by Han Han
On the Internet we often see people talking about “the tragedy of Lanzhou”—although the Gansu provincial leadership probably has no clue what they’re talking about. Now we see a Lanzhou tragedy unroll before our eyes. The Gansu report was initially posted on major news websites, but when opening these web pages today I found that all the links to this item have been frozen—not one of them can be opened. Who has been “harmonizing” the Propaganda Department, one wonders? The Propaganda Department Central Office, of course. The leaders of Gansu Province, alas, have done a lousy job of interpreting the imperial will. This time they’ve really put their foot in it with their misguided effort to curry favor.
The other name for Internet commenters is “the fifty-cent party”—hired hands who masquerade as ordinary Internet users—really a variety of mole. It’s a colossal mistake to make public the placement and identity of moles. This information should have been passed on to the higher authorities in the form of a secret document delivered by a special agent. Doing that would certainly have elicited a handsome reward. But by publicizing this story, Gansu has laid bare a fact that the government has always been unwilling to admit—the existence of the “fifty-cent party.” If someone has to spend money to buy praise and support, that’s a sure sign that he’s got a lousy record. This news has directly shattered the false image that the higher authorities have worked so hard to create. I think we can be sure that the leaders of the Gansu propaganda department have not a hope in hell of ever getting promoted now.
According to the report, Gansu Province must speed up its surveillance of the Internet this year and establish an Internet commenter team, a system in which fifty commentary experts form the core, augmented by one hundred commentary talents, with five hundred commentary writers constituting the outer circle.
If a small province like Gansu needs to hire another six hundred and fifty Internet commenters, it’s not hard for those with curious minds to work out that in the nation as a whole there must be at least one hundred thousand people whose full-time job it is to post comments on the Internet. If we assume that each commenter’s annual salary is fifty thousand yuan, then the government’s annual expenditure on complimenting itself must come to five billion yuan, which is equivalent to twenty-five thousand Hope Primary Schools, or one-tenth of the cost of the Three Gorges Dam, or more or less the cost of the two new Shanghai bridges across the Huangpu River plus the bill for constructing the Oriental Pearl, or thirty Boeing 737s, or a medium-sized aircraft carrier, or ninety of those Mil Mi-26 helicopters that we were in desperate need of after the Wenchuan earthquake and had to resort to borrowing from Russia. If these figures were by any chance to be leaked, this could easily create friction between the people and the government!
It’s human nature to make oneself look good by sticking gold leaf on one’s face, and it’s obviously going to cost money to do that, but if you’re trying to stick an aircraft carrier on your face, this shows the face you have is really getting way too big. The good thing is that none of those busybodies has yet got round to adding up all these figures and nobody has yet sounded the alarm, so we can all rest easy.
From this Lanzhou tragedy, you officials will see there’s a very thin line between understanding and misunderstanding your superiors’ wishes. Propaganda departments far and near, take heed.
Are you Xiaoming?
February 6, 2010
I wonder if you’ve noticed that there’s been an increase recently in the number of Fifty-centers appearing in the main online forums and news discussions. Of course, I’m not in favor of labeling as Fifty-centers everyone who disagrees with you, but Fifty-centers are easy to spot, because people who sell their souls—particularly people who sell their souls at such a low price—will say things that have no basis and will climax without any foreplay. When I first noticed the proliferation of Fifty-centers, I was quite perplexed and thought it must be because the authorities had increased their budget, but later I read a report that attributed it to the economic crisis. Recently Section 5, Clause 17 of a document entitled “Internet Commenters’ Management Methods,” issued by the Communist Party network in the city of Hengyang, stipulates that the standard remuneration for Internet commenters is ten cents per post. It’s pretty obvious that, nationwide, the Fifty-centers have seen a reduction in their pay, and that helps to explain why we have the sensation that all of a sudden there are five times as many of them as there used to be. Actually, it’s just the same number of people, but they’re all working overtime. In the past, when we spotted a Fifty-center, we could all gather round and peer at him, but now, with forum administrators deleting our posts and other Internet users chiming in with their own comments, we sometimes find ourselves totally outnumbered by Fifty-centers.
According to that top-secret Gansu document on “The Composition of Fifty-centers,” their ranks are staffed by fifty skilled writers, one hundred competent writers, and five hundred outer-circle writers. The Fifty-centers whose comments we see everywhere are, so far as I can tell, made up largely of the outer-circle writers, but from time to time a few “competent writers” emerge to test the waters. As for the “skilled writers,” I suspect they must have other administrative responsibilities, for we haven’t seen much sign of them. Of course, the main reason for their absence is that they’re busy attending banquets and raking in gifts during the Chinese New Year.
The recent proliferation of Fifty-centers is one of the reasons I started my microblog. For one thing, the Fifty-centers react rather slowly to new things, and I’m sure that for many “competent writers,” just registering and signing in to the Tencent web browser is already as much as they can manage. At the same time, one can’t express views anonymously on a microblog, and that makes them scared to register. And most importantly, if by any chance they perform conspicuously well on the microblog front and their superiors direct them to consolidate their position, they’d have to tie themselves to their cell phone in order to constantly manipulate public opinion, and that would be their ruin. They’re only getting paid ten cents per post, after all, and it costs the same amount to send out a text message; if you factor in the cost of recharging their phone battery, then just for them to break even would be a sheer impossibility. You shouldn’t make fun of them—they sell their souls for ten cents and would sell a kidney for a thousand yuan, so for them even the tiniest fraction of a yuan is a significant gain or loss. Although ideologically they align themselves most impeccably with the ruling class, their actual livelihood places them at the bottom of the social pyramid.
I think we should permit the Fifty-centers to exist, for everyone has the right to hire others to speak on their behalf, and every hired worker has the right to speak wherever they please. If you can give Xiaoming a beating and then hire someone else with the money you’ve pilfered from Xiaoming’s pocket to give Xiaoming a scolding, that just shows you’ve got a good deal of gumption. Every government has an agency that helps to promote it, and that’s perfectly understandable. But the Fifty-centers are a fiasco. I used to think that they served to shape public opinion but now I realize that’s not so, because nobody who sees a crowd of people standing around eating shit is going to try to squeeze their way in and eat it, too. The Fifty-centers originally were a product of provincial governments trying to curry favor with the top leadership. But now, with so many Fifty-centers on the loose, lots of “upstanding” and “correct” people may simply open their mouths—clearly without getting paid a cent—and they immediately are written off as Fifty-centers, so this has gravely damaged their enthusiasm. You check into a hotel for a one-night stand and when you come out everyone thinks you’re a prostitute—this has to be a bit demoralizing. Once you institute this Fifty-center structure, apart from the damage done to your image both domestically and overseas, all of your original supporters end up suspected of being Fifty-centers.
Why do I seldom have good words for our government? One reason is that I don’t want other people saying I’m a
Fifty-center; a second is that when one has no freedom to criticize, then praise is meaningless; and the third is that I’ve already paid my taxes, and our taxes are used to foot the bill for the Fifty-centers’ expenses, so that is equivalent to me indirectly praising the government.
Finally, I plan to sift through a batch of posts and differentiate which ones were written by the outer circle, which by the competent writers, which by patriotic youth, which by ignorant young girls, which by unhappy people, and which by idiots. If I put you in the wrong category, and your comment was purely voluntary and not for profit, there’s really nothing I can do about that. You should ask your masters why a view like yours could be worth a full ten cents.
Han Feng is a fine cadre
March 4, 2010
In recent days the diary kept by Han Feng, a director in the Laibin Tobacco Bureau, has become a big sensation.19 In an era where the Internet is flooded with pinups and videos, I find it refreshing to suddenly encounter such an authentic piece of writing—surely it will go down in history as the work with the greatest literary and social value to be released in China in 2010. Assuming that the diary is genuine, I’m confident that it establishes its author as a fine cadre, for the following reasons:
1. This cadre accepted only sixty thousand yuan in bribes during a six-month period—the first time in several years that I’ve seen only five figures associated with the word bribes. Where else could one find such an honest bureau chief?
2. Of the women he has had affairs with or is currently conducting affairs with, not one has been elevated to full-blown second-wife status.
3. This bureau chief does not gamble or go whoring or bribe his superiors. When purchasing a cell phone, he waited in line like everyone else and it took him two hours to complete his purchase.
4. In the pages of the diary, we find a state official who chases skirt with the least possible financial outlay. At a time when other officials regularly buy their mistresses an automobile or an apartment, the most expensive present he ever gives one of his women is a cell phone or an MP4 player. This shows not only that Han Feng is a decent fellow but that his partners are decent women, too. If there were more couples like this in our country, we could easily afford to build several more aircraft carriers.
5. He attended banquets on only eighty-nine occasions, when I know of many village officials whose banquets over the course of a year number well over three hundred and sixty-five. But he often got drunk, which reflects a poor capacity for alcohol, so in this area he has fallen well short of the standards expected of an official. This has to constitute his gravest offense, for here he has seriously sullied the reputation of our civil servants.
6. Although he sported with women on multiple occasions, he also accompanied his wife on shopping or other excursions on twenty-five days and bought his father a cell phone. There is no evidence that he used his authority to advance the interests of family members.
7. He knows how to install computer software, loves digital technology, photography, and sports, and is capable of using microblog services to maintain his diary; this all shows that he is an official capable of keeping abreast of the latest developments.
8. In his diary we see not the slightest sign of a desire to own luxury cars or expensive property or paintings, calligraphy, and antiques; all he does is quietly do stuff on his cell phone and computer. In his diary he even writes, “Today I spent one hundred sixty yuan on a pair of headphones—they’re terrific.” What a modest, easy-to-please official!
9. As for his job performance—although we have yet to uncover evidence of him doing any work, given that he is a bureau chief who has burrowed his way inside a number of female subordinates, his title and his performance more or less match.
To sum up, in the current scheme of things Han Feng is undoubtedly a more than satisfactory official, one who amuses himself with harmless pursuits, one who refrains from excess, one who inflicts no suffering on the people and little damage on the state. In this diary we find an official who is over the moon with a purchase of just a few thousand yuan, who, after buying a new cell phone, for three days straight makes one and the same diary entry: “Fooled around at home with my new phone.” He was so happy he even gave up on fooling around with women! I strongly suggest that we let him off and give his lady friends a break as well, for they are but the tiniest of little shrimp and their biggest sin has been simply to have nibbled on some floating organic matter as they paddle about in the water. We can hope that functionaries like Han Feng will be punished for their offenses, but we certainly should not regard them as the incarnations of official malfeasance. In an official culture where decadence is the norm, they have to count as the most innocuous, environmentally friendly elements. We should let this bureau chief remain in his position and allow him to continue researching his digital products. If he is dismissed from office, his successor is likely to be a bigger threat to society, for the simple reason that he will know not to keep a diary.
Where else could I find someone like you?
March 14, 2010
Since I set up my public opinion poll, some 210,000 Internet users have registered their votes, and of these, ninety-six percent think Han Feng is a fine civil servant and should retain his position, and only four percent think he is a bad one and should be punished. In the future I plan to conduct other such polls, as a way of compensating for no one ever having seen an electoral ballot, despite all those elections of representatives to the National People’s Congress. Starting today, I am unilaterally setting myself up as a strategic collaboration partner to the major governmental websites, so that when they invite participation in some poll or other, I will do the same (but refraining from writing anything that might shape voters’ views on the subject), and then see how my poll results compare with theirs.
Among the voters, some feel strongly that Han Feng is really not bad at all, given that his appetite is so limited, and some profess a genuine respect for his decency as an official, while others are mocking or ironic in their comments, but all are conscious that this is a matter completely out of their hands. In my grandfather’s younger days, when everyone was in economic difficulties, local officials were not necessarily any better off, and only later did it become clear that in our country there was a stark distinction between good officials and bad officials. The result of the Han Feng poll shows that we have entered a new era, one in which there is hardly a single official with clean hands, in which it’s only a matter of good corrupt officials and bad corrupt officials. People believe overwhelmingly that Han Feng belongs to the first category.
Although Han Feng was recently arrested on a charge of accepting bribes during real estate transactions, when reading reports about him we shouldn’t just focus on his fondness for tinkering with technology, abusing his office, and taking liberties with women. In an interview with New Century Weekly, one of Han Feng’s superiors said, “Tobacco consumption in Guangxi seriously lags behind other provinces. One of Han Feng’s achievements was to raise consumption in his area of jurisdiction to over six cartons per capita, exceeding the nationwide average.”
In this admirable part of the country, then, people originally did not smoke very much. So the government set up an agency which had the mission of raising tobacco consumption; success in pulling off this assignment is one of the criteria for identifying an effective leader, and inducing ordinary people to smoke more has become a feat about which a government agency feels proud. It’s bad enough for a respectable country to not prohibit smoking—how can you sacrifice public health just for a tiny boost in GDP? But then, when I think about it, there’s nothing strange about that—it’s been the pattern all along.
When the National People’s Congress and the National Political Consultative Conference were in session, reporters were always asking if I had any legislation I’d like to propose, or suggested I record some interviews about people’s lives today, or even go to Beijing and mingle with some of the delegates, but I tur
ned all these invitations down. As someone in absolutely no position of authority, what could I hope to achieve? And besides, for one thing, I can communicate my ideas well enough, just using my laptop; and, for another, I’ve made it clear already that I’m not into putting on a show.
But now, as those two meetings come to an end, the point I want to make is that our government is really very fortunate. A majority of people always take the view that the top leadership’s policies are correct, but are simply mishandled by administrators lower down—never do they question the first part of that proposition. They continue to cling to the most primitive trust in our top leaders. When ordinary citizens encounter mistreatment, their final resort is to go to the capital to denounce their persecutors, although the Letters and Visits Office’s main order of business is simply to add their names to the list of targets of security monitoring and send them back where they came from. When they’re abused by the village chief they appeal to the township chief, and when the township chief pays them no attention they appeal to the district chief, and when the district chief will have nothing to do with them they appeal to the city mayor, but they have no hope of ever securing an audience with him, and so they fantasize about finding the sympathetic ear of a minister in the central government (or someone even higher up), convinced that these lower-level leaders have blocked the transmission of their complaint. The possibility seems to have never occurred to them that the person they most want to see decided long ago that they were an infernal nuisance, rejecting their petition with an offhand “He’s failing to see the full picture.” All they ever seek is a little benefit, never insisting that they have a certain right; they always feel the problem lies with the local officials and nowhere else. Just as long as some big-shot in an Audi extends a greeting at the Chinese New Year, they get a warm sensation inside. They feel an official like Han Feng is really doing a pretty good job, for their hope is not that a functionary will serve the common people, but simply that he won’t cause trouble for them. You can live in your fine apartment, drive your nice car, screw your little secretary, and we won’t object to any of that. So long as you don’t beat up my son, demolish my little home, or molest my daughter, you count as a good official in the eyes of the people. If bloggers annoy you, you can delete their posts; if writers antagonize you, you can harmonize them; if journalists displease you, you can deal with them in just one short line: “No negative reporting allowed.”