Until recently, it has been very hard in China to say in public that the government, which calls itself the People\u2019s Republic of China, in fact is something quite different from the people of China. No medium would carry such a message. But now, with the slippery Internet, such messages do get out, and do spread. They get partly blocked, but not stopped.<\/p>\n
This month, Han Han, aged 28, a master of Aesopian wit and probably China\u2019s most widely read blogger, wrote this:<\/p>\n
The world over, a country is like a woman and the government is like the man who possesses her. Some couples live happily and feel satisfied. Some get along smoothly. Some have tense relations, some see domestic violence. In some cases the woman can divorce the guy and marry someone else, and in other cases she\u2019s not allowed to. But whatever the case, when you love a woman you shouldn\u2019t have to crank \u201cloving her man\u201d into the bargain.<\/p>\n
Han Han is somewhat different from the \u201cdissidents\u201d in China. He writes in elusive, acerbic terms \u2014 the \u201ccool\u201d language of younger people, who are his main readership \u2014 and gets away with statements that are at least as devastating as anything dissidents say. He differs, too, in the numbers of his readers. An intellectual dissident feels lucky if an Internet essay draws 20,000 hits. Han Han\u2019s essays often get more than a million, as well as strings of comments in the tens of thousands. Since its inception in November 2006, Han Han\u2019s blog has had 421 mllion visits. His huge following protects him, too, because China\u2019s rulers can imagine the size of the rebellion that a shut-down of his blog might trigger.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 18, the anniversary of Japan\u2019s invasion of China\u2019s northeastern provinces in 1931, Han Han wrote a razor-sharp commentary on the protests against Japan that are taking place in China. On Sept. 8, a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels off barren rocks known as the Diaoyu Islands that are claimed as national territory by both China and Japan. Japanese officers arrested the Chinese boat captain and brought him to Japan, after which people took to the streets in many Chinese cities to defend China\u2019s national pride and territorial integrity.<\/p>\n
Anti-Japanese protests happen from time to time in China, and China\u2019s rulers generally welcome them as ways to mobilize popular opinion behind the Communist Party leadership and to distract attention from domestic problems like corruption, inequality and environmental degradation. But such protests are a double-edged sword because they underscore the legitimacy of protest itself.<\/p>\n
In Han Han\u2019s view, the anti-Japan protesters of the past month have been used. His blog post addresses his fellow citizens this way:<\/p>\n
There are three roles on China\u2019s stage today: master, lackey, and dog. Most of us switch between two of the three. (Which two? Well, you can hardly expect yourself to be the master, can you?) Normally what the master wants from the lackeys is craven docility, but right now he needs some yipping dogs. No problem! Because in a dog\u2019s mind, no matter how the master treats you, when an outsider shows up it\u2019s your job to guard the homestead. …Deep inside, our leaders aren\u2019t really angry. They just feel emasculated. And so, in their view, we are supposed to feel emasculated, too. But who ever took to the streets shouting \u201cI\u2019ve been emasculated!\u201d? That only makes things worse. During times when the leaders\u2019 face is intact, they smack us in the mouth; when they lose face, we\u2019re supposed to earn it back for them. How do we take this?<\/p>\n
Han Han then addresses the government, this way:<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t tell me that you and I are equally hurt by these \u201cmotherland\u201d issues. … In our country the common people do not own one inch of the land; all the land, as you know, is rented from you. So from where I sit this issue resembles a tiff between my landlord and my neighbor over a tile that is lying on the ground. I know that the tile was blown off my landlord\u2019s roof during a high wind, and also know that the landlord, who is afraid to fight the neighbor, has never dared to go fetch the tile. But what does that have to do with me, the tenant? Why should somebody with no land fight to get somebody else\u2019s land back? Why should a tenant with no dignity fight for his landlord\u2019s dignity? How much are people like that worth, per pound? How many would it take to add up to one pound?<\/p>\n
At the end of his essays Han Han drops the allegorical mode and states plainly that \u201cProtests against foreigners by people who are not allowed to protest at home are utterly worthless. They are nothing but a group dance.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The authorities apparently do not dare to shut Han Han\u2019s blog down. But they did erase this particular item, about 50 minutes after he posted it. Those 50 minutes, though, were enough to get it onto Chinese Twitter, where it was a hit all last week and from where it has spread around the world.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Perry Link <\/strong> is chairman of Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside, and author of \u201cEvening Chats in Beijing,\u201d as well as co-editor of \u201cThe Tiananmen Papers.\u201d<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em> Perry Link <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Message Too Powerful to Stop By PERRY LINK Until recently, it has been very hard in China to say in public that the government, which calls itself the People\u2019s Republic of China, in fact is something quite different from … Continue reading