This Generation (27 page)

That's right, writing these things on a microblog makes me feel good, for I am vain and sometimes even a bit hypocritical. As I achieve more in life, I can pretend to be less and less vain, since I have more reason to think highly of myself. But I remain vain internally. To opt out of attending awards ceremonies or upper-crust
events is actually just another form of vanity, rather than genuine detachment. After keeping a blog for years now, I'm not easily distracted by people's comments or expectations. But if I keep a microblog for a few days I find myself immersed in a heroic fantasy world. Of course, maybe it's just me who acts that way. Maybe everyone else can write without a second thought, dash things off effortlessly and maintain their composure while displaying their art, without all the second-guessing that I do. But I felt an unhealthy state of mind was affecting me, so I decided to close down my microblog. If you're not a writer, on the other hand, a microblog might be a good way to spice up your life and unveil a better version of yourself.

Microblogs have altered the form and speed with which information is transmitted and have complicated efforts to block it. In reality, of course, it is the Internet that has changed everything, and it's a variety of products that have made communication that much more convenient. I have an alternative online pseudonym that I use regularly to sign in and see what's going on. Actually there's no real difference from before—it's just less trouble to access. I used to get my news from the papers, and I might have to look at twenty newspapers; later I would sign into chat rooms—four or five of them; and now we have microblogs, and so long as I follow enough people's microblogs and they are all to my liking, then all I need is a single account. Although more scandals are publicized than before, the issues go away all the more quickly. When you read the papers, a month or two after an event you still see follow-up, in-depth reports. When I was in middle school, I was under the impression that if a scandal was uncovered it would be a topic of discussion for months. Later, twelve years ago, when I began to join online discussions, I realized just how many things I had been in the dark about before. Now, when you access microblogs you hear about even more things, but unless an event is really tragic, something that is news in the morning will have disappeared from view in the afternoon, and you need to do an online search to find any trace of it. But what I have learned is that, through all this time, I have remained pretty much
the same person I was before, and I don't seem to have affected the people around me, who just carry on with their own concerns and interests. I don't think it's the case that my essays have influenced readers' tastes; rather, they have simply been consumed by readers who share the same tastes.

The result, I find, is not that people change, but that like-minded people come together in one place. In my own microblog universe, you're bound to feel that this government is the pits and that its days are numbered. If you read someone else's microblog, you find that life is comfortable and everything is great. And so, the world you see is simply the one that you follow online. And that world is updated so constantly you don't even have time to download it.

There were a couple of days last week when all my time was taken up with motor racing and I didn't go online at all. Only afterward, on the way home, did I check the latest microblog messages. A friend of mine posted something about a tragic incident that happened over a week ago. He had given the matter a lot of thought, done some research, and after seven or eight days came to a certain conclusion about what actually happened. His analysis made a lot of sense and I expressed full agreement. Usually a lot of people forward his messages, but only a few dozen people forwarded this one, and a post on the first page of comments read, “How come there are still people commenting on this? We already had our say on that.”

December 23, 2011

Recently I've been looking over
questions that readers have sent in, and the topics of revolution and reform have come up repeatedly. The media love to ask me about these things too, but all that happens is that I talk and they listen—there's no way that what I say will appear in a newspaper. Whatever view you take on these issues, you're likely to get in trouble. But here I'm going to devote the whole post to my ideas about revolution, merging together my answers both to readers and the media.

Q. Mass protests have recently been springing up in China. Do you think China needs a revolution?

A. In a country whose social makeup is increasingly complex—and particularly when that country is in Asia—the final winners in a revolution are bound to be ruthless and cruel. To be quite frank, revolution is a word which sounds refreshing and exciting and seems to promise instant results, but for China it's not necessarily a good choice. For a start, a revolution needs to make demands, and demands normally
begin with an attack on corruption. But that kind of demand can't sustain itself very long. Freedom or justice doesn't have a market either, because apart from some writers, artists, and journalists, if you ask the average man or woman in the street if they are free, they generally feel that they are; and if you ask them whether they need justice, the prevailing view is that so long as they personally don't suffer injustice, that's sufficient. It's not everyone who regularly experiences unfair treatment, so they won't identify with efforts to seek justice and freedom for others. In China it's very hard to formulate a demand that has collective appeal. So it's not a question of whether a revolution is needed or not, it's a question of whether it can possibly happen. My view is: It's neither possible nor necessary. But if you ask me whether China needs more substantial reform, my answer is: absolutely.

Q. Why don't you lead an uprising yourself?

A. You've got to be kidding. Even if I identified with revolution and led an uprising in Shanghai and it won widespread support, all the government has to do is shut down the Internet and block cell phone signals, and I bet that without the government even mobilizing its stability-maintenance machine those angry protestors will be so devastated by their inability to chat with their friends through instant messaging or play games on the Internet or watch recordings of soap operas that they'll crush me in no time at all. Don't harbor the fantasy that you can support me by constantly updating the posts on your microblog, because you won't even be able to open the thing, and after three days of that you're going to start hating me.

Q. Do you mean to say that China doesn't need democracy and freedom?

A. There's a lot of confusion about this. Intellectuals tend to think of democracy and freedom as a single package. Actually, for the Chinese, democracy may well lead to a lack of freedom. In the eyes of most Chinese, freedom has nothing to do with publishing, media, and culture, or with personal expression, elections, and politics, but with public standards of behavior. Thus, people with no access to power feel free to make an uproar, jaywalk, and spit, while people with connections feel free to ignore regulations, take advantage of loopholes, and engage in all kinds of malfeasance. Good democracy brings with it social progress and greater respect for the law, and this is bound to make the majority of people—who are not concerned about cultural freedom—feel that they're not as free as before, just as when many Chinese visit developed countries they feel acutely uncomfortable. So democracy and freedom don't necessarily go hand in hand. I feel that Chinese people have their own unique definition of freedom; freedom in the broader sense doesn't get much traction in China.

Q. China's problems are just too deeply rooted, so reform is not going to get us anywhere. Only with a revolution can we really turn things around, right?

A. Let's suppose that revolution is allowed to develop and there's no clampdown. No, that's impossible. Let's imagine for a moment that a revolution takes place and makes a certain amount of progress: There's no way that students, ordinary people, the social elite, intellectuals, peasants, and workers can all reach a common understanding. And we always overlook a section of the population—that's to say the poor, who number some two hundred fifty million. Under normal circumstances you wouldn't notice their existence, because they never use the Internet. If a revolution has reached an intermediate stage, it has to have generated a
new leader, for a revolution without a leader can't hope to succeed—the White Lotus uprising is a good example. But a revolution with a leader is not necessarily going to be something much to celebrate—the Taiping Rebellion is a good example of that.
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A Chinese-style leader is going to be nothing like the kind and humane person that you imagine when you sit there in front of your computer. A Chinese-style leader most likely will be arbitrary and imperious, selfish and crazy, vicious but also an effective demagogue. Hmm, yes, that does sound a bit familiar, doesn't it? But Chinese people will go along with it, and only if you're like that can you climb to the top of the heap, for this society is accustomed to scoundrels ruling the roost and good guys getting the chop. The kind of leaders that young intellectuals would favor would be kicked out within a week, I reckon, and the more educated you are the less likely it is that you would pledge allegiance to a leader. So these people will be the first to abandon the revolution.

With the departure of the social elite, there is bound to be a change in the composition of the revolutionary masses. No matter how appealing the revolution's original slogan, in the end it is bound to boil down to a single word—money. The nice way to put it would be that we're taking back what really belongs to us; the more unpleasant way to put it would be that, in the eyes of an egalitarian, looting is legitimate. I know what you're thinking: Because I've made some money, I'm scared shitless that I'll lose it all. But that's not it. In the surging tide of revolution, if you have an iPhone, if you drive a motorcycle, or even if you just surf the Internet or regularly buy a newspaper and eat at Kentucky Fried Chicken, then
you count as someone with money. So long as you are capable of reading this essay online, that makes you a target for revolution, dripping with original sin. Someone with a fortune of a hundred million yuan is actually safer than someone with property worth ten thousand, because when the richer man opens his door in the morning, his copy of the
New York Times
is sitting right there—he already has a home abroad. In the end, the ones who suffer will be the middle class, the quasi-middle class, and even the quasi-affluent. In the political campaigns of the past, people turned on others and drove them to their deaths, and these days, people have become inured to wrecking other people's lives for the sake of monetary advantage. So just imagine what's going to happen. Plus, we Chinese believe in settling scores, so we are bound to see some violent convulsions.

Any revolution needs time, and with China as big as it is, even setting aside the prospect of nationwide chaos, warlord rivalries, and a power vacuum, if things drag on for five—or ten—years, ordinary working people are bound to look forward to some dictator with an iron fist who can restore order and sort things out. If that entails giving up on liberalization and reverting to
People's Daily
orthodoxy, it won't matter to them. Besides, all our hypotheses are predicated on the army being subordinate to the government rather than the Communist Party, so these are all fantasies, and when even fantasies are not optimistic, the real thing is bound to be ten times worse.

Q. Well, what about Egypt and Libya . . . ?

A. They were both governed for decades by a dictator, and their cities are few. In countries like that, with a single incident as a trigger and a single square as the focus for protests, revolution can succeed. In China, there is no one specific individual who can be the target of revolution—there are many
cities and a huge population, and all kinds of shocking disasters have already happened. The G-spot is already numb, never mind the flashpoint. Even if social contradictions were ten times more intense than they are now and even if we had ten Vaclav Havels giving speeches simultaneously in ten different cities, and if we imagine too that the authorities don't interfere, ultimately these speeches will end up becoming advertisements for sore throat lozenges delivered in the Haidian Playhouse.

Of course, all that is beside the point. The most important thing is that most Chinese people wouldn't blink at seeing other people slaughtered, for they cry out only when they personally suffer. It would be impossible for them all to maintain solidarity.

Q. Your position seems just like that of the government's paid minions—has your palm been greased, too? Why can't we elect our president through one-person, one-vote?

A. In a society like this where things are either one way or another, black or white, right or wrong, boss or flunky, the very word
revolution
itself sounds intimidating, and when put into practice it's going to wreak even more havoc. Many people think introducing one-person, one-vote is China's most pressing need, but this is not so. If we do that, the final result is bound to be that the Chinese Communist Party's candidate will win, for who has more money than the CCP? With fifty billion yuan, they can easily buy five hundred million votes. If fifty billion's not enough, they can raise the figure to five hundred billion—the nation's annual tax revenues come to ten trillion, after all. How are you going to compete with that? You feel that the friends in your circle are fair and independent, but adding up all their votes can't amount to more than several hundred thousand ballots, and those enlightened would-be legislators that you admire
would be lucky to muster as many as one hundred thousand votes. The only person who can hold his own with the CCP is Ma Huateng,
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because he can pop open a window when your instant messaging service starts up and say: “Vote for me and I'll give you five thousand in Q coins.” He can certainly count on two hundred million votes by doing that. But the problem is, Ma Huateng will have joined the Communist Party by that point.