It is unfortunate that all this discussion started with a response to Osnos’ blog,  because it caused the whole debate to turn around that. I regret that by doing this I have upset some people I respect, who were actively demanding Ai’s release. The fact is I disagree with and even dislike many of Ai and Liu’s statements, but now that they’ve been imprisoned for speaking out their views, there is only one right thing to do. This blog stands for Freedom of Speech.

So I have decided to borrow the banner from the roof of the Tate Museum and hang it on my own roof until my next posting, or until my blog goes down, whichever happens first. It represents not only Ai and Liu, but any person who has been imprisoned merely for having different ideas or for exposing hideous crimes, like the American hero Bradley Manning.

Summary and Main Points Taken

And finally, here are my main conclusions of the debate:

• There is a worrying trend in the pro-democracy movement in the West, including aspects as varied as Liu’s Nobel, the so-called Jasmine “revolutions” of China or the success of Ai’s art. The West creates its own icons without considering whether they have any chance to be accepted by the Chinese people—and of this much I am sure: the most important point for a democratic movement to succeed is to convince its own people. Any other road leads to Irak.
• One worrying aspect of the Liu and Ai work is they represent a radical current of thought that has a long history in China—from the early years of the republic, to the Cultural Revolution and then the “River Elegy” movement.  This is a current of  self-abasement and contempt of the own culture, which proposes wholesale replacement by “Westernization” , as Liu himself says. This kind of thought mirrors the opposite ultra-nationalist current, and they both feed on each other, at the expense of more moderate, balanced positions. I am afraid by supporting these options we are only pushing China even further from the West.
• Another way of seeing this is the usual blog discussions that many of us have with patriotic Chinese. In the media and schools, the CPP deliberately conflates China with CCP, promoting the idea that criticizing the regime is tantamount to attacking the country. Unfortunately, many of Ai and Liu’s statements only add to the confusion, as they direct their attacks to the culture and history of China rather than the party. This, and Liu’s openly pro-American stance in criminal invasion wars (all the while receiving money from the US) makes it extremely difficult to make a case for his independence, let alone his pacifism.
• I believe the best that can happen to the Chinese today (and to the rest of the World) is a progressive opening of China and a normal exchange with the West — free of weird inferiority/superiority complexes. I think initiatives like the WTO, the Olympics and many other in the last decade are conductive to this, whereas extreme statements like those of Ai and Liu only distance us more and more. There is way too much at stake to let it in the hands of impulsive characters.
• As a commentator said in the last post, the situation is not due to Western media bias, but rather to CCP pressure, which causes the moderate Chinese dissidents to decline interviews. Another journalist in the podcast confirmed also what we all know: that the media is there to sell stories and that a story with a special character sells better than a story without. In other words, the Western media doesn’t work for freedom, it works to sell papers—to Western readers. Which is why the Fourth Estate in international politics is essentially flawed.
• So, partly due to the CCP and partly due to the structure of the World media, we end up with these heroes created to our own image. Fine, that’s how the World works today, it is faulty, but not deliberately evil. Just please, do not kid yourself, don’t dream that you are seeing the heroes of the Chinese, or the leaders that will change China.

Are there other options?

I imagine the best critic that can be done to all this is: “do you have any better option?”

Sincerely, I believe there are other options. They are surely not as accessible as Ai, because they shy away from Western media. They may be difficult to accept in our countries, because their ideas clash with preconceptions of what dissidence should be. Moreover, their art or writing might be very specific to the Chinese public, making them impossible to sell in the West.

These are all major difficulties, sure. But frankly, I just don’t see anyone is trying so hard to surmount them.

We have seen in the past how the media ignores thinkers who don’t conform with strictly Western standards of “dissidence”.  One obvious example I think of right now is Han Han, who has immensely more weight in China than Liu or Ai. Another is Xu ZhiYong, who did a comprehensive study of the Tibetan problem, not to mention the cases of the black cells in Beijing, studies that were incomparably more elaborate and politically risky than the lists of Ai.

I am not suggesting we should turn these people into media stars, that wouldn’t help much. But it would be interesting to keep an eye on them, rather than  spend all the efforts inflating our own myths. When the day comes, it will be people like that who will make a difference.

The trouble is,  I don’t think he chose the right issue to address. Many of us who (mildly) oppose all this Ai Weiwei fad don’t do so on the grounds of irrelevance, but for other more important reasons.  In particular, we fear that the disproportionate focus of Western media on characters like Nobel Liu XB or Ai WW is counterproductive, and it can undermine the democratic dissidence in China.

Both Liu and Ai are quite extreme characters. Both have a few things in common: an aggressive style, an economic dependency on the West, and (coincidence?) a radically pro-Western stance. More crucially, both share a taste for expressing their views or creating “art” [1]  by means of destroying  the things that are dearest to all Chinese who love their country, communist or otherwise:  their history, their culture, their wounds of the colonial period.

You could argue this is just a natural reaction because Liu and Ai both suffered the excesses of patriotism.  You could argue that their pro-Western views are unrelated to their economic dependence. You may convince me of these points: but how are you going to convince the Chinese? If this is about promoting democracy, shouldn’t marketability to Chinese be a core consideration?  Of all the remarkable dissidents that China has, how come we chose as our stars these two, a present on a silver tray for the editors of the Global Times?

Of course, Ai Wei Wei is just an artist, and it fine if he chooses to be bohemian and provocative. Liu is a writer, and good for him if he believes that Chinese culture is inferior to Western. Neither of them should be arrested for their ideas. But this doesn’t qualify them as political models either.

The point is, Liu and Ai do not stand for what most open-minded Chinese people want: pragmatic policy and progressive change. We choose to highlight these two characters not because they represent a Chinese ideal, but because they represent our ideal of  what the average Chinese dissident should be. And I am afraid, by doing so we are pushing China even further apart from us.

Is there some aspect of Liu or Ai that I forgot in the equation? What do you think?

1. I am just a simple engineer, you will excuse me for thinking that breaking historical vases or taking photos of your middle finger is not remotely art

This show is déjà vu, but if you are interested you can see some thoughtful analysis of the question in the latest China Hearsay post. I completely agree with that post, including some historical comparison with the Jim Crow laws that some might find far-fetched (more further-fetched comparisons available below)

Even more interesting to me is the reaction of the American/European public to these kind of announcements. As Stan points out, typically it is outrage or even amusement: “the balls!”  Implicit in this tone and attitude is the rock-solid certitude that the USA and its allies indeed respect human rights more than China.

Whether it is in politics, science or any other field, intelligent people don’t have blind certitudes. This attitude of smug self-evidence is, in itself, a symptom that we should worry. Such strong convictions normally belong to fanatics, or else are the fruit of lazy (and carefully manipulated) minds. I think we have a bit of both here.

First of all, here is my answer to Stan’s analysis of USA vs. China human rights question:

I agree.

There is however another angle that makes a stronger argument for China, that is foreign policy. I am surprised they didn’t use it this time, and they stuck to the fair play of domestic vs. domestic comparison.

It is obvious that China cannot “win” on the domestic rights comparison today. Even in China most educated people realize this, but they rationalize it and accept it as a temporary situation while China is developing, which will slowly improve over the years (a not unreasonable position, IMO).

But back to the foreign policy argument. Although it is not always stated so clearly, I understand it goes like this: Since human rights apply equally to all humans, and an Iraqi life is as valuable as an American or Chinese life, then the thousands of innocent people killed in a reckless, self interested and illegal intervention, which was consciously based on lies, are morally no different from the victims of Mao Zedong’s policies (Mao’s absolute numbers are larger, but that’s because he was dealing with a much larger population).

And in any case, even if you consider only 10% of the victims of American foreign policy are innocent, the trampling of human rights is still orders of magnitude larger than the 100 odd dissidents that are soft-repressed in China, most of them getting away with a few months detention or house arrest.

I am an old reader of this blog and this is not an attempt at trolling or sparking controversy. I just sincerely wonder how Americans rationalize this — I find myself considering this problem more and more often since I live in China, and it’s very hard to get a sound moral standpoint. I have no issue with people criticizing China’s abuses, just like many of us criticized the Iraq war. What I find completely amazing is that millions of Westerners seem genuinely convinced that their governments are somehow less evil or more just than the Chinese one. Any answers?

In the meantime, I have come up with some partial answers here, and you are welcome to add more below.

I am afraid that if our attitude looks like that of intolerant fanatics, it is because we ARE intolerant fanatics. It is a quirk of the Western character that has marked us for many centuries, the need to have our strong faith and genuinely believe that every mean is justified to defend it. Christianity, Islam, Communism, Capitalism, Democracy, you name it, in every time and place we had some holy idea we had to impose on others.

This is how we manage to digest so easily the terrible injustice caused by our regimes, by invoking Democracy, the purifying faith. Everything is justified, because we voted for it, even if the victims of the war never had a say. The CCP has learned to mimic this absurd justification, and similarly calls itself democratic, as the votes of a few (the Central Committee) decides for the whole. In sum, our democracies have the same legitimacy in Foreign Policy as the CCP has in China — only they are infinitely more cruel, and tougher at repressing Freedom of Speech.

When it comes to something as essential as Human Rights, we really need to stop being so frivolous. We should draw a clear line between defending Democracy, a mere political opinion subject to discussion, and standing for Human Rights, a matter of dignity and survival. With the usual shallowness of the Western media, we have turned the whole thing into a carnival, enforcing the notion that only we hold the Truth, and giving a thousand reasons for the Chinese public to believe our protests are hypocritical and self-interested.

In conclusion:  I sincerely hope that China will continue to criticize more consistently America and other countries — hopefully with studies of better quality than this one. Western Foreign Policy clearly lacks checks and balances, our media has failed to play its role, and China is the only hope to balance this out.

Here is to hoping the CCP get their act together and stop their paranoid repression of Freedom of Speech. Then China might earn enough credibility to play its role in the World. It is urgently needed.

Some things I liked watching this week:

• The coverage of the Earthquake continues to be great. Contrary to what some feared, the official media has prominently displayed the CCP leaders bowing to the Japanese flag, and some touching videos of Sichuanese victims remembering how Japan helped them in 2008. The hero of today? Not a soldier, but a young Chinese student who has decided to stay put in her post in Sendai, to continue with her duty in spite of the danger. I found it all really moving, perhaps because it was unexpected.
• Another outside event: China has abstained from vetoing the UN resolution that allows “all necessary measures” against Libya if Gaddafi does not hold fire immediately. The same day the CCTV has openly explained this to the public, stating the possibility of foreign countries to intervene in Libyan affairs. I wonder if this would have been presented differently, had the tsunami not distracted attention from the Jasmine ideas—the vote itself would have probably been the same, it looks like there was no other option.
• Finally back to China: there has been this amazing story of the salt, you can read it all in this interesting post. One of those crazy viral chains that spread like wildfire in China. Someone started a rumour that salt is essential against radiation, and within hours there was a nation-wide run on the convenience stores:

An interesting phenomenon that this blogger explains as lack of political trust. I agree, and I add the following:

What is really remarkable about China is that the hoarding was so completely irrational. I mean, why would you get salt of all things? Anyone can go on the internet and see third party information to check about the salt. The first thing I did Tuesday is goggle “salt iodine radiation” to find some expert advice.

It looks like Chinese people don’t have this instinct of looking for different sources, perhaps due to years of media control. In the end, this is not a story of distrust, but rather of blind trust: the trust of all those absurd sms chains started by some Zhejiang guys (salt merchants?) saying that you need to get salt.

What is it that makes Chinese society so conductive for viral chains? My guess: not only distrust of the government, but also the lack of a liberal education and the instinct to search the truth for themselves.

To be fair, it was mostly older people and uneducated peasants that acted this way, there is still hope for the young generations. My colleagues at work found it all rather funny, and I received lots of jokes. They were also spreading like wildfire on kaixinwang.

The Japanese are queuing to get water. The Americans are queuing to get iPad 2s. The Chinese are queuing to get salt.

First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an insult to intelligence, his appearing on camera lying to a Chinese passer-by only makes things worse. You might argue he was casually walking around, but in a stroll protest walking around is precisely the way to participate. You might believe he was saying the truth, but that would mean he is an incompetent officer, ignorant of the situation on the ground. Clearly that is not the case.

No, the ambassador of the USA has openly and consciously joined a minority protest against the Chinese government in Beijing. Mr. Huntsman’s action is clearly not due to incompetence, but to careful calculation, based on Western vanity and political ambition.

Don’t American politicians understand that democracy can only win if it is seen as homegrown? What would happen if the French ambassador was seen joining a protest for, say, the health reform in the US, would this help further the Democrats’ agenda? Does this kind of action help the millions of real, anonymous Chinese who hope for a more open system? Certainly not.

And of course politicians understand this. They know full well these actions are undermining the democratic movement in China, feeding the nationalistic tide that is the CCP’s most powerful weapon. The problem is they don’t care. Because their priority is not *Democracy in China*, but rather *to be the promoters of Democracy in China*. To publicly score a goal on the enemies of the faith, the intolerable leaders who have dared take China to international success without paying respect to our democratic sensibilities.

I know I am reading too much into this single event, it is unfair to single out American politicians. This is just the natural result of a misconception that the mainstream media establishment in the West has promoted for years: that believing in democracy is in itself a source of legitimacy. That we always know better.

Yes, most of us think that democracy is a better system of government than the CCP rule, and we wish the Chinese people could enjoy it as well. But somehow, in the West, we have come to imagine that our being born in such a system — without having done anything for it in most cases — automatically gives us the moral superiority to decide for others, to smugly disregard fairness and basic respect, and to discount the opinions of those pawns who don’t even know what is good for themselves.

Quite apart from its foolishness, this mindset has to be the number one factor destroying the credibility of democracy supporters worldwide.

Just to avoid misunderstandings: I don’t agree at all those Chinese nationalistic websites. I believe that Human Rights are above any political consideration, and that freedom of speech should be promoted regardless of borders and political systems. I even strongly support direct action to unblock the information channels. We all have the right and the duty to point our fingers where a government has trampled human rights — just as we accept others to point it out when our own own governments do the same.

But we need to understand this is a very different thing from telling the Chinese people how they should think, which minority political action they should join, or even to directly draft for them a political Charter and tell them which elite political figure they should regard as their moral leader.

Certainly, the whole thing would have been more effective if the Nobel wasn’t completely made worthless by last year’s award. But even without that, it couldn’t have any positive direct result. The government will not move because of outside pressure, and Mr.Liu, the brave drafter of the Charter, will hardly see his situation improved.

What this Nobel may probably bring is some important indirect consequences, such as:

1- The government will learn perhaps that raw power is not always the best way in international politics. How were they expecting to threaten Norway, not buying any more oil and smoked salmon? The problem of soft power, which ccp has definitely NOT mastered yet, may have to be reconsidered.

2- This is a very direct attack against the party, and even if it comes dressed in neutral scandinavian colours, everyone knows this represents the Western establishment. Internally this might provoke some reactions and give strength to the radical. This and the pressure on the yuan may quickly escalate in the coming weeks.

3- There is no way to know ultimately what will be the outcome of all this. From a pure justice point of view, clearly a person imprisoned for writing about human rights is more worthy of this prize than a newly elected politician. But looking at the World political and economic situation today, I am afraid this might be a not so smart move.

Let’s hope for the best. In the meantime, congratulations to Liu, a brave Chinese man.

The data was immediately published by the People’s Daily Chinese. A month later, it came out in the English version of the paper, and since then it has been making the rounds of the Western press, with the predictable apocalyptic spin.  Within China, however, the article has failed to spark any significant debate, even though the subject wasn’t censored. It is already positive that the authorities speak openly of this problem, but clearly a different approach is needed to raise awareness and find solutions.

With the help of my sister, pediatrician Dr. Madariaga, I have been comparing data from different primary sources outside and inside China. The CASS data coming from China official statistics turns out to be very consistent with previous outside sources, like the often quoted BMJ study. It is also the most pessimistic of all, and the most politically credible, as the patriotic CASS can hardly be accused of anti-CCP bias.

What follows is my analysis of the existing research from a different perspective. Not to do projections on the future, but to see what these numbers tell us of the Chinese today, and what solutions can be found. The results are shocking, read and judge by yourself:

The Story: A Very Common Occurrence

Today, almost 20% of the pregnancies that happen in China are manipulated using the simple method of ultrasound scan to determine gender, followed by abortion in case it is a female.

Most first time pregnancies are natural, with only a few percent points of manipulations. This makes sense, as the 2nd trimester abortions necessary for sex selection are not without risk for the mother’s reproductive capacity. Most families prefer to assure the first descendant, knowing that if it is a girl they will get a second go anyway.

However, about 50% of the first birth parents (the same 50% who had a girl?) decide to go for a second one. It is here that the gender manipulation happens massively. Around 30% of these families manipulated their pregnancy using the method described, with some provinces like Anhui showing a rate of up to 50% manipulations for second births.

This shows that sex selective abortion is not a minority problem practiced by a few rogue parents. It is a very common occurrence, with large parts of the population and the health sector taking part in it. In spite of the illegalization of ultrasound scans for sex detection in the 90s, it is obvious that a large part of the doctors are colluding with the public to ignore the law. In short, in most parts of China practicing sex selective abortion is extremely easy and extremely common. Practically anyone can do it.

Among these depressing results, here is a positive note: The very fact that the practice is so widespread would mean that government information campaigns can have a very important effect if they are done seriously. On the other hand, supervision and control campaigns are condemned to fail, although some particular measures might be applicable. More on this in “Conclusions” below.

The Numbers

Here is the basis data for the story above. I have used several research papers shown in references. In particular, the research done by the British Medical Journal in 2005 has been one of the most useful. Where possible, I have used the CASS paper because it is more recent, and the data (from the 2009 Statistical Yearbook) should be statistically sounder.

According to CASS, among the registered children below 4 years old, there were 123.26 males per 100 females. It is known that the expected value is around 105/100 females, therefore:

1– According to this ratio, there should be around 117 girls born with those 123 boys. 17 girls are missing, these are pregnancies that have been selectively aborted (about 7% of the total 240).

2- However, to get rid of that 7% of female fetuses, it means that around 14% of the pregnancies actually used ultrasound scans with the intention of aborting. Of this 14%, approx half were male and they proceeded, half were female and they aborted.

3- The ultrasound+abortion properly performed should give close to a 100% success. However, due to the illegality of the method and the lack of resources in many areas of China, I have introduced an efficiency E of 90%±10 to cover errors, cheats, late diagnostics, etc.

Following the steps above, we get the following general formula for the percentage of manipulated pregnancies N, where X is the male/100females ratio, and E is the success rate of sonography+abortion.

N = [(X*100/105 - 100)/(X*205/105)]*205/100E = [(X-105)/X]/E

With this simple formula we can estimate the number of manipulated pregnancies in the different cases provided by the BMJ study (this data is from 2005, for registered births. It is more conservative data than the CASS 0-4 year olds). Here are the numbers I obtain for different cases:

Confidence: Because of the different sources, it is hard to estimate overall confidence parameters. I have taken the following assumptions, and the intervals should be close to the 95% confidence range:

• Natural ratio is 105±2 with a very high confidence rate.
• The Statistical Yearbook table gives 2 decimals precision.
• The BMJ data gives confidence levels of 95%.
• I have taken the E as 90%±10, to cover even the most conservative case where there is a 100% efficiency in the system.

But more than the confidence numbers, the consistency of all the different sources over time strongly backs these results. The  interval on BMJ 1st birth makes this information hardly usable, but for the rest of the lines in the table, the results are significant beyond doubt. In particular, the 2000 census, the BMJ paper and the CASS all confirm main line: Almost 20% of the total pregnancies are gender manipulated.

Unregistered, Adopted, Infanticides and Others

One of the main objections that can be done to this data is that those 7% girls missing from the census 0-4 year olds are not all due to abortion, but to unregistered births (including infanticides, abandonments and children just kept out of the law). Certainly, some part of the N values I am giving corresponds to these occurrences, but it is so small as to be insignificant in the statistics.

Many children from unregistered births trickle back into the stats in the following years, as they register for immunization or schooling purposes. Surprisingly, in all the reference studies we see the sex ratios for 1-4 year olds (and even the 5-9yo) are higher than those of births, showing that late registrations tend to be more boys than girls. This causes the sex ratios at birth used in BMJ to be lower than the 0 to 4 year old values of CASS.

In a country like China it is inconceivable that significant numbers of people live their lives unregistered beyond childhood. To affect the statistics significantly, there would need to be millions of roaming “phantom” girls that have never been asked their IDs, and there would be at least some trace of this.

As for the murder/abandonment option, it simply does not make any ethical or practical sense for any Chinese familiy to do this today. If only because the ultrasound method is much better in any cost/risk calculation. This is the main reason to believe the ultrasound+abortion hypothesis accounts for the practical totality of my missing girls: it is by far the easiest way to do it for any Chinese family.

Sex Selection: How it happens

Form practicing specialists I obtained the information that at 15 weeks of pregnancy it is possible to determine the gender by ultrasound at almost 100% precision. Some research shows that this can be done even as early as 10 weeks, but let’s take the conservative assumption of 15 to account for the technological/legal situation in China. Even with this assumption, there is still largely the time to do a sex selective abortion.

In fact, according to this study by the WHO, virtually all 2nd trimester abortions in China are performed using medical methods. Induction with mifepristone and misoprostol for 10–16 weeks’ gestation, and intra-amniotic administration of ethacridine lactate for of >16 week’s gestation are routine methods in clinical practice in China.

So it is easy to figure out how this works. An ultrasound scan around week 15, followed by a drug induced abortion the same week, probably performed (and billed) by the same doctor for no more than 100$ the whole package. It is unlikely that doctors get much more than that, due to the available resources of the rural population, and the existence of competition. Virtually very hospital and consultation has ultrasound scans, and the numbers speak of a burgeoning sex selection industry.

Abortion in China: The holocaust

There are about 13 million abortions practiced in China every year, for a total of 18 million births. Almost 10% of the total abortions are motivated by gender selection.

Some Western “scientists” like to call this a holocaust of little girls, and they use it to expose the evil of the Chinese system. But we have to look at the problem more closely to understand how it happens, and why so many Chinese families are supposedly “evil”.

Nowadays abortion is freely available in China, and there are no defined time limits for access to the procedure. Sex selection is forbidden in theory, but in practice there is no way to know the motives of a person requesting an abortion. Certainly, sex selective abortion is a massive problem in the aggregate, but from the point of view of a single individual, it is not necessarily more “wrong” than other cases of abortion.

In fact, from a purely ethical point of view, it is not clear that most common reasons for abortion are any sounder than gender selection. Many Chinese peasants practicing this have serious economic and subsistence reasons to prefer a boy. How does this compare with other common cases, such as: because the time is not convenient, because the parents want to study, because they just couldn’t be asked to use contraception.

People with religious or ethical beliefs have all the right to call this a holocaust. But in all honesty they should include in the count most of the 13 million of Chinese abortions, as well as most of the abortions practiced in the West. Or is the destruction of a fetus any less wrong when its gender is not known?

It is about time China reduces its rate of abortions, but this is a different problem that has little to do with gender selection.

Why Prohibition is Completely Useless

The Chinese government forbid in the 90s the use of ultrasound for the purpose of gender assignment, in order to curb the growing trend of gender selection. In fact, it is the popularization of cheap ultrasound devices in the 90s, rather than the single child policy, which has been the main driver of the problem.

The problem with ultrasound scans is that they is an important diagnosis tool, and the devices themselves cannot be banned. As we have seen, abortions without a justified reason are not forbidden either. So what IS forbidden? Here is the reason why the law never worked and will never work: what is forbidden is to transmit information.

Information is famously the single most difficult thing to keep under control, and this is the basic element of information, a bit, boy or girl. It can be transmitted with the raising of an eyebrow. Considering the economic incentives, the large number of doctors who have access to the machines, the existing demand, the lack of a social conscience of the problem, the impossibility to prove the crime… one cannot imagine for a moment that this Prohibition can ever have any effect in China.

If the worrying trend shown in the graphs is going to be stopped, it will most certainly not be through prohibition. But see below are some alternative ideas that may work.

Conclusion and Some Ideas for the Government

Unfortunately, most of the articles published about this are concerned with either exposing CCP’s policies, or else drawing spectacular scenarios of the future. The goal of this post is just to analyze the existing research from a different perspective, looking at this serious problem from the side of its protagonists. This is part of my old quest to understand the Chinese people.

By looking at the other side of the problem, we have found some results that are shocking, even for Chinese readers. The reaction of disbelief I have seen in Shanghai friends, as well as the little debate existing on the internet even after an official source wrote about it, all illustrate the the low social awareness of this problem. I hope my results can be useful to increase this awareness, and in the meantime here is my little contribution to figure out effective policies:

1- Communication Campaigns: We have seen banning does not work, and no efforts by the central government is going to change this in the short term. On the other hand, because of the large proportions of the phenomenon in society, a vigorous information campaign is likely to have a strong effect amongst the least convinced of the “selectionist” parents and doctors. A massive long term campaign is needed, including films, adverts, sponsoring television characters, etc. to create a negative perception of gender selection. More importantly, the campaign should highlight the advantages of having a girl in China, which are rapidly growing as the gender imbalance makes females more demanded.

2- Abortion Controls: Nobody can know if the motivation behind an abortion is gender selection or not. But what is sure is that practically all gender selection abortions occur after the 12th (probably 15th) week. In the frame of a general move to lighten the restrictions of the single child policy, the introduction of restrictive conditions for late abortions would  have an important effect in dissuading sex selective behaviors, apart from avoiding risks for pregnant women and other misuses of abortion. This should be accompanied by campaigns to promote contraception to avoid a sudden spike in fertility.

I wish someone inside the Chinese Government reads these points and considers them urgently, for the sake of China and the World. And please, speak about it, let everyone be aware of the problem, encourage debate. Not censoring is already a good step, but active measures should be taken as well to promote discussion. This is a problem that can never be solved by the authorities alone. Involve the people!

If you have some other suggestions, or else some question/correction, please leave them in comments.

References

• China’s excess males, sex selective abortion, and one child policy: analysis of data from 2005 national intercensus survey – BMJ
• Sex Ratios at Birth in China – CEPED-CICRED-INED
• CASS 中国2011-2015年期间需要关注的人口问题 – 2010 Social Blue Paper
• CASS 2010 Blue Paper Index – 2010 Social Blue Paper
• The worldwide war on baby girls – The Economist
• Abortion Laws Around the Word – Pew Forum
• Sonographic early fetal gender assignment, by V Mazza – 2001
• Surgical vs medical methods for second-trimester induced abortion-WHO
• 1 in 5 marriage age Chinese men to remain bachelors… – People’s Daily
• Abortion statistics cause for concern – China Daily
• Statistics China – UNICEF

1. for a simple introduction to the problem of gender imbalance in China and its potential consequences you can read this article from the Economist

This little piece by historian Hong Zhenkuai has been taken down from the Southern Metropolis, but it has managed to escape the censors on some other sites. I liked the subtle way Hong criticizes the reigning CCP dynasty, and the cool Chinese rendering of “L’Etat c’est moi” as “朕即国家“.

Since I don’t have the time for Language Thursdays today, I have done this bit of translation work:

The French Bourbon king Louis XIV reportedly said “L’etat c’est moi” [1]. Even if all the World’s sovereigns love autocracy, few of them would say it so openly. Louis XIV ruled from 1643 to 1715, the same period as China’s Kangxi. Kangxi’s thought was probably not unlike “L’etat c’est moi”, but clearly he had more “wisdom with Chinese characteristics” than Louis XIV – he did a lot of “humane actions”, thus earning a reputation of humane Lord while still ruling as a dictator.

In the ideas of the Sovereign People, the sovereignty belongs to the people and it is not “L’Etat c’est moi” but rather “L’Etat is us“. Of course this kind of ideas only appeared after Louis XIV’s death. In his age there were not many in the World who could tell the difference between the notions of sovereign, government and State. In China, even if the pre-Qin philosopher Mencius said: “first the people, then the State then the  monarch”, in fact in the 2000+ years since the Qin and the Han, Patriotism has meant Loyalty to the Monarch, and these two concepts are muddled.

Only after the Western ideas arrived, some Chinese people started little by little to acquire a modern understanding of the notions of government, country and monarch. Among them Liang Qichao was first. He arrived to these conclusions during his experience in exile after the failure of the 1898 reforms.

Liang said that China was accumulating weakness, one of the causes being that the Chinese people could not distinguish between State and Dynasty, to the point that the patriotic spirit was not aimed at the right target[...] China has a long history, the Tang, Yu, Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, Song, Qi, Liang, Chen, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing [2] are “all names of dynasties, not of States”. From the Yin named Shang, to the Ji named Zhou, to the Ying named Qin, to the Liu named Han, to the Li named Tang, to the Zhao named Song, to the Zhu named Ming, [3]; and also the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing; all of them were family clans, not proper States. They were private operations run by a family clan and not a common asset of all the Chinese people. And yet the Chinese people frequently confuse Dynasty with State, as Liang Qichao said, and this is their big weakness.

Of the bad consequences of not differentiating between State and Dynasty, the most obvious is that Patriotism becomes Love for a Dynasty, or even Love for the Leader. Liang Qichao said: “Our long history shows, the famous officials and generals [...] [4].” Those characters in our long history, they killed people for one family clan, they did their hard efforts to acquire position and wealth, this has nothing to do with patriotism. But it was raised as a model of “patriotism” by each of the dynasties, and the people, since they cannot distinguish dynasty from State, they continue to praise and respect them. Truly lamentable.

A bit later than Liang, Chen DuXiu wrote a piece with title “Should we be patriotic or not?”, in the text it says: “To ask whether we should be patriotic or not, first we have to ask what is the State. Originally it is nothing but a group of people organized to resist the attacks of others from outside, and to harmonize the disputes of the people inside. Good people use it to defend against oppression outside and harmonize disputes inside, bad people use it to oppress the peoples both outside and inside. Therefore if someone asks: “should we be patriotic or not?” we will answer in a loud voice: “We love our country, the one that seeks happiness for the people, and not the one for which the people have to sacrifice”

The functions of a State, according to Chen DuXiu are: To defend against outside oppression, and to harmonize internal disputes. The former is towards the outside, the latter towards the inside. Harmonizing disputes is only the passive side, the State must also actively pursue public policies like preventing and providing relief against natural disasters.

The functions of a State should be performed by the government. If the government can do these functions, then the State is “seeking happiness for the people”; if not, then it becomes “the State for which the people sacrifice”. In human history the most common in practice is that the government cannot fulfill the State’s functions, or else it does them poorly. In this case it can appear that government equals no government. Or that government is even worse than no government.

Because of its geography China is a country where draughts and floods occur frequently. There are statistics that show that in the 2270 years before the Republic [pre-1911],there were 1392 officially reported draughts, and 1621 officially reported floods. It can be seen that every year there was some disaster. Because of this, one of the main functions of the Chinese government in the old times was to lead the defense against natural disasters, it can be said that this is one of the bases of the legitimacy of the government, and the emperors paid a lot of attention to these phenomena.

The emperor Qing even required the high officials in the provinces to timely inform of the rainfall, harvest, grain prices, etc. to understand the situation and so in case of a disaster to be able to offer immediate assistance and/or reduce the taxes in the affected regions. But looking at history, very often the people received no help. And in the case of large scale disasters, when the government could not offer assistance, the people had to face the risks and take action to survive. Like Li Zicheng who led the peasant revolt in the end of the Qing. His main actions where in Shaanxi and Henan, because there was a big draught there and the Ming government could not organize effective assistance. This force the victims to become roaming people, and ultimately a violent mob.

In any society there are some large tasks that involving many people, so there is no way any organization can do them other than the government. If the government cannot perform its responsibilities, the society becomes unruly, and the the public interest suffers. For example, food safety, public health, protection of the environment, this kind of affairs need to be taken charge of by the government.

In the development of human societies, this problem has been encountered for a long time: the people need the government but the government cannot live up to their expectations, protect them against outside menace or provide internal services. In many cases it even evolves into an organization that infringes on the people’s rights.

To make the government do its task diligently, the people needs to have the right to supervise the government, and the most effective way is to elect the government by voting. The people needs to understand what is common sense – that is, as Liang Qichao said, that the State is not the dynasty (government). The dynasty can be changed for the survival of the State. What the people should love is their country, and not the dynasty.

Hong Zhenkuai  Historian

1. meaning the State is me
2. it is cool how all the history of China fits in one single line of dynasties: 唐虞夏商周秦汉魏晋宋齐梁陈隋唐宋元明清, I guess we should add 国共 in the end, for the KMT and the CCP dynasties of the XX century
3. all these are the original surnames of the families that were behind each dynasty
4. follows rant against the old patriotic heroes, this is old Chinese someone help me translate: 试观二十四史所载，名臣名将，功业懿铄、声名彪炳者，舍翊助朝廷一姓之外，有所事事乎？其为我国民增一分之利益、完一分之义务乎？而全国人民顾啧啧焉称之曰：此我国之英雄也。夫以一姓之家奴走狗，而冒一国英雄之名，国家之辱，莫此甚也！乃至舍家奴走狗之外，而数千年几无可称道之人，国民之耻，更何如也！而我国四万万同胞，顾未尝以为辱焉，以为耻焉，则以误认朝廷为国家之理想，深入膏肓而不自知也。

Here is an update to yesterday’s review of Han Han, with some additional info about the Time nomination, which might be more important than it appears at first sight.

Then, if you stay till the end of this chapter, we will put on the yellow socks to analyze a bit more that terrible scourge of our times: the Ulterior Motives. This is for the benefit of all the puppet journalists and researchers who enjoy using that phrase, please pay attention.

The comments today come in the form of title-paragraphs, to allow for easy skimming:

1- The rules of the Time 100 are often misunderstood and heavily criticized, especially after internet star moot hacked the online poll last year and turned it into a joke. However, what you should keep in mind is that the internet poll only selects one of the members of the Time 100 list. That is, only the top person in the online poll makes it into the final official list, and in the position that Time editors decide. To be fair, it does make sense to include at least this one person from the poll, as it is representative of online mobilization power (when it is not hacked).

2- The fairness of the Time 100 is often put in doubt, and for good reason since ultimately it is nothing but the personal views of some magazine editors. And so what? The Peace Nobel is also an undemocratic selection by some random Norwegian wise men, and I would expect top Time magazine journalists to be better informed in World affairs than them. This is as fair as it gets for a list of influence.

3- The importance of the List: Like the Nobel, the list is important only because people give it importance. When it comes out it is read and commented by millions around the World. Many in America know Rain, the Korean star, just because he was voted high in the Time poll by a concentrated base of Korean fans. Now Rain is an international figure, what will happen if Han gets the same status? His independent view of China may be heard outside, and a full generation of Chinese people will have a channel to the World. This is a bit optimistic, I know, but there is a lot of potential if Han plays it well.

4- The chances of Han Han to win are very high if he really wants to. Supposing this year Time protects the poll against hackers, the number of votes necessary to win will not be much higher than 2 million. With an average of 1 million readers for any single post he writes, Han could easily mobilize enough people to storm the list if he campaigns for it. On the other hand, I am not sure he really wants to go that way. To be elected by others for a foreign listing is one thing, but to actively promote himself for it might raise future accusations of Ulterior Motives.

The Ulterior motives

And as promised above, here is my essay on Ulterior Motives. In case you are not aware, Ulterior Motives (usually translated from the Chinese 别有用心 or 别有用意) is a stock phrase that the Party and attached mouthpiece press uses to criticize people they don’t like. It has become so pervasive that it is like a CCP meme, similar to the famous classic “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people”. Most of the times, the “Ulterior” refers to American interests, and this hideous phrase is used to mobilize nationalistic feelings and pave the way for future charges of subversion.

This phrase wouldn’t be so revolting if it was only heard from Xinhua and the People’s Daily. After all, every government uses the patriotic trick to mobilize the masses, and lying is part of the routine of most politicians. But what is really disgusting of Ulterior Motives is that it has spread widely in society, to the point that even the work of intelligent people, like Lian Si, is polluted by it. Not to mention accomplished idiots like that guy who writes for the Shanghai Daily.

The allusion in “Ulterior Motives” is sickening because of the smug, self satisfied tone used to smear the victim, but it is more than that. It  is also low and cowardly, as it doesn’t dare to speak out the words.

So dear incompetent puppets, please listen up. If you are going to accuse someone of Ulterior Motives you should at least have the guts to specify what those motives are. “Ulterior” in general is meaningless, life is a complex phenomenon and all actions have multiple motivations. You need to list them out and offer some proof so that the reader can make up his mind.

To help you understand better, find here below 2 examples of how the Ulterior Motives are treated when you have what it takes to write it out. I will give you one from each side, to be completely fair:

1- The USA sent its Army to Irak to murder thousands of great innocent people for the main ulterior motives of serving its own political/economical interests AND to satisfy a base craving for revenge in a large part of the American public.

2- The CCP leaders imprisoned people like Liu XiaoBo or Xu Zhiyong for the main ulterior motives of eliminating any potential challenge to their own personal position of power and wealth.

So you see, it is easy to do. Either you go and mention what you are speaking about, or else just STFU. Unspoken accusations stink.

Han Han has been nominated for the Time’s most Influential People, and pushed by the millions of Chinese netizens, he is quickly ascending to a likely Number 1. Xujun Eberlein has done a good analysis of the situation, particularly the disgusting way that the People’s Daily and the Shanghai Daily are trying to downplay and oppose Han Han’s election – and ironically helping him to get more votes.

I found the article on Shanghai Daily revolting. The one on the PD is so obviously unprofessional that it’s harmless, after all this is not a real newspaper. But the ShD, what is wrong with these people? What orders are they following from above, to cast Han in this light? The critique by R. Zhou we commented last year was at least intelligent and it had a point, but this clown writing on the ShD sounds like a clueless mouthpiece at the service of the party.

First of all, regarding the books, everybody knows that Han is not doing great literature. For the outside World, his work is largely untranslatable and devoid of meaning, which explains why he is not known in the West. But even for the Chinese readers he has little to offer today. His most successful novel is a juvenile rant packed with High School inside jokes that are only funny for spotty teenagers. His initial critique of the education system was sharp and well-aimed, but since then he has failed to develop into an adult author.

And yet, it is not fair to judge Han for the books.  The publishing business in China is heavily controlled, and it would be impossible for him to publish anything real, now that his target has shifted to politics. Reading his blog it becomes obvious that it’s there that you find the true Han Han today, the books looking more and more like a filler to provide income or support his reputation.

As a blogger, Han is honest and talented, and I observe he is slowly moving from small-time cadre-picking and internet-meme recitation into valuable political commentary. Two of his recent posts can serve as example: this one where he goes against the very Chinese idea of trusting the higher authorities and blaming the local ones – a phenomenon he has unwittingly nourished himself. The second one, and my favourite up to now is this post translated by the CDT. His position regarding East and West is inspiring, and as far as I know it is a first in Han.

This Time nomination can be an inflection point. We could sense it coming, as these past months a few major Western papers covered Han prominently. After the initial faux pas last year it looks like he  has done his homework, but his position is complicated. He has to find a place to live between his previous teenager couldn’t care less attitude, and an open engagement with the West that would destroy him in China.

The uniqueness of Han Han as a  political critic is partly due to this positioning. He is the only major dissident that is clearly independent of Western ideological pressure as much as of the CCP’s. This, together with his very concentrated post-80s fan base, gives him enormous strength, and he is intelligent enough not to spoil it by crossing the line, instead pushing bravely on the limits. This is why the insinuation by that Shanghai Daily idiot that he may have “ulterior motives” [1] is cowardly and low, and it shows that the heavy propaganda machinery might be moving already.

The obvious reason why the media is sending bombs in Han’s direction is that the party is  nervous about him. He is uncontrollable and he is getting way too much power, now attracting foreign attention that he didn’t use to have. It will be tough to take him down when the time comes, because there is no evidence of  ”ulteriority” in his actions up to now. But the first accusations  are coming to the press, and there will be growing attempts to frame Han.

In conclusion, it is a great thing that Han has been nominated, and I am pretty confident that the Chinese netizens will vote him up to N1. From our side in the West, we should give him some more breathing space, and a lot more credit for what he is doing. He is pushing a line that few in his position would dare touch, and he has far more potential to be effective than all the dissidents working with the West.

As we already saw here, our media has a terrible habit of  demanding dead heroes for the Western public, and they will soon want more blood. But Han has always been a free man. Here is to hoping he’ll find his own way between the traps of the Party and the righteous Western establishment.

1. “ulterior motives” is the repugnant and tired phrase that the propaganda bureau uses to accuse dissidents that have some help from the West, attempting to mobilize nationalist sentiment against them, as we saw it also recently in my review of the books Ant Tribe

Well, for those who doubted, here you have the proof. Get the solid worldwide reputation of Google Inc. for non-evilness, add an American president that enjoys public support in almost every corner of the World, and you can assemble a Megaton soft bomb with the power to break through all the conventions of international politics. That is exactly what Google’s actions represent today, and for the time being they are obtaining the expected support outside of China.

While at first some observers interpreted the Hong Kong move as a face saving one, I think after Brin’s appeal to Obama today there is little doubt that this was not the case. What is probably even worse from the CCP’s perspective is the direct link set up today on Google HK to Drummond’s blog post in Chinese. Up to now only a few Chinese activists had bothered to read the message, now every single Google.cn user is sent there. Google is attempting to speak directly to the people of China, bypassing the channels of the government, how is that for a detonator?
This is the kind of action that only a company like Google could risk, and only a government like Obama’s could support without lifting suspicions all around the World. It is a completely new approach to international politics where a company now is not only pushing for political goals, but even addressing peoples and governments directly as an equal. Any company in the World acting like this would get a severe rebuke from its own government, but I doubt that this will be the case for Google.

It does not work like this

I have been quite negative about Google’s actions ever since this “New Approach” started in January. Unlike other critics, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Google’s leaders or the goodness of their objective. On the contrary, I am convinced that this is a deliberate personal move by Google’s leaders to do their real significant bit while they are still in time, before they lose full control of the corporation. With the growth of Google this is bound to happen soon, and both Page and Brin have announced the sale of a good chunk of their shares this year.

But my reasons to be against Google’s plan are much more simple than that. It is just that I think it will not work.

I readily admit that I might be wrong, indeed I hope so, this is a completely new approach and nobody has all the certainty. But from my observation of China in the last few years, I can’t see how the plan might work. The government will try to avoid a scene, and it is possible that for a while Google will remain unblocked. But sooner or later the CCP is going to have them pay for this, the door has been left wide open for another call to patriotism, and the consequences will be bad for the Chinese and for the internet.

A problem of principles

In fact, even if the outcome turns out to be good, I am not comfortable with the principle of Google’s actions. It is a principle of moral superiority, the old story of Western people going to different continents and killing as many as they could to save them from the wrong faith. It is based on the boundless Western hypocrisy that allows us even today to commit some of the worst crimes in the World while proudly walking under the banner of human rights.

Granted, Google’s bomb is a soft one and it does not kill people, my parallel only goes so far. But if we look at the recent history of China, we will see that the Chinese today are far better off than they were at any other time of  the last century, including when the West had power over them. And surprisingly enough, whatever freedom and progress the Chinese have today was not achieved through ultimatums or moralizing stances. On the contrary, it was achieved by the patient work of millions of Chinese who sincerely care about their country.

And those people didn’t manage it alone, together with them there are also thousands of foreigners like me who have been working here for years, helping China develop its technologies, teaching English to the Chinese, dealing with the authorities and getting our hands “dirty” with things like the Olympics or the Expo. Events that the righteous minds in the West thought they should have never been given to the Chinese, because they don’t share our true faith.

I am convinced that this is the right way to develop China and the rest of the World, helping them out on the daily hard work, and avoiding righteous heroes that take us nowhere. And in spite of all the times I have had to swallow my pride and take what came from the Chinese authorities, when I speak with most of the Chinese around me I don’t see suffering and oppression, but hope in the future. That is the best sign that we are doing it right. Let’s be patient.

This is the continuation of the previous post in the series, where we ended up rambling off the main topic and into a thick soup of political terms. Today I am back to impose some discipline. The article was meant to be about sex, and sex we will do. Just stick around for a few paragraphs of theory, or scroll right down to the examples if you prefer.

The question we considered last time was: why communist regimes, most of which have abolished religion at some point, are in fact among the most puritan countries regarding porn? Which can be otherwise formulated: why are Chinese commies so prudish? With the ever growing impulse of the porn censoring machine, this may well become one of the fundamental questions to understand modern China.

My take on the question

One obvious answer is that prudishness is not strictly related to religion, but rather to the character of a society and its leaders. You only need to see the thousands of starched black-suited cadres participating in the NPC, looking exactly like their CCP ancestors preserved in formol, to realize that the leadership of the party is overwhelmingly conservative. And it is perfectly normal that they should be conservative, since the main objective of the CCP today is harmony and maintaining the status quo.

But this short answer is not completely satisfying at least in two ways. First, the Chinese communists were already prudish long before 1949, according to first hand accounts of their life in Shaanxi. Besides, conservative people as described above are focused on following the path of their predecessors, they wouldn’t have such a problem with porn if it hadn’t been condemned by the party founders in the first place.

A better answer to my question is that, contrary to some common believe probably spread by Cold War propagandists in the West, communist was never about having sex in common. Instead, it is a very boring economic theory written by a German philosopher, more concerned with the proletariat and the means of production than with naked calisthenics.

When it came to its practical application, most communist countries soon realized that the theory required extreme levels of pressure and discipline on the “proletariat” to ensure it behaved according to plan. Sexual freedom and lewd behaviours have never fitted well with discipline, as Mao himself knew very well. Not only they divert energy from the revolution, but they also promote individualism and conflict among men. In fact, one might argue that a market phenomenon like porn will always be more comfortable with Smith’s Invisible Hand, wherever this hand might have used to wander in its free time.

In China in particular, the case for suppression of lewd behaviours was even stronger than in other communist regimes. This is because the old society that communists were set to destroy was characterized precisely by the exploitation of women by men, and of all by aristocrats and capitalists. From feet-binding to concubines, an important part of the injustice in pre-revolutionary China was directly caused by the lust of the powerful, as illustrated in works like Pearl Buck’s classic  ”The Good Earth“.

Maoism emphasized the “purity” of thought and criminalized those behaviours that were inevitably tied to the old society, both for practical discipline reasons and as a matter of necessary consistency with his rhetoric of liberation from the feudal society, especially in the early days. Some interesting anecdotes of Mao’s initial crackdown on prostitution after taking Beijing are told in the excellent “Peking Story” by David Kidd.

This legacy of communist policies has still a deep influence on the conservative minded cadres that rule the party today, and it will probably take a few more generations of leaders before the party changes its views on porn and “unhealthy” content in China.

Conclusion and some examples of Chinese Porn

One of the main reasons I needed to write this post is that the crackdown on porn doesn’t make much sense from a pure “follow the money” perspective. Porn, just like prostitution, is a huge parallel market, and like all shady businesses everywhere it is a great source of revenue for the powerful who protect it. The links between prostitution and the army are well known in China, and there should be strong economic motivations to establish similar links with online sex providers. I hope this post explains why this is not happening.

As I already clarified in part 1 of this series, I don’t really give a damn for the companies that run pornographic sites, and I am just as happy if they all get banned in China. I think Western netizens waste way too much effort in such basic pursuits as could be fulfilled better offline, to the point that porn has become the first commodity on the internet. For a self-confessed internetholic like me, it has always been a source of embarrassment when offline people link both concepts together.

Regarding the consequences of these restrictions on porn in China, some commentators suggest they lead to frustration and an increased obsession with erotic content on the internet. While this obsession is certainly there, I don’t see it is any worse than in the West. In fact, in many ways it seems healthier, judging by the email forwards I regularly get from my (male) colleagues. The pictures that are popular  in China often show a cute girl, fully or at least half dressed, smiling for the camera. In contrast, the ppts I receive from the West rarely involve just a girl, or even a human being. They tend to cover a range of sick scenarios that you surely do not want to explore clicking here.

But enough with the theory. Have you ever seen porn done with Real Characters?

Here I leave you with the most amazing examples of Chinese porn that have still not been banned from the internet!

Young lady performs blog job on fat headed man

A well endowed guy doing missionary in China

Close up of the action in figure 1…. gross!

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And finally, to illustrate the social problems caused by the use of lewd content and the dissolute behaviours that necessarily follow, here is the little story of Mr. Ren. For those who don’t understand classical Chinese, the story tells how the man goes out with his young lover, while his wife is waiting at home wondering why he is so late:

Mr. Ren out with his lover.

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And in the following chapter, we see the beneficial action of Chinese officials devotedly working for the revolution, selflessly monopolizing all the available lovers to ensure that married men return to their families, thereby preserving social harmony.

Mr. Ren happily reunited with his family again

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I hope my little character stories will not hurt the feelings of the Chinese people too much. Now please scroll back up again and read the main part of the post. What do you think of the explanation? Alternative theories?

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