Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China

by Jianying Zha

  But Jianguo isn’t an educator like Xu. He’s a man of action. The CDP founders are all men of action, and history has not been kind to them. I remember something I heard a Chinese CEO once say: “The person who takes one step ahead of others is a leader. The person who takes three steps ahead of others is a martyr.” The CDP men are martyrs. I used to console myself with the old Chinese saying “Bu yi chengbai lun yingxiong” (不以成败论英雄, “Do not judge a hero by victory or defeat”). Yet Jianguo also seems a mulish simpleton, a man with a black-and-white vision of politics, oblivious of all shades of gray, not to mention the rainbow of hues that you’d need to paint a semblance of Chinese life today. In other moods, I would think of Confucius’s remark about one of his disciples, Zilu: “He has daring, but little else.”

  Neither attitude seems quite right to me now. I recall a conversation I had with Perry Link, a distinguished China scholar at Princeton University, about Wei Jingsheng. Wei is Jianguo’s personal hero, a legendary figure in the Chinese democracy movement. Back in 1978, when he was a twenty-eight-year-old electrician, Wei had the audacity to post essays on the Democracy Wall demanding democratization; Deng Xiaoping, he said, was a dictator. Wei was charged, absurdly, with “leaking state secrets,” and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. During his time behind bars, through sickness and periods of solitary confinement, he never backed away from his views. Once he had been released, he immediately resumed his prodemocracy writing and activities, and he was sent back to prison. After serving two years of a fourteen-year sentence, he was freed, ostensibly for “medical reasons,” and flown to the United States, where he kept up his personal campaign against the Chinese government. The West must not be fooled by [China’s] reforms, he warns, for the Communist Party will never change its true nature. What’s certain is that Wei will never change. Over time, many of his early admirers have come to see him as a man with a simplistic, static vision of China and the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, the Party appears to be far more agile and adaptive than Wei Jingsheng.

  I told Perry about my ambivalence toward people like my brother and Wei. I admired their courage, their deep sense of justice, but felt uncomfortable with their almost religious sense of self-certainty. “People like Wei Jingsheng are like the North Pole,” he told me. “They are frozen, but they define a pole.”

  Yes, I thought, my brother is frozen, with his unchanging, unchangeable vision of what is to be done. He reduces a vast, complicated tangle of problems to a single point source of evil: the Communist Party. End one-party rule, and the evil is eradicated. Even as he was locked up, he has locked the world out, refusing to listen to anything that disturbs his convictions, closing his eyes to a reality ridden with contradictions, ambiguities, and possibilities. For all this, Perry is right: people like Jianguo define a pole.

  And, of course, those who locked him up are on the wrong side of history. Liu Ge, a friend who is a partner at an illustrious Beijing law firm, likes to remind me of this. “All the countries that have succeeded in modernization have a multiparty system, while those sticking to one-party rule are losers,” Liu said. “Democracy makes a country win and dictatorship makes a country lose. The rulers today want to make China better, and they have done a lot of things well, but they cannot face their ugly past—how they turned China into a place with a hundred holes and a thousand wounds, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and so on. So they are not confident enough to take radical critics like your brother.”

  Gradually, though, I have come to feel a certain degree of impatience with the impulse to see Jianguo mainly through the lens of Chinese politics. I’d rather see my brother not as an integer in the realm of political calculation but as a flawed but admirable human being, with perhaps one striking oddity: his uncompromising insistence on upholding his idealism at any cost. A novelist friend of mine who has listened to me talk about Jianguo over the years once compared him to the creatures she’d seen in the 2005 documentary March of the Penguins. “The penguins are silly, laughable creatures—they are fat, they waddle, they fall on their bellies, and they are single-minded,” she said. “But when they are in the water they are beautiful! What your brother does politically is absurd, but his idealism and his courage in their purity are beautiful.”

  Maybe the question of whether Jianguo is a hero or a fool is beside the point. Above and beyond the consequences of his action is the moral meaning of his action. By keeping his promise to himself, he has fulfilled his own vision of a righteous life, his own sense of purpose. During one of my prison visits, I mentioned that a former classmate of Jianguo’s, an expert on rural issues, had just won a prestigious official award. “That’s good,” Jianguo replied. “He helps the reform from within the system. I’m outside the system. There are a lot of big intellectuals who can help reform with their knowledge. I don’t have enough systematic education to do that. But people like us have a role to play, too.” He smiled at me. “Character is fate. Just remember this: your brother is a simple, old-fashioned, outdated, and stubborn man. Once I make up my mind, I stick to it.” In the past few years, he has lost much of his hair, and a recent attack of shingles had left some scabs on his forehead, but his face was as serene as I’d ever seen it.

  In early 2007, with a year and a half to go, Jianguo started talking about how many books he’d like to finish reading. “Really, it’s not bad here,” he assured me. “I’ll get out in 2008, and if you are in Beijing then, we’ll watch the Olympics together.” We spoke about several of our Shanghai cousins, all successful businessmen and lawyers. “I’m very happy they do well in their business,” Jianguo said. “But each person has his own goal. To achieve democracy in a country, some people must offer their blood and lives in the struggle. Look at South Korea, or Taiwan: there had been so many crackdowns, so many prisoners. But, wave after wave, individuals rose up. They gave their lives to pave the way to their democracy.”

  His eyes were intent, his gestures expansive; for a moment, you could tell, he had even forgotten that he was in prison. “China is a huge country,” he went on. “We have 1.3 billion people. We ought to have at least a few men who are willing to do this.”

  Postscript

  On June 28, 2008, Jianguo was released after serving the last day of his nine-year jail term. A small group of relatives gathered in his apartment to welcome him home. My daughter brought him flowers. Jianguo choked up when we embraced. It was the first time I saw his tears.

  In the ensuing three months, during the Beijing summer Olympics, a team of policemen followed him daily, and a police car was parked in front of his residence at night. The policemen were friendly and polite: they accompanied him on shopping trips, carried heavy bags for him, even bargained for him at stores and helped him install an air conditioner at home. Since they followed him anyway, at my suggestion Jianguo would sometimes ride in the police vehicle when he went out. I did it with him a few times as we went to meet friends at restaurants. In the restaurant, the policemen, usually two on a shift, would take a table at the other side of the room, and eat their meal while keeping an eye on us. Once, when Jianguo visited my apartment and spent an entire afternoon and evening talking, napping, eating, I felt sorry for the young agent standing outside, waiting by the staircase, so I offered him a chair. He declined, politely, even a bit shyly. These were some of the most bizarre experiences I have had in China.

  “They called me dage [大哥, big brother],” Jianguo told me, “but of course they are just doing their job, and they would ransack my place or arrest me anytime if an order is issued.”

  Then, one day after the Olympics ended, the police car and the agents vanished. After that, Jianguo moved around freely, except on days deemed “sensitive,” such as during a special anniversary or a Party congress. On those days, the policemen would “resume their post,” watching and restricting Jianguo’s movements. Once in 2009, for reasons not completely clear, they took him to the police station for a twelve-hour “inquiry,” and co
nfiscated his computer and mobile phone. But when I asked him what happened at the police station, Jianguo laughed: “Oh, I just gave them a big long talk about my views on politics and democracy, while they kept filling my teacup and also let me take a few breaks.” It sounded almost like he enjoyed having the police officers as his captive audience!

  Lengthy prison life has seriously weakened Jianguo’s health. Despite medical treatments and therapy following his release, he suffers numerous ailments and tires easily. Nevertheless, his passion for political reform and his concern with China’s social issues remain undiminished. These days he spends a good part of his energy tracking events on the Internet, posting essays, and communicating with a group of friends and kindred spirits. He was among thousands of signatories for “Charter 08,” an influential manifesto that called for democratic reforms and an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

  After a slightly shortened version of this essay appeared in the New Yorker magazine on April 23, 2007, several Chinese versions, translated by enthusiastic readers, promptly appeared on the Chinese Internet and, despite official censors’ blockage, circulated widely. I have since received many letters from readers across the world who expressed their admiration for Jianguo’s courage and conviction.

  Incidentally, on the day of Jianguo’s release, as relatives surrounded him and chatted, one of the local policemen standing in the room stepped up to me and asked: “You must be Zha Jianguo’s sister Zha Jianying, aren’t you?”

  I confirmed this.

  “Well, I have read your essay about your brother,” the young policeman said. Then, probably unable to find suitable words to go on, he simply grinned at me broadly.

  Servant of the State

  On the afternoon of October 18, 2009, the writer Wang Meng addressed a full house at the Frankfurt International Book Fair. It was the fair’s last day, and China, this year’s guest of honor, had worked hard to demonstrate its cultural appeal. Earlier on, Xi Jinping, designated to be China’s next Communist Party secretary, had flown in to open the China theme hall with German chancellor Angela Merkel. Celebratory events followed. The pianist Lang Lang shared a stage with German artists at the old Frankfurt opera house. There were Peking Opera performances, Chinese folk arts on display, forums on China’s growing economic and political might.

  But all was not rosy. There had been a glitch weeks earlier. Two Chinese dissident authors were invited to an affiliated event and then disinvited; word spread that the organizers dropped the pair under pressure from the Chinese government. The two showed up anyway, but when they spoke at a forum on “China and the World: Feeling and Reality,” the official Chinese delegation walked out of the room. The incident caused a sensation, with German media accusing the forum organizer of being “spineless” and caving in to China’s censorship of its writers. The organizer was fired quickly. But after a round of protests, a conciliatory tone settled in. By the time the large delegation of Chinese writers and then later, Wang Meng, arrived in town, calmness was restored.

  At seventy-five years old, Wang Meng is perhaps the most famous living writer in China. A short, trim man with black-rimmed glasses and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, Wang has been a versatile man of letters with a long, prolific literary career. He has published widely in nearly every genre, and some of his work is considered the best literary expressions of that time in China. Having served as the culture minister in the 1980s, Wang is accustomed to ceremony. In Frankfurt, Wang was asked to give an overview on the present state of Chinese literature. “Chinese literature is developing very quickly,” Wang told the audience, in the blandly diplomatic language of someone whose job it was to put the best face on things. “So is the readers’ taste. Whatever accusations exist, I can only say this: Chinese literature is at its best of times.... China has over a hundred literary journals, many writers of serious literature, and over a thousand novels published each year. One can say China is a big literary nation.”

  He might as well have changed the word literature to blogerature, for his remarks were greeted by a storm of derision on the Chinese Internet, which has an estimated 70 million bloggers. One blogger compared contemporary Chinese literature to Chinese manufactured goods—large quantity, cheap price, low on added value, no brand. How can Wang call this “the best of times”? Is the old man muddleheaded or trying to be sarcastic?

  Other remarks were more extreme. Calling Wang a liar and a toady, a popular young blogger named Li Chengpeng offered his verdict:In truth, Chinese literature is at the same level as North Korea . . . the majority [of Chinese literary publications] are full of falsity and perversity, with many writers taking money from the state and creating junk and gibberish. As for the over thousand novels each year, there are millions of pirated and covert editions . . . if one can call this a big literary nation, then why not call Sweden a big literary nation since it’s the number one seller of patterned toilet papers? . . . Wang Meng’s way of thinking is the same as the eminent men in all [Chinese] fields: as long as it’s large, plentiful, and junky, everything Chinese . . . is at the best of its time.

  Li’s essay was entitled “Old But Not Dead Becomes Meng,” a nasty word play which turns a famous line by Confucius into an insult on Wang’s given name. With a tone inversion, Meng (蒙) happens to mean “to fool” or “to lie.” Within days Li’s blog post received over 150,000 hits, followed by over 2,000 reader comments. A lot of them assaulted and jeered Wang mercilessly.

  For two weeks Wang made no response. When he did, his tone was calm. “What I meant was that [Chinese] writers’ living and writing environment is at its best time.” He was comparing it with Mao’s days, he explained, and he was addressing a foreign audience in Germany. It’s pointless to talk about it out of that context, he said.

  It occurred to me that Wang’s speech could be aimed at a particular foreigner at Frankfurt. Wolfgang Kubin, a professor of Chinese studies at Bonn University, is one of the most distinguished Sinologists in Germany, especially in the study and presentation of contemporary Chinese literature. A tall, serious man with an elegant, melancholy face and white hair smoothly brushed back, Professor Kubin had led the German Sinologists to welcome the visiting Chinese writers, many of whom, including Wang, have been his good friends. But the Chinese were well aware of the fact that Herr Kubin has been one of the most outspoken critics of contemporary Chinese literature. In fact, he made waves in Chinese media when he famously “trashed” Chinese studies in a 2006 interview with Deutsche Welle, a German magazine. Using the word “trash” three times during the interview, Kubin offered a resoundingly negative evaluation of Chinese writers since 1949. As he sees it, none is a great writer since most of them write poorly because they have a poor mastery of their mother tongue and are ignorant of foreign languages; their awareness is low and their vistas are limited; they despise themselves and each other. And finally, they have no guts whatsoever. Asked whether he considered Gao Xingjian—the first and, so far, only Chinese winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—to be a great writer, Kubin’s reply was glacial: “Gao Xingjian? Don’t joke about this.”

  This was promptly reported in the Chinese media with headlines like “Famous German Sinologist Shellacks Chinese Literature as Trash.” Interestingly, the reaction was a lively mixture, with a good deal of Chinese cheering and applauding Kubin for firing such cannonballs.

  Hence, Wang’s Frankfurt speech might very well be a gentle yet direct response to Kubin. However, Wang’s statement evidently made no dent on Kubin’s opinion, for shortly afterward the German made a blasting encore, this time directed especially at contemporary Chinese novelists, pronouncing their work as “of rather mediocre quality.” Interviewed by a magazine, Kubin said that all his Chinese counterparts privately hold the view that the contemporary Chinese novelist is an utter ignoramus, one who “has no literary culture, no mastery of his language, doesn’t know a word of English, and hasn’t the slightest knowledge of foreign literature.” In shor
t, on the world stage Chinese novelists are “tubaozi [土包子, hillbillies], as one calls migrants in China who have left the countryside for the big cities.”

  This time, however, few eyebrows were raised at the Kubin sturmunddrang, either because the Chinese have grown jaded or they are too busy with other hot topics of the day to bother. No reaction either from the Chinese writers, which prompted at least one blogger to comment: “Chinese writers probably can also claim that Kubin is trash, but they have not done so. That shows a humility that contrasts sharply with Kubin’s elitist and dismissive criticism.”

  And no one has heeded another detail: in the 2006 interview, Kubin had trashed the Nobel Prize as well. “You have to write poorly in order to win,” opined the professor. “If you write well, you will never win it. Therefore the Nobel Prize in literature is also trash.”

  In China, Wang has long been speculated to be a Nobel candidate. Reports and rumors have circulated for years about the likelihood of his winning it, and the Chinese media regularly takes him to task on the subject: Has he been nominated? What does he think of this year’s winner? What’s his view of the prize?

  Wang’s response has been to cool the Chinese obsession. The Nobel Prize has had an uneven record, he would say, it has selected great writers, but has also left out even greater ones. It tends to provoke irrational reaction and goad people into aggression, as when a red cloth dangles before a bull’s eyes. He noted a certain pattern in the Nobel selection. “To show that they are teliduxing [特立独行, independent and idiosyncratic], they like to award dissident writers in socialist countries, and leftist writers in Western countries.”