Xiao Jianhua Didn't Read Between The Lines. Maybe Others Should Stop Too.

Chinese billionaire Xiao Jinhua [肖健华] is missing.

Despite numerous news reports to the contrary, that’s pretty much all anyone outside the State authorities here really knows.

Xiao Jinhua is a high-profile executive, reclusive in one sense (at least where he lives and how he’s protected) and, like so many people of means here in China, the holder of multiple passports. Some early accounts in Hong Kong even indicated that he was simply overseas, possibly undergoing a medical procedure of some sort.

Today the New York Times presents an account of how they think Xiao left his residence: in a wheelchair, under a blanket or covering of some sort, escorted by individuals who may well have been security agents from the mainland. That story reinforces the growing sense that Xiao was rendered back to the Chinese mainland for investigation (including interrogation), much like a number of Hong Kong booksellers whose publications apparently riled political authorities in Beijing.

All of that is both fascinating and disturbing. But what it means in terms of political import isn’t at all evident. Some have speculated that Xiao’s abduction is a sign of a deepening power struggle in the run-up to this year’s 19^th Party Congress; that Chinese president Xi Jinping is attempting to cement total authority, possibly extend his tenure past the usual and legally-proscribed two terms; and that Xiao is “a pawn” in what it either an effort to discredit Xi’s rivals, or possibly an attempt to embarrass Xi himself, given alleged financial ties between his family and Xiao. Maybe, but then again perhaps nothing of the sort.

There’s a lot of fine investigative reporting that’s already been done on Xiao and his disappearance. No one really knows why Xiao was taken back to the mainland; the fact that it mirrors the snatching of Hong Kong booksellers might indicate—might indicate—that Xiao managed to anger some powerful people in Beijing about what he knew and with whom he might share it with. There may well be more to follow in the coming days about the kidnapping or disappearance (whichever it is, and there’s a difference), which could be helpful in determining just what’s going on with Xiao and what it all might mean. At this point—nothing about any political motive is clear, and everything connected to that is conjecture, guesswork, and gossip.

What’s also less than helpful—indeed, debilitating--is the assumption that there’s enough information available now to label the incident a move by Xi and his allies to work some sort of political magic for themselves. The Establishment Narrative when it comes to elite politics is that Chinese leaders struggle for power; that apparently they don't have enough of it already (even though conceptions of “power” slip-slide between status, authority, influence, domination, and everything in-between); and that pretty much everything that happens in China’s upper echelons is about one faction trying to subvert another to preserve positions.

Yet at the same time, the same Narrative intones that the process of political succession in China is more institutionalized, more predictable, less violent than before—that really what goes on beyond closed doors in Beijing isn’t all that unlike which happens in the great wide and often white open of Washington.

But Chinese politics cannot possibly be both—on the one hand, a vicious political cage-match; and on the other, negotiated by consensus in a conference room.

Indeed, it’s unfortunate, unfair and unhelpful to describe Chinese elites are motivated by just more of what they really have, and that every move they make is done to protect their political flanks and their families. That’s an inane caricature, one that’s very nearly colonial in character: It renders Chinese politics as so different, so Other to be less serious than politics elsewhere--to use “renders” in pretty much the same way as it’s traditionally presented, as “abducted”. What’s often missing is an attempt to cast Chinese politics, when it is a struggle, as a struggle for power over policy, over the direction of the political system, China’s economy, military doctrine, and the like, replete with debates and arguments about the same that demand attention, not dismissal every time a high-profile event intrudes. Anyone conversant with the Party media here should know that and be cautious about concluding what’s going on with Xiao, but perhaps it’s easier for some to just plug in the microphone jack and pontificate, rather than pause and ponder for a bit.

There’s almost certainly a larger story here, but at this moment, it’s opaque at best, and should be labeled as such. The only thing that's truly clear is that no one saw Xiao Jianhua’s disappearance coming, which says as much about the way Chinese politics is presented by far too many observers as the purported abduction itself. Each is disturbing in its own unhappy way.

New Year and New Ways Of Moving On

By all rights—or at least government regulations--Chinese New Year holiday should be over. This year, it began officially on January 27^th and is supposed to end on February 2^nd.

Like many things here in China, central regulations mean little to local residents. Beijing’s schedule isn’t theirs.

Some people are already back to work, while a good many others are still somewhere else, making some cities quiet and some towns overflowing with folks. Many citizens, especially the affluent and urban classes (often mistakenly categorized as “middle class”), left early and plan on returning late. Some took holidays here or abroad before the actual Chinese New Year date of January 28^th when they rendezvoused with family in their ancestral hometown, or (increasingly) elsewhere in China and are continuing their time away from work even now.

Why that’s happening isn’t entirely clear but there are some possible explanations. When China was made up primarily of large state-owned companies and conglomerates, rules and traditions were better enforced where holidays were concerned. And since workers at those types of firms tended to be the offspring of previous or present employees, there was social pressure to conform to the norms of obedience lest you cause family members a loss of face by trying to subvert the standards. 

Now, with the rise of e-commerce and entrepreneurship, when companies are smaller, employees are often arranging with co-workers for a schedule that is longer than that bestowed by the government. It’s common to find companies with a handful of employees who’ve just decided to shut down for a month or more, to finally untangle themselves from the tensions of a Chinese economy that often seems to never take a day off.

There’s also been speculation among some observers about how a growing number of Chinese aren’t traveling back to their birthplace or succumbing to social pressure to see their parents, but striking out of their own—which usually means going overseas. That’s certainly been the case for fun and discovery, as well as reconnecting with family members who have emigrated.

But from a local perspective it’s remarkable how many Chinese this New Year have decided to use the car they purchased for commuting to work and the extended family piling in simply to explore other parts of China. This year, it’s been common to see cars from far-off provinces in various localities, perhaps for just a day or two, sometimes for an extended stay. Retailers and renters welcomed this influx of outsiders but for more than a few, it was just another headache during the holiday. In some cities in Jiangsu, traffic police bemoaned the proliferation of outsiders with no experience driving in urban settings, showing up and thinking regulations couldn’t possibly apply to them because they were on holiday and shouldn’t be expected to be familiar with such matters as restricted bus lanes and private parking. Some residents in Nanjing were stunned to find that their allocated parking space in their compound was filled with someone else’s vehicle—a relative of a resident, say, who decided to leave it there while the family and relations or friends went away to Europe for a few weeks. As with so much of other types of social conduct in China, permission isn't often part of one’s personal portfolio--especially when it came to exercising one’s ability to drive.

And then there’s the local impact of so many people simply departing, closing up shop (literally), and not always leaving reliable word as to when they’re coming back—or if they actually are planning to return. Some do, of course; but even when a well-meaning merchant or service worker wants to get back to business, the transport network and ticket system—vastly improved though they both are—might fail them. Promises to reopen by a given date can’t always be kept, no matter the fine intentions of a printed notice. 

And because every Chinese New Year brings change, in particular to many small vendors, there are landlords who look for new tenants in the wake of an expired lease, and tenants seek a new start or are forced to make one in another place for various reasons. The many closed and locked doors of restaurants, small retailers, and market stalls might represent just a few well-deserved weeks away from the daily grind for some, or they may well signal a more permanent evacuation by the previous occupants. Because customers in local China focus on reliability, the relations that vendors have forged in previous months are in jeopardy when residents don't know when a place and person they’ve grown to trust will be seen again. 

That may seem like a small matter in a big country, but in local China, everything seems large.

It’s surely nice for some to have exercised some new options, and to make a new start with the new year. For others here in Local China, the new uncertainties that are produced by all this change may not be worth celebrating.

When Did Some Students in Beijing Start Being Indicators of Political Sentiment in China?

There’s an interesting essay at the China File website entitled, “Why’s Beijing So Worried About Western Values Infecting China’s Youth?” by Eric Fish. Fish’s own book on China’s millennials is seen by many in the China-Watching Establishment as a shrewd analysis of China’s young and potentially activist generation, possibly in part because it supports the notion that the next cohort may well bring about the sort of change in China that many of these observers want to believe in.

Fish’s take in the present essay seems to strike the same positive chord for some: That China’s current leadership is anxious enough about the prospect of youth rising up in political resentment here that authorities have assembled a set of draconian measures to control the classroom, specifically Western influence at universities and elsewhere. Surveys taken of students here, according to Fish, indicate that many Chinese youth are favorably disposed towards democracy as well as for what passes for American culture, so Chinese leaders are right to be uneasy.

But there are ample reasons to wonder about this interpretation of China’s youth, as well as the assumption that Beijing is “worried”.

The article cites three surveys of Chinese students--in 2007, 2009 and 2011. It’s not at all clear how relevant these surveys are to China’s current youth, especially since they are somewhat dated and they’re about students, not other sectors of youth. Another analysis that Fish refers to was recently published (in 2016,) but it’s not clear when the survey was conducted (the original article doesn’t say) and, in any event, the total number of interviewees was 29--all of whom said that they were already viewers of various American television series. How fans of, say, Friends are more likely to evolve into an anti-government political force isn’t explained, but it appears to have been assumed that if you harbor such tastes you’re likely to dislike China’s current leaders.

In fact, when Fish’s article refers to “China’s youth”, what’s really being talked about are some students at some Chinese universities—almost always in Beijing, which means the better endowed and established schools, where it’s often the children of elites and the well-placed who go to get credentialed instead of intellectually enlightened.

Fish also cites an article by University of Southern California Professor Stanley Rosen, noting that, according to Fish, shows deep concern on the part of Chinese officials with the attraction of Western culture for China’s young, drew on “surveys conducted for internal government use never released to the public due to political sensitivity, which [Rosen] accessed through contacts in government-affiliated think tanks.”

But while Rosen’s article is more nuanced (noting for example that there are many foreign influences on China’s youth, not just American ones—such as Korean pop idols), there’s reason to wonder about the inference that it’s especially authoritative because it relies on an internal study (or perhaps more than one) of youth attitudes by Chinese government departments and institutes. If there were staff at one of these think-tanks who allowed a foreign scholar to see the study (or at least shared its findings), they were taking an enormous risk doing so—and it’s not immediately apparent why they’d do that. It’s rare to find such risk-taking in think-tanks here in China, especially given the supervision the analysts there live under simply because they are one of the main contacts for foreign scholars and are government organizations, not private ones. Maybe they were particularly courageous--or perhaps the level of classification wasn’t all that high, making the findings perhaps less compelling than what’s implied in Fish’s article. It's tough to tell, and so caution is probably called for here, too.

In short, there are reasonable questions that should be raised about validity and reliability in this regard, especially when efforts are made to extrapolate this limited data to a more general universe—say, employed youth, young laborers still looking for work, and so on, without distinction of gender or location either. If one is speaking of Chinese students in select universities in Beijing and some of their attitudes about American culture, maybe that says something about them specifically. But the claims made in the Fish article are more far-reaching than that, the inferences even more so.

Finally, there’s the Chinese government view as presented in Fish’s essay. As with many commentaries about China under Xi Jinping, the essay speaks of “China’s leaders”—a category that evidently encompasses the entire Chinese Communist party as well as the government apparatus, without any reference to differences of opinion or debate between political elites. As a whole, we’re informed, China’s leaders are frightened, anxious, concerned, worried—the terms may differ but the sentiment seems the same: They’re scared of society. And it’s “them” here: The possibility that some Chinese political elites might well be not all that anxious about youth attitudes (whatever those are) or have other points of view apparently isn’t possible, or at least it’s not even raised.

For evidence of this anxiety, Fish’s article points to Xi Jinping’s recent speech on ideology and political instruction in China’s universities, and an editorial by the current Minister of Education Chen Baosheng [陈宝生], that immediately followed Xi’s address.

Both are important indicators of sentiment in Beijing, but neither pronouncement necessarily indicates a heightened fear in the corridors of power here.

In fact, Xi’s speech, while talking extensively about universities, is actually a part of a larger campaign focused on cadres and how they’re managing not to do a very good job managing the Party’s impact generally and the need to step up. (Fish’s article helpfully provides a link to the official summary of the speech in English, but the actual speech as reprinted in People’s Daily is far more revealing and should have been relied on.) Xi makes no direct mention in his speech of threats from the West, only the need to build up socialism. That's a critical point, and unsurprising really: The threat Xi sees isn’t from Westernization per se but a failure within the Party to protect socialism from neglect so that Western influences can be deflected or absorbed appropriately. That’s where Xi’s focus is—protecting the Party against itself, not fighting off social threats from students who are watching foreign television or hearing about the odd international perspective from their professors. (Left unmentioned in Fish's essay is the desultory attitude that many instructors here take towards their classes and students.)

The editorial from Minister Chen that Fish cites has a somewhat different take—indicating again that there are important distinctions to be made where the actual views of China’s decision-makers are concerned. The headline of the Sina.com news site does emphasize the efforts by hostile forces to penetrate Chinese campuses, but the editorial is actually devoted to explaining in Marxist language how knowledge is acquired and should be conveyed. So it's not an attack on foreign influence as its central theme. This isn't a leading Chinese elite lashing out at the West and worried to death, but a high-level bureaucrat instructing his charges not to neglect Party values. Chen may see insidiousness on the part of some outsiders, but in this essay at least, he’s really speaking to the inattention of education administrators and internal shortcomings, not some all-out assault by Westerners, which is what's implied in Fish's articles.

Most importantly, it’s not at all clear how anyone can truly discern anxiety or fright among China’s leaders. Indeed, it’s apparent in actual conversations with many officials (not only local cadres) that their concerns are often other than what some observers abroad insist that they must be, and that they’re pretty confident in their own capabilities. Maybe China’s elites are wrong to be anything but scared stiff, but how anyone can tell without actually asking them (or at least reading what they actually said and wrote with particular care) remains as much a mystery as how some students based primarily in Beijing suddenly represent China’s political future.

What A Difference A Davos Makes--Except in Local China

What a difference a Davos makes.

Until yesterday, China’s President Xi Jinping was cast by many in the international media as a Mao Wannabe: Someone interested primarily in political supremacy at home, locking up lawyers and political activists and cleaning up the Communist Party, while pursuing an assertive policy of projecting Chinese power abroad. Xi was in command, looking to possibly extend his tenure. All of that had been quite disturbing to many observers outside China (that is, when they weren’t talking about his “challenges” and how any day now—any day now—there would be a backlash from society that would threaten Party rule)[1].

Suddenly, following his lengthy speech at Davos, Xi’s become to many the Great Global Stabilizer, interested in securing trade, opening economic frontiers, expanding commercial cooperation—in a word, what’s been known by many outside China for decades as “globalization”—a term that Xi was careful to qualify by speaking of “economic globalization” [经济全球化]—namely, untrammeled trade for China though not open borders where outside ideas from other societies are allowed free rein. Nonetheless, for a world terrified by the election of Donald Trump as the next American president, Xi and his speech are being cast as a vote of confidence in the existing world order.

Local residents and local Chinese companies here don’t quite understand what the fuss is all about. Their views are varied to be sure; yet more than a few, even in affluent provinces, are anxious about their own economic futures. Many see Beijing as having been very good at bringing benefits to a narrow elite (what Marxists used to call the “comprador class”), while not caring all that much for small businesses and entrepreneurs trying to break into markets, local and otherwise. Some residents see the factory floors and offices in large industrial parks and innovation hubs under construction as already reserved for the well-connected and the well-heeled, with little prospect for themselves. They understand that when Xi is talking about “globalization”, he’s referring to globalization with Chinese characteristics. When Xi praises the status quo, he’s signaling that China is relatively satisfied with its position—and that citizens and local officials should follow suit.

Not everyone here will be persuaded. Many locals here wonder when their children will get to study abroad like their classmates who can afford private tutoring; when their prospects and the small business they’re trying to run will be as good as those who they see as politically-connected, tied into the local power structure where the government still dominates the market. Of course, there’s growing entrepreneurship. But while Alibaba might be seen as a sign of China’s innovative spirit by many observers overseas, for more than a few residents here, Taobao is a place to buy goods cheaply, not a platform to expand their business and grow their income and place in Chinese society.

There’s also a political context to this sort of local unease. Websites and social media extolling Chinese pride (and the need to keep foreign goods at bay) often stoke local sentiment of being sidelined by economic policies which may play well inside China’s beltways but have little impact on the country’s many counties. China’s conservative intellectuals do have a stronger presence here that they usually given credit for, and Xi and his like-minded comrades haven’t been very interested in countering their narrative of a country that’s been shortchanged by foreign forces and foreign companies. Xenophobia is far easier to tap into here in China than it is in the United States.

None of the local disquiet that does exist means that social revolution is simmering; that farmers will be aligning with students and “China’s new generation” (whatever that means this week) to challenge Communist party rule. Nor is the opposite suddenly true here: That Beijing’s rule is especially robust and getting stronger, squeezing out the last breaths of a suffocating civil society and dictating local policies without pushback. Both scenarios are absurd, written from far, far away in what could be another galaxy entirely. For many here in China, Xi's vision is sound and it's secure.

At the same time, what Xi’s speech does connote is very much business as usual for Local China. For the well-positioned in China’s beltways and beyond, that’s delightful news. For the rest, it’s really no news at all. Davos to them makes no difference.

---

[1] It says quite a great deal about the bizarre nature of many analyses about China and politics here that these two very different views—that Xi’s in charge and that Xi’s in trouble-- often coexist, sometimes from the same commentators within a very brief time frame.