"Sinocentrism" is not an ideology

I enjoyed this piece in today's Washington Post (H/T Rectified Name) describing what they see as the possible reasoning behind the hacking of the New York Times' computers after their publishing of an article disclosing the massive wealth held by the family of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (AKA the loveable 'Grandpa Wen'). The piece essentially says something very familiar to China watchers - that Chinese nationalists see outside criticism of the Chinese government as basically a form of attack on the country, and that as such it is permissable to take measures against such criticism which would, were such measures directed by foreigners against Chinese, draw accusations of meddling in Chinese affairs.

All the same, what they refer to as 'new Sinocentrism' (let alone the potentially tautologous nature of the word 'Sinocentric') is an extreme over-complication of a very simple phenomenon. Every powerful country in history has, with varying degrees of justification, been accused of seeing themselves as the centre of the world. The mere fact that some Chinese have a world-view that applies different rules to China than to other countries does not mean that they have developed an internally consistant ideology around that idea. In fact, it may just as easily be considered an example of how the Chinese government still lacks such an over-arching ideology and must instead rely on nationalism that comes more from the gut than anywhere else. A country operated according to an established ideology does not need to control debate in countries that do not subscribe to that ideology because that debate created outside the context of that ideology is invalid.

Just as important, such a 'Sinocentric' view is not 'new' in any meaningful sense of the word, because China's leadership never ceased seeing things this way. Even during the Mao years, the theory of "unequal treaties" (that is, treaties forced on China following a military defeat) formed the basis of all negotiations with former colonial powers and their successors, despite China's reliance on treaties which were, to all appearances, also formed 'unequally'.

Whatever happened to "internal democracy"?

I was just reading through the comments on the Guardian website under their article covering the latest speech of Ed Milliband, Labour party leader, when a comment caught my eye. The speech itself was described in the article as 'audacious' - a word which in the Grauniad's thesaurus appears to sit next to 'intellectually bankrupt' and 'inane' - but the comment was a quote from Ed Milliband's father, Ralph, the ever-wrong and ever-intelligent Marxist intellectual:

It is however one form of expression of a much more general aspiration, which has held generation after generation of socialists in its thrall, and which consists in the hope of ‘capturing’ the Labour Party for the adoption and the carrying out of socialist policies. The point is not here that this is an illusion but rather that it is the obverse phenomenon which has very commonly occurred, namely the ‘capturing’ of the militants by the Labour Party. This is not only true at the parliamentary level, though it is there that it has been most obviously true. But it has also occurred at the grassroots: people on the left who have set out with the intention of transforming the Labour Party have more often than not ended up being transformed by it, in the sense that they have been caught up in its rituals and rhythms, in ineffectual resolution-mongering exercises, in the resigned habituation to the unacceptable, even in the cynical acceptance and even expectation of betrayal.

As a description of how not only the Labour party but any party (including the Chinese Communist Party) can divert the intentions of those joining to serve the ends of its leadership this is hard to better. This quote from the same article is also worth reading from the point of view of an observer of Chinese affairs, even if it is about a different party in another country:

The reason for this lack of serious debate [within the British Communist Party] is very simple. It has to do with the fact that the Communist Party is an exceedingly managed party, in which the leadership is well able to reduce the scope and extent of debate; and to do so in the name of a ‘democratic centralism’ which is in fact a device for the oligarchic control of the leadership over its members. ..... The fact is that the democratic claims which the Communist Party regularly makes for its own internal organisation are a sham, save perhaps at the lower levels of the party. It has not yet begun to learn the meaning of the ‘inner-party democracy’ of which it boasts, and cannot do so as long as it continues to worship the sacred cows of ‘democratic centralism’ and the ‘ban on factions’.

This encapsulates the nature not only of decision-making within the British Communist Party (a group of crack-pot would-be revolutionaries now happily disbanded), but within any party which, like the Chinese Communist Party, makes decisions at the top without members lower down having any real say in matters. This lack of any real transparency in decision-making and meaningful involvement of party members makes a mockery of those who try to maintain that the CCP is 'not a monolith' (by which one assumes they meant that it is a party that accommodates divergent views, since all parties contain differing views if only unexpressed ones) and practices a kind of 'internal democracy'.

This is not to say that divergent views within the CCP, but when the leading proponent of one of two models ends up being expelled from the party and placed under arrest for crimes which it would be fair to suspect every senior politician in the People's Republic of committing, it is very unclear in what way the CCP is actually tolerant of differing opinions. The decision between whether Bo Xilai's Chongqing model and Wang Yang's Guangdong model was not made by democratic means, internal or external, but through the arrest and public shaming of Bo Xilai - 'internal democracy' had no part in this. 

Edit: Imagine for a moment if Barrack Obama's father had written the following . . .

"The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world...When you hear the English talk of this war [i.e., WW2] you sometimes almost want them to lose it to show them how things are."
 

 . . . and you will see the difference between British and US politics plainly.

The Hong Kong Backlash

Much has been written elsewhere about the whole kerfuffle surrounding the ham-fisted attempt to insititute a once-a-week moral and national education (MNE - AKA civics) classes in Hong Kong's schools that some suspected of being aimed at brainwashing Hong Kong's youth into accepting a CCP-friendly world-view. On paper, at least, the proposals actually left the schools free to decide on content, and the nature of this kind of education is such that it's hard to believe that that many people would have been won over by it even if it was just as bad as its critics made it out to be. It is, however, correct to say that MNE grew to represent something more than a mere once-a-week time-waste, as the excellent Big Lychee blog points out:

"Hong Kong is experiencing a backlash against attempts to turn it into something it isn’t. The government can’t admit that a secret but ham-fisted policy of Mainlandization was launched, let alone promise that it will now be suspended as counterproductive. It can’t (apparently) drastically reduce the number of Mainland visitors or bar them meaningfully from buying second homes here. It can’t even officially admit that National Education is completely over and done with and has ceased to exist. It can’t do much else because its own citizens won’t let it."
 

Exactly. This is the reason why you see people too young to remember the 1997 hand-over marching through the streets of the territory carrying the old colonial-era Hong Kong flag. Not because they seriously want to be returned to the UK, or even because the majority of them would like outright independence, but because they see the Hong Kong that exists right now, the one that came about under the old flag, as one under attack from the authorities whose flag now flies at government buildings in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is unique in being a quasi-city-state that is Chinese but not altogether part of China. The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 is explicit in this status having an end-date in 2047, when full unification with the mainland is due to occur. The current government of Hong Kong is tasked with acheiving this union, a union which, since the Chinese mainland has not reformed in any meaningful way politically since the 90's, and is governed by a party apparently committed to avoiding reform, requires that Hong Kong become like the mainland. This the people of Hong Kong do not appear willing to accept.

There is, of course, another deadline in play in Hong Kong affairs - the 2017 deadline for the introduction of universal suffrage. What chance is there now of this commitment coming about if the Hong Kong electorate continues to vote as it did in this year's LegCo elections? It is very hard not to think that the Chinese government will never accept a Hong Kong Chief Executive who is not their creature. 2017 therefore appears to be a date at which problems are already very much forseeable.

A note on what may be considered 'subversion'

A long time ago I had a long-running discussion with some of the people who run the Hidden Harmonies website on whether Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo's conviction for subversion showed that the mere writing and publishing of articles on the internet alone was considered subversion in China. The discussion ended, as always on that den of crazed nationalists, with them maintaining the position most favourable to the Chinese government (that Liu Xiaobo's real crime was spying even though he was never charged with that, nor any proof of spying other than innuendo offered at the trial) in defiance of the evidence of their own eyes.

It is therefore with no satisfaction or surprise that, following a link from JR's blog, I read the indictment of Chen Pingfu, a man whose crime was described thus:

"The Gaolan County Public Security Bureau has concluded its investigation of this case. The Gaolan County People’s Procuratorate submitted his case to the Lanzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate for examination and review for indictment. The examination conducted according to law has found that:

Between July 2007 and March 2012, the defendant Chen Pingfu registered blogs or microblogs under the name “Chen Pingfu” on NetEase, Baidu, Sohu, Mtime.com, Sina, Tianya, and other websites where he published or reposted 34 articles including [list of blog post titles]. In these articles he expressed such inflammatory views as that Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thoughts, Deng Xiaoping Theory, Three Represents, and Scientific Development have no benefit for the society and the people; that the Communist Party rule knows only to push ordinary people around and not let them make a living; that the current system is not democratic enough, and that democracy and constitutionalism should be implemented.

The aforementioned facts of crime are proven by documentary evidence, material evidence, and the defendant’s statements."

Whilst Chen Pingfu's sentence is still yet to be announced, it is clear that, at least according to the Gaolan County People’s Procuratorate, the mere writing of articles critical of the Chinese government is subversion. Chen's 'crimes' consist of writing and publishing articles saying no more than what 95%+ of the Chinese people think in private: that communism is nonsense and the current system of governance is essentially dictatorial. No other offence is mentioned.

I do not expect the people at Hidden Harmonies to acknowledge that Liu Xiaobo went to prison merely for criticising the government publicly, nor do I expect that they would admit that this is what Chen went to prison for when, as will certainly be the case, he is eventually convicted for the same 'crime'. Experience has shown that  there is literally no distortion that hard-line nationalists are incapable of swallowing, nor any incontrovertible truth that they are incapable of denying. However, thinking people should bear in mind that China still is a country where mere criticism of those in power is a crime.

The very simple reason why the EU arms embargo on China is going nowhere

As an example of the political differences between the countries that make up the EU and the government of the People's Republic of  China, you couldn't do much better than the cancellation of the press conference due to be held today at the end of the latest round of EU-PRC trade talks. At least according to the BBC, it seems that the Chinese side refused to attend unless they could hand-pick the journalists allowed to attend. This, if true, indicates the degree to which China's government would like to avoid answering questions now or ever about the present political problems besetting the People's Republic, or about the economic statistics announced today which have even me believing that we are now seeing a significant slow-down in the PRC's economic growth (along with the rest of the world).

Another reason, of course, why the PRC's representatives at the talk would have wished to avoid having to answer (or not answer) questions from journalists that they did not pre-approve is that the talks were a wash for them. On the two big issues that the PRC government had wanted to see concessions on - the EU arms embargo and recognition by the EU as a fully-fledged market economy - the EU's representatives have remained adamant.

Naturally Wen Jiabao will not recognise the root cause of this intransigence. Despite what officials in Beijing might say, it is neither due to a 'cold war mentality' nor is it based on 'prejudice'. It's root cause is very simple: the People's Republic of China is not a democracy. It is a totalitarian state which, in as much as it has allies, has aligned itself with countries antagonistic to the interests of Europe's democracies, such as the Assad regime and North Korea. It is an autocracy that directly threatens democratic neighbours in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere with military force.

Not only is China undemocratic, but it is an undemocratic state where selective application of a range of laws that can make doing business in China twice as expensive for foreign companies as it is for local ones. This may be either by accident or by design, but in neither case does it deserve recognition as a full market economy.

In the late 1970's the governments of both the states of Europe and the United States were willing to make a deal with the devil. They judged, perhaps correctly, that they had more to gain in supporting the PRC's development as a military power on the southern flank of the country which most directly threatened them - the USSR - than they did in supporting a totalitarian state emerging from the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

By 1989, however, this had changed. It was not the cold war which was nearing its end that prompted the sanctions in 1989, nor was it prejudice against the Chinese people to whom Europe and America had previously sold weapons. Instead the USSR's hold on Central and Eastern Europe had crumbled, and, much more pressingly, the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party's rule had been made clear in the blood-bath of Tiananmen Square.

The situation has not changed. Selling arms to the PRC whilst it remains in the hands of people willing to turn heavy weapons on their own citizens, who target the free society across the Taiwan strait with more than a thousand surface-to-surface missiles, who censor opinions and arbitrarily arrest, detain, and torture their critics and their families, would be selling them the rope with which to hang ourselves and our friends.

[Picture: A monument to the innocent dead of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Wroclaw, Poland. Via Wiki]

The Third Sino-Japanese War (and why it's not going to happen)

So by now you've probably seen the pictures of nationalist demonstrators in mainland China looting Japan-linked businesses and burning Japanese-branded cars. Whilst the anger of the demonstrators is obvious and extreme, for anyone who's observed China for any significant length of time, the suggestions seen in various places that this might drive China's leadership into a war with Japan seems very wide of the mark for the following reasons:

• In the word's of Charlie Custer's excellent post on the riots: "China’s Anti-Japan Riots Are State-Sponsored. Period."  - far from demonstrators pushing the government into taking action, its the government that is driving the demonstrations. China both has the capability for clamping down on demonstrations of the size seen thus far and is willing to use it where it feels they may be going in the wrong direction. Indeed, CNN reports riot police intervening when a local government office was attacked, and there have also been reports of police singling out pro-democracy demonstrators mixed in with nationalists and arresting them.

This does in fact fit a long running pattern for such demonstrations, running through the 2005 anti-Japan demonstrations, then the 2001 anti-US demonstrations, right back to the demonstrations sparked by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Just as is described in this eyewitness account, the demos in Beijing in all cases consisted of demonstrators being marched past the offending embassy in groups of a few hundred, venting their rage, and then being hustled onward by the Chinese police. Elsewhere, depending on the attitude taken by the local authorities, the demonstrators have been allowed to burn and smash properties, but nowhere will they be permitted to threaten the government.

 

• There is nothing to fight for. The islands themselves are of little or no value and are incapable of sustaining significant numbers of inhabitants. Depending on who you believe they either have very little fresh water, or a very small stream, or just enough to sustain up to two hundred people, but no more. A garrison left on the islands in their current state would be totally dependent on supplies coming in by sea or by helicopter (there is insufficient room for an airstrip), would be exposed to the elements, and would be sitting ducks for any ships or aircraft in the area. Any attempt to develop or fortify the islands to the point where a garrison might stay there for a prolonged period of time would be seen months ahead of time by the other side.  

Of course, the real prize in holding the islands is the gas and oil under the seabed surrounding the islands, but this would be impossible for one side to develop safely without the agreement of the other side. As Iran found out in the eighties, an oil platform is just a big floating target if someone wishes to attack it. Occupying the islands would do exactly nothing to change this, nor could either side genuinely hope to exclude the other from the air and sea around the islands on a permanent basis given the area that would have to be covered. Whichever country used force to permanently exclude the other from the area and develop the oil and gas resources themselves would be vulnerable to attacks on infrastructure similar to those launched by both sides in the 1967-70 Israeli-Egyptian war of attrition. 

China's leaders neither have a realistic reason to believe that their country would gain economically from war with Japan, nor are they in a position where they might have to declare war because of pressure from a nationalistic public. Instead, as Jeremiah Jenne points out, this sudden out burst of government-directed anger against Japan is most likely an attempt at distraction from the CCP's current problems surrounding this year's transition of leadership in Beijing. Put simply, in observing Chinese political affairs you should never forget which hand holds the whip.

[Picture: An Iranian oil platform blazes in the aftermath of Operation Nimble Archer, 1987. via Wiki]

Nehru on the Sino-Japanese dispute

Actually, the following quote (taken from India's China War by Neville Maxwell) is the then-Indian prime minister talking in early September 1959 about the Sino-Indian border dispute, but it adds up to much the same thing:

"Now, it is a question of fact of whether this village or that village or this little strip of territory is on their side or our side. Normally, wherever these are relatively petty disputes, well, it does seem rather absurd for two great countries . . . immediately to rush at each other's  throats to decide whether two miles of territory are on this side or on that side, and especially two miles of territory in the high mountains, where no-one lives.

But where national prestige and dignity is involved, it is not two miles of territory, it is the nation's dignity and self-respect that is involved. And therefore this happens."

 "This" was a violent border clash, one of many leading up to the 1962 war.

Doesn't everyone know who Neil Armstong is?

One of the biggest surprises I had during my time in China came during my first year there when I taught English in Nanjing. I was giving a class of first year accountancy students a quiz as their final lesson of the term, and one of the questions was "Who was the first man on the moon?".

Collecting the results at the end I was surprised to find that no-one had even tried to answer it. The students weren't the best English-speakers in the school, but they certainly understood the question. I did wonder if they just didn't know the Roman-script version of his name, but none even attempted to write it in Chinese characters. In the end it appeared that no-one actually knew the answer to the question, a question that most British school children knew the answer to. My guess was just that Armstrong wasn't much of a hero in China - or was it something else?

What Sun Yat-Sen has to tell us about the Assange case

Anyone following the case of Julian Assange, currently in hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy, will have found out that he has today been offered asylum by Ecuador.

Just like many people who have followed this case, I've gone from being sympathetic to Assange to being rather dubious of his version of events. Particularly the argument that he should not be extradited to Sweden because he may be extradited from there to the United States is deeply unconvincing, for the very simple reason that it would be much easier to just extradite him directly from the UK.

All the same, the idea that, in order to arrest him and execute his extradition to Ecuador, the UK government might revoke the diplomatic status of the Ecuadorian embassy is, frankly, about as misguided as it is possible to be. The effect of doing so would be to render any aid the UK's diplomatic missions abroad might lend to people in genuine need of shelter utterly ineffective. All the authorities in Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, Damascus, Havana, Minsk, or Caracas need do is point to the actions of the UK government in this case, close our embassy, and drag whoever it was that was misguided enough to place their trust in the UK off to a dismal fate.

Moreover, the name of Britain would be mud across the continent of South America and in much of the rest of the world. Political capital is already being made out of this case by the authorities in Quito.

The reasons why the law under which this revocation would be carried out was enacted go back to the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher (pictured above) by a gunman firing at demonstrators from the window of the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. In that incident, the siege of the embassy (and a counter-siege of the British embassy in Tripoli, as well as the taking hostage of British citizens in Libya) was eventually resolved by the government allowing the people responsible for WPC Fletcher's murder to leave the country, and then breaking off relations with Libya.

This suggests a clear course of action which appears the most advisable given the circumstances. Let Assange go to Ecuador. Let the tax-payers keep his bail-money. Let Ecuador then deal with the problems of sheltering this man just as France and Switzerland have dealt with the problems of sheltering Roman Polanski. Let the Swedish government, who have historically acknowledged either few or no obligations to the UK, priding themselves in their even-handed neutrality in all matters, make shift for themselves.

This option, though, seems to have been fore-closed by the British government's statement that they are prevented from doing so by a 'binding obligation' to Sweden. This, if it is genuinely the case, is very unfortunate.

If, due to European legislation, this approach is no longer open to the government, then a long, hard reassessment of the legislation that binds the hands of the UK government in this fashion is necessary. Most will be confused as to why exactly in 1984 it was possible, given the awful circumstances, to allow people wanted for the cold-blooded murder of a British police officer to leave the country whilst, today, it is impossible for someone wanted for questioning in another country to be allowed to go to a third one to avoid what has already become a diplomatic disaster.

It is, of course, possible that significant diplomatic pressure may be brought to bear on Ecuador to make the Ecuadorian authorities hand Assange over. This was, after all, what happened when, in very different circumstances, Sun Yat-Sen (pictured above, source here), future father of the Chinese revolution, but then just a doctor living in exile, was kidnapped and held at the Chinese embassy in London. Yet, the negative consequences of doing so are suggested by Sun's story. Here's how Marie-Claire Bergere described what happened:

"On 16 October 1896, Sun Yat-sen arose from praying in his guarded room at the Legation. He later wrote that he felt a calmness and hope that made him realise that his prayer was answered. He renewed his attempts to persuade an English porter, Cole, who brought his food, to take a message to his friend Dr Cantlie, and this time the porter agreed to do so. On receiving the news Dr Cantlie informed Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office, which took no relevant action. He then alerted The Times which waited to see what the Foreign Office would do. Aware of this, the Foreign Office began to pressure Macartney, warning that The Times was holding the story. Cantlie finally applied to an Old Bailey judge for a writ of habeas corpus against the Legation. The newspaper The Globe heard of this and broke the news of Sun's kidnapping on 22 October 1896. The next day all the London newspapers published the story. Soon angry Londoners and journalists surrounded the Chinese Legation clamouring for Sun's release. In the afternoon of 23 October Sun was freed. The following day he wrote a letter to The Times thanking its readers for their support, public spiritedness and love of justice. . . Sun's kidnapping made him famous and later facilitated his fund-raising activities around the world..."

Whilst some commentators may be surprised to learn that the "evil foreign media" once intervened to rescue the father of the Chinese revolution, the point to be learned for today's case is that there really doesn't seem to be any 'up' in this for the British government. A diplomatic battle between the UK and Ecuador ending in Assange being lead away in hand cuffs from the Ecuadorian embassy (if this may be acheived), will only result in even greater notoriety for Assange and even more diplomatic back-lash against Britain. 

Isn't China a superpower already?

So the London Olympics have finally closed down after 17 days of what I hope you will forgive me for saying, has been a rare, fantastic time to be British. Whilst the closing ceremony was exactly the trashy Eurovision-esque event that Danny Boyle's marvellous opening ceremony so delightfully turned out not to be, this was not even a smudge on the general feel-good of the performance of all the atheletes and volunteers which I enjoyed in the past two weeks, if only at a distance from my couch here in Poland.

It's also worth recognising how different the two positive aspects of these Olympics which depended least on the performance of the athletes would have been had it not been for the ground broken by the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  Volunteers have always been part of the Olympics, and the Olympic games has featured an expansive opening ceremony since the Moscow games in 1980, yet it was Beijing that set the bar to be met in both the enthusiasm and number of the volunteers supporting the games, and in the size and nature of the opening ceremony as a way of attempting to present a certain idea of the culture of the host city and country.

Pace Cohen, China may have problems developing "soft power", and a good part of this may be due to the government, but this does not mean that it does not have any. Sporting power is a form of soft power, and the Chinese athletes have shown in these Olympics, again, and this time without the home advantage, that, despite all the disadvantages facing athletes coming up in a huge and still largely poor country, they can be world-beating.

All of which makes me think that it is time to re-visit the ways in which China is often described: "the future superpower", "the rising superpower". It strikes me that these descriptions may have already had their day. China may still be rising, but it is very easy to argue that superpower status has been acheived.

Comparing the PRC to the US to decide whether it is a superpower is setting the standard too high. Whilst the US has been, or as we probably should start saying, was the sole superpower for quite some time, the USSR was also undoubtedly a superpower, yet the PRC has surpassed it in most metrics of 'power'.

In the field of soft power, government-friendly artists like Zhang Yimou and Lang Lang have a greater appeal world-wide than any Soviet government-sponsored artists that managed to stay in favour (Eisenstein? Shostakovich? Both paid the price for minor works of dissent). We need not compare Chinese films to those produced by Hollywood to see that it has already outstripped a super power in this field.

Economically speaking, the PRC surpassed even the most generous inflation-adjusted estimate for the USSR's final nominal GDP in approximately 2008. The maximum estimate of the USSR's per capita income in the final full year of its existence, roughly 15 thousand US dollars at 2010 prices - an estimate that may well be as much as double the real figure, will, at current growth rates, be exceeded by the PRC within the next 10-15 years. The PRC already has a larger economy than the country which, at least in the past, was often referred to as an economic super-power: Japan.

Militarily, the People's Republic does not yet approach the strength of the Soviet Union, with even its current, rapidly growing military spending still lagging behind the final official military budget of the USSR (222 billion US dollars at 2010 prices). Against this we must also place the fact that the USSR's military strength was paradoxically a weakness in that it was paid for through crippling high levels of spending, and the fact that China could afford these levels of expenditure now if she wanted. Just as importantly, China will almost certainly reach this level of spending within the next five years or so. China can already sustain a super-power military, and possesses nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers only to the extent that they are sources of power and not beyond that.

It is in the field of political power that China lags behind the furthest in the power stakes. Whilst we might expect the PRC's growing military might to attract allies, especially amongst former (present?) co-ideologists in Vietnam, the exact opposite has by-and-large been true. Little has been heard of recently about the formerly much-touted Shanghai Cooperation Organisation grouping of central Asian states of which both China and Russia are members. The history of the region is littered with international bodies which became little more than talking shops (SEATO, ASEAN, etc.) and it is tempting to think that the same has happened to the SCO. None of the myriad insurgencies being fought world-wide right now are trying to re-create the present Chinese system in their own country.

As I wrote a while back, China's socio-political model is not likely to ever be attractive to  people outside of China because it was essentially arrived through a series of disasters which no country would or could replicate. If China does have influence in the outside world it is usually as one of the few powerful countries willing to lend support to certain unpopular states (North Korea, Zimbabwe, Iran etc.) or as a country whose government is willing to exert influence to cancel orders if it is displeased by developments in a certain country. It is therefore in the political field that China is weakest, the only one in which it is still yet to achieve super-power status and, given the limitations of its present government, may never surpass even the USSR (whose system at least some in the outside world took seriously) whilst the CCP remains in power.

But whilst the political model of China does not threaten those of democratic countries, the opposite is not true. Democracy is still very attractive to the average Chinese person, not least for the very clear advantages it gives citizens who want to vote corrupt politicians out of power. It is this that explains the need the authorities to try to inoculate the population against the idea of democratic reform by spreading the twin myths that democracy is somehow un-Chinese or unsuited to China, and that those who do advocate democracy are traitors working against their country's interests.

It was with this dynamic in mind, the dynamic of a reasonably friendly competition between two superpowers, one of which is rather less endowed with confidence than the other, that I've been following the race for the top spot in the medal rankings between the US and China. Whilst the real answer for why the Americans in the end pulled ahead after days of see-sawing between themselves and the Chinese is the relative weakness of the Chinese team in the track-and-field events, the narrative grasped on by commentators in some corners is one of essentially racist bias against China.  In reality, of course, there is no evidence that Chinese athletes were the target of particularly bad decisions - in every incident listed except the gymnastics (where the decision, which appears to have been a bit unfair, meant Brazil receiving one of only three gold medals won during the tournament), other athletes went out in the same competitions for the same infractions. That this kind of complaining is actually likely to be interpreted by neutral observers as betraying a very un-super-power-like lack of confidence does not seem to occur to these commentators.

[Video: The beating of drums heralds the opening of the Beijing Olympic games, 2008]

A Tale Of Two Torches

Last week, whilst on a visit back to the UK, I saw the Olympic torch relay go through my home town. My feelings were, to say the least, mixed.

The last time I had seen the Olympic torch, it was being hustled through the streets of London by members of the People's Armed Police under the eyes of angry demonstrators in the chilly April of 2008. This time round, however, things were quite different. The crowd that had gathered on Lancing village green despite the rain was there for the strict purposes of cheering the torch on its way to London.

Whilst I have never been entirely comfortable with flag-waving patriotism - there's something deeply un-British about it - I can't say I wasn't swayed by the enthusiasm. My young niece, clutching her Mandeville mascot, seemed to think the whole thing was totally marvellous. The story of Charlie White, the young lad who carried the torch for our stretch of the route, made it seem uncharitable to dwell on negative thoughts about the Olympics.

However, there are definitely things about the London Olympics which set people against them. Whilst these Olympics are, unlike the last games, not partly a PR exercise for a dictatorship, they have made some excessive impositions on the lives of British people.

The ridiculous VIP-only "Olympic Lanes" have sparked a lot of criticism for stopping Londoners from using the roads of their own city, even drawing comparisons to the the "ZiL Lanes" of the old Soviet Union. The over-zealous attitude of the Olympic authorities to protecting their brand has also caused concern. Above all the staggering cost of hosting the Olympics during a recession, and when it is far from certain how much of this money will end up in the pockets of the British tax-payer or create jobs in Britain, is highly controversial - although I should say that two members of my extended family are now working for LOCOG in different capacities. All these things give the impression that the IOC has become rather over-used to having its way whatever the cost or the inconvenience to the host nation.

However, people seem, at the very last minute, to have rallied around to support the Olympics. Much of this was thanks to Mitt Romney's rather ill-timed criticism and his tone-deaf behaviour during his visit to London. Danny Boyle's bizarre-but-magnificent open ceremony no doubt left foreign observers confused (the fireworks-display-to-Pink-Floyd section of it certain confused me - even if I enjoyed it as well), but for the average Brit it did manage to encapsulate the eccentricity that more than anything typifies the British character. The fact that dissenting voices have not been washed way, with people like Shami Chakrabarti and Doreen Lawrence featured prominently in the opening ceremony (their Chinese equivalents would be Xu Zhiyong and Ding Zilin), also underlines the difference between what London and the previous host city have to offer.

I myself have followed the same journey to a grudging acceptance and intention to enjoy the games. No doubt there will be cock-ups and bad weather, but then how else would we know that the games were being held in Britain?

[Video: BBC footage of Charlie White's torch run through Lancing]

Xzibit's take on Chen Guangcheng

. . . . and then they removed it.

[Picture made using the Xzibit Yo Dawg Meme generator, meme explained here]

The Expat

" . . .The majority were men who, like himself, thrown there by some accident, had remained as officers of country ships. They had now a horror of the home service, with its harder conditions, severer view of duty, and the hazard of stormy oceans. They were attuned to the eternal peace of Eastern sky and sea. They loved short passages, good deck-chairs, large native crews, and the distinction of being white. They shuddered at the thought of hard work, and led precariously easy lives, always on the verge of dismissal, always on the verge of engagement . . . They talked everlastingly of turns of luck: how So-and-so got charge of a boat on the coast of China — a soft thing; how this one had an easy billet in Japan somewhere, and that one was doing well in the Siamese navy; and in all they said — in their actions, in their looks, in their persons — could be detected the soft spot, the place of decay, the determination to lounge safely through existence. To Jim that gossiping crowd, viewed as seamen, seemed at first more unsubstantial than so many shadows. But at length he found a fascination in the sight of those men, in their appearance of doing so well on such a small allowance of danger and toil. In time, beside the original disdain there grew up slowly another sentiment . . . " - Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

I had read Heart Of Darkness whilst still in university and found it to be terribly over-hyped and somewhat unreadable, but when I read Lord Jim in 2004 whilst in Nanjing I felt immediately that here was a book written by someone who, whilst he was a creature of his time, understood what it was both to be a young man and to be an expat. Lord Jim is still one of my favourite books, even if I have not yet warmed to Conrad's other works.

America: From the mountains to Manhattan

One of the great things about the field I work in - patents - is its international nature, which means I regularly have the opportunity to travel to other countries as part of my work. Earlier this month I went to a conference on patent information in Denver - something that was fascinating for me but I doubt too many of you will be all that interested in. It was, however, my first time in the US, and whilst I believe initial impressions of any country, especially one so large as the US, can be misleading, I thought I would share a few of them here.

I didn't get to see that much of Denver since I spent most of my time there in the conference centre. My one spare evening there I met up with a friend who used to work for Foxconn who now works on renewable energy for GE (technology wghich was much in evidence in and around Denver) and he took me on a drive up into the Rockies. Amazingly, it only takes a 30-40 minutes drive from the centre of Denver for you to find yourself in the Rockies just below the tree-line at 10,000 feet above sea-level, standing next to a lake among a hear of buffalo or elk, a lake which feeds the Clearwater river, which flows down to the Coors brewery. Say what you like about American beer, Coors at least has the best of origins.

Since I was (sort-of) in the neighbourhood, I decided to spend an extended weekend catching up with some friends in New York. My flight from Denver International to La Guardia took two hours, but the sky was clear and during which time I never lost sight of built up areas. It is only from the air that you get a real sense of just how immense America is - an experience I have only ever had twice before, once flying over the emptiness of Siberia, and once flying over the seemingly endless narrow valleys and villages between Beijing and Chengdu.

There was another hint of China when I landed in La Guardia - the signs which endlessly alternately flashed "Welcome to La Guardia"/"God Bless Our Troops" or "Baggage Claim Ahead"/"Welcome Our Military Heroes" certainly felt very familiar from my time in the People's Republic even if communist propaganda avoids mention of any deity. The people lugging their baggage through the concourse and wolfing down their Jumbo Pretzel Dogs paid the signs about as much attention of the signs as the average Laobaixing does the red-and-gold banners that one finds on the average Chinese street.

What then ensued was some of the hardest partying I've indulged in in quite some time. At one point I was taken on a tour of roof-top parties - we got to three before heading to a late-night jazz club in the West Village to listen to some of the best jazz and blues I've heard in a long time. The next day I met up with some friends for drinks at the roof-top garden of a gentlemen's club (of the British variety). Appropriately enough,  we enjoyed a round of Manhattans as we watched the sun set over Central Park, just a few blocks from where Alistair Cooke used to write his weekly Letter From America . I had another great night in the city that never sleeps, and then it was time for my flight home.

And what of the people? Firstly it would be uncharitable in the extreme not to concede that Americans are, as a whole, some of the friendliest people you can meet, and not at all behind the British in politeness. This was so even in New York - although I guess I should say I did not meet a single person in New York who was born there, in fact struggling would-be actresses were somewhat over-represented amongst the people I spoke to in there, although I will cop to a bit of selection bias here.

Political opinion in the United States was something of a surprise - coming from a country which until 30 years ago described itself as a 'mixed economy' it was slightly bizarre to hear the fears expressed by some that the United States was becoming a socialist country. This was especially so given the apparent evidence everywhere that America was as close to being socialist as North Korea is to being a free-market state.

All-in-all I was impressed by the US in a way I had not expected to be. I look forward to my next visit there, and who knows?