A First-Hand Report from a ‘Jasmine Rally’ in Shanghai
In mid-February, as the anti-authoritarian wave sweeping the Middle East continued to gather momentum, a Twitter user using the account name of Shudong posted a tweet announcing that “Jasmine Revolution” rallies would be held on February 20th in every large city in China, and announced that the details would be posted later elsewhere. This information was indeed posted as promised, apparently on the U.S.-based website Boxun.com; it called for rallies to be held on the 20th in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing, and other major cities around the country, and repeated every seven days thereafter, until such time as the organizers’ concerns were met.
According to a translation posted on the China Digital Times website, which often reports on dissident and other pro-democracy activities, the Jasmine organizers cited a number of grievances as the reason for their action, including:
- corruption (“a government that grows more corrupt by the day…”)
- high inequality (“Why is it that in just the last few decades China has gone from being a country with the smallest gap between the rich and the poor to one with the largest?”)
- high inflation (“The excessive printing of currency is recklessly diluting the value of the people’s wealth.”)
- lack of judicial independence (“we are resolute in asking the government and the officials to accept the supervision of ordinary Chinese people, and we must have an independent judiciary.”)
- the one-party system itself (“China belongs to every Chinese person, not to any political party…. The Chinese people’s thirst for freedom and democracy is unstoppable”.)
Interestingly, the “freedom and democracy” language was a direct quote from China’s current premier, Wen Jiabao, and acknowledged as such. Premier Wen spoke those words during a remarkable CNN interview last year, where he appeared to support the idea of political reform, triggering speculation of a rift within China’s top leadership over fundamental political issues. On the morning of February 26th, in an action that seemed clearly timed to pre-empt the second weekly Jasmine Rally (scheduled for the afternoon of the 27th), Wen conducted a highly unusual web chat with Chinese citizens, in which he promised to address a number of the grievances raised by the Jasmine Rally organizers, including taming inflation, runaway property prices, and environmental damage. This chat was heavily covered by Xinhua, the Chinese Communist Party-controlled news service, but tellingly, no mention was made of political reform.
It was unclear whether this extraordinary chat was instigated by Wen himself, or by China’s top leaders as a whole. Regardless of which is the case, the lack of any similar action by President Hu Jintao was very conspicuous. This was consistent with Hu’s reputation: his unwillingness to consider even the most timid political reforms has been duly noted by China’s people, who have begun referring to him in sardonic Internet postings as “Hu-barak” or (more recently) “Hu-ammar Qaddafi.” These appellations are partly a response to the Chinese regime’s pervasive Internet censorship, which has cracked down heavily on postings that mention the fallen Arab dictators by name.
Unfortunately, the Wen chat was only the nice-guy public face of Beijing’s response to the Jasmine Rallies — the mere suggestion that its top leaders could end up like Hosni Mubarak appears to have given the CCP a serious case of the vapors, and its response was strikingly disproportionate to the actual act which triggered the rallies. Within hours of the first postings, according to Chinese sources cited by CDT, police were requesting server logs to hunt down “Shudong,” who had posted anonymously. Detentions of several top dissidents soon followed, while others were put under house arrest. CCP goons even threatened to rape the wife of one dissident, according to technology blogger Jason Ng. Ng also cited claims on some websites that the army had been issued live ammunition to deal with the protests.
In addition, the regime directed a number of employees (the so called “fifty cent party,” named for the amount of money they receive for each pro-regime Internet posting) to register with Twitter; these individuals immediately began cranking out posts denouncing the “Jasmine Revolution” as illegal and claiming it was a secret plot by the United States. Search terms related to the “Jasmine Rallies,” including the word “Jasmine” itself, were rapidly banned from Chinese websites. Ironically, “Jasmine” is the name of a Chinese folk song that was a favorite of Jiang Zemin, and was publicly sung by Hu Jintao, meaning that censorship of the word also wiped out “patriotic” posts meant to praise CCP leaders.
All this, and many other repressive measures both in cyberspace and the real world, took place before the first actual rallies. When the initial Jasmine Rallies finally did occur on the 20th, most observers found them to be somewhat anticlimactic. In the capital, the appointed site was in front of a McDonald’s in the Wangfujing neighborhood; hundreds of people appeared, but it was impossible to know how many were demonstrators and how many were accidental passersby or simply gawkers (according to Ng, some people thought that a Chinese movie star was in the area). However, there were at least three arrests, according to the Los Angeles Times, and one attendee was questioned after he attempted to photograph jasmine flowers with his mobile phone. Police presence in the area was heavy, with hundreds of officers guarding both ends of the streets and physically pushing away foreign journalists with cameras, according to an AFP report. In Shanghai, at least three people were detained, and staff at a popular Starbucks next to the appointed rally site were apparently directed to remove chairs and tables from the sidewalk outside the store.
Visiting a Shanghai “Jasmine Rally”
In light of all these events, this writer, who happened to be in Shanghai on business on February 27th (the appointed day for the second Shanghai “Jasmine Rally”), decided to visit the rally site, a plaza in front of the “Peace Cinema” in the People’s Square neighborhood, and see what, if anything, was happening there.
“Daily you curse us uncultured, implacable commoners.”
And all this time I thought it was only us dumb Americans clinging to our guns and religion who were unworthy of our Brahmans.
I had the good fortune to spend 10 days in China for business, some 4 years ago. The Chinese folks I met were rather cheerful and extrovert by disposition, and it was clear that they profoundly despise their government.
I knew about the old Chinese tradition of large extended families, but I finally understood the reason for this during my trip. There does not seem to be any collective memory of a government ever concerned in the least with their welfare, and they know how to rely first (and possibly last?) on a well-established loyalty of family-based mutual support. I felt that when they decide that enough is enough, their determination will be unstoppable, because they are so wonderfully resourceful and self-reliant.
No wonder the CCP is nervous!
The first thing that any outsider must factor into an analysis of China, is that it is the most consistently chauvinist culture on the planet. Let’s begin with the name: China, essentially meaning “Middle Kingdom”. Have you ever stopped to consider what “middle” they are referring to? It is NOT a geographical middle, instead it is a philosophical concept that firmly states China is between heaven at the top, and the barbarians in all the rest of the world at the bottom, with China as the only intercessor. Does this give you a clue that China and the Chinese have a somewhat ingrained and very different viewpoint from you and me, and that it is never going to change? Start factoring that into your thinking, and THEN perform an analysis of any so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’.
>The first thing that any outsider must factor into an analysis of China, is that it is the most consistently chauvinist culture on the planet.
Chauvinist, yes. Most chauvinist on the planet – that’s debatable. Even limiting the discussion to East Asian countries that I have personal experience with, I think Korea and Japan are both more nationalistic than the PRC.
Let’s begin with the name: China, essentially meaning “Middle Kingdom”. Have you ever stopped to consider what “middle” they are referring to? It is NOT a geographical middle, instead it is a philosophical concept that firmly states China is between heaven at the top, and the barbarians in all the rest of the world at the bottom, with China as the only intercessor.
I haven’t heard this, and always understood the “middle” as being geographical. What’s your source?
Does this give you a clue that China and the Chinese have a somewhat ingrained and very different viewpoint from you and me, and that it is never going to change? Start factoring that into your thinking, and THEN perform an analysis of any so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’.
Of course Chinese people have a different viewpoint. But saying “it is never going to change” is obviously false, and reflects the “cultural stasis” fallacy. All cultures change over time. For example, in China, Chinese people no longer wear queues, or bind women’s feet. The political culture has also changed (for example, there were drastic changes in 1949, 1962, 1976, 1978, and 1989, to name just a few turning points), and will continue to do so. The question is how it will change, to what extent, and how quickly. Perhaps you might factor this into YOUR thinking.
…. in just the last few decades China has gone from being a country with the smallest gap between the rich and the poor to one with the largest ….
And around a billion slaves, many of them brutally colonized foreigners, whose living standards are little different from those their ancestors enjoyed.
Three thousand years ago.
Seems that the first thing that all dictatorships or oligarchies do today to stamp out a revolution or an uprising is shut down the Internet so as to silence all of the social network sites on it. Do NOT give this power to our elected representatives here in the United States. The Internet is the last bastion of free speech in this country that is easily accessible by everyone. It should NOT be shut down under any circumstances. If you can’t win on the battlefield of ideas, something is definitely wrong with your political position. We should be encouraging free speech, not trying to shut it down as they do in China. Even with the Wikileaks scandal, if something illegal is done or a crime is committed, go after the people responsible for it. But you go down a very slippery slope when you decide to just shut down this fountain of information down.
There will never be an uprising that will topple the Chinese govt..
Why, the Chinese army will crush any opposition, and unlike other world uprisings, no country( EU, US etc ) will ever call China to task or support the people.
There needs to be movement from within.
I don’t know why but I kept seeing Michelle Obama and the ONE as I read this article. Any chance the birth certificate is in China? Where does Soros get his backing again?
Will the wave of change sweeping the Middle East spread to the Far East and hasten political reform in the world’s largest unelected dictatorship?
NO
Linking to the site for the first time, I can see immediately the writers and readers of the propaganda house are extremely aberrant and abhorrent. John Parker’s opinion column is such a wild lunatic ranting of lies that it doesn’t merit a response. The internet should leave room for these sites for crazies, I agree, but I’m not one of them.
One of the 50 cent-ers appears to do the bidding of Beijing. Not very literate in English
(50 cent-ers are a group of people paid by the Chinese propaganda ministry to attack anyone they want)
You are correct, Larry, “First Advisor” indeed seems to be a 50-center. AFAIK, this is the first time one has attempted to rebut one of my pieces – it’s actually rather flattering, and proves my point – the CCP must be on thin ice indeed if they feel threatened by the likes of little old me.
I won’t argue with him directly, because inasmuch as he is a government employee, there would be no point. It is interesting to note, though, the element of projection in his language (“propaganda house”) – because the Chinese media is filled with state propaganda and devoid of individual voices, “First Advisor” ignorantly assumes that media in the rest of the world must also be government propaganda, and could not possibly reflect the opinions of real individuals. Also, it’s amusing to note that he apparently never made it past the letter “A” in his English vocabulary book – as shown by using “aberrant” and “abhorrent” in the same sentence.
Very interesting article, thanks. Personally, I think it’s easy to overstate how much all the regular people in China hate the CCP. I don’t disagree that it’s a bad government; it’s just that in my years living in China, I heard a wide range of opinions on the government (I’m fluent in Mandarin and got into this conversation a lot, with everyone from my friends to cab drivers). It’s not remotely surprising to me that in a country as large and diverse as China, there’d be a large diversity of opinion on politics.
I’ve talked to people who hate the CCP and who were party members (though sometimes just for connections, not due to philosophy). The two things I heard most often were that a.) China has too many people (it’s almost impossible to get people to stop telling you this) and b.) that China is not ready for democracy, that it would be too chaotic and that there is too big a gap on education for it to result in a stable government. And right now, at least, stability seems to be more important to most of the people I’ve talked to than serious efforts to reform or revolt against the government. College students are worried about jobs, homes, when and if to get married, and maybe when the next Zhou Jielun concert tour starts; many aren’t that political outside the abstract.
Personally, I’m quite curious about the origin of the calls for a “jasmine revolution” in China – if it really was made anonymously on boxun and twitter, it could be coming from outside of China – maybe overseas dissidents, though I suppose technically it would not even have to be from a Chinese national. If the CCP is cracking down on the basis of a rumor, people could be turning out curious about the same thing but not necessarily prepared to protest. That said, there’s no shortage of uprisings within China that are truly indigenous (what’s the current figure, 100,000 a year?), but none of these appear have had real potential to lead to anything like mass uprisings. Not yet, anyway.
Who would have guessed that the events in Tunisia would spread and threaten so many of the rulers in the Middle East? The Chinese have similar conditions throughout much of their country. I wouldn’t bet that they would have a similar uprising, but it cannot be discounted.
First of all, the CCP is a drag on humanity and will fall, sooner than later. But it won’t be because of the “opinion” enumerated above.
There’s so much wrong in this poorly researched, poorly thought-out, just plain wrong op-ed piece, I don’t know where to begin. I get the hate for the CCP, but it’s simply preposterous to claim that China would have been better off with the KMT or the British (!). C’mon. A KMT China would not have followed the US-imposed economic and political liberalization, but would have gone for Leninist party state (people too often forget that the KMT was fascist dictatorship that borrowed liberally from both Hitler and Stalin). It followed what turned out to be the correct way only because it was under twin blackmail from the US and China. At best, KMT China would look like today’s India; at worst, today’s Venezuela or Zimbabwe; most likely, today’s Brazil or Mexico.
If the CCP were to fall, it would not be because of this “Jasmine” BS, but because the Chinese economy tanked. And therein lies the key to changing China. If you want to stop this obscene grotesquery of a fascist dictatorship lording over 1.4 bil people, stop buying Chinese goods and make our government demand fair play, which should kill Chinese competitiveness in the short term and cause political unrest that should bring about a real change.
I’ve lived in China for the last 8 years, and this is a fantastic analysis. This is what’s really going on, and it is how people feel about things here.