Here are some facts about China:
1. The Chinese government puts a great deal of effort into blocking unfavorable foreign news.
2. China’s leadership is located in a compound right off of Tiananmen Square, called Zhongnanhai
During a recent trip to Beijing, I visited a popular bookstore that was just a few blocks from Zhongnanhai. You could buy a number of western magazines, and I picked up an issue of The Economist. Ironically, China was the cover story, and the article was at times highly critical of Chinese policy.
Here’s one example:
China is suppressing and interning people from Muslim ethnicities, most notably Uighurs, on a vast scale in the Xinjiang autonomous region
In another article in the same issue they claim that Taiwan is not a part of China:
My Han [a Taiwanese presidential candidate] calls Taiwanese independence “more scary” than syphilis. He refers to Taiwan as a region (that is, of China) rather than the country it is.
Why does the Chinese leadership allow this sort of western magazine to be sold in a major bookstore just a few blocks from Zhongnanhai?
The easy answer is that the magazine is in English, a language most Chinese cannot read. That’s clearly part of the story, but not the whole story. After all, many Chinese college students now do learn English. And the Chinese internet firewall does block western media such as the New York Times, written in English. Indeed even the online Economist is blocked. I’m going to argue that a recent post by Bryan Caplan provides the most plausible answer, but first let’s consider a bit more evidence.
1. There are few people in the world more incompetent with computers than me. I once called tech support at Bentley for help when it turned out that my computer monitor was not turned on. I still don’t know how to read emails on my iPhone. Yes, I’m that guy. But even I was able to circumvent the Chinese media firewall and read the New York Times while in China (using a VPN).
2. Many middle class Chinese now take trips to places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Australia, the US, and Canada, all of which have lots of ethnic Chinese people and publications that are written in Chinese. If the Chinese want to figure out what’s “really going on” they have no trouble in doing so, even in their own language.
3. The Chinese government increasingly covers up past atrocities such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square massacre. But literally hundreds of millions of Chinese still recall these events, and any Chinese person could simply ask an older relative what happened. These historical events cannot meaningfully be viewed as “secrets”.
Instead, Bryan Caplan provides the most plausible explanation for Chinese censorship:
What then is the primary purpose of censorship? It’s not to suppress the truth – which has little mass appeal anyway. The primary purpose of censorship is to monopolize the pretty lies. Only the powers-that-be can freely make absurdly self-aggrandizing claims. Depending on the severity of the despotism, you may not have to echo the official lies. But if you publicly defend alternative absurdly self-aggrandizing claims, the powers-that-be will crush you.
I believe that at some level the Chinese leadership understands that in the modern world it’s impossible to keep things secret. They also know that most people don’t care enough to search out the truth. Thus they want to present a happy face, what President Xi Jinping calls the “Chinese Dream”. You are not going to be thrown in jail for pointing out that the Cultural Revolution was a disaster. But the Chinese government is increasingly likely to censor movies that dwell on ugly aspects of China’s past, as these atrocities make the Communist Party look bad. Indeed Zhang Yimou’s new film may have been recently blocked not so much for its message, but rather the possibility that the film was so good that the message might receive widespread acclaim:
Instead, the acclaimed Chinese director has suffered the perverse fate of seeing his new film — the achingly personal period drama One Second — withheld from contention precisely because it is reputed to be so good that it might take home multiple awards, something the Chinese government is said to very much not want. . . .
Subsequent discussions with regulators have encouraged the One Second team that permission for a theatrical release within China will ultimately be granted. But it’s become clear to them that taking the film to a high-profile festival abroad is officially unwelcome. Should a director of Zhang’s stature win major awards for a film with One Second‘s themes, international media attention would be cast back on China’s officially suppressed history — this is suspected to be the authorities’ line of reasoning. Propaganda Department officials may have been sufficiently concerned by this possibility in Berlin that they resorted to the drastic step of yanking the film at the last minute via an unconventional mechanism.
The key phrase word is ‘suppressed history’, not “denied history”. The Chinese Communist Party does not obsessively try to prevent every unpleasant “secret” from being accessible to the Chinese people. Rather they try to flood the media with pleasant truths and pleasant lies.
Of course this is also true to some extent in democratic countries. The difference here is that we still have lots of major independent media outlets that are easily accessible—outlets that are critical of whatever party is in power. This also explains why we should be concerned when democratically elected governments try to monopolize the commercial media:
Hundreds of private Hungarian news outlets have been simultaneously donated by their owners to a central holding company run by people close to the far-right prime minister Viktor Orban, cementing Mr. Orban’s grip on the Hungarian news media.
If approved by the country’s regulatory authorities, which are led by an official appointed by Mr. Orban, the deal will place most leading private Hungarian outlets under the control of a single, state-friendly entity, in a move that is unprecedented within the European Union, according to Freedom House, a global rights watchdog that analyzes press freedom.
It is the latest broadside against pluralism under the increasingly autocratic Mr. Orban. Since taking power in 2010, he has steadily chipped away at Hungary’s checks and balances, stacking the Constitutional Court with loyalists, reshaping the electoral system to favor his party and placing dozens of watchdog institutions — including the judiciary and prosecution service — under the leadership of his allies.
Press freedom is not all or nothing; it’s a matter of degree. Even in America we censor commercial speech, such as cigarette commercials.
PS. Speaking of Zhongnanhai, that’s also the name of a popular cigarette brand in China. The Chinese rock group Carsick Cars have a song entitled Zhongnanhai, with a very infectious hook. Beijing University finance professor (and blogger) Michael Pettis (one of the coolest people I’ve ever met) was instrumental in discovering and developing the Carsick Cars. They once toured with Sonic Youth, which might give you some idea of their musical style.
Artists in authoritarian countries become very adept at making points indirectly.
PPS: I hope I don’t get this Beijing bookstore into trouble.
READER COMMENTS
Warren Platts
Sep 21 2019 at 4:06pm
Pettis: the one economist who understands how the global system works..
Brent Buckner
Sep 22 2019 at 2:28pm
I’m not so sure that in 2011 Michael Pettis was more prescient than many others, which leads me to doubt that he is the one who currently understands how the global system works. (c.f. https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/45483 )
Oleg
Sep 21 2019 at 4:16pm
“But literally hundreds of millions of Chinese still recall these events, and any Chinese person could simply ask an older relative what happened.”
How would they know to ask? Also, what can their older relatives tell them beyond their own experience? What’s horrifying about those events beyond what individuals personally experienced was their scale.
Scott Sumner
Sep 21 2019 at 6:30pm
I can assure you that older Chinese people are well aware of the scale of these events, at least the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square. Perhaps there’s less understanding of the scale of the Great Leap Forward.
Oleg
Sep 21 2019 at 11:10pm
That may be, but your qualification regarding the Great Leap Forward kind of makes my point. I wonder what the public perception of Nazism in Germany today might be without the openness towards the study and teaching of this history, particularly among those not old enough to remember it.
Scott Sumner
Sep 22 2019 at 5:52pm
I think you misunderstood my point. I’m not saying the propaganda and censorship has no effect; it does help to shape perceptions. But not because it keeps things secret.
Oleg
Sep 22 2019 at 11:36pm
I see it. However, I’m not sure what important distinction is to be drawn between “secret” (which I presume means completely unknown) and “known” in some sense (e.g. that particular event “x” happened) but presented in such a distorted manner that a prevailing belief about it is created – say, for example, about the Great Leap Forward – that bears no correspondence to the historical reality. In one case “x” is completely obscure, in another the things you believe about “x” have no, or very little, relationship to reality. If “x” isn’t truly “secret” in the latter case, it might as well be.
Lorenzo from Oz
Sep 21 2019 at 10:14pm
Yes. My thinking on this was greatly aided by reading the work of Xavier Marquez, who runs the Abandoned Footnotes blog.
Why do totalitarian countries run elections? Because they are rituals of dominance. People take part in the ritual of acceptance which expresses their ruler’s dominance in a way congruent with the pretty lies of dominance (starting with the label “People’s Republic”).
Armed services and prisons have pervasive rituals which express the hierarchy of dominance that runs them.
Marquez argues that “legitimacy” makes sense as a normative concept, but not as a positivist-analytical one for reasons that fit in nicely with Timur Kuran’s preference falsification analysis. If the rulers can block public signalling of dissatisfaction and get people to accept the rituals of dominance and acceptance, it’s a win and all they need. An ostentatious pattern of elevation of supporting pretty lies dominating any other public discourse does that nicely.
Mark Z
Sep 22 2019 at 2:30am
Many voters actually like totalitarian regimes. Of course once in power they’ll try to tilt the field in their favor, but they often get to that point by being propelled by the will of many or even most of the voting public.
Maybe governments engage in inefficacious censorship in part because large segments of the public want it? They don’t like the idea of their country being insulted. Blasphemy laws aren’t necessarily just for the sake of the Church, but also the pious masses.
Jon Murphy
Sep 22 2019 at 9:43am
So, here’s a question I have about a lot of these discussions and totalitarian behaviors:
If I may borrow a quote from The Simpsons: “It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen.”
My question is: why do people listen to these lies? Some of them are so completely absurd, especially when it comes to cults of personality, it makes me wonder how anyone can accept them.
Phil H
Sep 22 2019 at 10:01am
Jon, I’ll hazard an answer to this, though of course I’m no expert. I live in China, and part of the reason is that living here feels awesome, particularly compared to my native Britain. Almost everyone believes that their lives are getting better, and will be better in the future. Everyone’s got a scheme to get rich. Everyone feels a bit smug about how much better China obviously is than the rest of the world (that one can be mildly irritating for an expat, but very few are oafish about it).
Just recently, excoriating the Hong Kong protesters for their obvious silliness has been so *satisfying* to the middle class Chinese people I know… whereas looking the negatives in the face is hard. Just look at the rows over Confederate heritage in America.
Jon Murphy
Sep 22 2019 at 12:19pm
That’s a good point.
For certain groups, I’d say that’s true, but for the majority, I’d disagree. What I am about to say comes from my own personal experience, so take it for what it is worth.
I volunteer at the Manassas National Battlefield in Virginia doing living history events. That means I dress up in the Union blues and Confederate grays and demonstrate what life was like on those fateful days in 1861 and 1863 (we do not do re-enactments, but we do artillery and rifle demonstrations coupled with encampments).
The group I am with, mostly amateur historians (I’m the only one in academia, and even then I am an economist) and I generally do not like the removal of Confederate statues from the parks. For better or for worse, these are historical monuments. I think by destroying or removing them, we lose the ability to study the war from their perspective, which can lead to misunderstandings about the war.
Further, these studies should be done in stark detail. Look at slavery and the brutality of the South. But also look at the brutality of the North during the war: Sherman’s March to the Sea, the occupation of New Orleans (where rape by federal troops of women out past curfew was not only legalized but encouraged), the Seige of Vicksburg, etc.
You take the good with the bad. You get your Lost Causers with your historians.
All this was a long way of saying that believing comforting lies is not the only story viz. the confederate rows (btw, I love that phrasing).
Scott Sumner
Sep 22 2019 at 5:58pm
Phil, You said:
“Everyone feels a bit smug about how much better China obviously is than the rest of the world (that one can be mildly irritating for an expat, but very few are oafish about it).”
This is a wildly inaccurate statement, based on many conversations I had with Chinese people. The Chinese often have a view that foreign places and things are much better. The air is clearer overseas, the food isn’t as tainted, the products are better quality, the service is better, the single family homes are nicer, the universities are better, the hospitals are better. I could go on and on. I really don’t know what you are talking about. Maybe they think their infrastructure is better than in the US, but that’s about it.
Phil H
Sep 22 2019 at 8:44pm
Thanks, both.
Jon – on how to remember the Confederacy… I mean, OK… but I think that’s quite a stretch. Using public monuments as part of a nuanced analysis of the evils of war is, I would hazard, not really the way most people think about them. The first-level, basic understanding of a public monument is that it celebrates what’s good in our heritage, right? And I don’t think that anyone should persuade themselves that a group that literally fights to the death to own slaves is “what’s good” in America’s heritage. You can call my reasoning simplistic, but that’s kinda the point. Public celebrations of heritage generally aren’t nuanced.
Scott – on the superiority/inferiority of China. Sure, of course there is plenty of public recognition that living standards on average are higher in other countries. But I live in a wealthy 2nd tier city on the coast (Xiamen), and middle class lifestyles here are not really inferior to middle class lifestyles in Western Europe. That stark sense of the gap in living standards is gone. Since the melamine scandal ten years ago, things have really changed. The hospitals have improved, the housing stock has improved (all that building means there are lots of places to live now!) So on a gross lifestyle level, the coastal elite are not really feeling that gap – and in the last couple of years, the evident quality of Chinas rail network and the futuristic feel of WeChat have reinforced the sense of progress. In these areas, China may even be ahead.
More importantly, China has momentum on its side. The rhetoric tells them that the Chinese “nation” is being “revitalized” (those pretty lies that Caplan wrote about); if rising China is like this, then what will a fully risen China look like?
This last point is surely correct. In 30 years’ time, China will almost inevitably have the world’s largest economy, by a very significant stretch. For a country that has spent more than a generation assiduously chasing GDP, that feels important! And China will be militarily much more significant than it currently is. (Personally I suspect the military balance in the western Pacific will have to change.) So while there are indeed many areas in which life in China is not as good as life in the developed west, a lot of people around me are starting to feel that China may be more likely to deliver improvements in their life than any other country.
These are the sentiments that I (sometimes) hear expressed. Not by all: my “everyone” was an exaggeration. But in certain circles.
Jon Murphy
Sep 22 2019 at 10:12pm
I agree. Which is why I think it is a good conversation starter.
Dylan
Sep 23 2019 at 10:03am
I was at XMU in Xiamen last year for a couple of weeks, and FWIW, my assessment of the opinions of the “typical” upper middle-class Chinese people that I have had the opportunity to get to know well, has been one of Chinese superiority. They are polite when expressing this sentiment, but it definitely comes across. A couple of my close friends are appreciative of the level of freedom that Western democracies have, but that seemed a minority viewpoint by far (although I’ll admit this is something difficult to judge, since people do tend to self-censor their viewpoints in public, and only open up more in private conversations). But, on any individual comparison between a Chinese company and a U.S. based one, the feeling was that the U.S. was just light years behind. WeChat definitely stands out, but also T-Mall over Amazon, delivery services where you can get almost anything you want delivered within an hour for very little money. Then there are of course things like infrastructure, cleanliness of the cities, quality of the food, public safety, etc.
Scott Sumner
Sep 23 2019 at 1:14pm
Dylan, I think you are mixing up two issues. The Chinese do tend to view some aspects of their culture as being superior to the US. Students study harder, workers work harder, there’s less crime, etc. But they also realize that China’s much poorer, more corrupt, more polluted, etc., as compared to the US. The SOEs are appallingly inefficient. Most people I talk to in China believe American living standards are vastly higher than in China—and they are correct!
It is not uncommon for pregnant Chinese women to come over here to give birth, just so their child will have American citizenship. Does that happen in the reverse direction, even among ethnic Chinese Americans?
Dylan
Sep 23 2019 at 4:45pm
Scott,
That’s a funny question that you ask about giving birth. I had two Chinese colleagues I worked with about a decade ago, and both of their wives returned to China shortly before giving birth, partly I believe because they didn’t want their children to be U.S. citizens.
For the rest, I think you’re right to an extent. The Chinese people that I’m friends with certainly would acknowledge that there are many things wrong with China, but I was commenting on that sense of smugness that Phil observed. That felt right on to me, and something that I’ve not seen from other emerging countries that I’ve visited. Indians, for example, tend to hate and are embarrassed by movies like Slumdog Millionaire, that show a less polished version of their society than what you would see in a typical Bollywood picture…but that’s because they realize the living standards are so much worse than in the west, and they are excited when western companies come to India.
China was totally different in the short time I was there. Now mind you, Xiamen is a fairly wealthy resort area, but the people I visited who were upper middle class types, all lived in much nicer places than my apartment in New York, drove very expensive cars, and seemed to enjoy a very high standard of living, so much so that I was the one embarrassed when they visited me in my home. All of the Chinese people commented on how dirty and smelly the U.S. was, and they were shocked to see so much poverty and homelessness in cities like Washington D.C. They loved Europe though.
Scott Sumner
Sep 23 2019 at 1:18pm
Phil, I don’t feel we are that far apart. Living standards have improved dramatically almost everywhere in China. You said China will have the world’s largest economy in 30 years—actually it’s already the largest in PPP terms.
I’d still say that living standards in Beijing are well behind the US–maybe 1/2 to 2/3 in PPP terms. But that’s better than 1/10th, which was the case a few decades back!
Mark
Sep 22 2019 at 11:23pm
One theory I have heard is that China is more likely to censor materials intended for a mass audience (such as movies and Internet posts), compared to materials intended for a more high-brow audience (such as books). I was surprised when reading the Chinese science-fiction book Three Body Problem, as that book portrays the Cultural Revolution as so traumatizing that it caused one of the protagonists to want to destroy the human species, yet it was nonetheless published in China and popular worldwide. Perhaps there is a bit of old Confucian paternalism at work here; intellectuals can be trusted to tell “right” from “wrong”, but the masses must not be exposed to “bad” influences.
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