In Nanjing, Stability Suddenly Slides Back In

China’s Communist Party will hold its 19^th Party Congress later this year—an event where a major power struggle will occur and Chairman Xi Jinping will emerge with even greater authority (and possible longer tenure) than he enjoys presently.

Well, that’s at least according to the Establishment Narrative, which portrays Chinese politics as a cage-match, where all leaders are basically back-stabbers and spend all their time wrestling for even more influence than they already enjoy, neglecting policy in preparation for the main event.

But matters outside China’s Beltway show the situation to be otherwise.

What concerns local officials here in Jiangsu isn’t the event but the run-up. At least that’s what they’re talking about this month—ensuring a stable social environment while Party leaders try to decide the agenda at the 19^th Congress (and even when it will be held).

This emphasis on upholding social stability [维护社会安全稳定] that’s appeared in various forms in major Party media in recent days here is an interesting one. Nanjing government has only rarely used the term “stability” in recent years, and was even reluctant to mention it as a governing concept during demonstrations in 2011 and with other protests more recently. The local political apparatus is built for hearing complaints, soliciting input, and working political networks that rely on the longevity of families, friends, and residents who remain rather familiar with each other. The city is suffused with normal.

So this sudden focus on social stability is an awkward one for more than a few local officials here, simply because it's not been an ongoing concern.

The result is a whole raft of purportedly critical tasks out of Beijing that Nanjing authorities are now going to have to get going on.

For example, on August 19^th, high-level representatives from Jiangsu provincial government met to emphasize the need for Nanjing officials to “strongly pursue investigations of hidden dangers and to settle any social contradictions [they find]”[扎实推动隐患排查和矛盾化解]. Jiangsu Party Secretary Zhang Jinghua [张敬华], alluding to the Party Congress, stated that 2017 is “a year with special meaning and significance” [特殊重要意义的一年] and therefore so is the political responsibility of party cadres and government officials to focus on “safeguarding safety and stability [维护安全稳定作为].” Reform and development—that is change and growth as defined by Nanjing officials--remain crucial, Zhang acknowledged, but they can only be safeguarded [保障] if local political cadres work diligently to prevent major safety accidents, guard against mass incidents, and prevent petitioners from airing their grievances publicly [坚决守住不发生重大公共安全事件、不发生重特大安全生产事故、不发生重大群体性上访事件的底线]. This is Zhang trying to convince cadres that those tasks are now primary—“the first order of business” [“一把手工程”], as he insisted.

The objective of this effort, according to Zhang, is “to resolutely prevent chaos, [and to do so] by diagnosing what’s causing the turmoil” [坚决防止乱投医、乱拍板留下后遗症]. That means that Nanjing officials need to expand on what have become known here as “big visits” [大走访活动]—going to the grassroots, and look to investigate local disputes and prevent those from leading to large disruptions. 

But that's what local representatives have been doing for some weeks now, so to do more of that--that's easy, but has to strike some as perhaps unnecessary.

Indeed, if all that were straightforward and easily absorbed and implemented by the local authorities, there'd have been no need for Nanjing mayor Miao Ruilin [缪瑞林] to continue the same theme of preserving social stability less than a week later in an address to local officials. But it wasn’t any of those things; which is why Miao had to step forward and push the issue.

“Without security, there’s simply nothing” [没有安全就没有一切], Miao insisted, and told attendees that apart from preventing unrest, they needed to guarantee the “Three No Occurrences” [“三个不发生”]. That’s a set of events that must not happen, as defined by the region and organization (e.g., a local government authority making sure traffic disruptions do not occur). Miao didn't provide what that list is for Nanjing specifically, and so it’s likely still under discussion[1]. It's Beijing's template, not Nanjing's, and so it's not easy to simply get going with.

Miao’s comments as carried in news accounts also made it clear that the city was still having trouble coordinating various departments and getting officials to focus on stability as “the overriding political task” [压倒一切的政治任务]. Mentioning the importance of synchronizing responsibilities is always a sign that’s not been happening and that someone needs to be reminded.

Given Nanjing’s unfamiliarity with having to repress social disagreement, it’s not shocking that departments and agencies don't know whom to talk with.

Still, what's the problem?

Well, what concerns central-level officials aren’t common protesters,[2] but comrade politicians—people like Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, who saw themselves losing political battles in Beijing and would have turned to the street to try to mobilize support if they hadn’t been seized and their networks rolled up. Apparently, some high-level officials who see themselves on the losing end of policy debates in the run-up to the Party Congress could seek to trigger or at least take advantage of local disturbances. The directive being pushed at Nanjing is to get officials here to prevent social unrest because Beijing believes that losers might seek to spark troubles if they’re about to be sidelined. Nanjing's being shoved to implement isn’t aimed at unrest for local reasons; it's being pressed to prepare for instability that might be engineered from above.

Yes, the Party Congress will be crucial, but for rather different reasons than are being asserted all too often. Just as important, it's far from a done deal. That at least one local government is preparing for the possibility of political unpleasantness should give even further pause for wondering how the next few months are going to go.

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[1] One further sign of the contention is that there’s a rather different portrayal of Zhang’s speech provided here, one that emphasizes social governance as a means to stability—which sounds an awful lot like continuing what’s been working for Nanjing: http://news.163.com/17/0817/06/CS18L2KK000187VI.html

[2] The Establishment Narrative portrays Beijing as being terrified of instability, scared about dissidents, lawyers, activists who look to transform anger into organized opposition aimed at overthrowing the Party. But the local reality for many officials is very different. In China, protests are dealt with locally, and authorities have proven to be far more creative and resilient in coping with unrest than those looking to foment it. When there has been resistance, it’s been limited, local and almost always unaffiliated with activists or social organizers. The lone rebel is aesthetically attractive to many who report on China; but such activists make a minor footprint or two while the Party pursues its own path and isn’t afraid or incapable of running down those blocking the road. Unfortunately, too many stories turn what are essentially tales of just power into stories of justice denied. That's emotionally satisfying for some, but ultimately unrevealing and quite misleading.

Who Gets to Drive And Park Public Policy in China?

How and where in Nanjing you should park your car is a trifling but telling story of public policy in contemporary China.

In 2011, Nanjing had 990,710 registered cars. By the end of 2016, the city had 2.2 million passenger vehicles.

Traffic flow is one problem, but parking is a larger one. For many residents, it’s not how fast you go but where you end up in Nanjing that’s the daily test. The city is adding new parking spaces and requisitioning old ones, but beyond a general sense that more slots and structures are needed—and neighborhood initiatives for specific streets undertaken—sentiment is split among local officials about how best to meet this challenge.

There are The Enablers: the same sort of Modernising Reformers pushing the age-old Chinese effort at change through scientific innovation. These days, it’s the notion that more sophisticated technology can be used to inform and guide public policy. Science may or may not save China, but this camp sees it as an essential problem-solver.

For example, many local governments in China are utilizing new technologies for data collection. For many observers, that means using “Big Data” for assembling social credit scores to more closely monitor citizens and their conduct. But as local officials see matters, they need data simply to know more about the society they’re supposed to be governing and to create options for managing it. Nanjing had been employing information to gain a clearer sense of traffic problems--for example identifying the likely travel routes taken by drunk drivers), and tracking pedestrian traffic at local shopping malls, among other initiatives.

In the case of parking challenges in Nanjing, according to this school of thinking, Big Data can identify traffic patterns and the supply-and-demand situation about parking, eventually pass that information in real-time to drivers looking for parking spaces, and, in the interim, look at ways to construct better venues for parking.

As with other Chinese cities, more than a few of these measures go well beyond experiments: Publicly available documents[1] make it clear that Enablers have been successful at kick-starting programs of data collection that are producing new policies. While for many observers these efforts are invasive and Orwellian, for local officials here, this strategy is simply seen as better social management—a policy path of technocracy combining with autocracy.

Then there are The Disciplinarians: Hardline conservatives who want to manage Chinese society spiritually, whereby the Communist party is the most physical and metaphysical force of and for all.

This group of officials doesn’t rely on innovation; just on the idea that what’s ails Chinese society isn’t a lack of institutional modernization but a dearth of individual moderation.

In their view, the solution is civilizing citizens. And to do that, it’s necessary to shame the misbehaving ones.

To that end where parking is concerned, Nanjing Daily [南京日报] frequently publishes photos taken of violators—vehicles parked illegally or blocking traffic. It’s a throwback to the campaigns of old, which sought to identify transgressors of various shapes and sizes, depending on the political season.

The Disciplinarians aren’t naïve or Neanderthals: They know that technology has its place in Postmodern China. They just believe that The State, not Science, should dominate. It's public policy by enforcement, powered by ideology.

So this is a contest--between reformers who believe that nation-building here is best done by taking advantage of progress already made and making the system smarter, versus conservatives who think that further advancement will only come with tighter controls and instilling a deeper sense of awe for the power of the State. The lean towards Big Data is a move both support, but for very different reasons. The former sees it as making public policy sharper; the latter likes it as a blunt instrument to bludgeon those who disobey.

What’s true for Nanjing is true for China generally, and who wins the battle here for what sort of public policy gets adopted will both affect and reflect politics at higher levels. In China, it’s not only where you end up; it’s who gets to drive there.

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[1] An excellent compilation and analysis of many of the social credit initiatives here can be found at http://china-social-credit.com. There’s no better research available in China or abroad on this subject thus far than that done by Dr. Floria Sapio.

Cambridge Stands For Complicity

Chinese authorities have every right to censor content of any sort coming into the country.

Cambridge University Press--the publisher of the academic journal China Quarterly--seems intent on helping them do that.

It’s an interesting and telling story. Sometime in recent weeks, China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT, 国家广播电影电视总局), through the division that oversees the printed imports asked (or demanded or requested—it’s not clear which) Cambridge University Press to remove certain articles and book reviews covering sensitive subjects about China appearing in the academic journal China Quarterly—over 300 in all from the website that the latter maintains in China.[1]

The decision to do so, according to an explanation from the Press, allowed Cambridge to “ensure that other academic and educational materials we publish remain available to researchers and educators in this market.”

That’s what everyone says.

It’s what Google thought when they entered into an agreement with Beijing about restricting search terms, only to end up, after years of caving into an escalating set of demands from authorities, finally shutting down its search engine here and ceasing most operations.[2]

And it’s what other foreign institutions—from companies to nongovernmental organizations to universities--believe will happen: Cooperate a little; be patient and show good faith; and eventually—eventually—Beijing will come around and let you carry on as if China’s just another country.

But China isn’t another country. It’s run from the top-down, a sort of soft totalitarianism in some respects; markedly better at centralizing and controlling than it had been for centuries; and the culture, ethics, morality and methods of operation in China are different. So many people here in PostModern China don’t compete to cooperate, but to conquer.

Chinese officials expect that when any foreign institution cooperates a little that it’s acknowledging that Beijing has a point—a sharp one—and its power and authority will be obeyed. Authorities here believe that when foreigners comply with demands or cooperate with requests, they understand who holds the whip-hand. Bowing down doesn’t set the stage for true friendship, only deeper frustration—and further demands down the road.

That’s probably why so many foreigners think about changing China. 

The naïve ones believe it can be done, usually by them. They don't last long, dashing away when their flight is called, their contract ends, the last call for alcohol is rung.

The smarter and more experienced recognize that the only way to change China is for China to change itself. 

And China is changing itself, of course—but in a deeply conservative direction, with some screeching that the nation is under siege from foreign forces at the very same time it enjoys more and more success. Democracy is a dead letter.

There’s of course the argument made by Cambridge University Press as well as the editor of China Quarterly (who really may want to think of resigning if he really believes what he’s saying is true) that they do believe in the sanctity of intellectual inquiry but need to stifle it because—well, they have no choice.

But they do have choices. And they’re just as good and maybe a lot better than the one they’ve made. More on that further down.

Those who think that Cambridge University Press made the right move have no way of knowing what’s next. For example, what happens when the next article deemed sensitive by SARFT appears in China Quarterly? The Press assures everyone that they “do not, and will not, proactively censor our content,” but they immediately add that they “will only consider blocking individual items (when requested to do so) when the wider availability of content is at risk.”

In other words, they’ve provided SARFT with a seat on their Board of Directors, and a place on the editorial staff of China Quarterly.

And surely SARFT knows that. There are politics at work here in China, with officials vying to be the hardest of the hardliners, now that that’s the Party line for what seems to be some time to come (barring some upheaval at the 19^th Party Congress). SARFT’s move didn’t come out of nowhere; many of these articles have been around for some time. SARFT wants to play an even larger role during President Xi Jinping’s second term, as their moves in recent months have shown, supporting the more general tightening that’s been transpiring.

It’s also possible that SARFT wanted to be part of the recent campaign being pursued by some here to build a social science with Chinese characteristics—that is, by blocking foreign content deemed sensitive, scholars and researchers concentrate on spreading the narrative that Beijing promulgates. As Dr. Mike Gow has pointed out on Twitter, if the new focus is on core socialist values [社会主义核心价值观], then it only makes sense to stiff-arm information from other sources.

In any event, no one gets strong in China these days by being soft. Stifling foreign sources of information and entertainment are an easy way for SARFT to display fealty with the Party leadership and Xi's harder-than-iron line.

And hardly anyone here in China’s provinces will know what happened, or care all that much if they've heard. If there's resistance and anger, it won't be in the streets. More than a few local residents are pleased with the vast improvement in speed and services with the country’s internet, and praise the government’s interest and oversight in containing scams, regulating pornography, and other supervision. If word gets out to the masses what SARFT has done, the narrative will be presented so that many here will applaud and assume it’s all for the good of the nation. There's no hypocrisy locally: Chinese authorities who confronted Cambridge are being straightforward and very smart. It's Others Far Away who are being far less so.

Still it would have been interesting to see Cambridge University Press to take another tack—any other one save the usual obeisance that Beijing has come to expect.

Suppose Cambridge University Press had refused to pull the China Quarterly articles: Would SARFT really have moved to block all of the content Cambridge University Press offer here in China? Or was this bluff—SARFT playing tough, hoping Cambridge would cave so they could then go to work on other publishers? After all, this had to be SARFT and the agents and agencies it works with; this wasn't some monolith with the moniker "China".

Suppose SARFT went ahead and did move to block content after Cambridge refused. What would China’s many professionals and educated have done, especially if the Press had retaliated, sought to ban Chinese scholars (many of whom enjoy extensive State support) from publishing with it? Might other agencies and officials in Beijing, less pleased with the current political situation and eager for some easing, have pushed back at SARFT? Insurrections take many forms, sometimes low-level and from institutions.

After all, what Cambridge has done is to undercut crusaders for change within the system all the more. Imagine how reformers in China feel when they don't even get lip service from foreigners, but see the latter kiss up to Party conservatives here.

And suppose the Press ended its participation in the highly circumscribed Beijing Book Fair, and sought to mobilize academics and officials outside China to express their dismay—and (perish the thought apparently) actually defend and stand with them?

We’ll never know, because none of that had happened. 

Instead, Cambridge University Press defaulted, as so many before them, becoming complicit instead of confrontational. 

And Cambridge won't reap any rewards from this end of the ocean. It won't take long for SARFT to be emboldened and move to strike out at other foreign publishers who will--as others will undoubtedly do at the forthcoming Beijing Book Fair--seek to talk about cooperating with Chinese authorities for some greater, vacuous good, while their own publications and books are taken down from the display racks. Why should SARFT seek to play nice when being nasty got them what they wanted.

Maybe one day it will be possible to know what the world and China will look like when someone says that Beijing has every legal right to censor content and seek to control social space within their national boundaries—but that they, the foreign firm in question, won’t be helping in that effort.

Perhaps one day. But not today. Today, hardliners in Beijing won, as they always do these days, only this time with more help than usual. They may want to send flowers to England to express their appreciation.

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[1] Moreover, in another move less well-publicized, the Press removed more than 1,000 e-books from its site which were apparently also deemed too sensitive by Chinese authorities. Little if anything is known about that decision.

[2] It’s bizarre that many people think that Google pulled out of China because of censorship. That’s not what occurred: Google’s search engine was censored from the beginning—by Google when Beijing asked—and authorities here expanded and increased their supervision and control in the ensuing years. Google pulled out of China, of course--but only after years of acquiescence, when censorship, a shrinking market share here and a political shift within the company, became too much.