Dear Mr Kerr (et al),

 Herewith an extended version of my comment, re: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/19/waiting-wikileaks-beijings-seven-secrets/

 Since 2006 I have worked with Chinese who are journalists, editors, and television media personalities,  producers, editors, directors, sales/marketing people, presenters, hosts, and cameramen. Previously (2002-2005) I was involved in a messy romantic relationship with the top and most highly-recognized news anchor of a municipal-level network; and from 2008 to 2009 I lectured to bi-lingual broadcasting majors at one of China's top-ranking specialty universities for broadcasting. I know more than a bit about how media/news in China works; and I note this, now, to give you a frame of reference for what follows.  

If one works for state media, then one is doing state PR, and state marketing. Period. It is impossible to be in a broadcast/journalism major, to complete internships, and to get into print or broadcast media and not know that you are in effect working for an advertising agency.  And for the most part, work in the media racket is pretty good, by Chinese government-sector (and sometimes by private sector) standards.  I have made these points elsewhere, in greater detail:

http://open.salon.com/blog/bamboo_sarissa/2010/07/13/prcs_cnn_in_nyc  

...and I refer you/parties to this discussion to that post.

In fine, however, it breaks down like this:   Media work in China is great – if you can get it. But you get your post, advance, and keep your position in the system only if you’re willing to play the game the right way. If a mainland Chinese wants to use writing, journalism, photography, etc., to criticize the Party, then s/he had best stay out of media.   In other words, one cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds too. Whistleblowers, hard-core investigative journalists, would-be reformers --- they’re not martyrs, or heroes, or brave souls deserving of “our” support and admiration; they’re just people who don’t understand their job description. 

And that's one of the things that pisses-off department heads/cadres about these wannabe "dissidents":  Media jobs are not always well-paying, and are glamorous for a few only; but the perks are sensational, and the work is pretty easy most of the time. Anyone actually attempting to exploit the structure of PRC media to reform the Party is the paradigmatic case of biting the hand that feeds. Alternatively, men and women who grandstand – stand-up to the Party, "take-on injustice", fight the good fight – are either (i) insane, or (ii) hoping to catapult themselves into the spotlight for personal gain.

Breaking the rules will only make the Party tighten its throttlehold on the media industry – and only the mentally-infirm or very selfish do not grasp this. There are better and worse ways to use journalism (etc.) to nudge things along, and often times certain officials/cadres want media to advance a new and perhaps heterodox idea.  But the PRC's media machine isn't evil; it's the machine you get - perhaps: the machine you need - as you attempt to run an enormous country with a massive population that has inherited culturally a mindset rather unlike ours.

And so your friends, I’m sad to say, have got it all wrong. They’re not being harassed for attempting to do good journalism or good works; they are being harassed for attempting to do journalism in a country where real journalism doesn’t exist and where (at the moment) doesn't belong.

Here’s a story that might interest you -- I hope it helps me make my point a little clearer.

The “Balloon Fun” franchise once had several hundred shops in China. The chain was founded by a sister of a friend of mine, who I will refer to as ‘Dot’.  If I remember the story rightly, Dot’s husband won rights to the brand as part of the divorce settlement. That meant that the savvy, enterprising Dot – now a single mother with a 2 year old boy – had to find another source of income – apart from the one or two retail outlets of the chain she continued to own and operate.

While out in the ZJ hinterland one day sometime in 2008, Dot found a little tea plantation (down near Taizhou, I think) that was growing a rare but not famous variety of tea. A tea connoisseur herself, Dot made some enquiries, and realized that these leaves were ripe for the picking --  that is, Dot could probably go into the tea business.  As mainlanders grew in affluence and ethnic confidence, wealthy Chinese nationals were gradually (and selectively)  reconnecting with tea culture and other aspects of Chinese high-culture. The tea and tea house industry in China had been bouncing back since the late 90’s (at least), and there was money to be made in small-harvest local niche teas.

Dot didn’t know much about agriculture, but she knew a lot about branding. Dot also knew that “the new countryside” was high on Beijing’s political agenda, and that applying economic stimulus to the local countryside would be appreciated – and facilitated – by the Party.  Dot knew also that – for this very reason – local television and newspapers would run stories, articles, interviews, etc., about her, her venture, her product, and (eventually) her brand of tea --- for free. All she needed to do was make a few phonecalls to friends within the media industry -- and take them for tea.

Local Party chieftains get points for advancing things on Beijing’s agenda; and  if you are the editor of a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast news-desk, you are forever thinking about what kind of copy you can run that is locally-relevant, doesn't feel like propagandistic pablum, and is...safe.  Dot’s story had everything they could possibly want in good copy: there was the "green"/environmentally friendly angle; she was a young urban entrepreneur; a young urban female entrepreneur; young urban female entrepreneur making money by bringing money to the poor hinterland… Not really riveting stuff; but good enough.

So the news items ran for free, as did the mini-documentary. The writers and editors and camera crews sent out to do the writing and taping got to leave the city and go play in the village and eat at cozy little nong jia le establishments, wile the bosses (all the way up the food chain) were pleased with the copy. Locals liked seeing their little community on tv, and urban residents - especially those lately from the countryside - love to see evidence that things are getting in the outback --- and that there's money still to be made there.

Everybody wins.

Ask Dot - ask middle-class Chinese businesspeople - if they want wide-sweeping changes to the way news and information is managed in the PRC. You’ll find a greater variety of answers than you think --- at least when you're getting honest answers, which is unlikely if you are a foreign snoop talking through an intepreter to someone you don't know who clearly appreciates that you're exploiting her for your own purposes. 

Dot couldn’t have launched her product if she had to pay for those column-inches and that airtime - because, let's face it: it wasn't that interesting, really - and Dot’s situation is similar to other businessfolk who know how to play the game.  Many Chinese may complain about freedom of expression issues; but the ever-growing middle-class – the people best-positioned to redirect the shape of modern China – often have vested interests in not having free-market forces determine media content.

Look. The urban upwardly-mobile get their news online, and from dish network. They know how to get the information they need to make the decisions they must in order to realize the priorities they have according to the values they embrace; and this class of Chinese (so far as I can tell) appears very content (at least in the short-term) to let their less-mobile, off-line countryside brethren have whatever bread and circuses the Beijing media pipeline pumps into their TV’s and a.m. radios. The last thing the new middle class wants is a revolution of the Chinese proletariat, or plebiscites that could hazard the semi-illiterate majority derailing 30+ years of progress.   Media works just fine in China – for most of the Chinese, most of the time.  And as for the Party’s literal or figurative pistol-whipping of the “troublemakers”, I say: Most of them get what they deserve. But that's none of my business, really.

Now, I hope I never claimed or suggested that the Party has the support of the people tout court. What I have said and what I do maintain is that the flourishing of the Party requires only (a) that the Party remains responsive (or: seems to remain responsive) to the basic needs of the majority, and (b) that the Party shows always that things are getting better – economically and socially - and are not getting worse.  Note also that the content of that “better” is a Chinese “better”, not an American "better"; and while there is some overlap, these value-sets are not identical.  (Remember: We're talking about a culture where parents of unmarried children meet in parks and public plazas with placards advertising marriagble youth.)  If you or anyone else is claiming that the Chinese want from each other (in their communities) and from each other (in their society) the same things Americans want, you are mistaken. 

And what, Mr Kerr, do you “love” about China? Let’s examine this.

What can one reasonably say to "love" about a country? I address this issue towards the end of "Postexilic (4)".

1. "I love their history" – well, surely only the good parts. Unless one means “I love reading and studying history”, and in that case the object of one’s affection is the documented history of nation/people X, and the pleaure of becoming acquainted with it and understanding it; but this kind of love, surely, could not justify anything other than the perpetuation of X’s history (and hopefully: only the good parts!) and the renewal of works of history to peruse and enjoy. 

2. "I love their culture" – ok, well, which parts? The culture of footbinding? The culture of eating dogs? The culture of xenophobia, and racism?:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/lou-jing-chinese-talent-show

http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/10/21/lou-jing-racism-gone-wild/

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/lou-jing-faces-racism-tv-talent-show-china-over-skin-color-2542856.html

How very curious! Why are Chinese netizens heroes when they blog/post things that accord with liberal Western sentiments, but are invisible, beyond reproach, or simply unintersting when they - China's hoi bloggeroi - reveal the darker side of the Chinese psyche?  It was odd that when Louisa Lim reported on the Lou Jing case for NPR, she failed to mention how very ugly the good neitzens of China can be. Why is that?  (She also did not mention the www.chinasmack.com article -- which now a broken link, and which I'm sure informed and seeded her report.)

So “love” of China cannot mean history, or culture simpliciter – not without extensive qualification. So perhaps you mean the people – you love "the Chinese people".

But surely, not all of them – I imagine you would exclude the thugs and burglars and bandits and rapists and knife-wielding psychopaths who carve up school children. I am sure you would have no more love for a Chinese murderer than you would for a Dutch or Swiss or Canadian murderer, so, no – you do not love these Chinese. How about the Chinese snakeheads, who manage the children forced to sell flowers, the dirty tots who grab your knees and thrust roses into your closed hands? How about the Chinese  who  run rings of teenaged female prostitutes, and ship them around the country, from brothel to sauna to KTV?  How about the Chinese merchants of human bondage? No, not these Chinese either. (Yikes! Some of these folks seem even worse than normal, well-adjusted Party members!)

No, I say the love you profess must be the love one has for the generalized and idealized Chinese - the Exotic Oriental Other-- because otherwise, there is nothing distinctly Chinese that is especially loveable that would not be shared by all love-worthy people, whatever their citizenship or ethnicity.

If  you have found that the Chinese uniformly have some especially lovable trait that no other people has, and that they have this trait on account of being Chinese, please tell me. But I doubt such a trait exists, because, like everywhere else, there are Chinese arsonists, rapists, paedophiles, and cutpurses.  Indeed, China has Chinese CCP members -- and they are intrinisically not lovable, right? How could you love a people who are oppressed, and are willing to suffer oppression rather than die honorably in noble revolt? (Answer: Perhaps there's less oppression and dissatisfaction and discontent than our media and our busybody academics say there is. Either that, or most Chinese are cowardly -- and if so, is being cowardly a loveable characteristic? One cannot have it both ways, I'm afraid.)

I suspect that what you love about China is how you feel when you are in China --- how you feel about yourself when you are in China.  That, sir, I totally understand, for I too love being in China.  I am at my best and I am happiest when I am there, and - for whatever reason - I feel like I am at home there. I love being in China. I love many things and some people in China.

And I am sure, too, that – though I love (some) of the food, (many) of the people, (much) of the culture, (most) of the philosophy, and do love to read Chinese history (etc.) – that it is still nonsense for me to say that I love China --- because: there is nothing to which that affective state ['loving China'] can attach itself without so much qualification that, eventually, there is nothing for the "I love China" to stick to. In everyday language, yes, sure: You love China. I love China. But in fact the phrase is... meaningless. And if it is not meaningless, then, it is nonetheless impossible to infer or to deduce from the fact that "I love China" any obligation to interfere practically with matters of state in a nation that I am not a legal citizen of.

Perhaps, Mr Kerr, I "love" China as you do, perhaps as much as you do; but though China is my adoptive (second-) home, and the land in which I find so much of what I do love, and love deeply, I do not confuse my love of China (etc.) with the reality that she is not my native land, that she needn’t embrace me as I embrace her, and that when I am there I am there as a guest of the Chinese people and their current version of (unloved) Chinese officialdom.

I reprimand mainland friends and colleagues when they reveal their racist sentiments; but I have not yet found that it is my duty to correct “Chinese racism”. I try to be civil and courteous according to those Western norms I know best; but I am unaware of any obligation to or warrant for Westernizing “the Chinese”, or encouraging them to embrace Western norms of civility as I understand them.

Nor, for that matter, would I let my child piss on a metropolitan sidewalk, or ride in my black Audi A-6 with her head out of the sunroof like a Golden Retriever, or detonate commerical-grade recreational ordnance on the sidewalk she just pissed on.  (Normal Chinese behaviour.) I wouldn’t keep a caged bird.  (Ditto.) I wouldn’t drive drunk, or force dinner guests to gan’bei themselves into a coma. (Ditto.) I wouldn't  keep a mistress, or pay for her affections with a studio apartment, a Mini Cooper, LV bags and Lancome skincare products.  (Ditto.) I wouldn't wait until my son is 11 years-old before I have him submit to a circumcision -- and then tell him that whacking-off is bad for his health. (Ditto.) I wouldn't force my post-partum wife to suffer a month of old-style yue'zi on account of the fact that my mother and the local witchdoctor said it would be good for her. (Ditto.)

Aye -- there are a million things I find questionable about many Chinese norms, and about the Chinese lifestyle; but I know that these are tethered somewhere, somehow, to a suite of values, and that some of these are very different from my own. Given that - and given that I am a guest in their country anyway, with no legal right to be there save at with their permission  – well, how could it be my business to... reform them? ...even if I love" them, and want the best for them? The Chinese allow me to live and work in their country because I have some valued skill or skills; they do not allow me to live in their country because they want or need lessons in Jack Cameron's understanding and interpretation of Western etiquette or Western morals, or Dr Cameron's lectures on political theory.

Political reform – and reform of rights to self-expression – require adjustment to the wild and weird matrix of values that make the Chinese so different from Americans, and perhaps from Westerners generally.  The Chinese cannot be an open, democratic society (like the US) and still be the same Chinese --- it doesn’t work that way. You can't take away their bao'zi and let them eat it too.

And anyway, I’d much, much rather see interloping, know-it-all, paternalistic Americans  lobbying aggressively for, say, Chinawide legislation requiring Chinese motorists to keep their children in approved child-safety seats,  and policies that strictly prohibit the little emperor from crawling on mama’s unbelted lap while baba texts his mistress and dodges jaywalkers, or enforcement of rules regarding the detonation of fireworks in densely-populated urban areas.

But that's not my fight, even though I'm guided by the very best of intentions --- as well as the wish not to be run down by a black Audi A-6, fragged by commercial-grade fireworks, or witness to a toddler having his head turned into cranial quince on the windshield of baba's black Audi A-6.  (Does that make me selfish?). Somehow, though, none of that is as exciting as "stopping CCP corruption", or "stemming the tide of Han encroachment upon Chinese Turkestan", or "freeing 'dissidents'", is it? And anyway, I don't think the majorAmerican thinktanks and charitable trusts offer grants and fund research for such unsexy things.