Sixuan Qian
PIN-10166
Bliss or Misery? -----Contemplating the Engagement of Cultural Forms and Economic Progress
Human Development for Contemporary China
Introduction On March, 3rd, Standard & Pool reported a news considering China was one of the most promising economics entities under financial tsunami, while one week after, on March, 11st, New York Times put China in front of the spotlight again with a piece of news concerning a prevalent dissatisfaction among Chinese online population towards China’s cyberspace censorship. China has been a strong rising power, even when facing a global financial downturn. But is it truly promising and sustainable? In the paper, I intend to explain through both cultural and historical perspectives that an economic development within a society is problematic if it is lack consideration of its cultural context. Grass-Mud Horse: A Cultural Phenomenon in Contemporary China Tucker (1997) considers the focus of culture as differences, ethnicity, community, identity and conflicts around these. Hecht talks about enactment layer in his communication theory of identity. In his point of view, culture identities are enacted in social behaviors and symbols. He says, “Communication is the locus of identity in the enactment of layer (Hecht et al., 2005, p263).� In other words, how people within a
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certain culture express and behave in the process of communication is a phenomenon belongs to that culture. Chinese cyberspace has become one unique and important community shaped by contextualized situation in contemporary China, with the great firewall as the most powerful on-line censorship in the world. China’s online population had always endured censorship. Some though, would break the firewall through proxy sever. The conflict had been rather invisible. Grass-mud horse, since its first appearance on cyberspace in January this year has somehow, made the conflict quite visible. The cartoon, grass-mud horse was made to tease the government’s on-line censorship, using similar sounds to create a contextualized dirty pun in Chinese. An online story was then created on how the grass-mud horse beating down the river crab, which was a pun of the government’s main slogan: harmonious society (Wines, 2009). According to Wines (2009), the grass-mud horse phenomenon was against the campaign the government censors began which had shut down more than 1,900 Web sites and 250 blogs — not only pornographic sites as it claim, but also online discussion forums, instant-message groups and even cell phone text messages. Among the most prominent Web sites that were closed down was bullog.com, a widely read forum whose liberal-minded bloggers. Xiao Qiang, when interviewed by the New York Times, says, “The fact that the vast online population has joined the chorus, from serious scholars to usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how strongly this expression resonates.”(Wines, 2009).
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Guo (2009) called the grass-mud horse allusions “weapons of the weak” and “hidden transcript”, two concepts constructed by the Yale political scientist James Scott. He explains that the hidden transcript is opposite to the open one, which is forbidden by the powerful, and thus can serve as the weapon of the powerless weak. Human development with both economic and cultural lens Material well-being is indeed significant for any society. However, one society’s development is not simply about economic growth. Tucker maintains that “without consideration of culture, which essentially has to do with people's control over their destinies, their ability to name the world in a way which reflects their particular experience, development is simply a global process of social engineering” (Tucker, 1997: p 4). He indicates that the true meaning of development should be the one of human’s where people’s beliefs, ideas, meanings and feelings are taken into consideration and respected. He further points out that a society is not only constituted by material things and by the actions it performs but above all by its idea of itself. He suggests that cultural perspectives are crucial through which we must consider how people view the world and their place in it and what is meaningful to them (Tucker, 1997). Grass-mud horse phenomenon in current China has reminded me of the June Fourth Incident, which is not a cultural phenomenon but is initiated by cultural context then. When opening-up brought economic prosperities to China, it also created increasing gap between rich and poor, which Chinese intellectuals then claimed as visible inequality between the powerful and the powerless. They argued that a further
Bliss or Misery? Contemplating the Engagement of Cultural Forms and Economic Progress
Sixuan Qian
economic and democratic reform was needed. A protest in Tiananmen Square thus started leading by university students in Beijing. At first, what the students want was only a dialogue with the country’s leaders. They wished their suggestions could be directly listened by top officials of the country. At that time, the government failed to action since there were completely different views towards the protest within it. The protesting students became aggressive after total ignorance, while the government’s attitude had turn from ignorance to repression. Tragedy thus happened (Miles, 1997). I mention the incident because I consider my analysis can be more logical through a historical perspective. We can and must learn from the tragedy of history. Firstly, an economic development without relative consideration for the cultural context can lead to economic downturn. According to Kelley & Shenkar (1993), there was a serious effect on the Chinese economy after the June Fourth Incident. Foreign loans to China were suspended by World Bank and governments; tourism revenue decreased from US$2.2 billion to US $1.8 billion; foreign direct investment commitments were cancelled and there was a rise in defense spending from 8.6% in 1986, to 15.5% in 1990, reversing a previous 10 year decline. As for the grass-mud horse phenomenon, which also attracts a lot of attention of the foreign media, including prominent ones as the New York Times and the Guardian, there would certainly not be any direct foreign divestment causing only by it. However, a rather collective dissatisfied sentiment towards the government with the unemployment rate keep increasing in society under financial tsunami is simply not a
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good sign for China. No matter how promising its economics may appear to be currently. On the other hand, the phenomenon has brought China’s democratic problem up once more, which I think would make China an even less attractive investment country, especially under a global economic downturn. Secondly, economic reform could bring one society prosperity. However, the prosperity can never be sustainable if the society only pursuit for pure economical growth without caring and respecting its people’s thoughts. June Fourth Incident had been a dark and sad memory for lots of intellectuals. Most of them were talent students from top universities in China. Even in contemporary China, a university student cost huge education investment of the country, never mention a top university student in the late 80s. China simply lost them. From public protest to the hidden context of mocking, Chinese people have learnt the art of being ingenious, being clearly aware of the unbearable price for speaking out. A possible brain drain could occur if China keeps going to ignore, or worse, suppress free thoughts and dissatisfied feelings of its people, which could be the most damaging poison for the economic development and in turn, a human development. Economically, China is developing quite fast and well that the world can never ignore. Even under financial tsunami, it is one of the most promising economic entities. However, our achievements are largely own to the cheap and abundant labor resources. What we best at is manufactory, making others’ ideas into reality, the least important and valuable sector under global economical chain which can be transferred to any other region at any time. The economic development simply would not last, and due to
Bliss or Misery? Contemplating the Engagement of Cultural Forms and Economic Progress
Sixuan Qian
the birth control policy in China, we would not even have such labor resources as we have today. We lack our own ideas. We lack the ability to innovate.
Until today,
China does have one single Nobel Price owner who holds a Chinese nationality. It is rather sad. What we truly lack are not top talents who have ideas but mechanisms that would stimulate their practical work and achievements, a mechanism that is culturally tolerant, free and loose. Thirdly, it is high time that a whole China should seriously rethink about its contemporary culture as well as a practical human development. Being one member of Chinese society, what I am confusing is that what our Chinese culture is and who are we. When talking about Chinese culture, we would refer to ancient China, five thousands of history, oriental, mysterious, glorious and beautiful. That is something we were, something that lead to where we are today, but it is not us. While a contemporary China would usually be referred to one with great economic achievements: modern cities, dazzling skyscrapers, which are part of us, but definitely not all of us. A culture for current China is somehow missing. From June Fourth to grass-mud horse, the apparent form of public discourse has changed; fierce anger and disappointment has been replaced by seemingly casual mocking. Nevertheless, the underlying thinking pattern has not, which are against of the current without practical thinking, with everyone knowing the problem and no one offering a sound solution. We lack a civilization that encourages knowledge application, the will to innovate as well as the public sphere for people to express and communicate.
Conclusion
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There is an old Chinese saying that it takes more than one cold day for the river to freeze three feet deep. China’s development has long been insufficient when thinking through a cultural lens. Nevertheless, by the end of my paper, I would rather take
another thought. As Xu (2008) points out, a crisis in Chinese is written as “危机” ，in
which “危” represents the crisis while “机” represents opportunity. In other words, by realizing the crisis, we can meet the opportunity.
Bliss or Misery? Contemplating the Engagement of Cultural Forms and Economic Progress
Sixuan Qian
Reference
Guo, Y. H. (2009). The weapon of the weak in internet era. Retrieved March,20th, 2009, from http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002252#comment-1003890 Hecht, M. L., Warren, J. R., Jung, E., & Krieger, J.L. (2005). The communication theory of identity: Development, theoretical, perspective and future directions. In M.B. Gudykunst (Eds.), Theorizing about intercultural communication (pp.257-278). London: Sage. Kelley, N. L. & Shenkar, O. (1993). International business in China. US: Routledge. Miles, J. A. R. (1997). The legacy of Tiananmen: China in disarray.University of Michigan Press Tucker, V. (1997). Introduction: A cultural perspective on development. In Tucker, V. (Eds.), Cultural perspectives on development (pp. 1-21). US: Routledge. Wines, M. (2009, March, 11). A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors, New York Times, Retrieved March,20th, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?_r=1&em
Global Initiatives Symposium in Taiwan 2009