MCLC: interview with Rowan Callick

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: interview with Rowan Callick
***********************************************************

Source: The China Story (7/3/13):
http://www.thechinastory.org/2013/07/party-time-an-interview-with-rowan-cal
lick/

Party Time: An Interview with Rowan Callick

Rowan Callick is Asia-Pacific Editor of The Australian newspaper.
Following some two decades in Papua New Guinea, he moved to Australia in
1987 after which he worked for The Australian Financial Review for some
twenty years during which time he was that paper’s Hong Kong-based China
correspondent (1996 to 2000). In 2006, he joined The Australian as its
China correspondent. He is the recipient of the Graham Perkin Award for
Journalist of the Year (1995) and his work on Asia and the Pacific has
also been acknowledged with the prestigious Walkley Award (1997 and 2007).

Rowan’s career is also marked by a strong engagement with the policy
community: as member of the National Advisory Council on Aid Policy
(1994-1996); of the Australia Indonesia Institute (2001-2006); of the
Foreign Minister’s Foreign Affairs Council (2003-2006); and, since 2012,
as an honorary fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

In his first book, Comrades and Capitalists: Hong Kong since the Handover
(Freedom Publishing, 1998), he examined the impact of China on Hong Kong
and looked at the possible effects of the handover on China itself. In his
recently published Party Time: Who Runs China and How
<http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781863955911/party-time-who-runs-china
-and-how> (Penguin Books Australia, 2013) Rowan offers an in-depth
analysis of the Chinese Communist Party along with an insightful portrait
of today’s China. The book and the multiple stories of power and humanity
that it relates inspired the following interview.—The Editors

____________


Question: Your recent book Party Time is fascinating, informative and
insightful. What made you want to write about the Chinese Communist Party?

Answer: I have been writing substantially about China for almost twenty
years, including two spells as a China correspondent – from 1996-2000 for
the Australian Financial Review, based in Hong Kong, and from 2006-2009
for The Australian, based in Beijing.

There are three common threads in this task: an understanding of history,
personal empathy, and the pervasiveness of the party.

Yet I kept discovering that visitors to China found the party invisible,
that when asked to speak to groups – chiefly but not only from Australia –
ranging from teachers to share traders, they expressed puzzlement that I
should mention the party prominently in my talks.

I realised then, that there was a huge party-shaped hole in understanding
about China, even among people sufficiently motivated to visit the
country. So I began to plan and interview for my book, while I was working
in Beijing.

 
Q: Many people regard knowledge of the Communist Party as absolutely
essential for understanding contemporary China. In your view, is this
true? Or, do you now see some aspects of contemporary China developing in
ways beyond the Party’s control?

A: The final chapter in my book is titled: ‘China Beyond the Party’, so I
certainly feel that while it remains a jealous party, reluctant to share
space, to operate in genuine partnership with individuals or organisations
it does not control, China is bigger than the People’s Republic. People
have more space to constructive private lives and family lives.

The Party began under Deng Xiaoping to concede space – as a result of its
already being exercised – to people doing business for themselves. During
and after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the Party began also to concede
space for altruism.

The Internet has also opened space beyond Party control. Despite the
deployment of thousands of ‘net police’ and massive investment in
supervisory software, persistent ‘netizens’ find ways to communicate
information and ideas around and beyond the Party.

But the Party remains at the centre of contemporary China. It does not
have to control directly every institution and activity; it does retain
though the capacity to do so, which remains crucial, a level of authority
that marks China’s governance out as unique in the twenty-first century
world.

 
Q: When talking about China, the party-state is foremost in people’s
minds. In your experience, do many Party leaders at the different levels
see China, the Party and the state as the one indivisible entity? What
about Chinese citizens?

A: China has always been ruled – except for a brief period during the
first half of the twentieth century – by elites, usually imperial
families, who have perceived themselves as incorporating the very essence
of Chineseness, of China itself.

The Party is not different. It may have had its episodes and echoes,
earlier in its ninety-year life, of being partly at least driven by class
consciousness, by a form of internationalism. But since the Cultural
Revolution evaporated its ideological raison d’être, it has transmuted
into an organ whose legitimacy rests instead on constantly improving
living standards and on its incorporating China, as did imperial dynasties.
The mystical heart of Chineseness that formerly lay in the Forbidden City,
now rests in Zhongnanhai, the Party headquarters immediately to its west.
At a more local level, matters are inevitably more functional. But even
officials in provinces and prefectures are reluctant to countenance rivals
to their authority. Chinese citizens naturally find it hard to separate
party and state; the ‘separation of powers’ has never happened in China.
But they do have an understanding of China – meaning, essentially, Han
China, as a cultural entity and value-set that is not subsumed by or
subordinate to the party-state.

 
Q: Among the ordinary people you’ve spoken to, do many regard one-party
rule as simply the way things are? Do people discuss the possibility of an
end to one-party rule sometime in the future?

A: It’s fair to say that ‘ordinary people’ routinely accept that the
Party’s rule is the natural state of play in China. They have known
nothing else. But the remarkable number of ‘mass incidents’ throughout the
country – chiefly reflecting anger at official corruption or
high-handedness – demonstrates that they want the Party’s cadres to
maintain high standards, even when this is the exception rather than the
rule. Many view local corruption as aberrant, and believe that ‘if only
the emperor/the party general secretary knew’, then their righteous anger
would lead to swift justice. In a parallel manner, many want to be able to
have their day in court – a court with a truly independent and righteous
judge – more than they might want to be able to choose their leaders, or
exercise democracy in some other way.

While conversations about the end of one-party rule might be rare, they
are not unknown. Many strikingly independently minded individuals do
discuss almost every conceivable manner in which China might be changed.
They might not – almost certainly will not – be able to publish these
thoughts or conversations at a mass level within China, but they can do so
outside, in Hong Kong say, or in Taiwan.

 
Q: In Party Time, you remind readers that China is ‘a society of
individuals, and strikingly so’. This is a very significant remark as
individuals are often forgotten in Western accounts of Chinese politics
and society, which tend to portray the persons under discussion as
representatives of one or another group. What do you mean exactly by a
‘society of individuals’ in the contemporary Chinese context? Given that
there is always some level of censorship at work, to what extent can
Chinese citizens genuinely express their individuality? To what extent
does CCP politics influence their daily life and actions?

A: Every Chinese village or town is comprised of people whose sense of
self, of being a unique individual, is strong and resistant to
communalisation or corporatisation. People like to fit in, to be and to be
viewed as good citizens, but they also enjoy at times defying expectations
of conformity. Westerners for instance look to ‘dissidents’ to behave and
to speak in ways which they would recognise as consistent, and consonant
with Western ideas of nonconformity. But that rarely happens. Dissidents
who go into exile are frequently found to be almost as ‘difficult’ – due
to their unpredictability and refusal to fit a mould – in the West as in
China. Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, for instance, jailed for
almost twelve years, holds complex and unique ideas that appeal to others
– that’s why he was jailed, primarily – but is no ‘freedom fighter’ or
campaigner for Western values.
 
Q: You discuss the Chinese legal system and consider obstacles to its
development. You also discuss the prospects of justice in China,
mentioning in particular the difficulties that the judiciary faces in its
attempts to enforce the law fairly. In your view, can judges be just in a
society that does not have an independent legal system?

A: Yes, judges can and mostly are just in China. The courts operate, at a
basic level, in a pragmatic and effective manner. But there are also
constant miscarriages of justice, politically driven exemptions and
convictions, and an incapacity for justice to be seen to be done when
almost the whole legal process takes place behind firmly closed doors. I
have spoken with judges who certainly intend to be righteous, in the
tradition of predecessors in ancient dynasties. But cases that involve
vested interests, on either side – plaintiff or defendant – are almost
invariably referred for Party adjudication. It is inconceivable that such
a case will not be concluded in favour of the ultimate interest of the
Party or its leaders in that area. True independence of the courts is a
crucial test of the capacity of the openness of the system. China is not
there yet, and is not shifting significantly in this direction.

 
Q: Chapter Five of your book focuses on journalism and censorship. You
recount the experiences of Chinese journalists who were forced to work
under strict Party control. To what extent has state control of the media
in China affected the reporting of foreign journalists in China? What are
the main difficulties of reporting from China on Chinese current affairs?

A: The party-state is only moderately interested in what people outside
China think. Its focus is on what messages Chinese people receive. But of
course it retains jealously a capacity to scrutinise everything that is
said, written or done within its own borders. It concedes that the world
has a huge and legitimate interest in China, and understands that it
benefits from this – especially in the economic realm – but believes that
it owns the right to control access to all information it perceives as
strategic or even significant. This view governs domestic and
international reporting alike. China thus provides unique challenges for
foreign journalists; little and often zero access to courts, the top
figures in key state owned corporations, or leading politicians. There is
naturally a degree of competition between state-owned media, with Chinese
journalists straining to stretch the boundaries within which they are
required to operate. But there are limits, which foreign journalists
remain free to breach – sometimes meaning that some big stories are broken
abroad before being picked up within China itself, sometimes coming back
into China via the Internet.

Some subjects are temporarily declared off-limits, by explicit
instructions from the propaganda department. Other topics are more
permanently restricted, potentially landing foreign journalists in serious
trouble if they are breached: Falun gong, the Dalai Lama, Uighur
independence campaigners among them. There remain mysteries at the heart
of the Party – such as its funding and budgets – at which journalists
chisel away but which remain elusive.
 
Q: In relation to a musical event in China, you wrote, ‘cross-pollination
is viewed by the authorities as cross-pollution’. To what extent are the
Chinese authorities suspicious of foreigners across a range of
professions? And, in this context, what do you think of the controversy
surrounding the recent Communist Party circular ‘Document No. 9’ (also
known as the ‘Minutes of the 2013 National Conference of Propaganda Chiefs
– a briefing document on the current situation of ideology’) which warns
against ‘dangerous Western values’?
 <http://www.thechinastory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/JDM080414onlinewa
r.jpg>A cartoon circulated online in 2008 showing patriots engaged in
battle against the promoters of universal values (click on to enlarge).
Source: Danwei 
<http://www.danwei.org/internet/southern_metropolis_chang_ping.php>

A: The authorities have sought since 1978 to attract certain foreign
expertise – predominantly in technical and managerial areas. But the
Party, believing it incorporates China itself in its uniqueness, is
convinced that there are clear limits to what it can learn from
foreigners. It is far from a closed world, but it is a shielded world. The
concept of universal values – re-branded ‘Western’ values even though they
are widely espoused elsewhere in Asia – has come to be perceived in core
ideological circles within the Party as challenging or troubling. They are
viewed as a potential Trojan Horse carrying within it the potential to
erode Party – or, as often presented, ‘Chinese’ values. Similarly,
‘constitutionalism’ is also portrayed by powerful elements within the
party as dangerous – potentially leading to the constitution being placed
above the Party as the core source of authority and legitimacy in China.
The immediate rush of support for Charter 08 – the document that
eventually triggered the jailing of Liu Xiaobo, who was than awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize – when it was posted online, indicated the potential
support for such values branded as ‘Western’, in juxtaposition not only to
Chinese traditional values but also to the Party’s own communist values,
which may also be perceived to have ‘Western’ roots.

 
Q: Do you think the Party motto ‘serve the people’ has any meaning in
today’s China?

A: Yes, many people still join the Party in order not only to advance
their own careers and obtain access to state assets, but as a way to help
maintain China’s development, and as a channel for their altruism. The
motto of course remains prominent, in Mao’s own calligraphy, at the major
entrance to Zhongnanhai, the party HQ. Those who recruit Party members,
for instance at universities, hold out the Party as the sole effective way
for service, given the circumscribed scope permitted NGOs or churches or
indeed any other social organisation. But despite this manifest sincerity,
many Chinese people have become sceptical of such slogans in the face of
the large and widening wealth gap, and of the plethora of stories and
rumours about large-scale corruption among officials in a party whose lack
of accountability is itself a core driver of that corruption.

 
Q: In a recent interview with the ABC, you mentioned that Indonesia and
Taiwan offer useful examples of democratisation that China could
potentially follow without undermining its economic prosperity. Do you
know if China’s leadership is looking at those two Asian examples? More
generally, is there any evidence of the leadership seeking inspiration
from other Asian governments in its attempt to reform the existing system
in China?

A: China’s leaders have since the days of Deng Xiaoping held Singapore in
high regard as a successful fusion of corporate and political governance
under the guidance of a dominant party. My own raising of Indonesia is a
response to Chinese official critics who claim that democracy takes
centuries to install successfully, that it does not work in Asia, that
democracy can hold back economic growth, that democracy might work in
smaller countries but not in nations with populations of hundreds of
millions. But this is not an example which has any traction within China.

The case of Taiwan is quite different. Deng Xiaoping and Chiang Ching-kuo,
the son of Chiang Kai-shek, studied in Moscow at the same institution at
the same time. But at their two countries’ decisive moments, Deng took his
authoritarian party down one road, Chiang down another – risking all. As
it turned out, in placing the fate of the Kuomintang (Nationalists) in the
hands of Taiwan’s embryonic electorate, he gave the party a new lease of
life, with the voters granting it the sense of legitimacy that continues
to elude China’s Communist Party. The moves towards greater social and
economic harmony between the two countries continue; but politically they
remain poles apart. A question that must remain unanswered for now, is the
extent to which the rapidly enhanced familiarity on the part of
mainlanders towards Taiwan, may lead to their asking – though naturally in
the most guarded manner – whether following Chiang’s decisive loss in the
civil war, Taiwan has ended up having the better of it, in recent years,
both economically and politically.