Author: Geremie R. Barmé
The people that the Chinese are often most worried about are other Chinese.
Chinese living and working abroad have played an enormous role in the country’s economic boom. For years, they have sent money back and offered hope to those at home during periods of calamity and chaos.
Yet holding a foreign passport doesn’t make these expatriates any less Chinese. Of all people, they are expected to be most attuned to the complex realities of life in China. When they fall short, they are treated with official suspicion and individual disdain. Read more…
Author: Geremie R. Barmé, ANU
As the contretemps involving Google’s conflicted presence in the People’s Republic of China unfolds, it is timely to recall one anniversary that passed by all but unnoticed in 2009: that of a covert Cold War-era clash between John Foster Dulles and Mao Zedong in 1959. This overlooked anniversary is worth recalling now, since it is of particular relevance to contextualising the remarks—and the Chinese response to those remarks—that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently made regarding Internet freedom and U.S. policy in Washington on 21 January 2010 (see here for full text of Clinton’s speech).
In the speech, Clinton reminds her audience of comments that President Barack Obama made on Internet freedom during the webcast section of his November ‘town hall meeting’ in Shanghai. Read more…
Author: Geremie R. Barmé, ANU
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. Read more…
Author: Geremie Barme
Why does China still conduct military parades?
On Thursday, October 1st, Beijing hosted the sixtieth-anniversary celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic. The Communist Party leadership has elevated the event into a state-religious holiday, of sorts, centered on a massive military parade –including five thousand soldiers arranged partly by height – followed by a civilians’ parade involving a hundred thousand citizens. Read more…
