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China’s promise

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In Brief

The year 2009 marked a series of important anniversaries for China. Some were commemorated in the official media but others, the ‘dark anniversaries,’ passed with a wave of heightened alert and anxiety.

The ‘dark anniversaries’ recalled quelled protests, social unrest and state violence, events such as the 1959 rebellion in Lhasa, the shutting down of the Xidan Democracy Wall in 1979, and the tragedy of the 1989 protest movement. These events challenge the official Party-state narrative of modern China, and understanding them helps us appreciate how China’s strong unitary state has evolved over the past decades.

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Days after the 1 October 2009 celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Republic, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao 温家宝, visited North Korea. During his stay he visited the memorial to the Chinese ‘volunteer army’ that fought alongside Soviet and Korean communists during what is known in China as the ‘War to Oppose American Aggression and Support Korea’. Addressing the tomb of Mao Anying 毛岸英, son of Mao Zedong, Wen said: ‘Comrade Anying, I have come to see you on behalf of the people of the motherland. Our country is strong now and its people enjoy good fortune. You may rest in peace.’

The statement received little media attention but was seen as remarkable among the well-informed in Beijing. Some argued that it meant a contemporary Chinese leader was declaring that the efforts to create a strong and prosperous nation have finally born fruit. By offering consolation to the dead son of Mao Zedong, it seemed Wen was also declaring the mission of the ‘Chinese revolution’ had been achieved.

But if this is true, what will the Chinese mission be in the twenty-first century?

After achieving power in 1949 the Communists ensured national stability but soon betrayed their commitments to bring about true democratic rule and economic prosperity. Although China has experienced unprecedented economic transformation and global integration in recent decades, the long-term political and social transformations are still unrealised.

Nothing made this more evident than the detention in late 2008 of the writer and leading pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波. On Christmas Day 2009 Liu was sentenced to eleven years in prison for ‘inciting subversion,’ the longest term given to any offender accused of this crime since its 1997 introduction.

With international criticism of China’s failure to realise social and political transformation alongside its economic achievement, the Chinese authorities have become increasingly anxious to present their monolith version of Chinese reality. The Chinese Party-state, with the support of many citizens nurtured by guided education and the media, invests heavily in presenting the ‘Chinese story’ (zhongguode gushi 中国的故事) to the world, a story which censors the panoply of narratives making up the rich skein of human possibility in China’s society.

Despite the many media publications the public is still not allowed access to uncensored views and debates. Such paternalistic policing of opinion and discussion continues to foster a kind of state demagoguery that has and will continue to have harmful consequences for China as a global presence.

If China is to be a responsible member of the international community then Chinese citizens need to be informed and free to debate, disagree and reach social and political consensus in a way that is not determined behind closed doors.

Individuals, societies and countries engaged with China will be challenged to offer insights and find creative ways to deal with the realities of the Chinese world.

One approach can be described as ‘New Sinology,’ a robust engagement with contemporary China and the Sinophone world in all of its complexity. This approach recognises an academic and human relationship with the Sinophone world that is not just about the People’s Republic, or Taiwan, or Chinese diasporas. It is the intellectual, academic, cultural and personal involvement in which many of us are engaged, not merely as nationals of one country or another, but as individuals, regardless of our background.

A New Sinology is not a study of an exotic, or an increasingly familiar other. It is an approach that attempts to include China as integral to the idea of a shared humanity. It is a study, an engagement, an internalisation that enriches the possibilities of our own condition.

To talk of some divide that must be bridged is to accept that difference creates barriers. This limits us to the idea that studying China, learning its languages, cultures and thought systems is to become interpreters of a ‘correct’ view of what China and Chineseness is.

We are concerned not only with China’s current problems, but also the origins of those problems, as well as future possibilities. Just as the Anglophone world has become part of global culture, the Sinophone world too is increasing its global reach, enriching wherever it extends. Those who are being educated in Chinese now, and in the future, can and will be co-creators in this process.

Young people—regardless of ethnic background—are and will be part of this new era of Chinese engagement. Many foreign-born Chinese, while pursuing various careers and studies, are also interested in learning more about the culture of their ancestors. Many students from the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or ethnically Chinese students from the region, study China-related subjects at tertiary institutions. Co-creating China for them, and students of other backgrounds, should and will be possible. Writing, thinking and creating in Chinese is one way that the enmeshment with the Chinese world is already unfolding.

English, as a global language, has been transformed and enriched by its non-Anglo-Saxon users. So too will the Sinophone world be enriched and enhanced by the growing number of Chinese users. Lured by the economic boom, employment and educational opportunities, and just plain curiosity, people from countries throughout the world are coming to China. Many have found employment in big cities, in teaching, entertainment, or a host of other professions.

Just as young Chinese people will have an impact on their own, as well as world culture, so too will non-Chinese foreigners, who have made the Chinese world their base of creativity, impact China. These individuals and groups will help form the pluralistic ‘Chinese story’ that is part of the global story of humanity.

This article is featured in the upcoming issue of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘The Challenge of China’. An extended version can be found here at The China Beat.

Geremie R. Barmé is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Professor of Chinese History in The ANU College of Asia & the Pacific. He is also the editor of China Heritage Quarterly.

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