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Psst... Where's the Revolution?
| No jasmine here. |
I've put the blogging on hold to focus on a reporting trip up North in Beijing (more to follow on that front), and during my hiatus, there's been plenty of Chinopoly-worthy material to report on: China's government has unveiled its newest five-year plan, President Obama has nominated a new ambassador to China... But all of this seems to be overshadowed by the largest pseudo-event in China's recent history: China's great Jasmine Revolution.
China's Jasmine Revolution started with a tweet. And then another. Where were these tweets coming from? China? Taiwan? A basement in Palo Alto (as one Beijing-based journalist publicly wondered)? Nobody seemed to know (but there's a rundown of events here). It didn't matter. China's security apparatus was all over it, and it wasn't going to allow any peep, bleep, or tweet about revolution go by the wayside. The tweets asked people to take strolls in the busiest shopping districts of several major Chinese cities on Sunday afternoon--a time when people typically take strolls in the busiest shopping districts of their cities. It was either an incredibly stupid or genius plan, depending on how you looked at it: Stupid, because nobody would be able to gauge how large these 'protests' were. Genius, for largely the same reason: the police wouldn't figure out who the protesters were.
None of these events attracted the throngs of protesters who showed up in the Spring of 1989 at Tiananmen Square or ten years later during protests by followers of Falun Gong. As we've reported in past weeks, China's economy, while definitely suffering minor bumps and bruises lately, is much healthier than the economies of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Many Chinese know this, and they don't want to do anything to put their economy at risk (even if they do catch wind of a protest--you need a VPN client to access Twitter in China). Thus, China's Jasmine Revolution has been reduced to throngs of jittery police showing up at the designated spots each Sunday facing off with dozens of foreign journalists. Instead of a story about Chinese citizens being the victims of brutal crackdowns, the story has become one of journalists getting roughed up, their rights trampled on. In sum, foreign correspondents in China, instead of covering the Chinese, are now covering themselves. A logical conclusion, perhaps, from a revolution whose reflection was first spotted in the look-at-me-look-at-me hall of mirrors of Twitter.
So where's the real revolution? I caught a glimmer of it the other day while trolling my favorite Chinese blogs. If you've got five minutes, check out this video that's received more than a million hits.
It's security camera footage of an attempted bank robbery outside the port city of Tianjin. The robber's persistence is both haunting and comical; it reminds me of the Cohen Brothers' portrayal of Anton Chigurh, the hitman antagonist in their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men.
Who is this guy? We don't know. He might have been a farmer, a factory worker, unemployed, or, like Chigurh, a sociopath. What's clear is that he wants money, and he's willing to work hard to get it, at great risk to others, but mostly to himself. Like the rest of the have-nots in China, perhaps he's so desperate he's reached the point of no return. The price of food, property, energy, everything--is going up in China, putting more pressure on those who haven't been able to secure a seat on China's economic bullet train. This man is hungry for money, like much of China. And he's not taking part in a mass movement. He's trying to solve his problem his own way. If a critical mass of those left behind ever reaches this level of desperation, that's when a real revolution may begin.
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This description of a revolution in china is interesting to me. In our book Chinese Lessons, by John Pomfret, for a Made in China class that I'm currently in, the author writes about his experience of life after the communist revolution. It seemed to me like the government did it's best to crush any revolution that took place, and it resulted in a much quieter protest due to this (maybe).
It's such a striking contrast to the revolutions that the USA experienced. We had loud protestors who often obsessively demonstrate to get their point across. In fact, it's still common for people to see protests taking place. Every semester at the U of M I have been witness to a protest.
It is a very interesting topic!
I saw the video before coming to China. I am also in Seth's class "Made in China" 2011 class. I have found the lack of access to my normal social media annoying. From speaking to Chinese people this restriction bothers foreigners more than most Chinese. They just shrug and quietly work around the problem by using internal media or somewhere out there a hacker is quietly opening a pinhole in the great firewall. Americans especially think blocking any information is bad. I think the Chinese make a distinction between social freedom and expression and political expression. In America those distinctions are blurrier because some people identify personally with a political group. It is part of their identity. I also think monitoring a social media outlet is a good way to keep track of people and ideas. I wonder even if twitter was available would anyone in China trust it enough to send a message about a protest? In the US Twitter is not anonymous. If the government asks they can gt someones messages and information. Maybe this non-revolution information was a test by the government looking for "monkey's" sticking their heads up out of the grass.
While reading through this article, it is still hard to comprehend how the Chinese citizens still have this constant fear of their government. It is one thing to have free speech and open opinions, but the Chinese government is taking complete control of their citizens. As China's economy becomes more dominant in the global market, there must be a point where the citizens demand certain rights. A growing country can bring many new opportunities to its citizens, but these opportunities can be taken away by a government that takes complete control.
Governments all over the world will do anything they possible can to stay in power and the people who hold the power in China are no different. In the book Chinese Lessons, by John Pomfret, he explains a couple of the techniques and methods used in the endless struggle to maintain power and push forward their certain ideas about government. His book also showed how the government was crushing revolutions or even the slightest sign of a revolution.
I found this semi-protest that was set up via one stray tweet to be very interesting. It is also amazing the fact that the Chinese Government is using such extreme action to stop a protest, which in reality wasn’t even a real protest. The government will do anything to stay in power.
Thanks for the update Rob, without it I may have forever been in the dark about this quiet 'revolution'.
Regardless of the fact that the Jasmine Revolution could be considered a pseudo-event, I find it to have elements of genius. I feel it demonstrates the new potential power of social media in a form of subverted deviance. It seems as though it was a tricky way of turning agents of surveillance and paranoia upon themselves. And while authorities are distracted by quiet threats of a mass revolution, there is an apparent and growing desperation of so many individuals. The above referenced video of the robbery is ironically inaccessible at the moment (I would assume thanks to "China's security apparatus"), but from what I gather it is representative of the discontent and inequality felt by 'regular citizens' such as farmers, factory workers or the unemployed. This is certainly a large portion of the population and at some point will most definitely be a force to be reckoned with; therein perhaps, will lie the real revolution.
First of all, what exactly were the protests against? Censoring? It reminds me of the Tien. Square protests that were more about general revolution and reform than any one topic in particular. I do think it is interesting to protest this way, similar to the passive protests where people encourage each other to, say, not spend money on one particular day to make a statement about capitalism. I also find the online culture of China extremely interesting. So many sites are censored, but so many people still find a way to use them. I feel that starting a protest virally like this makes a lot of sense in the Chinese context because those who "break the rules" to use sites like Twitter have already make a small step toward civil disobedience.
Rob, the origin of Jasmine Revolution is evident in the original manifesto itself. Pay attention to the passage that asked peopole not to leave trash behind after the protest.
The only time clean-up was called for after a mass incident, in China's modern history, was the 1999 Falun Gong protest at Zhongnanhai. The fact Epoch Times' religious promotion of this story further gives credence to this Falun Gong calling card.
I found this article to be very interesting as well. According to 'Chinese Lessons' by John Pomfret, he states that the government will do anything to stay in power. Anything that they see as a potential threat, no matter how small, the government will take force to re-establish homeostasis. Coming from the US where protests are a very common way to express your opinion, I find it very heartrending that there is no room for citizens here to express their beliefs. But at the same time, with a population this big, I might be a little scared of a mass protest as well!
China sometimes is a contradiction to me. They have made such great strides so quickly to catch up to the rest of the world and be a successful economy. However it seems like some things will never change for China, such as the citizens being able to protest or not be scared of their government. Even the smallest protest, or signs of a revolution, is shut down immediately. It is very clear that China wants its government to hold all the power. As a few bloggers mentioned before me, it is completely opposite in America. Any one can protest, even if it is the most outlandish of things. I have learned that most social networks are banned in China; the fact that the protest spread through twitter says something in itself. As you stated you need a special VPN to access Twitter, those who wanted to protest are those who are already trying to change things just by using a social networking tool.
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