[As China grew richer, the West assumed,
political freedoms would follow. Now it is an economic superpower — and the
opposite has happened.]
By Amy Qin and Javier C. Hernández
At
Huining No. 1 High School, the pressure is on to excel on college entrance
exams.
Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times
|
To Ms. Gong, 51, who dropped out of school,
the future of her son, Li Qiucai, 17, is paramount. If Qiucai does well on the
college entrance exam, if he gets a spot at a top university, if he can achieve
his dream of becoming a tech executive — then everything will change.
“He is our way out of poverty,” she said.
To achieve all this, Ms. Gong and millions of
other Chinese like her have an unspoken bargain with the ruling Communist
Party. The government promises a good life to anyone who works hard, even the
children of peasants. In exchange, they stay out of politics, look away when
protesters climb onto rooftops to denounce the forced demolition of their
homes, and accept the propaganda posters plastered across the city.
Ms. Gong is proud of China’s economic success
and wants a piece of it. Politics, she said, doesn’t matter in her life. “I
don’t care about the leaders,” she said, “and the leaders don’t care about me.
For years, many Western analysts believed the
Chinese people, having endured decades of hardship under Mao, would tolerate
one-party rule in exchange for rising incomes and more social freedom until the
day — or so the argument went — that a newly prosperous nation would demand
political freedoms, too.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Income
levels have jumped, yet China’s authoritarian leaders have consolidated power.
President Xi Jinping could be a ruler for life. China’s people still place
demands on the party, but the old assumption that prosperity inevitably stirs
democratization is being challenged.
It turns out that the unspoken bargain that
binds Ms. Gong and others to the state is more complicated. It resonates, in
part, because China is still intent on addressing the questions that it asked
itself one century ago, before the Communist Revolution in 1949: What made it
so weak and held it back as the West advanced? And what did it need to do to
get ahead?
Love,
Not Marriage
James Ni is fine with not being a member of
the Communist Party. He is a fabulously wealthy private entrepreneur whose
company, Mlily, is the official pillow and mattress partner of the English
soccer club Manchester United. His goal is for Mlily to become a global brand.
Growing up in a small town in Jiangsu
Province, Mr. Ni came of age during China’s once-unimaginable economic
transformation. Private enterprise wasn’t even legal when he was born in 1975.
And once the state did open the door for private entrepreneurs, they faced persistent
obstacles — as they still do even today.
“Of course, there are a lot of things that
are unfair,” Mr. Ni said. “The state-owned companies have an advantage. Those
who have the right connections have an advantage. But in this environment of
development and expansion, anyone can find their own way.”
Today, Mr. Ni estimates his personal wealth
at $400 million. Many Chinese executives cozy up to local governments to gain
advantages, but Mr. Ni says he keeps a distance from officials, hewing to a philosophy
that “it’s better for business to stay business.”
In the long view of Chinese history, it is
remarkable how the country now embraces entrepreneurs, given the traditional
Confucian condescension toward profit-seeking merchants. To catch up to the West,
the party embraced market mechanisms and capitalist ideas not as end in itself
but as a means through which to achieve national wealth and power.
Party leaders have always worried that
private business could evolve into an independent economic force, and some in
the West predicted that capitalism could be a Trojan horse for democratization.
Yet though Mr. Ni resists joining the party, he is fiercely patriotic, loves
China and believes that, ultimately, party leaders want what is best for the
country.
“This country is my land,” he said. “And as
long as I live on this land, I will be comfortable and have self-respect. That
is what’s important to me.”
Party leaders legalized certain private
enterprises in 1979 and made a historic shift in 2001 by accepting capitalists
as members of the party itself.
“Allowing private entrepreneurs into the
party really reinforced a certain mutual dependence between the party-state and
the private economy,” said Kellee Tsai, the dean of humanities and social
sciences at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Even so, the rules of competition have been
tilted in favor of state-owned enterprises. Mr. Ni’s first business venture,
selling software, failed. He got into the bedding business after noticing the
high prices of memory foam pillows in a shop display. But while state-backed
companies could easily get bank loans, Mr. Ni, a private entrepreneur with no
credit history, was shut out.
Instead, Mr. Ni raised 500,000 renminbi —
about $60,000 at the time — in seed money in 2003 from friends and family, with
over half coming from a single cousin. These trust networks are at the heart of
China’s huge “gray” economy, operating outside the formal banking structure and
providing an investment engine for a private sector.
As Mr. Ni’s company grew in Nantong, a city
in Jiangsu Province, local cadres began to take notice. But Mr. Ni said they
did not interfere because he complies with regulations, employs about 3,000
people and is a major tax contributor. That, in turn, helps the officials
advance their careers by meeting production targets.
And even when the party does hand down
orders, there is sometimes room to push back. Four years ago, Mr. Ni’s vice
chairman told him that the government wanted the company to create a party cell
inside Mlily.
“I said no,” he recalled. “It is just some
middle-level officials trying to please higher-ups. It wasn’t an order that
came down from Xi Jinping.”
But there are signs that under Mr. Xi, the
space for maneuver may be shrinking. In recent months, leftist scholars,
bloggers and government officials have publicly endorsed what appears to be a
state-led shift away from free-market policies. Mr. Xi has recently sought to
reassure private business leaders, praising their contribution to China’s
economic miracle, but his broader approach has favored the state-owned sector.
“Today you have the largest bureaucracy in
history, with a capacity to intrude in anything,” said William C. Kirby, a
professor of China studies at Harvard. “It isn’t just ideology. There are now
enormous numbers of interest groups that don’t like competition.”
For guidance, Mr. Ni often looks to Jack Ma,
the executive chairman of Alibaba, who is China’s richest man and a cultlike
figure among many businessmen. Mr. Ni is currently enrolled in a business
school program that Mr. Ma established to cultivate China’s next generation of
entrepreneurs.
Over the years, Mr. Ma has spoken publicly
about the push-pull relationship between private companies and the government,
though there is one piece of his advice for entrepreneurs that Mr. Ni seems to
have especially taken to heart: “Fall in love. But don’t marry.”
Perhaps nothing is more linked to social
mobility in China than education, especially the college entrance exam, known
as the gaokao. At Huining No. 1, graduates who have won admission to China’s
top universities return each summer as living proof of the dream, sharing their
experiences and imploring students like Qiucai to work even harder.
Yet if the gaokao is a symbol of opportunity,
it is also a tool of social control. Scholars say it is a clever governing
tactic borrowed from the keju, the Confucian examination system that determined
the selection of government officials in China for more than 1,300 years. Even
in dynastic China, the keju lent the government an aura of meritocracy, as it
was open to all men. But only 1 percent of applicants passed the exam for the
highest degree, since few had the time and money to prepare.
In a modern China rife with corruption, the
gaokao is seen as relatively fair and incorruptible, meaning that those who
fail are unlikely to blame the government.
“It allows the government to say: ‘If you are
not successful, you can only blame yourself. You did not work hard enough,’”
said Yong Zhao, an education professor at the University of Kansas. “That is a
very powerful way of governing.”
The gaokao was established in 1952, under
Mao, and initially only students with class backgrounds deemed suitably red
were allowed to apply. The test was suspended during the Cultural Revolution —
the turbulent period in which teachers were beaten and schools shuttered — and
then restored in 1977, after Mao’s death. More than 10 million students rushed
to take the exam, which was now more meritocratic, and open to almost anyone.
In the decades since, the spread of basic
literacy and numeracy, and the cultivation of top technical talent, have
resulted in immeasurable economic gains. But the gaokao has contributed to
concerns that China’s education system overemphasizes rote memorization and
instills values of obedience and conformity, not critical thinking.
For the Communist Party, the surge in high
school graduates has also increased pressure to provide employment — and
brought rising complaints that the system still places rural students at a
disadvantage. Admission quotas at universities still greatly favor urban
elites, and secondary education in the rural areas is lagging. And even as
schools like Huining No. 1 keep students focused on the gaokao, a rising number
of graduates struggle to find work and repay college loans.
So some are opting for another way to get
ahead: They apply to join the Communist Party.
Back then, the blame was placed on a
conservative traditional culture that emphasized hierarchy, discouraged
individual initiative and rewarded knowledge of Confucian classics over more
practical topics like mathematics and science. The Communists sought to smash
that culture through Marxist-inspired policies, but that ended in disaster.
Yet China’s leaders, and its people, have
continued to look for answers, as the party crafts new ones that build on and
reshape traditional culture without rejecting it entirely.
The government has offered education as a
path to social mobility, unleashed private enterprise by removing Confucian and
Marxist stigmas against the merchant class and cultivated a potent brand of
nationalism, blending pride and humiliation into a narrative of restoring
Chinese greatness.
But for many Chinese, those incentives are
only part of the calculation. So, too, are the costs of rejecting the party’s
bargain.
Over the years, the party has expanded its
repressive capabilities.
For some, like the ethnic minority Uighurs in
Xinjiang, the country’s turn toward hard-nosed authoritarianism has meant the
devastation of entire families, cultural and religious practices and ways of
life. For others, just the fear of repression is enough to keep them in line.
It is impossible to know how many Chinese
disapprove of the system. In private, many middle-class Chinese have voiced
frustrations with, for example, Beijing’s handling of the growing trade war
with the Trump administration. But few dare to speak out.
Memories of famine and political upheaval
have shaped Ms. Gong’s generation and are passed down in the form of whispered
warnings: China has too many people. China is not ready for democracy. Stay out
of politics. Don’t ask questions.
But so far, frustrations and fears have been
overshadowed by the surge in pride — and the sense of opportunity — that has
come from seeing the motherland’s rise.
Once, the allure of the West was considered
irresistible; now many Chinese educated in Europe or the United States have
returned, eager for their children to know a China that is proud and powerful.
James Ni had a chance to study in America but instead remained in China and
became a multimillionaire. Hua Yijia, a venture capitalist in Beijing, studied
and worked in America but wants her 8-year-old daughter to take pride in being
Chinese.
“I want her to understand the beauty of the
language and the hard work and sacrifices of the people, especially in the
countryside,” Ms. Hua said. “China used to be a very backward country, but her
generation will have so many more opportunities.”
Many analysts and Western diplomats are now
confronting the likelihood that so much of what they assumed about how China
would change — and become more like the West — is turning out to be wrong.
“The Chinese mentality is very practical,”
said Xu Zhiyuan, a Beijing-based historian and writer. “From a young age, you
are told not to be idealistic, you are told not to be different. You are
encouraged to survive, to compete, to excel within the system.”
“The whole society is a competitive
playground.”
The
Chinese Dream
It was Aug. 9, exactly 302 days until the
college entrance exam, and Li Qiucai was frantic.
In the halls of Huining No. 1 High School, in
the northwestern province of Gansu, teachers were already turning up the
pressure. The school is a powerhouse in producing rural students with top test
scores, and teachers urged Qiucai to preserve the school’s reputation and
“shine like the sun.” Signs posted in the hallways warned that students must
tolerate a little pain now to avoid a “life of suffering.”
Since Qiucai began attending the school two
years ago, his life has been a blur of late-night cram sessions, practice tests
and mastering the art of finishing geometry problems while slurping noodles. He
starts each day by running around a racetrack chanting, “The heavens reward
industrious people!”
He attends classes until almost 10 p.m., with
only a short break on Sundays, and lives nearby in a $32-a-month apartment with
his mother, who cooks and cleans so that he can study full time.
All of it is pointed toward next June, when
Qiucai will be one of nine million students taking a test that is at the core
of China’s high-stakes meritocracy — those who perform best get a ticket to the
Chinese dream.
“Only if I do well on the test,” Qiucai said
one recent night as he worked on physics problems, “can I have a better life.”
The
Pull of Home
Over time, Hua Yijia felt the pull of China.
The feeling surprised her.
Living in Boston, Ms. Hua had received an
elite education in the United States, landed a consulting job and even
contemplated applying for American citizenship. She loved jazz and American pop
culture.
But more than a decade after she left China,
she decided to return in 2007.
Part of it was opportunity: a job prospect at
a consulting firm in Beijing. Part of it was a tinge of disillusionment: She
had seen Chinese friends hit a “bamboo ceiling” in corporate America, even as
the careers of friends in China seemed to be taking off. And part of it was
something deeper: a desire to help the country catch up with the West and to
reconnect with her Chinese roots.
Now a partner at a venture capital firm, Ms.
Hua, 44, has a daughter whose elementary school offers a steady dose of Tang
dynasty poems, calligraphy lessons and excursions to ancient sites. “She needs
to know where she came from,” Ms. Hua said.
Exposed to liberal democracy, Ms. Hua’s
generation was supposed to be the one that demanded it at home. Middle-class
Chinese students poured into universities in the United States and Europe —
then seen as the most promising path to wealth and prestige — and some Western
analysts predicted that they would return to China as a force for political
change.
Like many other middle-class parents, Ms. Hua
worries about repression and rampant materialism in Chinese society. Yet many
of these parents say they want their children to see themselves as Chinese
above all else — to understand China’s roots as an agrarian society and to have
a sense of pride in the perseverance of the Chinese people through decades of
poverty and strife.
Patriotism has run through centuries of
Chinese history, uniting the country in difficult times and, more recently,
blending a pride in the cultural legacy of China’s civilization with deep
resentment over the humiliations at the hands of foreign powers during the
colonial era. It is a volatile mix that the party skillfully manipulates to
stir the feeling that China needs to stand up in the world.
Even as some analysts argue that China’s
success has more to do with the resilience of its people than the Communist
Party and its policies, leaders have been adept at shaping a politicized
nationalism that reinforces the primacy of the party — and defends the
authoritarian model as the best bulwark against chaos.
“Chinese nationalism binds the people with
the state, not to each other,” said Minxin Pei, a professor of government at
Claremont McKenna College.
Mr. Xi has selectively revived traditional
Chinese culture — an effort, experts say, to give people something to be proud
of. That approach, however, is rich with historical irony. Both the modernizers
who overthrew the Qing dynasty and then Mao and his communists once blamed
Chinese tradition for holding the country back.
But with communist ideology long ago having
lost its appeal to the public, Mr. Xi is drawing on Chinese tradition to
reinforce the idea that the country needs a strong leader to prevent chaos and
to guard against outsiders. That leaves some worrying that he could be leading
the country into a new period of isolation.
“Opening up and learning from the West is not
a humiliating thing,” said Zhu Dake, a scholar and cultural critic in Shanghai.
“Chinese culture is not a self-enclosed culture, and our greatness is not
wholly self-created. Unfortunately this is a minority point of view.”
Ms. Hua’s apartment complex overlooking
Chaoyang Park in central Beijing is covered with propaganda posters, including
displays celebrating “socialist” values like “patriotism” and “honesty.” She
said she worried that it had become nearly impossible to criticize the country
without being labeled unpatriotic, and she is uneasy with tightening censorship
and information control.
“I’m a Chinese citizen,” she said. “It
doesn’t mean I think everything in China is great.”
But if she has grievances, she still believes
society is moving in the right direction — and has made peace with waiting.
“Two steps forward, one step backward,” she said.
Ms. Hua has started to take her daughter on
trips to poor parts of China, to show her the vast inequalities that still persist,
even in an age of mobile payments and self-driving cars. She hopes her daughter
will live in a more tolerant China, one still open to the outside world.
But that is not the same as wanting China to
be just like the West.
“I hope my daughter will have the chance to
be exposed to different worlds and different cultures,” she said. “But she was
born in China. She grew up here. She will always need some understanding of who
she is and what it means to be Chinese, from the very beginning.”