To mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing protests violently suppressed on 4 June 1989, the South China Morning Post published a series of six articles, including extensive coverage of both the protesters and the government's thinking and analysis of the continuing significance of the event in Hong Kong.
New York Times A Chinese Voice of Dissent That Took Its Time by Sharon La Franiere March 2, 2012 Beijing EVEN at 106 years old, Zhou Youguang is the kind of creative thinker that Chinese leaders regularly command the government to cultivate in their bid to raise their nation from the world's factory floor. So it is curious that he embodies a contradiction at the heart of their premise: the notion that free thinkers are to be venerated unless and until they challenge the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. Mr. Zhou is the inventor of Pinyin, the Romanized spelling system that linked China's ancient written language to the modern age and helped China all but stamp out illiteracy. He was one of the leaders of the Chinese translation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the 1980s. He has written about 40 books, the most recent published last year. Leaders here might hail him as a role model for young Chinese, but for one flaw: Mr. Zhou does not support one-party rule or think it can last. So within China, he remains largely uncelebrated. As the state-run China Daily newspaper remarked in 2009, he should be a household name but is virtually unknown. A telling example of the party's discomfort with him: when the government summoned 500-plus scholars in 2009 to celebrate the Encyclopedia of China's second edition, Mr. Zhou was disinvited at the last minute. Friends say they believe it was because the Communist Party propaganda chief, Li Changchun, did not wish to shake his hand. Mr. Zhou does not dwell on such snubs. Nor do they intimidate him. He is a relative latecomer to controversy, turning his attention to politics only after retiring from his full-time job at age 85. But he is making up for lost time. Chatting recently in his study, filled with overflowing bookshelves, Mr. Zhou declared democracy "the natural form of a modern society." He rejected the argument that China is not suited to it. "You can have democracy no matter what level of development," he said. "Just look at the Arab Spring." Many Chinese intellectuals share such beliefs. But the most outspoken are often the aged -- Communist Party elders or retired cadres who either rely on the Chinese reverence for the elderly or who no longer worry about the consequences. China's state news media ignore Mr. Zhou's political views but not his role as the architect of Pinyin. Three years ago, he figured prominently in an hourlong documentary on Pinyin on the state-run CCTV network. Chinese characters do not directly correspond to sounds. Pinyin's phonetic alphabet enabled learners to match words easily to actual speech. "It had an enormous impact on literacy," said Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania. All Chinese students now begin to read and write using Pinyin before moving on to characters. Sweet-natured but wry and rigidly dispassionate, Mr. Zhou works at a tiny wooden desk in a government-provided, third-floor walk-up apartment with unpainted concrete walls. His longtime colleague Chen Zhangtai, 80, said Mr. Zhou decided renovations would be too distracting. He described Mr. Zhou as the embodiment of a "true scholar." He added, "He just always seems at peace with the world." And continually fascinated by it. His blog entries range from the modernization of Confucianism to Silk Road history and China's new middle class. Computer screens hurt his eyes, but he devours foreign newspapers and magazines. A well-known Chinese artist nicknamed him "Trendy Old Guy." Mr. Zhou was born on Jan. 13, 1906, when the Qing Dynasty ruled and women bound their feet. The son of a Qing Dynasty official, he married the daughter of a wealthy family and went into banking. After the Japanese invaded in 1937, his family was forced into the countryside to escape Japanese bombs in Chongqing, China's wartime capital. His 5-year-old daughter died from appendicitis. Although he never joined the Communist Party, Mr. Zhou's sympathies with it date from that period. In Chongqing, he got to know Zhou Enlai, then the party's main emissary to the outside world -- a relationship that later helped save his life. In 1946, Mr. Zhou and his family moved to New York, where he represented the Xinhua Trust and Savings Bank. He toured the United States in luxury Pullman cars, rode the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner to Europe and fended off offers from Western banks. His intellectual life was equally rich: he had several lengthy chats with Albert Einstein. But shortly before the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949, Mr. Zhou brought his family home. He taught economics at a university in Shanghai and studied linguistics as a hobby. In 1955, Zhou Enlai, now prime minister, called him to Beijing. The party wanted to make Mandarin China's national language, simplify Chinese characters and devise a new phonetic alphabet. Mr. Zhou's son, Zhou Xiaoping, an astrophysicist, said his father protested that he was a mere amateur. He was told: "Everyone is an amateur." The summons came just in time. The next year, Chairman Mao's Anti-Rightist Campaign targeted Western-trained economists. One of Mr. Zhou's best friends, the head of an economic research unit, committed suicide. So did Mr. Zhou's favorite student. In his new job, Mr. Zhou found tremendous confusion, but also a foundation for his work. In the late 1500s, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci had formulated a system to Romanize Chinese characters. Many English speakers were already using the British Wade-Giles system, developed in the 19th century. Chinese linguists had devised other alternatives. Mr. Zhou's team wrangled endlessly: how to cope with the homonyms that are rife in Chinese; how to indicate the four tones of Mandarin; whether to use a Cyrillic, Japanese or Roman alphabet, or to invent a new Chinese alphabet based on the shapes of characters. Mr. Zhou argued for the Roman alphabet, to better connect China with the outside world. In 1958, after three years of work, Pinyin -- literally "to piece together sounds" -- was finished and quickly adopted. THE decade-long Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 wiped out Mr. Zhou's lingering belief in communism. He was publicly humiliated and sent to toil for two years in the wilderness. Upon his return, he rejoined the government, fighting for Pinyin to be adopted as the international standard. Professor Mair said the United Nations agreed in 1986. Mr. Zhou says Chinese characters will exist for centuries to come. But to his delight, Pinyin has proven ever more useful. Chinese now rely on Pinyin-to-character programs to send cellphone text messages, post on Internet microblogs and write e-mails. Mr. Zhou himself uses a typewriter that converts Pinyin into characters to deliver ever-more pointed critiques of the party in essays and on his as-yet-uncensored blog. About Mao, he said in an interview: "I deny he did any good." About the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre: "I am sure one day justice will be done." About popular support for the Communist Party: "The people have no freedom to express themselves, so we cannot know." As for fostering creativity in the Communist system, Mr. Zhou had this to say, in a 2010 book of essays: "Inventions are flowers that grow out of the soil of freedom. Innovation and invention don’t grow out of the government's orders." No sooner had the first batch of copies been printed than the book was banned in China.
Is the de-globalisation writing on the wall? How China is reversing cultural openness with the West
• In the decade or since Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics, the country’s relationship with developed economies has descended into antagonism and confrontation
• Public sentiment, official rhetoric and general contact has shifted as well amid the belief that others are trying to stop China’s rise
In the last two months, staff at subway stations in the Chinese capital Beijing and the neighbouring city of Tianjin have been on a mission.
Signs and route maps with English names at the stations have come down and been replaced with ones with pinyin, or romanised, transliterations of the Chinese characters.
Instead of maps pointing out the stop for Tianjin Binhai International Airport, the directions are now to Binhai Guo Ji Ji Chang. Beijing Railway Station is now referred to as Beijing Zhan, and Olympic Park is Gaolinpike Gongyuan.
Instead of maps and signs pointing out the stop for Tianjin Binhai International Airport, the directions are now to Binhai Guo Ji Ji Chang
China has a literacy rate of over 97 per cent, but pinyin is only recognisable to around 70 per cent of its 1.4 billion population, according to official data. So the question is, just who are the target readers of pinyin?
Many foreigners have complained that it is an inconvenience and Chinese have said they do not get the point.
In response to the public concerns, the Beijing municipal government said the change was made to conform to national standards – The Guidelines for the Use of English in Public Service Areas, which took effect in December 2017.
Not all English names have been abandoned – some exceptions include the Summer Palace and the Military Museum, which are both places of interest with widely accepted English names.
But it is still unclear why the changes are taking place now.
With the Winter Olympics just days away, commenters and commentators have asked what it says about Beijing’s openness, and noted the contrast with the friendly atmosphere in 2008 when Beijing was hosting the Summer Olympics. Some have suggested that it signals a process of “cultural deglobalisation”, in which China and the West are retreating from each other.
Publicly, the Chinese leadership has shown unremitting support for globalisation and opening up. At the annual World Economic Forum on January 17, President Xi Jinping urged other powers to discard the “cold war mentality” – a veiled swipe at the United States – and touted China’s efforts to share Covid-19 vaccines, fight climate change and promote development.
“We should stick to openness and inclusiveness. We should say no to isolation and exclusivism,” Xi told world and business leaders in the virtual conference, warning the attempts to “isolate, intimidate, decouple and sanction” others would “only push the world into division, even confrontation”.
However, in the three-plus years since the China-US trade war started, the trend has been in just one direction – China and the West appear to have drifted apart culturally, as antagonism and confrontation have dominated relations.
Clashes have erupted over trade, technology, the military and ideology, as well as the origins of Covid-19.
China’s response to the United States has been unyielding and combative, widely described as a Wolf Warrior style by overseas political and foreign relations observers. Nationalism has also grown at home against the backdrop of Beijing’s considerable efforts to warn the country of espionage and infiltration, especially from Western nations.
That shift is apparent on the streets.
“Welcome to Beijing!” 48-year-old Beijing taxi driver Wang Hao said in English, reciting a greeting he learned in 2008 during compulsory English lessons put on by his employer.
“My pals and I made fun of each other’s accent [back then]. And we were really enthusiastic about greeting foreign visitors in those couple of years around 2008. We were encouraged to speak English and showcase the hospitality and openness of China,” he recalled.
“In recent years, things have been quite different,” Wang said. “To be honest, foreigners are not my favourite passengers. Most coronavirus cases in China are imported cases. Many Western countries don’t befriend China. I don’t like bullies.”
Wang’s remarks dovetail with the official line and reflect broader confidence in the administration at home. The Chinese public generally trusts its government, a recent survey suggests, thanks to the economic miracle in the past decades, a forceful control of the pandemic and the Communist Party’s publicity campaigns.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer conducted in November, 91 per cent of Chinese citizens trust their government, the highest rating in China for a decade and among the 28 countries in the survey. The barometer was the 22nd annual trust and credibility survey conducted by consultancy Edelman, and based on 30-minute online interviews conducted with 36,000 respondents from 28 countries.
"To be honest, foreigners are not my favourite passengers. Most coronavirus cases in China are imported cases." — Beijing taxi driver Wang Hao
Contributing to the cultural decoupling trend, China last year banned the use foreign textbooks in schools providing K1-K9 education. It also prohibited foreign teachers outside China from giving online English sessions, and tightened scrutiny over schools with an international curriculum.
“These changes and moves may not be game changers in and of themselves, but taken together and in conjunction with the political winds of the moment, they probably represent a sort of cultural deglobalisation,” George Magnus, research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, said.
“In what most people regard as a rivalry that extends to values, beliefs and standards, this is not so surprising, if still regrettable.”
The drift is also affecting otherwise routine background exchanges.
Foreign diplomats have told the South China Morning Post that it is getting harder to reach Chinese researchers from state-affiliated institutions to share insight with embassies.
Most invitations filed to government institutions in the past year had been turned down, even when discussions were on traditionally safe ground such as the economy, a foreign diplomat said on the condition of anonymity.
“In several cases, we were asked to seek approval from various departments. After a long wait of several weeks or even months, we often got a ‘no’ in the end,” the diplomat said.
Another foreign diplomat said many invitations were declined for the sake of “Covid-19 control”, although most of his colleagues had been in China for at least a year and were fully vaccinated. “I don’t understand why we pose a threat to the ‘pandemic prevention and control work’. I’m not sure if it’s an excuse.”
Magnus said the pandemic, unfortunately, gave cover for separation and distancing especially where, in China’s case, there was a particular emphasis on zero-Covid and mass quarantine in response to even modest prevalence.
“It feeds the fears and paranoia of those who cannot visit, travel or move freely inside and in and out of China. Hopefully this will end sooner or later but while it persists, it certainly underpins an attitude of closure rather than openness,” he said.
Stringent pandemic policies and tax law changes are also driving expatriates away, eroding business and diplomatic foundations.
In Shanghai, the number of expatriates fell to around 163,000 in November 2020 from more than 208,000 over the previous decade or so – a drop of more than 20 per cent. In Beijing, the number of foreigners has fallen by more than 40 per cent to about 63,000, according to China’s census data.
“Today, people-to-people exchanges between the US and China are on the wane, reversing momentum towards better mutual understanding,” said Ker Gibbs, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
Opinion polls also suggest a high level of distrust of the US among Chinese, especially among the young. In a survey published in November by the Carter Centre’s US-China Perception Monitor, 62 per cent of Chinese held unfavourable views of the US, rising to 63 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.
At a conference last month, Yan Xuetong, director of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Studies, warned that China’s Generation Z was displaying a high level of overconfidence in the country’s power and hostility towards Westerners.
“Post-millennial students usually have a strong sense of superiority and confidence, and they tend to look at other countries from a condescending perspective,” Yan said.
“[They] look at international affairs with a make-believe mindset, thinking it’s very easy for China to achieve its foreign policy goals. They think only China is just and innocent, while other countries, especially Western countries, are evil, and thus have natural hatred towards Westerners.”
Such nationalism was driven mainly by opinion leaders on the internet, and students were heavily influenced by conspiracy theories and economic determinism, Yan said.
He suggested that his fellow lecturers on international affairs should try to focus on hard facts so that students did not develop overconfidence in the country.
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said he expected the nationalistic tendencies to persist as long as China believed the US was determined to suppress China’s rise.
“There is much to lose and less to gain by harbouring this nationalism and overconfidence-borne tendencies,” Gupta said.
“China needs more rather than less internationalism, especially as it aims to become a shaper of global rules and norms. It needs broader engagement with the world at the societal level to better understand the role of China and the contributions it can make to global society.”