MCLC: China Dream award

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Jacqueline and Martin Winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>.edu)
Subject: China Dream award
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Very interesting. Many issues here. Yang Xianhui wrote about the Great
Leap Forward famine, right? Privatization of rural land is another very
important issue. If the farmers own the land, will many of them sell to
developers?
 

Martin
 

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Source: NY Times (12/15/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/asia/15iht-letter15.html
 
Dreaming About a Life Free of Lies
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

GUANGZHOU ‹ In this southern city on Saturday, where some of China¹s
leading entrepreneurs, artists and intellectuals gathered to honor
recipients of the "China Dream" award, one word was on everyone¹s lips:
truth.

At two morning seminars, an afternoon gala awards presentation in the
dazzling Guangzhou Opera House and an evening banquet, prizewinners and
celebrities spoke of their China Dream and their longings for truth,
morality and greater rights. The event suggested social and intellectual
changes that are as significant as the better-known economic changes that
began in Communist-ruled China after Mao Zedong¹s death in 1976.

The China Dream prizes, now in their third year, are awarded by the
liberal Southern Media Group, which is headquartered in this flourishing
city on the Pearl River Delta. Winners "represent our times, in which we
dare to dream, can dream and are fulfilling our dreams," the group said in
a statement.

The prizewinners, seven individuals and one environmental group, included
the writer Jia Pingwa, the scientist Yuan Longping (known as "the father
of hybrid rice"), the TV news anchor Bai Yansong and the Society of
Entrepreneurs and Ecology. Founded in 2004, the society works to reduce
the sandstorms that plague the north by combating desertification in Inner
Mongolia and consists of hundreds of businesspeople like the real estate
developer Ren Zhiqiang, chairman of Huayuan Group, and Liu Xiaoguang,
president of Beijing Capital Group. The combined wealth of its members and
their companies may total around 2 trillion renminbi, or $314 billion,
said Zhu Hongjun, the environment correspondent of Southern Weekly, the
media group¹s flagship publication. Mr. Zhu hosted a morning seminar
titled "For the Public Good, For the Republic," where Mr. Ren and Mr. Liu
discussed the advantages of democratic, transparent decision-making, which
they say they are pioneering in the society.

Addressing a packed auditorium at Sun Yat-sen University at the other
seminar that morning, Yi Zhongtian, a literature professor at Xiamen
University who moderated many of the day¹s events, said: "People say you
can¹t tell the truth. People say it¹ll get you into trouble."

"My bottom line is: Don¹t tell lies," he said. "If you think you can¹t
tell the truth, then don¹t say anything. And when you can say the truth,
say it."

His audience, mostly students, laughed and clapped wildly.

What was Mr. Yi¹s China Dream? someone in the audience asked.

"Truth, goodness, health and happiness," he answered.

Yang Xianhui, a writer and guest speaker, said his China Dream was for
farmers to own their land, because without that legal right they were prey
to endless exploitation. Currently, farmers lease the land they farm from
the state, and land grabs by officials, often allied with developers, are
common.

China is rising, but for its rise to be healthy, people need greater
equality and rights, Mr. Yang said. "Privatize farmers¹ land!" he
exclaimed, bringing exuberant applause.

The students dreamed, too.

Standing outside in the bright winter sun after the speeches, a student of
international politics who gave her name as Ms. Pang said: "My China Dream
is that everyone should feel secure."

Ms. Pang, who is from Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province, home of the Chinese
Navy¹s South Sea Fleet, said unemployment in her hometown was high and
some families struggled to survive on 400 renminbi a month. "The rich-poor
divide in this country is enormous now, and there are many poor people who
have no sense of security whatsoever," she said.

Her companion, Mr. Liang, who also gave only his surname, referred
admiringly to a talk that morning by Qin Hui, a historian at Tsinghua
University.

"Professor Qin said that his China Dream is for China to break the endless
dynastic cycles it has suffered, including in 1949, where one dynasty is
violently overthrown by another," Mr. Liang said, referring to the year of
the Communist rise to power.

Later, receiving his award at the gala, Mr. Bai, the TV host, said: "To
tell the truth is the most basic thing, the minimum, and not the highest
thing, the maximum!"

He recounted wryly how he once won a prize for truth-telling.

"Praising someone for telling the truth is like saying, ŒThanks for not
being a thief,"¹ Mr. Bai said, as the audience laughed. "By insisting on
telling the truth, one day we can reach our dreams."

Much of the energy underpinning the search for moral values today comes
from China¹s pre-1949 traditions, once rejected by the Communist Party in
the name of modernity and the people¹s dictatorship, the event suggested.

The stage for the gala was set up as a pre-1949 classroom, with pupils in
old-fashioned uniforms reading from a textbook titled "Moral Character."

"Teachers" ‹ that is, the prizewinners or celebrities ‹ gave lessons in
traditional values like benevolence and public morality, as well as the
pre-1949 political system and human rights. In an apparent rebuke, the
Communist Party received almost no mention.

Chen Danqing, a well-known artist who was not a prizewinner, noted that
his lesson, "Kindness and Humanity," reflected "true culture, ethics and
morals."

Receiving his prize, Jia Pingwa, a popular author, said: "Dreams can only
come true if you have freedom. If you don¹t have freedom, you can¹t make
your dreams come true."

That this free-talking event took place in Guangzhou would not surprise
many Chinese, who know that for at least 100 years, much political change
has come from the south. This has included Sun Yat-sen¹s 1911 republican
revolution, which ended the last imperial dynasty; the rise of the
Kuomintang, which ruled but then lost China to the Communists in 1949; and
the Special Economic Zones founded in Shenzhen and Zhuhai in 1980, marking
China¹s turn to capitalist-style money-making. If Beijing is the nation¹s
capital, Guangzhou, southerners say, is "capital of the south."

That can irk conservative northerners. In November, Kong Qingdong, a
Peking University professor who says he is both a Communist Party member
and a 73rd-generation descendant of Confucius, criticized the Southern
Media Group as "traitors."

"We¹re not worried about that. Not too worried," said an editor at
Southern Weekly, speaking anonymously because of political sensitivities.

Yet he added: "We know that people can only really flourish if the system
around them is good. But we can¹t say that publicly here. We can only
honor individuals."