Guest post by psychodrew
I first moved to China in August 2003, the summer after the SARS epidemic killed 774 people in Asia and North America. First reactions to my announcement usually fell into one of two categories. The first was the Are you crazy? Don’t you know people are dying of SARS? group. For those of you with concerns about SARS, I refer you to the foremost experts on this topic, the residents of South Park.
The second was the How can you live in such a brutal, authoritarian country where the people are so oppressed? group. For those of us who grew up during the Cold War–I was in high school when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled–the word communism likely congers images of a Chinese man standing in front of a tank in Beijing in June 1989, East German soldiers carrying the body of a man shot dead trying to escape to West Berlin, President Kennedy addressing the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or President Reagan in Berlin declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Thus, like those who questioned who me, I was anticipating a tightly controlled society where people were bitter and desperate for freedom.
What I found was a people who were optimistic about the future and generally satisfied with the government. Indeed, a Pew Research Center poll released in late July confirmed my observations that the majority of Chinese people are satisfied with the government’s performance and that they were optimistic about the future.
According to this poll (click here for the full report), 86% of respondents were satisfied with the country’s direction and 82% believed that the economy was good. That’s an increase of 38 pts and 30 pts, respectively, from 2002. Among 24 countries around the world, China ranked first in these two categories.
The growing Chinese economy may have something to do with Chinese attitudes about the government:
While corruption is seen as a problem, most Chinese (65%) believe the government is doing a good job on issues that are most important to them. However, poorer Chinese and residents of the western and central provinces covered in the survey give the government somewhat lower grades than do citizens in eastern China.
Some caveats:
First, the poll was taken after the riots in Tibet that fanned the flames of Chinese nationalism.
Second, excitement and pride over the Olympics has certainly contributed to the populations positive feelings toward the government and about their future. Over 90% of the respondents believed that the Olympics would help China’s image and 79% said that the games were “important to me personally.”
Third, the pollsters themselves acknowledged that they oversampled urban residents and that the sample was drawn from an area covering only 42% of the population.
Still, these results are stunning when you compare them to how Americans feel about their own country. According to Real Clear Politics (as of 8/10), the president’s approval rating stands at 29.2%. Congress is at 19.3%. And only 16.3% of Americans believe that the country is headed in the right direction.
Huh? How can people who do not have the freedom of speech, press, assembly, or religion have more positive feelings about their government than citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Well, compare the life of a recent high school graduate today to one 40 years ago. In 1968, China was the throws of the Cultural Revolution. Launched by Chairman Mao to distract attention from the economic catastrophe and famine that followed his Great Leap Forward and purge his enemies from power, the Cultural Revolution brought chaos and violence throughout the country and resulted in at least one failed coup. During the Cultural Revolution, the education system came to a halt as intellectuals were sent to the countryside, prison, or executed. The national university exams were halted until 1977, a year after Chairman Mao’s death. Students studied Mao Zedong Thought as the government nurtured a cult of personality.
A high school graduate in 1968 would not have been able to go to college-ever. The economy was in decline because of the political instability. Unless this student were connected enough to get a government job, a lifetime of labor in a factory or a state farm was the most likely outcome. That is, assuming this young person was not sent to the countryside to help develop the country, as one individual I know.
Today, a high school graduate can go to college. After he graduates, he can choose his own job. He doesn’t need to live in a housing unit provided by his company. He can get married without asking for his employer’s permission. He doesn’t have to join the Communist Party to get ahead in life. And while criticizing the Communist Party in 1968 may have brought a death sentence, today it largely goes unpunished.
Does this mean that Chinese people are content with censored internet access and restrictions on speech? Of course not. But for the first time in centuries, the country is united, the people are prospering, and society is stable. For a civilization that knew only civil war, occupation, imperialism, political upheaval, famine, and poverty for the 150 years preceding the era of reform that began in 1978, life is good and getting better. Is it perfect? Of course not. According to the Pew Research Center Poll, Chinese people identified the following as the five biggest problems facing the nation–rising prices, the gap between rich and poor, corrupt officials, air pollution, and unemployment.
The Communist Party believes that the Chinese people will tolerate fewer civil liberties if the party can continue to deliver more opportunities and a better life. Do things the way we want, they say, and you and your children will have a better life. And the people seem willing to accept that bargain. In fact, the Pew Research Center poll found that 76% of the respondents supported the government’s one-child policy, although support was greater among higher income Chinese than lower income Chinese.
This kind of trade-off should not be shocking to Americans. During the 2006 Congressional battle over the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, a Rasmussen poll found that only 31% of Americans opposed extending the law. As recently as 2006 (the last year for which I can find polling data), Gallup found that 31% of Americans were willing to give up some civil liberties in exchange for protection from terrorism, that a majority (55%) supported President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program and that by a 48%-41% margin, the plurality of Americans said it was more important to convict terror suspects on evidence they don’t see than to risk setting them free by withholding classified information.
Some will accuse me of being an apologist for the Chinese government. But I’m not. The government does horrible things. It puts political prisoners in labor camps. Spies on its own people. Controls the media and censors the internet. Abuses the criminal justice system for its own good. And it turns a blind eye to corruption when doing so serves its purposes. But when evaluating the life of the Chinese people and the performance of the government, you need to look at the government’s performance as a whole and the beliefs of the Chinese people.
To pigeonhole the Chinese government as brutal, oppressive and insensitive because of its human rights record is akin to saying that George Bush has been a good president for national security because there have been no domestic terror attacks since 2001. The Chinese people do want more freedom, but for now, they have other concerns. At the end of the day, free speech doesn’t pay the bills. If it did, wouldn’t our own government’s approval ratings be in the 90′s?
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