I asked the official to name the most important characteristic for a cadre who aspires to leadership positions in the Party. “Relationships,” he said without hesitation. “The ability to work well with other people and within the Party.” He went on to say that government is not the cushy place to work that people generally imagine—a man reading the paper with a big mug of tea at his desk while he accrues wealth and influence. Relationships (guanxi), and the ability to navigate the internal politics of the Party, not just the politics of a city or even national politics, rank highest among key skills for young leadership candidates. I followed up and asked about the place of merit and hard work. He shrugged. “In my experience, emotional intelligence and the ability to manage relationships is the most important part.” He thanked me as I placed another biscuit on his plate.
Tom was frustrated when we left the meeting. “He means ass kissing. It is the same old bureaucracy.” Despite all the noise about catching tigers and flies, Tom believed that the government had not changed enough, and he wanted to help put that change in motion.
To Cindy, government had changed, and that made Tom less appealing. Eliminating corruption meant government positions had become nothing more than bureaucratic jobs with low-wage ceilings and minimal perks. In 2015, President Xi Jinping received a 62 percent pay raise to about US$22,000 a year.11 If that was the president’s salary, how much could a middling official earn? Cindy’s interest in government was minimal, unless she was talking about the Party’s highly publicized encouragement of entrepreneurs. Then her eyes began to shine.
In appearing to shut China’s back doors, eliminating corruption had opened the front door to entrepreneurship. To young Chinese, the anticorruption campaign was a signal that if you worked hard, you could reap the rewards of your effort, an enormous shift that encouraged Chinese innovators and entrepreneurs to strive, strive, strive.
The Party was also filling the news with word of its new policy, which it dubbed “A Multitude of Entrepreneurs, a Thousand Innovations.”* The idea was to cut the red tape and make starting a company easier financially, perhaps by having to pay little to no rent. In tandem with massive new nationwide policies to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, especially among young people, the Chinese government was attempting to give Chinese young people the freedom they desired.
The combination of eliminating corruption and encouraging entrepreneurship may very well be the secret sauce for China’s transition from a manufacturing economy to an innovation and entrepreneurial economy. China’s entrepreneurial spirit and desire to get ahead were bubbling within the country. Xi and the Party wanted to simply open the floodgates and get out of the way.
Perhaps most important to the Party is that Xi’s anticorruption campaign, accompanied by a voluble propaganda campaign, has been an unmistakable signal to Chinese citizens that the government is going to be less prominent in their lives. The government was not going to meddle in a young person’s ability to control their own future. Add to that the policies promoting entrepreneurialism, and the Chinese government was delivering a version of freedom that Cindy and her cohort found increasingly easy to accept.
* * *
Xia Xia’s Chinese high school history textbooks were spread out on the coffee table. An open high school history book from Taiwan rested next to a mainland history book. Both were open to their respective sections on Tiananmen Square, 1989.
China has invested a large amount of time in crafting and telling its story. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung believed that we all have a personal myth, the story of our life and personal history we tell ourselves and are emotionally invested in. The stories are just that, stories, not entirely true—more our interpretation of our life’s specific events within a larger narrative, be it a hero’s journey, a romantic tragedy, or a comedic adventure. Our version of our story shapes our identity.
Countries also have their own myths, the stories told in history classes as we are growing up that shape the way we see our place in the world. They have their own truthiness. British and American history books have different accounts of the Boston Tea Party. American history books and Native American history books tell the Thanksgiving story very differently; and, as Tom and I knew, mainland Chinese history books and Taiwanese history books have different accounts of Tiananmen Square. Omission can be one of the storyteller’s most efficient tools. Taiwan, interested in distinguishing its own government from that of mainland China, spent three pages on the protests and violent repression at Tiananmen Square. Xia Xia’s history books spent a paragraph.
China’s post-90s generation grew up on a much different story than the previous generation. In the wake of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 (the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Event, or Incident, depending on which history you’re reading), Deng Xiaoping gave a speech to members of the Chinese military elite, during which he stated, “During the last ten years our biggest mistake was made in the field of education, primarily in ideological and political education—not just of students but of the people in general. We didn’t tell them enough about the need for hard struggle, about what China was like in the old days and what kind of a country it was to become.”12
The Patriotic Education Campaign began in China in 1991, two years after Tiananmen, and two years before Tom was born. China was going through an identity crisis. Actually, in the parlance of the Communist Party, China was going through three: “A crisis of faith in socialism, crisis of belief in Marxism, and crisis of trust in the Party.”* The Patriotic Education Campaign fundamentally changed the way Chinese history and culture were taught in schools. China’s teachers stopped lionizing Mao and started emphasizing China’s long history as a wealthy, powerful nation-state.
The Patriotic Education Campaign also emphasized China’s decline in the early 1800s and the Opium Wars (1839–60). In retrospect, Chinese blame themselves for allowing their country to be so insular, falling behind the international community technologically, and allowing themselves to be taken advantage of. They also blamed the international community for taking advantage of the Chinese but acknowledged their role in allowing themselves to be taken advantage of by commemorating China’s Century of Humiliation. It was a mix of pride and shame: “Look at how great we were,” followed by “look how far we’ve fallen.” According to Zhao Suisheng, author of A Nation State by Construction, the Patriotic Education Campaign “elevated nationalism to the status of a spiritual pillar of the communist state.”13
Tom noted that the American Dream and the Chinese Dream are practically identical except ours focused on the individual. Tom said, “Our rags-to-riches story is about our whole country. When I was young, my country was in rags—our shabby clothing, our poor houses, our meager income and little food. Twenty-three years later we’ve cast off the rags and are now working toward riches. And it is probably our government system that has enabled us to do so.”
Another key difference is that China’s dream is not a rise; it is a return. A return is more a vindication. It signals that a fall had taken place.
China’s fall into the Century of Humiliation begins with the Opium War. China had demanded that the British pay cash for Chinese goods because the Chinese had no interest in trading for British goods. To balance this trade deficit, the British smuggled opium into China and sold it to Chinese. The Chinese government then destroyed a shipment of opium; the British brought a military force to Canton and marched it up the coastline, and China was forced, as it views the proceedings, into a peace treaty expanding trade ports and extraterritoriality for British subjects in China. The Chinese regard what happened as a weakness on their part and abuse by the British and French (a British-French alliance squared off against the Chinese in the Second Opium War), a trend of foreign aggression that would continue with other Western powers and then the Japanese. Recasting China’s narrative focusing on the country’s historic success, which saw its end at the hands of foreign aggression, instead of primarily emphasizing the gl
ories of Mao Zedong and post-WWII and civil war China, was not only more factually correct but also created a unifying narrative of China against the world. Since the Tiananmen Square protests, Chinese “party leaders have made a priority of inoculating them against liberal values,” coaching them to see that “the Communist Party has been the sole engine of progress in modern Chinese history, rescuing the country from humiliating subjugation to foreigners and restoring their nation to a position of respect and power on the global stage.”14 This patriotic education campaign and a refocusing of history away from Mao is why, when the United States sends ships to intervene in the South China Sea, members of China’s youngest generation are likely to say, “It’s just foreign powers trying to restrict China’s return to power again.”
“Our system is country-focused. The success of the country will bring the success of individuals,” Tom explained. “Yours is the opposite: the success of individuals will bring about the success of the country.”
I asked Tom, “So any threat to the Party is a threat to the success of the people? That’s why journalists and lawyers who undermine the Party become ‘enemies of the people’?”
“Right,” Tom said. “We remember rags. Now, as a country, it feels we are returning to riches. We’re doing it faster and on a larger scale than any other country or empire in the history of the world as we know it. For that, you have to sacrifice.”
Back in the early 1980s, when China was laying plans for its new economy, Deng Xiaoping became known for explaining China’s path into modernity through almost classically poetic terms: China will “cross the river by feeling the stones.” It’s gorgeous imagery, vivid and evocative. What he was saying, though, was that China had no real idea what it was doing, that it was standing in the rushing river of time and politics, reaching out with one leg, groping around with its foot, and if the rock beneath felt sturdy enough, shifting its weight forward. Missteps in Deng’s vision were inevitable. The risk of being swept downstream was high.
Deng also meant that China was charting a new path. To its political left was Western democracy, a solid bridge with a sturdy hold on the banks of modernity. To its political right was the narrower path of Soviet communism. China looked at both and chose to wade into an uncharted stretch of river.
To think of China as communist or capitalist is not particularly useful. The Chinese government confounds the categories I learned in school to describe government systems; to jam the Chinese into any one box results in more confusion than clarification. In reality the Chinese government is creating something new.
* * *
One summer night, Tom and I walked along one of Chengdu’s canals after dinner. We had been cooped up all day in the apartment—he was translating a sixty-page philosophy treatise from English to Chinese for a professor. Although he can barely speak English, Tom, like many young Chinese people, can read and write it at a decent level. The process, though, was extremely taxing. To blow off some steam, we’d gotten into the habit of walking along the stone canal after dinner, when Sichuan’s muggy heat eases into a warm breeze.
Chinese neighborhoods come alive at dusk in summer, and the waterway offered an especially lively stretch. Just before the sun dipped below the high-rises, a tinny portable stereo would blast bouncy Chinese pop as mothers, aunts, grandmothers, neighbors, a smattering of kids still in their school uniforms, and the odd uncle or two began their choreographed evening aerobics routines.
As Tom and I spoke, we weaved through the plastic stools and tables set up alongside the canal where families were having their supper or adults smoked or played cards while the children ran and played. Tree branches hung lazily over the walkway. The sound of dance pop faded out; ballroom music faded in. To our left dozens of older Chinese men and women were practicing the waltz. The woman who received packages in our apartment building—one of a small platoon of aunts and uncles in the building who do it in shifts—told me that’s where older men and women go to spark new romances. Sellers of noodles or cakes set up their wares with stools alongside their stalls. Young couples ordered barbecue or bowls of thick-cut noodles in sweet sauce, a Sichuanese specialty. Everywhere we heard the click-clack-click-clack of mahjong tiles mixed with the slap-slap-slap of sandals against the stone pathway.
But that evening, Tom was clearly distracted again by thoughts of Cindy. He pulled out his phone and powered it off.
“Big Brother?” I asked. Tom didn’t laugh. He said he didn’t want to be thinking about her texts anymore.
Cindy’s ambivalence about Tom’s government ambitions felt to him like an insult to all of society. She and his peers didn’t see the value in his dream. He declared that, in a pinch, if he had to choose a classic science fiction dystopia for comparison with China, he would have to say his country was becoming more like Brave New World than 1984. Aldous Huxley’s classic, written eighteen years before Orwell’s, describes a population numbed by material pursuits, discouragement of individual thought, and the drug soma. Money, materialism, lavishness, extravagance—they distracted people from the pursuit of truth and decency.
Tom had said he wanted to join government to make a difference, because he believed in the cause and wanted to help make people’s lives better. Cindy wasn’t interested in his goal because he wouldn’t make any money. She saw him as sacrificing his own freedom, giving up social mobility and accepting the shackles of a set wage with little hope of earning much more. Tom couldn’t see why she was unable to understand the virtue in his pursuit.
During one year I asked a hundred people if Chinese people had a belief system. The majority answered, “Money.” Second choice was simply no. It’s crass, but money was actually not a bad answer. Just as parents elsewhere bestow their religion on their children, parents in China bestow on theirs a faith in money, a practical, survival-based faith the parents had inherited from their own mothers and fathers.
We walked until we arrived at an apartment complex where a friend of Tom’s lived. We took a few bottles of beer to the roof. Tom sat on the ledge of the thirty-four-story building. A stiff wind might have blown him off. From there we could see about a square mile of Chengdu before an opaque gray fuzz of smog sealed off the rest of the city. Apartment buildings in China are put up in clusters, eight at a time in a tight grouping. Some tall, some short, some new and gleaming, others squat and concrete.
Tom then told me that he was still resolved to join the government. I asked Tom what his greatest fear was. As he looked out at the city, beer in hand, Tom was contemplative. He did not seem to be afraid of heights. He chewed on the question. “My greatest fear is having to make my kids ride the subway,” he said. He then sat silently watching the churn of traffic. From our perch the city looked like an ant farm. “I’m afraid I’m going to be so average that I’m going to not be able to provide or create something of myself and actualize my potential. That’s the pitfall of my future, not an extreme failure or even success with large failure, just fading into the middle, into mediocrity.” He took another swig of beer and said, “And then my kid will have to ride the subway.”
It was hard not to feel alone in a Chinese city. For China’s Me Generation, everything around them—throngs of cars lined up for miles, hundreds of efficient, sterile apartment complexes as far as the eye can see, swarms getting on the subway—was telling them they weren’t unique. From the rooftop Tom could take in the whole scene with a glance. From up there, the individuality that China’s urban young people insist on made sense: if they weren’t absolutely sure of their uniqueness, their surroundings would swallow them up.
“That is the risk of the path I’m taking. It is a slow climb, and it is easy to get stuck living a mediocre life,” Tom said. He gestured at all the bright lights of the city. “Maybe next time you come back, I’ll be the mayor of all that. Who knows, right? We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Acknowledgments
I owe deep gratitude to a number of people who supported me throughout the pro
cess of writing this book, which began long before the idea for a book was conceived at all. First and foremost, thank you to my family. I know I’ve not always made it easy for the three of you (“can you obsess over something closer to home?”), and I truly appreciate your finding it in your hearts to encourage my dreams, as inconveniently located as they may be. Also, thank you to my mom for your editor’s eye, patience, and deep, nourishing love. Thank you to my dad for being an eager and challenging student and a wise and loving soul. Thank you to my sister for your playfulness and generosity of spirit and for trying to keep me tethered to reality.
A special thank you to Grandpa Seymour, Grandma Pearl, and Grandma Sally. Your unconditional love propelled me, and I wish I were able to share this with you now. Thank you as well to Uncle Alan, Grandpa Ray, and the Kent family for your unremitting love and support. A big loving thank you to the whole Katz family for the love and support. Justin, thank you for talking to me about the Warriors all four years while I was away.
I would in particular like to acknowledge the people who welcomed me into their lives. Xiao Ye and Lao Li, you two have given me a home many times over. The whole Liu family, especially Wei Wei and Xia Xia, you have been great friends and supportive family. Thank you to Huan Huan for early brotherhood.
Of course, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to everyone who allowed me to write about them. I especially want to acknowledge Bella, William, Tom, Debbie, Joy, and Ju Chao. I am lucky to have you as friends.
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