China Hands Spring 2015

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China Hands F O R F U T U R E L E A D E R S I N U S - C H I N A R E L AT I O N S

SUSTAINABLE CITIES OF THE FUTURE

THE CHANGING IMAGE OF CHINESE-AMERICAN FOOD

INTERVIEW WITH WINSTON LORD

Economics & Finance, p. 24

Life & Culture, p. 34

Opinion, p. 41 VOL. 3 ISSUE II | SPRING 2015 chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 1

WHAT’S ONLINE chinahandsmagazine.com

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TOP 10 CHINA EVENTS IN 2014 - ANDREW RETALLICK

F to Alibaba’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, to Hong Kong’s Umbrella From reform of the one-child policy, A Revolution, the year 2014 catapulted China even further onto the world stage. Andrew Retallick reviews the top 10 China events of 2014, giving balanced a balanced perspective on China’s domestic and international affairs, as well as on political and social P developments. Retallick presents a great overview of the Umbrella Revolution: R announced that it would not allow open nominations for Hong Kong’s Chief In September 2014, after the CCP T to the streets en masse. Ultimately, the protests ended quietly three months Executive in 2017, protesters took L impacts on the delicate relationship between the Hong Kong government and later; however, it will have great the CCP in the future. The protests surprised much of the international community, as a protest of such scale had not been seen in China in F the past decade. Though we can only guess what the upcoming year will hold for T insight and remind us of a recurring theme in Sinology - anything is possible.

China, these events give us great B

CONVERGING IN MCLEOD GANJ: E TIBET AND TAIWAN - THERESA CEELEN

C India—where the Tibetan government resides in exile—Taiwanese pilgrims Every October in McLeod Ganj, flock to the Himalayan town toChear His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself give a series of teachings. In this piece, C Theresa Ceelen examines the pilgrimage of these people to McLeod Ganj and the resulting political and religious intersections that the Taiwanese and Tibetans share. Tibet and Taiwan hold separate political relationships with FGanj, citizens of these two T’s share a common ground of marginalization. Here, Mainland China, but in McLeod O and their common pursuit of maintaining a national heritage is facilitated they find empathy with each other, in part by the Dalai Lama’s lure. Converging in McLeod Ganj, Tibet and Taiwan find space to cultivate their own identities, and together they learn L how apolitical stances are often the strongest.

F F T A NEW HOME ACROSS THE STRAIT - CHRISTIAN RHALLY REMEMBERING 1949: FINDING In this piece, Christian Rhally pieces together a remarkable narrative of Chinese who fled to Taiwan after the establishment of the CCP through an interview with Mr. Chiang Sangda, who arrived in Taiwan in 1949. Chiang, Opinion L he lost his entire family in the Chinese Civil War, saw escaping to Taiwan as who was only 18 years old when his only option of survival afterTthe defeat of the KMT. As Chiang describes, “Most of us fled to Taiwan because he felt hatred and resentmentTfor the Chinese Communist Party.” Chiang, along with over 2 million immigrants R from 1945 to 1949, fled from the Mainland to Taiwan. As Chiang recollects about his experiences in Taiwan, he provides valuable insight into the experiences and lives of many Chinese, and traces a narrative of this unique experience.

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VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Fall 2014

TABLE OF CONTENTS W 5W Words from the Editors

F F Features

LILLIAN FOOTE

6

American Universities Setting Up Shop in China

P P Politics & Diplomacy

EMILY HARRIS 10 Red Capital SIYU YANG 12 The Pearl Harbors GIDEON WELLES 15 Lingering Shadows

F F Features

ZARA ZHANG 18 The Transplanted “Flowers of the Motherland” QI XU 22 Beyond the Gaokao

C C Economics & Finance

MEGAN RUAN 24 Sustainable Cities of the Future DAVID YIN 26 Chinese Consumers Go Mobile NATHAN WILLIAMS 28 Venezuela

F F Features

EMILY FENG 30 On the Margins

L L Life & Culture

LUCAS SIN 34 From General to Junzi MICHELLE PETERS 37 Taipei’s Sustainable Urban Design MARIN TOSCANO 38 Farmers’ Markets with Chinese Characteristics

O O TEDDY MILLER WENBIN GAO YIFU DONG SCARLETT ZUO

41 42 44 45

Opinion

Lasting Relations, New Hopes—Interview with Winston Lord The Hide and Seek of Jiang Wen—Review of Gone with the Bullets Eye of the Storm—Review of Bei Dao’s Memory of the Storm Long Journey to Inclusion—Review of Museum Exhibit Chinese American Inclusion/Exclusion

The contents of this magazine are copyright of China Hands and may not be reproduced without express written consent. The opinions expressed by contributors to China Hands do not necessarily reflect those of its advisor, staff, or sponsors. China Hands would like to thank Schwarzman Scholars Program, YaleChina Association, and Asia Society for their support of this publication.

EXCLUSIVELY SPONSORED BY

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS

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China Hands EDITOR IN CHIEF Teddy Miller, Yale ‘16 MANAGING EDITOR Yi-Ling Liu, Yale ‘17 DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORS Jean Koo, Yale ‘17 Forrest Lin, Yale ‘16 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Ian Spear, Yale ‘17 Melissa Yin, Princeton ‘16 Miguel Paredes, Yale ‘17 Qi Xu, Yale ‘18 Yifu Dong, Yale ‘17 EDITORS AT LARGE Helen Gao, Yale ’11 Daniel Sisgoreo, Yale ’14 Dilong Sun, Yale ’15 Erwin Li HARVARD BUREAU CHIEF Alex Foote, Harvard ’15 PRINCETON BUREAU CHIEF Melissa Yin, Princeton ’16

PUBLISHER Kenan Jia, Yale ’16 ONLINE EDITORS Aaron Mak, Yale ‘16 John Lazarsfeld, Yale ‘17 EVENT DIRECTORS Qi Xu, Yale ’18 Chuhan Zhang, Yale ’18 CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sherril Wang, Yale ‘17 ILLUSTRATIONS DIRECTOR Christina Zhang, Yale ‘17

MARKETING DIRECTOR Zona Zhang, Yale ’18

ILLUSTRATORS Zishi Li, Yale ’18 Issaria Manakongcheep, Mt. Holyoke ‘18 Sherril Wang, Yale ’17 Christina Zhang, Yale ’17 Kaifeng Wu, Yale ‘18

OUTREACH DIRECTOR Christian Rhally, Yale ’16

FINANCE & OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Diana Wang, Yale ’18

BROWN BUREAU CHIEF Emily Schell, Brown ‘15

BOARD OF ADVISORS Stephen Roach, Deborah Davis, Jessica Chen Weiss, Nancy Yao Maasbach, David Wertime cover illustration by SHERRIL WANG 4

VOLUME 2 ISSUE II | Spring 2014

STAFF

Dear Readers,

As China Hands releases its fifth issue, we continue to reflect on our mission and seek to improve our quality. As editors, we never cease to be amazed by the standards of the student submissions we receive, which affirm our belief that some of the most important insights on China today are being formed by our own generation and deserve a platform. By focusing on original reporting, we strive to provide a unique perspective on important issues facing China and the future of US-China relations.

This academic year, we have deepened existing relationships and formed new partnerships with organizations and institutions. We have extended for another semester our sponsorship from Schwarzman Scholars, which shares our vision for promoting international exchange, for our annual 25 Under 25 feature, published every fall. This spring, we have partnered with the Yale USChina Forum to provide their lineup of excellent speakers and panel discussions with media coverage.

We continue to seek new ways to expand the diversity of perspectives presented in this magazine. Under the leadership of Alexandra Foote and Melissa Yin, respectively, our Harvard and Princeton bureaus have grown and contributed. We are also excited to announce the establishment of another bureau at Brown University headed by Emily Schell. Christian Rhally, a longtime leader in the China Hands team, has also formed a China Hands Taiwan team, which has already proven to be a crucial branch of the organization.

In an effort to engage with our readers on a more regular basis, we have also developed a platform for more frequent online publication, China Hands Blog. Not only has the blog allowed China Hands to expand its coverage of US-China relations, but it also lets bring more and more interested writers from various backgrounds into the fold. Among the blog topics discussed have been the top 10 events in China in 2014, McLeod Ganj, the Dalai Lama’s residence-inexile and China’s “Going Out Policy.”

This spring, we decided for the first time to base the issue on a specific theme — Education. Many of the pitches that came in from our writers seemed to delve into this topic, on that has been the forefront of conversation with regards to US-China relations. Flip through the pages, and you will notice that all our Features pieces — from Lillian Foote’s cover story on Sino-Foreign joint universities to Emily Feng’s discussion of migrant students and the challenges they face in an urbanizing environment — revolve around the rapidly changing face of education in China, and in particular in its relationship to the rest of the world.

In our Politics and Diplomacy section, we discuss Hong Kong media’s gradual loss of autonomy as a result and predicts its future in the light of the recent Umbrella movement. In Economics and Finance, we examine the emergence of eco-cities as a potential solution to Chinese environmental and economic troubles. Our Life and Culture section exhibits two perspectives on the food that we consume, and what is suggests about society: one on the changing face of Chinese American food as a result of a changing Chinese demographic in the United States, and the other regarding the food industry in China and its implications on food safety. Finally, in the Opinion section, we have an interview with former US ambassador Winston Lord as well as our first film review on Jiang Wen’s controversial new film Gone with the Bullets.

We hope you enjoy our issue.

WORDS FROM THE EDITORS

Yours Truly,

Teddy Miller Yi-Ling Liu Editors of China Hands chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS

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• FEATURES •

n a c i r e am p u g n i t t e S

LILLIAN FOOTE discusses how foreign and domestic universities are linking up to create new learning environments.

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illustration by Christina Zhang

s e i t i s r e v i n A u N I n H C N I p o h S p A

long Century Avenue, a major street in the heart of Shanghai’s Lujiazui business district, there stands a sleek fifteen-story glass and concrete building. With its floor-to-ceiling windows and crisp sharp contours the structure blends into a long string of neighboring commercial skyscrapers, sharing the same skyline with landmarks like Jinmao Tower and the Shanghai World Finan`cial Center. But far from being the headquarters of a multinational corporation, this building houses the facilities of NYU Shanghai, a brand new university co-established in 2012 by New York University and East China Normal University.

In the fall of her senior year of high school, San Francisco resident Megan Hou applied early decision to NYU Shanghai, a choice that surprised many of her friends.

While most of her classmates were applying to schools close to home in California, Megan was drawn to the university’s yet-to-be defined character. At the time she applied, NYU Shanghai did not have any buildings, alum, or even an established curriculum.

NYU Shanghai is one of several universities recently established in China as a joint higher education institution between an American university and a partner Chinese university.

In 2014, Duke University followed NYU’s lead, co-founding Duke Kunshan University with Wuhan University in Kunshan, a city in China’s southeast Jiangsu province.

These schools, formally called Sino-foreign joint-venture universities, are emerging to fill a gap in the global education economy.

The number of Chinese students applying to universities in the US has seen a dramatic rise

in the last few years, increasing by 75% over the last three years to an impressive 275,000. While Chinese demand for international higher education continues to grow, many Chinese students are in search of a less expensive alternative that does not require going abroad to study.

“Most joint-venture campuses are about educating Chinese who can’t afford to go overseas,” explained Deborah Davis, a sociology professor at Yale. Major American research universities like NYU and Duke are accommodating this demand by establishing their own joint-venture universities, providing them direct access to the brightest students in the ever-expanding Chinese education market while strengthening their international presence.

From a geopolitical perspective, China has much to gain by opening its doors to Sino-foreign joint-venture universities. Ever since Reform and Opening Up began in the late 1970s, China has prioritized educational exchange with the West as a way of developing its own industry, science, and technology.

“When China returned to the global stage, it really wanted to appear to be a global power, but it didn’t have enough human resources that could [facilitate] dialogue seamlessly with an international audience,” explained Dr. Heini Shi, director of International Relations at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, one of the first Sino-foreign joint-venture universities established in China in 1994. “China’s seeking some universities that can bring in some know-how and intellectual power.”

T

hese Sino-foreign joint-venture universities may boast distinctly modern facilities in a bustling urban setting, but the typical day of a student at a Sino-foreign joint-venture university shares many

similarities with that of an American university student.

On a Wednesday morning at Duke Kunshan University, Chinese student Mike Tang gets up and heads to DKU’s Conference Center for his Social Research Methods seminar, taking a seat by the classroom’s glass-paneled wall where he can get a view of the green lawns around campus. Most of DKU’s undergraduate classes have only 10 to 15 students, creating an intimate learning setting that stands in stark contrast to Mike’s home university, Nanjing Medical University.

Like most Chinese public universities, Nanjing Medical University only offers lecture-style courses due to the overwhelming number of enrolled students. “[At Nanjing Medical University], the professor can’t directly hear one student’s voice, explained Mike, whereas “at DKU the professor gives every student the chance to give their thoughts, to hear what they are thinking about.”

After heading to lunch in the dining hall, a rectangular room encased in glass where students cluster around small café tables to eat lunch and chit-chat in a mixture of Chinese and English, Mike attends his American History lecture where his professor reviews his assigned readings in painstaking detail.

Mike’s last class of the day, Population and Environmental Dynamics Influencing Health, is a discussion-driven seminar that begins with each student giving an individual presentation on an academic article of their choosing.

While a diverse course load similar to Mike’s is offered at many American liberal arts institutions, the multicultural background of DKU’s students weaves a uniquely international perspective into class discussions.

Mike recalls the disparate opinions he and his classmates shared when talking about marriage in his Population and Health seminar. His Indian classmates discussed the troubling social practice of child marriage

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 7

• FEATURES •

in their country, something that shocked Mike and his fellow Chinese classmates. In a comparison of Western and Eastern marital practices, Mike noticed that “sometimes Chinese and Indian [students] would share similarities...we talked about the old tradition where the parents of the girl should pay the guy’s parents,” a custom that his American classmates did not support.

Complicating this discussion was the acknowledgment by Chinese students that China’s economic modernization had begun to reshape Chinese social expectations, potentially encouraging urban Chinese to actually adopt a traditionally Western perspective.

“In modern cities in China, the guy’s parents or the guy himself should spend a lot of money on a house, on a car...if you don’t have [these things] I don’t think a normal girl would like to marry you,” chuckled Mike.

be fluent, differences in English proficiency levels often create a skewed class dynamic.

Florence Tesha, a sophomore at Duke from Tanzania who spent a Global Learning Semester at DKU this past fall, recalled how many of her Chinese classmates in her Global Health Ethics class would participate very little in class because of a lack of confidence in their English speaking skills.

“Chinese students were afraid that people would judge them, so they would want to speak in Chinese,” Tesha remarked.

In an effort to promote more equal participation, Tesha’s professor adjusted the class seating arrangement, having international students with high English proficiency sit in groups with Chinese students, an exercise that simply resulted in Chinese students discussing amongst themselves in Chinese or international students dominating

“What happens in the school stays in the school. China’s the type of place where, if nobody says ‘Don’t do it,’ then it’s okay to do it even if you know that this could possibly be against the law.”

Could such a classroom discussion, like the one described by Mike, take place within the walls of an American university?

Thinking about the discussions I had in my own Global Health class my freshman year at Yale, I remembered how often my classmates and I struggled to understand or accept different cultural practices to which we had no previous exposure.

Mike, however, was constantly coming into contact with a diverse range of cultural backgrounds in his everyday life, whether he was sharing a room with his Indian classmate, attending panels on China-Africa relations with Tanzanian friends, or playing pick-up basketball with some American students.

The benefit of a truly international student body, however, also brings inherent barriers to fostering open discourse among students in class, a communication problem that challenges the academic goals of DKU. Since all of DKU’s classes are taught in English, in which the school requires its students to

8 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

English group discussions and presentations.

While the class eventually settled on a discussion format in which Chinese students had the option of discussing in Chinese and then reporting back to the rest of the class in English, this solution meant international and Chinese classmates did not share their initial thoughts on a topic with each other, taking away an unfiltered aspect from in-class discussions.

Beyond a simple language barrier between students of different English backgrounds, Tesha noticed that cultural miscommunication also had a large influence on how she interacted with her classmates. Drawn to studying in China out of an interest in better understanding Chinese people, who have been migrating in large numbers to Tanzania over the last few decades, Tesha quickly learned that many of her Chinese classmates considered directness when speaking rude. “I felt that most Chinese students, even when they felt something was wrong,

or they were offended or maybe disappointed, they didn’t really say it and it made it harder for me to interact from then on because I kept asking, ‘Are you okay? Do you have something to say?’” Tesha explained.

Tesha also could recall certain casual conversations when students brought up a topic that accidentally illuminated their different cultural prejudices in an uncomfortable way. The most striking example of this occurred one day at lunch in DKU’s dining hall when a Duke international student pulled up an online news story that reported on ivory tusks being smuggled into China from Tanzania, found on Chinese president Xi Jiping’s airplane.

Before Tesha could respond, a Chinese classmate at the table immediately dismissed the story as false, declaring that China would never steal from Africa and was only helping lift up one of its impoverished countries. Angered by this nationalistic point of view, Tesha’s Kenyan classmate retorted that China’s apparent charity for Africa disguised its exploitation of Africa’s resources. “I was trying to act like I was in a neutral position because I had Chinese friends there and they weren’t going to take any of me saying, ‘It’s Chinese people that are responsible,’” explained Tesha.

M

ike Tang is sitting in a white linen chair in a Kunshan hotel’s cavernous banquet hall, a high-ceilinged room that features four droplet chandeliers and quilted beige walls. He and his ten classmates have formed a circle in the hall’s center with their chairs, trying to create a sense of intimacy in this makeshift classroom.

While golden carpeted floors and a podium at the front of the room lend an official air to the small class discussion, Mike’s class is talking about a photo that Chinese officialdom has banned from public display.

In it a lone man stands before a column of Chinese military tanks, his head just reaching the height of one of the vehicle’s steamroller wheels. This is the iconic “Tank Man” photograph, taken the morning after June 4th, 1989, the Tiananmen Square massacre that dramatically weakened the Chinese Communist Party’s political legitimacy on the world stage. “As a Chinese student, we don’t have too many chances to know about this

• FEATURES •

photo...I never really got a chance to know what happened at that time,” explained Mike.

The open discussion of a politically taboo event like the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on a college campus in China may surprise many Americans. Many members of the American academic community doubt that Sino-foreign joint-venture universities can foster academic freedom under China’s authoritarian regime, warning that the Chinese government has remarkably stringent regulations over colleges and universities in order to maintain the Party-state’s stability.

Mike’s classmates, however, not only learned about the Tiananmen protests while in class but also were able to express radically different political opinions about the event with each other and online.

One classmate with a particularly outspoken viewpoint was Pranav Sridhar, an Indian student from Shiv Nadar University in New Delhi who spent a Global Learning Semester at DKU this past fall. With his deep clear voice and animated speaking style, Pranav immediately strikes his classmates with an enthusiasm to participate. “Pranav is a special type,” chuckled Mike. “He can be full of energy all the time, and I think many other students don’t show the same passion (as he does).”

When discussing the Tiananmen photo in class, Pranav took a very outspoken stance, declaring that it represented a tragic event. Intrigued by the symbolic importance of depicting a single man standing in opposition to the entire Chinese state, Pranav decided to publish an article on Duke’s student website exploring the strategic use of individual figures to mobilize group acts of defiance throughout history.

Pranav’s confidence in openly sharing his politically controversial thoughts while living in China can largely be explained by the academic freedom DKU provides its students. “It was a very open, inclusive learning environment for all of us. We were allowed to express ourselves openly, keeping in mind respect for everyone’s backgrounds,” Pranav explained.

Although DKU’s administration did not interfere in the publishing of Pranav’s article, sensitivity toward classmates’ reactions did affect the way in which Pranav approached such a politically charged topic.

Pranav’s Chinese roommate had warned him that publishing the article may make him unpopular among some of his Chinese classmates, a consequence that he weighed for a long time before moving forward.

Pranav also noticed that in-class discussions at DKU initially had a more formal atmosphere than at his home university in New Delhi. Since DKU’s students were coming from universities all over the world to spend one seven-week international semester together, the combination of a lack of familiarity with each other and a highly diverse range of cultural backgrounds made students weary of being too outspoken. By the time the second half of the semester began, Pranav admitted, “I’m not so sure if we had reached the comfort level where if you’re from China and I’m from India I could ask, ‘Dude, how can you not have democracy in China?’”

For Tarela Osuobeni, a junior at Duke who spent a Global Learning Semester at DKU this past fall, the lack of restrictions on what she could study at school allowed her to explore academic subjects that were publicly off limits in China. In her Chinese class Tarela chose to give her final presentation on Hong Kong’s recent Umbrella Revolution, a series of pro-democracy protests that directly challenged the Chinese government’s restrictions on its Chief Executive elections.

Although TV and Internet coverage of demonstrations was strictly censored in mainland China, as a DKU student Tarela was provided with a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, that enabled her to access blocked Western media sites following the unfolding movement. When I asked Tarela if she thought DKU was succeeding in maintaining an academically free environment while operating in China, she didn’t seem to think the question was relevant. “What happens in the school stays in the school. China’s the type of place where, if nobody says ‘Don’t do it,’ then it’s okay to do it even if you know that this could possibly be against the law.”

In her observation Tarela had identified the gray operational area DKU occupies in China; while providing a safe learning space for its students to freely pursue their academic interests, DKU has had to negotiate its academic freedom in terms that are acceptable in China’s current political environment. By not openly challenging the

Chinese government’s politically repressive practices, DKU can maintain a high degree of autonomy, keeping in mind that the spirit of intellectual curiosity it strives to uphold may not be as well received beyond the physical boundaries of its campus.

I

n July 2010 China’s Ministry of Education published its National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development, a document which laid out a comprehensive plan for modernizing China’s education system over the next 10 years. Commonly referred to as Blueprint 2020, this proposal included the ambitious goal of helping China’s elite research universities “reach or approach the level of worldclass universities” within just a decade.

Indeed, China has been searching for new strategies that will help it attain its goal.

This past December the Chinese central government convened a committee of administrative experts to offer ideas on Chinese higher education reform, inviting NYU Shanghai Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Lehman to give a speech on his own recommendation.

Praising NYU Shanghai as an innovative model of higher education, Lehman attributed much of the school’s success to its newness.

“We are able to innovate and take risks because we are an institution with no past,” he mused.

But far from suggesting that well-established Chinese universities were incapable of achieving the same success, Lehman identified Sino-foreign joint-venture universities as the ideal site for experiments in higher education that inform China’s efforts to improve its own higher education institutions.

“There is a desire on the part of our sponsors, [the Shanghai government], for us to model a different way that then may be emulated or not,” explained Lehman. As China continues to regard higher education as an essential tool for moving up the economic value chain, it will be interesting to see whether the examples set forth by Sino-foreign joint-venture universities like NYU Shanghai and Duke Kunshan University will be used to initiate concrete change within a still developing Chinese education system.

Lillian Foote is a sophomore at Yale University. Contact her at lillian.foote@ yaleyale.edudu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 9

IN THIS SECTION

Pearl Harbors p.12

Lingering Shadows p.15

Politics & Diplomacy I

n the fall of 2014, the Umbrella Movement hurled Hong Kong into the international spotlight as hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in the name of democracy and true universal suffrage.

However, in February 2014, just seven months before the Umbrella Movement began, thousands protested in the name of a different cause: press freedom. Inspired by an attack on former editor-in-chief of Ming Pao Daily, Kevin Lau, who was slashed by two assailants with meat cleavers outside a local restaurant just days before, protestors raised concerns about what they see as alarming levels of media censorship in the former British colony as it grows closer to Mainland China.

Hong Kong residents are not the only ones sounding the alarm about press freedom— international rankings also reflect their concerns. In 2002, Hong Kong ranked 18th in international rankings of press freedom put forth by French-based NGO Reporters Without Borders. In 2014, it ranked 61st.

However, Hong Kong has no formal restrictions on the press, making it difficult to explain this drastic shift in journalistic discourse in the past decade. As veteran journalist and protest organizer Shirley Yam told CNN, challenges to journalistic independence come not only from the government, but from the private sector: “Headlines were added, complete pages were removed, photos were cancelled, interviews were bought, columnists were sacked…we get calls from senior government officials, we get calls from tycoons, saying ‘we don’t want to see this in your paper.’”

Hong Kong is a true political anomaly of our times, embedded directly in the ideological struggles of East versus West, capitalism versus socialism, and democracy versus authoritarianism. Prior to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from the British colonial government to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), many voiced grave concerns about the PRC’s ability to preserve Hong Kong’s democratic values, rule of law, and freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, especially following the Tiananmen Square 10 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015 10 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

Incident in 1989. Yet when Hong Kong did not become the devastating “Tiananmen II” that many had predicted, international audiences largely lost interest in the continuing political developments in the region.

While China has generally stopped short of direct state control or censorship of media, many suggest it has resorted to indirect and subtle methods to exert control over the Hong Kong media, especially via the infiltration of “red capital” into the local media system.

In the 1970s, Hong Kong saw a shift in media from partisan and party press to commercially oriented mass media. While the expansion of mass media is largely thought to facilitate the professionalization of journalism and empower journalistic independence, today’s business tycoons and corporations with significant business, political, or personal interests in Mainland China own many of Hong Kong’s media organizations. Many interpret this as an attempt

by Beijing to manage the political effects of the transition through media acquisition by pro-China capitalists. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 2014, more than half of local media owners sit on Beijing-appointed government bodies such as the National People’s Congress.

Such changes in ownership have instigated processes which require journalists acquire new norms and adjust their practices.

Although media ethics generally dictate that there be a “firewall” between the commercial and editorial sides of a newspaper, owners of newspapers can control major decisions such as the basic newsroom setup and the hiring and firing of top-level personnel that determine the organizational culture.

As such, one of the most common critiques of Hong Kong media is the prevalence of self-censorship, which, though impossible to identify with certainty, is evident in the press’s tendency to dodge political controversy, its shift in editorial tone in line with Beijing’s policy, and the firing of “high-risk” contributors.

Many optimistic analyses prior to the 1997 handover pointed to the free market in Hong

Kong as a force that would protect news organizations from the heavy-handed influence of Beijing. For the time being, it seems market forces have ensured that most newspapers’ editorial lines have stopped short of becoming “pro-China.” In a 2006 survey of 1,004 Hong Kong journalists, the majority (58%) said that the media should “take a neutral stand” in

RED CA Media Own Self-Censorshi

EMILY HARRIS exam gradual loss of autonom the event of a conflict between Hong Kong and China. However, among the remaining respondents, those favoring the Hong Kong stand (39%) far outnumber those favoring the Chinese stand (3%), attesting to the ultimate reliance of the news media on the domestic market for survival and prosperity.

However, it seems that in the age of new media and declining newspaper profits, conglomerates and tycoons have become more interested in the political, rather than economic, possibilities associated with newspaper ownership.

In a 2014 interview, Ernest Chi, deputy editor-in-chief of Ming Pao Daily claimed that while twenty years ago the paper made $200 million HKD ($26 million USD) annually, they’re now at one percent of that.

With an ever-thinning bottom line, even one advertising client can have a significant influence on a newspaper’s earnings.

• Politics & Diplomacy •

More significantly, razor-thin profit margins mean that investments are made in newspapers today with an eye on political return on investment. “The media is only a small part of their empire, but they use it as a leverage, to haggle and to bargain,” Chi says of the investors. “Investors ask themselves, ‘What do I want this thing for? Give me political influence.’”

There is little doubt that changes in Hong Kong’s media ownership have altered the balance of ideological discourse in the Hong Kong media. Naked state repression of the media has been deemed out of the question by the PRC’s continuing political agenda

APITAL ership and p in Hong Kong

ines Hong Kong media’s y and predicts its future. and commitment to maintain the appearance of respect for civil liberties, and market forces have prevented explicitly pro-China editorial lines from commercial newspapers.

However, what is most concerning is not that the Hong Kong media has become predominantly pro-Beijing (it hasn’t), but rather that journalism as a profession is now more beholden to special interests than they are the public interest. Even journalists who work for genuinely politically independent commercial papers are pressured to appeal to consumer’s lower viscera, on the way to their wallet. Hong Kong journalists have become limited in their role as the “fourth estate,” as the political and/or economic calculus of publishing can now outweigh the moral imperative to uncover the genuine, often discomforting narratives of Hong Kong society.

One example of this tendency is the Hong Kong media’s reliance on international media

reports when covering tensions between the PRC and Taiwan. By reporting only what has already been reported by others, the local media can publish political criticism and sensitive issues while ostensibly adopting a posture of detachment—if criticized, they can claim that they are only “objectively” reporting what others have already reported. In other instances, this understanding of “neutrality” might take the form of reporting “just the facts” articles, or publishing side-by-side editorials that take opposite positions on a controversial issue.

Such effects of self-censorship are multiplied via the spiral of silence effect, in which people who perceive that their opinion is popular express it with confidence, while those who perceive that their opinion is in the minority remain silent. This sets off a spiraling process that increasingly establishes only one prevailing opinion.

Mass media play a crucial role in the development of the spiral of silence because people depend heavily on the media for facts and for the evaluation of the climate of opinion. The maintenance of a free press in Hong Kong is thus critical to the protection of their other civil liberties and overall way of life. Because Hong Kong remains a limited democracy, journalism has always been a particularly important outlet for political participation in Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, media ownership changes have eroded the strong tradition of civic participation through journalism in Hong Kong.

That is, of course, not to say that civic action has died in Hong Kong—far from it. Rather, the world briefly became captivated with Hong Kong’s political fate once more in the autumn of 2014, as the “Occupy Central” movement saw hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens take to the street in the name of universal suffrage for the 2017 Chief Executive election.

Despite this mass action, local news coverage of the Occupy Central often emphasized the desire of the “silent majority” in Hong Kong to go to work, go home, and not be troubled with the looming date—2047— when the protections guaranteed to Hong Kong under “One Country, Two Systems” will expire. Meaningful democratic conviction and resistance remain nevertheless possible, especially amongst the current generation of young people. The continual prospect of 2047 is a powerful image for those who will still be

alive during that transition. New media, for all its faults, may prove to be an important arena where dissenting political views can be discussed and share. However, Internet activism alone will likely be insufficient to challenge the powerful institutions with a stake in Hong Kong’s political development.

Given the deterioration of de facto press freedom in Hong Kong’s local media, does international journalism present a viable alternative for informing the Hong Kong public and sparking meaningful public discourse on the key issues they face?

Perhaps not. International journalism is itself not immune to commercial pressures.

Furthermore, a discussion of Hong Kong’s political rights that grounds itself outside of the collective memory of the Hong Kong people in unlikely to resonate with locals.

As Hong Kong moves closer to 2047, there are continual questions as to whether Hong Kong will become more like the PRC, or whether the PRC will become more like Hong Kong. First, it is a big assumption that the current CCP regime will still be in power in 2047. Assuming that it is, much depends on whether the current generation of youth, who will still be very much alive when the “One Country, Two Systems” expires in thirty-three years will continue to demand the civil liberties they grew up with.

Some journalists covering the Occupy Movement suggested that the movement may serve as an example for the burgeoning middle class in Mainland China which many suspect will be at the forefront of any democratic movement there. However, as of now, such type of large-scale social movement remains largely unimaginable.

Considering both the economic value of Hong Kong to the PRC, and the growing dependence of the Hong Kong economy on Mainland Chinese consumer spending, there is a very real possibility that Hong Kong will continue to allow their civil liberties, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, to slowly erode. This may result in Hong Kong looking potentially more like the budding Shanghai Free Trade Zone, an area in which trade and rule of law, as it relates to corporations and contracts, are respected, but where CCP hegemony is inescapable.

Emily Harris is a senior at Yale University.

Contact her at emily.harris@yale.edu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 11

• Politics & Diplomacy •

ac y

: s r o b r a H l r a e P e h T

m

o l p i D China’s Port

China

SIYU YANG reflects on what China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy means for India-China and US-China relations.

F

lip to the back of a five rupee Pakistani note and you will see red-orange cranes amid a seascape of soft, complementary blue. The illustration is of Gwadar Port, brainchild of the Pakistani government since the country’s independence in 1947. Its management transfer to the state-owned China 12 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

Overseas Port Holding Company last year generated renewed buzz around the China Threat theory. Among the most vociferous opponents were India and the United States. Meanwhile, China has responded by formalizing its venture as an economic strategy, assuring the world of its peaceful intentions. illustration by Zishi Li

• Politics & Diplomacy •

The String of Pearls The Chinese takeover of Gwadar Port, which China was contracted to build since 2002, had India claim that China aims to encircle it with a chain of Chinese-influenced ports throughout the Indian Ocean, often dubbed as the “String of Pearls.” This phrase was coined in a report by the US defense consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton in a 2005. Perhaps due to its strong visual imagery and colonialist connotations, the phrase stuck in the minds of China observers.

Located some 400 kilometers east of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40% of the world’s oil tankers pass, Gwadar is valued by China as a solution to its Malacca Dilemma. The Strait of Malacca is a narrow passage between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, through which over 80% of China’s imported oil is shipped. Beijing has been apprehensive about this choke point since China became a net oil importer in 1993. A blockade of the Strait could truly hold China to ransom, much like how American oil sanction on Japan led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of the Pacific War. Michael Kugelman, senior program associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said that although Gwadar Port “was built in order to create various benefits for Pakistan, from local employment to improving the economy by having an efficient warm-water port,” the investment also “gives China a foothold in South Asia and facilitates its trade routes by moving away from the Malacca Strait.” He notes that “these are not necessarily advantages for Pakistan, but Pakistan is willing to overlook that because it values its relationship with China so much” in a hostile diplomatic environment and Pakistan “regards China’s navy as a reassurance, an indication that China is an ally.”

However, the postponement of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan last September due to security concerns may indicate waning enthusiasm for the project. Insurgences in the Balochistan Province, where Gwadar is located, continue to make construction of a land transportation route unrealizable.

At the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent, two sites on Sri Lanka have been identified as “Pearls.” The Port of Colombo on its west coast saw the opening of a $500 million container terminal in August 2013, 85% of which is owned

by China Merchants Holdings International.

On the poorer south coast of Sri Lanka, the

Hambantota Port is expected to be the largest port in South Asia once completed, serving as a hub between Singapore and Dubai with the aid of Hambantota International Airport, also funded

by China. Chittagong Port in Bangladesh is turning into “Gwadar East” after China promised $9 billion to develop deep-sea port capacities in 2010. Its Pearl status was elevated a year ago when China agreed to supply the Bangladesh Navy two submarines, to India’s consternation.

In another energy-related project, China invested in a deep-sea port on Maday Island at Kyaukphyu, Myanmar, to facilitate a $2.5 billion pipeline transporting oil and gas to China’s Yunnan province. Chinese investments have dwindled, however, since Myanmar’s opening-up and democratic reforms in 2011 brought investments from elsewhere.

In February 2014, China signed an agreement to set up a naval base in Djibouti, joining France (Djibouti’s former colonizer), the US, Germany and Japan. Strategically positioned, the small nation sits at the Horn of Africa facing the Mandab Strait, where the Red Sea enters the Indian Ocean. On the far end of the String is Seychelles, an island-country halfway between Madagascar and the Maldives. For now, China will be using it as a refueling port for its anti-piracy operations that began in 2008. Xi’s visit to the Maldives last September drew parallel to his predecessor Hu Jintao’s 2007 visit to the Seychelles, laying foundation for further association with China.

The “String of Pearls” is now a foil to Xi’s “Maritime Silk Road” slogan introduced October and the official name given to China’s strategy of building better trade routes from its South Sea to the Middle East and Africa. The two appellations reflect the mistrust many have of China’s seemingly expansionist moves and its effort at dispelling them.

As countries on the Indian Ocean littoral trade economic development for Chinese influence over them, the lack of neocolonial ambition does not stop China from emerging as a challenge to America’s dominance over the seas.

“Legitimate concern over China’s legitimate rise” The economic argument for the String of Pearls is reflected in Xi’s tour of South Asia last September, negotiating backing for the chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 13

• Politics & Diplomacy •

“Maritime Silk Road.” These efforts aim to secure China’s oil supply. China imports more than half of its oil, of which 52% percent come from the Middle East and twenty-three percent from Africa, both requiring transportation across the Indian Ocean. Economic strength is China’s greatest asset, but also its greatest vulnerability in a time when energy availability and security drive so much of the economy.

Pehrson at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army proposes that since the survival of the Chinese regime depends on the continued rise of living standards, projecting its naval power in the Indian Ocean is of core importance to Chinese leaders.

As countries on the Indian Ocean littoral trade economic development for Chinese influence over them, the lack of neocolonial ambition does not stop China from emerging as a challenge to American dominance over the seas. The British Empire, perhaps the greatest String of Pearls in history, was not formed by executing a carefully set-out plan, but grew as economic interests took its merchants all over the globe.

Kugelman specifically emphasizes the role of energy security: “There is a widely held perception, particularly in India, but also in other smaller countries in South Asia excluding Pakistan, that China is trying to secure energy assets and other types of natural resources to support China’s economy. In doing that, it is willing to push its way around and get involved in parts of the world that are by no means its backyard.” Kugelman maintains that certain members of the security establishment in India envision potential conflict between the two countries “years from now, when natural resources become more precious than they are now.”

India’s lack of trust in China also has historical roots. In the words of twenty-year-old Kumar, a student at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, “far more fundamental than the economic competition is the Sino-Indian War of 1962, the root of distrust against China even for young Indians today. We simply could not believe that China, which our prime minister at the time called ‘a brother,’ would attack us,” referring to the territorial conflict on the Tibetan border.

The construction of the deep-water port in Sittwe, Myanmar, funded by the Indian government, is a response to counterbalance the China-Pakistan axis. Indian Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Japan last August also had China

The world has yet to entertain the possibility of a nation being “powerfully peaceful” on a resource-scarce planet.

14 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

concerned that a “democratic” alliance will form in the Indo-Pacific waters. Kugelman adds that “India makes no secret of the fact that its decision to modernize its navy is a direct response to China’s decision to modernize its navy.”

For the US, the uneasiness is more complex. The US watches as China devises a network of potential Gibraltars in the Indian Ocean, in the same manner that the US gained its naval dominance through overseas bases such as Australia, New Guinea and Taiwan, not to mention Japan and Hawaii.

Kugelman points out that the US is very intent on completing the “Pivot to Asia” strategy launched in 2009, a reorientation of its foreign policy focus to the Asia-Pacific while encouraging its diplomatic partners to do the same. He adds that, in this respect, “Washington may look with a bit of concern at China and its various activities and efforts in South Asia… that this has been happening and that there has not been much of a response from India as of yet.”

Naval scholar Seth Cropsey at the Hudson Institute and Arthur Milikh at the Heritage Foundation have warned that the rise of a competitor state challenging American influence on the oceans will lead to economic consequences for the US, as there were to the Dutch when they “vanished as an international force in the late eighteenth century due to the loss of dominant sea power.”

Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, characterized the reactions of India and the US as their “legitimate concern over China’s legitimate rise.” He suggests that “China feels its navy is bottled up by Japan and the United States from bases on land in Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. It wants to break out of that and project its capabilities.”

Attempting to explain why this will not adversely affect the world order, Liu Mingfu from the Chinese National Defence University said, “while China pursues ‘powerful but not hegemonic status,’ US struggles for hegemony… The Chinese goal to challenge the US is to build a ‘hegemony-free world.’” While the world certainly expects a multipolar international power landscape, it has yet to entertain the possibility of a nation being “powerfully peaceful” on a resource-scarce planet.

Siyu Yang is a junior at Princeton University.

Contact her at siyu@princeton.edu.

• Politics & Diplomacy •

LINGERING SHADOWS A Retrospective on 228 and the White Terror

“E

ach man was trussed up and the lot were bound together, neck-toneck, by heavy cords. They were headed toward the river on the outskirts of town and there could be no doubt that they would be tortured or dead within the hour.”

The passage above, from U.S. diplomat George Kerr’s Formosa Betrayed, ranks among the least harrowing vignettes of the 228 Incident, when thousands of mostly native Taiwanese civilians were killed during a crackdown by Nationalist (Kuomintang) forces in 1947. Even after the incident, subjugation of the local population only intensified after Chiang Kai-shek’s arrival in 1949. In fact, the establishment of Taipei as the Kuomintang’s (KMT) new capital marked the beginning of martial law on the island, a period also known as the “White Terror.” From 1949 to 1987, Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, suppressed any inkling of political dissent as their regime incarcerated about 140,000 Taiwanese and executed more than 3,000 perceived opponents to the KMT. To this day, the 228 Incident and the White Terror serve as sociopolitical symbols and painful milestones in Taiwanese history, underpinning the schism between the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the mainland China-friendly KMT. “228 will always be an important part of the myth of Taiwan...and part of the narrative of the nation,” says Craig A. Smith, history professor at the University of British Columbia and a former Fellow of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national academy. This narrative poses renewed relevance, given last year’s Sunflower Movement, when student-led civic groups protested against a proposed free-trade pact with mainland China, and the KMT’s abysmal showing in November’s 9-in-1 elections. Both events captured the zeitgeist of discontent surrounding President

GIDEON WELLES investigates how the 228 Incident and the White Terror, two dark chapters of Taiwanese history, are looked upon today.

Ma Ying-jeou’s administration of the KMT, a factor that may well determine the outcome of next year’s presidential election. But for many, the seeds of enmity can be traced back to the Nationalists’ arrival in 1945.

A Breaking Point On October 24, 1945, Governor Chen Yi accepted the Japanese surrender of Taiwan, proclaiming the Retrocession Day and marking the return of Taiwan to Chinese control after fifty years of Japanese rule. When immigrants began to arrive from mainland

Mourning Wall outside the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum

photo by Gideon Welles

“In 228, Taiwanese people were sufferers of oppression,” says Yao, “but during the Formosa Incident – we became challengers.”

China between 1945 and 1949, the consequences of fifty years of Japanese stewardship soon became apparent. Cultural differences and linguistic tensions brewed between the “backwards” Mainlanders (waishengren, or “foreign-born people”), and native-born Taiwanese (benshengren), who were “viewed as Japanese dogs,” says Paul Tseng, assistant researcher at the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum.

The most striking discrepancy was in education, a difference that hindered Taiwanese intellectuals from playing an active role in reform. “Taiwanese were not schooled in classical Chinese, and their qualifications were in Japanese, so they could not be politicians in the KMT’s eyes,” adds Tseng. As even the Governor of Taiwan Chen Yi believed that the Taiwanese were too “politically retarded” for self-determination, officials from the Mainland were appointed to high-level positions instead.

On top of having their political dreams dashed, locals were increasingly marginalized

Yao Chia-Wen

photo by Gideon Welles

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 15

• Politics & Diplomacy •

economically as Governor Chen maintained state monopolies established by the Japanese.

The breaking point arrived on February 27, 1947, when agents from the governmental Tobacco Monopoly Bureau confiscated contraband cigarettes from a 40-year-old vendor. Her resistance was met with a blow to the head. The surrounding crowd protested, and in the ensuing melee, the agents shot and

spree. Victims were lined up against the river, their hands and feet pierced and tied with barbed wire before being shot in the back.

Tseng attributes this brutal response to the Mainlander’s loss of face to the Taiwanese and Japanese: “When the Nationalist soldiers first arrived in Taiwan, they lacked confidence.”

Their disheveled and ragged appearances did not match the expectations of postwar

Cultural differences and linguistic tensions brewed between the “backwards” mainlanders (waishengren, or “foreign-born people”), and native-born Taiwanese (benshengren), who were “viewed as Japanese dogs.” killed a bystander. Public anger spread quickly via radio and erupted into an island-wide rebellion against the KMT mandate. From February 28 to March 7, waishengren who had immigrated to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War were targeted at random.

Hundreds were killed. In spite of its intensity, the Taiwanese insurrection was short-lived.

Once Chiang Kai-shek approved the order to restore control, the 21st Army Division landed in Keelung on March 7, 1947. Their crackdown lasted until May 12. A 1992 Executive Yuan report estimated a death toll of 18,000 to 28,000, but overtime, this figure has become politically contentious. Given that Taiwan’s population totaled approximately four million at the time, Tseng says that such a large loss would have been catastrophic for Taiwanese society and he personally prefers to settle on a more “realistic” 4,000. At the extreme end of the spectrum, Xi Xiande, Associate Professor of Journalism at Fujen University, argues that such figures are grossly inflated and that “only nine hundred people have been verified as having been killed by [Governor Chen’s] army; anything else is speculation and politically motivated.”

While the death toll has been vigorously contested, the brutality of the KMT’s response certainly remains clear. When the KMT army landed, they engaged in no less than a killing

16 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

liberators as posited by Taiwanese, or the better drilled and orderly Japanese. Thus, 228 was an “overcompensated effort by the KMT to assert control over Taiwan, a new colony that they did not understand,” he adds.

Violence was spurred on by the KMT agents’ “informational asymmetry.” Tseng reveals, “Soldiers were in an awkward position.

Without war to advance themselves, they fed exaggerated information to their superiors.”

This mindset of informational asymmetry persisted in the witch-hunt for Communist bandit spies after the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan in 1949. Initially precarious, Chiang’s regime was ensconced once the Korean War forced President Truman to neutralize the Taiwan Strait with the Seventh Fleet, thereby preventing any PRC invasion. Nevertheless, several years of anti-communist propaganda culminated with the beginning of the 38-year White Terror, during which many individuals were imprisoned, tortured and marginalized as the Chiang regime purged Taiwanese intellectuals and whoever was perceived as connected to the Mainland. Purges in Taiwan continued throughout the 1960s, with slogans such as “capturing one hundred innocent people is better than letting one guilty person get away” that embodied stringent KMT doctrine.

From Victims to Challengers The scale of last year’s Sunflower Movement evoked memories of the civic unrest of the early 1970s in Taiwan, when a new generation of activists began to challenge martial law.

After the United Nations switched its recognition of China from the Republic of China (ROC) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1971, Taiwan’s international status was called into question with little leeway to resist the transfer of the East China Sea islands (diaoyutai) to Japan the same year. Nationalist sentiment rose among young, left-wing intellectualists, who were dismayed by the government’s passiveness. “After the diaoyutai, they were afraid of Taiwan being returned to Japan,” says Wang Xiaobo, philosophy professor at the National Taiwan University (NTU), “How could they justify martial law, if they couldn’t oppose the US or Japan?”

With the Taiwan miracle yet to spur Taiwan’s sluggish economy, discontent students saw studying abroad as the only outlet. “Young people were eager to leave.

They often said, ‘Come, come, come to NTU, go, go, go to the USA!’” Wang recalls. Wang was one of the several faculty dismissed and imprisoned as a result of the NTU Department of Philosophy incident, when the regime targeted educators sympathetic to student activists from 1972 to 1975. By then, the nature of activism had evolved, but the government’s response had not. Government critics were still labelled “communist sympathizers.”

Around then, the first wave of students, brimming with foreign exposure to democracy and liberal thought, returned to Taiwan.

One of these was Yao Chia-wen, a lawyer who had studied at the University of California, Berkeley, who soon began to challenge martial law by giving legal aid and demanding social welfare. “It was not possible to form political organizations then, [but] we were very successful in challenging the regime until we were grabbed,” Yao remembers.

As one of the Kaohsiung Eight, Yao was one of the eight activist leaders arrested after the 1979 Formosa Incident, when pro-democracy demonstrations in Kaohsiung were quelled. By demanding congressional and constitutional reforms, Yao and his peers had gone too far in government’s eyes. Initially

• Politics & Diplomacy •

sentenced thirteen years, Yao was released in seven years, thereupon becoming the chairperson of the DPP. While public discussion of 228 remained taboo until after martial law was lifted in 1987, it increasingly gained symbolic importance to the then-nascent Taiwanese independence movement. “In 228, Taiwanese people were sufferers of oppression,” says Yao, “but during the Formosa Incident—we became challengers.”

Under President Lee Teng-hui, the government apologized for 228, established February 28 as a memorial day, and began to compensate victims. However, some argue this is not enough. “Government compensation was not an admission of fault, but of sympathy to victims,” argues Xi. Families who suffered a death originally asked for $10 million NTD ($320,000 USD), but the government responded with $6 million NTD ($192,400 USD). Despite the government’s financial compensation, “from the victims point of view, [any] money is never enough,” says Wang, whose mother was executed during the White Terror. Wang believes the public is too focused on the 228 victims and too little on the victims of the White Terror. He says, “Proportionally, the majority of White Terror victims were waishengren. When do we remember them?”

Since 1989, the government has awarded $26 billion NTD ($850 million USD) to the victims of both 228 and the White Terror.

However, Yao and those aligned with the DPP claim 228 victims are underrepresented due to the high burden of proof required by the government, for many records were either destroyed or simply never existed. “If a soldier comes and kills people in a street [at random], how can you prove it happened?”

Yao asks. This longstanding struggle for disclosure should have advanced when the government made White Terror prisoners’ dossiers public in November. However, when requested access to files at the Jingmei Human Rights Memorial, they only said that owing to Taiwan’s strict privacy protection laws, the

files had not actually been released.

While Wang upholds victims’ right to personal privacy, he also suggests political motives at work. “If those records were made public, we might find out that certain people were bought out,” hinting that it was in the interests of the KMT and certain DPP members to maintain such secrecy. In 2006, a newly commissioned government report placed Chiang Kai-shek at fault for 228, but as with previous assessments, placing blame has not elevated 228 from a political issue.

“Rather than blaming individuals, you have to look at the systematic response,” Smith says. “Otherwise, it’s a politically motivated attack.” Smith cites efforts made by the new Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, whose grandfather was a White Terror victim, to transcend partisan politics, and recent literature that views 228 from a sociological perspective. “Discussions about 228 and the White Terror have been useful when [directed at] gender inequality, aboriginals, and peoples on all margins of society,” Smith adds.

The Road Ahead But there are still lingering shadows. On February 28 this year, activists pelted Chiang Kai-shek’s memorial with eggs, shouting “murderer.” For Yao, 228 remains a lesson that

Taiwan must strive towards independence. “We believe that if [we] have a new government of Mainland China, we may have another 228,” he cautions.

How the myth of 228 will be deployed ahead of next year’s election depends on the strength of the DPP. “228 is only used when the DPP [is] feeling weak or victimized,” says Daniel Lynch, an associate professor of International Relations at University of Southern California, “but I don’t see them reaching into the negative past. They should be more confident now.”

Nevertheless, the legacy of the Sunflower movement and KMT’s resounding defeat in the 9-in-1 elections signals a shift in the political climate. With next year’s presidential election on the horizon, pro-independence rhetoric is making a comeback in Taiwan.

Indeed, a recent poll by Taiwan Thinktank reveals that 70% of Taiwanese believe that the DPP will win next year’s election. A new chapter in Taiwanese politics lays ahead, but the memory of 228 and the White Terror remains ever-present.

Gideon Welles is a graduate of the University of Southern California. Contact him at gideondavidwelles@gmail.com.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 17

The Transplanted “Flowers of the Motherland” ZARA ZHANG examines the experiences of Chinese students studying abroad in the United States 18 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

illustration by Sherril Wang

• FEATURES •

I

n China, young people are often referred to as “flowers of the Motherland”— a simile that conveys their freshness and rootedness. In return for the Motherland’s nurturing, Chinese youths are expected to take it upon their shoulders to construct the nation’s bright future. However, in the past decade, the most promising of these flowers have mass-uprooted themselves by the millions to a distant and unfamiliar land: America.

Last year alone, China sent 274,000 students to the US, making it the number one country of origin for international students in America. The motivations and aspirations of this massive exodus will play a decisive role in shaping US-China relations in the 21st century.

The Promised Land A popular joke in China goes that the annual plenary session of the People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference is more like a gathering for parents of Chinese students studying in the West—it is no secret that numerous top Party leaders have sent their children to America, which many perceive as the “promised land” for higher education.

Sally Yan, a counsellor at the New Oriental Education Group, speculates that the number one motivation for Chinese students to study in the US is to “follow the trend.” When top students and those from envied backgrounds opt to leave, others scramble along, sometimes with the blind assumption that a foreign college degree is always superior than a domestic one.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to study overseas is no longer monopolized by the rich and the powerful. Even in lowermiddle income families, parents are sometimes willing to sell a house or make other major sacrifices in order to finance their children’s overseas education. Though immensely difficult, it is theoretically possible for an outstanding Chinese student with a humble background to be admitted a top US college with substantial financial aid, and many are willing to make a wager.

As powerful a factor as it may be, peer pressure is not the sole reason prompting Chinese students to leave. Four of the five students interviewed for this article said that they simply want a better education, and the best universities in the world are to be found in the US. Even the very top universities in China cannot begin to compete with the Ivy League, at least according to popular rankings.

There are “push” factors operating as well. In China’s rigid education system, students spend years cramming for a single fate-altering exam, the gaokao. They have to declare a major before applying to domestic colleges, a momentous choice that many feel they are not ready to make at age 17. America’s liberal arts education offers a fresh perspective on what a world-class education can be like, as well as the freedom and flexibility of which Chinese students have long been deprived.

“A Collective Bias” With freedom, however, comes confusion. Upon arrival in the US, many students are overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices that are thrown at them by American liberal arts colleges. Some find it extremely difficult to decide on a field of study, even though they are usually not required to do so until sophomore year.

Jessie Lu, a student from Guangzhou who graduated from Duke University in 2014, studied three fields that would leave many of her compatriots scratching their heads: public policy, journalism, and film.

“I want to study something that would allow me to understand American society better, because the whole point of studying abroad is to know another way of thinking,” she explained.

Although her reasoning aptly sums up the meaning of an overseas education, the choice to study the humanities remains highly unorthodox among Chinese students. Most leverage the rigorous math and science training they acquired in China’s domestic education system and choose to study fields related to these disciplines. Horrifying myths of students finding themselves unemployable after obtaining degrees in non-technical majors have become a popular refrain for Chinese parents, who extol the practical benefits of studying a technical discipline that supposedly guarantees job offers.

When students are confounded by the plethora of available options, the default go-to choices are economics and mathematics. It is believed that people in these majors have the highest chance of landing coveted high-paying jobs in the finance or consulting industries. Ken Ling, a former president of the University of Michigan’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association, said that at least a third of the Chinese students he knows at his school are majoring in these fields.

Language barriers may be the major reason for the underrepresentation of Chinese students in non-economics and mathematics fields. When she first started out as a public policy major, Lu went through a hard time adjusting to the style of academic writing required in her classes and often sought help from the writing center. Today, she speaks impeccable English and works as the the Director of Communications for the Bay Area office of the rapidly growing Chinese drone startup EHANG. According to Lu, the rise of technology and startup sectors has created a vast demand for skillsets possessed by those trained in the humanities: presenting product is just as important, if not moreso, than making one. Nevertheless, she notes that there remains a “collective bias” against the humanities among the Chinese, which she finds unjustified.

She is applying the communication and critical thinking skills she learnt in school to her Silicon Valley job every day, a fact that many Chinese would still find surprising. Until

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 19

• FEATURES •

these soft skills become more appreciated by the Chinese community, the stereotype of the Chinese scientist and engineer is unlikely to go away in the near future.

Comfort in Numbers If you randomly pick ten international students from Michigan State University, seven will be from China. The school enrolled 3,848 Chinese international undergraduates in fall 2014, a number greater than Harvard’s entire classes of 2017 and 2018 combined.

When such a large number of Chinese students are brought together on a foreign land, they will inevitably gravitate towards each other, sometimes forming their own exclusive social enclave. For some students, interacting exclusively with their compatriots defeats the purpose of studying abroad, but others are not worried about what they believe is a natural phenomenon.

Jack Xu, president of NYU’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association, said that most of his friends are within the Chinese students’ circle because he believes in hanging out with people whom he finds it the easiest to connect with.

It is not so much an unwillingness to venture out of their comfort zone, as much as the magnetic pull of a large and familiar community that keeps Chinese students from breaking out of their circles. At many universities with large Chinese populations, such a community takes the form of Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA). These organizations, often with a four-digit membership, have become the center of many Chinese students’ social lives.

The CSSA is more than a group of people who speak their language and understand their jokes—more importantly, it is a network of support that helps them navigate the confusing and difficult transition to the American education system and way of life. Serving around 3,000 members of its Chinese community, NYU’s CSSA hosts regular events that easily draw hundreds of participants, such as a Valentine’s Day party, an Annual Creative Cultural Gala, and a singing competition. Xu, its president, sits on top of a 70-people executive board, and spends more than 10 hours each week on CSSA-related activities.

To stay, or not to stay “The best way to catch up to Western countries is to study

in those countries… In order to do better than Western countries we have to learn from them and adopt those knowledge according to our needs,” wrote Hou Debang, one of the most renowned chemists in Chinese history who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a century ago.

For Hou, “to stay or not to stay” in America after graduation was not a question. He lived in a bygone era when students went to the West for the sole purpose that they could return and help to beef up China’s power with their newly learned scientific know-how. However, for today’s Chinese students, “to stay or not to stay” is a question that keeps them occupied and confused from the moment they step onto American soil. In an era where most Chinese students go overseas for the simple reasons of self-improvement and an alternative experience, returning is not an obligation but a choice. Again, with the freedom to choice comes the difficulty of making a good one.

Yan said the number of Chinese students who choose to go back has been increasing steadily, and she is not worried that China will face a potential “brain drain” problem. According to China’s Ministry of Education, 79% of Chinese students who studied abroad returned home in 2014, a 3.2% increase from the previous year.

One reason might be the fact that going back to China is no longer stigmatized like it was in the past. “Just a few years ago, if you go back to China, it’s almost equivalent to saying ‘I can’t make it here’,” Lu said. “But right now because China has grown so much, going back has almost become the trendy or hip thing to do.” She adds that many students are going back to start their own companies, as the romanticized idea of entrepreneurship has taken a hold on Chinese students.

If Chinese students have difficulty staying, it is often because their immigration status does not automatically guarantee them an extended visa after they complete their undergraduate studies. All international students need to apply to an H-1B visa in order to work in the U.S.

America’s liberal arts education offers a fresh perspective on what a world-class education can be like, as well as the freedom and flexibility of which Chinese students have long been deprived.

20 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

illustration by Kaifeng Wu

• FEATURES •

As China develops into the world’s biggest economic powerhouse, its sheer number of opportunities are attracting students to return for an extended period of time after graduation, but only a small number of employers are willing to sponsor such visas. Ling estimated that the visa issue is the number one factor that prevents Chinese students from staying on, adding that many international students find it frustrating that they do not have an equal chance to work here as compared to American students.

Even so, many Chinese students would happily go back to a country where they can live and work more comfortably in a familiar culture.

The wealthier ones often end up helping with family businesses or leveraging family connections to land jobs. Even for those who do not come from monied backgrounds, landing a decent job is usually not difficult, given their international exposure, English language skills, and the added value of a foreign degree.

Nevertheless, some students are slowly realizing that even in their home country, impressing the employers is not as easy as it seems. These days, Chinese employers are becoming more discerning and even blasé about overseas returnees. Many prize intimate knowledge of Chinese society in candidates—a quality lacked by many students who studied abroad and did not make extra effort to stay in touch with happenings in China.

For example, Xu Xiaoping, a prominent Chinese angel investor who often tours American colleges to speak to students, often warns his audience that simply having studied abroad is not enough. Sometimes domestically educated talents make better entrepreneurs with their greater savviness with the Chinese market, better understanding of the working style, and a wider range of personal connections.

Therefore, even though China may not be suffering from a “brain drain” in the traditional sense, the “flowers of the country,” cultivated overseas, may prove maladjusted to China’s soil once they are transplanted back to motherland.

Though China’s leaders are extolling the “Chinese Dream,” many of the country’s top talents are dreaming of going to America for a superior education, and some are inevitably converted to the “American Dream” along the way. Even so, as China develops into the world’s biggest economic powerhouse, its sheer number of opportunities are attracting students to return. The Middle Kingdom retains its magnetic power, but whether that will last remains to be seen.

Zara Zhang is a sophomore at Harvard University. Contact her at zhang08@college.harvard.edu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 21

M

• FEATURES •

ention China’s university recruitment process to any American and they will immediately talk about the gaokao.

When it comes to Western news reports, the gaokao, or the national higher education entrance exam, dominates the media. Students in uniforms bury their heads in piles of problem sets; red motivational banners that state “Diligence for one year, comfort forever” hang on classroom walls; the count-down board stands menacingly at the school gate. Such is the image conjured up in the Americas when speaking of gaokao. Most people, however, are unfamiliar with the prevalent alternatives to the university recruitment process offered in China today.

ENGLISH

BEYOND THE GAOKAO

Nanchang Foreign Language School (NFLS) is one of China’s seventeen foreign language schools that can recommend students who are excellent in foreign languages to earn direct admission to universities. Fu Shuning, a graduate from NFLS in 2014 and now a freshman at Tsinghua University, was guaranteed a place at Tsinghua six months before her peers took the gaokao.

NFLS has a quota of 135 for such recommendations. It gathers the top 135 students in school in an almost fate-determining meeting. At the meeting, the students, proceeding in the order of their ranking in school, make their university choices. Fu, who was top in her class, chose Tsinghua.

Because each university allocates a quota for recommendations, the higher the student’s ranking in high school is, the earlier he gets to choose his university, the better his chance of getting into his dream school is. “That process is similar to game-theory,” Fu recalled. “Everyone came to the meeting with a list of schools in their mind. Students with lower rankings, in addition to considering their preferences, have to guess what the students before them might choose.”

Fu described the direct admission process as “no less competitive than the gaokao.” The relationships among students became “strange,” when gossips and suspicions prevailed during that period of time.

With the recommendation from NFLS, Fu is eligible for Tsinghua’s direct admission recruitment. In preparation for the recruitment that includes a written test and an interview, she, like the other 134 at NFLS, has to compromise her schoolwork. The written test is very different from gaokao because it demands broader knowledge HUMANITIES often not found in the gaokao syllabus. “The Eleven hundred students in their last year stakes are high. If we did not pass direct admission of high school applied to Fudan University’s selection, we would have to take the gaokao. independent recruitment program in the But since we were already spending less time on humanities.

Commonly known as Boya Bei in gaokao preparation than others did, we would lose Mainland China (directly translated as Liberal out,” Fu said, explaining the process’ trade-off.

Arts and Sciences Cup), the program is the first The direct admission program at foreign among all programs of its type.

It is open to all language schools began in the 20th century when Mainland Chinese students in their last year of China was in need of foreign language talents for high school.

Successful individuals have to pass its Reform and Opening Up policy. The program three rounds of stringent selection—an essay, is a channel for selecting and nurturing such a two-day Experiential Camp at Fudan and an talents. Students selected are extraordinary not interview with 10 university faculty members. only linguistically but also holistically. “Often the Among this year’s forty-five students who students are street-smart. They are wise beyond were accepted was Huang Yifan, a graduate their years,” Fu describes in fluent English. of Shanghai Nanyang Model High School.

“Although it is an alternative to the gaokao, the In Huang’s year, Fudan invited the top results are the same—the students will end up 150 writers to its Experiential Camp held on in the same universities even if they take the campus from December 8-9, 2013. Huang gaokao. Universities want the best. If you are earned his ticket to the annual camp with his the best, it doesn’t matter how you get there,” philosophy essay on David Hume. Like other Fu comments, saying that she didn’t feel “that 149 articles from his peers, Huang’s essay stood much benefit” of the direct admission process.

22 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

out among over one thousand submissions on philosophy, history, or Chinese language.

For Huang, now a freshman at Fudan School of Philosophy, the camp started with an address by the Dean of the School of Philosophy, followed by a sample university lecture at the Guanghua Building. He later joined an informal group interview with other 13 students and 3 faculty members.

“We had to present our opinions on two current affairs,” Huang said, recounting his interview. “I had a question on the reform of the gaokao English exam. Our positions did not matter, for I am now classmates with students who voiced completely different views.”

His first day of the camp ended with a 1600-word written reflection of his experiences that day and his personal goals. The second day was much more intense. Fudan randomly assigned two essay prompts to each applicant and allowed seven hours to complete an article on a prompt of the student’s choice. Huang’s first prompt focused on Mengzi’s understanding of

• FEATURES • SOCCER Cao Rui, a junior at Guangzhou Sport University, earned his admission ticket to college with exceptional performance in soccer.

During his time at Jiujiang No.3 High School, Cao was a core member of the school soccer team, the winner of the annual interschool soccer tournament in Jiangxi Province in 2010. In recognition of sportsmanship, China awards each player of the top three teams the Certificate of National Second-Level Athlete.

“That certificate is a stepping stone to college application, if one follows the sports track.

I received mine in my first year of high school after the team’s victory,” Cao explains.

The university recruitment process for athletes starts in March. Individual university sets different rules, but generally the process includes a written test on Chinese Language, mathematics, English and politics, and a test on the student’s chosen sport. A student can only apply to one university, because it is impossible to be physically present to take those tests at more than one university at the same time.

“My father accompanied me to Guangzhou. We stayed in a hotel near Guangzhou Sport University,” Cao remembers. With nearly 1,200 applicants for soccer and many more for other sports such as badminton, cross-country and swimming, the hotel room rates doubled and even tripled during that test period. However, the price did not deter parents from accompanying their only children at the supposed turning point of their future.

Cao’s two-day soccer test included a timed shuttle-run, a shooting test within a designated distance, and a match with randomly assigned teammates. By the end of each day, the university put up the applicants’ grades and rankings on the wall. According to Cao, approximately 150 lucky ones, out of the pool of 1,200 for soccer, eventually passed the test.

The cutthroat competition demands thorough and intense preparation in sports. Cao had to get up at 5:30 AM for his physical training. “It was winter. It was dark outside.

There was no one but cleaners on the road.” Cao recalls his high school life. After Cao and his teammates arrived, they changed into sports gear and started their one-hour training. They returned to classroom once school started at 7:30 AM. His daily afternoon training began at 4:30 and did not end until it became all dark at 8:00 PM. Cao has less to say on the written test and its preparation. Compared to the gaokao, the written test for athletes are twice as easy. “I did not pay attention in class,” Cao confesses, “I couldn’t even if I wanted to do. The teachers had lower expectations for us too.” Months before Cao’s test at Guangzhou, he attended regular crash-courses offered by an external teaching agency.

Despite his passion in soccer, Cao admits that were he better at schoolwork, he would have chosen the gaokao rather than the athletic track.

“I am worried about employment. Many of my schoolrecruitment program such as qianfen kao, the mates share the same concern,” he says. “They chose thousand-point exam encompassing topics from this track simply because they could not have entered both the science and the humanities, Huang prestigious universities and received good paper praises Boya Bei and similar systems. According qualifications if they had chosen the gaokao instead.” to Huang, such programs benefit students with special interests, especially those who are he three students’ stories echo tens of thouunaccustomed to the typical study method for sands of students’ in China as they struggle for gaokao—rote learning and endless problem sets. security amidst the uncertainty in university “Such a program frees me from the torture entrance, adapt to the changing selection process, of gaokao. It allows me time to read books and constantly face trade-offs. But the students are that both interest me and prepare me for not the only ones struggling—Chinese universities the selection process,” Huang comments. are struggling to find the fairest college recruitHe adds that gaokao becomes less intimiment process. They are experimenting, whether dating in Beijing and Shanghai, regions with with the gaokao, independent recruitment, sports more developed university independent recruitment, or direct admission. This is the same recruitment programs, as compared with that with universities in the U.S., with ACTs, SATs, in Zhejiang Province and Jiangsu Province.

APs, and different application requirements. Both “Gaokao is anti-humanity in those provinces,” countries are searching for the best and fairest way. he says. “Two to five percent of students are admitted to mental health clinics each year.”

Qi Xu is a freshman at Yale University and an asso-

QI XU recounts three stories of students making it to college through ways other than the gaokao.

love, and second prompt Hume’s philosophy towards love. Like Huang’s prompts, every set included one Eastern and one Western philosophy question on the same theme.

Huang spent his day reading relevant passages and writing his paper at the Philosophy Room, interrupted only with a rushed lunch.

“We finished our lunch quickly and silently, all the while under scrutiny, ” Huang recalls.

Only 62 students made it to the last round: an individual interview with three Fudan professors of the student’s chosen major and seven other faculty members.

Professors asked Huang about public’s misconception of Buddhism, the practical utility of morality, and reasons for upholding virtues.

“The professors could always detect my ambiguity and challenge me with deeper questions,” Huang mused on his interview experience. “They did not stop challenging us further until we failed to answer.”

Though acknowledging that he could still enter Fudan through its other independent

T

ciate editor of the magazine. Contact her at qi.xu@ yale.edu. chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 23

IN THIS SECTION

Chinese Consumers Go Mobile p.26

Venezuela p.28

Economics & Finance Sustainable Cities of the Future MEGAN RUAN examines the emergence of eco-cities as a potential solution to Chinese environmental and economic troubles.

O

n a sunny afternoon in Jiangxi Province, Professor Roger Ruan of the University of Minnesota stands on a grassy knoll overlooking . . . another grassy knoll. To the unsuspecting observer, this 400-acre piece of land seems like nothing more than green hills and rice paddies. But for Ruan and his team, it is about to become the physical arm of their renewable energy lab from across the world. Their vision is to create a pilot version of a system that has rapidly picked up speed in the past decade: an eco-city.

Eco-cities are urban centers built or modified to function within the limited means of the environment. The end goal is to eliminate all harmful emissions, making use of renewable resources to enhance efficiency, health, and social welfare.

Of many initiatives proposed, eco-cities address a few major concerns about China’s future. First, though China rigidly governs migration, local administrations have struggled to provide affordable housing for the influx of people moving into urban areas.

Second, scrutiny of China’s accelerated growth consistently prompts concern about its impact on the environment. The development of eco-cities gives China an avenue to build a healthier and more sustainable future.

The idea of building a “green city” is no recent innovation. In 1975, Richard Register at the University of California in Berkeley formed an organization called Urban Ecology, dedicated to ecological city design and planning. His approach outpaced traditional urban greening methods such as revised land-use and voluntary resource conservation, and instead focused on creating “decent, affordable, and economically mixed housing,” promoting technology to reduce pollution and hazardous waste, and supporting

24 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

“ecologically sound economic activity.”

Today, Urban Ecology acts as a consultancy helping neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area design sustainable streetscapes, architecture, and land use arrangements.

Eco-cities have come a long way since Register first conceived of the idea.

Technologies for clean power, waste management, agricultural resource recycling, and water conservation have been vastly refined, and governments have invested in municipal frameworks for these technologies.

The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, a flagship cooperative project between the governments of Singapore and China, is one current effort to build a large scale eco-city.

The city is compactly planned for 350,000 residents and accessible from a variety of major transportation routes, less than 150 kilometers away from Beijing. The chart below shows the energy, transportation, and natural resource targets that the Tianjin Eco-City hopes to hit. Of note, the city supplies 100% potable tap water, a feature unusual in the majority of

large Chinese cities, much less in rural areas.

However, though the Tianjin Eco-City is moderately sized compared to China’s largest cities, housing few hundred thousand people still poses a challenge for ecological sustainability. Often, the very process of building an eco-city can be “inherently unsustainable.” Some researchers claim it is more important to prioritize development of existing cities than to fund idealized master plans for brand new eco-cities. However, doing so would eliminate the possibility of creating jobs via demand for “green” workers.

Lastly, an unintended consequence of being located near existing urban centers is the disincentive to move into the eco-city versus an established city like Beijing. For example, the Caofeidian project, just south of Beijing, has been dubbed a “ghost city” in reference to its trickling inflow of residents.

Now, rapidly filling the ranks of new eco-cities has become a vital step in easing fear of a real estate meltdown, but enough job incentives must exist in order to attract residents. China’s

photo from tianjineco-city.com

• Economics & Finance •

economic targets are traditionally outlined in its “Five-Year Plans,” which have increasingly focused on jobs in green industries. During the 11th Period (2006-2010), more than 9,000 jobs were generated by the solar power sector alone. Between 2011 and 2020, the government hopes to increase this to an average of 6,000 direct jobs and 16,000 indirect jobs per year, in industries such as solar, wind, and sustainable transportation.

At the University of Minnesota, researchers Roger Ruan and Paul Chen are exploring an alternative to the massive eco-cities that have been built so far. Both are experts in the field of biosystems and bioengineering and believe that a truly environment-friendly, pollutant-free “eco-city” must be built on a small

living with zero pollutants to the soil, water, or air,” said Ruan. Used in conjunction with more traditional forms of green energy such as solar, wind, and hydraulics, these “distributed eco-cities,” as Chen calls them, have the potential to be completely emission-free.

The demo city is labeled as “distributed” because it employs different energy-recovery methods depending on where the eco-city is built. Bioregionalism, or harnessing resources specific to each region, creates a much more versatile ecological framework than a massive commercial venture such as the Tianjin Eco-City. Building eco-cities in rural rather than near-urban areas also attracts unskilled rural laborers by providing a host of conservation-related jobs. These jobs could change

photo from inspirationgreen.com to mid-size scale. In November 2014, they received a grant from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to build a pilot version of their “green metropolis” in rural Jiangxi Province.

The city aims to create an entirely contained cycle of production, consumption, and waste recycling. Solid bio-waste will be funneled to produce feed and fertilizer, while liquid waste rich in phosphorus and nitrogen will be used to grow hydroponic (water-rooted) plants. Since plants can directly submerge their roots in reservoirs of wastewater, growing crops for edible use and livestock feed will require vastly reduced land area.

“This kind of complete recycling and reuse system can be used to produce truly organic

the lives of rural citizens that have been historically neglected by the government.

Fortunately, eco-cities can help resolve the social divide that exists in China today, between those of rural and urban residency status. The household registration that China has operated under since 1949, called hukou, is partly used to control internal migration, a fact which has severely limited socioeconomic mobility.

In the mid 1980s, policies were enacted allowing holders of rural hukou to migrate to cities in order to fill industry’s exploding labor demand. China experienced an estimated influx of 200-250 million rural citizens into urban areas—the equivalent of the United States moving its entire

population, except Florida and California, into urban residency. Following this so-called “Great Migration,” many cities were unable to meet housing demands, prompting the rapid growth of urban slums.

In the words of Professor Kam Wing Chan, from the University of Washington, Seattle, these rural-urban migrants are “trapped, through institutional mechanism, in a permanent social ‘half-arrival’ situation, with little hope of acculturating into the urban permanent population.”

This class of unskilled rural migrant labor, or nongmingong, is in substantial need of urban employment and affordable housing. As China moves to complete its push for urbanization, eco-cities can provide the necessary outlet. The viable stream of jobs, both in standard industry capacity and sustainability and renewable energy production, simultaneously addresses the problems of overcrowding and environmental hazard.

Relocating to an eco-city, where production uses modern green technology, will inherently encourage further expansion of such methods.

In November 2014, China and the United States struck a landmark accord to limit emissions of greenhouse gases through 2025. China ambitiously plans to cap its carbon emissions by 2030 and also to “increase its share of non-fossil fuels to 20% of the country’s energy mix” (Harvey). Intuitively, eco-cities are a framework under which China can begin to satisfy this goal. All that is needed now is a mechanism that encourages more citizens and businesses to live and work in eco-cities.

Standing atop the hill in Jiangxi Province, Ruan says the never-ending hills in front of him are a reminder of how much further there is to go. But he then turns to the land behind him, which has already been surveyed and marked for development. He says, “Look how much progress has been made. We are giving people a truly once in a lifetime opportunity—to live and work in a place that is not only fruitful, but also sustainable and beautiful. It shouldn’t take much more convincing than that.”

Megan Ruan is a sophomore at Yale University.

Contact her at megan.ruan@yale.edu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 25

• Economics & Finance •

Chinese Consumers Go

MOBILE

“I

n the US, e-commerce is just online shopping. In China, e-commerce is a lifestyle,” said Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, which went public on Nasdaq in September 2014 and raised $25 billion to become the largest initial public offering in history. Alibaba’s rise symbolizes the breakneck growth of China’s internet and e-commerce sectors. By 2016, China will have 730 million Internet users and 380 million online shoppers, up from 460 million and 145 million respectively in 2010.

Due to major state investment in telecommunication infrastructure and a relatively underdeveloped physical retail sector, China has witnessed a boom in online retail, which offers better variety, lower prices, and greater convenience.

By 2015, e-commerce is expected to hit 7.4% of total retail value in China and cover almost half of the urban population, thereby becoming the largest e-commerce market in the world.

Within e-commerce, mobile commerce (or m-commerce) is emerging to become a significant building block in China’s economy. Smartphones, which are becoming cheaper and better, account for

100

1.5%

5.8%

80% of new phone sales in China today, contributing to its position as the world’s largest smartphone market. Chinese consumers are also drawn to the convenience of mobile shopping, which allows them to shop anytime and anywhere, especially while commuting. Sixty-nine percent of smartphone users in China have used their devices to make a purchase, compared to only 46% in the US. In addition, the three national mobile operators—China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom— have invested heavily in upgrading their infrastructure. In July 2014, they jointly announced plans to build a national 4G network capable of providing fast mobile

14.5%

33.0%

80

45.7%

54.9%

59.2%

61.7% Share of PC online shopping Share of mobile shopping

60 98.5%

94.2%

85.5%

67.0%

54.3%

40 45.1%

40.8%

38.3%

20 0

2011

2012

2013

2014e 2015e 2016e 2017e 2018e graph from iResearch

26 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

broadband to a billion users.

Mobile shopping and payments come hand in hand. The rising popularity of Chinese mobile payment systems has facilitated m-commerce. Since June 2010, the People’s Bank of China has issued over 200 licenses to non-financial institutions to provide third-party payment services and declared a national mobile payment standard. These two developments have led to explosive growth in the Chinese mobile payments market, which reached 1.43 trillion RMB ($228 billion) in the third quarter of 2014, a five-fold jump from a year earlier.

Driven by high adoption rates of mobile devices, increased mobile network connectivity, and a boom in mobile payments, China’s m-commerce sector jumped from 12 billion RMB ($1.9 billion) in 2011 to 828 billion RMB ($132 billion) in 2014, and comprised almost one-fifth of the overall e-commerce market. According to the consulting firm iResearch, m-commerce is expected to hit 2.5 trillion RMB ($400 billion) and constitute over half of the online retail market by 2016. In China, mobile will soon become the most important platform through which people purchase goods and services.

• Economics & Finance •

DAVID YIN examines the rise of mobile commerce in China and its potential impact on the composition of the nation’s economy.

A catalyst for rebalancing In China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, the National Development and Reform Commission laid out various plans to restructure the economy, such as boosting domestic consumption and the service sector, raising wages and reducing inequality, and developing strategic emerging industries.

According to Stephen Roach, the former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, the rise of new technologies such as m-commerce “can really accelerate China’s transition” from an export- and investment-driven economy to one driven by domestic consumption, and from the labor-saving

secondary sector (mostly manufacturing and construction) to the labor-intensive tertiary sector (mostly valueadded services).

Given the underdeveloped and inefficient physical retail sector in China, e-commerce and m-commerce will play a crucial role in unlocking the spending power of Chinese consumers. This is especially true in smaller cities, where mobile devices are the primary means of going online and product variety for physical retail is more limited. A McKinsey study has found that despite having lower average incomes, consumers in Tier 4 cities expended as much on e-commerce as those in Tiers 2 and 3 cities since they spent a higher proportion of their disposable income on online shopping.

E-commerce and m-commerce in China increase spending as only 61% of overall online spending comes from replacing existing offline purchases, meaning the remaining comes from incremental consumption. By 2020, online

5000

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4000

3,728.4

3000

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2014e 2015e 2016e 2017e 2018e

GMV (bn Yuan) graph from iResearch

graphic by Sherril Wang

shopping is estimated to increase private consumption by almost 7%, up from 2% in 2011.

At the 12th National People’s Congress in March 2015, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang laid out the country’s “Internet Plus” strategy, which aims to promote technology industries as the country’s next engine of growth.

Expanding China’s m-commerce sector will boost employment, income, and the service industry. The online retail sector will create almost three million high-skilled jobs in the next few years. It also pays out a greater portion of revenues to employees than physical retailers, in part because it hires more workers with tertiary education. This will help alleviate the 16.4% unemployment rate of university graduates, assuming the graduates have the relevant skillsets.

Based on case studies in the US and Japan, China’s e-commerce and m-commerce sectors can improve their labor productivity through investing in more efficient systems. For example, most express delivery players in China have already started using semi-automated sorting centers in bigger cities. Online retail has also driven the development of adjacent industries, such as the $13 billion service provider sector (marketing and online advertising, payment systems, logistics, delivery, IT services).

With the rising popularity of mobile devices and and new innovations to mobile payment systems, China’s m-commerce will continue to experience robust expansion and leapfrog physical retail.

These will help China rebalance towards domestic consumption and the tertiary sector, creating major growth opportunities at home and abroad.

“China doesn’t have to go out and build brick and mortar malls,” says Roach.

“Online malls are virtual, and their reach is greater.”

David Yin is a senior at Yale University and former editor-in-chief of the magazine.

Contact him at david.yin@yale.edu. chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 27

• Economics & Finance •

Venezuela: A Worthy Investment?

NATHAN WILLIAMS assesses the uncertain future of Chinese investment in Latin America.

P

uerto Cabello, Venezuela. The time is 0430. Monstrous ships sit in port, loading up on Venezuela’s lifeline: crude oil. By the end of the day, these massive tankers will have exported 2 million barrels of Venezuela’s black gold, 600,000 of which are destined for the People’s Republic of China. The sale of oil from Venezuela to China, however, represents much more than another transaction: it epitomizes Venezuela’s desperate attempt to buy more time for a failing economic system.

However, before analyzing China’s role in Venezuela’s economic future, one must first understand Venezuela’s economy in comparison to other Chinese investments.

Over the past decade, China has increased its financial presence in Latin America, going as far as initiating a project to construct an alternative to the Panama Canal in Nicaragua.

However, Venezuela is unique in that, unlike China’s investments in other developing economies, Chinese involvement in Venezuela does not promise profit. The recent decline of commodity prices in Latin America has hurt Venezuela’s already unstable economy. In addition, no country in the Western Hemisphere has been hit harder by the declining price of crude oil than Venezuela. The oil industry accounts for roughly 95% of the country’s export earnings as well as an unhealthy 25% of Venezuela’s GDP. As a result, when the price of crude oil plummeted to prices as low as $50 per barrel in early January, the already weak Venezuelan economy was dealt a massive blow, propelling the country towards economic disaster. In response, Venezuela’s leaders turned to their one powerful ally: China.

As the future of Venezuela’s economy continues to spiral downwards into chaos, its leaders have relied heavily upon

China’s financial support and mercy to stave off complete collapse. Until now, China has extended over $50 billion dollars in loans to Venezuela, permitting the Venezuelan

At the end of the day, most bankers want to increase revenue, not spread a particular ideology. Chinese bankers are no different.

28 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

government to repay the loans through guaranteed deliveries of oil. Of the 600,000 barrels of oil the Venezuelan government exports to China daily, over half are exported in order to repay loans to various Chinese banks, not to generate new revenue. However, as mentioned earlier, the global drop in oil prices has gravely damaged the Venezuelan economy and thereby the country’s ability to repay loans; unfortunately for Venezuela, China has other partnerships to uphold as well.

Venezuela hasn’t been the only victim of the global decline in oil prices. The near collapse of the Russian economy has led Chinese banks to lend over $30 billion to Russian oil companies in order to prevent a complete Russian economic collapse. Furthermore, China loaned billions of dollars to Argentina, second only to Venezuela in terms of money borrowed from China in Latin America. However, despite past financial leniency with Venezuela, Beijing feels reluctant to lend large sums of money to economically weak states, especially when dealing with so many foreign projects at once.

• Economics & Finance •

photo from skyscrapercity.com

Ever since last July, General Secretary Xi Jinping has yet to sign any official deals with the Venezuelan government pertaining to the repayment of loans. As a result, most foreign policy experts doubt China will attempt to become economically close with—let alone continue to lend to—Venezuela in the near future. This is not to say that China will simply leave Venezuela to deal with its economic woes alone. However, rather than simply loaning money, Chinese banks may instead provide funds for developmental projects in hopes of generating profit. In early January, the Chinese Development Bank and Bank of China agreed to invest $20 billion in the Venezuelan economy over the next decade. Nevertheless, the specific nature of the investment, such as what projects the Chinese Development Bank plans to invest in, remains a mystery.

To some, China’s new Venezuelan investment plan

investment campaign as propaganda, arguing that Chinese leaders are unwilling to admit the failure of China’s investment in Venezuela. More importantly, most experts believe Chinese money cannot save the Venezuelan economy; foreign money only addresses a symptom—not the root cause—of Venezuela’s weak economy. If Venezuela is to make a full economic recovery, its government must change the way it does business.

According to Harvard Professor of Government Steve Levitsky, a specialist in Latin-American politics, Venezuela’s economy is in need of “drastic reform” if it is to overcome decades of poor economic decisions. In order to move forward, Maduro’s administration must dramatically reduce subsidies, make cuts to popular government programs, and invest in economic sectors other than energy.

Unfortunately for Maduro, regardless of how his government is to phrase such austerity measures, “it’ll be the equivalent of ripping off an economic Band-Aid and damage his support among the lower classes.”

At the end of the day, most bankers want to increase revenue, not spread a particular ideology. Chinese bankers are no different; poor investments appeal to no one, regardless of political beliefs. Nevertheless, in the event that China’s government decides to increase its support of Maduro’s government, such a decision would not end Venezuela’s economic troubles. If anything, increased Chinese support may come to hurt Venezuela in the long run, encouraging Maduro and future Venezuelan leaders to look abroad for help rather than implement the painful economic reforms needed to turn their country around. If Venezuela’s economy is to truly recover, change must come from within its borders.

photo from panampost.com

may seem illogical. Venezuela’s weak economy and poor governance have led many analysts to dismiss China’s new

Nathan Williams is a freshman at Harvard University. Contact him at nathanwilliams1942@gmail.com.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 29

• Features •

S

ON THE MARGINS Migrant Education in Beijing

EMILY FENG investigates how China’s migrant workers and their children, shut out of the public education system, have long pursued education at quasi-illegal “migrant schools.” Now China is urbanizing again — and migrant education is changing.

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ometime last summer, I found myself in Changping district, on the outskirts of Beijing proper, surrounded by screaming children, their faces browned by the sun overhead and the ubiquitous haze of dust floating above the low-slung courtyard.

These were migrant children, children whose parents had moved to China’s prosperous eastern cities looking for work and a better life for their families. Unfortunately, because of anachronistic migration policies enshrined under the hukou, or residency, system, these children cannot attend urban public schools. Many of their parents elect to leave their children behind with family members as they migrate for work. Others bring their children with them to places like Beijing, enrolling them in illegal migrant schools.

Over the past year, I’ve done both ethnographic and policy research on the phenomenon of Chinese migrant education, specifically in Beijing where the problem is the most severe in scope and degree. What I found is an extraordinary variation in the nature and administration of Beijing’s migrant schools, and indeed, among national migrant education policy. I witnessed human generosity that gave me much to hope for and instances of neglect that created equal amounts of despair. Whether China confronts the issue of migrant education is inevitable; how it can do so effectively is the real question.

Recently, China has announced a new urbanization plan which, if successful, will bring nearly 200 million rural citizens into cities and reform the restrictive hukou system. This state-sponsored massive urbanization will change the landscape of migrant education and indeed, the circumstances underlying migrant labor themselves.

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hen my parents grew up in the sixties, they lived in the Chinese countryside. My father grew up irrigating rice paddies and herding cows in a small village which sat at the bend of a river. Today, almost all our relatives live in the nearby city of Huzhou in Zhejiang province; only the elderly and the occasional city dweller, seeking some bucolic peace, remain in my father’s old village. It was easy for my relatives to transfer their hukou to the urban backwater of Huzhou, which was not a popular destination for migrants.

They were lucky; for nearly 250 million migrant workers today, there has been no opportunity for such mobility. These migrants work largely in the informal sector, underpaid and unprotected by employment contracts. Accompanying them are nearly 23 million migrant children, who cannot attend public school like their urban counterparts. While 54% of Chinese citizens now reside in cities, only 36% currently enjoy urban benefits like housing, social insurance and pension, and primary education for their children.

Often unheard, however, are the voices of these migrant children who accompany their parents to factory towns or urban metropolises like Beijing or Shanghai. To meet the educational needs of these children, quasi-illegal migrant schools pop up in large cities densely populated with migrants, like Beijing and Shanghai. In Beijing today, there are approximately 150-200 migrant schools, but their number is dwindling. They face a number of challenges: scarce funding, under-trained and underpaid teachers, safety issues, and outdated curricula. And, like all Chinese institutions, they suffer from the capricious twists and turns of political favor.

The unique situation of migrant workers is due to the hukou

illustration by Christina Zhang

• Features •

system, leftover from the 1950s under the auspices of Chairman Mao Zedong. Under the system, citizens are given either a “rural” or “urban” hukou and receive social services and welfare benefit according to their hukou designation. As the new nation grew and developed, the categories of “rural” and “urban” artificially sorted citizens into pseudo social classes, with urban citizens enjoying the bulk of benefits from China’s post-reform economic development.

Since Reform and Opening in 1978, migration restrictions have largely disappeared, but those who do decide to migrate relinquish many of their social benefits.

The image of the migrant worker has slowly threaded its way, through films like Last Train Home and Jia Zhangke’s Touch of Sin, into global conceptions of China. Migrant workers power the mammoth factory-states in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China, churning out the cheap exports we all rely on. They are the hidden force behind China’s consistently breakneck economic growth, an invisible labor reserve army that has contributed its poorly compensated lifeblood to the growth of the nation and received

very little in return.

It is an altogether precarious existence which migrant children and their parents face: unstable employment, no consistent education options, and nowhere to call home.

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wo years ago, during the third time Zhen came to Beijing looking for work, she also began looking for an elementary school that would accept her young son.

Zhen’s story is a typical one among Beijing migrant workers.

She migrated with her husband from her native Hubei province to Beijing for the first time ten years ago, looking for work. The move was difficult; they had to leave their son, then one year old, behind with his grandparents while they sought employment. It was the beginning of what was to be a life characterized by volatility.

Whenever work dried up, Zhen and her husband moved on to the next city.

Two years after they first “went out” from Hubei, Zhen returned to care for her now three-year-old son. They eventually brought him to Beijing, where Zhen and her husband sell produce from a cart on the side of the street. Yet Zhen is unsatisfied with her son’s elementary school. “It’s chaotic,” she explains, echoing the sentiments of many of the other migrant parents in Bai Miao, a neighborhood in Changping district. Still, without a Beijing hukou, she cannot enroll her son in a public school. Still, with nothing to lose, she tried registering her son at the nearby public school. “The line was incredibly long,” she remembered. “I waited all afternoon, only to be told that I didn’t have the right paperwork and permits.”

Migrant parents face several difficult options for their children’s education. They could leave their children in their home villages to further swell the ranks of “left behind children” cared for by the elderly and those unable to “go out.” Left behind children face a host of disadvantages. A recent report compiled by the China Youth and Children Research Center found that nearly half of left behind children had suffered accidental injuries and suffered higher rates of behavioral and emotional problems.

Wealthier migrant parents—whose only commonality with the migrant worker we know so well is their hukou status—can also send their children to expensive private schools or have their hukou transferred through work. They are the exception; for the majority of migrant parents, the options are limited to migrant schools of various quality. Migrant children may complete their elementary years in such a manner, but migrant schools which accept middle school age students are rare and migrant high schools are nonexistent. At this point, academically serious students either return to their home villages to prepare for the college entrance examination, a test they can only take in their native provinces. More often than not, migrant students join their parents in their search for work.

Migrant schools must also make strategic choices given their limited resources. Almost none of Beijing’s migrant schools has an official permit to operate, meaning their facilities have not been inspected according to zoning or safety regulations, curriculum has not been standardized, and diplomas they issue are therefore usually not recognized by public schools. Mostly dependent on the school fees of their migrant students, migrant schools usually choose not to allocate resources to begin the costly permit application process.

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• Features •

They are the hidden force behind China’s consistently breakneck contributed its poorly compensated lifeblood to the growth of the Even if migrant schools could pass safety and curriculum inspections, many school principals I talked to hinted at a strong element of political intervention in the school permit application process.

One of the founders of Tongxin Elementary School in Chaoyang district explained the change in political winds: “The schools also would not pass the permit process...Before it was easy to establish a private school, especially in the 1990s. From 2000-2004 they would let you [start a private school]. Now people are not allowed to start a new one.”

For the most part, migrant schools are private enterprises, established by private entrepreneurs often with commercial, rather than educational, interests at heart. Many profiteering principals viewed their migrant schools as a business, their students as customers, and their school fees as revenue.

“The principal [where I work] is very young and just graduated from a nearby Beijing university.” said Wu, an English teacher at a migrant school in Beijing’s Changping district. “The reason why he is successful is that he is good at promotion and publicity; that’s how he got so many kids [to attend his school].” Yet his educational credentials were conspicuously absent. The principal studied engineering and bought mismatching sets of English textbooks for the school as he had no background in education.

Wu’s story is one of many I heard illustrating the unintended consequences of outsourcing migrant education to an ill-regulated private sector. Unsurprisingly (though with notable exceptions) migrant schools are more poorly maintained and understaffed, and their students experience higher rates of behavioral and learning disabilities than those in public schools.

I was curious about how Zhen, the migrant worker and mother from Hubei, had fared in her search for schooling for her young son and decided to pay Bai Miao Middle School a visit. Of the more than 100 migrant schools that still remain in Beijing, the one Zhen’s son attends falls somewhere in the middle of the pack of migrant schools. Many migrant schools repurpose old factories or barracks for school facilities, but Bai Miao’s school has a clean swept front yard and brightly painted walls. It relies on per semester school fees of 1,300 RMB to fund operations (Zhen has a monthly income of 1,000-2,000 RMB). The school is on the large side with 900 students, and is able to purchase the standard primary school curriculum from the Beijing Education Bureau. Still, the principal ran his school like a business, and extracurricular and after school programming were nonexistent. A surly, grey-faced man, he chain smoked cigarettes while artfully evading my questions. “The teachers are all home for the Dragon Boat Festival,” he told me when I asked to speak with them. The Dragon Boat Festival had ended two days before.

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hile the quality and execution of migrant education remains in flux, the Beijing government has moved decisively to crack down on migrant schools all across the city. As a result, the landscape of migrant education is changing. Since 2006, in preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, city officials began 32 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

an ongoing crackdown on migrant schools. In the Fengtai district of Beijing alone, officials closed sixty migrant schools. Migrant schools were pushed out of Beijing’s center, and the majority now are located in the peripheral suburbs hours away by bus. Through a combination of these school closures and reform efforts, fewer and fewer smaller migrant schools remain. If they do, their lack of a permanent space (usually an evasive tactic so as to avoid unfriendly authorities) make them nearly impossible to track down and visit repeatedly. Those that remain must win government or corporate support—or perish.

Blue Skies Elementary School in Fengtai district is one of the only migrant schools that survived the pre-Olympic crackdown.

Unlike most of its peers, Blue Skies has an official permit to operate, despite a Fengtai moratorium on new migrant schools. In 2005, Blue Skies won a 1.5 million RMB ($240,000) grant from the Fengtai district government, which to this day provides the school with furnishings and waives the monthly rent for the modest facilities the school uses. “It’s very easy to get [a permit] because we have government support,” Liu explained. Only three other migrant schools in Fengtai still exist.

This mixture between public and private funding places Blue Skies in a new category of migrant school, one that is closer in status to a private school or American charter school. Unlike other migrant schools, it receives grants from the Fengtai district government but has more leeway in recruiting migrant students.

In this respect, Blue Skies is an experimental approach that the Fengtai government has sponsored to better accommodate migrant students. How the principal managed to foster such close government support, however, remains a mystery. In ways equally opaque, Dandelion Middle School, a well known school which enjoys partnerships with elite Chinese and western universities such as Duke University, has leveraged the political connections of its formidably competent principal Zheng Hong into becoming one of the best migrant schools in Beijing. Dandelion’s staff offered me a more straightforward explanation for their success.

“The [local] government is working with our school because they recognize that after nine years [of operation] that it’s pretty good,” said Marcus, a volunteer coordinator. “Thus, the school has more freedom and creative opportunity.”

Other migrant schools have turned to community activism to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of political fortune. When One Heart Elementary School in Picun Village was threatened with closure due to urbanization plans, Beijing educators, artists, and parents used social media to draw attention to their school; eventually, One Heart was allowed to remain open even as a nearby migrant school was shut down.

Yet most other Beijing migrant schools have not fared as well, due to the growing hostility of Beijing authorities. After months of futile searching, Zhen has given up her quest to enroll her son in a public school. She will send her son back to Hubei to attend middle school. “There is no hope anymore,” she sighed.

• Features •

economic growth, an invisible labor reserve army that has nation and received very little in return.

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n August 2013, the national Chinese Ministry of Education announced a new education policy which would reverberate throughout the migrant education system. Under the auspices of standardizing the school enrollment and permit systems between China’s many provinces and cities, every eligible child would receive an electronic school enrollment number tied to their hukou status. The resulting electronic system, called “一人一生一号” (“one person, one life, one number”), would make accessing school records and transcripts from all locations easier. Because more than one third of Beijing’s residents do not have Beijing hukou, Beijing implemented its own city-specific policy in January 2014 to accommodate the new electronic enrollment system. According to this “five certificate policy,” all Beijing migrant students must submit five items of paperwork so as to qualify for an enrollment number in a Beijing public school. These “certificates” include things like proof of employment and permission to reside temporarily in Beijing. Ostensibly to provide a pathway for migrant students to attend Beijing public schools, the five certificate policy instead has opposite effect; its requirements are so onerous that virtually no migrant student in need qualifies.

The five-certificate policy has only exacerbated Zhen’s concerns about her son’s education. “My permits were all stopped up, because if I can’t get a temporary resident permit than I can’t get the other permits,” she said, referring to the sequential nature of the five items of paperwork.

In addition to the high barriers erected by the five-certificate policy, the policy’s inconsistent implementation across Beijing’s districts has further stymied migrant parents. In some districts, both parents must apply for each child, whereas others only require one parent. Other districts require migrants to have labor contracts dating back at least six months to three years when applying for an enrollment number. Additional modifications for just one permit may include business permits, approval from work supervisors, and proof of social insurance; multiplied by five, and all the different requirements can become impossible keep track of.

These variations have caused a general environment of uncertainty among migrants. Even though Zhen plans on sending her son back to Hubei for middle school, she is fearful that his grades will not be able to be transferred to a Hubei school after hearing of cases of failure from family members. Because she has not lived in Hubei for more than a decade, she is unsure if her son can apply for an enrollment number there despite having local hukou.

Far from accelerating the entry of migrant students into Beijing public schools, the five-certificate system has further codified their legal exclusion. Migrant students and schools operate parallel to the state education apparatus in a politically limbo: their existence widely acknowledged as necessary yet simultaneously opposed by the authorities.

Up against such odds, migrant students and their parents often find little for which to hope. Anyi, a mother of two whose children attend the same school as Zhen’s son, has never dared to think beyond the immediate present. “We haven’t really thought about

our kids’ future,” she admits. “Of course we want them to attend school, but it all depends on where they find work. They can only go to schools with a bad environment, anyways.”

Moreover, Beijing’s five-certificate policy exacerbates the lack of education continuity in a famously rigid educational system.

Migrant students find it difficult to attend middle school, because of the dearth of migrant middle schools, and often elect to return to their home province. However, students who attend an accredited elementary school can enter a publicly licensed middle school more easily, and only those who have graduated from a public, accredited middle schools may attend public high schools that offer a curriculum which prepares students for the gaokao, or National College Entrance Examination. Moreover, only residents with Beijing hukou can take the this examination in Beijing which confers advantages; China’s best universities are in Beijing, and Beijing students receive preferential admission. Saddled with even more uncertainty due to the five certificates, Beijing migrant students face tough choices between staying with their family or pursuing an education in a hometown they may have never seen.

Combined with the hukou system, a geographic caste system of sorts, migrant students begin life on an uneven playing field heavily tilted against them. n May 2014, only about twenty miles from Bai Miao, at a much-televised press conference Chinese spokespersons announced a plan that, by 2020, would move an additional 200 million citizens into China’s cities. Most importantly, the plan declared that 150 million migrants living in cities would receive urban benefits like public education by 2020. Small to medium cities have already begun easing their hukou restrictions so as to attract migrants, but Tier 1 cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen will continue to have extremely high barriers of entry for migrants. Migrant schools will slowly disappear in these places, either incorporated into the public system (as in Shanghai) or slowly edged out (as in Beijing). But migrant students themselves may start to head for other places, where the competition is less intense and local hukou much easier to get.

Urbanization, by loosening social institutions and encouraging migration, will create new opportunities for migrant workers and their children. As the human flow of migrants turns inland towards China’s relatively undeveloped central and western provinces, China may finally begin building the social infrastructure to finally incorporate migrants as urban citizens with access to jobs, education, and social benefits. Providing these growing cities with the resources necessary to create these opportunities will be an immense social-planning challenge. Indeed, such a human migration on this scale is unprecedented, but so has China’s path been so far.

I

Emily Feng is a senior at Duke University. Contact her at emily.z.feng@gmail.com.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 33

IN THIS SECTION

Taipei’s Sustainable Urban Design p.37

Farmers’ Markets p.38

Life & Culture From General to Junzi The Changing Face of Chinese Food in America LUCAS SIN explores the past, present, and future of Chinese-American food.

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new Chinese restaurant, Junzi Kitchen, is opening on Broadway in small city New Haven, CT. And they’re promising to brew a small scale revolution in Chinese-American cuisine. For starters, they’re not serving General Tso’s chicken. They’re serving a northeastern snack, fast casual style: chun-bing.

The first word that comes to mind as you bite into Junzi Kitchen’s new chun-bing is balance. Balance, as in juicy chunks of pork hock braised overnight against crisp vegetables tossed, dressed, and treated with respect.

All wrapped in a thin pancake. Piquant, gritty Northeastern Chinese flavors layered carefully in a tight wrap. Sweet and sour.

Savory and spice. This is the sort of thing you could finish in one bite. But instead, you savor, bite by bite to decipher and make sense of the flavor profiles at work.

But balance, too, as in a single food item on the cultural vanguard that reverses orientalist persuasions and disrupts the status quo of Chinese food in America. The chun-bing, a comfort food item brought over directly from Northeastern China, not adulterated for Americans, but refined into a product that is clean, thoughtful, accessible, and flavorful. Junzi Kitchen, opening this spring in New Haven, CT, is at the forefront of a new wave of Chinese cuisine in America, one that brings to life a translation of flavors that does not condescend to the American palate. An imported food item that instead appeals to a modern American food climate that respects and indulges in authentic culture, sustainability, and simply delicious food.

34 VOLUME II | Spring 34 VOLUME 3 ISSUE3 IIISSUE | Spring 2015 2015

illustration by Zishi Li

• Life & Culture •

Chinese cuisine in America is as popular as ever, but the market is ripe for disruption by restaurants like Junzi Kitchen. A survey of ethnic cuisines in America yields that Chinese food is by far the most popular ethnic food in America, with over 43,000 Chinese restaurants in the country. That’s more than all the Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s and KFC branches combined. The second most popular ethnic cuisine is Mexican, with around 31,000 restaurants nationally.

And the most popular Chinese dishes, as reported by GrubHub, is General Tso’s chicken. But if one were to bring General Tso’s chicken, as it is found in most Chinese-American restaurants today, to Chef Peng Chang-kuei, he would not recognise the stuff. Peng, a Hunanese chef, invented General Tso’s chicken in the 1950s when he worked catering Nationalist government banquets. Fuchsia Dunlop writes in her interview with Peng, “General Tso’s chicken did not pre-exist in Hunanese cuisine, but originally the flavors of the dish were typically Hunanese—heavy, sour, hot and salty.”

Today, General Tso’s chicken is sugary, sour, mildly spicy, battered, deep-fried and lathered in brown sauce served over steamed rice. Alan Zhu, chef and owner of the 25 year-old Debbie Wong Restaurant in Middlefield CT, “cannot imagine a Chinese restaurant without General Tso’s.” It’s sweet. Fried. Chicken. Everything the American palate loves.

Then how did Peng’s original come to be the contemporary, bastardised iteration of the dish that Americans so enjoy today?

There was no master architect. Unlike many other ethnic cuisines, Chinese cuisine in the US has long strayed from the centralised businesses and brands. That is, that the culinary cornerstones of Chinese-American cuisine—dishes such as chop suey, crab rangoons, fortune cookies, and General Tso’s chicken— have evolved organically without the direction and innovations of individual companies. Today, within the top 100 restaurant chains, only two of them serve Chinese cuisine.

The evolution of Chinese-American cuisine has always been driven by Chinese immigrants in the United States, working independently to adapt to the American palate.. In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants brought their foodways with them across the Pacific during the Gold Rush. As Chinatowns in California began to grow in size and the American public began to visit Chinese restaurants, Chinese chefs began to adapt their dishes for public taste. They introduced western vegetables into their stir-fries; broccoli and onions in Chinese are translated into xi lan hua or “western broccoli flower” and yang cong, or “western onion,” respectively. They also adopted other Asian food items into their own menus—crab rangoon roughly from then unpopular Burmese menus and fortune cookies from Japanese production facilities forced to close down due to the Japanese-American internment during World War II. And they began frying chicken and lathering it in ubiquitous sticky brown sauce: General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, and orange chicken.

Those were the dishes that stuck, not only because they were enjoyed, but because they provided an illusion of authenticity. Eating at a Chinese restaurant was an adventure into the exotic. It was cultural. Historian Sylvia Lovegren writes that once in the early 20th Century, you could hear “Who’ll Chop Your Suey When I’m Gone?” at the Owl Nightclub in New York, or dance to

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• Life & Culture •

Louis Armstrong’s popular tune “Cornet Chop Suey.” Edward Hopper painted his famous Chop Suey in 1929.

Of course, today, it’s become far too easy to dismiss Chinese-American cuisine as truly inauthentic. And that continues to drive the industry on. “People are starting to become more aware, gain broader exposure, to see what authentic looks like,” Symon He, veteran marketing analyst in the Chinese-American restaurant industry, said in an interview. “They’re more curious to see what authentic tastes and feels like.”

The answer to this demand thus far is an influx of Chinese restaurateurs with greater regional specificity. Chinese cuisine is an umbrella term for what is often referred to in China as the “Eight Great Cuisines”—the cuisine of China is diverse and colourful. Popular ChineseAmerican cuisine represents only a fraction of Southern flavor profiles.

He continues, “New restaurants then are appearing in cities with regional, authentic concepts.” He points to regional cuisines of Sichuan and Shanghai that have gained significant traction and more recently restaurants like Jason Wang’s Xi’an Famous Foods in New York that are

introducing new vocabularies, new flavors, and new dining experiences to the public. On the menu are liangpi noodles—a spicy, cool dish loaded with peppers, cumin, and stretchy hand pulled noodles—imported and recreated from Northern China without dumbing down or mass marketing authentic flavor. Previously, the dish was unknown and unnamed in New York. Now, it’s a staple of Chinatown.

And as was the case in the past, dishes like these are carried by changes in the Chinese population in the United States.

Wang, like many new chefs and restaurateurs, is a second generation Chinese immigrant who is highly educated and sensitive to the American palate. And of course, he’s also catering to an increase in the Chinese-American population at large.

Yong Zhao, the CEO of Junzi Kitchen, however, is interested in a specific demographic shift. Recent years have witnessed a massive increase in the number of Chinese students in the United States. And this as an opportunity to harness new talent for a new wave of Chinese cuisine. His Junzi Kitchen team is comprised largely of highly educated students and scholars from China, driven to bring comfort food from home and to integrate innovative business practices into that cuisine.

This begins with a focus on local New Haven culture. “It isn’t enough to let Chinese culture run rampant; it must be thoroughly integrated into the local scene,” Yong says. Junzi will partner with local businesses, local government, and local residents to ensure an honest business that is as much rooted in authenticity of the land as its cultural roots.

So while Junzi Kitchen seeks to create as big an impact in the American market as possible, the business is built one restaurant at a time. High-quality ingredients, food made to order, fast-casual assembly line formats and most importantly, a cuisine—not profit—driven food practice.

Perhaps these principles can be traced back to ancient Confucian values of junzi, or gentleman.

Junzi live a life of balance. They are wise, honest, humble and devoted to community. Acting along those principles makes for a good story.

And if food was to carry any story at all, Junzi would have it.

Lucas Sin is a senior at Yale University. Contact him at lucas.sin@yale.edu.

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photos from junzi.kitchen

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R U E L B A N I A T S U I’S S

TAIPE

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t’s a sunny Sunday afternoon in Taipei. The bike paths along the Xindian River are filled with large families out for a walk, runners sweating under the sun, and bikers decked out in head-to-toe Giant apparel. Baseball teams run onto the field for practice, tennis coaches drill players on their forehands, and young inline speed skaters whip around the track. Elderly couples take their pet dogs out for a ride, while others are returning home with baskets full of produce from the outdoor Fuhe Bridge flea market. One Taipei mother who recently started coming to the riverside park points to her two daughters nearby, “just practicing how to ride a bike.”

Completed in 2011, Taipei’s riverside park bike path system extends for over a hundred kilometers along the Danshui, Keelung, Xindian, and Jingmei Rivers. The park system provides residents with open space to exercise and enjoy outdoor activities, even in the midst of Taipei’s bustling city center. According to the Asian Green City Index, a research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Taipei has one of the highest ratios of green space per capita, with fifty square meters per person, out of the twenty-two cities evaluated.

The riverside parks succeeds particularly in their use of land in Taipei. Taipei’s geography should be looked at from two perspectives, “from the opportunity and… from constraint,” explains Shuli Huang, an advisor to National Government Councils on Sustainability and Development and professor at National Taipei University. The Taipei Basin originally attracted settlers for its fertile soil and convenient transport on the Danshui River, but flooding has been a chronic problem.

Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies professor Karen Seto believes that in regards to climate change and urban design, “flooding and protection of the city’s infrastructure and inhabitants [are] of primary

MICHELLE PETERS discusses how Taipei’s riverside park bike path system maintains outdoor green space and a symbiotic relationship with the natural environment, even in the midst of urban expansion.

concern.” The government constructed levees along the major rivers to combat such issues with flooding, but this in turn blocked riverfront accessibility. Furthermore, water pollution was a serious problem in Taipei’s rivers until about ten years ago. “Many buildings along the rivers are still not facing… the river, but the backside is toward the river,” Huang explains, hinting that the river was simply seen as a place to dump sewage.

However, with the construction of a new sewage plant and the riverside parks, Taipei’s rivers have once again become a valuable resource. Chienyuan Lin, deputy mayor of Taipei from 2008 to 2010, states that the government’s purpose in constructing the riverside parks were manifold. “In addition to providing leisure space for citizens, it is also bundled with the purification of Danshui river and other rivers.” To go along with the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition, “landscape beautification and greening of urban spaces were also promoted,” Lin adds.

Before the construction of the riverside paths, bikers did not have adequate space to enjoy sports in Taipei other than biking on the street. One frequenter of the riverside paths believes that having such outdoor space is important “for physical health and alleviating pressure.” Even for those who do not take sports quite as importantly, the parks provide a space for gathering with friends and enjoying the outdoors.

From a cultural perspective, Taipei has done an excellent job providing space for recreation, but from an ecological perspective, problems remain. Huang believes that the high ratio of green space in Taipei can mainly be attributed to the surrounding hill slope and therefore do “not really penetrate into the urban area except the urban waterfront.”

Huang argues, “Taipei should really have some symbiotic relations with the surrounding ecosystems” especially when considering

future growth. He refers to the Guandu Plain as an example. Although Guandu has a nature preservation area for bird watching, the rest of the plain is mostly abandoned with only some agricultural practice and Huang therefore believes that “it’s not a very efficient use of land.”

When it comes to sustainable development, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies professor Gordon Geballe believes that “the hardest ecological, or maybe philosophical, principle to remember is change.”

While there is still progress to be made, Taipei’s successful ventures, including the construction of riverside parks and the implementation of YouBike, a citywide bike sharing system, reflect that urban development and design in Taipei certainly embrace positive change for the city. In 2016, Taipei will hold the honor of World Design Capital, an initiative sponsored by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. With the theme “Adaptive City – Design in Motion,” Taipei will focus on current development issues the city faces and how both government officials and citizens can employ “design thinking” to improve the quality of life in Taipei. With the spirit of the World Design Capital initiative and a new city administration eager for change, Taipei undoubtedly can continue to be an innovator and a leader in sustainability and urban development. As many countries across the globe experience high urbanization rates that are predicted to be on the rise, perhaps Taipei can provide for inspiration on creative approaches to maintaining outdoor green space and a symbiotic relationship with the natural environment, even in the midst of urban expansion.

Michelle Peters is a junior at Yale University.

Contact her at michelle.peters@yale.edu.

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Farmers’ Markets with Chinese Characteristics MARIN TOSCANO explores the food industry in China: its world-famous corporations, farmers’ markets, individual food vendors, and related food safety issues.

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n the face of drastic food scandals like exploding watermelons pumped with growth stimulants and glow-in-the-dark pork contaminated by phosphorescent bacteria, finding a place to buy safe and healthy food is a source of mounting tension and confusion for Chinese consumers.

Farmers’ markets, while now gaining popularity and considered “progressive” in the US, are commonplace in China and are increasingly viewed as problematic and “backward.” There is a growing attitude among the middle class that traveling food vendors and street-side vegetable and fruit stands make neighborhoods look luan— disorganized and unkempt—and may contribute to food safety scandals, prompting local officials to enforce what has been a very laissez faire law requiring food vendors to get licensed and pay fees to sell food. While this may be successful in making the streets look cleaner, it is unclear if limiting who can sell food, and when and where they can sell it will be truly effective at improving food safety.

Chinese consumers hold varying perceptions about food safety in relation to different methods of food distribution, and many struggle as they try to decipher if Westernstyle supermarkets are addressing food safety atrocities with improved hygienic and regulatory standards, or if food safety scandals are merely being repackaged.

While the quest for safe and healthy food becomes more and more complex, frustrated 38 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

consumers turn to factors like convenience and presentation to make their purchasing decisions. When pressed about their food shopping preferences in relation to food safety and quality, many consumers interviewed in Beijing and Kunming admitted that they do not see a significant difference between shopping at supermarkets versus farmers’ markets. They noted that no matter where they go, the food is coming from the same wholesale markets, which are sourcing from the same pool of large-scale and often unregulated farms.

Supermarkets came to China’s top tier cities in 1990, selling an image of modernity and Western convenience. Since then, foreign chains like Wal-Mart and Carrefour, as well as Chinese-born supermarkets, have spread rapidly across China’s cities and suburban areas, resulting in over 50,000 supermarkets in less than three decades. At first, supermarkets specialized in imported food products and packaged, processed foods that were marketed predominantly to China’s rising middle class. Over the last decade, however, supermarkets have made distinct efforts to increase fresh produce and meat sales.

In recent years, it is becoming apparent that supermarkets are not immune to the food safety challenges in China. Carrefour invested ￥5 million to operate a food safety test lab in hopes of eliminating food scandals. Despite these efforts, some mislabeled and expired products reached the shelves of certain Carrefour branches. In

one case, Carrefour was accused of carrying a processed beef product that when tested was found to consist of several kinds of meat, including pork and lamb, but no actual beef.

In another scandal, Carrefour was exposed in deliberately mislabeling conventionally produced chicken as free-range and charging a higher price. As similar scandals accumulate in the awareness of Chinese consumers, their trust for supermarket chains and brands that strive to promote transparency waivers.

The expansion of supermarkets is changing the way that Chinese people shop, prepare and eat food, and will undoubtedly impact food culture, dietary nutrition and overall health. Mrs. Wang, who grew up in Beijing, but has lived in the US for the last ten years, noticed how her shopping habits changed without access to farmers’ markets: “In China, I would walk almost every day to fresh markets, [but] now I have to drive to the supermarket, and I only go once a week…

Many Chinese are concerned that the food in supermarkets is only restocked once a week.”

Younger generations in China are experiencing a similar transition as their work lives become more demanding. They often rely on their elderly parents to go to outdoor morning markets where food is the cheapest and to shop and cook for the family daily. However, those who don’t live with their parents gravitate towards supermarkets for convenience.

Shopping at supermarkets means consumers are sacrificing what has traditionally been photos from matthewmuller.com

• Life & Culture • highly valued by Chinese people: freshness.

Farmers’ markets, or wet markets in China, are not exactly the same as the trendy farmers’ markets in the US that sell heirloom tomatoes and support local farmers. Today, especially in China’s urban areas, it is very rare that the vendors at farmers’ markets are involved with growing the produce they sell. Vendors are often rural emigrants who at some point may have farmed in their hometowns, but now wake up every morning at three to commute to wholesale markets, where they rush to select the best produce for the best price. There are still occasional “grandmas” who come down from the countryside and sell a few surplus vegetables or eggs from baskets they carry on their backs, but they are unable to afford licenses for selling food. Farmers offering “farm-to-street” produce are few and far between in modern-day Chinese cities.

Farmers’ markets are still viewed by most Chinese consumers as superior in terms of freshness, flavor, diversity, price, and accessibility, but when it comes to safety, supermarkets and farmers’ markets both lack transparency.

There is persistent demand from Chinese citizens that the food system become more standardized so that product quality and origin are transparent to the consumer.

Concerned Chinese citizens and policymakers often refer to the Federal Drug Administration as an ideal regulatory body to emulate, but there are obstacles to applying such a system in China, and it can be argued the FDA has its own unresolved problems in regards to food safety and quality.

Implementing effective safety inspections at food production farms and factories has proven especially challenging in China. As is often the case in China’s top-down political system, central policy mandating increased food safety inspections is corrupted at the local level, where agricultural businesses that can afford to pay bribes, pass inspections and even outright buy organic certifications, regardless of actual production practices.

Perhaps a “crackdown” on unregulated food distribution in the city attempts to placate consumers by superficially displaying a more regulated system, while actual food safety standards at the production level remain inadequate.

Several residents in Beijing and Kunming think the “messy, chaotic and unregulated” nature of farmers’ markets epitomizes food safety problems, but others are not so sure

that better labels and packaging can ensure safer food. Most consumers noted that they prefer to buy dried goods, oil, and processed foods at supermarkets, believing these are more trustworthy, but still prefer to go to farmers’ markets to buy fresh produce.

Consumer perceptions regarding where to buy the highest quality meat and fish are still inconsistent. Some interviewees thought meat sold at farmers’ markets is “safer” because it is slaughtered on the day of sale and therefore “fresher,” while others think supermarkets are more “hygienic” because they keep their meats refrigerated.

Consumers interviewed in Beijing noted that they shop at supermarkets not based on the hopeful illusion that products are safer, but rather because they prefer buying food in large, well-lit indoor stores, which they feel provide a more “hygienic, organized, and modern” shopping environment.

Jared Schy, an independent researcher studying sustainable agriculture in Yunnan, muses, “These are the same words you might use to describe something that is lifeless and barren; traditionally, food has been sold in a way that does not try to hide its origin from nature and its journey through human hands. Supermarkets distance food from the combined natural and human elements it takes to produce it, thereby making food production chains more complex and elusive to the consumer.”

Chinese consumers seem to be at a crossroads: there is debate over whether a large corporation like Carrefour can be trusted to source safe food just because they have a reputation to protect, or whether small-scale producers and vendors might use better practices because they are not operating at an industrial scale. The spectrum of consumer opinion varies greatly: some are content to pay exorbitant prices for food labeled as organic, while others think the only way to truly know if your food is safe is to grow it yourself or to get surplus from friends and family in remote villages where they know the locals do not use chemicals.

It would be a shame if farmers’ markets became the scapegoat amid the panic to address the dramatic food safety issues rampant in China. Food scandals have been linked to both world-famous corporations and small-scale vendors, making it difficult to say whether one form of distribution is more conducive to selling safe food than the other.

If traditional forms of food distribution are

traded for the system used in the US, where supermarkets dominate and the small-scale growers and vendors are left with no support from the food industry, China may find itself trading one set of problems for another.

Food access issues reminiscent of “food deserts” in the US could be an unforeseen consequence of tackling the wrong link of the food chain in a desperate frenzy to combat food safety issues. Much like in the US, high-quality supermarkets with fresh produce will likely operate exclusively in high-income neighborhoods, making low-income communities more susceptible to food safety issues.

China’s infatuation with the American food system is based on the perceived ideals of transparency and regulation. Perhaps it would be more beneficial if China focused on progressive trends in the US that aim to promote improved food safety and quality: farmers’ markets selling fresh and healthy local meat and produce. China may actually have a head start in this regard: farmers’ markets and vendors are already in abundance and food supply chains are more regional or localized relative to the US. For a revival of China’s farmers’ markets to take place, there would need to be a significant rise in incentives and support for small-scale farmers to produce safe and healthy food, as well as the development of a regulatory system that provides incentives for food producers to comply with safety standards. Chinese consumers will need to be persistent in demanding food that is both safe and healthy. Otherwise, China’s food system is likely to continue experiencing safety issues and confront rising health challenges.

Farmers’ markets with Chinese characteristics have been both a victim of and contributor to food safety issues, but they hold the potential to become part of the solution.

Marin Toscano is a graduate of University of Colorado at Boulder. Contact her at marin. toscano@gmail.com. chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 39

IN THIS SECTION

Gone with the Bullets p.42

Eye of the Storm p.44

Chinese-American Inclusion/Exclusion p.45

Opinion Lasting Rel

ation s, N ew

Ho p es

Editor-in-Chief TEDDY MILLER sits down with former United States Ambassador to China Winston Lord at the China Hands 2014 Fall Issue Launch Event.

40  VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

illustration by Zishi Li and Sherril Wang

• Opinion •

I

t was a celebration: the China Hands Fall 2014 Issue launch event. Writers, editors, designers and business team members crowded into the Trumbull Room of Yale University’s Branford College. China Hands had organized a launch event each semester since the organization’s inception two years, four issues, ago. It was a tradition.

And yet anticipation filled the room.

The party’s guest of honor was on his way, and only someone of Winston Lord’s pedigree could have commanded that level of respect from a group of college students on a Friday night. A former President of the Council on Foreign Relations (19771985), United States Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China (1985-1989) and Assistant Secretary of States for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1993-1997), Winston Lord, Yale College Class of 1959, has not only helped shape the foreign policy of the United States for the greater part of the last half-century, he has also been an integral figure to the US-China relationship.

Unsurprisingly, when Lord walked through the door, the room became completely still. However, with the conversational savvy of a career diplomat, he quickly broke the tension by making a quip about the dismal New Haven weather.

After a few chatter-filled moments, the group settled down, sitting comfortably on the cushioned couches of the Trumbull Room with Lord seated at the center. As the interviewer, I was seated to his right, pencil and list of questions in hand.

Lord opened by speaking to the entire group, summarizing his broad view of US-China relations with one simple, effective sentence: “I’ve seen it at many different times from many different perspectives.”

Lord’s abbreviated autobiography was not just a history of work, though; it was charged with pointed insights and colorful, even humorous, anecdotes.

Early on in his career, Lord,

“It’s not just government— business connections, cultural, journalistic, all these can help strengthen the fabric.”

as a member of the United States National Security Council’s planning staff, was a special assistant to Henry Kissinger during his famous secret trip to Beijing in 1971.

When recalling the adventure, Lord confidently and humorously noted that he was actually the first American to enter China since the Communist Party’s victory in 1949. “Some of you may think that Dr. Kissinger was the American to go into China after 1949,” Lord said, “but I was there ahead of Dr. Kissinger, just before we got to the Chinese border I went to the front of the plane… so I was the first.”

After outlining his involvement at the top levels of the ever-changing relationship, Lord began to give an account of his position on current affairs between the two superpowers. Lord started by declaring his support or “bipartisanship, pragmatism and moderation,” referring to himself as a “flaming centrist.” Lord also stressed how one also had to realize that the US-China relationship is “not only the most important relationship in the world, but also the most complex.”

Lord himself believes in a double-sided path to more amiable relations. “On the one hand,” he said, “we’ve got to make sure that America genuinely welcomes the rise of China,” as it could be “a spur to make us more dynamic ourselves.” He firmly stated, “We’ve got to accord China a great role in world events.” At the same time, however, Lord argued that China should make an effort to adhere better to international norms.

Satisfied with the description, I asked what Lord made of President Obama’s recent seemingly successful negotiations in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, particularly with regards to climate change. Lord gave an overall positive picture, noting that the US-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change could be crucial for younger generations.

What is not yet clear, however, according to Lord, is “whether this is temporary or it’s a significant improvement in our relations.”

Not everything about the Obama visit went so smoothly, however, and it was reported that during the concluding discussions, Xi ardently warned against

foreign governments meddling in China’s domestic affairs. On this topic, Lord expressed a deep level of concern. Speaking candidly, Lord specifically worried about a rising “anti-Western theme, led by Xi himself.” Lord explained further his understanding that the sentiments Xi communicated were “a reflection of China’s growing power and its rightful place in the world.”

On a deeper level, Lord believes there is a certain degree of “insecurity” within the Communist Party “about how stable the situation is politically.” Lord said that “between corruption and pollution and the lockup of dissidents and the problems in Tibet and Xinjiang, there’s a lot of turmoil in there.” Even though China looks very confident on the world stage, “Xi and the others are concerned at home” due to “some inherent problems in Chinese society.”

Returning to the positives as the conversation drew to a close, Lord demonstrated his profound hope for the future of US-China relations by telling his audience how students like ourselves could contribute. “The first way to make a contribution,” Lord made clear, “is to go to the other country.” For those interested in government, Lord urged them to employ “wider perspectives” when discussing matters with their Chinese counterparts. “It’s not just government, business connections, cultural, journalistic, all these can help strengthen the fabric,” Lord said encouragingly.

Before heading back out into the night with his entourage, former US Ambassador to China Winston Lord left me with one statement in particular that has stuck in my head. “I’m not saying young people by themselves are going to solve this problem,” Lord said, “but they represent the foundation for the future.”

Teddy Miller is a junior at Yale University and the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine.

Contact him at theodore.miller@yale.edu. chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 41

• Opinion •

The Hide and Seek of Jiang Wen WENBIN GAO reviews the popular Chinese blockbuster, Gone with the Bullets, directed by Jiang Wen. “In any case, I can’t make a film about [contemporary issues] now. It would be rejected instantly by censors and there’d be worse trouble. I turned to historical films because they pass censors more easily. When you write about [current matters], what can you write?

There’ll be problems if you deal with real stories.”

—Jiang Wen

42 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

A

s‌ a popular yet controversial director, Jiang Wen always finds himself in the spotlight. His new film, Gone with the Bullets, is set in 1920s Shanghai and its plot surrounds a beauty pageant.

The film is one of Jiang Wen’s trilogy on the Beiyang Government, the central authority in China in the 1910s and early 1920s. Although it has been a commercial success, bringing in over 500 million RMB at the box office, comments on the film have been extremely polarized.

The name of the film, Gone with the Bullets, shows an obvious connection with its predecessor, Let the Bullets Fly. Following Let the Bullets Fly, the new film continues to explore the dynamics of local Chinese politics. However, while both films touch on topics such as corruption, power, love and the all-encompassing theme of modernization, Gone with the Bullets develops the historical satire or illusion employed in Let the Bullets Fly to a new height. Surrounding the mysterious death of a prostitute named Ma Zouri, the film provides a dazzling overview of figures from all sides of the political spectrum,

photo from thebeijinger.com

• Opinion • including warlords, western powers, members of the former Manchu aristocracy and police officers from the Shanghai French Concession.

The grotesque death of Ma Zouri is both similar and different from that of Meursault in Camus’ L’Étranger. It is similar because it shows the helplessness of an individual. However, while such helplessness for Camus comes from the ontological irregularities of fate, for Jiang Wen, it comes from the disproportionate comparison between one man and the political community in which he resides.

Domestically, the new film has received largely negative comments.

Although Let the Bullets Fly is widely recognized as a film with esoteric meanings, most people claim that they can at least understand it.

The new film, however, is considered by most Chinese film critics as obscure and incomprehensible. Many critics criticized Jiang for being egotistical, and for experimenting with art in a way that neglects the receptivity of the audience. The moviegoers’ complaints reinforce the criticism—many of them left halfway through the film because they couldn’t understand it, for the rich historical allusions and the unconventional episodic narrative totally baffled them. The harsh criticism from the “big V” (an influential user of Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter) Wang Sicong, son of the Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin, has added momentum to the already heated discussion on Weibo.

The film has also received mixed reviews abroad. Gone with the Bullets has been selected to be screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival and is celebrated by some critics as “a masterpiece full of surprises.” However, other critics still make biting comparisons between Gone with the Bullets and Let the Bullets Fly. Film critic Edmund Lee from South China Morning Post wrote, “It was a tall order for Jiang Wen to replicate the acclaim of his satirical comedy Let the Bullets Fly (2010). With this second entry of his early republican China-set trilogy, the actor-director gets mixed results from an eccentric tale of obsession, wealth and power.” He went on to call the film “a pompous tragicomedy” and a “glitzy and misanthropic spectacle.”

Although overwhelmed by negative comments, Jiang himself remains confident about the artistic quality of the film. In an interview with Renmin Net, Jiang claimed his new film to be “the best of all of his works” and said he would “respond with arrogance to those who are arrogant.”

What are the possible reasons for the polarization of opinions? First, many people, especially the majority of the domestic audience who are still used to traditional realism, cannot appreciate Jiang’s avant-garde techniques. Second, the subject matter in the film, though similar to that in Let the Bullets Fly, is in fact much more complicated. The story sets its background in Shanghai, a merging point of East and West. It deals with not only Chinese characters, but also foreigners from countries such as France, Russia and Vietnam. It struggles with the theme of cultural and political exchanges between China and the west. The international dimension of China’s modernization, which is largely absent in Let the Bullets Fly, is explicitly portrayed in the new film. Appreciating the film requires a certain level of knowledge in Chinese history that exceeds history textbooks and party propaganda, and the lack of this understanding results in the confusion of average Chinese moviegoers.

Jiang has always been a unique director because although he persistently explores historical subjects, he is able to remain in the mainstream and has enjoyed continuous financial success. Unlike other directors such as Lou Ye, Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yuan, who are either banned in China or remained low-profile due to the

obscurity of their works, Jiang remains a popular and yet unorthodox interpreter of Chinese history. The only failed attempt is his film Devils on the Doorstep, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000 but was banned in China for seriously deviating from the official narrative of the Anti-Japanese War. On the whole, Jiang has not only survived the censorship system, which is especially suspicious of historically conscientious works, but has also gained prestige even within the regime. His method of esoteric expression has protected his films that might contain subversive elements. However, such a way of expression will inevitably distance himself from the public, making his films harder to understand.

Jiang confirmed that Gone with the Bullets has been modified by the authorities to such an extent that even his team “could not recognize the film” on the day of release. It remains unclear about what changes has been made. Nonetheless, it is clear that even history wrapped in obscure language is not immune from the censorship system. The co-existence of Jiang Wen with a regime that detests independent artistic expression of any kind is a fragile one. But up to this point, we are happy to see that Jiang has chiseled out some space in a mountain of monolithic authority to express his artistic talents. If Jiang persists, the game of hide and seek between him and the censors will continue.

Wenbin Gao is a freshman at Yale University. Contact him at wenbin. gao@yale.edu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 43

• Opinion •

Eye of the Storm

YIFU DONG reviews a book of memoirs on the Cultural Revolution, Memory of the Storm (Baofengyu de Jiyi).

W

hen I was attending Beijing No. 4 High School, one of the best-known high schools in China, I had heard of the role of my school in the Cultural Revolution. However, it is extremely difficult for any student today to imagine that the same grounds, where the hexagon-shaped classrooms, gardens and sports field now lie, served half a century ago as the epicenter of a political storm that forever altered the fate of China. The high school became the eye of the storm largely because the school was elitist in the 1950s and early 1960s before the Cultural Revolution, when many princelings, or sons of higher level officials in the Party, government and military, attended the school. The list of princelings include famous names such as Lin Liguo, the son of Lin Biao, Liu Yuan, the son of Liu Shaoqi, and Bo Xilai, the son of Bo Yibo.

In 2011, eighteen alumni of Beijing No. 4 High School, also witnesses of the Cultural Revolution, contributed a chapter to a collection of memoirs called Memory of the Storm (Baofengyu de Jiyi) in Hong Kong. The three co-editors are Bei Dao, Cao Yifan and Wei Yi. Bei Dao, the most famous of the three, is a widely-acclaimed poet who attended Beijing No. 4 High School and later continued his career in Hong Kong. Other contributors include famous artists and intellectuals such as Mu Zhijing, Liu Xuanhui, Qin Xiao and Chen Kaige.

Despite the powerful lineup, it is easy to overlook the importance of this book because the stories are largely confined to the experiences of teenagers in an elite Beijing high school.

Clearly, the book does not serve to present the whole picture of the Cultural Revolution, but the essence of the book is a precious collection

44 VOLUME 3 ISSUE II | Spring 2015

of firsthand accounts. The contributors offer a mosaic of memories, encompassing school life, class differences, violence, travel and even sex. The value of the book lies in the glimpses the memoirs offer into history as well as their openness to interpretation. In the book, the distinct purposes and biases of different contributors are visible: some try to protect their own images, some confess, and others try to remain modest and downplay their roles and achievements. In fact, their contradictions and biases carry a large part of the value of the collection. The truth does not lie in a single account; it is rather either constructed through various lenses or hidden between the lines.

One good example of constructing truth from various angles is the legendary story of Zhao Jingxing. Zhao, unlike most others who are either princelings or sons of intellectuals, came from a working class family. Surprisingly, however, he was even better-read than most of his peers in school, which fostered an exceptional trend of learning, expression and free flow of ideas. Not only did Zhao know by heart the orthodox texts of communism, he also read most of the influential western philosophers.

Furthermore, he wrote his own philosophical work, openly critiqued and claimed to have developed Maoist theories and published an article arguing against Mao’s decision to send young people to the countryside. Like many others, Zhao paid a price for his independent thinking and rationality in an era of insanity, but his plight was the most severe among his peers. He received three years in prison as a high school student and some even speculate that he nearly received the death penalty for his outspokenness and candidness about his beliefs. His life story does not come from a single source.

In fact, Zhao’s own account focused only on his readings and thoughts; he downplayed his own importance and showed no self-pity and only a sense of composure and confidence. It is through the vivid descriptions of others, including Zhao’s friends as well as his assigned accusers, that we are able to know this exceptional character.

Zhao embodied a trait common within the walls of Beijing No. 4 High School: rationality.

Most students clung to it even though irrationality became the means of survival during this time. Some even brewed their rational thinking into independent newspapers that enjoyed nationwide prestige. Unfortunately,

much of this rationality faded in the storm.

Today, such achievements are completely unthinkable for Chinese journalists, let alone high school students. Since the Cultural Revolution was so violent a storm that forced everyone to make a choice, and each person made a different one: some exercised careful avoidance, some resorted to violence, and some challenged evil head-on. In Memory of the Storm, we are able to catch a glimpse of countless individuals’ momentous decisions that would forever change the course of their lives.

Although many of these characters came from privileged background, they represented the best hope of a generation. While the era seems a world away, however, the students of Beijing No. 4 High School were committed to “carrying the world on their shoulders,” as Qin Xiao points out in his memoir. Given the students’ prestigious background, the school’s reputation, and the backdrop of 1960s Chinese society, the students were indeed in an advantageous position to make positive impact in society. Half a century after the storm, however, even the most promising high school students are not in that enviable position to change the world. Despite their exceptional talent and effort to overcome social limitations, their potential suffers from a severe lack of freedom and initiative as they are constantly under patronizing guidance and excessive protection that trap them in their comfort zones. Looking back at the generation of the contributors to the Memory of the Storm, I can only envy the spiritual and intellectual high ground the students of my high school enjoyed fifty years ago.

Now that such atmosphere filled with freedom has largely disappeared, the contributors write with a profound sense of nostalgia. Even though the Cultural Revolution was one of the darkest chapters in Chinese history, the contributors and the readers alike can appreciate the rationality, opportunity and glow of hope in that bygone era. After all, the book is meant to be more than just a collection of fragments of memories; it commemorates the glow of hope at the eye of the storm, as well as the promises of a generation swallowed up by the Cultural Revolution.

Yifu Dong is a sophomore at Yale University and an associate editor of the magazine. Contact him at yifu.dong@yale.edu.

photo from haiyunzi.com

• Opinion •

Long Journey to Inclusion

SCARLETT ZUO visits Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion, an exhibition at the New York Historical Society.

A

fter an endless journey across the Pacific, you have finally made it to shore. But all of a sudden, you are pushed into a small room, where three tall, stern white men look down on you and seat you in a hard wooden stool. Suspicion written all over their faces, they bombard you with questions: Who are you? Where are you from? Who do you know? And most importantly, how can you prove that your words are true? You feel tense, fearful and vulnerable, but you somehow manage to answer the questions in the correct manner. When they finally give you the nod, you sigh with relief: I am now in America.

This was the experience of Jung Joong, a nineteen-year-old from southeastern China whose immigration interview on June 8, 1911 at Angel Island Immigration Station is recreated with audio and photography at the Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibition at the New York Historical Society. The rich texts and materials at the exhibition offer a rare chance for audience to engage with an often-overlooked history of the twists and turns of the Chinese-American experience.

The exhibition begins with the historical background of the initial US-China encounter.

In the nineteenth century, under a trend of global

photos from laplacacohen.com and aabany.org

migration, thousands of Chinese arrived in America as voluntary emigrants. A series of Jake Lee paintings vividly depict Chinese laborers mining gold and silver, working at vineyards, building railroads and manufacturing goods.

However, Chinese migrants were not very popular in the US. Many were considered “coolies,” a slur against unskilled, low-wage immigrant workers who, like enslaved Africans, could not act as free men. As job competition intensified, Chinese workers, often seen as too industrious and too different, soon found themselves as targets of racial hostility. A set of timelines at the exhibition illustrates the eruption of anti-Chinese violence, whose tactics included beating, murder, arson and mass expulsion, which had brought unending terror to many Chinese Americans since the 1880s.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first immigration restriction law explicitly based on country of origin.

The act prohibited Chinese laborers from entering and reentering the country. Chinese immigrants who wished to enter the country must have proof of their exemption from exclusion as students, teachers, merchants or diplomats. Jung Joong, the young man who passed the inspection, was indeed very fortunate, for many who failed to answer such questions during their interrogations faced longer detention and deportation.

The next part of the exhibition accounts the experience of less fortunate Chinese immigrants who often had to stay in immigration and detention centers for days, if not months.

Visitors are invited to walk into a recreation of men and women’s detention barracks on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, through which most Chinese immigrants entered the US. The barracks are bare and crowded, resembling prison cells. Immigrants in these barracks were not called by their names but only by their assigned serial numbers. On a similar note, the Geary Act of 1892 required that all Chinese persons in the US must provide white witnesses and carry government-issued photo ID cards to maintain their legal status. These ID cards with headshots had only been used for criminals previously. The exhibition quotes a ChineseAmerican commenting that he and his people

had indeed become “prisoners of the state.”

To circumvent immigration laws, Chinese helped one another pass the exhaustive inspections by creating false identity papers and coaching materials. In a recording of interrogations, the officer even went into such details as how many rows of houses there were in the interviewee’s village. After passing the interview, many immigrants became “paper sons, daughters, and wives”—false relations with legal residents that existed only on official documents—but they were at least allowed to lead new lives in America.

Despite decades of struggle against discrimination, conflicts and suffering, the final part of the exhibition narrates Chinese-Americans’ endurance amid hardship and eventual prosperity during times of progress. An enlarged comic book tells the story of the family of third-generation Chinese immigrant Amy Chin. Visitors can see Amy’s grandfather making the journey to the US and opening a laundry shop, immigration laws separating her parents, and her family finally buying their own house with hard-earned money.

Unfortunately, the story does not tell us what Amy is doing now and whether she is still carrying on her family’s laundry business.

Despite major steps toward inclusion, ChineseAmericans cannot be merely seen stereotypically as laundry workers or restaurant owners.

They can also be politicians, doctors, lawyers, artists, or anything they aspire to become.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that this display is on show simultaneously with a related exhibition called Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving at the Museum of Chinese in America and with the airing of the first ChineseAmerican-centered TV series Fresh Off the Boat. All of this publicity and media attention reminds us the importance of respecting the identity and celebrating the history of Chinese-Americans. We have reasons to be hopeful that Chinese-Americans and other minority groups will gain a stronger presence on the media as well as in historical discourses.

Scarlett Zuo is a junior at Yale University.

Contact her at scarlett.zuo@yale.edu.

chinahandsmagazine.com | CHINA HANDS 45

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