Wherein I consider Howard French’s opinion piece on the Nail House, entitled “A Couple’s Small Victory a Big Step for China”. This is a follow-up to the previous post on the Nail House case.
I don’t mean to pick on Howard French. OK, maybe I do. But I feel his piece fits many things I wish to discuss about American coverage on China into a neat little package. The nut of his opinion piece, which begins rather breathlessly and then tells us “giddiness should be resisted”, is this:
China is unlikely to be delivered unto a new era by a Gorbachev-like figure. Indeed, since the Soviet meltdown, the leadership has policed itself vigilantly to prevent such a turn and, under President Hu Jintao, has, if anything, grown more conservative.
It seems unlikely to be delivered by China’s intellectuals, either. The country’s scholarly class is for the most part too cowed and too cosseted, too thoroughly co-opted by the system and by the country’s new affluence to make many waves.
Great change won’t come from the country’s peasants, either, even if they have been the locus of mounting effervescence in recent years.
Change, when it comes and whatever form it takes, will be propelled by the fast-rising middle class, by savvy and articulate people who are mindful of their rights, rooted first in property but extending almost seamlessly to questions of speech, of movement and of association.
French believes that Wu Ping and her husband Yang Wu are the harbingers of such change, bold pioneers of a coming new era. I don’t deny that the Nail House tenants were savvy, or that Hu Jintao is not going to be Gorby, or that Chinese scholars nor peasants have not produced some revolutionary movement. There are three assumptions embedded in this article that I’m not so sure about.
- That this was a confrontation between “the people” and “the state”. As French puts it, on the surface this appears to be “two simple citizens against a mighty and murky alliance of an authoritarian state and big development money”. He then says in reality “in a society where people have been effectively atomized … they also figured out how to glue millions of discrete individuals together in sympathy for a cause not directed from above.” So then we are to understand this was a popular movement against the state, not two lone individuals. But was it really against the state? Certainly the Chongqing officials/developers were cast as the opposition here, but Wu Ping and Yang Wu invoked the nation and the law as their protection. The national government was not the target here, but the local. And the national government is not, as many Americans believe, monolithic. CCTV interviewed Wu Ping just before the March 22nd deadline. Even the local government was not simply set against the tenants – after all, negotiations dragged out for three years before the story exploded in the media. While the developer no doubt played dirty tricks, some elements of the Chongqing government must have functioned to some degree in protecting the tenants, otherwise the house would have been long since demolished. But instead of portraying this as a tangled web of interests both within and without the local community, government, media and national goverment, French tells us a simplified David and Goliath tale, to the readers loss.
- That there is a new era on the horizon. James Mann, in his book The China Fantasy, suggests that American perspectives on China have long been dominated by two competing visions of the future: The Soothing Scenario, a democratized China brought about by trade and globalization, and The Upheaval Scenario, in which China collapses due to any number of internal problems. Mann then posits a third scenario, in which China does neither, and more or less continues doing what it already does, namely be authoritarian, only richer. Mann is not the first to suggest this. French’s article seems to imply a bit of both of the first two scenarios, suggesting that trade and economic reform has created a middle class that will generate upheaval, forcing the government to adapt and perhaps even democratize or face a collapse. He ends his piece quoting Zhao Ziyang, who vanished from the leadership after supporting the students at Tiananmen, saying that the works of Mao would have to be relegated to a museum. But the underlying assumption is that there will be a “new era” at all.
- That the new era, or two or three, didn’t already arrive long ago. The middle class in China, for several years now, have been “mindful of their rights” as French puts it. Freedom of speech, movement and association has grown tremendously particularly for those with money. Rather than perceiving this as a trend that started long ago, and with at least some awareness by the government of what they were inviting, if they are at all as smart as French says they are, French sees it as being on the horizon. There’s no consideration that these events actually exist along a continuum of gradual changes ever since Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour. Or that there are more recent antecedents to the Nail House story: The Huananxincheng Story a year earlier had much of the same criteria: local middle class man seeks to defend his rights, is beaten by local provincial authorities, and then CCTV makes it national, forcing the provincial authorities to address it. But sometimes I feel like many in America have “Tiananmen Fever” – as if the democratic revolution they saw on TV was put on pause, and they are waiting for someone to pick up the remote and press play again.
I wonder at the fact that I find points to agree with Lu Gaofeng’s China Youth Daily editorial, Media Overexcited in Nail House Coverage – I haven’t decided if Sina.com’s cash prizes for photos was a good idea or not – and Chinese blogger Xiaowu’s commentary, in which he says:
So I have argued that what really happened is not the same as the audience watched or read from the media. It is not about a tough resident fighting against government’s violence and power. It is not an incident of human rights or protecting civil rights. It is definitely not an evidence to show that “wind may come in, rain may come in, but the king may not… …” is true in China. There is a logic widely known operating. The local government did not take away this house immediately because some stronger forces working behind. From the TV news report, the woman of the office of demolition was not as arrogant and aggressive as the victim. There are some reasons for it. Imagining the victim as a heroine of human rights is only a wishful thinking of ordinary people. … …
UPDATE: Philip Bowring in the Asia Sentinel has a relevant article entitled “China’s Middle Class: Not What You Think It Is”, in which he points to the work of UBS economist Jonathan Anderson who crunches the number and believes that the number of Chinese citizens that could arguably be urban middle class, that is those who can afford “a mortgaged apartment, a car, a computer, the occasional karaoke visit”, comes out to 70 million. If that’s the case, it seems difficult to believe they will be at the forefront of radical change, and as James Mann suggests, they may actually be the most likely to be for the status quo.
Fantastic piece….
Thanks…
This is a great analysis of the unfolding of the “Nail” house story.
The only point I would like to add is that this excellent post focuses on American views of China, and an important part of the way the story of the “Nail” house circulated is to do with the culture of the world wide web and blogging, in China and globally.
This story and picture of “China’s Most Incredible Holdout” traveled around China’s blogs for a while before it arrived on the American blogs. The original story was lost, elaborated on, and then pieced together and rediscovered before being translated.
I posted on it (March 10th) because I realized that the picture was “viral” in China and handed around regardless of the facts of the story which actually got lost fairly early on according to the translation in Peering Into The Interior.
I was interested to see if it would go viral here. And to some degree it did after Boing Boing (March 12th) posted it as part of a series of pictures of holdout houses they have been covering.
But, having picked it up early, I followed the “Nail House” as it traveled around the International blogs and it was rarely contextualized as saying something about China, at first. In fact, mostly it was posted with other Western Holdout stories – often by development and real estate related blogs, or, more sympathetically, from other blogs like Google Earth who have also been covering other “Holdouts” from many places.
The idea of the “holdout” has strong resonance in the blogosphere worldwide.
But, the nailhouse story shifted dramatically when the blogger Zola took it up and the owners went public.
The culture of blogging had a lot to do with the way the story became transformed into cyberactivism with memes like ‘vote with your feet’ [用脚投票]passing around the Chinese blogs. The subheading on Zola’s blog read “you never know what you can do till you try.”
Blog culture, half “sensitivity to news, half desire for fame,” directed the narrative of the “nail” house both in China and elsewhere.
And, “netizens,” Chinese or not are all beginning to speak to a global audience.
Tish,
One of the gaps in my summary is exactly what you touch upon: the timeline for the picture going viral on the Chinese side and how it was discussed. I really want to see such a timeline put together.
You’re right that the nail house was usually not contextualized to China. It was framed as a sort of “Oddly Enough” story based on a weird photo. But by the end of it, China hands had to write about the “impact”. One of the reasons I’d like to see that timeline of the nail house virus spreading on the Chinese side of the internet is because I don’t embrace the term “cyberactivism” easily, and I don’t know if that’s what this was.
And if I understand correctly, the owners went public before Zola arrived, and in fact before the picture went up. I heard that in the last 3 years they were very public in the local papers. Maybe that’s wrong – another gap. National coverage only came with the photo and deadline suspense.
As for netizens speaking to a global audience, I tend to disagree. The globe heard about this from mass media. The global audience doesn’t read blogs. Journalists sometimes do, and then they speak to a global audience. Blogtivists tend to only be read by each other from my perspective. In this case, if you’re right, then the sheer number of “feet” hitting BBSes drove journalists to cover the story. But those feet could be driven the same way a mob is – some people like the spectacle, some want an excuse to vent, some want to see what venters say, and some actually want to organize and seek solutions. I don’t see a whole lot of organizing, structures, mandates or manifestos coming out this. It was here, and it went away. Millions more homes continue to be demolished but I have yet to see the netizens chase them down until they’re all gone. Instead, there are new things to be interested in…
By all means, educate me on this if I’m wrong.
There is a big question here that cannot be answered simply. I think the heart of the matter is about the intersection of “old” and “new” media. And, how that relates to social change and the transmission of news globally?
I really like your analysis and I feel it speaks very insightfully to the American view of China as circulated by “China hands.”
But, I suppose, as someone more involved in new media than old media, I see a problem in the statement, “The globe heard about this from mass media. The global audience doesn’t read blogs.”
I would be interested to know what is the global mass media you are referring to? And, importantly, how and why the global mass media you refer to picked up the story, if not because it was so big in the Chinese blogs – to the point of an attempted ban (soon lifted because it was futile).
In the early days of the story, which are mapped quite clearly in Peering Into The Interior translations, the facts of the matter – the owners fight which was reported in local media – got disconnected from the picture when it first began to travel around China’s blogosphere. This was also the case when the picture first arrived in American blogs.
But, the story becoming a mass media event was not just about the deadline and the picture. It also coincided with the owners setting up their own blog and getting involved with the China’s blogosphere, Zola’s “mission,” and the attempts that were made to suppress the story. This was also notably at a time when the blocking of China’s Live Journal bloggers was on Boing Boing and elsewhere. The “holdout,” and Zola’s “bravery” were told in relation to this.
You are right that there seems no direct connection between the “Nail House” story and success, in terms of cyberactivism, in relation to the much “blogged about new property law.”
But, while “China hands” may pick up on notions of cyberactivism in ways that are very tied up with specifically American projections. This doesn’t mean that “netizen’s” potential role in social change can be dismissed.
Many bloggers from China, Singapore and elsewhere self describe themselves as “a dedicated netizen.” At least this is what I see on the blog networks and social networks that I hang out in,e.g., mybloglog, twitter, jaiku, etc., etc,
How an emerging culture of netizens may or may not speak to a global audience cannot be understood from analysis of global mass media or by examining the viewpoints of “China Hands,” alone.
I think it takes a participatory approach in new international forms of communication, social media, the blog networks, twitter, jaiku, Second Life, video commenting, etc, etc, to even begin to get an idea what may be emerging.
But, how will these new forms of international communication figure in terms of positive social change? I don’t think anyone can see this clearly yet.
But, I think, it is probably fair to say, that the role of “netizens” in social change, probably, will not manifest in traditional forms, or organizational structures, with “mandates or manifestos.”
But, of course, the whole mission of my blog, Ugotrade, is to be a participatory observer in these new technologies of communication, and to report, speculate and join in with their possibilities for positive global development. So, my comments here are reflecting my blog’s agenda.