The Great Hype of China

It takes less than 2 minutes to cross the Lo Wu bridge, an enclosed concrete arc over no-mans land that spans a narrow greenish/brown river held back by straight cement walls, with dark coils of thick circular barbed wire flowing atop them. To the back are the customs booths of Hong Kong; 100 meters to the front lies those of the surging, rising, popular China.

Thousands of shoppers pass through the customs gates at Lo Wu on the Hong Kong/China border headed from Hong Kong to the markets of Shenzhen, an enormous city situated on China's southernmost border just 100 meters past the Lo Wu gates. Shoppers come with enormous bags folded over arms and suitcases rattling in tow; many walk briskly across the country-less bridge, eager to pass Chinese customs towards the self-emblazoned "Shopping City" situated on the Shenzhen side, an enormous reflective-glass edifice home to millions of cheap goods. In the evening the ritual is conducted in the other direction, bustling shoppers surging through Chinese customs, across the bridge, high above the barbed wire and through Hong Kong customs towards home.

This surging flow of people towards Shenzhen looks like a symbolic reenactment of the China effect on the world. Indeed, via a more complicated distribution method, millions of western shoppers every day head through Chinese customs, plucking up cheap Chinese goods as they finish online Christmas shopping or buy the perfect birthday present at the mall. Maybe because of this, Americans have caught the China bug: some point to China's rise as a model for strong government, others point to China as a rising threat; everyone has an opinion. But one agreed-upon theme stands out: China is rising.

Many think they alone happened upon this China epiphany. This article poses a question: Instead of throwing arms up in praise of China's rise, shouldn't the response be a more blunted "duh"? With the unlimited potential of 1.3+ billion people, abundant natural resources, an enormous coastline, a hard-working and intelligent society, it certainly is convenient when disastrous political ideas like Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution disappear from view for over 30 years. Even events like Tian'anmen Square are dwarfed domestically by the tragedies unleashed during Mao's tenuous 25+ years at the helm. In turn, the government has done much good in the past 30 years which allows great economic effects to be felt.

Although the CCP maintains a monopoly on power, this much is true; basic education is relatively widespread, running water flows more places now and famines are unheard of. Basic life is simply much better for Chinese citizens. Even controversial projects mean (relatively) well: a massive dam over an active fault-line isn't the world's smartest idea, but brownie points for facing the future energy needs for an enormous region. The world's highest railway, connecting Tibet to the rest of China, doesn't win-over fans of Tibetan culture, but it will bring more wealth to one of the poorest regions of China. Yet despite these relatively good intentions, a monopoly on power is dangerous and deceptive. China is being held back by its current government, not helped.

It seems likely that China has all the pieces of a puzzle that needed to be fit together. And the puzzle is being put together, sort of. Roughly 10% GDP growth per year is incredible, while the positive changes in Chinese citizens' lives in 30 years is staggering. Yet the redundant, obviously negative facts about China raise legitimate questions about whether China's "rise" is as spectacular as some claim, and begs to ask if China is still sacrificing due to a backwards government that fails to understand that economic freedom is not compatible with authoritarianism.

In a nutshell, the CCP restricts the free flow of information in China by censoring media outlets and skewing educational standards. The CCP argues under a thin guise that such policy is for stability and the economy, and quietly points to China's economic miracle as justification. An economy can be mobilized without freedom. But an economy will not become the "next United States" unless it allows its citizens creative freedom to pursue a free market in all realms, even if it means infringing on the CCP's monopoly on power. The common rebuke is that China is, and will, gradually change its attitude towards freedom, and eventually all Chinese will enjoy rights similar to those of Japanese, Europeans or Americans. Everyone should sincerely hope this is the case. But the CCP is stubborn, and devout China watchers over the past few years have grown wary that regarding the free flow of information, the country is closing up, not opening.

Chinese Premier Hu Jintao recently has vowed to "purify" the internet, quoting an article in the South China Morning Post originally run by Reuters (found here). This isn't surprising, but it is troubling. An estimated up to 30,000 CCP officials' sole job is to police the internet. Surfing the internet in mainland China, if you haven't had the opportunity, is a remarkably antagonizing experience (numerous websites like BBC and Wikipedia in English are simply blocked, internet surfing takes painfully long at seemingly random times, and searches for things like "Tian'anmen Square" and "Falun Gong" turn up empty). Possibly a cause for its own censorship, Wikipedia has a great article on the matter.

There are other troubling signs as well, as well as some misunderstood positive ones. A Beijing court recently upheld a petty verdict against a New York Times employee (Zhao Yan), Shandong police beat up a blind rights lawyer for exposing corrupt officials, a second rights lawyer in the province was sentenced to jail for a similar offense, and a Hong Kong reporter was given a jail sentence for allegedly spying for Taiwan. The CCP still hasn't resolved the tragedy of Dongzhou in 2005, when between 3 and 40 villagers were shot by police while protesting in the largest known atrocity since Tian'anmen Square. And even as pundits praise China's recent crackdown on corrupt Shanghai party bosses, many fail to realize that crackdowns are common in the year leading up to the Communist Party Congress (held this year), as the premier uses "corruption" charges as a convenient way to complete a more sordid task: consolidating his own power within the party (the New York Times ran a few commendable pieces on the phenomenon).

The power to think creatively and compete in the name of efficiency, growth and more fulfilling human life will not happen unless people have enough freedom to challenge the status quo. Life without freedom is sterile, one-sided, and unknowingly blinded to the potential and rewards offered by competition and the free flow of ideas. China has yet to learn this lesson, probably a result of its recent economic success. Yet China doesn't need to look far to see the choices made by people who are given one between two systems, between freedom and not. China simply needs to focus its gaze south to Shenzhen, on the border of Hong Kong and watch as, at five o'clock sharp, thousands of shoppers repeat their morning ritual in reverse, streaming out of the Shopping City, lining up at the customs gates, passing over the Lo Wu bridge, and back into Hong Kong territory and freedom. Because the freedom to shop isn't real freedom. The freedom to think is.