than two, you are [still] going to be punished.” With the two-child policy, the Communist Party requires by law to practice birth control and continues to intervene in personal family planning. Its strict political control and limitation on personal freedom still holds true even with this change. Another problem with the spotlight on the two-child policy is the media’s hypersensitivity to this issue. There has been a great deal reporting on the two-child policy in the American news to the extent that its effects are exaggerated. One cause of this overcoverage may be the iconic influence the one-child policy has had on shaping the image of China to the outside world. By implementing a policy of childbirth control, the Chinese government received considerable criticism regarding its limitation of individual freedom. The one-child policy has almost become an emblem of many of the CCP’s policies that are difficult to grasp for the outside world. The discrepancy between this seemingly grand change to a two-child policy and the actual changes it is going to bring the the public is definitely present. The sheer shift in number from one to two does not mean much for the Chinese population, and the CCP’s intention behind its birth control policy remains the unchanged. JEAN YOUNG KOO is a junior at Yale and the Managing Editor of China Hands. Contact her at jeanyoung.koo@yale.edu.
Illustration by Catherine Yang
LIFE & CULTURE
BAIJIU ABROAD ALEX HERKERT remarks on the potential of China’s favorite liquor in the West.
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n July of 2015, I arrived in Qingdao, China, on a train from Shanghai. My host family, whom I had never met before, was waiting for me at the train station with my name on a sign. After a stilted greeting, they suggested we get something to eat and we drove to a nearby restaurant. Before food was even mentioned, an ornately decorated red bottle was removed from a cabinet in the corner of the room, and unveiled by the waitress with much pomp and circumstance. My host father took the inaugural sip of the beverage, lingering on it for a few seconds. He told the waitress it would do, and all of us around the table were brought a small glass from which to drink. A toast was made, and with a rousing “Ganbei!,” meaning cheers, we all drank the clear liquid. I first noticed the slightly rotten smell, followed by an intense burning sensation, and I quickly repressed the urge to cough. The small sip left an unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth, and yet when I looked at my host family around me they seemed to have genuinely enjoyed it. As the night continued, more rounds were poured, and my host father’s face turned cherry red. We lingered at the table for hours, sharing stories, laughing, and getting to know one another. This was my first introduction to the liquor known as baijiu. Although relatively unknown in the Western hemisphere, baijiu, literally translated as “white alcohol,” is the most consumed hard alcohol in the entire world. The label baijiu applies to a variety of slightly different liquors; all distilled from sorghum or glutinous rice and produced using the same traditional Chinese methods. Its taste is very distinct from other liquors, often described as having a certain funk, or saucy fragrance. An entire culture surrounds the consumption of the liquor in China, and it has become an integral part of business meetings, family reunions, and dinner parties alike. In recent years, there have been many efforts to give the quintessentially Chinese drink a worldwide presence by bringing the rice liquor to consumers beyond China’s borders. In the United States, baijiu is already available in a large number of Chinese restaurants and grocery stores. These sellers cater to Chinese populations in large cities, but the
beverage has not achieved popularity amongst the average Western consumer. There are several explanations as to why the alcohol has not proved an instant success in the United States. Ian Spear, a Yale student who has spent two summers studying abroad in China, commented, “I just cannot imagine that it would really catch on in the US.” He thinks, and many others who have spent time in China agree, that its high alcohol content, often upwards of 60 percent, is off-putting. Yifu Dong, a Yale international student from Beijing, also seemed skeptical of the market potential for baijiu in the United States. He noted that in China “beer is more popular than baijiu amongst younger students,” and therefore the likelihood of younger generations bringing it to popularity in America is quite low. Baijiu is simply not ingrained in the culture of the United States as it is in China, and that cultural importance is difficult to export. Despite these many obstacles, Oscar Salicetti, a manager at Lumos Bar in New York City, hopes that his team can carve out a space for baijiu in the already crowded New York bar scene. Lumos is the first bar in New York City that specifically caters baijiu towards the modern Western consumer. Salicetti commented that up until two years ago, it was almost impossible to find baijiu outside of Chinatown in the United States. However, he believes in the potential of the drink, as, “baijiu has over seventy different categories and fragrances, and it can mix well with many different flavors.” According to the Lumos
website, the cocktails are priced between $10 and $20, and the bar has enjoyed success with its interesting combinations since its opening last year. Salicetti believes that “in the next five years, you are going to see baijiu brands made for Western consumers all over New York.” For him, and for many others who hope to capitalize on this potential market, the Western baijiu story is just beginning. It is difficult to say what will happen with baijiu in the coming years. Perhaps the success of Lumos Bar can be replicated around the United States, and baijiu will become a household word. On the other hand, the fragrant alcohol may fall back into obscurity, largely unappreciated by the Western market. No matter the outcome, baijiu maintains a rich history and legacy in Chinese culture. After the first meal with my host family in China, I was exposed to baijiu on many more occasions. I learned quickly the rules surrounding the drink: let your superiors toast first, hold your liquor, cheers means drink to the bottom of the cup, and never refuse to toast. This etiquette is not written down, but has been passed down through generations in China. If baijiu successfully travels to the United States, it will constitute only a small chapter in the beverage’s history. Baijiu may be the next tequila, or you may never hear the name again. Either way, millions will be enjoying the drink in China tonight. ALEX HERKERT is a junior at Yale University. Contact him at alexander.herkert@yale.edu. chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 39
LIFE & CULTURE
Illustration by Catherine Yang
REFORM AND OPENING UP OF SEXUAL CLIMATE ALBERT CAO reflects on how various phenomena in a socially complex China are shaping people’s notions of premarital relationships.
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erhaps most striking in my journey to the heart of Beijing this past summer was the contrast between the raucous nightlife districts, often spilling over with crowds of foreigners and young urbanites, and the more placid old areas, where locals can be observed carrying on with rituals reminiscent of a seemingly bygone era. While roaming the streets of Beijing, it was not uncommon for me to find myself sandwiched between a bustling block of European-styled plazas, and an unsuspecting, sleepy hutong, a remnant of Beijing’s pre-modern housing system. In one particular instance, while traversing nanluoguxiang, one of Beijing’s most commercialized hutong, I was intrigued to discover old-fashioned housing interwoven with upscale pizza parlors and novelty shop storefronts, separated only by crudely constructed entryways. The transitory dynamic exhibited here is the of the kind that has brought China’s societal changes to the attention of the international community. What had been my picture of stalwart conservatism and strict tradition had evolved to encompass much more by the end of the summer.
study conducted by the evolutionary psychology department at the University of Texas, however, found that in the 25 years between surveys collected in 1983 and 2008, attitudes of young urbanites toward premarital chastity had dramatically loosened. Lu Guo’en, a graduate student and Master of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages major at the Minzu University of China, attributes this division to fundamental differences in lifestyles between generations and growing societal pressures. It has to do with the added element of higher education and career development, according to Lu. For example, instead of marrying at twenty—once widely accepted as a general benchmark age—twenty-five and even thirty have become more realistic marks in the eyes of many people. The more transient and unstable lifestyle that has become commonplace among China’s college and young professional population has derailed a traditional system in which marriage, instead of a career, was paramount.
Possibly most indicative of this evolution has been the public’s shifting views on premarital relations, something once considered explicitly taboo in China. The country has historically been conservative on the matter of premarital sex, but, as of current times, finds itself more towards the middle of the pack, relative to the rest of the world. According to a Pew Research Center study conducted in 2014, China ranked 28th of 40 countries worldwide in terms of aversion to premarital sexual affairs. 58 percent of poll participants expressed disapproval towards premarital sex, while 29 percent indicated either approval or indifference.
A large part of growing sentiment towards a more liberal stance on premarital relationships can be attributed to an onslaught of new social phenomena. Rapid commercialization has introduced the public to new social customs, allowing people to familiarize with and often adopt such behaviors. Most noticeable has been the emergence of a wildly popular TV game show If You Are The One. Formatted as a dating game show in which a male contestant attempts to win over the hearts of one of the female onlookers, If You Are The One has survived Chinese media censorship to become one of the most highly-rated programs on air, and has sparked tremendous interest as the first of its kind to come into existence within China.
Unsurprisingly, age also played a large role in determining sentiment towards premarital sex, with respondents over the age of 50 overwhelmingly responding negatively. Another
The show centers around the male contestant’s efforts to convey his aspirations for the future and attributes through Q&A and videotaped segments. His aim is to persuade one
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of the women to accept a first-date, which is in itself conducive to loosening attitudes toward engaging the opposite sex. By giving both sides an open forum to engage in thoughtful and revealing dialogue, the show promotes preference and free choice over preordainment when it comes to selecting a partner. In the same vein, online dating websites have also proliferated. Affectionately dubbed “jiaopeng lianwang,” literally “friend-making websites,” they have become the go-to social media hotspots, especially in urban areas, for those looking to break into China’s flourishing dating scene. Some examples include Jiayuan.com, the largest internet dating website in the People’s Republic of China, with over forty million registered users, as well as recently established Baihe.com, which garnered nearly a quarter of a billion dollars this past year ahead of its IPO launch. Loosening of censorship restrictions in recent years has led to the exponential growth of the number of users on these online platforms. Now seen by many as a legitimate and even necessary adaptation of China’s long-running custom of matchmaking, these websites offer invaluable services to those who were previously unable to find a partner, namely individuals deeply invested in academia and the so-called “leftover women.” Websites like Jiayuan and Baihe cater to those with very specific preferences. Their filters include educational background, monthly salary, age, and ownership of property. Through these online dating websites, the gap between tradition and innovation is crossed, as many individuals attempt to find a compromise between traditional conventions and modern social constructs. Among the most sensitive to this transformation are China’s universities, though, which host a generally liberal and open-minded culture. Far from the reaches of parental supervision, students on college campuses find themselves in a more empowered position and can participate in activities previously unavailable. Use of smartphone apps on in urban hotspots for dating and matching purposes has gained significant traction over the last several years, often facilitating students’ plunges into the college dating scene.
userbase of 180 million as of last year, founded explosive success chiefly as a hookup app. Even unusual cases such as China’s Tianjin University offering of a how-to-date crash course in Spring 2016 have sprung up. Completion of the course, unsurprisingly, is contingent on the success of a blind date at the end of the term.
THE MORE TRANSIENT AND UNSTABLE LIFESTYLE THAT HAS BECOME COMMONPLACE AMONG CHINA’S COLLEGE AND YOUNG PROFESSIONAL POPULATION HAS DERAILED A TRADITIONAL SYSTEM IN WHICH MARRIAGE, INSTEAD OF A CAREER, WAS PARAMOUNT. However, many of the most jarring expressions of this cultural change come through underground operations. Phenomena such as “pink light saloons” are well-known to locals as thinly disguised brothels targeted at college students. Often makeshift in nature, these clubs exploit the wealth and social insecurity of many college students. An incident last year involving a brothel ring at the heart of Wuhan’s Wuchang University of Technology raised attention to the growing prevalence of prostitution at China’s most esteemed institutions. Such scenes reflect the darker side that accompanies the ongoing process of young, college students in their efforts to compromise newly afforded sexual freedom with lingering vestiges of sexual conservatism. With all of the unfettered enthusiasm for the more sexually open environments of Chinese universities, there is also the sobering reminder of the uniqueness of such conditions. Lei Mengjie, a graduate from Beijing’s Language and Culture University, cautions that “while this behavior among college students is representative of contemporary society’s trends towards openness, it cannot be discounted that students are afforded a generous amount of freedom.” China’s university campuses are among the most transparent in reflecting societal change, but they are not wholly representative of the country’s changing cultural tides, especially in light of ideological conflicts across age and geographical lines.
Ultimately, a nascent culture of premarital sex acceptance has seeped its way into Chinese life. Changing public sentiment has shown an IN 2014, CHINA RANKED 28TH OF 40 COUNTRIES undeniable inclination towards removing WORLDWIDE IN TERMS OF AVERSION TO taboos previously placed on premarital PREMARITAL SEXUAL AFFAIRS. 58 PERCENT OF POLL relationships. While such outward PARTICIPANTS EXPRESSED DISAPPROVAL TOWARDS change is readily perceived, it cannot be discounted that many traditional views, PREMARITAL SEX, WHILE 29 PERCENT INDICATED including those regarding premarital EITHER APPROVAL OR INDIFFERENCE. affairs, are still deeply rooted. It remains to be seen how other factors enabling this change play out— The online Chinese marketplace for dating apps has been less regimented governmental control and the economic flooded by apps like Tan Tan, termed by many as being a boom—but what is evident is that China’s society has “Chinese Tinder” for its template similar to its US counterentered a new age of unprecedented social flexibility. part, and Xin Dong, or “Crush,” which directly focuses its attention on college students by only permitting individuals ALBERT CAO is a sophomore at Yale University. Contact having institutional credentials to register for the app. Mo him at albert.cao@yale.edu. Mo, crowned as China’s most popular “dating” app with a
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 41
LIFE & CULTURE
HOSTING THE WORLD JOSHUA EL-BEY investigates how China’s 2008 Olympic Games continue to impact the International Olympic Committee.
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he “Bird’s Nest,” China’s national sports stadium, represents a paradox of sorts. While its beautifully interwoven threads of metal and concrete boasts of China’s unequivocal power, it is also the result of China’s past, riddled with instances highlighting its shortcomings as a world leader. That past includes China’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2000 Olympic games. China did not receive widespread support from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in part because it made no mention of assuaging human rights violations or ensuring freedom of the press. It is believed that the protests against China in 2000 from the likes of Amnesty International, Reporters without Borders and Human Rights Watch, swayed the opinion of the IOC to escape damage to its own reputation.
Illustration by Catherine Yang
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Leading up to the 2008 Olympic games, however, the tone of China’s bid presentation changed. There was more rhetoric than ever before on championing human rights, transparency, and freedom of the press. Some people suspect that China was pandering to international norms to promote ulterior motives—that is, to grow their economy and showcase the grandeur of China’s progress. Wang Wei, the Secretary General for China’s Olympic bid, argued that the 2008 Olympics was an opportunity
LIFE & CULTURE
to show how far China had come since 2000. Believing China would not renege on its promises as that would risk international embarrassment and domestic unrest, the IOC voted in support of China hosting the 2008 Olympics. The “Bird’s Nest” was constructed and, in it, China displayed exceptional execution of the Olympic games. Dennis Wang, current graduate student in the Yale School of Public Health, stated that “it was a milestone moment for China definitely.” One of the moments he deeply remembers was “watching the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics… and [he recalls] that being a very proud moment.” However, the 2008 Olympics wasn’t without its controversies. Over 300,000 Chinese people were relocated on short notice. Activists were rejected permits to protest and over 50 were arrested, or banned outright from the games. Twenty thousand journalists were not permitted to access certain websites, and there were strict rules regarding reporting in Tiananmen Square. These actions were a huge break from Chinaa’s rhetoric promising freedom and transparency during the games. In the aftermath, the IOC has had to grapple with the question of accountability as well as methods of preserving the respect of the games. Until recently, the IOC has had no accountability framework of its own, particularly because the hosting cities themselves historically have had democracies that held governments accountable to certain standards. Regimes like communist China have proved the exception. In addition, there have been different philosophies that have questioned the politicization of sport. Jacques Rogge, former president of the IOC, has often been cited as an advocate against politics in the world of sport. “We are not a political body, we are a sports organization,” Rogge said. However, the Olympic games symbolically reflects shared ideals and commitments among all participating countries. When countries like China are allowed to violate these shared values of freedom and human rights it is seen as a stain on the Olympic brand. Susan Brownell, a leading researcher who has interviewed IOC and Chinese officials on the matter, offered insight into the abundant interest surrounding the Olympic games and the discourse on accountability. Some human rights groups use their activity in China to increase membership
dues and as evidence that their efforts are worth more funding. In addition, the media has “often engaged in hostile reporting separate from reality” to increase interest from readers. As a result, some governments don’t want to interact with the media and evade NGOs, which is then interpreted by the predominantly Western world as a lack of government transparency. So, the degree of accountability can be difficult to gauge because the perception of China has been heavily influenced by the activists’ and the media’s own interests. For the 2022 winter games, there may be the same level of scrutiny, if not more so, than there was during the 2008 games. China’s decision to host the winter games in the desert of Zhangjiakou is likely to provide an opportunity for further protests over water equity. Will China repeat its controversial relocation practices of 2008? If so, how will it be held accountable? More importantly, how will the story be told and perceived by the broader international community? Brownell predicts that the Western media will be ready to cover China and NGOs. How positively or negatively we perceive China will very much be shaped by these forces of Chinese civil society, something that’s already affecting international institutions like the IOC. For the first time, the IOC in its 2020 agenda formally offers language to build a sector committed to ensuring compliance with IOC principles. Activist groups have taken credit for their success in influencing IOC efforts. Brownell, however, noted that while the 2020 agenda is well intentioned, there are few means to enforce IOC principles. In fact, the IOC will only serve in an advisory capacity working closely with local communities, Olympic stakeholders and local government officials. By 2022, the world will see how IOC efforts and the benefit of hindsight will affect the execution of the games in China. As for today, the events surrounding China and the Olympics highlight the power of civil society to vastly construct and shape public perception, and public perception has the power to impact international discourse as it relates to China, the Olympics, and the types of reforms bodies like the IOC could and should enact. JOSHUA EL-BEY is a senior at Yale University. Contact him at joshua.el-bey@yale.edu.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 43
OPINION
OPERATION BORDERLESS ANDI WANG interviews Neil Shen of Sequoia Capital about helping technology companies thrive overseas.
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ne of the most recent titles given to Neil Shen, the 47-year-old billionaire venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, is the highest ranked Asia-focused venture capitalist (#8 overall) by Forbes. Former co-founder of Ctrip and HomeInn, two NASDAQ-listed companies, Shen now dedicates his energy and resources to helping the next generation of technology-driven startups succeed across national borders. Shen, known for his cool rationality and calmness, says he has three points to make, and he stops speaking at exactly the end of the third point. Although succinct, his tone was passionate when talking about the topics that occupy his attention. Shen begins the interview with the assertion that “without a doubt, China will see more companies that compete in the global market.” He is referring to Chinese companies like DJI, a world leading producer of camera drones and a Sequoia Capital portfolio company. According to Reuters, DJI takes roughly 70 percent of the world’s market for drones. Even more uncommon for a Chinese technology company, nearly 80 percent of its $500-million annual sale is in foreign markets, primarily US and Europe, according to DJI’s Public Relations Director Jianhuo Shao. With the foreign expansion of companies like DJI and BGI—a leading biotechnology company in genomics—Neil Shen said that Sequoia Capital’s global network is crucial. “Sometimes all it takes is a phone call with a potential local partner, and the company would figure out the rest with the partner. But with Sequoia’s endorsement, the transaction ‘cost’ is much lower,” Shen said.
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Shen not only succeeded in bringing Chinese firms abroad, but also helps American technology firms adapt to China’s market. In early 2014, Linkedin, the social network service for professionals, announced its entrance into China through a joint venture with Sequoia China and China Broadband Capital. This year, Airbnb, the home-sharing service, entered China in a similar joint effort with the two companies. Shen says that Sequoia helps foreign companies with three things: building a local team, adjusting to the local business and cultural environment, and complying with local regulation and law. Having an entrepreneurial and highly localized team is especially crucial to a foreign company’s success, says Shen. The team must be able to make operational decisions independently, rather than just carrying out orders from their American headquarters. On the flip side, having the brand and network of a parent company is a great aid to the local branch. Shen says LinkedIn China under CEO Derek Shen is a great example of a highly innovative local team. As former founding CEO of a major group buying site in China, Derek Shen combines both entrepreneurial spirit and experience in working at big firms. As a further testament to the team’s entrepreneurial spirit, Shen is excited to see Linkedin China launch its first localized product “Chitu,” a chat app designed for young professionals in China. In helping Chinese companies abroad and American companies at home, Neil Shen seems to care less about the origin of a company than its merits. He said that in a “flat world”—referring to Thomas L. Friedman’s
bestselling idea that geographical divisions are disappearing and competition is becoming increasingly global—companies must make the best product to succeed. Competition could come from any corner on the world map. “If you are a game developer, your competitor could be a company in Southeast Asia, and you might have never heard of it. Your competitors are not necessarily in China,” said Shen, warning entrepreneurs of the danger of limiting one’s self in only the local market. Beyond supporting multinational enterprises, Shen has a vision for connecting American culture, science, and technology to China. As an alumnus of the Yale School of Management, he is the top donor to the Yale Center in Beijing, the Ivy League university’s first physical facility outside the United States. Opening a year ago in Beijing’s Central Business District, the center hosted a number of high-profile speakers, including Richard Liu, founding CEO of JD.com, and Xiqing Gao, former GM of China Investment Corporation. Shen is optimistic about the future of the center in bridging ideas and insights from top leaders in both countries, “In terms of what the Center can do, the sky’s the limit,” said Shen. One cannot help from thinking that this is also true for Shen’s portfolio companies. Like DJI’s new Phantom 3 model, the next generation of technology startups will fly across national and geographical borders. ANDI WANG is a junior at Yale University. Contact him at andi.wang@yale.edu.
Photo from Wall Street Journal
OPINION
THE ILLUSORY SUCCESS OF CHINESE SCHOOLING ZARA ZHANG reflects on a BBC series that documents a unique education experiment in the UK.
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rowing up, I have always found myself in a perpetual journey to the West: I was born and received my elementary education in China, attended high school in Singapore, and am currently studying at a college in the US. Every move to a new country was accompanied by the adjustment to a new, more westernized education system. With such experience in mind, I found BBC’s recent documentary series Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School particularly illustrative of the clash of civilizations that characterize today’s world and my everyday life. Motivated by statistics showing Chinese students consistently outperforming their British peers in international standardized tests, a secondary school in Hampshire, in the UK, brought in five Chinese teachers who immersed 50 ninth graders in a traditional Chinese-style education for five weeks. In a nutshell, the experiment pitted the “Chinese way” against the “British way.” The series ends with a victory for the Chinese teachers, whose students scored higher on every subject in a cumulative final exam. These results led the school’s principal to promise to introduce elements of Chinese education into future instruction. To Chinese audiences, the series may feel like a long-overdue validation of their country’s education system, long criticized for its rigidity, ruthlessness and overemphasis on exam scores. Many Chinese viewers, therefore, may see the series as proof that the Chinese way can ultimately triumph over the Western way. This conclusion, however, is a vast oversimplification of the reality. That scores in a single exam across four subjects were the sole criteria by which the British and Chinese sides were judged was perhaps the most problematic aspect of the series. Viewed on the this level, the only lesson one can take away from the series is that the Chinese method produced better test-takers. Granted, a fair and thorough evaluation of students’ abilities is never an easy task: a balance of needs to be struck between convenience and comprehensiveness. Large countries like China disproportionately value standardized testing because the sheer number of students they have to
evaluate makes a multi-faceted comparison method unfeasible. For instance, importing America’s holistic Common Application system to China could create a logistical nightmare. However, standardized testing has many obvious faults as well. Commentators have observed that China has produced thousands of test-taking machines whose creativity and critical thinking skills have been largely suppressed. Many of my Chinese friends who are attending American colleges say they came to the U.S. fleeing the gaokao—the fateful exam on which a half-mark off can mean the difference between acceptance or rejection by one’s dream school. Today, a third of international students in the United States come from China. If the Chinese system is truly superior, why is it driving so many students away? The answer probably lies in several hallmarks of a Chinese education, all well illustrated in the series: rote learning, rigid assessment, and ruthless competition. Throughout the series, I saw images that rekindled memories of my middle school days in China: the grueling 12-hour school days, the large 50-person classes, and the imposition of strict discipline. I remembered how my middle school displayed the rankings of the 900 students in my year in every exam on a giant notice board for all to see. I remembered my elementary school teacher who made us sit holding our hands behind our backs in order to prevent us from fidgeting in class. Ultimately, the documentary alerted me to how strange the Chinese education system can appear to Western eyes. In an era where countries around the world are embracing educational methods that foster independence, creativity, and critical thinking, the approach employed by mainstream Chinese schools is starting to appear anachronistic. Authoritarian approaches to classroom management may make students less eager to speak up or or offer opinions. Naked competition and public shaming may scar the selfesteem of a student who is struggling. An environment where conformity is encouraged and being different is discouraged may produce citizens who blindly follow authority and never stop to ask questions. These effects are also well captured in the series: despite higher exam scores, some British students in the “Chinese school” reported feeling
deprived of their social lives, their individual opinions and their confidence. When I attended high school in Singapore, my British economics teacher wrote me a largely positive student evaluation, but included the line that “Zhang Rui is a little quiet in class, perhaps due to cultural reasons.” As the only international Chinese student in the class, I remember feeling very grateful for his acknowledgement of the “cultural reasons” that made me different from my Singaporean classmates. One thing I hope the Western audience can take away from this series is such appreciation. The idiosyncrasies of the Chinese students are no coincidence, they are the products of a certain type of education. I, like many of my Chinese peers studying abroad, have a love-hate relationship with the Chinese way of teaching. Even though I am a fugitive of the system, I have to admit that it is not without its merits. When I arrived in Singapore in ninth grade, my level of math and science was significantly more advanced than my Singaporean peers, thanks to the rigorous drilling I had already received. Both in Singapore and in the US, I found, and continue to find, myself more receptive of alternative opinions, more capable of imposing self-discipline, and more likely to trust in hard work rather than natural talent. But in more sober moments, I consider the realworld consequences of the two education systems, the true test of which side is “winning.” Chinese children may be better at math and science, but Apple and Facebook were not born in China. Chinese students may be able to fluently regurgitate a list of current affairs, but few can tell you their own opinions on these issues. Top Chinese colleges are as selective as the best institutions in the world, but they are seldom home to groundbreaking research that changes the world. Instead of a panacea that would cure the Western world of underachievement, the “Chinese school” may only prove to be an ineffective yet tempting tonic. ZARA ZHANG is a junior at Harvard University who was born and raised in Changchun, China. Contact her at zhang08@college.harvard.edu.
chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS MAGAZINE 45 Photo from The Guardian
OPINION
BIG FISH VS. MONKEY KING zishi li asks the question,
“Who will revitalize the Chinese animated film industry?”
I first noticed a post about Big Fish and Chinese Flowering Crabapple on the Internet back in high school. It is an upcoming Chinese animated fantasy film directed and produced by B&T, an animation company established by two young alumni from Tsinghua University. Released in 2008, its demo immediately received most of the Chinese national animation prizes and even participated in Mipcom Drama Festival in Cannes. The post claimed that the B&T animation company encountered a financial problem during the manufacturing process. In light of the great success of its demo, the producers called for an online crowdfunding. The Chinese animation industry has been fighting against the conventional notion that animations are exclusively for children. Although such notion was rejected among audiences of DreamWorks’s Kung Fu Panda and Ghibli’s fantasy animated films, the Chinese animated film industry has been in continual decline since the 1980s. In hopes of enhancing the industry, the government provided subsidies to the animation producers, but it was allocated inclusively to all animation teams. Therefore, many recently established studios that hope to produce high-quality films are in want of further financial and technical support. Due to the overwhelming quantity of mass-produced childish animations in the Chinese animation industry, I had almost lost hope for these so-called animation professionals. The demo of Big Fish is highly laudable considering it is the work of two amateur filmmakers. Various Chinese cultural elements are cleverly embedded in its intriguing plot. Moreover, the two producers’ story easily evokes people’s sympathy. Having no background in animation, Liang Xuan withdrew from Tsinghua University and cooperated with his friend Zhang Chun to establish B&T in 2005. They were motivated solely by their love for animation and a wish to boost the industry. After a long-term fundraising and three years of struggle, they finally began their project on Big Fish. B&T expected Big Fish to be phenomenal and “profoundly touch people’s hearts and bring them the power of love and hope.” Though I was once moved by B&T’s grand prospects, I doubt the credibility of their claim today and view them only as hollow. The screening of Big Fish was postponed from 2012 to 2015, then to February 2016. Many who participated in crowdfunding asked for an explanation and complained about the
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producers’ frequent backtracking. Sharing the same screening schedule with two other topical films in summer 2015, Monkey King: Hero Is Back did not attract much attention at first. However, it amazed its initially small audience so much that its popularity exploded within several days. Its director Tian Xiaopeng is a professional with a fruitful career in animating. Feeling urged to break the slump in the Chinese animated film industry, he launched this film project to expand the story of the Monkey King, one of the main characters in the traditional Chinese novel Journey to the West. Although some imperfections do exist in the flow of the story and 3D movement transitions, its rich plot and excellent visual effects reflect the production team’s painstaking efforts. As Monkey King became the highest-grossing Chinese animated film, many on social media platforms started to share links of interviews with its production team, whose story is as evocative of sympathy as its counterpart in B&T. Given the high risk of investing in animated films in China, Tian had great difficulty collecting sufficient money to continue with his project. Different from B&T, Tian never called for crowdfunding and kept Monkey King unknown to public. The creation process was an eight-year battle against everlasting dissensions with his teammates and an underdeveloped 3D technology in China. Despite the positive public appraisal, Tian humbly admitted that Monkey King was overrated: “It is the slump of the industry that makes our work receive more compliments than it actually deserves.” Director Tian’s success and modesty reinforced people’s diminishing trust in Chinese animation professionals—especially among the younger generation. Animation is an industry that functions upon its own rules and involves collective efforts of a large team. Professionals like Tian are most likely to energize
the Chinese animated film industry. Familiar with how the industry functions, they have essential skills to balance creativity and productivity. If amateurs expect to turn their original ideas into new animated films, they have to strictly follow the professional procedures. It means to have a solid manufacturing team, the ability of giving out very specific instructions to each section of it, a fixed schedule, a finalized script, and a thorough marketing plan. If a producer fails to meet any of these requirements, an idea that may generate a good animated film will shrivel to an armchair strategy. The two founders of B&T bravely advertised Big Fish as the booster of industry, but their lack of professional experience hampered their product and proved that the industry opens doors exclusively to people who truly understand it. The script of Big Fish is yet to be finalized. When making suggestions, they used ambiguous phrases such as “This is not what we want,” instead of concrete feedback. When negotiating with Japanese professionals on a collaboration project, B&T failed to convince the Japanese team of Big Fish’s potential. As B&T keeps struggling with logistical issues, they have already disappointed people who once had high hopes on them. In view of Tian’s achievements in Monkey King: Hero Is Back, the only solution to boost the Chinese animated film industry is to deliver sufficient resources to the right professionals. At this moment, the role of amateurs in this industry remains trivial, until the audiences evaluate the quality of Big Fish and Chinese Flowering Crabapple after its release— hopefully next year. ZISHI LI is a sophomore at Yale University. Contact her at zishi.li@yale.edu.
OPINION
THE FUTURE OF THE CHINESE SCRIPT RACHEL LENG reviews Beyond Sinology: Chinese Writing and the Scripts of Culture by Andrea Bachner. Andrea Bachner’s new book, Beyond Sinology: Chinese Writing and the Scripts of Culture, examines the shifting significance of the Chinese language in Sinophone literature and culture by focusing on script politics. The book’s main objective is to analyze what “binds language, scripts, and medial expressions to cultural and national identity” and illuminate how the “confluence of digital media and reshaping of global power structures impacts our understanding of the Chinese script.” Challenging the commonly held perception that the Chinese case is an example of “truncated language reform” failing to achieve a “script of modernity,” Bachner posits that the sinograph (characters used in Chinese writing) is the outcome of national language politics. Thus, the book proposes working “beyond sinology” to read the Chinese script and culture with a transcultural and transmedial approach. Beyond Sinology is divided into five keyword chapters – Corpographies, Iconographies, Sonographies, Allographies, and Technographies – that discuss various multimedial forms, theoretical angles, and cultural contexts. The first two chapters investigate how the sinograph maintains material affinity with human bodies and imagistic mimesis as media and language. Bachner debunks the myth equating sinographs to images, pointing out that only a small fraction of the Chinese lexicon actually compose pictographs. Bachner notes that the sinograph is suspended in between translation and transculturation as both image and text, signifying a specific Chinese cultural tradition but also gesturing at broader graphic expression. These first two chapters might have benefitted from moving beyond the China/West divide to consider alternative frameworks of language and national identity. In particular, comparison with Japanophone, Hispanophone, or Lusophone discourses might have enabled Beyond Sinology to further transcend an Orientalist perspective of sinology. The third chapter on “Sonographies” serves as the book’s thematic bridge by examining the multimedial interactions between sinophone speech and writing, but assumes only one common Sinitic script. Bachner proposes the notion of “muteness envy” to describe the process whereby the sinograph
“leads to a multiplicity of disconnections and reconnections of writing and speech.” This chapter delves into close readings of Sinophone glossolalic poetry to identify the sinograph as a script where both sound and writing actively destabilize each other. The symbolic divide between image and speech evident in the case of sinographic homonyms is important, but this chapter assumes a standardized Sinitic lexicon across polyphonous contexts. The relationship between the sinograph as a Sinitic-script and other scripts used in China is important and should also be considered. The last two chapters reflect upon the Chinese script’s adaption to foreign cultural systems and digital media with new modes of writing emphasizing phonetics. “Allographies” investigates Malaysian-Chinese and Taiwanese diasporic sites as examples of writings from the peripheries of the Chinese literary tradition. Bachner posits that such texts render the Sinitic script an other to itself, obscuring the connection between the sinograph and a monolithic imaginary of “Chineseness.” Although I applaud Bachner’s inclusion of Sinophone contributions, the writers discussed are still connected to essential cultural Chineseness within her framework of Chinese diaspora studies. Moreover, the chapter only studies writers from Taiwan, or Malaysian-Chinese writers who now reside in Taiwan, overlooking the numerous other productive Sinophone communities around the world. Representing these other communities would have most likely allowed Bachner to articulate a Sinophone that can produce different script politics beyond Sinocentric discourses and Western theories of signification. “Technographies” addresses the sinograph’s artistic and pragmatic expression via forms of experimental poetry and Internet language. Bachner claims that the Chinese script adapts to digital principles and various visual interfaces, but at the same time retains “a nostalgic and material power in excess of, or even resistant to, the digital media revolution.” Bachner
considers Xu Bing’s 1987 A Book from the Sky and Taiwanese experimental writers Cao Zhilian and Hsia Yu’s various approaches to sinographic designs and Chinese pseudographics as examples of writing that challenge the cultural value of the Chinese script. Beyond Sinology ends optimistically, asserting the malleability of the Chinese script in the wake of the digital revolution. Although an interesting proposition, whether the sinograph constitutes an “unusually stable linguistic and script system precisely because it translates well” is questionable. The problem here is that Bachner appears to define translation in limited terms of Chinese characters being digitally transferred into pictographic and iconic forms. Engaging with what scholars have written about the untranslatability of languages in general and of the Chinese script in particular may support Bachner in clarifying her position. Beyond Sinology achieves a lot by offering a wide range of intermedial, comparative, and cross-cultural analyses in light of the Chinese script, but this expansive undertaking is riddled with vague, sometimes contradictory, remarks about the definition of sinology itself. In concluding, Bachner suggests that scholars should move “beyond sinology” by deploying “a new method of reading, a new sinology” that simultaneously “redefine[s] sinology and its traditional understandings of what counts as ‘Chinese.’” Yet, how is it possible to transcend sinology by adopting a newly invented model of it while simultaneously redefining it? These faults, however, lie gently on Bachner’s Beyond Sinology, whose bilingual and multimedial foray is highly recommended for anyone interested in Sinophone studies, sociolinguistics, comparative literature, and Chinese identity politics. RACHEL LENG is a Research Associate and Principal English Editor at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. Contact her at rleng@post.harvard.edu.
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