Years of Poems and Spirits

Came upon the news: China’s Banks Told to Boost Loans to Small Businesses

The Chinese government, thru fiat, mandates that “financial firms should make support for small and medium-sized businesses a priority in 2009, and ensure that loan growth to such firms exceeds overall loan growth, ”

Although the above news is a good thing for China, I find myself a bit disappointed. On the one hand, this is a right decision that will spur domestic growth. On the other, if the policy is successfully carried out, the private enterprises may become reliant on government money and soon lose its edge–not just political edge, but productive one too.

In recent years, headline growth mainly comes from heavy investment with diminishing returns. According to some, this growth pattern is almost cancerous. Huang Yasheng has been focusing on the lagging income growth behind that of GDP. Both he and Nick Lardy point out that the private sector is more productive and efficient, yet is terribly under-capitalized.

I too have been cheering for foreign private equity money going to China to pick up the slack. If there is a healthy private economy–private production by private funding–we may see a healthy property class asserting more political autonomy.

But the regime again stayed one step ahead. How come the bad guys always make the right decisions? The current regime is a parasitic, rentier-autocratic class. Yet it is so good at protecting itself from being replaced by anything even remotely progressive. It just has to assimilate the good guys until they are all the same …

It is just amazing how many regimes survive incredible odds just because they gained independence for their respective nations. Castro in Cuba, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and of course, CCP in China. Although most people don’t care for the intimidation or the lack of freedom they live under, they nevertheless make peace with themselves by invoking the great deeds their own oppressor accomplished against the foreign ones.

In China, the CCP’s legacy rests largely on the notion that the Chinese were awaken by a rude yet immensely superior Imperial force. From what I was taught since grade school, the situation was described as a self-reliant China suddenly overun by foreign powers who had long-hatched plans to enslave China. That China was ill-prepared, for it had been an isolated nation for millenniums.

This narrative makes CCP looks like a real leader: it stepped up in a time of total confusion and utter chaos, and led the nation to self-determination against almost insurmountable odds.

I don’t buy this narrative at all. To me, the history should be read as:

1. As a nation, China is shaped by its constant interactions with foreigners throughout history.
2. The anger toward Imperialism, as well as a sense of impetence in face of it, is largely stoked by the rise of Japan. In other words, the defeat at the hands of the Japanese is both a last draw and a rallying cry.
3. The fact that modern Imperialism is such a shock to the Chinese is not because it is perpetrated by foreigners, or even militarily superior foreigners. Rather, it represents a superior civilization.

Therefore, my conjecture is that, national sovereignty or territorial integrity is just a MacGuffin in a larger play where the real emotional battles are at civilization level (not related to Huntington’s theme).

The “communists” prolonged the decline of the old Chinese civilization and was thanked for by the masses produced by such a civilization.

That is also why CCP can survive so many scandals, crimes and disasters.

More thoughts and proofs come later …

Can’t believe this. Just wrote this blog last night then today come across this article, 何晋：秦称“虎狼”考：兼论秦文化遇到的对抗. which basically says that Qin was an alien nation, forced itself upon China proper, and was eventually “Sinicized”. Again, this confirms my conjecture that China was never “isolated” and the fear of Modernization is the fear of being culturally defeated.

Just read the outrageous news, “Leading Russian Rights Lawyer Is Shot to Death in Moscow”. The title says it all. What is striking is the nonchalant tone in the piece, as if being murdered in broad daylight is part of daily life for Russian liberals.

True or not, just got me thinking. A new term coined in China last year was “beggar-gang journalist” (新闻丐帮). It refers to journalists flocking to industrial accident sites, waiting to be bought off.  For example, there have been reports that some coalmine accidents were left out of news after reporters were seen getting paid off.

Each of the two above story may not be so interesting until they are placed side by side. It reveals something about each society, particularly what happens when ”civilized” disagreements cannot be reconciled.

If I read Norbert Elias right, historically, conflict resolution used to be violent. A side project of the modernization/state formation/social transformation is the “civilization” process after which physical violence is replaced with “war of words and symbols” (my phrase). Well, the journalists are perhaps the ultimate word warriors in this regard.

But sooner or later, the words will run afoul of the real world somewhere. How the societal dissonance is reconciled really tells something about the society. Both China and Russia are top-down, patriarchal societies, yet how they hold themselves together seems to be different: one resorts more to man self-interest, the other to man’s fear.

Needless to say, this is not about who is more right/better than the other. Just interesting to note.