The dogs in Beijing walk themselves. They are usually pretty small, smaller than most dogs you see America, but with bigger eyes. They strut around the street minding their own business, weaving in and out of passersby with no collars, no owners, and, most of the time, no obstructions. I once tried to pet a shorthaired, puggish one. I sort of snuck up on it from behind, placed my hand on its little head, and rubbed. At once it darted about five feet away to the side of the street and then turned around to stare at me square in the eyes. It seemed to say, “Excuse me, sir, did you...did you just pat my head? You did? Please don’t do that again. Good day.” Then it ran off to wherever it was going (it seemed in a hurry), never to see me again.
The dogs in Beijing are the city’s freest inhabitants. They never ride the subway, so they don’t have to place their bags under an airport style x–ray scanner every time they board. They don’t surf the Internet, so they don’t have their browser crash at random when they click on politically sensitive material. They’ve nothing to protest about, so they don’t get sent down to the countryside for reeducation when they wish to express their anger (legally, mind you) at losing their homes to a sports stadium. They don’t drive cars, so they’re unaffected when every other private vehicle is banned for the duration of the Olympics. And, best of all, they have no superficial understanding of national humiliation, no desire to prove to the world that they will no longer be made victims to the West or that they practice a sort of autocratic capitalism. No, Beijing’s dogs, like New York’s, Istanbul’s, Tbilisi’s, and everywhere else, are content to live and let live, to harm no one so long as no one harms them, and to go about their business with single–minded concern. I had no problems w
ith Beijing’s dogs, except perhaps once, during a Hash House Harriers run, when a rather hydrophobic–looking one chased me through an alleyway. Instead, my main enemy, I decided, was the climate of illiberalism put in place by the Chinese government and reinforced by the ostensibly apathetic majority of the Chinese people. And yet despite these two undeniable facets of modern Chinese society— illiberalism and apathy—so reprehensible to my American sensibilities, I have once more left China with a renewed sense of awe and respect for those who long for change in a country so categorically opposed to it.
My primary function at the United States Embassy as an intern this summer was to help American citizens. In practical terms, this meant that I assisted with, among various other tasks, what are called “repatriation cases,” instances when arrested Americans are only allowed to leave prison if they agree to deportation. Deportation entails that they return immediately to the US on a special passport, and are typically denied reentry to China for five years. If they can’t pay for the plane ticket themselves and have no close relations willing to pay for them, the government issues them a short–term loan to purchase it. If they elect not to return home, they have no other option but to remain in prison, perhaps indefinitely. The meetings that I had with these arrested citizens gave me a crash–course in the human cost of oppressive bureaucracy.
Take Tim, for instance, whose name has been changed to preserve his anonymity. Tim is a 23–year–old male from Ohio who wanted to spend a summer seeing China, or at least its modern cities. He visited Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Xian in a little over a month. When he returned to Beijing in preparation for his flight home, a police officer at the airport told him his visa had expired. The officer instructed him to go to the Public Security Bureau in Beijing, pay the fine of 500 yuan (roughly $73) per day for each day he had overstayed his visa, and obtain an extension, after which he could promptly fly home. As for rescheduling his airline ticket, well, that was his problem, according to the policeman. He should have known the rules. Tim then went to the Public Security Bureau, did not have enough money to pay for overstaying his visa, and was subsequently arrested.
Tim did end up flying home after getting a loan from the US government, but not before spending some 21 days in a Chinese prison, with 14 inmates to a cell and only two beds. Fortunately for him, foreigners, quite graciously, are allowed their own bed for four hours per night. When I met him he was scared, exhausted, filthy, and desperate to speak to anyone else in English. He was not allowed to see a doctor. The prison wards forbade him from going outside to exercise, as Chinese law allows inmates to do. I know that Beijing during the Olympics is not the same as Beijing during ‘normal’ times. Yet this summer will always leave me with the sense that Beijing is the land of endless bureaucratic oppression, a vibrant hybrid of the capitalism of Huxley’s Brave New World and the privacy invasion of Orwell’s 1984.
Another individual I met—let’s call him Matt—showed me firsthand that China’s prison system was no less harsh to its long–term inmates. Matt is a Chinese–American man, probably in his early sixties, with an adult daughter in the United States. He was arrested for something along the lines of smuggling non–Chinese citizens across international borders. I never really understood all the details, but the names of both Hong Kong and North Korea came up; needless to say his case was more serious than a repatriation. He would be in prison, as far as I understood, indefinitely, and his crime lay outside my responsibilities. I came to investigate his treatment, accompanying a counselor officer and career–diplomat who assists in making monthly visits to arrested Americans in China. The officer asked Matt if he had been allowed to see a doctor. He said he had not. He had reported symptoms of chest pain and severe coughing fits, all of which had fallen on deaf ears with the prison guards. In such a situation the Embassy writes what is called a diplomatic note to the prison warden, requesting better treatment for the prisoner. The warden then decides whether or not to heed our requests. The prisoners seldom experience any improvement in their treatment.
At any rate, the officer asked Matt if he would like us to bring him anything on our next visit. He made one request: a heavy text on Chinese law, in English. I surmised that he was planning on researching prisoner’s rights. He need not have bothered, because in China, there is no real rule of law. Even if the constitution itself holds that a certain law must be respected, Party officials can trump it. The Party is the only law. After the officer and I left, what bothered me most about Matt’s case was not the fact that he was going to make a futile attempt to fight an unjust system, nor even the fact that thanks to the prison’s intransigence, he would likely die from a highly treatable disease. No—it was that I knew Matt was a fundamentally good person: he was polite, articulate, kind, and even humorous despite his situation. Yes, he broke the law in a particularly dangerous place to do so, but only one rash decision separated me from Matt. I still have not reached any answers to the questions I pondered on the drive back to the Embassy: What are the chances that I could be sitting in a Chinese prison? How long will it be before I too make a single, fateful error, in China or anywhere else? How does imprisoning people like Matt make the world a safer, better place?
Despite these troubling instances of Chinese bureaucratic tyranny, the Beijing Olympics and the summer leading up to them was not entirely negative. For all the headaches the Games caused, and for all the infuriating and saddening government intrusions, Beijing is still one heck of a town, with or without the Olympics.
Few cities in the world have transformed so completely and so quickly as Beijing since it won the Olympic bid in 2001. When I visited in 2005, there were three subway lines, two of which were very old and each with very slow, stuffy cars. Now there are six lines, with another three scheduled to open in 2012. And all have newer cars, some brand new, featuring wide, roomy interiors, air conditioning, and electronic maps of upcoming stops. The stations themselves are paragons of modern technology, with subway cards that can remain in one’s wallet as they are scanned walking in (think the entrance to Lerner, done correctly). Best of all, the subway costs only 2 kuai, about 29 cents, no matter the destination. Without a doubt, the Chinese government has invested great effort in providing efficient and economical public transportation.
Nicolai Ouroussouf’s article on Beijing’s new ultra–modern architecture, published in the New York Times on July 13, was a particularly interesting read for me, because the tripod–minus–one–leg–looking China Central Television (CCTV) tower, visible from my office and three minutes away by taxi, served as the article’s centerpiece. The government completely transformed that whole region of the city—Chaoyang, the Modern Business Direct—in anticipation of the Olympics. Funky new buildings á la the CCTV tower pack the area full of high–end consulting and law firms, as well as a plethora of European designer–infested malls. I did not make an official count, but I probably could have found three Gucci stores within walking distance from my housing complex.
In a way, Beijing’s modern trappings, alongside its authoritarian system, represent a microcosm of modern China. With its double–digit growth rates over the last several years, the Chinese Communist Party has proven that a nation does not need political liberty to enjoy rapid economic growth. This undemocratic capitalism seemingly refutes the notion, prevalent after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that all political regimes would embrace market–determinism and democracy. History may eventually bear out this theory, but it remains to be seen how long the Chinese Communist Party will be able to placate its citizens with economic prosperity while it continues to strangle political liberty.
For the Beijingers themselves, this summer offered a mix of good and bad. The Olympics allowed Beijing residents to beam with pride about their city, both about its formidable tradition and its rapid modernization. It allowed them and their fellow Chinese throughout the country to demonstrate to the rest of the world that the ancient Chinese civilization and all its glory, so beautifully depicted in the Olympic opening ceremony choreographed by China’s most famous filmmaker Zhang Yimou, is ready to take its rightful place as a global leader. And fortunately, as the official Olympic slogan plastered everywhere from sidewalks to road signs to television commercials read—“One World, One Dream”—Beijing and the Chinese people appear to desire friendship with everyone.
 A migrant worker in Shanghai. Growing inequality between the countryside and the coastal cities has resulted in labor migration, as well as newfound urban alienation. |
The Olympics largely succeeded in reinforcing this message. Controversies arose over arrested activists who had legally petitioned to stage protests, and, earlier on, regarding Beijing’s poor air quality. But the Communist Party clearly demonstrated that it could organize a massive international event and manage the situation sensibly.
At the local level, however, matters were quite different. The Olympics heralded quite a few headaches for the ordinary Chinese citizens and Beijing residents in particular. First there were the architectural issues: for all the praise Beijing received concerning its modern architecture, it razed thousands of homes and left their former owners stranded. In the few times I walked around the Olympic Green to admire the National Stadium (or “Bird’s Nest” as the locals call it in Chinese) and Water Cube, I could not help but think, what was here before? Aside from Tiananmen Square, Beijing is not a city of sprawling open spaces. Where were the hutongs, the famous centuries–old, alleyway homes? What happened to the maze of walls and elderly citizens riding on their bicycles? Where did old Beijing go?
Even for those whose homes remained unscathed by the surge of new construction in the city over the past seven years, this summer did not pass without a hitch. Hospitals, for instance, were told to limit the number of operating and emergency rooms in use for Chinese citizens, to accommodate Olympic athletes. This policy resulted in a number of frustrated Beijing residents having to travel to other cities to undergo surgery, an already expensive procedure made even less accessible by the new regulations.
The unbending bureaucracy that American prisoners endured did not escape local Beijingers, either. A Chinese coworker in my office related a story in which a disgruntled Beijing man on a public bus was having a conversation about the Olympics with a friend. “The government has spent 300 billion yuan on the Olympics, but how much on the earthquake victims in Sichuan?” he asked. “The Olympics are a two–week period of games, why does the government seem to think they are more important than taking care of China?” A minute later, the man received a tap on the shoulder and a voice whispered in his ear, “Do not turn around. You are getting with off me at the next stop. Do not ask any questions.” The next day the man’s boss got a phone call. “Your employee will return to work in a few weeks. Do not inquire about his whereabouts.”
I am not sure if the story is true, but it serves to illustrate the tense climate experienced by Beijingers for the past several years. And while national sentiment ran sky–high during the Olympics, there was a lingering feeling in the smog–ridden air that everyone wished for a return to normalcy.
I wrote above that the Chinese people appear apathetic to the authoritarianism in their country. Others believe that the Chinese people have no choice but to be silent about it. Beijing is, after all, the sight of the May 4th, 1989 student massacre—an event that, while unspeakable and unacknowledged at the official level, remains fresh in the collective consciousness of Beijingers as an example of what happens when change is pursued too directly. When I asked about the student protests, the Chinese were quick to defend their government. “The students were trying to use violence to overthrow the government,” they would tell me. “They were preventing the government from doing its job, camping out in front of the Great Hall of People (Beijing’s ceremonial congressional headquarters),” they would add. But beneath their quick reproduction of the party line, I could sense that they felt the incident was a tragedy, as their eyes would drop to the floor, and their voices would hover just above a whisper.
I left Beijing this summer as I always do: both angry that the Chinese can’t see things the way I do, and impressed beyond belief with all that they have accomplished. For all of my criticisms of the Chinese acceptance of totalitarian domination, one redeeming fact stands: China has given its people a better life in the last thirty years than it ever has before. Some 500 million fewer people live below the poverty line in 2008 than did in 1978. And reform is cautiously infiltrating the political system as well. The government no longer requires women to turn in their “sanitary napkins,” as the Chinese call them, every month to demonstrate they are not pregnant. Western movies and music are omnipresent, let alone Starbucks and McDonalds. However begrudgingly, China has changed steadily to improve the lives of its citizens throughout the past three decades. And while the Chinese government must do much more to grant its citizens rights, we in the West must acknowledge how far China has already come. While the day when the Beijing man can walk as freely as the Beijing Shih Tzu has not yet arrived, the Chinese people’s dogged determination to make their country a better place might one day translate to individual liberty.
Above: A lone soldier in front of the Museum of Chinese History in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. The Olympic countdown clock was erected four years before the games began
WILLIAM LANE is the Deputy Arts and Letters editor of the Current. He is majoring in East Asian Studies, with a focus in modern Chinese history.