Michael Wenderoth looks at the hot topic of innovation in China, which some regard as essential for China’s continued advancement. Wenderoth argues that Western companies shouldn’t focus on innovation of specific projects, but rather adopt “design thinking.” Paul Foster turns to Chinese politics and demonstrates how Xi Jinping is adapting hip-hop culture in an effort to consolidate power and expand China’s soft power propaganda outreach. John Garver, in the first of two articles, analyzes a line of historical interpretation that some in China are using to justify the notion that China should become the world’s dominant power. As the argument goes, China at one time dominated the known world through its tributary system and therefore should “rule the world” again. Garver unpacks a scholarly discussion suggesting that the idea of Chinese domination through the tributary system may be a myth, which, if true, would undercut the aforementioned intellectual argument for China’s resuming its rightful role in the world. Garver also reviews a book by noted China scholar David Shambaugh, who argues the case of reformers in China who see Xi Jinping’s retreat from marketization and clampdown on political and media expression as a mistake. Shambaugh, Garver writes, argues for a broad loosening of Party control in the economy, as well as in political and social life. Finally, China Currents Managing Editor Penny Prime interviews veteran journalist Mike Chinoy, who has produced a 12-episode documentary called Assignment China, featuring correspondents who worked in China from 1945 to 2015. It makes for compelling reading for anyone interested in how we get information about China.

The post Editor’s Note appeared first on China Research Center.

Western executives are accustomed to long, deliberate planning cycles to research, develop, and launch products in their mature home markets.  Many of them find it hard to manage the size, complexity, and speed with which business in China moves.  Most multinationals have passed their “market entry” phase and have been forced out of their comfort zones to grow. Business conversations today focus on three topics: 1) scaling the business via geographic, customer segment, product line, or business model expansion (moving beyond established higher-end product positions in Tier I cities)¹, 2) turning around a failing Chinese business, or 3) defending against aggressive Chinese competitors.

The holy grail solution in the West is “innovation:” create a killer product that fits the market to create long-term sustainable advantage. Yet McKinsey’s 2015 China CEO survey revealed executives believe the key to success is credibility with headquarters and the local team, followed by people management (finding and retaining talent). ² Innovation was ranked lowest.

Why the disconnect?

In this article, I argue that innovation (at least the simplified “new product” definition) is overrated in China. Given the pace of the market, innovation should not be viewed as an end-goal, but as a process that unlocks profitable business opportunities. Western executives should create an organization, operating mindset, and executional capabilities that enable them to quickly detect customer trends, create valuable solutions, and learn from local competitors. To achieve this aim, I propose companies embrace design thinking (“DT”) – a not-so-new methodology to bring innovative products to market. Channeling Deng Xiaoping and the spirit of China’s political and economic transformation, I propose Western firms employ “Design Thinking with Chinese Characteristics,” to make the approach more suitable and successful in the Middle Kingdom.

Specifically, I recommend companies follow five principles in adapting their DT approach in China: 1) think like an anthropologist – and maintain that mindset; 2) embrace and (gasp) copy Chinese competitors; 3) view innovation more broadly, focusing on improving service to the customer; 4) do less market research, do more market; and 5) look beyond the China-U.S. or China-EU framework, deriving ideas from other markets that may be more appropriate to China’s context.

To illustrate key points, I draw heavily from my focus in the dental/medical sector, which I believe is broadly applicable because of the diverse range of customer types and challenges present. ³ I also reference the collective experience of InterChina Consulting, a leading M&A and Strategy Advisory in China, where I serve as senior advisor. ⁴ In the conclusion, I present limitations to the DT approach and suggest areas for further inquiry, acknowledging that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution in China.

Background
From Guanxi to World Class

To win in China, Western firms need to run world-class operations. ⁵ Gone are the days when companies could offer second-generation products and rely solely on “guanxi” (relationships) to move business. In China, consumers are hard to pin down, competition can arise overnight, the playing field is not always level, and new technology and globalization accelerates the speed of change. ⁶ In response, companies are demanding more “compressed” consulting engagements, ones that seek rapid understanding of customer segments – an area where design thinking works extremely well.

Design Thinking 101: Put the Customer First

Design thinking has gained a widespread following the past two decades in the design community, with consumer product companies, and in the field of innovation. ⁷ DT involves five steps, putting the customer and rapid product iteration and development at the core: 1) empathize with your customer, often through observing them in situ; 2) define (or reframe) the problem/real issue(s); 3) ideate and brainstorm to generate solutions; 4) rapidly prototype concepts; and 5) quickly test those concepts, gain feedback, and iterate.

The most common consulting request I receive is to evaluate potential distributors. Lured by a promise of “contacts” and “guanxi,” many executives forget basic business sense and make poor distribution choices. Without a serious understanding of the customer – who they are, how they buy, contexts in which they use or engage the company’s products – it’s impossible to determine whether a specific distributor makes sense. In fact, the majority of turnarounds InterChina has worked on are the result of poor distributor or partner selections. Many Chinese distributors don’t share a company’s brand vision, prefer to sell on relationship and price discount, and do not maintain sophisticated records. One European client had no visibility into end-purchases and price and was lucky to receive periodic Excel spread sheet updates. Clearer understanding of what is happening with customers – even if it means doing one’s own research or implanting one’s own employee in the distributor or with a key customer – has become more important than ever and benefits from thinking like an anthropologist.

Principle #1: Think like an Anthropologist – and Maintain that Mindset

Anthropology distinguishes itself from other social sciences by its emphasis on the examination of context, the importance of participant-observation, experiential observation in research, and making cross-comparisons.

Observation is critical because people don’t always do what they say they do. They may not be aware of their actions or may not be able to articulate their needs or desires, particularly in rapidly changing markets like China. To get a true picture of customers, companies need not only to talk to them, but also to observe them in situ, seeing through a customer’s eyes how they engage the product, category, or company. By doing so, companies gain a richer sense of their customers’ daily lives, specific language they use, and their moments of joy and pain.

Industry reports are a good point of departure but lack the richness of observation. Traditional surveys rely on the fact that customers understand – and can clearly articulate – their own behaviors, attitudes, and needs. Interviewing and focus groups are slightly better, as adept facilitators can read or probe attendees, but they too rely on people accurately reporting what they actually do. Social media has become cost-effective and insightful, but online and offline behavior can vary widely.

Firms like IDEO, Frog Design, and Continuum specialize in DT, but strategy consulting firms such as InterChina left our desks long ago, integrating field work into the approach to see the whole picture. As the Chinese say – 百闻不如一见 （bai wen4 bu ru yi jian – asking one hundred times falls short of seeing it once.) Companies with limited budgets can conduct “secret shopper” visits, ask to observe customers (such requests are often honored, and after 15 minutes they often forget they’re being observed), or visit customers with sales representatives. In any case, a best practice is to have company employees participate and learn observation techniques so they can later champion and spread the mindset internally, as many companies mistakenly view observation as a one-off conducted at the start of a process, rather than an ongoing process.

One medical company performed observations (with permission) in public and private clinics. They wanted to understand doctor-patient dynamics and differences between the segments. In the public hospitals, industry reports and interviews claimed doctors favored prescribing “the top imported product,” but observations revealed doctors prescribed domestic knock-offs more than three-to-one over imports. Digging deeper, they discovered doctors were not conscious of their actual prescription habits, and found that doctors simply excluded imports from consideration because of perceptions (“This one I know won’t be able to afford it…” “This one will ask me lots of questions and I can’t interrupt my workflow…” “This one I might have to explain to the chair…”). These insights led to a better understanding that public doctors were busy and wanted minimal workflow interruptions, which in turn led the company to focus on correcting doctor and department misconceptions, as well as pre-educating patients.

The Western executive who participated also left with a deeper respect for how the segment worked: “I was told public doctors have massive workloads and don’t have any chair-side rapport with patients, but until I saw it, I didn’t believe it.” He was also shocked to see the amount of data moving around by USB and local competitor reps assisting doctors, a direct response to restricted internet access in the hospital and the needs of doctors to get through patients quickly. The company, which relied on doctors downloading and displaying digital treatments, made it a top priority to figure how to adjust their offering to make it fit into a Chinese public doctor’s reality.

Observations in private clinics revealed an opposite problem, one the executive had never experienced in Western markets: lack of patients. Through secret shopper feedback, the company learned private doctors lacked confidence and patients did not trust them. This led to a critical customer insight that drove action: “Private doctors need help building their reputation and patient trust.” Attitudes among patients varied heavily by city, complicating but clarifying their efforts. Patients in Beijing believed Beijing University (a public hospital) was the gold standard, so references to Beijing helped build credibility. In Shenzhen, a city of domestic immigrants with fewer State hospitals, patients were swayed by advertising and trends in Hong Kong. In response, the company launched “business education” classes for private clinics and created online forums that elevated the status of doctors in the eyes of consumers in a regionally relevant way. Importantly, none of these initiatives required reconfiguring the company’s product.

Two years later, having established a base in 北上广 （bei shang guang — Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou), the same company considered geographic expansion. Knowing dynamics in Tier II and III cities were different, they maintained the anthropologist mindset. By listening to patients chatting on their cell phones in waiting areas, they discovered that the majority of patients in Shanghai were not from Shanghai, but hailed from affluent cities in the Zhejiang and Jiangsu area. This changed their expansion strategy dramatically. Investigation revealed that patients from Wenzhou came to Shanghai to see the top doctor in the region and to shop – something that would be difficult to replicate in Wenzhou. So instead of entering Wenzhou, they doubled-down to help existing Shanghai customers grow, and reallocated their search engine marketing spend to keywords and geographic pockets outside Shanghai to drive awareness of medical options in Shanghai. Similarly, they found competition among clinics intense, which worked in their favor to focus on Shanghai and open additional accounts there.

For many Western executives, insights like these were counterintuitive. The logic in many Western countries would be “go to new geographies where additional demand lies,” but in East China they found they had much more room to grow without expanding. By thinking like an anthropologist and maintaining that mindset, the company dramatically outpaced its competitors. And by deeply studying Chinese competitors and looking for analogies beyond the U.S. and EU, they can tap into even more insights.

Principle #2: Embrace and (Gasp) Copy Chinese Competitors
Gone are the days of laughing at Chinese companies and products. The debate can rage over how “innovative” Chinese companies are, but in a growing economy with hyper competition and occasional government support, the law of large numbers is in full force. It’s hard not to find examples of companies that have become wildly successful, even if serving the domestic market alone. ⁸

The government’s approach the past 30 years has been to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Western firms need to wake up and consider what “management with Chinese characteristics” looks like, and how it may help them succeed.

Aside from having “home field advantage” – being more in tune with the culture, rules, and local business environment – Chinese companies exhibit several areas that Western managers can learn from.

First, Chinese companies are keenly aware of the government’s role and the shifting regulatory environment, making them attuned to the importance of nonmarket strategies. A common belief among experienced expatriates is that anything is possible, but you need to understand where the government’s interests lie. Inside counsel for a large U.S. machinery maker learned tracking features on their equipment could run afoul of local regulators, so their government relations team took a humble approach and sought ways to shape unclear policy in more favorable ways.

More importantly, Chinese firms – primarily the small, entrepreneurial ones – find ways to strip down products and get them to market quickly, often settling for razor-thin margins. One U.S. dental maker of sophisticated devices was shocked to find multiple competitors in China when they first entered the market.

Rather than dismiss them as copycats, they took a step back and deeply studied how they had been successful. They uncovered many service-related areas where the Chinese firms excelled. To serve public hospital doctors, the Chinese competitor hand-delivered information, taking advantage of cheap and efficient local delivery services (such as one of China’s leaders, SF Express)⁹, and often accompanied the information with in-person sales rep support. On the consumer side, by studying their Chinese competitors’ digital patient education efforts, they were quickly exposed to new areas like using online bulletin boards to reach university students and “instant call” customer support to serve demanding Chinese professionals who wanted immediate answers. One executive, China head of a worldwide healthcare leader, received a constant barrage of requests on what to do with Chinese companies that copied or repurposed his company’s logo and brand imagery. His response: “We’re never going to shut all these down, so I encourage my team to study what was done. Many times, savvy competitors reconfigure our website so it becomes more appealing. If their format actually is better, I am open to adopting that web format ourselves. It’s very easy to run an A/B test!”

Studying what Chinese try can be a shortcut to gaining local knowledge. As one marketing head of a U.S. consumer product giant shared, “I could do a lot of research, but sometimes I need to take off my Western hat and try things in a much more Chinese/local way.”

To put this in practice, companies should place more emphasis on competitive analysis and intelligence, making it a dedicated part of an employee’s role. One company extends competitive insight across the company by placing their own and their competitors’ social media sites on monitors near the tea station so employees can see how customers interact with the local and foreign brand. Additionally, a common practice among top Western firms is to regularly review competition in management meetings. One U.S. tech company’s Beijing office huddles 15 minutes daily to discuss what their main Chinese competitor (who owns 75 percent market share to their eight percent) is up to. The marketing head, who is Chinese, says the review sessions prepare them mentally for anything that might happen. Most competitive moves they ignore, but she reported they fold multiple ideas into their own offerings.

Principle #3: Think about Innovation More Broadly, Focusing on Service to the Customer
“Chinese service” is no longer an oxymoron. Chinese firms are using technology, manpower, and talent to find creative new ways to capture and retain demanding – and less loyal – Chinese customers.

A focus on service addresses a major problem multinational executives face: reconfiguring a physical product takes time, energy, and political will. Most foreign multinationals develop product centrally (outside China), using elaborate stage-gate methods. Getting central corporate resources and approval to develop a product specific to China, to say nothing of local regulatory approval or launch preparation, takes time. And unless the CEO or executive team is fully committed to China, a Chinese business that contributes less than five percent to worldwide corporate revenue rarely will get special consideration. Instead corporate favors focusing on product changes that will increase sales in their larger, existing developed markets (usually the U.S. and Europe). Sadly, by the time changes make it to market, the executive has already rotated into a new position.

So for today’s executives – particularly those working for U.S. public companies where pressure to meet quarterly sales targets runs high – “quick wins” that come with service innovations or improvements are highly valued. Speed is everything in China. Repositioning a product, localizing packaging, reconfiguring price or bundling, rethinking sales/marketing/service, working with local partners, can all make a difference, and be done quickly.

The most striking example of translating this principle into a winning go-to-market strategy is how one company up-ended its customer service model. The company, which provided customer service and treatment advice to doctors, started with a very Western approach to customer support: a toll-free phone number. By observing one segment of customers – clinicians in aesthetic plastic surgery centers who had low clinical skills but were strong at marketing and selling to patients – the company realized no one picked up a phone for help. The doctors, they discovered, wanted instant support but found it difficult to describe a patient’s condition over the phone, and they were too busy to download and email photos and fill out forms, the company’s service approach in the West. Around the same time, the company observed sales reps communicating to doctors with a new app called Wechat. In a semi-annual user insight roundtable, key customers bragged how the company’s Chinese competitor was using Wechat to update doctors on their order status in real time.

Seeing the power of Wechat, the company set up a regional pilot that allowed doctors to use the mobile app to submit photos and leave voice messages with their questions. Doctors got rapid responses from the company’s support team in written form (doctors did not want their patients to overhear the advice), with links to similar treatment types they could show to patients. Doctors and sales reps loved the immediacy and intimacy. The team went on to win a regional innovation award, and the company began exploring ways to scale the service in China (Wechat has made a push in the B2B/customer service space) as well as take the service innovation to other emerging markets where Wechat is used widely.

Because Chinese traditionally don’t expect a lot from China-made products, Chinese firms have had to work harder to differentiate, particularly through service. While Chinese firms don’t always nail service, they do try things. Western firms would be wise to do the same.

Principle #4: Do Less Market Research, Do More Market
The top comment I heard last year came from a European gourmet foods CEO, lamenting his company’s uneven success in China. He argued that all their deep research had not taken them very far over five years. Perhaps emboldened by the fact a Chinese company had purchased a stake in his firm, he argued: “Do less market research, do more market.”  By that, he meant actively testing and trying ideas: essentially the core DT idea of rapidly testing, collecting feedback, and iterating.

Marketers know that the best market research is live testing. One China GM told me that he takes a venture capital approach: every year he allocates at least 20 percent of his budget to five-to-10 new, riskier initiatives. “Every one of my competitors is trying to secure top talent, optimize their sales force, cut costs. We all grow 20-30 percent annually. The question is, ‘What are you doing that’s different to grow 50 percent and reach a size that makes corporate take notice?”

He sets a few “design guidelines:” ideas cannot violate corporate ethical standards, marketing initiatives should integrate the sales force, and data to measure success must be generated. He gives his team some open rein, and then largely steps out of the way.

A French consumer products marketer echoed that sentiment: “I encourage us to try new things and challenge my assumptions. More often than not, my gut is wrong, but if it drives sales, I am happy to be wrong.” She added: “Like the Chinese government, I am pragmatic and I encourage my team to be the same: If it fails, we learn, brush it under the rug, and move on.”

None of the western executives admit it, but they actively pursue local initiatives that fall “under the corporate radar,” embodying the Chinese saying that the mountains are high and the emperor is far away (山高皇帝远 –shan gao huangdi yuan). The key to success with this strategy is having a good relationship with one’s regional or corporate boss, and the ability to dramatically execute if the idea is a winner. Fast execution is critical because the window of time on successful ideas is brutally short in China.

An example of this practice at work came from a provider of aesthetic medical solutions. They realized doctors wanted to grow their businesses and consumers were skeptical of private doctor clinical skills (the trust issue alluded to earlier). In response, they created an online forum where doctors, backed by the brand, could provide live “expert” Q&A to consumers nationwide. The forum became a win-win-win for the company, doctors, and consumers, with doctors lining up to use the service.

Principle #5:  Look beyond the China-U.S. or China-EU Framework, Deriving and Feeding Ideas from and to Other Emerging Markets

Most of the companies and executives I work with are of U.S. or Western European origin. The vast majority, however, are global citizens – they speak multiple languages and have taken on postings around the world. The most interesting sea change is that most look beyond the U.S. and EU for inspiration. Like anthropologists, they realize China is at a different stage of development and has a different historical and political-economic underpinning, one that doesn’t fit the Western model.

“I find myself trying to tap into our ex-Soviet Bloc country team to understand how to navigate political uncertainty. Americans and Northern Europeans have no appreciation for that,” said one GM.  Others talk to Latin America GM heads, who must manage a complex region and multiple distributors. Said another, “In many ways I start with the assumption that China is many different markets. This helps me break it down into manageable chunks.”

One dental company found China more similar to Spain than any other Western country: customers that operated on lower margins, regional differences and languages, heavier reliance on relationships, considerable grey market activity, and a burgeoning segment of university students seeking treatment that did not show up in the U.S. or Northern Europe. The two general managers opened a direct line and benefited immensely from the conversations, taking strategic advice from one another. Indeed, top managers actively develop the ability to look at analogous areas and build relationships with those who can bring them insight.

There is still plenty to learn from the West, and no country or company has a monopoly on ideas. Silicon Valley’s tech environment closely resembles the complex, rapid change in China, and approaches there can work in China. But the tide is shifting, and the hubris and slow corporate decision-making in the West is running its course.

Conclusions

In this article, I’ve put forward the notion of “Design Thinking with Chinese Characteristics” and provided examples for how this approach can help Western firms succeed in the complex, rapidly changing mainland marketplace.

No approach fits all. Sectors that are heavily regulated by the Chinese government (banking, energy, telecom, insurance) still exist, where foreign players are more restricted to the fringes. Even in these sectors, a thorough understanding of customers and intermediaries is fundamental to playing the game, and in fact may point to heavy and creative use of nonmarket strategies. Even seasoned “China hands” (expats who speak Mandarin or who worked in China earlier in their careers) need to find ways to let go of outdated models they have about China. More research is needed on Chinese management techniques, how Chinese innovation expresses itself, and differences between sectors.

Anyone who touches Chinese consumers knows how rapidly they are changing. Technology, globalization and the rise of China and its homegrown companies will shape the new business landscape of the future. Executives and companies with experience in the China market gain valuable skills and experience necessary to survive in the new global economy. May a design thinking approach with Chinese characteristics better prepare us all.

The Idea in Brief

The post Employ “Design Thinking with Chinese Characteristics” appeared first on China Research Center.

… a propaganda official from China’s Inner Mongolia region offered dubious praise [for the rap propaganda], calling the song “bewitching and brainwashing.” What pleased him most, Li said, was that final sentiment, when commenters say they could not get the song out of their heads, or that they sometimes found themselves involuntarily humming it. ²

The same article cites statistics asserting the video “has attracted 70 million views and appeared on thousands of online accounts.” Involuntarily humming the song demonstrates the power of an “ear worm,” a song you can’t get out of your head, and is an example of the power of culture to captivate people’s minds, and maybe even hearts, for better or worse.

Soft power exercised through such cultural tropes provides straightforward, but simultaneously ironic and humorous opportunities for cultural and political analysis.  An earlier example of this is President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Mongolia from August 21-22, 2014, during which he and Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj are pictured with bows and arrows in hand (see below):

“Mongolia treats Chinese president with traditional pageant” ³

This weapon-laden photo op is the third of three pictures accompanying the English report — the picture was also circulated in Chinese media — which describes the occasion as a Nadam Fair specially arranged for the visiting dignitaries. Events included “performances of wrestling, horse racing, archery, and dancing.” This was the “cultural” dimension of the summit, which had other serious business. The Xinhua report accompanying the slide states:

During the visit, the leaders of the two countries announced the upgrading of their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and pledged to almost double their annual trade to 10 billion U.S. dollars by 2020. ⁴

This amounts to the promotion of China’s sphere of influence as a “comprehensive strategic partnership” involving mutually beneficial business, couched within the engagement of leaders in seemingly less serious “cultural” exchange. Such cultural trappings may be interpreted as the froth of more serious diplomatic engagement, but on a deeper semiotic level, it functions to key readers to a narrative latent with symbolic importance.

In the current context of Xi Jinping’s recent drive to use pop culture to promote his “Four Comprehensives,” the secondary objective of the campaign is to raise the president’s profile and thus contribute to his accumulation of cultural capital. The archery picture at the Sino-Mongolian summit in August 2014 was taken a year-and-a-half before the current Spring 2016 campaign. Looking back, it appears the soft power campaign started long before the current employment of rap propaganda. The archery picture can be read as a metaphor, a reenactment of a symbol of ethnic nationalism and inter-ethnic cooperation and brotherhood, reprising the myth of martial arts hero Guo Jing, the main character in Jin Yong’s famous epic novel, The Eagle-Shooting Heroes [She diao yingxiong zhuan] 射雕英雄传 (English title from the 1987 Yuanliu Publishing collected works edition, Taiwan).

Compare the picture of Xi Jinping with bow and arrow in hand to the DVD and television series covers below (or in the web links):

The various English titles of the novel and multiple television series adaptations laud the shooter as “hero” or refer to “bravery,” a reasonable translation of the Chinese, in which “hero” appears in the title and “bravery” applies to the protagonist’s character. The cultural symbolism of the “eagle shooting pose” that Xi adopted for the Sino-Mongolian Summit camera can be read as directly referring to the famous scene from the novel and film/television depictions where protagonist Guo Jing proves himself worthy of Genghis Khan’s notice through his archery by shooting eagles (or condors, depending on the choice of translation) out of the sky on a hunting trip. A short list of television and film adaptations of this novel includes: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (TVB 1983), The Brave Archer (Shaw Brothers 1977), The Legend of the Condor Heroes (Tai Seng 1994), The Eagle-Shooting Heroes (2008).

Why might Xi Jinping want to identify himself with Guo Jing? The answer may be found in Guo’s character, specifically the kind of hero he is:

[Guo Jing’s] most outstanding trait is his constant strife for moral rectitude, as seen when he faces a dilemma after Genghis Khan attempts to force him to lead the Mongol army to attack his native land. Although he was born and raised in Mongolia, he is unwilling to side with the Mongols to attack the Song Empire. ⁵

“Moral rectitude” is the first order of identification that could benefit Xi Jinping’s image, particularly since he has been fighting corruption on many fronts since the fall of Bo Xilai. In this view, President Xi’s pose consciously (or unconsciously) mirrors that of Guo Jing, depicted in these four cover photos. Xi Jinping cleverly positions himself as a symbol with which his pop culturally informed Chinese audience may identify. He is a Han national hero, like Guo Jing. What kind of identification is this?

First consider the power of the pop culture icon. The degree of identification hinges on the cultural penetration of the image Guo Jing, whose character is propagated first through the popular novel, then by way of television and film adaptations, and finally by virtue of the stature of the novel’s author, Jin Yong. For those Western readers not familiar with this dimension of Chinese culture, author Jin Yong and his character Guo Jing are comparable to J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. Virtually everyone alive in the last two decades can conjure a picture of Harry Potter. Guo Jing’s existence and cultural penetration are equally well established. Although Guo Jing’s martial arts/swordsman dimension might be more akin in Western terms to Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and his protagonist d’Artagnan, the temporal immediacy of Harry Potter fits the pop culture analogy closer. So who is Guo Jing?

As the story goes, he was raised in Mongol society, became the adopted son of Genghis Khan, the blood brother of the Khan’s son, and engaged to his daughter. Guo Jing is the kind of hero who is famous not merely for his martial ability, but also because his prime character virtues are uprightness, honesty, and loyalty. Throughout Jin Yong’s narrative, Guo Jing relies on these virtues while negotiating difficult terrain in his coming of age, learning kung fu arts, falling in love with the clever Huang Rong, also of Han heritage (and breaking off his engagement with Khan’s daughter), and eventually defending the Song against both the Jurchens 女真人 and the Mongols 蒙古人. Guo’s upright, straightforward, hardworking, loyal nature simultaneously facilitates close fraternal (albeit adoptive) ties with the Mongol clan that raised him and ethnic allegiance to his Chinese roots. Eventually (it is a long story of 1,600 pages), Guo Jing defends the Song against foreign incursion, but maintains his integrity in all his relationships despite significant interior and exterior conflict.

The novel The Eagle-Shooting Heroes was written in installments and serialized in the Hong Kong newspaper Hong Kong Commercial Daily 香港商報 from 1957 to 1959, and its sequel was continued in Ming Pao 明報, which was founded by Louis Cha (Zha Liangyong 查良镛). The author and newsman are one in the same –  Cha’s pen name is Jin Yong. The first film version in Hong Kong was made in 1958, and later film adaptations were made in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. ⁶ The 1983 TVB television adaptation, titled in English The Legend of the Condor Heroes, was made in Hong Kong and starred Huang Rihua (Felix Wong) and Weng Meiling (Barbara Yung). It spanned 59 episodes, and was a social phenomenon at the time, garnering an incredible 99 percent viewership in Hong Kong, and was rebroadcast in 1985, 1990, 1995, 2012, and 2013 (in Taiwan). This adaptation continues to hold its own in pop cultural consciousness. ⁷ Jin Yong’s books were not available in Maoist mainland China, where politics tightly controlled cultural production, especially during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The TVB production time frame of 1983 is coincidental with the early years – shortly after Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the outside world – which were characterized by the massive importation of “Gang-Tai (Hong Kong and Taiwanese) popular culture in the 1980s.” ⁸ This “pop culture craze” was specifically marked by a trio of cultural producers and their products: Jin Yong and Qiong Yao’s novels and Deng Lijun’s songs. While Jin Yong had become enormously wealthy and influential as a Hong Kong newspaper publisher, his pop cultural impact was most deeply felt through serial publication of his 12 major novels, the revision and publication of those installments as books, and three collected works editions, as well as the multiple adaptations of each of his stories for television and film. He was so widely read in China that “the head of the National Publishing Bureau is reported to have told Jin Yong that in 1985 alone 40 million volumes of his fiction were sold in the Chinese mainland.” ⁹ In fact, the breadth and penetration of Jin Yong’s novels and characters in the cultural consciousness are so deep that there are a handful of other characters who are equally recognizable as Guo Jing to the Chinese readership.

The 1983 adaptation of The Legend of the Condor Heroes in 59 episodes is considered the definitive classic version by the generation of Chinese currently in their 50s and 60s, both inside and outside of China. This adaptation is listed variously as the ninth most popular TV series in the Chinese diaspora according to one source, ¹⁰ as well as the number five television series in mainland China, with a viewership rate of 90 percent. ¹¹ Given that there have been four other major adaptations of this work, and a 2017 version is currently in production, it is not surprising that there is a stark generational difference in terms of which edition is preferred. This holds for the multiple adaptations of Jin Yong’s other works, too. For example, my informal discussion with Chinese graduate students at Georgia Tech reveals that students in their late 20s favor more recent adaptations.

Guo Jing is simple and plain, even slow as a child, but loyal, upright and honest. Hard work accounts for his attainments. In addition to archery, a skill at which Guo Jing excels, his martial prowess is famed. He learned kung fu moves through a lifetime of diligent practice from a wide variety of upright practitioners, including masters from a virtuous Daoist sect as well as the leader of the largest gang in the martial world, the Beggar Band. The photo of President Xi posing like the hero Guo Jing, may be read as a reference to both the President’s forthright nature and his commitment as the defender of the nation. Here is the picture of a simple, but hard-working, upright and loyal hero, identifying with virtuous ideology (Daoist sect) as well as identification with the common people (Beggar Band), whose martial skills can protect the nation and whose diplomatic prowess as a leader can facilitate cooperation and harmony with China’s external neighbors and domestic ethnic minorities.

Unpacking the image is appropriately complex. Guo Jing straddles ethnic boundaries and belongs to both worlds. Indeed, the official media surrounding the China-Mongolia summit emphasized President Xi describing the closeness of the two nations using the expression, “a visit in the style of calling on relatives” (yici zouqinqi shi de fangwen  一次走亲戚式的访问), noting that “calling on relatives” is part of the “comprehensive strategic partnership relationship” (quanmian zhanlüe huoban guanxi 全面战略伙伴关系) and deepening China-Mongolia friendship. ¹²

The archery image documents the closeness of the Sino-Mongolian relationship and echoes Guo Jing as friend and “relative” of the great Genghis Khan. Did President Xi understand the potential pop cultural significance of paying homage through a picture that imbues himself with Guo Jing’s highly laudable virtues?

Is there any indication that President Xi is, or could be, aware of such a connection? A search of official media does not reveal any mention of author Jin Yong or his novel and protagonist Guo Jing in relation to this state visit. However, there is evidence of President Xi’s general consciousness of the novel at least. A Sina News article from May 26, 2015 is titled: “The Peach Blossom Island [depicted by] Jin Yong’s Pen Attracts Uncle Xi’s Visit, Where is It?” ¹³ This article cites “Uncle Xi” (Xi Dada 习大大) directly referring Peach Blossom Island, the childhood home of Guo Jing’s sweetheart and eventual wife Huang Rong. Second, a February 27, 2016 article from China News titled “Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Xi Jinping All Loved to Read Jin Yong” cites that article and explains:

Actually, among those who have in succession been China’s leaders, many are fans of the books of the “great martial knight” Jin Yong, and Jin Yong also had intersections with many leaders. ¹⁴

This article was written in preparation for Jin Yong’s 92^nd birthday on March 10, 2016, and describes Deng Xiaoping’s invitation to Jin Yong to visit in 1981, which “caused a sensation in Chinese society around the world” [yinqi le quanqiu huaren shehui de hongdong 引起了全球华人社会的轰动] and eventually led to unbanning his books. Subsequently, Jin Yong also met with leaders Hu Yaobang in 1984 and Jiang Zemin in 1993. Since the article doesn’t mention current President Xi Jinping, beyond the Peach Blossom Island citation above, the title of the article may serve two purposes: first, to align President Xi with his predecessors, and second, to associate him with the eminent Jin Yong, who possesses cultural credentials of which any politicians could only dream.

A century of Chinese leadership on the world stage, from Sun Yatsen to Chiang Kaishek, to Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, and up to the present, demonstrates the skill and aptitude of Chinese leaders over at least a hundred years and longer, if one includes the millennia of bureaucratic and educational dominance of China’s elite. Furthermore, Shanghai was the business hub of Asia in the early 20th century and is well on its way to regaining that status; China’s military leadership helped defeat the Japanese in World War II; some non-state-owned businesses survived even during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s; and of course the phenomenal rise of China as an industrial and export power over the last three decades. ¹⁵

On the global stage, the “rise” of China may be cast as a zero-sum gain, incurring the question whether “rising” China implies “falling” of other world powers, particularly the U.S. Is supplanting U.S. global leadership a prerequisite implied by the word “leadership?” Will China’s growing economic and military competitiveness result in enhanced international political competitiveness? In my reading, President Xi’s projection of the image of a Chinese leader situated to protect the nation from outside threats through his identification with Jin Yong’s martial arts hero demonstrates Xi’s cultural savvy: he identifies himself with the upright, honest, loyal defender of the Chinese people, and by extension, their domestic and international interests.

This is soft (cultural) power subtly buttressing the president’s image for the domestic audience. Is this is an astute appropriation of pop culture in service of the discourse of nationalism? It is hard to say definitively. Analyzing the archery picture closely, one might note the dignity and spirit of friendship between the two leaders and their wives participating in this activity. They actually look like they are having fun, and the series of photos that accompanies the activity appear to show the Mongolian president politely correcting President Xi’s bow-handling, as the arrow will only fly true (for a right-handed person shooting Mongolian style) if it is mounted on the right side of the bow. President Xi will have a chance at hitting the “eagle,” so to speak, if he shoots “right.”

Can savvy soft power symbolic acts prove useful on the world stage? Employing rap music to promote President Xi’s signature objectives and the “brave archer” trope may be seen as steps to engage the discourse of soft power, somewhat akin to the attempt to use the linguistic appellation “Uncle Xi” to infer identification with the common folk. ¹⁶ How this is received, especially outside China, is another matter. A Washington Post article by Emily Rauhala from September 23, 2015 discusses the use of video to promote the image of President Xi. This article is titled “China’s President Xi is ‘so cute,’ says world’s creepiest propaganda video.” ¹⁷  The headline may not be fair to Xi Jinping and may indicate a lack of objectivity. Given that the word “propaganda” is a pejorative in English, is it really necessary to use both the adjectives “creepiest” and “propaganda” in the same headline?

Nevertheless, the appellation “Uncle Xi” used to refer to the President is a clear example of image management. Is it a coincidence, as one report puts it:

He owes another portion of his popularity to his wife, a famous singer in China who adds to his popularity. One might not quite believe it, but the people like to call him “Uncle Xi”? ¹⁸

It is logical to think that the spouse of a famous singer with particularly close connections to pop culture may influence the production and management of her husband’s popular image. Appropriation of symbolism inherent in pictures like the “archery photo” could be helpful as small building blocks in solidifying Xi’s domestic image.

Many questions remain. Since both soft and hard power operate on cultural consciousness, can we prioritize one over the other? Could soft power prove “stronger” than hard military power through its influence over the audiences (think of a Hollywood analogy)? Will overt hard power of nationalism, military or business technocracy dominate the cultural and international discourse? China has many resources and experiences (read “competitive advantages”). And this brings us back to the photo of Xi Jinping shooting the arrow. Is his target, like Guo Jing’s eagle in Jin Yong’s novel, a metaphor for the U.S.? As the second-largest economy on the global stage, China can make a case that its leadership position should be commensurate with its economic position? Will China attempt to displace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower? Genghis Khan and his descendants established the largest global empire in history in the 13^th Century, extending from China to Europe. How will a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between China and its friends unfold in the 21st century?

The post Xi Jinping’s Soft Power Martial Arts Cultural Trope appeared first on China Research Center.

A panel on the traditional East Asian tributary system at the annual convention of the Association of Asian Studies in Seattle in early April produced a fascinating discussion on the subject of whether China really ever ruled the world, or at least the East Asian portion of the world that China’s pre-modern emperors understood to be the world. This arcane debate touches on the self-identity of rising China. Many of China’s “citizen intellectuals” who now opine in print and online about China’s mission in the emerging world order argue that China must once again become the dominant power in the world, replacing the United States in that role and dispensing a morality superior to the conflict-prone individualistic materialism peddled by the United States. Since the notion that China in fact “ruled the world” for several millennia constitutes a key premise of this new Chinese nationalist hubris, it is important to ask: Did China ever really once dominate East Asia as the idea of the traditional pre-modern tributary system maintains? Close examination of that proposition suggests that the answer is “no,” it did not.

The idea of a “tributary system” ordering relations for two millennia between China’s successive imperial dynastic states (Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Qing, etc.) and other states in East Asian, Central Asian and Southeast Asian was developed by Western scholars after World War II. Harvard Professor John King Fairbank was a pioneer in formulating the tributary system model. The “East Asian tributary system” became the standard model of Western sinology, and several generations of scholars delved into aspects of this system. Papers presented at the Seattle conference continued this effort by investigating the operation of the tributary system during the Qing-French confrontation over Vietnam in 1884 and during the Qing-Meiji confrontation over Chosen (Korea) in 1894.

The tributary system supposedly worked like this:  China’s emperor, the Son of Heaven, claimed – and to a significant degree exercised universal authority over (similar to the Pope in Medieval Europe)  – all kings and potentates ruling civilized lands and lands aspiring to become civilized. Rulers of other lands recognized China’s superior ways and voluntarily entered into subordinate relations with China’s Son of Heaven in order to gain his sage advice and practical help. China’s imperial states typically had superior economic wealth and military power, but it was superior virtue – reflected in China’s prosperous and orderly society – that really distinguished China’s Son of Heaven from other powerful rulers. The ideal relation between China’s emperor and foreign rulers was analogous to the relation between a wise and benevolent father and a dutiful son: obedient submission in exchange for benevolent treatment.

The standard model laid out several key modalities of the tributary relation. China’s Son of Heaven invested foreign kings, conferring symbols of celestial authority that were handy in guarding against coups, usurpations, and rebellions. The Son of Heaven also supplied a calendar that accurately reflected the agricultural cycle and predicted celestial events (eclipses, comets, and such), powerfully demonstrating the Son of Heaven’s close relation with the cosmos. “Gifts” were also exchanged between the Son of Heaven and the foreign ruler. In theory the foreign ruler’s gifts were tribute to the Son of Heaven in recognition of the latter’s august supremacy. But since benevolence toward “obedient” subordinates was required of the Son of Heaven, Chinese gifts to the foreign ruler typically far outweighed in value the foreign gifts to China. This can be seen as a way of buying the foreign ruler’s “obedience,” but was, in any case, often less expensive than war and more effective than building great walls. In exchange for “obedience” to imperial Chinese “instructions,” the foreign potentate ruled their lands with little Chinese interference and with broad Chinese support. Given China’s wealth and power, foreign rulers often found these handy things to have, in dealing with rebellions or foreign invasion, for example.

Many of China’s contemporary “citizen intellectuals” commenting in the space for discourse created by the government’s declaration of China’s “peaceful rise” and “dream” of  “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” assert that China must work to establish a modern variant of the traditional tributary system, perhaps in Asia and perhaps over the whole world, replacing the United States as global hegemon. ¹ China’s rapidly growing power and influence suggest, to these citizen intellectuals, that the time has come for China to restore its historically normal place – per the tributary system – as leading global power.

A number of considerations indicate that the notion of many centuries of Chinese domination of its known world via the tributary system is, in fact, a scholarly simplification that became a myth.

First of all, “barbarian” states were often more powerful that China’s imperial states.  This was especially the case with the horse-riding states that emerged to China’s north and whose highly mobile armies of mounted archers were often able to ride circles, quite literally, around Chinese armies. In dealing with these militarily potent “barbarian” states, China’s imperial rulers often resorted to extremely generous “gifts” to stave off worse fates. China would try to frame this payoff of blackmail within the framework of the tribute system. But if that failed, China would pay up while still writing the records dutifully reporting that the foreign potentate obediently kowtowed before China’s Son of Heaven. The tributary system in these cases became a framework not for China’s hegemony, but its weakness.

Major East Asian states refused to accept ritual subordination to China. Japan and Russia were the most important of these. Except for a brief period in the early 15^th century, Japan’s imperial court adamantly refused to agree that China’s ruler was superior to Japan’s. ² Japan’s ruler, like China’s, was a “celestial emperor” not a mere “king,” Japan’s royal court insisted.  Japan’s lese majeste made direct communication between China and Japan’s rulers virtually impossible. Relevant here, however, is the reality that Japan did not live under Chinese hegemony via the tributary system. It refused.

Regarding Russia, arrival of Russian adventurers in the 17^th century to lands north of what is today China’s northeast led to decades of low-grade conflict between Qing China and Romanov Russian forces. That conflict ended in1659 when the two states concluded a treaty delineating their mutual boundary. Drafted by Jesuit priests in service to the Qing court and written in Latin, the Treaty of Nerchensk embodied European notions of equality of sovereign states – both of which are ideas antithetical to the tributary system’s hierarchy and universal rule. Most important, the treaty led to a de facto military alliance against the Mongol states still dominating much of Central Asia lying between the Qing and Romanov realms. While Chinese scribes and historians certainly did their best to fit Qing ties with Romanov Russia into the tributary mold, the reality was that an aggressive and powerful Russian state was China’s equal, and did not pay tribute to or kowtow before the Son of Heaven.

During the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1279-1368 CE) the modalities of the tribute system were adapted to aggressive imperialism. The great Mongol khans ruling – also, as the Sons of Heaven – typically began new conquests with demands for ritual subordination via the tributary system. If and when those solicitations were rejected, powerful Yuan armies and fleets followed.  This was certainly hegemony, although the additional descriptor “Chinese” may not apply.   More to our point, the tributary system of the Yuan dynasty did not involve voluntary submission out of recognition of superior civilization. Nor did it involve loose and indirect Chinese rule; Mongol rule was heavy and harsh.

The notion of voluntary subordination to China’s Son of Heaven out of recognition of China’s superior civilization – a notion popular with many contemporary Chinese nationalists – does not comport well with the more messy realities of Asia’s history.  Even countries like Korea and Vietnam that drew deeply on China’s civilization had complex feelings about their tributary relation with China. The relationship had many advantages, including avoidance of wars with China for “disobedience” to its wishes. But a close relation with China also required periodic defense against bouts of Chinese aggressiveness. Vietnam, especially, survived as an independent state in China’s civilizational orbit by developing a political culture centered on the idea that they were NOT Chinese and would resist Chinese attempts to make them so.

Then there were the seaborne European maritime powers. The arrival of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English merchant ships in the western Pacific in the 16^th and 17^th centuries plugged East Asia into an emerging global economy. With new designs, European ships could sail the wild Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, delivering much sought-after East Asian goods to European markets. These merchant powers chaffed at the restrictions of the tributary system which Ming and Qing governments imposed on this trade. Ultimately, in the 19^th century, those Western grievances would lead to wars toppling the tribute system in favor of free trade.   But even while the Ming and Qing states were healthy, Chinese control over this dynamic East Asian maritime trade began and ended at water’s edge. China’s imperial states were, with a very few exceptions, continental land powers. ³ Chinese naval fleets generally operated in coastal waters. Ming and Qing China simply did not exercise hegemony over the seas of the Western Pacific, let alone the Oceanic highways beyond. Rather, those maritime lines of communication were dominated by powers other than China.

On close examination the standard model of the East Asian tributary system depicting long centuries of Chinese dominance is a crude simplification of a far more complex reality. It may work fairly well in understanding China’s ties with a small set of countries (Korea, Vietnam, and Siam), but set in a larger, fuller context must be seen as one piece of a more diverse, Rube Goldberg-like “system.”

It may well be that all academic theories are simplifications of sorts. But when some Chinese nationalists today envision China restoring the long-lost golden age of a China-centric hierarchical state order in Asia or the world, with China delivering greater security, prosperity, and order than the United States, they are turning an academic simplification into a myth. It would be unfortunate if China’s rise in the 21^st century were guided by a myth about its pre-20^th century role in East Asia.

The post China Rules the World? appeared first on China Research Center.

A leading U.S. authority on China’s politics, David Shambaugh of George Washington University, has authored what amounts to a manifesto of China’s reformers who are dismayed by the recent return to hard authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping. These moderates believe that the current retreat from both deeper marketization of the economy and gradual political liberalization and return to hard-line repression not seen since the immediate aftermath of the Beijing massacre of June 4, 1989, will ultimately undermine rather than strengthen Communist Party rule over China.  China’s reformers cannot themselves write an open and direct critique of China’s current direction under Xi, so Dr. Shambaugh has given them voice.   In effect, China’s reformers have aired their views through a well-connected American Sinologist.  Anyone desiring to understand the debate over China’s future underway among China’s top leadership can do no better than Shambaugh’s concise book. (172 pages exclusive of notes).

The upheaval that began with the autonomous student movement in Beijing in April 1989 continued through the collapse, one-after-the-other, of the East European Communist states and culminated in the disintegration of the USSR at the end of 1991. It was a profound shock for China’s rulers, a near-death experience. A consensus quickly emerged within the CCP top leadership. The decision to impose the Party’s will in June 1989 had been “correct.” Political liberalization allows opposition to emerge and leads to mounting challenges to Party leadership that may require highly risky confrontation with large and mobilized sections of the population.    This was the fundamental “lesson” of the 1989-1991 upheavals. Don’t relax or lose control.  Don’t allow opposition to emerge and coalesce. Insist on upholding Party leadership. Don’t share power. This is the perspective that inspires the current return to hard-line authoritarianism under Xi Jinping.

By the mid-1990s, however, and according to Shambaugh, a different interpretation of the “lesson” of the Soviet collapse emerged among CCP leaders. From this perspective, the fundamental cause of the Soviet collapse was not Gorbachev’s much-belated efforts at reform starting in the mid-1980s, but the increasing bureaucratization and rigidity of Communist rule,  plus a disregard for the desires of the people of the Soviet Union going back to the 1920s and 1930s. These things, this ossification of Communist rule, had made Gorbachev’s desperate efforts necessary. The overthrow of Soviet Communist rule in 1991 was the result of six decades of repression and stagnation. This was the great danger the CCP needed to avoid.  The Party needed to forge a more “consultative” type of rule with a more independent media, legislature, judiciary, economic activity, and civil society. The Party needed to pay greater heed to the desires of the people, and less attention to imposing its will. The Party needed to give up a degree of control – to the judiciary, to legislative bodies, the media, the intelligentsia, to enterprises. Changes along these lines, the reformers argued, ultimately would strengthen CCP rule. Refusal to become more inclusive was the path to ultimate regime demise.

From 1998 to 2008 the moderate reformers’ views prevailed, and under the tutelage of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, China followed a “soft authoritarianism” course. Autonomous civil society organizations were tolerated. The media were given freer rein. People’s Congresses and the “democratic parties” were given a broader role in “consultation.” Private entrepreneurs were subsumed within the realm of “socialism” and given political voice. Foreign entities operating in China were given loose rein. Late in 2008, however, a conservative coalition coalesced around deep suspicious about the previous decade of soft authoritarianism and progressive weakening of Party control. This coalition included the Party propaganda apparatus, ministries of state and public security, the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police, and inefficient state-owned enterprises. Party control was reinstituted across a range of policies, turning China away from soft to hard authoritarianism under Xi Jinping.

The crux of Shambaugh’s argument – and, I believe, that of the CCP moderates he is speaking for – is that China now faces a series of very serious problems which cannot be adequately addressed under hard-line authoritarian policies inspired by fear of CCP loss of control.   Rather, genuine solutions of these problems will require loosening of Party control over the allocation of capital and labor, higher education and intellectual inquiry generally, civil society, and even institutions of state and the political process to a significant degree. CCP moderates do not envision liberal democracy for China. Their inspiration is Singapore, where a single party perpetuates its rule but with autonomous technocratic organs of government (including legal and judicial organs), and wide if still limited scope for free debate and discussion.

Shambaugh piles up a long list of pressing problems: An aging population and exhaustion of low-cost labor supply. Future costs of caring for the elderly. Property and stock market bubbles. Huge levels of debt carried by local governments and state owned enterprises.   A heavy burden of non-performing loans carried by banks. Massive over-building of industrial plants. Sub-optimal allocation of capital via state fiat to state-owned banks. Informal loans provided by non-official lenders that are largely unregulated, very important for the private sector and, thus highly risky. Degradation of arable land and usable water. Air pollution.  Normalizing the status of China’s vast population of migrants illegally inhabiting its cities.  Meeting the rising expectations of an ever-larger middle class deeply plugged into global events  (including uprisings against autocratic regimes around the world) via the internet. Maintaining positive relations with the United States and with China’s neighbors. Adequate solutions to these problems will require a greater openness and a greater role for markets – with a corresponding rollback of state control. China’s leaders generally understand this, Shambaugh argues, and have laid out policies to address these problems in authoritative statements of previous Central Committee Plenums. Yet those earlier policy prescriptions have been ignored.  Fearing loss of control and dominated by the conservative coalition, CCP leaders have drawn back from real reform, relying instead on administrative control and repression. This, Shambaugh maintains, is the CCP path to Soviet-style stagnation, bureaucratic ossification, and popular alienation.

Two key and interrelated threads of Shambaugh’s argument have to do with:  1) escaping the middle-income trap by shifting to high value-added production, and 2) the role of free intellectual inquiry in fostering scientific and technological innovation.

A middle-income trap occurs when a newly industrializing country succeeds in becoming a producer of low-cost, labor-intensive export goods utilizing brands, product designs and production technology supplied by richer, more technologically advanced countries. On this basis, the country accomplishes a comfortable mid-range of income and development. It fails, however, to move past this stage of development and become a rich country or leading global economy. China’s leaders recognize this danger. A State Council investigation found that only 13 of 101 industrializing economies had succeeded in escaping this “trap” and becoming rich economies. “Successes” included Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel, Puerto Rico, and Mauritius. Economies that remained “trapped” included Russia and other post-Soviet states. To escape the mid-level income trap, China needs to shift from massive investment in fixed assets (transportation infrastructure, housing, and expansion of heavy industrial facilities) and production of goods for export to production of goods and services for Chinese consumers. Massive state spending and easy bank loans under state guidance drives China’s current “middle income” production structure. China’s most efficient, dynamic, and innovative firms tend to be private companies outside the state sector and disesteemed by China’s formal financial system. China’s leaders understand, Shambaugh says, that deep market reforms are necessary if China is to escape the “middle-income trap” and become a rich and leading economy. But confronted by a slowdown in China’s economic growth rate combined with sluggish foreign demand for China’s exports, China’s conservative control-minded leaders, fearing loss of control, have fallen back on an old tried and proven method of state fiat and administrative direction.

In terms of free intellectual inquiry, Shambaugh’s argument is that such freedom is required for path-breaking scientific and technological innovation that leads to new products and processes that become embedded in high value-added goods and services. Indigenous innovation is thus a key driver of escape from the middle-income trap. China’s leaders clearly recognize this problem and have spent significant money on research and development and on elite universities. China now produces an abundance of journal articles and files a large number of patents. It woos accomplished ethnic Chinese engineers and scientists to “return” from Europe and the U.S. to China to continue their investigations. Yet the payoff of these efforts in terms of basic innovation has been paltry. Shambaugh attributes this to a Confucian emphasis on rote memorization and a preference (once again) for state direction and control. Major breakthroughs in understanding – new ways of looking at things – are difficult to accomplish in an atmosphere of insistence on ideological correctness and orthodoxy. Creating a genuine innovation economy and thus escaping the middle-income trap will require that China embrace a culture of free intellectual inquiry and debate, Shambaugh argues.

Shambaugh outlines several possible trajectories for the CCP. The good outcome, he suggests, would be a return to power of a reform coalition at the next Party Congress in 2017.  China’s post-Mao politics has been characterized, Shambaugh notes, by a shift every several years between a period of “fang” or relaxation, followed by several years of “shou” or  tightening. The current post-2008 tightening may be merely the most recent iteration of this fang-shou cycle, to be followed by renewed efforts at reform – perhaps after the global economy has escaped its current doldrums. Shambaugh also raises the possibility that strongman Xi Jinping might be pushed aside at the 2017 Party Congress, or perhaps even before that, in some sort of intra-Party coup.

On the other hand, if the current conservative hard authoritarianism continues, the CCP state might be sliding into its “Brezhnev period” of several decades of bureaucratic ossification and alienation from those it rules. In such a situation, Shambaugh suggests, CCP leaders might attempt to re-legitimize their rule by giving the Chinese people what they crave: demonstrable establishment of China as a leading – perhaps “the” leading – global power. Hard authoritarianism internally combined with aggrieved nationalism externally would be a gloomy development.

The post Manifesto of China’s Reformers: David Shambaugh’s China’s Future? appeared first on China Research Center.

PP: To begin, please explain what the project is and where the idea came from.

MC: The idea for Assignment: China came out of discussions at the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute that Clayton Dube, who runs the Institute, and I, were having about how Americans and others understand or misunderstand China.  One of the things that became very evident was that most Americans get most of the information that shapes their views of China from the media.

As we looked at this and thought about it, having been a foreign correspondent for many years, it became very evident that most people don’t have the slightest idea how foreign correspondents actually work. The process of how correspondents gather information shapes the final product people see on TV or hear on the radio or read in the newspaper or a website.

So we began this very ambitious project to tell the story of the people who have told the China story for the American media over the last 70 years.  Who were these people, how did they end up in China, what did they do when they were the AP correspondent in Nanjing or Shanghai in 1949 at the time of the revolution, or the Time Magazine correspondent in Hong Kong in 1959, or trying to make sense of the Cultural Revolution in the ’60s without being able to go there?  What was it like to go to China with Nixon? What was it like to open the first U.S. news bureaus in Beijing after normalization?

We began by tracking down as many as possible of the current and former China correspondents and people who interacted with them. In the end we did well over 100 interviews.  The series ended up being a narrative of Chinese history from 1945 to 2015, but from the perspective of the people who were on the ground trying to make sense of it as it happened.  People talk about journalists writing the first rough draft of history, and so this is essentially an attempt to tell that first rough draft of history through the eyes and voices of people who were standing there experiencing it as it played out.

Some of these people have written books and memoirs but others had never written anything or spoken very much about their experiences.  And so in those cases this was really precious material that hadn’t come to light.  People were able to give us home movies and private photo collections and all kinds of documents, and then we dug very deeply into the archives of the American television networks, and archives of presidential libraries, and places like Pathé, and old photo agencies, and so on.  So we were able to assemble what, even to us, turned out to be an astonishing collection of material.

PP: In the end, you did 10 or 12 episodes?
MC:  We started out doing interviews for a documentary but after we did the first bunch of interviews, we said, Wow, this is more than just one single film. And it kept growing. One of the joys of doing a documentary in this way is not being a prisoner of a network, and able to distribute it through the U.S.-China Institute website and YouTube channel. In this day and age you don’t need CNN to have a distribution mechanism.  You can put it on YouTube and spread the word through social media and that’s what we’ve tried to do. And if it warrants a dozen episodes, then you can do as many as makes sense.  For me, coming from a news background, that was very liberating.  So in the end we have 12 episodes beginning with reporters who covered the Chinese Civil War from ’45 to ’49, and ending with the beginning of Xi Jinping’s era in 2012-2014.

For example, there’s one episode called “China Watching” that looks at the two plus decades when Western journalists were not able to go to China and had to sit in Hong Kong trying to figure out what was happening.  The circumstances of being one step removed created its own sort of—what’s the right word—it became kind of an art form different from conventional journalism in a lot of ways.  A type of “Peking-ology.” So part of our project was to track down people who were based in Hong Kong in the ’50s and ’60s, and early ’70s.

Another episode is about the untold backstory of the press and the Nixon trip, which is absolutely fascinating. And then there’s an episode at the end of the Mao era dealing with the first generation of reporters who opened bureaus in Beijing after normalization.  There is one on the 1980s up to ’89.  We devoted a whole episode to Tiananmen, partly because the story is extremely dramatic and partly because in terms of the American perceptions of China, it was really this kind of watershed moment that changed the way people looked at China, and in terms of journalism it was really important because it was the first time an upheaval of that scale was shown to American audiences; it was broadcast live on TV.  People take it for granted today. You expect to see live reports from anywhere and in fact, you can go live with an iPhone from anywhere.  So it’s hard to appreciate how revolutionary it was that I, working as the CNN Beijing bureau chief, could stand in the middle of Tiananmen Square with hundreds of thousands of protesting students behind me and do a live broadcast.

Then we look at the 1990s, and there are four episodes examining the period from 2000 to the present day.  The final episode called “Follow the Money” tells the story of how David Barbosa of the New York Times did his remarkable investigative reporting about the hidden wealth of the relatives of Premier Wen Jiabao, and Michael Forsythe, then of Bloomberg News, did the same kind of amazing reporting about relatives of Xi Jinping, which brought the story full circle because you ended up with a lot of the reporting for this being done back in Hong Kong.  Also as the Chinese got more muscular in their dealings with the international press, people had trouble with visas.  For example, Forsythe ended up back in Hong Kong. The irony is you have a different kind of China watching, in which instead of reading the tea leaves of the People’s Daily, people are going through public financial documents of companies in which relatives of senior officials have lots of money invested, or going through property records to see multimillion dollar apartments.  So it seemed to be a good place to end it.  But it’s a pretty comprehensive look at the kind of major moments in Chinese history from the end of World War II to today.

The idea as we put this all together is that primarily the goal here is that this material can be used in the classroom, but by no means is it exclusively intended for use in class.  The 12 episodes provide a foundation for a course that could be used in journalism education on covering China, but each episode is self-contained and so you can watch one without having to watch the others, although there is a cumulative effect, particularly because a lot of the same characters appear in multiple episodes and you get to know them better and learn more about them.  But if you were teaching a course on recent Chinese history or international relations, the episode on the Nixon trip, for example, and the role of the press in the making foreign policy, would fit well.  There are also lessons in how the Chinese economy works today, for example with the episode on the hidden wealth of relatives of Chinese leaders, and many other possible lessons embedded in each episode.

PP: A theme that runs through the episodes is this relationship of the foreign press with the Chinese government, and it seems like it ebbs and flows.  Sometimes it’s more open, then it’s more closed.  Can you comment on that and then on what the current environment is for foreign journalists in China?

MC: There’s a permanent tension between the foreign press and the Chinese government.  The Chinese kicked all the Americans out in 1949 and with very few exceptions didn’t let any of them back on a regular basis until the late ’70s. But what you have here is a permanent tension and it waxes and wanes, depending on the overall climate.

For example, around the time of normalization there was this American love affair with China. Deng Xiaoping was the cuddly Communist who went to Washington and wore a cowboy hat when he met Bush in Texas. As a result, there were friendly stories as the reforms took hold: the first restaurant, the first private store, and so on.  And the government was sort of okay with that.

But journalists wanted to go deeper.  This theme runs through all of these episodes, going over years and years of how journalists pushed the limits, how hard it was to meet Chinese people, how hard it was to have Chinese friends, how difficult it was to get any authoritative information, being followed, being bugged, being hassled.  And to some degree it’s always there.  When the political climate in China is looser, it’s less evident and the limits are broader.

For example, the late 1980s – which is when I first was based in Beijing in ’87, up through Tiananmen – was a remarkably open time and everybody who was there then remembers it as a time when you could really meet people, and there was this tremendous lively positive engagement, which the authorities didn’t like, but they didn’t push back that hard.

And then after Tiananmen, there was a very deep chill; and then in the ’90s, again, as the economy began to pick up, it became easier to meet people as the story shifted from political repression to economic growth.  But over and over again, it happened where the journalists got in the firing line.  Part of what journalists do is to report on issues and tensions in the society and so when journalists went to talk to dissidents, Falun Gong activists, human rights lawyers, etc., they came under all sorts of pressure.

And then there was a period around the Olympics when the atmosphere again relaxed very considerably because the Chinese promised the Olympic committee there’d be a more open China.  That was when they changed the rules so that you could travel more freely.

But I would say starting at the end of the Olympics – 2009 onward – the climate got tighter, and I think the key turning point was 2011, which was the so-called Jasmine Spring. I think the Arab Spring really freaked out the Chinese authorities, and there were these calls on the internet for demonstrations in Beijing. Nobody knows whether it was just a few Chinese exiles in a basement on a computer in New Jersey putting this out, but the authorities totally flipped out. When journalists started going to Wangfujing Street to see whether anything was happening, there was a really, really aggressive push. This expanded into a degree of intimidation that we had not seen in a very long time.  Journalists got phone calls in the middle of the night, security people were going to their homes at 5:00 in the morning and threatening, “You better not cover this.”  It is unlikely that anything remotely like what was happening in the Middle East was happening in China, but Chinese officials were nervous, combined with a sense of assertiveness more generally in Chinese behavior that comes from their sense that the economic crisis of ’08 and ’09 showed the West was in steep decline and China was on the rise, and they have muscles so why not flex them. As a result, there has been an attempt to not only control the narrative of the Chinese press, which has always been there and has gotten much stronger, but they’re now trying to extend that to the foreign press.  And so you had a very, very difficult period.

The other thing is that even though the rules officially say you can travel anywhere and talk to anybody who’s willing to talk to you, the fact is that local authorities either haven’t heard of, or don’t pay any attention to that. Journalists discover when they go around the country, local thugs paid by the local authorities often go after them, beat them up, take their gear, or intimidate people, prevent them from talking to people, or retaliate against people to whom they try to talk.  So for many stories, it’s almost like guerrilla war now, where a reporter goes in, gets what they can, and slips out as quickly as possible.  And then the investigative reporting I mentioned – Barboza at the Times, and Mike Forsythe at Bloomberg, as well as The Wall Street Journal – around corruption of the Bo Xilai case, I think also contributed to the sense of anger at the foreign press and the determination to try and curb that.  So a lot of news organizations have had trouble getting visas.  It’s eased up slightly compared to 2012, ’13, and ’14.  But it’s still a very tough assignment.

On the other hand, I think a lot of journalists feel that it’s such an amazing story, and it’s such a big complex country that the government can’t stop you from doing everything, and there’s still a lot of amazing things that one can do.  So even today it’s much easier to operate as a journalist, and it’s a much more open society than it was 30 years ago, but it’s tough and you have a government now that if you cross lines, and say things the government doesn’t like, you’re going to hear about it, and sometimes more.  There was a French journalist who wrote a commentary about Xinjiang after the Paris terrorist attacks last fall that challenged the government’s narrative that all dissidents in Xinjiang are terrorists, and as a result she was forced to leave.

So it is a very difficult place because the Chinese are much more willing to push back on the foreign press now that they feel “We’re a big power; we can throw our weight around.”

PP: The other change is that now Chinese journalists and media are going all over the world and reporting back in China.  This is new and I just wonder: do you have any sense about whether that is influencing the media in China, given that they understand they want to get information too?

MC:  It’s a really interesting question because you do now have Chinese foreign correspondents showing up at all the conflict zones, and I think a fair amount of what they do is just straight news reporting, particularly when it’s not an issue that is too sensitive to China.  But when it is, the reporting either in the original form or once it is edited is shaped to fit the narrative.  There was a debate I know among many Chinese journalists about the fact that CCTV now has a big English language service, and some people see this as just an attempt to project soft power, and it is.  But I’ve known Chinese who work there who said, This is a good thing because if we want to be credible, we can’t just be party mouthpieces, we have to do more.  That pushes things in the right direction.

Maybe four or five years ago there was some hope that that was the case but I think the direction it’s going now is not great and so it will be interesting to see how this affects the way Chinese operate internationally.  If the media has to be such a loyal tool of the Party, at what point can it still credibly report things internationally?  But it is true that the Chinese have put a lot of money into it and they’re making these services available like CCTV English for free in many parts of the world, and it’s pretty slick.  So it’s a very interesting trend, although if the ultimate overall situation in China continues to tighten up, it’s hard to know how appealing that’s going to be or how skillfully that image can be softened in presentation for the rest of the world.  I don’t honestly know the answer, but it’s a very interesting question.

PP: Underlying that there is this expectation that journalists want to be professional, and I think that’s true across China and across the world, so that’s a good trend.

MC: Many young Chinese now, and I’ve taught some of them, are studying at journalism schools outside of China in the West and they’re absorbing some of the ideas and values of Western journalism.  And it raises a very interesting question about what happens to somebody like that when they go back to China with their newly minted master’s degree in journalism from a good U.S. journalism school.  How can they apply their skills?  I think it’s difficult, to be honest, and I think a lot of people are going to be quite disillusioned.  On the other hand, these are people who have had those influences, and if they stay in the media and communications world, in 15 years they’re all going to be significant, influential players, and nothing in China ever stays the same.  I do think the tightening we’re seeing under Xi Jinping is not another shift back and forth, as we saw on and off from the late ’70s on, but this is something more substantial and possibly more enduring. But nothing stays the same forever.

PP: Very interesting. Your project is a valuable contribution to the China field, to history, and to journalism.  How can people access the episodes?

MC: All of the episodes are available for free at The U.S.- China Institute website http://china.usc.edu/complete-series-now-available-assignment-china-usci-series-american-reporting-china

Several of them have Chinese subtitles and eventually all will be available with Chinese subtitles. There is also a thumb drive that has all 12 of the episodes (the non-subtitle version).  The complete series is available for a $45 donation, which includes shipping and handling. If you’d like the complete set, please send a check for $45, payable to the University of Southern California with “Assignment: China” in the memo field, to:

USC U.S.-China Institute
University of Southern California
(Assignment: China)
3502 Watt Way, ASC G24
Los Angeles, CA  90089-0281

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