Some of the more interesting things to look at, in my opinion, would be the posts I wrote concerning the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, Simple Pleasures and, of course, Women.

Enjoy!

The pensioners are much more active this time around, chanting “same work, same pay,” singing “Socialism is Good,” and periodically charging the police lines to get to the government building’s main gate. As of right now, the police and the protesters are both seated and talking. The older women call them “young man” and explain that they are here to receive equal pay, and nothing more.

They are not calling for reform or freedom, just for enough money to meet the rising costs of living in Chengdu.

I feel that if I go down to speak with them, I would do more harm than good right now. But I will find a way to get more information later, when the police aren’t staring me down with adrenaline in their veins.

Pensioners outside the government offices in Chengdu

Hemmed in by police, some of them wear hospital whites

About 500-600 showed up, chanting and facing the police lines

The typical centrally-planned list of negatives does more to open up gray area than anything else, and that is a hallmark of life in China. Every dictate from on high is like the club coming down on a gopher’s head.

A related article in Caijing Online, Official Newspaper Blames Local Govts for Overcapacity Which Threats Chinese Economy, talks about the naughty local governments and their tendency to build vanity projects in order to impress the upper crust in the Party and justify more billions. It’s clear that the corruption campaign – recently extended to five years – and the regulations are part of an overall center vs. periphery struggle that is as old as China itself.

Chinese emperors are notoriously paranoid. Some of the country’s greatest heroes are generals who were a bit too successful and ended up facing the imperial headsman. Today is no different, because China is still in many ways a feudal state (this has become my phrase of the day btw), run by a classic blood and money oligarchic network that must destroy itself to save the nation. The family ties detailed by Bloomberg and the NYTimes are replicated all the way down to the street I live on, where last week’s brawl involved two rival gangs with family-run shops competing on one strip.

Maosanity was all about eradicating this feudal hierarchy. In fact, all communists bathe in a bubbling hatred for aristocratic privilege. There is little difference between China now and China then (pre-Liberation). Only the gadgets have changed. Most societies around the world operate the same – even the USA, with its American Dream of a land populated by free princes, has succumbed to standard social operating procedure a long time ago. Wealth at the top, struggle everywhere else.

If history teaches us anything, it is that meaning lies in the struggle. That’s why hope is so important, because only through enduring hope of an ultimate victory can anyone continue doing the meaningful things in life. Writing about local governments in China using platforms to raise up infrastructure projects that may bring the whole nation’s economy crashing down is undeniably tangible …

… even as the world spins its way through the void, struggling to maintain the wobble while the sun’s countdown to supernova ticks away.

Demise is guaranteed, but that’s about it.

Now I know where all the recycling goes
down a funk street in hongpailou
past the rows of ankle high plastic seats
roundtables and dust covered plastic hats
rough faced workers with mouths full of pigfat
laughing out loud as they chopstick spar
a bowl of pepper dust covered meat and taters
without question no doubt better believe its the best food in China
past the lady in a corner sewing up pants
past the dog on his back biting at some fleas
past the tied up cat yowling out its misery
through a gate into the old powerplant

ruins remind me why i love this place
life amidst the poverty
no ghettos no guns
no hard looks no despair
gales of laughter send the
winter sausages swaying in the window

past a tower sinking into plaster
and metal and plastics and the detritus of a century
where the woman rocks a baby boy next to a pile of stacked old doors
nails face up
waiting to be overloaded on the semi
three men pulling the wires out of a QQ and a fat man eyes me up
rickshaw after rickshaw pull up and drop off scavenged stuff
for the tractor to pick up and pile somewhere else
just when i think how quaint it is, to be broke,
how peaceful the black dog looks curled up
camouflaged
the tractor’s driver hops out

he’s maybe twenty, with an urbanites face
an urbanites pants and and urbanites shoes
he whips out a white iPhone, pops in his headphones,
and hustles past
It still surprises me

Here is the intro to the story:

“On November 15-18, 2012, Dr. Ford attended the 4th Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, an event sponsored by the International Military Branch of the China Association for Military Science of the Academy of Military Science of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  The paper he presented to this conference appears on NPF and on the Hudson Institute website. Below, however, appears a follow-up essay based upon Dr. Ford’s experiences at the conference, where he served on a Roundtable discussion group focused upon strategic mutual trust.”

So what did Dr. Ford experience? In the clear, polite, yet piercing language of the consummate professional Dr. Ford describes nothing more than Chinese generals demanding everyone in the world shut up and do what China says with regard to any and all issues that have even the slightest relation to China. I can just imagine everyone at the “Roundtable” trying to control their anger, shaking their heads at Chinese bombasticism, and trying their best to use logic and “facts” to convince these generals that there may be an alternative view of reality that they have not yet considered.

Reminds me of a dinner I once had with an Air Force colonel, his family and friends, and Luna. The colonel was Luna’s “uncle” and I was her “foreign friend” – I shudder to think of what the two of us had in common. Whatever we did have in common re: Luna would remain the only bridge to cross, due to entrenched political views on his side and imperialist lies on mine. Naturally, crossing the only bridge between us was unthinkable. In fact, Luna kept her head down for the entire dinner.

Long story short, Colonel Tight-britches said that the US had never won a war in Asia, that any attempt to do so would end the same way the Korean War had (Total Defeat and Humiliation at the Hands of the Chinese), and that in order to avoid utter defeat, the US had better recognize the wisdom inherent in all Chinese due to 5,000 years of continued, unbroken, glorious civilization and just get with the program.

The Program being, in summary: acknowledge China as Master and move within a worldview that establishes said acknowledgement as the basis for any and all interaction.

That happened way back in 2005 or so. Around the same time I wrote this, in response to an article written in the Asia Times by Yu Bin:

“Yu Bin’s recent article for Asia Times Online is a very Sinocentric view of the growing pains East Asia will face as the region grows increasingly more influential and substantially richer. Yu Bin goes into three major problems: China’s relationship with its own poor and underemployed, China’s relationship with Japan, and China’s relationship with Taiwan. Again, with rather Sinocentric suggestions for how these problems could be best solved. 

Although a Chinese-style solution to the problems – namely calm acceptance of the inevitable peaceful rise to leadership of East Asia’s largest nation – would be splendid if it ensured peace and stability and prosperity for all, it is quite uncertain whether or not China can handle East Asia’s affairs any better than it handles its own.”

Point being: the more things change the more they stay the same. Indeed, Dr. Ford himself considers China’s attempts to control the narrative as nothing new, or unplanned, but a tried-and-true strategy for achieving and maintaining political and diplomatic dominance:

“[Ford's experience] … suggests that there is nothing at all anomalous about a range of otherwise seemingly idiosyncratic PRC demands in recent years, including calls for Western governments to prohibit “biased” coverage of the PRC in domestic Western media, the insistence that a small town in Oregon destroy a privately-painted wall mural sympathetic to the cause of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence, Beijing’s angry complaints every time anyone has any dealings with the Dalai Lama or gives a prize to a Chinese whose political views are not approved by PRC authorities, its indignant reaction to  the “lack of balance” in a recent publication from the Australian National University, its harassment of Western media organizations that tell their readers about corruption in the Chinese elite, and the above-listed agenda related to Japanese domestic politics and administration.

I once assumed that most such things were simply an uncoordinated, unsystematic prickliness bespeaking merely Beijing’s ongoing insecurity in the modern world and the crudely propagandistic reflexes of the Chinese Party-State.  And I had assumed that the “non-interference” theme in PRC diplomatic discourse was simply a propaganda trope intended to be alternatively invoked or ignored with opportunistic and often hypocritical cynicism.

My dealings with PLA officials at the Xiangshan Forum, however, suggest a possible (and more interesting) alternative explanation.  Beijing’s various idiosyncrasies in these regards may be, in meaningful part, the relatively coherent and consistent outgrowths of a conceptual framework – an Information Age twist, if you will, on much older themes of Sinocentric moralism  – in which the emerging Chinese superpower hungers to control other peoples’ narrative of China.”

In high school our history teacher, Mr. Coswell – who doubled as our football coach, which actually suited his massive frame and plodding dictation much better than teaching history – informed us that China suffers from “ethnocentrism.” That’s right, in 9th grade, at Bishop Grimes High School in Syracuse, NY, the history of China was framed for impressionable kids like me as a study in racist arrogance.

To Mr. Coswell’s credit, I have found cultural (which, let’s face it, is often swapped for racial) arrogance to be a hallmark of Sino-World discourse. On both sides. The world is trying to move away from that, I believe that truly, despite Anglo-Saxon/European attempts to derail the trend toward multiple (equal?) poles in the world. China, however, has not received the memo.

China may never receive that memo; just like the US may never see fit to spend less on weapons. It’s cultural you see, for Chinese to see themselves as the fount of Asian culture (which, in many many cases, they were), and allowing these “little brothers” to talk back to the father will never really be accepted. Ford mentioned the “rectification of names” as a possible entry path into Chinese thinking about its own place in the world, and I see no reason why not.

It helps to explain why intelligent humans in 2013 can claim territory based on the phrase “since ancient times” and then demand that those who have forgotten open their books and rectify any erroneous beliefs. A great essay by Dr. Ford. Western diplomats should be aware of powerful Sinocentric ideas when they deal with high-level Chinese officials, especially PLA people.

I think it would be interesting to hear what Xi et al say about Dr. Ford’s observations, because, as I learned during my dinner with the Colonel, military men are at their best when they’re destroying bridges.

“全世界人民都知道：SmILENCE” (The Whole World Knows: SmILENCE)

He held a signing near my house in Chengdu and I went to check it out and take some photos. I bought the book and was hoping to get an autograph, but I had both my boys with me and at least 2000 people showed up with the same idea. But without toddlers to chase. Earlier on his Weibo account, Li let his 6 million+ followers know about the signing, and he also revealed a gag order from the “relevant organs”:

“深夜有人匆忙传达上峰死命令：12日成都签售，不准读者向我提问、不准我说话，不准我致开场白，连“新年好，谢谢你们”也不准说，不准介绍流沙河、冉云飞及所有嘉宾名字，不准向他们提问，也不准他们说话，连“新年好”也不准说。他们只能坐在角落…我深觉这这违背了我对尊严的理解。他们疯了。思考中…”

” … I am not allowed to let readers ask questions, I am not allowed to speak, no allowed to give opening remarks, I am not even allowed to say “Happy New Year, Thank you all” … I am not allowed to introduce Liu Sha He [a prominent Chengdu-based intellectual who was among the fist to sign Charter 08] … this is totally contrary to my understanding of dignity. They’re nuts. I’m thinking about it … “

Li Cheng Peng gets away with all sorts of things that people like Ai Weiwei and others cannot, because he is not as famous abroad as he is here in China. His clout in China is formidable. As he sat down to sign his book, he donned a black gag and the crowd roared. Several young people came with their own gags.

“He is too famous to touch,” said a girl named Yueling. “I bought three of his books just to support his cause and keep him free to speak.”

Several people bought upwards of 10 copies, some for friends, others just to show their appreciation. I will get an interview soon, and post that when I do get it. Till then, here are some pics of the book signing:

It was a packed house of about 2000 people

Li Cheng Peng supporters read the book while waiting for the man to show up

Li Cheng Peng, center, with Liu Sha He seated behind him.

The boys soak up the scene

Outside on the street a protest at the gates of the government building turns briefly violent as the police snatch two ringleaders out from the crowd and stuff them into the back of a paddywagon. I hear women screaming and men yelling from my fourth floor office and I see police grab one young kid, in his twenties from what I can tell from way up here, and beat him a bit after he tried to pull one of the men out of the wagon. Three cops are filming the whole process. Not to ensure that noone got beat, but to strike fear into everyne’s heart. We got you on tape and we will come and get you when you least expect it. I am afraid for them just watching the cops film it all. Two busloads of police pull up midway through the scuffle. Then it’s over.

My co-workers all jumped up and watched. And then wandered away. One came up to me and said: “take a picture and send it to the NYT, you’ll be a superstar.”

I said why don’t you become mayor and put a stop to it all.

He said, I would build a wall around Chengdu. We laughed. Because I don’t want him to know that I thought of the picture and the NYT and he doesn’t want me to know how little of a fuck he gives about the people on the street, fighting in the rain, watching their leaders get dragged off to …

Pensioners camp out in front of the Chengdu government

About 200 pensioners are camped outside of the Chengdu municipal government office building to protest imbalances in benefits offered to private and public sector employees. They represent around 50 state-owned hospitals, clinics, and community health care centers and, from the looks of it, they aren’t going anywhere until the imbalances are addressed.

“People from the same generation, who did the same work, receive three times the pension we do,” a group of ladies told me this morning. “How is a sixty-year old supposed to live on 1,000RMB a month these days?”

The majority of the pensioners are women in their sixties; the type of stern yet motherly figure commonly seen in hospitals of China briskly administering prescriptions, taking blood, marching down sterile hallways with sheafs of documents, and placating clumps of worried, irate patients. They are the backbone of the healthcare system in China and they feel they’ve been given a raw deal: “same work, same pay,” they repeat over and over, “we need to be treated fairly.”

Private hospitals like Chengdu’s Angel Hospital pulled away a lot of the best doctors from around the city with attractive salaries, upgraded office environments and, it seems, much better retirement options. But for those who stayed in the public system, with the state-owned and managed hospitals  - famous for being crowded, dilapidated relics of Soviet influence – the meagre retirement pay coupled with resentment over their private colleagues’ conditions has now spilled, peacefully, out onto the streets.

As lunchtime approaches, the women sit in small groups peeling bananas and hard-boiled eggs, quietly chatting with each other or hailing an old comrade. They have small stools and pieces of cardboard to sit on and, for all of their angre over unfair pay, they seem a jolly bunch. Cackles ring out from time to time and several of them break away to discuss the situation with the the twenty-odd young police officers hemming them in on all sides.

“We’re going to stay until the government acknowledges us, ” says Ms. Xiong, who was a nurse at Chengdu’s No.9 Hospital. “We’re not going anywhere until this problem gets solved.”

Or perhaps a gaping gangrenous wound that has festered for so long while hundreds of doctors jostle violently to be the one to cure it, but of the hundreds only one or perhaps two have any idea what caused the wound, how to treat it, and even these two only know how – they themselves lack the proper medicine and bandages to actually do it.

An essay I read called China “the Kingdom of Lies” and in my 12 years my experiences concur. Sitting with masters in Emei and Hanyuan and Qingcheng and other places, I feel as if the world has been thrown onto its head. Bureaucrats sit at the table of honor and laugh condescendingly at martial artists; masters don’t shun students anymore, but hope that the student will “see some worth in my kung fu”; marketers take over where artists have been pushed out.

It’s a tough thing to witness and deal with. But it’s my motivation so I guess I’ll just have to swallow it.

Another round of the blues in this again. Feels familiar like I’m saying goodbye and sneering as I go to help me leave. My only friends in this world are my brother and my sons – one too far away and the others too tiny to lay an arm around ole dad’s shoulders and say Quit Tripping Pops, Just Relax. Life is like a chicken grease chord, like a sparrow in a slow-motion hurricane, like peripheral vision. Almost gone, but always there.

Evan Osnos, in a breakdown of the aftermath of the story, says this about rumors of a leak:

“Give me a break.”

Osnos himself has been involved in some serious investigative journalism, including a series of stories for the Chicago Tribune that earned the team a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism. Barboza is one of the NYT’s best journalists and has been covering business – which this story was mostly about – for years. So we should expect this level of effort from them and the newsrooms that back them and not be surprised when they deliver. Does anyone sneer when Lebron dunks? No. Only when he doesn’t.

But just yesterday a correspondent with a major British news organization was standing next to me in the bathroom and he asked, Do you think the Wen Story was a leak? It’s a question two people who follow the media and China will ask each other in the loo, or at a bar, or over dinner.

In fact, the question is so prevalent that Osnos went out of his way to refute it in his column linked above, and Barboza wrote a blurb about “Obtaining Financial Records in China” in order to prove that, yes, it is possible to get your hands on this information without a Chinese insider handing you a dossier in the shadows of the Shanghai Bund.

Why so Skeptical?

There are a few reasons why people think this may have been a bit more than just top of the line journalism. One of them is Timing. Barboza was asked this question in the Q&A that followed the story, and his response was:

“Why now? Because it took that long to gather and evaluate the evidence, which involved thousands of pages of corporate and regulatory documents that we obtained through public record requests to various government entities in China … I got started last year, and within a month or so, I was discovering intriguing things about some of the businesses, but each new discovery required digging deeper and deeper. I expected to finish the project within a month, by working weekends, but it took more than a year!”

Barboza just happened to be investigating Wen Jiabao’s family following a story on China’s state-managed economy, called Endangered Dragon, and by the time all of the work was done, a year had passed and the only slot for the story turned out to be just before the 18th Congress, a once in a generation changeover of Chinese politicians and power. A changeover in which the outgoing prime minister happened to be the focus of the story.

Coincidence? I think not.

Now some of you out there might know the term “time-peg,” which refers to a story that must be published within a certain period of time in order to be relevant, or in this day and age, get the most traffic. So when Barboza started working on this story a year ago – and found out that these public records were a lot more interesting than people give them credit for – he may have let his editor know that he had a potential bombshell on his hands.

If so, any editor on earth would have said: keep working, lets aim for next Fall. So in my humble opinion, the timing of the story does not point to a leak, it merely demonstrates the business side of journalism.

Another issue is Access to Public Records. In the “Obtaining …” article linked above, Barboza outlines the basic method he used to get his hands on records, names, and numbers:

“Thirty years of economic reform — and government policies aimed at attracting foreign investment — have created a set of government agencies that keep records on private corporations and their major shareholders, including copies of resumes and government-issued identity cards.

It is this system that allows news organizations, including The New York Times, to request and review corporate records. Although ordinary citizens are not allowed access to the records, they can hire a lawyer or consulting firm to request documents for a fee of $100 to $200 per company.”

So the NYT took advantage of documents in the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) and started digging. Remember, this isn’t the first time this has happened. Bloomberg came up with some interesting numbers in stories on Bo Xila’s and Xi Jinping’s fortunes. So if Bloomberg could come up with the numbers, why not the NYT? In the Q&A Barboza again defends his work and the integrity of the documents he unearthed after being peppered with questions:

“I have read the speculation that some “insider” gave me information, or that some enemies of the prime minister dropped off a huge box of documents at my office. That never happened. Not only were there no leaked documents, I never in the course of reporting met anyone who offered or hinted that they had documents related to the family holdings. This was a paper trail of publicly available documents that I followed with my own reporting, and if I might hazard a guess, it was a trail that no one else had followed before me.

In short, given the amount of effort this investigation required, I’d be stunned if there were a box of documents sitting somewhere that contained all of this work. If only it were so easy!”

If the NYT and Barboza can be accused of being tools in a factional struggle, why not the Bloomberg team that investigated Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping? The answer to this question may in fact be … another question.

The Media as a Tool

The other, stickier accusation involves the ancient question, Who Benefits?

And of course this is why everyone who is not a friend or colleague of David Barboza is calling (or whispering) that this was a leak. The hardline conservative faction within China’s government that sees no reason whatsoever for reform is the group that, according to most China Watchers out there, benefits the most from having Wen Jiabao’s reputation as a crusading do-gooder dragged through the mud. Wen’s fall from grace may have allowed Party Elders like Jiang Zemin and Li Peng boot Wang Yang and Liu Yuanchao in a “straw poll” reported in Reuters today …

Not only does the reform faction’s most recent poster boy get pulled down, but a deeper and more insidious reaction also takes place: people moan and sigh in resignation. Yet another “leader” revealed to be nothing more than an opportunistic leech. It reminds me of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” concept currently being administered in Gaza: Beat Them Down Until They Submit. I personally believe that Chinese were already very aware that Grandpa Wen wasn’t who he wanted them to believe he was, and not only that, but reform-minded Chinese unequivocally do not look to Party Leaders for inspiration.

Regardless of the true impact of the story, the fact is that the timing of the article, the scope of the information – about the man’s MOTHER for goodness sake – and the fact that there is a faction out there currently slapping its knee in glee over the fall of Granpa Wen, leads people to believe that Barboza was helped by a dossier.

Which brings me back to the urinal. When the correspondent asked me about the Wen Story,  I said, “Hell yeah it was a leak! There is no way that any foreigner is getting his hands on that information without someone reporting it to a superior, and then that superior letting the relevant organs know. If the information got out, someone up high knew about it and let it slide.”

This is of course the conventional wisdom. The word on the street. That it is impossible for any foreigner to get their hands on this info without help. Barboza in the Q&A mentions Caixin as one of the best at using SAIC numbers for their stories. Breaking stories on land reform, factories doing no good, embezzlement and so on.

But Wen Jiabao? Barboza is asking us to believe that SAIC officials were passing out information on sensitive people to lawyers the NYT hired for a year, without anyone outside of  his small circle of editors putting the pieces together and realizing that this was a huge story on the prime minister. He just fooled all of these desk jockeys and then BAM! surprised everyone with a huge “takedown of Wen Jiabao” …

“Yeah, we took a look at that dossier,” the British correspondent told me. “But we were busy with the MP double-dipping scam in Britain and decided to leave it alone. You have to be ready to face the legal consequences for a story like this. So only the big boys could touch it.”

Just like that. Matter-of-factly telling me that a the dossier everyone is alluding to was shopped around like Spain’s unwanted property. Was the Brit just expressing jealousy? Trying to agree with my bombastic declaration that “of course it was a leak” because that’s what people do when they’re washing their hands in the bathroom?

I don’t know. But I am absolutely certain that the media is a tool regularly and consistently used by actors across the spectrum of society for their own gain. Did a faction hand Barboza a folder full of evidence? I don’t think so. Did they make sure that he received the information he “was looking for” during that one year investigative romp through SAIC’s underbelly? Seems likely.

But the more I read the story, the more I read Barboza’s other work, and the more I reflect on how humans in boring offices filled with documents behave, the more I am willing to believe that the NYT really did show the world how it’s done, by using the tools … 

I’ll leave it with Barboza again, defending himself and his efforts to doubters all over the world:

“My only real source for this lengthy article was a filing cabinet full of documents I requested from various Chinese government offices over a period of about a year. After having some luck with my initial requests for corporate registration documents from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce bureaus, I went on a reporting spree: requesting and paying fees for the records of dozens of investment partnerships tied to the relatives of Wen Jiabao.

I also began making lists of individuals and companies and trying to figure out who the people were and what their relationships were to one another; and what, I asked, was the purpose of all these partnerships — many of which had similar shareholders lists.

Although S.A.I.C. records are open to the public, few journalists in China have really made good use of them. They are invaluable sources of information about private companies. Two excellent Chinese publications, Caixin and the 21 Century Business Herald, have regularly used S.A.I.C. records. These two publications have done some groundbreaking business reporting here. But government restrictions on writing about the families of senior leaders limits the scope of investigative journalism in China, particularly when the families of high-ranking officials are involved.

So, Jack, there was no person “inside the Wall” helping me. I read the documents, called lawyers, accountants and financial experts for advice about how to make sense of the records. Occasionally I met someone who was able to identify one of the shareholders. But I told very few people that I was working on a story about the prime minister’s relatives. Even my closest friends did not know. I knew talking about my research could be risky, and might derail the project.”