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Welcome in Foreign policyBriefly about China and happy holidays.
This week, we highlight five stories that take stock of a difficult year in China, from growing censorship as Chinese President Xi Jinping begins his third term to massive popular protests that demanded an end to the zero-covid policy.
If you would like to receive the China Brief in your inbox every Wednesday, please sign up here.
Welcome in Foreign policyBriefly about China and happy holidays.
This week, we highlight five stories that take stock of a difficult year in China, from growing censorship as Chinese President Xi Jinping begins his third term to massive popular protests that demanded an end to the zero-covid policy.
If you would like to receive the China Brief in your inbox every Wednesday, please sign up here.
China has had a tough end to 2022. The country has reported just seven deaths from COVID-19 since it lifted its strict zero-Covid policy this month, but bodies are piling up in Beijing crematoriums amid a rising wave of infections. Despite the best efforts of censorship, the gap between state propaganda and reality is mocked online. The current wave began in Beijing, but residents in other cities are already reporting widespread cases and many are voluntarily self-isolating.
There was little good news for the Chinese public this year. Property sales have collapsed and prices have followed. The zero-covid policy has severely damaged China’s economy, which is likely to be rocked again by the new wave of infections. Chinese President Xi Jinping has tightened his grip on power as he begins an unprecedented third term, and censorship has intensified. The alliance with Russia has become a global embarrassment and ordinary Chinese are increasingly cut off from the world.
Below are five pieces from FP that sum up China’s rough year.
1. Ukraine exposed the real danger of Chinese censorship
by Howard W. French, April 11
It is difficult for people in free societies to understand the psychological burden of a political environment like China’s, where too often honest work is punished and lying is rewarded. Under Xi, untalented figures rise in Chinese institutions, while the gifted and intelligent often withdraw from the arena. Pervasive censorship corrodes free thought: when political discussion is impossible but the public knows the government is lying, conspiracy theories abound.
FP columnist Howard French wrote about the distorted view of the world that results from such a society after talking to friends in China about Russia’s war in Ukraine. “These are ordinary Chinese citizens – not journalists, but well-educated people who live comfortably within the confines of the system. From the point of view of cautious credulity, they asked me if it was true that Russia was at war in—i.e. does not invade – Ukraine because of the spreading Nazism in that country,” he wrote.
But the problem goes beyond that, French argues. “Here was the crux of the problem: under the rule of nationalism, independent and critical thinking about the country or the policies and actions of its leaders became an internal taboo.”
2. Who got China wrong?
by Bob Davis, April 24
Then-US President Bill Clinton performs as an orchestra conductor in Xi’an, China, as he is welcomed by then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin on June 26, 1998.Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images
A major debate about China in Washington has focused on whether the engagement pushed by American elites for two decades has been a failure. According to China hawks, this approach has given the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) global respectability and a get-out-of-jail-free card for human rights abuses — while doing nothing to change China’s belief that the American order must be overthrown . On the pro-engagement side, it helped the Chinese escape poverty through economic growth and opened the country to the world, which will pay long-term dividends.
Veteran correspondent Bob Davis examines both sides of the argument in this review of two books on US-China relations. Former US President Bill Clinton famously said: “There is no question that China is trying to break the Internet. Good luck! It’s kind of like trying to nail jelly to the wall. “Reading Clinton’s comments now seems not just naive, but disgusting,” Davis wrote. “It turns out that China has perfected the jello-o nailing and destroyed its own nascent online civil society.”
“But does disillusionment with the turn in U.S.-China relations mean that the strategy of engagement — wrapping China more closely with the United States in a web of economic and political ties — is fundamentally flawed?” Davis is not advocating for either side, but takes a close look at the unspoken cost of each policy approach: rapprochement with China or an attempt to sever ties between two deeply entangled economies.
3. The Chinese public no longer knows what the rules are
by Helen Gao, Sep 5
China’s current COVID-19 crisis has followed many other upheavals for ordinary Chinese, from the collapse of the property market to an online crackdown on foreign content. Beijing resident Helen Gao describes the impact of these changes and the sense of confusion among the public. “People who thought they knew how the rules worked are left hurt and betrayed. … As people recoil from the political hurricane, the support they once leaned on is gone,” she wrote.
“A party known since the 1980s for its pragmatism and commitment to social stability has become an agent of chaos and, in extreme cases, a direct threat to people’s livelihoods.”
Gao recalls a dark joke circulated during Shanghai’s April lockdown that showed how life decisions ostensibly supported by the government had become expensive: “The unhappiest devil in China in 2022 is the person who ‘lives in Shanghai , invests in stocks, works in real estate and has a partner in after school. … Listening to the government, he did not stock up on groceries and under its encouragement is now expecting the birth of his third child.”
4. Young Chinese despair of a future without COVID
by Tracy Wen Liu Oct 24
People line up for a nucleic acid test to detect COVID-19 at a testing site in Beijing on July 5.Kevin Fryer/Getty Images
China’s zero-covid policy has also fueled generational despair. People in their 20s now face a tough job market, a nearly 20 percent youth unemployment rate, unaffordable housing prices and a socially intolerant government. Lying Down is the latest version of a recurring theme among young Chinese: minimal participation in a demanding society.
Chinese author Tracy Wen Liu traced the bleak prospects of a self-described “last generation,” arguing that this lack of hope will be a major problem facing China in the future. A graduate student she interviewed “can still see her own future slipping away. Before the pandemic, she would have traveled abroad for conferences or trainings, but today the zero-covid measures – combined with growing political nervousness about contact with foreigners – have made that impossible,” Liu wrote.
“Sometimes anger breaks through, such as with the October 13 protest against Xi and his COVID-19 policies in Beijing. But for the most part, young Chinese are frustrated and angry about the isolation of their own apartments brought on by COVID-19,” Liu said. Before the end of the year, China’s largest popular protests since 1989 would erupt, with young people among the most radical participants.
5. Mass protests in China are the end of a once trusted model of governance
by Lynette H. Ong Nov 28
Zero-COVID quickly became a much bigger problem for Beijing: a breakdown in the government’s ability to shape public opinion and deal with social unrest. For decades, China has balanced between listening to local demands and crushing broader movements, in part by cultivating neighborhood leaders and village heads to act as intermediaries, a system that quickly became overwhelmed, argues Lynette H. Ong.
“Trusted local figures draw on their social capital to persuade their fellow citizens to consent to state policies,” Ong writes. “Often this involves coming up with, giving some ‘carrots’ like bonuses for early compliance while pulling social and neighborhood strings. In other cases, it imposes enormous psychological pressure, making it a less-than-violent coercive strategy.
The massive unpopularity of China’s zero-covid policy in major cities shattered this system, leading to unprecedented protests: “Any remaining trust quickly evaporated and impatience turned into rage against the state. China’s earlier success in achieving zero COVID has turned into widespread resistance—not only to the policy, but to the CCP as a whole.”
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