Beijing, the Olympics, and the New China

Grace, Samuel, and I at the Lama Temple in Beijing. It’s the biggest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet.

It is hard to visit Beijing--like we did this last weekend--without reflecting on just how much the Olympics are going to change China. For sure, the Olympic craze is not just located in Beijing. The entire country (even Hohhot) seems to be mobilizing for this transformative event (including nearly 4000 people throughout China naming their newborns Aoyun, or "Olympics"). But certainly this mobilization is most apparent in Beijing, where the city is being modernized and sanitized. For many Chinese, Olympic preparations just mean more traffic and more headaches, or worse, dislocation from older neighborhoods in central Beijing. But for the Chinese government, the Olympics provide an opportunity to showcase the "New China" to the world.

This is when I visited Beijing: 271 days, 13 hours, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds before the beginning of the 2008 Summer Games. This large clock stands in front of an imposing government building on the eastern edge of Tiananmen Square. I apologize for the darkness: I took this photo at 6:30 A.M. While Arienne and the kids slept, I went to see the daily hoisting of the Chinese flag above Tiananmen—a popular activity for Chinese tourists to Beijing.

Our weekend trip provided the opportunity to reflect on the "New China," beginning with our departure from Hohhot's shining new international airport, just opened in mid-August, shortly after our arrival in Hohhot. As we waited for our flight--surrounded by China's business and government elite--we wandered through high-end clothing stores that sold khakis for 850 RMB (over $100) and cashmere sweaters for 2000 RMB (over $250), or twice as much as Chinese peasants make in an entire year and about twice as much as teachers at IMNU make in an entire month.

During our short flight to Beijing (Boeing 737 on China United Airlines, a small carrier), I browsed through the in-flight magazine, which looked just like in-flight magazines on American carriers. The first advertisement was a two-page spread for Mercedes-Benz, followed in succession by ads for the 2008 Camry, the "all-new Volvo S80," and the Cadillac Escalade. I had to flip through ads for Lacoste, Samsung, and PORTS 1961 (high-end Euro designer clothing), before I found the table of contents, which listed the following article titles in English and Chinese (unfortunately the articles themselves were written only in Chinese): "Monaco Beyond your Imagination;" "Treasure Up the Beautiful Time with Delicacies;" "The Story of Pearls;" "Passing the Wealth Torch;" "Chinese Elements in Hollywood;" and "Legacy Left by Pavorotti."

As we descended into Beijing, we passed over a beautiful golf course--a sport that used to epitomize the bourgeois leisure classes was now becoming popular among the Chinese elite. I could not imagine the drab grey communist world of the 1970s when western people were kept separate from the larger culture so as not to pollute the Chinese with their decadent ways. There are still concerns in China about "spiritual pollution" from the West, but no longer is China separated from western ways, especially bourgeois capitalism, which projects itself across the face of urban China with a dizzying onslaught of advertisements that makes American consumer culture seem tame by comparison. Ironically, the legitimacy of the communist Chinese government is now entirely dependent upon the continued expansion of China's market economy. As long as the communist party can keep China's GDP growing and can improve the material existence for a majority of Chinese, the party can maintain its hold on power (a big "if" given the increasing energy demands of the nation, environmental crises and limitations, and global market competition).

Riding bikes on Saturday, we emerged from a narrow hutong alleyway to see this view of modern Beijing, with sparkling buildings and luxury sedans.

Rob Gifford--an NPR correspondent who has recently written a book called "China Road"--says that since the 1990s, the Chinese government has made an unspoken compact with the Chinese people: don’t touch politics and you can do whatever you want. After the coercive and intrusive policies of the 1950s-1970s (such as Mao's Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), leaving politics behind was a pretty enticing proposition. Chinese people bought the deal: they have opted out of politics to pursue more personal freedom in the marketplace. Gifford makes the metaphor that China used to be a bird cage but now it is an aviary--you can’t fly up into the clear blue sky, but you can move around with much more freedom.

But how long can such a pact last? How long until consumer freedoms no longer satisfy the majority of Chinese? The young generation (like my students) is the first to come of age after Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and Opening." They are apparently not political (some would say to the point of being profoundly cynical about politics), but they are the first generation in modern China to grow up with a sense of freedom and even rebellion. I have students who wear blue contact lenses, long hair, baggy jeans, and are greatly influenced by hip-hop music. In a recent China Daily, a promoter of the Chinese hip-hop scene describes the music as "anti-establishment." He says, "I think that mainstream kids are enjoying their first taste of rebellion here in China."

Hip-hop is clearly not political rebellion. But where will all this consumer freedom and self-expression end? Can the Chinese government really control the outcome of its devil's bargain with the Chinese people?

And this brings me back to the impact that the Olympics will have on Beijing and Chinese society in general. Can Chinese society truly "open up" to the rest of world for a short period of time and control the consequences? Can it police the boundaries of Chinese society during and after the Olympics as completely as it polices Tiananmen Square, which today is patrolled by a large police presence, video cameras, and hundreds of plain-clothes agents?

A large police presence keeps things orderly in Tiananmen Square. At 6:00 AM, after the police herded thousands of early-rising tourists (including myself) through two main gates, I tried to take a walk to the south end of the square, away from the crowds waiting for the flag-raising. No such luck. I guess gratuitous wandering time happens later in the day.

The friendly police state: a poster at the Tiananmen East subway stop.

Deng Yaping, a winner of four Olympic gold medals in table-tennis, believes that "The Olympic legacy for Beijing will not only be the venues, not only the roads, but for the Chinese people to know the world." She says the Olympics “will open Chinese minds, let them understand more about Western culture, history and way of doing things, ways of thinking."

If she is correct--if China is really going to open up to the world--then the Olympics might be even more profound for China than an opportunity to showcase its modernization and economic progress.

Well, I'm not trying to be a revolutionary or a know-it-all. Obviously, I have no clue about what the Olympics will mean. Maybe nothing. But looking at the physical city of Beijing (because that’s all I can do, since I don’t read or speak Chinese), it's hard to see a communist state (except for all the large-scale government buildings). On the other hand, it’s very easy to see an expanding capitalist society. What does this mean? Well, for one, “Hooters” is now in Beijing.

In the San Li Tun district of Beijing. Isn’t progress wonderful?

Thanks for reading.

Dave