JISHOU, HUNAN –Chinese observers seem to draw two opposing conclusions from the Occupy Wall Street movement in the USA. The more common (state-approved) conclusion is: capitalism is bad, Marxism is good. The more thoughtful conclusion is: if the Chinese government doesn’t deal with widespread corruption, China might see similar protests in the not-too-distant future.

Recently, one of my friends asked me what Chinese reactions to OWS were. So, I’ve spent some time poring over Internet reports and blogs to get a sense how OWS is playing over here. Since my grasp of Mandarin is weak still, and my access to movers and shakers is limited, take my comments here with a grain of salt.

Official Chinese news coverage tends to characterize OWS as a confrontation between the very poor and homeless (the victims of heartless capitalism) and the rich and powerful (heartless capitalist dogs). The Communist Party is using OWS as an object lesson in the superiority of China’s Marxism.

Comments to an article about the clearing out of Zucotti Park in New York City are representative of netizen reactions. Several comments are rabidly anti-American and pro-Chinese, leading other commenters to accuse those writers of being paid pro-government trolls. (The Party reportedly pays people 5 mao, or 0.50 yuan, to post pro-government comments on the Internet.)

The more staid party publication, Global Times, predicts OWS will amount to nothing in the end and China should just wait and see what happens.

The Global Times, a widely read Chinese tabloid published by Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, noted in an editorial that “western countries can withstand street demonstrations better, since their governments are elected”.

“The conflicts may be minor or serious, but it will not bring significant change,” it added. “China needs to stay calm and observe how the street movements in the Western world develop and to make the rights choices for its own good.”

(From The Telegraph, Oct. 17.)

Lost in this state-approved presentation are several salient truths about OWS. It’s not just a poor people’s movement. OWS draws supporters from the middle class, too, including retired police chiefs, Iraqi war vets, housewives, grannies and working stiffs, as well as scruffy looking students. Chinese media ironically play up police roughly dealing with OWS protesters (subtly implying it’s a government crackdown), while obscuring the freedoms of assembly and free speech that permits OWS to be so widespread.

No one in the current government would dare remind anyone here of the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests, which brought out thousands of students and intellectuals to rally for civil rights and resulted in a quick and brutal reaction by the Chinese police and military. Most of my students, in fact, know very little about that episode in Chinese history.

As an example of how the message of OWS has been skewed, we can look at a street protest in Zhengzhou by supporters of OWS. Some of them included cadres (important workers who are party members) who seemed to believe that OWS was a rally in support of Marxist ideals and against capitalism. Perhaps the protest was Party-sponsored.

Earlier this year, when the Jasmine Revolution was underway in North Africa and the Middle East, the government here quickly acted to foil any similar movements in China. The usual suspects (likely organizers) were rounded up and detained for several months, the Internet was “harmonized” — scrubbed of any rallying cries for a Jasmine Revolution in China — and official media portrayed the successful Arab Spring people’s movements, as yet more evidence for the superiority of the Chinese Way.

Ironies of ironies, you may be thinking, since China was after all founded as a people’s republic after a people’s revolution against a repressive government. That was before all those “peasants” ended up in power themselves, of course.

It’s that bitter irony that other Chinese recognize. The Party and its economic policies of the last 30 years have enabled China to become a major player in the world’s economy and allowed enterprising Chinese citizens to become rich beyond Mao’s imagination. Meanwhile, freedom of expression is tightly controlled, the Internet and media are closely monitored and censored (I had to use a network proxy to search for “Jasmine Revolution,” in fact), and government officials and business magnates help each other become fat cats.

To help grow the economy quickly, the State has given favored businesses considerable freedom to operate as they see fit (another irony, laissez-faire economic policy), sometimes at the expense of the common citizen, whose protests, when allowed, are ultimately pointless. We hear reports of entire city neighborhoods being evicted and razed for a new construction project, of a miner’s widow being denied access to her husband’s remains and being forced to accept a cash payment as compensation for his death, of bad food resulting from lax regulation, poor construction practices, and environmental disasters.

Many have resulted from the close personal and economic relationships that have developed between government officials, who look the other way, and the favored business leaders, who pay them to look the other way. Having given businessmen an inch, China’s political leaders have seen big business take a mile, and become a troublesome barrier to reform.

This is precisely the same message of OWS, which has not been lost on more thoughtful Chinese observers, who warn that China may yet have its own Occupy movement. As long as China can keep its growing middle class content and comfortable with material wealth, protest movements will gain no traction, however. China has largely been insulated from the economic crises of the USA and EU.

But, if the Chinese economy goes sour and middle class folks lose their jobs, homes and comfy lifestyle, China’s leaders will have an enormous problem that all the ‘Net harmonizing in the world will not solve.

—————–
You might also check out this reports.

Stratfor Analysis

Bloomberg analysis

The party's over: Duan Linxi may be the last Hunan Super Girl

“We received notification from the administration that we cannot make selective TV trials with mass involvement of individuals in the year 2012″, Li Hao, deputy editor-in-chief and spokesman of the channel, diplomatically told the China Daily.

In other words, viewers can no longer call in and vote for their favorite performers. That might be too democratic.

“Hunan Satellite Television will obey the State regulator’s decision and will not hold similar talent shows next year. Instead, the channel will air programs that promote moral ethics and public safety and provide practical information for housework,” Li said.

In other words, we were told to produce the same old, mind-numbingly boring crap that China Central TV (CCTV) broadcasts already, in between patriotic movies about the Revolution and the Japanese Occupation.

Hunan TV has a reputation in China of being more “edgy” and contemporary than CCTV. It has successfully adapted game shows from Japan and programs from America (like Ugly Betty and American Idol) for Chinese audiences. The Super Girl/Super Boy competitions have been aired on HSTV in one form or another 2004. As with Idol winners and runners-up, their Chinese counterparts have gone on to clinch record deals, movie and TV gigs, and an active fan base.

HSTV milks the Super-person shows for every last bit of pathos and suspense. This year’s Super Girl contest started with 500 performers (all singers of some sort), who competed in provincial and regional contests for four months before a whittled-down core group landed on the first national broadcast in July.

The first program was supposed to run for a mandated 92-minute limit. Instead, it ran 90 minutes over the cap imposed by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Later episodes also ran over, but not to such a great extent. Despite their length (and the tedium of listening to scores of not-very-talented performers), it attracted millions of viewers away from more “wholesome” programming, which is probably why the SARFT clamped down.

From the China Daily article:

In 2007, SARFT took several moves to regulate talent shows, including banning TV talent shows in prime time (7:30 pm to 10:30 pm) and limiting the duration of each episode to no more than 90 minutes.

[An] anonymous staff member also said that the ratings for the contest this year “kept being higher than other TV programs of its kind”.

“For me, exceeding the time limit is just an excuse to shut down the TV program, and there would have been other excuses even if the TV station did not make the shows that long,” said Jin Yong, a researcher at the Communication University of China.

“I believe the reason that forced the administration to ‘regulate’ this program is that some television hosts in the program made inappropriate comments and some did not dress properly,” Jin said.

“The style might have offended some older viewers, so that the authority warned the TV station with the suspension order to make their program classier.”

Short version: Simon Cowell would have been deported within a day if he had been one of the judges.

Super Boy performers were also advised to sing only “healthy and ethically inspiring” songs (as in, boooorrrring) and producers were to avoid showing screaming fans and teary-eyed losers.

Li Yu Chun, a "Super Girl" winner from 2005

[True confession: I like Lǐ's style a lot. Her English name is Chris Lee. Naturally she has both Facebook and MySpace pages. Check 'em out.]

This year’s surprise winner, Duàn Línxī 段林希, from Yunnan, also does not fit the mold of the “ideal Chinese female singer.” If Lǐ was too punky, Duan is too reserved and un-star-like. With enormous black-framed glasses, an acoustic guitar and low-key songs, she was more like a cross between Scooby-doo’s Vera and Judy Collins than a Sheryl Crow rocker, but her fanbase helped her net first prize.

The Chinese government closely regulates the media here, and Hunan TV has had run-ins with SARFT before. Clearly, the message from the “feds” is to present a more uniform, “harmonious” form of entertainment, with little spontaneity and counter-cultural role models — the very reasons that viewers (like me) tune into to such otherwise mindless entertainment.

Oh, and FB recoded their site again, so the plugin I have that pulls comments on FB Notes into WordPress is broken again. It uses the mobile FB site, so I have no clue what’s up with that.

Fang is the architect of China’s pervasive net-nanny system that controls what Chinese can see on the Internet, and what content is allowed on Chinese websites. It’s popularly called the Great Firewall of China. Needless to say, Fang is none too popular among Chinese Internet users.

Predictably, tweets about the shoe attack were promptly blocked, as were web searches for the person documenting the prank.

The BBC has a more complete report.

In the interests of global understanding, perhaps George W. Bush can give Fang lessons on shoe-ducking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFX-dKpcDz8

Check out the new photos. Nothing truly exciting, but interesting, I hope. Before Christmas, I visited two local schools, one in the countryside and one in Jishou.

I have some thoughts about my trip back to the States, and about teaching here. I hope to get those written down soon, before classes resume on the 25th.

Chinageeks.org reports official news sources are keeping mum about the reasons for the protests, if they carry any reports about them at all. Apparently, China is also blocking Al Jazeera’s live video streams and sanitizing discussion forums as quickly as anyone posts.

Maybe the leaders in Beijing are a little worried. One wonders why.

The Chinese government was far from happy with the international attention paid Liu, who co-authored Charter ’08, a manifesto for democratic reforms in the Middle Kingdom. Foreign TV news coverage was blacked out, major news sites like the BBC and CNN were blocked, and any mentions of the award on domestic sites were rapidly deleted by the government’s army of censors.

But netizens here are used to government censorship, and they have developed their own sly ways of getting their points across without being overt. One example is the “grass mud horse,” a mythical llama-like creature whose name in Chinese sounds much like telling someone to have sex with his mother. (Cuss words are usually censored in the media here. Well, the Chinese ones, anyway.)

Danwei.org reports that admirers of Liu have been posting tributes on Twitter to other people surnamed Liu. The tributes have a double meaning — praise of Liu XiaoBo and also the other figure sharing his family name. here are some examples. Their names are linked to Wikipedia articles about them.

From @pufei (蒲飞):

The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He has won many awards from overseas organizations. His work is popular at home and abroad. His honest face inspires a feeling of warmth. He is quite concerned with the situation of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. His name is Lau Ching-wan (刘青云)

From @VicCh:
Essay: The person I admire most — “The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He has won major international prizes, and his deeds have inspired a fighting spirit in his countrymen. Although for a time he vanished from our sight, I believe his spirit will live on….” The teacher moves to call the police. The next line: “His name is Liu Xiang (刘翔).”

From @doubleaf (陈双叶) via @songshinan (宋石男):
The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He led students campaigns, published books, and won international prizes. Later he was unjustly accused and spent many years in prison. But I believe that all of this is but the test of history, because he said that fortunately, history is written by the people. His name is Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇).

From @wentommy (文涛):
The person I most admire has the surname Liu. Despite a prison term, this wonderful individual has won all kinds of international awards, and is an idol to many people. Her name is Liu Xiaoqing (刘晓庆).

From @yueyexiake (月夜侠客):
The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He has won world-class prizes. His skill with his hands shocked the world, and he must admit: I have no enemies. Sometimes he’ll stammer when talking to reporters, and for a time he vanished from view. The entire world frequently remembers his name, the country’s bridge to the future. His name is Liu Guoliang (刘国梁).

From @wentommy (文涛):
The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He enjoys immense prestige among the common people, but is a thorn in the side of the powerful. He is known for his humanity and kindness, and even when insulted he endures it with tolerance. In times of distress he would give up his family before his morals, and faces danger willingly. But some have criticized him for fake humanity and false righteousness. His name is Liu….Xuande (刘玄德).

From @nuosong (罗晓松):
The person I most admire has the surname Liu. He has a doctorate, has published books, and has been a defendant. He has won major prizes from many western nations, as well as awards from overseas organizations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is an idol to many people in China, and is the pride of the Chinese people. His name is Andy Lau (刘德华)!

Longtime China observers have noted that Beijing has changed its tactics. In the past, the censors would have taken pains to block most international news sites. They didn’t this time. While the BBC and CNN main sites were inaccessible, I was able to access CNN-Mexico, The Guardian in the UK and several others. Google News was also available throughout most of the day.

Rather than try the impossible task of blocking all access to the outside world, the government smeared Liu’s reputation and made sure that the average citizen knew nothing about why Liu was recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize committee. In addition, officials accused the Nobel committee and the West of trying to meddle with internal Chinese affairs.

No one was allowed to attend the award ceremony in Oslo to accept the prize. Instead, an empty chair “accepted” the award. The last time that happened was during the time Adolph Hitler controlled Germany.

The tweets about people surnamed Liu are amusing in some ways, but they speak volumes about how tightly the government controls information here. Think about that whenever some politico in the USA starts yakking about monitoring Internet and cellphone communications for reasons of “national security.” That’s what they say here.