MCLC: Anatomy of Chinese wsj review

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Rowena He <rowenahe at gmail.com>
Subject: Anatomy of Chinese wsj review
***********************************************************

Source: Wall Street Journal (9/19/13):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323808204579083211630945186.h
tml
 

Roots of Chinese Officials' Lies
To understand China's politics you have to learn how her officials speak.
By PETER NEVILLE-HADLEY

============================================
An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics
By Perry Link
(Harvard University Press, 367 pages, $39.95)
============================================

Princeton Professor Emeritus Perry Link draws on 30 years' worth of notes
about the Chinese language's quirks to construct a revealing picture of
how Chinese involved in politics think. The country may have been torn
apart by a century of ideological struggles, but the maddeningly malleable
manner of expression known as guanhua or "official language" has united
the warring factions.

 
Mr. Link dissects the mechanisms by which the modern rulers of China both
consciously and unconsciously use language to club the populace into
submission. There are important lessons here for those who deal with China
on any level.

 
Take for example the tendency to lapse into sloganeering. Chinese signs
recommending caution when crossing the road, or reminding lavatory users
to flush, often use seven-syllable 2–2–3 rhythms called qiyan, one of the
building blocks of poetry. To the Chinese ear this meter not only sounds
"right" but the rhythm lends their instructions authority.

 
This has made it popular with propagandists. Even at the height of the
Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards condemned all that was traditional,
Mao Zedong used the same classical form, Linghun shenchu gan geming: "Make
revolution in the depths of your soul."
 

Mr. Link suggests that the pull of tradition was so strong that Mao
probably wasn't even aware that he was using "old" ways of thinking to
attack "old" ways of thought. Nor were the crowds of youthful acolytes who
ecstatically chanted Women yao jian Mao zhuxi: "We want to see Chairman
Mao."

 
Mr. Link goes on to discuss the use of metaphor, but the book's triumph is
the final section in which he reveals the inner workings of manipulative
language in modern Chinese politics. Whereas in Qianlong's time guanhua
was the domain of officials, since Mao it has increasingly poisoned
everyday conversation.

 
During Mao's disastrous 1958–61 Great Leap Forward campaign, people had to
speak in guanhua of "great and bountiful harvests" even as tens of
millions starved around them. They learned to read their newspapers'
guanhua upside-down as they still do today: A claim that corruption has
been curtailed indicates that it's even worse than thought. A headline
saying 100 brothels have been closed means that there are hundreds more
that are still open.

 
Guanhua loves to takes refuge in generalities, leading to what political
commentator Cao Changqing calls "fruit language." As Mr. Link explains,
"If an official says 'fruits are good' and it turns out that a higher-up
decides that bananas are bad, the official can say 'I meant apples.' Fruit
language preserves an official's options and might even save his or her
career."

 
Intermittently enforced regulations expressed in vague and conflicting
guanhua permit arbitrary accusation, disguise authoritarian behavior, and
make almost everyone potentially guilty. Foreign businessmen quickly
realize that it is impossible to abide by all local regulations and take
comfort in the fact that most are not enforced.

 
But they are left with no defense when greedy officials suddenly cite lack
of compliance with a particular rule to demand a fine or even outright
ownership of the business.

 
The standard by which the rightness of official pronouncements is judged
is not whether they are true but whether they serve official interests.
Guanhua is more reliable than ordinary mendacity as it indicates not only
what the speaker wants the listener to believe, but where the speaker's
interests lie.

 
Mr. Link glosses over how the gap between what is said and what is really
thought has spilled beyond politics into so many other spheres. Visitors
to China must quickly learn to see through falsehoods, whether they are
tourists who find they can't trust what their guides tell them, or
businessmen who must unlearn their faith in the power of contracts.

 
Foreigners heading to China would do well to skip the copy of Sun Zi's
"Art of War" in the airport bookstore and pick up Mr. Link's book instead.
One can spend a lifetime learning Chinese and still not understand the
country. The key is to crack the guanhua code.

 
—Mr. Neville-Hadley is a Vancouver-based author.