1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:03,600 The following is part of Cornell Contemporary China Initiative lecture 2 00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:07,950 series under the Cornell East Asia Program. The arguments and viewpoints of 3 00:00:07,950 --> 00:00:11,680 this talk belong solely to the speaker. We hope you enjoy. 4 00:00:11,680 --> 00:00:15,680 So I'm very pleased to welcome Jeff Wasserstrom to the CCCI. 5 00:00:15,680 --> 00:00:20,440 Professor Wasserstrom is the Chancellor's Professor of History at University of California Irvine. 6 00:00:20,440 --> 00:00:25,760 He's the author of many books including "Student Protests in Twentieth Century China - The view from Shanghai" 7 00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:31,520 and "Global Shanghai 1850-2010" as well as many books for non-academic audiences, 8 00:00:31,520 --> 00:00:33,500 which the undergraduate school finds especially interesting, 9 00:00:33,500 --> 00:00:39,480 I think, "Eight Juxtapositions" and "China in the 21st century: What everyone needs to know" 10 00:00:39,480 --> 00:00:43,320 which I occasionally teach and enjoy reading. He just stepped down as the editor 11 00:00:43,320 --> 00:00:46,829 of the Journal of Asian Studies and is the current editor of the China Channel, 12 00:00:46,829 --> 00:00:53,489 chinachannel.org which is a repository for new writing about Chinese arts, 13 00:00:53,489 --> 00:01:00,030 letters, culture, history and society. He has 27,000 Twitter followers and his next 14 00:01:00,030 --> 00:01:04,170 project is a fresh look at the global history of the Boxer Rebellion among 15 00:01:04,170 --> 00:01:08,310 other projects and that sentence is the total unique sentence in the world, 16 00:01:08,310 --> 00:01:11,580 I think. He has 27,000 Twitter followers and he's working on fresh look at the 17 00:01:11,580 --> 00:01:14,720 global history of the Boxer Rebellion. So this is a rare combination of skills and talents. 18 00:01:16,909 --> 00:01:21,990 We're very glad to have him here and this talk is co-sponsored in addition to the East Asia Program 19 00:01:21,990 --> 00:01:25,500 by the Department of History and so we're very happy to have him and 20 00:01:25,500 --> 00:01:28,040 let's all give him a warm welcome. 21 00:01:32,370 --> 00:01:36,850 It's a great pleasure to be here. This is my first time in Ithaca, my first 22 00:01:36,850 --> 00:01:42,130 time at Cornell University. I almost started my academic career near here. 23 00:01:42,130 --> 00:01:48,490 My first job interview ever was at Colgate nearby and it was probably what 24 00:01:48,490 --> 00:01:52,690 I would have taken except for one small detail: they offered the job to somebody else. 25 00:01:52,690 --> 00:01:58,370 So it's nice to be here. It was a great visit so nothing against the place down the road. 26 00:01:58,370 --> 00:02:08,560 So what I'm going to do now is talk about - talk through some ways to think about what 27 00:02:08,560 --> 00:02:14,890 period China is in right now, what the People's Republic of China since I was 28 00:02:14,890 --> 00:02:17,739 in graduate school studying it a long time ago 29 00:02:17,739 --> 00:02:22,510 we thought of 1949, it was a new China founded a new country called the 30 00:02:22,510 --> 00:02:25,720 People's Republic of China, that was a clear breaking point. 31 00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:31,060 Before that, 1911, when the Republic of China was founded was a clear breaking point and there were 32 00:02:31,060 --> 00:02:34,180 other arguments about what kind of breaking points were within that period, 33 00:02:34,180 --> 00:02:40,180 between them but from 1949 on what was clear was there was the Mao period up 34 00:02:40,180 --> 00:02:44,830 until Mao died in 1976 and then there was a reform and opening period that 35 00:02:44,830 --> 00:02:50,530 began a couple of years later after the brief time of Hua Guofeng and that was just what you 36 00:02:50,530 --> 00:02:55,660 said - the Mao era and reform era but lately some people have been arguing 37 00:02:55,660 --> 00:02:59,560 that we should think about there having been started a new era, 38 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:06,250 a kind of post-reform era or what I'm playing with - a post-post Mao era. 39 00:03:06,250 --> 00:03:10,480 Xin Jinping himself is talking about a new era. He's the person who sold the most books, 40 00:03:10,480 --> 00:03:16,540 who's talking about that or at least has the most books circulating. 41 00:03:16,540 --> 00:03:20,680 How many of them are sold is a different matter. Carl Minzner, who wrote the book "The end of an era" 42 00:03:20,680 --> 00:03:24,130 and there are other people who are just talking about this so I'm going to 43 00:03:24,130 --> 00:03:28,420 talk through some of that. These are just some images but the other images thrown 44 00:03:28,420 --> 00:03:31,870 up throughout the talk and sometimes when I remember I'll put up where you 45 00:03:31,870 --> 00:03:38,200 can find them to give some sense of it. I'm working through some ideas from this 46 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:43,060 franchise - "China the 21st century: What everyone needs to know". I wrote the first 47 00:03:43,060 --> 00:03:49,150 version - that's not shown up there, in 2010 and it was really no thought then 48 00:03:49,150 --> 00:03:55,000 that there was a post-reform era. Clearly China had gone through a turning point 49 00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:01,270 with the Olympics and riding out fairly well the financial crisis but we won't 50 00:04:01,270 --> 00:04:06,100 start, start to think yet about the different change. The 2013 edition on the 51 00:04:06,100 --> 00:04:10,120 right, the first updated edition which Maura Cunningham helped me update 52 00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:15,940 and got a hidden credit for was just after Xi Jinping had become head of the Chinese 53 00:04:15,940 --> 00:04:21,880 Communist Party which is his most powerful position. He later, right when 54 00:04:21,880 --> 00:04:24,910 the vote was coming out, became President as well and Head of the Military 55 00:04:24,910 --> 00:04:28,220 Commission and at that point too we thought something had changed 56 00:04:28,220 --> 00:04:32,290 - the Xi Jinping committee power but the question at that point, as I'll return to, 57 00:04:32,290 --> 00:04:35,650 the question people were asking about Xi Jinping at that point was: "Would it just 58 00:04:35,650 --> 00:04:39,280 be more of the same? Would he be just another colorless, colorless leader 59 00:04:39,280 --> 00:04:43,360 like Hu Jintao or would he restart stalled reform processes? 60 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:48,580 Would he be more of the same or would he reboot something from the past 61 00:04:48,580 --> 00:04:52,510 and now I think it's got more complicated and some people were asking whether he's 62 00:04:52,510 --> 00:04:56,950 rebooting multiple things from the past or including the pre-reform past and 63 00:04:56,950 --> 00:05:00,020 also whether he's just doing things that are very different 64 00:05:00,020 --> 00:05:02,843 and so when the newest addition - Maura Cunningham gets her name on the cover 65 00:05:02,843 --> 00:05:12,000 which she deserves because she was a full co-author on this - came out in early 2018 66 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:17,650 when we were quite clear that Xi Jinping was not a colorless Hu Jintao kind of figure 67 00:05:17,650 --> 00:05:21,880 but the most charismatic and the most, sort of, closest to having a 68 00:05:21,880 --> 00:05:26,050 personality cult that we've seen in China since Mao's day and the most 69 00:05:26,050 --> 00:05:30,880 powerful figure since Deng's day so clearly something new was going on. 70 00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:36,130 We put it out at when we thought the sort of biggest things had happened. 71 00:05:36,130 --> 00:05:41,260 He hadn't chosen a successor. At the 19th Party Congress his name or his thoughts 72 00:05:41,260 --> 00:05:44,050 was going to the Constitution, something that hadn't happened to a 73 00:05:44,050 --> 00:05:49,600 living leader since Mao. We thought, you know, we have the main big changes on here. 74 00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:55,180 Right as we signed up on the proof, soon after that, he announced 75 00:05:55,180 --> 00:05:58,750 the end of term limits [which] went through the Constitution. Yet another thing that kind 76 00:05:58,750 --> 00:06:03,700 of underscores that we're moving into a different era because the notion of 77 00:06:03,700 --> 00:06:08,080 regular transitions of power was one of the things that was supposed to clearly 78 00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:12,130 differentiate the post-Mao era from the Mao era with Mao rules essentially 79 00:06:12,130 --> 00:06:16,930 for life so the question of being back in some ways with some things more 80 00:06:16,930 --> 00:06:22,200 familiar to the Mao era and in other ways clearly in uncharted territory. 81 00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:27,600 That's kind of where we are now, thinking about Xi Jinping. 82 00:06:27,780 --> 00:06:33,070 I'll return to this later but just in the back of your minds, this is a bit of 83 00:06:33,070 --> 00:06:36,940 a quote from something about somebody who was the commander-in-chief of land, 84 00:06:36,940 --> 00:06:40,750 naval and air forces, Supreme Commander of China Theater, president of State Council, 85 00:06:40,750 --> 00:06:45,010 chairman of the Supreme National Defense Council, director general of the Central Planning Board, 86 00:06:45,010 --> 00:06:50,280 chairman of the Party and Political Work so who is that describing? 87 00:06:50,280 --> 00:06:55,180 So you're supposed to think maybe it's describing Xi Jinping 88 00:06:55,180 --> 00:07:01,479 who has accumulated so many titles that Geremie Barme - the Australian China 89 00:07:01,479 --> 00:07:05,770 specialist, said we should just call him chairman of everything rather than keeping -- trying 90 00:07:05,770 --> 00:07:08,860 to keep it straight and other people have picked that up but that statement 91 00:07:08,860 --> 00:07:12,980 is not about Xi Jinping, so I'd be curious who 92 00:07:12,980 --> 00:07:18,380 might think it could be. Yes? Chiang kai-shek. You have a ringer here. He cuts there. 93 00:07:18,380 --> 00:07:23,600 You're right and we will get back to that, why I think Xi Jinping and Chiang Kaishek 94 00:07:23,600 --> 00:07:28,190 are worth putting in the same category even though other people 95 00:07:28,190 --> 00:07:32,300 are more often compared to Xi Jinping than Chiang Kaishek, in part 96 00:07:32,300 --> 00:07:36,530 because Chiang Kaishek was among other things, a fierce opponent of the 97 00:07:36,530 --> 00:07:40,490 Communist Party, but we'll get to some parallels with Xi Jinping but first we'll work 98 00:07:40,490 --> 00:07:44,540 through some other things. The other thing is there are lots of versions of 99 00:07:44,540 --> 00:07:49,250 talks. People give different versions of the same talk, different places, talks get 100 00:07:49,250 --> 00:07:53,180 filmed so I always want people who are coming to the talk even though this one's being 101 00:07:53,180 --> 00:07:56,600 filmed but people who are watching the filmed talk should realize this is something that's happening here 102 00:07:56,600 --> 00:08:01,220 and it's happening now. So I'd like to do something in the talk that says about 103 00:08:01,220 --> 00:08:07,610 this moment in time and this place in the world and so in this talk I'll do 104 00:08:07,610 --> 00:08:11,930 some kinds of comparisons that I've done at other places and something I draw on 105 00:08:11,930 --> 00:08:16,270 other people. I'll talk about how Xi Jinping is and isn't like an emperor, 106 00:08:16,270 --> 00:08:21,650 is and isn't like Putin, is and isn't like Mao and isn't isn't like Chiang Kaishek. 107 00:08:21,650 --> 00:08:27,560 I'm gonna argue that none of these parallels is perfect, no analogy 108 00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:31,460 even though the whole world of op-eds is based on saying here's the way you 109 00:08:31,460 --> 00:08:34,820 think about - it doesn't have to be Xi Jinping, it can be Trump. To understand 110 00:08:34,820 --> 00:08:42,800 Trump think about Hitler if you really don't like him, think about Reagan, think 111 00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:46,490 about Andrew Jackson. There have been a lot of different ones sort of and the 112 00:08:46,490 --> 00:08:52,550 whole culture of the op-ed is to fix on one as though we're somehow an 113 00:08:52,550 --> 00:08:57,050 analogy that unlocks things. It's not just people, it's also for events. As we saw 114 00:08:57,050 --> 00:09:01,980 with this peculiar thing with 9/11 being described as the new Pearl Harbor and other kinds of 115 00:09:01,980 --> 00:09:05,850 things and it happens in China too in the talk of the new Long March and other things 116 00:09:05,850 --> 00:09:10,040 like that. What I'm going to argue for it is the value of the imperfect analogy 117 00:09:10,040 --> 00:09:14,340 and saying that because analogies are imperfect it's good to keep a couple of 118 00:09:14,340 --> 00:09:18,600 them in mind, two or three. I think this is true with historical events. I think 119 00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:22,680 it's true with historical figures. I think it's also true with books 120 00:09:22,680 --> 00:09:27,240 including dystopian novels that people say, well, unlock a given moment. 121 00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:32,130 There have been a lot of people saying, to understand today, read 1984. People 122 00:09:32,130 --> 00:09:34,470 have been saying that about China for a long time. They say I'm trying to read 123 00:09:34,470 --> 00:09:38,700 1984, I said read 1984 and "Brave New World" and some other things. 124 00:09:38,700 --> 00:09:44,880 To understand Trump's America maybe 1984, Handmaid's tale and Lord of the fly. 125 00:09:44,880 --> 00:09:48,510 and maybe you start to get some of that. All of them are imperfect but think 126 00:09:48,510 --> 00:09:52,740 about multiple ones. I'm not going to talk about books though I could but the imperfect 127 00:09:52,740 --> 00:09:57,480 analogies thing is in this book - "Eight juxtapositions", which I used to think 128 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:00,900 "Chinese 21st century" as the shortest book I never write, this one is even smaller. 129 00:10:00,900 --> 00:10:05,310 You can read it on the plane. The Chinese 21st century you can read 130 00:10:05,310 --> 00:10:08,940 on the plane to China and finish up and watch a movie. This one you can read on 131 00:10:08,940 --> 00:10:16,920 the plane from here to Chicago. So I had talked about some of the analogies that 132 00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:19,710 were worked out there but I'm going to talk about one that's on my mind right now. 133 00:10:19,710 --> 00:10:28,830 So in the news right now is what happened to a Saudi Arabian critic of 134 00:10:28,830 --> 00:10:34,530 the ruling family and the question is whether the head of that ruling family 135 00:10:34,530 --> 00:10:39,390 - the crown prince who was being celebrated quite recently by 136 00:10:39,390 --> 00:10:46,680 Thomas Friedman, a very high-profile New York Times correspondent--columnist, 137 00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:51,360 was celebrating the crown prince as "Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at last" as 138 00:10:51,360 --> 00:10:57,750 the reformer that we've been waiting for to bring an autocratic country into kind of 139 00:10:57,750 --> 00:11:05,940 the global mix and on a good path. That idea has been shattered by 140 00:11:05,940 --> 00:11:10,950 this murder inside of the Saudi embassy in or consulate-- 141 00:11:10,950 --> 00:11:16,079 embassy in Istanbul, the stories about which are proliferating 142 00:11:16,079 --> 00:11:22,280 and making the news headlines just now. Now the thing about this piece 143 00:11:22,280 --> 00:11:27,990 that Emily Rauhala wrote soon after coming back from covering China - she's now in 144 00:11:27,990 --> 00:11:31,060 the US working for The Washington Post - focuses on this. 145 00:11:31,060 --> 00:11:35,220 She said, "In the case of the missing Saudi journalist the grisly details may be the message". 146 00:11:35,220 --> 00:11:40,110 What she is talking about was there seem to be in some of these events as well as the 147 00:11:40,110 --> 00:11:44,399 killings of journalists that have been traced back to Putin - a notion that 148 00:11:44,399 --> 00:11:48,480 sometimes something fairly crude is happening as though part of the message 149 00:11:48,480 --> 00:11:52,350 may be to try to get away with the event but also together maybe to strike fear 150 00:11:52,350 --> 00:11:57,630 into people who might think about criticizing a regime and in that, in 151 00:11:57,630 --> 00:12:01,440 part because she's a China specialist, she brings up another event which was 152 00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:05,160 the snatching of booksellers, Hong Kong book sellers who disappeared in 153 00:12:05,160 --> 00:12:09,690 mysterious circumstances and then had forced confessions on staged television. 154 00:12:09,690 --> 00:12:14,010 She analyzed one of those staged confessions that say, you see the 155 00:12:14,010 --> 00:12:19,050 bookseller accused of subversion wearing a different shirt at different points 156 00:12:19,050 --> 00:12:23,480 during what is supposed to be a single interview, which suggested that it was staged 157 00:12:23,480 --> 00:12:28,019 and when the idea would be to sloppily stage she argued maybe it wasn't 158 00:12:28,019 --> 00:12:31,680 sloppily staged, maybe people knowing it's staged is part 159 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:36,660 of what makes them fearful about finding themselves in that same situation. 160 00:12:36,660 --> 00:12:43,410 So I think Xi Jinping and the Crown Prince have certain kinds of things in common 161 00:12:43,410 --> 00:12:48,360 and the disaffection of the questioning of whether seeing him as a reformer, 162 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:52,260 a moderniser or as capable of thuggish behavior is 163 00:12:52,260 --> 00:12:56,140 something here. Before Xi Jinping became talked about as a president 164 00:12:56,140 --> 00:12:59,410 he was talked about as a princeling and the Crown Prince is 165 00:12:59,410 --> 00:13:05,680 talked about as a prince. Before Thomas Friedman was celebrating the Crown 166 00:13:05,680 --> 00:13:10,360 Prince as the reformer we had all been waiting for, Nicholas Kristof, another 167 00:13:10,360 --> 00:13:15,190 very very influential New York Times columnist, widely read, was saying the 168 00:13:15,190 --> 00:13:20,110 same thing about Xi Jinping. He was looking for a jump start in China. 169 00:13:20,110 --> 00:13:25,210 This is soon after Xi Jinping ascended and he made a series of predictions that 170 00:13:25,210 --> 00:13:29,020 he thought, it was hard to tell, he thought Xi Jinping would restart 171 00:13:29,020 --> 00:13:33,570 stalled economic processes and also oversee some political liberalisation. 172 00:13:33,570 --> 00:13:38,770 What has shattered that idea for many people the way that the events in Turkey 173 00:13:38,770 --> 00:13:43,570 have shattered the idea of the Crown Prince. Not so - the booksellers was one 174 00:13:43,570 --> 00:13:50,260 thing - but also the Xinjiang indoctrination camps into which hundreds 175 00:13:50,260 --> 00:13:56,020 of thousands or perhaps around a million of Uyghurs - a largely Muslim ethnic 176 00:13:56,020 --> 00:14:00,990 group in Xinjiang - have been disappearing of late and there are now competing arguments. 177 00:14:00,990 --> 00:14:05,830 The Chinese press - official press - first denied that there 178 00:14:05,830 --> 00:14:09,250 were these camps and now has been argued they are vocational camps and have been 179 00:14:09,250 --> 00:14:14,430 trying to justify them as just a effort to to fight, to eliminate 180 00:14:14,430 --> 00:14:19,090 extremism and terrorism. There's also been criticism of it though as a very 181 00:14:19,090 --> 00:14:27,870 dark kind of return to a kind of pattern of mass detention in camps that is a 182 00:14:27,870 --> 00:14:33,460 disturbing echo of things that happened in the Chinese past and dark periods in 183 00:14:33,460 --> 00:14:38,920 other parts of the world. So that is now something that is - there are different 184 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:43,450 views of Xi Jinping the same way there are different views of the Saudi Crown 185 00:14:43,450 --> 00:14:48,790 Prince. This is more of the Nicholas Kristof's article making the case for 186 00:14:48,790 --> 00:14:53,170 Xi Jinping as a potential reformer and he said a variety of things. He thought 187 00:14:53,170 --> 00:14:55,880 Mao's body would be hauled out of Tiananmen Square on Xi Jinping's watch. 188 00:14:55,880 --> 00:15:00,440 That doesn't show any signs of happening. He also said that Liu Xiaobo 189 00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:04,010 the Nobel Peace Prize winning writer would be released from prison 190 00:15:04,010 --> 00:15:08,870 under Xi Jinping's watch. That definitely didn't happen and the fact 191 00:15:08,870 --> 00:15:12,710 that Liu Xiaobo died while still in prison was one of 192 00:15:12,710 --> 00:15:17,540 the things that started to raise questions a little over a year ago in 193 00:15:17,540 --> 00:15:21,740 the minds of some people who were wondering about a new era. It was one of 194 00:15:21,740 --> 00:15:26,390 the things that got me thinking along with other things about just how 195 00:15:26,390 --> 00:15:31,580 different things have become. Because in the reform era over time even the most 196 00:15:31,580 --> 00:15:37,070 high-profile of disciplined figures were often released to receive medical 197 00:15:37,070 --> 00:15:41,690 treatment in the West. That wasn't happening under Mao. After Mao 198 00:15:41,690 --> 00:15:47,180 it was happening. Wang Dan - a key leader of the Tiananmen protests - was imprisoned 199 00:15:47,180 --> 00:15:50,390 and out of prison and back in prison and then allowed to go to the West for 200 00:15:50,390 --> 00:15:54,830 medical treatment. Wei Jingsheng who was the most prominent figure for the 201 00:15:54,830 --> 00:16:01,730 Democracy Wall Movement was eventually let out to come to America to seek 202 00:16:01,730 --> 00:16:07,340 treatment. So you have a variety of things that used to exist in China and the PRC 203 00:16:07,340 --> 00:16:11,420 then didn't exist and now they're back so there's some sense of a return of earlier 204 00:16:11,420 --> 00:16:16,520 patterns and some things that are just new. Now that's about what happens now. 205 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:19,940 When I brought up the Saudi Arabia news into the answer which I wasn't thinking about 206 00:16:19,940 --> 00:16:24,080 actually the last time I gave this talk, a version of this kind of talk a couple 207 00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:29,630 of months ago, but also what about being here in Cornell? Well one of the things 208 00:16:29,630 --> 00:16:33,590 that got me thinking about Liu Xiaobo 's time in prison and what it meant was a 209 00:16:33,590 --> 00:16:38,360 conversation that was held at the website China File which is an excellent website 210 00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:42,530 I encourage you to check out. I'm glad that Nick in introducing me gave a pitch 211 00:16:42,530 --> 00:16:47,900 for the China Channel, another one to check out. Normally one of the editors of that, 212 00:16:47,900 --> 00:16:52,620 an advisor or an academic editor, Alec Ash and Anne Henochowicz, get the 213 00:16:52,620 --> 00:16:55,920 lion's share of the credit for all the good stuff that's out there but China 214 00:16:55,920 --> 00:16:59,220 File has been around for quite a while and one of the things it does is that it has 215 00:16:59,220 --> 00:17:03,240 conversations where asked leading experts to weigh in on something that happened. 216 00:17:03,240 --> 00:17:08,520 In this case when the Liu Xiaobo died in prison they asked Nick among 217 00:17:08,520 --> 00:17:12,810 other people to weigh in and this is one of the pieces that really made me start 218 00:17:12,810 --> 00:17:16,920 paying attention to whatever he was writing. And what's interesting about it was 219 00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:20,100 there was a lot of people who were talking about it within purely a 220 00:17:20,100 --> 00:17:25,410 Chinese frame what was happening. But he brought up the fact that there were ways 221 00:17:25,410 --> 00:17:30,750 in which this kind of event, what was going on America, with threats to 222 00:17:30,750 --> 00:17:36,000 freedom of speech and turns towards authoritarianism made it worth thinking in some ways 223 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:41,100 about parallels placing Xi Jinping - wasn't the first time that people have 224 00:17:41,100 --> 00:17:46,950 brought this up but it underscored the idea thinking about a trend around 225 00:17:46,950 --> 00:17:51,630 much of the world toward what might be called a kind of muscular nationalist 226 00:17:51,630 --> 00:17:57,810 strongman leader who has little tolerance for critics and has an 227 00:17:57,810 --> 00:18:05,670 idea of to quote our local strongman leader "making X country great again" and 228 00:18:05,670 --> 00:18:09,870 Xi Jinping has been talking about national rejuvenation which is not that far of a move from making X great again. 229 00:18:09,870 --> 00:18:15,780 So I think there's a way in which thinking about this new 230 00:18:15,780 --> 00:18:21,390 era in China we should also think about a new era in the world in a new era of 231 00:18:21,390 --> 00:18:27,270 different parts of the world so the thing about this era - Pankaj Mishra 232 00:18:27,270 --> 00:18:31,170 called "An age of anger" but we can also think about it as an age of strongman 233 00:18:31,170 --> 00:18:36,630 leaders and muscular foreign policy and nationalist nostalgia and that suggests 234 00:18:36,630 --> 00:18:42,180 certain kinds of imperfect analogies, comparisons for Xi and others. 235 00:18:42,180 --> 00:18:47,930 Also at Cornell there is somebody I read to think about how images of the Chinese past 236 00:18:47,930 --> 00:18:53,670 including and mythic stories of history are repurposed for the present and so 237 00:18:53,670 --> 00:18:57,500 this is an image that Robyn McNeal, another of the 238 00:18:57,500 --> 00:19:02,450 professors that you, who are lucky Cornell students, can study with, took at 239 00:19:02,450 --> 00:19:07,639 the accompanied article that I edited at the Journal of Asian studies and there is 240 00:19:07,639 --> 00:19:11,029 also something that Robyn wrote that I thought about as I was preparing this 241 00:19:11,029 --> 00:19:17,299 talk to think about things about Xi Jinping which was just a review. He wrote 242 00:19:17,299 --> 00:19:22,490 a book review of a book about Confucius, the title "Returning to the canon", 243 00:19:22,490 --> 00:19:26,330 well the canon comes back. One of the things that's happened under Xi and 244 00:19:26,330 --> 00:19:31,340 began to happen under people before Xi - leaders but has been done with a 245 00:19:31,340 --> 00:19:36,799 vengeance by Xi is a return to Confucius and other canonical, classical 246 00:19:36,799 --> 00:19:41,029 thinkers. There's a forthcoming book "Inside the mind of Xi Jinping" by Le Monde's 247 00:19:41,029 --> 00:19:45,230 former Beijing correspondent that I think is very good. It doesn't get us 248 00:19:45,230 --> 00:19:49,820 inside the mind of Xi Jinping because in fact it's very hard to figure out what's 249 00:19:49,820 --> 00:19:54,169 going on inside Xi Jinping's thought. He doesn't give interviews really. You can 250 00:19:54,169 --> 00:19:58,460 only speculate but it's a good job of parsing speeches and other things around 251 00:19:58,460 --> 00:20:02,149 him to try to get a sense of it and one of the key things is under Xi 252 00:20:02,149 --> 00:20:06,320 Jinping there's been - and Comrade Confucius is a nice way of putting it - a 253 00:20:06,320 --> 00:20:13,240 notion that you can combine admiration for Mao and admiration for Confucius. 254 00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:19,429 And you see these are shots I took in Qufu - Confucius 's home city that's 255 00:20:19,429 --> 00:20:23,509 now been sort of theme park, a pilgrimage site a few years ago and you 256 00:20:23,509 --> 00:20:28,879 see in the one picture little red books right by the Lun Yu of Confucius 257 00:20:28,879 --> 00:20:34,549 put together so the sayings of one influential thinker and the sayings of 258 00:20:34,549 --> 00:20:39,169 another and it's sometimes thought that the Lun Yu is now replacing the little red 259 00:20:39,169 --> 00:20:43,370 book but actually sometimes the little red book replaces the Confucian sayings - 260 00:20:43,370 --> 00:20:47,950 a small set of sayings and now they both coexist. This was 261 00:20:47,950 --> 00:20:52,809 extreme. That's novel, one novelty about this era. It's not just a throwback 262 00:20:52,809 --> 00:20:57,159 to the Mao era because under the Mao era Confucius was criticized. 263 00:20:57,159 --> 00:21:01,779 It's also a combination of sort of the old and the new when you 264 00:21:01,779 --> 00:21:06,490 summed up in that kind of billboard there where it shows -- it presents an idea 265 00:21:06,490 --> 00:21:11,529 of the China that Xi Jinping imagines is one that respects, is in touch with 266 00:21:11,529 --> 00:21:15,820 traditional thought, is somehow in touch with the landscape of a beautiful 267 00:21:15,820 --> 00:21:20,140 country and has state-of-the-art technology represented by high-speed 268 00:21:20,140 --> 00:21:27,640 trains. Xi Jinping soon after taking power went to Confucius's homeland -- hometown -- 269 00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:33,309 and talked about how wonderful the revival of Confucius's thought there 270 00:21:33,309 --> 00:21:38,590 was, saw books there and said he wanted some day to read them. This was a sortof 271 00:21:38,590 --> 00:21:43,600 throw back from under Mao's day when you have here an image of Confucius as 272 00:21:43,600 --> 00:21:49,390 holding China back - this was a cartoon, a comic strip said this is what 273 00:21:49,390 --> 00:21:57,130 the Battle of China was like with the young bowed down before the old when 274 00:21:57,130 --> 00:22:02,020 the subjects bowed down for the emperor when wives bowed down in front of 275 00:22:02,020 --> 00:22:06,279 husbands, the new China is not going to be like that at all and this was the 276 00:22:06,279 --> 00:22:11,049 kind of illustrated picture to say under Mao's time why this was a break with 277 00:22:11,049 --> 00:22:15,760 that old China. Now when you see billboards, these I took in China when I 278 00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:21,039 was there last month you see a set of images that taught - this is the image for a 279 00:22:21,039 --> 00:22:25,480 kind of civilized behavior, is a young person helping an older person to cross 280 00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:31,840 the street - and this is what harmonious behavior is, a younger person washing the 281 00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:38,120 feet of an older person and and it's not incidental that it's not a woman washing the feet - a man. 282 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:40,919 So there's a way in which these are things that we can think about, 283 00:22:40,919 --> 00:22:46,019 a revival of some things from Mao's time but also a rejection of some things 284 00:22:46,019 --> 00:22:50,269 from Mao's time, rejection that was beginning under the reform period but 285 00:22:50,269 --> 00:22:56,940 what's going on is new in part because it's strengthening that revival of 286 00:22:56,940 --> 00:23:01,009 things like Confucianism while at the same time doing some things that are 287 00:23:01,009 --> 00:23:07,109 rejecting moves in that reform era such as Chairman Mao. So these are some ideas that 288 00:23:07,109 --> 00:23:11,340 I have, I play with in "Eight Juxtapositions" - the idea of imperfect analogies and 289 00:23:11,340 --> 00:23:16,169 these are the various. Each chapter has a sort of juxtaposition of two things 290 00:23:16,169 --> 00:23:22,889 often presented as in perfect analogy. One of the ones that I deal with 291 00:23:22,889 --> 00:23:27,509 in the book that I've done some things related to here is this idea that 292 00:23:27,509 --> 00:23:33,059 you should be wary of false questions that ask you to fall down on 293 00:23:33,059 --> 00:23:38,519 one side or another and sort of present you with just two choices when in fact 294 00:23:38,519 --> 00:23:42,899 in China in the case of China, and so with others, the best answer might be a little 295 00:23:42,899 --> 00:23:48,330 of each. So the question was posed again to pick on Nicholas Kristof. He sells 296 00:23:48,330 --> 00:23:54,019 enough books that I feel it's okay to pick on him, has a high enough profile platform 297 00:23:54,019 --> 00:24:00,330 but this idea was would Xi Jinping be a reformer and the easiest 298 00:24:00,330 --> 00:24:03,210 response or the way in which people are trapped in is saying no he won't be a 299 00:24:03,210 --> 00:24:07,200 reformer. We'll just get more of the same but in fact what you got was somebody 300 00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:13,559 who might be a reformer in some ways and something very different in another. 301 00:24:13,559 --> 00:24:18,210 Would he be a liberalizer or a hardliner as the way it is sometimes but 302 00:24:18,210 --> 00:24:22,139 actually in Chinese history, in the recent past and before, we've obviously seen 303 00:24:22,139 --> 00:24:26,879 people who are both including Deng Xiaoping who's thought of as a symbol 304 00:24:26,879 --> 00:24:30,989 of reform and in various times was imagined to be somebody who would bring 305 00:24:30,989 --> 00:24:36,330 political liberalisation as well as economic reform but actually showed the 306 00:24:36,330 --> 00:24:41,879 crackdown on Democracy Wall and ordering the troops in in 1989 to be 307 00:24:41,879 --> 00:24:46,110 perfectly ready to be a hardliner in some regards even while being reformer 308 00:24:46,110 --> 00:24:50,460 in others and maybe that's what we should expect. Now this is to make sure 309 00:24:50,460 --> 00:24:53,759 you're awake at certain points in the talk, I need to show funny pictures. 310 00:24:53,759 --> 00:24:58,259 Now the discussion about Xi Jinping is quite different. It's not is he just like 311 00:24:58,259 --> 00:25:03,450 Hu Jintao or is he like a new Deng Xiaoping. Now it's more what is he exactly, 312 00:25:03,450 --> 00:25:09,149 a new Mao or a new emperor. Xi Jinping had been compared to Winnie the Pooh at various points 313 00:25:09,149 --> 00:25:13,950 beginning with when people on the Internet in China showed great 314 00:25:13,950 --> 00:25:18,570 creativity. They saw a picture of Obama with Xi Jinping and noted their 315 00:25:18,570 --> 00:25:22,320 physiques and thought that Obama ooked a little like Tigger and Xi Jinping 316 00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,679 looked a little like Winnie the Pooh and then Winnie the Pooh was scrubbed 317 00:25:25,679 --> 00:25:29,730 from the Internet and then later he came back, shown wearing a crown when term 318 00:25:29,730 --> 00:25:35,190 limits were over. There was also a point when Xi Jinping and Abe met and 319 00:25:35,190 --> 00:25:44,249 Abe didn't look very happy so they thought that was a little ideal. 320 00:25:44,249 --> 00:25:49,080 So Willy Lam who did a very studious analysis of Chinese politics, instead of just having two choices 321 00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:52,590 on the cover of his book he put three. Should we think of Chinese 322 00:25:52,590 --> 00:25:57,720 politics in the era of Xi Jinping has renaissance, reform or retrogression and 323 00:25:57,720 --> 00:26:02,609 then thinks of different ways in which it is each of those states. if I revealed 324 00:26:02,609 --> 00:26:06,749 If I were really to gather I would have thought about the fact that Hu Shih went to Cornell and 325 00:26:06,749 --> 00:26:10,320 Hu Shih is associated with talking about the Chinese Renaissance but I didn't think 326 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:13,679 of that until the slide is on that so I didn't get to play with that. 327 00:26:13,679 --> 00:26:20,309 So Willy Lam in being interviewed about it talked about what was new, that 328 00:26:20,309 --> 00:26:22,859 Xi Jinping was not just the first among equals - 329 00:26:22,859 --> 00:26:29,809 he was the big boss, there was a concentration of power and he gave some ideas of how 330 00:26:29,809 --> 00:26:34,220 to think about this but I think at least when you get into three choices 331 00:26:34,220 --> 00:26:38,720 you're better than two and when you think about combinations rather than 332 00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:43,700 any one of them it's better. The way I happen to think about it is that 333 00:26:43,700 --> 00:26:48,799 we are in many ways in a new era but this new era like many others and we can 334 00:26:48,799 --> 00:26:52,700 talk about other ones that even when things are created by very clear-cut 335 00:26:52,700 --> 00:26:57,230 revolutions that create even a country with a new name you'll often see a mix 336 00:26:57,230 --> 00:27:04,940 of some degrees of novelty, some degree of continuity and also some degrees of 337 00:27:04,940 --> 00:27:10,159 restorations, even things that are thought of as completely new. To be 338 00:27:10,159 --> 00:27:14,210 intelligible to people often have to clothe themselves in some of the symbols 339 00:27:14,210 --> 00:27:19,669 and myths from something old. The French Revolution started the world over at 340 00:27:19,669 --> 00:27:25,669 year one. It was supposed to be a completely new system, jettisoned the old 341 00:27:25,669 --> 00:27:32,960 monarchy but it clothes its ideas in images drawn from the classical past 342 00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:37,850 as a way to somehow make it intelligible and there were also some continuities 343 00:27:37,850 --> 00:27:41,899 despite all the claims for complete revolution and that's an input you'll find if 344 00:27:41,899 --> 00:27:46,130 you press on just about any kind of political revolution 345 00:27:46,130 --> 00:27:48,320 but certainly I think, in the case of Xi Jinping, 346 00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:52,610 it's useful to think of those and thinking about that it's useful to think 347 00:27:52,610 --> 00:27:57,740 about comparisons other than the main ones I've mentioned so far of a new Mao, 348 00:27:57,740 --> 00:28:03,000 a new Deng, just like Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin before him or like an emperor. 349 00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:07,620 Those can get you some degree but you can also think of others. 350 00:28:07,620 --> 00:28:13,840 The strangest analogy that I bring up in "Eight Juxtapositions" is Xi Jinping and the Pope. 351 00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:21,770 They both rose to power at the same time - Xi Jinping and Pope Francis. Xi Jinping 352 00:28:21,770 --> 00:28:25,389 became President. Pope Francis became Pope in March 2013 353 00:28:25,389 --> 00:28:30,219 and I happen to be in China then, jetlagged and kind of fading in and out of sleep 354 00:28:30,219 --> 00:28:34,209 and turning on the news to different stations trying to practice my 355 00:28:34,209 --> 00:28:39,339 Chinese by listening to Chinese television, able to get CNN because in a foreign 356 00:28:39,339 --> 00:28:44,440 hotel and I dozed in and out. When I woke up I found out that whenever I woke up 357 00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:49,659 to see they were talking about the new leader of 1.2 billion people or so who 358 00:28:49,659 --> 00:28:54,279 had just been chosen through an election but it wasn't really an election because 359 00:28:54,279 --> 00:28:58,179 it was with just a bunch of old band deciding which of the old men should lead the 360 00:28:58,179 --> 00:29:02,739 place and the question was would the person - this old guy who was replacing was 361 00:29:02,739 --> 00:29:06,309 even older - would he fade away or would he sort of be looking over the guy's 362 00:29:06,309 --> 00:29:10,509 shoulder and I found out that that could've either been about Francis or 363 00:29:10,509 --> 00:29:13,359 about Xi Jinping. Everything I just said 364 00:29:13,359 --> 00:29:17,950 is the same. And actually some people - and never underestimate the 365 00:29:17,950 --> 00:29:27,009 creativity of Chinese users of the internet - Tea Leaf Nation, on the 366 00:29:27,009 --> 00:29:29,679 internet at that point there was a translation that in fact some people 367 00:29:29,679 --> 00:29:34,629 noticed this parallel in China and use it to brag about how much more efficient 368 00:29:34,629 --> 00:29:38,409 the Chinese system was because it took multiple votes for them to pick a new 369 00:29:38,409 --> 00:29:42,669 Pope whereas in China it was just one vote and not just a new leader but a lot 370 00:29:42,669 --> 00:29:48,459 of other new leaders as well. So Xi Jinping, when Xi Jinping started to 371 00:29:48,459 --> 00:29:52,570 have more of a kind of personality cult - his picture was everywhere. I happened to go with 372 00:29:52,570 --> 00:29:57,159 my family on a trip to Rome and there I saw Pope Francis's face 373 00:29:57,159 --> 00:30:01,989 everywhere and images of them and so I started thinking okay there's something 374 00:30:01,989 --> 00:30:06,159 here - this is a more charismatic Pope that we've had for a while, this is a 375 00:30:06,159 --> 00:30:09,579 more charismatic Chinese leader that we've had for a while. His words are 376 00:30:09,579 --> 00:30:14,259 being quoted more, his face is everywhere and when he shows up, his face is often with that 377 00:30:14,259 --> 00:30:19,029 - not of previous leaders just before him but as some really exalted 378 00:30:19,029 --> 00:30:23,079 leaders before, going back a bit. So I thought this is something that really 379 00:30:23,079 --> 00:30:28,690 has some potential. We're updating. My publisher - Penguin - 380 00:30:28,690 --> 00:30:34,509 the extra tradition is to do an updated edition with an added bonus 381 00:30:34,509 --> 00:30:38,889 tract - an added chapter. One of the things I had to do when I was writing that was 382 00:30:38,889 --> 00:30:45,129 think about do I want it to scale back or say, maybe, I wasn't so right with 383 00:30:45,129 --> 00:30:49,090 some of these parallels I drew. I knew they were imperfect but maybe the 384 00:30:49,090 --> 00:30:53,169 one with the Pope had become so imperfect that it really just shouldn't 385 00:30:53,169 --> 00:30:56,559 be used anymore. One of the things that made me think maybe it was problematic 386 00:30:56,559 --> 00:31:02,320 that Xi Jinping has showed such a fondness for martial displays. 387 00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:06,340 He's overseeing some of the biggest military parades in recent Chinese history. 388 00:31:06,340 --> 00:31:11,019 He really likes to pose in military gear that really isn't very popelike. 389 00:31:11,019 --> 00:31:13,899 There's an old saying attributed to 390 00:31:13,899 --> 00:31:18,099 different leaders, often to Stalin that, somebody said, are you 391 00:31:18,099 --> 00:31:22,899 sure you want to do that because the Pope won't like it and Stalin and 392 00:31:22,899 --> 00:31:27,220 whoever said well, how many battalions does the Pope have. That sort 393 00:31:27,220 --> 00:31:32,080 of answered it. So the Pope does have a little bit of a military guard but the 394 00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:36,399 Pope is definitely not a martial figures so maybe this was something that really 395 00:31:36,399 --> 00:31:43,179 doesn't work. But then I started to think also of ways that it really does still 396 00:31:43,179 --> 00:31:47,529 work. There are always problems with the analogy it's a very flawed analogy. Among 397 00:31:47,529 --> 00:31:51,279 other things the Pope doesn't have a wife who accompanies him on his 398 00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:56,139 travels. There're many many differences but there are also some 399 00:31:56,139 --> 00:32:03,820 parallels and one of the parallels that I think is interesting is a peculiarity. 400 00:32:03,820 --> 00:32:06,609 I thought of peculiarities of the Chinese 401 00:32:06,609 --> 00:32:10,989 system and I try not to fall into the trap just very common of foreign 402 00:32:10,989 --> 00:32:14,440 analysts of China of thinking of something is going on in China as 403 00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:21,399 utterly exotic and strange but it really seems to me strange that Confucius would 404 00:32:21,399 --> 00:32:26,200 be attacked at one period of the Communist Party's history and then 405 00:32:26,200 --> 00:32:30,570 celebrated in another. These are images from - the one on the right 406 00:32:30,570 --> 00:32:36,240 from the Cultural Revolution we destroyed for old - Confucius was being smashed, and then in 407 00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,810 the present period you have the Communist Party still in power and it's 408 00:32:39,810 --> 00:32:43,860 setting up Confucius Institutes around the world as a kind of representative of 409 00:32:43,860 --> 00:32:48,240 Chinese culture. So this sort of - it's gone from saying Confucius was a 410 00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:53,520 dangerous bad figure to saying Confucius is a thinker that we 411 00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:59,070 owe a lot to and we are somehow continuing in his footsteps we can claim credit for. 412 00:32:59,070 --> 00:33:05,490 On that trip to Rome we went to the Vatican and the Vatican where you 413 00:33:05,490 --> 00:33:09,360 get right before you go to the Sistine Chapel - the most famous painting in the Vatican, 414 00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:13,410 you see this painting which is the School of Athens which is right 415 00:33:13,410 --> 00:33:17,700 before you get to there and what you see here is set up - it's a very famous 416 00:33:17,700 --> 00:33:22,200 painting that not being an art historian - I didn't know anything about until going 417 00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:26,790 to the Vatican and then looking it up - and what it shows is different thinkers 418 00:33:26,790 --> 00:33:32,340 from the time it was painted during the Renaissance being matched up with great 419 00:33:32,340 --> 00:33:37,920 thinkers and scientists philosophers from the Greek and Roman period and 420 00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:41,420 what's interesting about that is that early in the Catholic churches' history 421 00:33:41,420 --> 00:33:49,350 some of Aristotle's books were viewed as as dangerous, pagan thinking and yet at a 422 00:33:49,350 --> 00:33:54,300 later point in the churches' history they have found a way to integrate and 423 00:33:54,300 --> 00:33:58,980 claim to represent the whole of the Western tradition including figures like 424 00:33:58,980 --> 00:34:03,150 Aristotle in the same way that the Chinese Communist Party has reconfigured 425 00:34:03,150 --> 00:34:10,020 itself to speak for all of the Chinese tradition as it sees it. 426 00:34:10,020 --> 00:34:14,220 So it's still a very imperfect analogy, still got all sorts of problems but I'm not 427 00:34:14,220 --> 00:34:20,730 willing to let it go yet. So here are just some of the images that have come 428 00:34:20,730 --> 00:34:25,350 out with the analogies much more common than the Pope that have been thrown out 429 00:34:25,350 --> 00:34:31,710 after Xi Jinping. Xi is an emperor or a new Mao or how 430 00:34:31,710 --> 00:34:36,060 about an emperor and a new Mao by being in an emperor's clothing but in the 431 00:34:36,060 --> 00:34:39,800 place where Mao's face goes. 432 00:34:40,230 --> 00:34:45,990 Xi as a Chinese answer to Putin or and especially after he did away with term 433 00:34:45,990 --> 00:34:50,310 limits, the idea of Putin just staying on and on seemed to be a parallel with 434 00:34:50,310 --> 00:34:54,720 Xi Jinping. Before that people have said maybe he's like Putin but then again Xi 435 00:34:54,720 --> 00:34:59,190 Jinping will only rule for ten years, so now and there are also arguments that 436 00:34:59,190 --> 00:35:04,380 he's not, just so like Putin, so it goes in both directions. There's an argument back and 437 00:35:04,380 --> 00:35:08,910 forth I don't think - it's not an either/or. I think it is one of 438 00:35:08,910 --> 00:35:15,180 the useful imperfect analogies out there And Putin by the way fits precisely that 439 00:35:15,180 --> 00:35:20,820 notion of the muscular strongman leader who dreams of making this country great 440 00:35:20,820 --> 00:35:29,490 again and he and so forth. But even with that sort of Xi and Putin 441 00:35:29,490 --> 00:35:35,190 being on good terms it's not just that they're similar 442 00:35:35,190 --> 00:35:38,910 but they're also on good terms. That is partly new but it's also partly 443 00:35:38,910 --> 00:35:46,290 a throwback to an earlier period in the Sino-Russian relationship. Other things 444 00:35:46,290 --> 00:35:50,720 that have seemed like a throwback in one way or another. With the end of term limits 445 00:35:50,720 --> 00:35:57,390 some Chinese in China were thinking that this was a throwback, this 446 00:35:57,390 --> 00:36:00,810 is like the Deng Xiaoping era had never happened because one of the ways that 447 00:36:00,810 --> 00:36:04,980 you knew you were past the Mao era was the term limits of more regular 448 00:36:04,980 --> 00:36:10,490 succession. So these are various ways in which these analogies are floating 449 00:36:10,490 --> 00:36:15,150 but even they, even when sometimes what seems to be a new analogy 450 00:36:15,150 --> 00:36:19,950 like the talk of Xi Jinping as a new emperor it actually gives you a revival 451 00:36:19,950 --> 00:36:24,900 of things that have been said before about previous Chinese leaders 452 00:36:24,900 --> 00:36:30,240 either in sort of an analytic mode or a critical mode and this image 453 00:36:30,240 --> 00:36:34,630 from the 1989 protest was one that showed 454 00:36:34,630 --> 00:36:38,920 Deng Xiaoping as kind of a latter-day Empress Dowager, not the official head of the 455 00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:45,400 country but really the one everybody was taking orders from, like in the late Qing period. 456 00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:51,190 But I want to make the argument for going back further than Deng Xiaoping, 457 00:36:51,190 --> 00:36:56,380 further than Mao but not as far as the emperors and figure out a 458 00:36:56,380 --> 00:37:01,420 way that I think this has at least as much to offer as most of the others and 459 00:37:01,420 --> 00:37:06,910 is too rarely thought about. So I want to finish this talk by playing with the 460 00:37:06,910 --> 00:37:11,410 Chiang Kaishek's imperfect analogy. It is still imperfect but the more I think 461 00:37:11,410 --> 00:37:16,089 about it the more angles it seems to have and I think when I'm saying this 462 00:37:16,089 --> 00:37:20,920 I'm going to focus in part on Xi Jinping and Chiang Kaishek but in some ways there 463 00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:27,729 are parallels from the period from late 1920s to 1949 with earlier periods in 464 00:37:27,729 --> 00:37:35,220 the People's Republic of China especially under Xi's to immediate 465 00:37:35,220 --> 00:37:41,049 predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao there're certain things that under 466 00:37:41,049 --> 00:37:45,729 those predecessors Confucius was revived after a period of falling out of favor 467 00:37:45,729 --> 00:37:51,009 with intellectuals and progressives. Chiang kai-shek revived Confucius after 468 00:37:51,009 --> 00:37:55,180 a period when progressive intellectuals had criticized him. Under Chiang Kaishek 469 00:37:55,180 --> 00:38:00,519 it was widely thought at least late in his time in power on the mainland that 470 00:38:00,519 --> 00:38:03,969 the biggest issue he really had to deal with, the thing that was potentially 471 00:38:03,969 --> 00:38:08,140 alienating popular opinion, the most was a problem of corruption within his 472 00:38:08,140 --> 00:38:13,690 party in both that period and the recent past. So I'll talk about Xi Jinping's 473 00:38:13,690 --> 00:38:18,450 particular parallels but it's also a broader kind of parallel to recent past. 474 00:38:18,450 --> 00:38:24,789 So one of the things about Chiang kai-shek, he is not usually thought 475 00:38:24,789 --> 00:38:28,869 about compared to any communist leader because he was an anti-Communist. 476 00:38:28,869 --> 00:38:33,519 He fought against the Communist Party and if you want to show a shot about sort of 477 00:38:33,519 --> 00:38:37,539 knowing your past 49 when the Communist Party's control as opposed to 478 00:38:37,539 --> 00:38:41,339 pre-49 with the Nationalist Party in control, you can 479 00:38:41,339 --> 00:38:45,630 show this image. If the TV shows it I'd say that that's how you know you're in the PRC 480 00:38:45,630 --> 00:38:51,119 not pre-1949. One problem with that is before Mao's picture was there for a time 481 00:38:51,119 --> 00:38:57,569 Chiang Kaishek's was there. Chiang Kaishek was head of a single party that 482 00:38:57,569 --> 00:39:02,760 admired, that was based on sort of Leninist principles - single party control, 483 00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:07,859 limited toleration for descent and anti-imperialism as driving forces. 484 00:39:07,859 --> 00:39:12,390 He didn't believe in class struggle, a clear part of Marxism just as 485 00:39:12,390 --> 00:39:16,680 Sun Yatsen had believed in class struggle as a clear part of Marxism but Chiang 486 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:21,960 Kaishek had a certain number - the Nationalist party under Chiang Kaishek, even before him, 487 00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:26,549 had certain things in common with the Chinese Communist Party as well. 488 00:39:26,549 --> 00:39:30,960 They came out in some ways of the same lineage. So that's one thing, that it 489 00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:36,930 shouldn't be completely out of the question to look back before 1949. 490 00:39:36,930 --> 00:39:40,859 So specific things - anti-corruption was a problem for Chiang Kaishek. It's been a 491 00:39:40,859 --> 00:39:43,380 problem that Xi Jinping is trying to deal with better than Chiang Kaishek. 492 00:39:43,380 --> 00:39:45,589 He does not want to suffer the same fate. 493 00:39:45,589 --> 00:39:50,339 Brother-in-law problems. Chiang Kaishek actually was twice as good as Xi Jinping 494 00:39:50,339 --> 00:39:56,940 at wanting one way. He had two brothers with questionable wealth. 495 00:39:56,940 --> 00:40:05,849 Both of his wife's - both of them - Xi Jinping and Chiang Kaishek have issues 496 00:40:05,849 --> 00:40:10,920 with brothers of their wives and under Chiang Kaishek 497 00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:16,020 there were two brothers-in-law who were rumored to be amassing incredible wealth. 498 00:40:16,020 --> 00:40:19,859 Chiang Kaishek himself wasn't seen as amassing that wealth but they were and they were 499 00:40:19,859 --> 00:40:23,579 widely criticised. Under Xi Jinping though it doesn't get talked about much, 500 00:40:23,579 --> 00:40:27,809 certainly not in China, one of the revelations of the Panama papers when 501 00:40:27,809 --> 00:40:32,490 they leaked, one of the things that journalists in the West seized on was 502 00:40:32,490 --> 00:40:36,930 revelations about money being moved offshore by Xi Jinping's 503 00:40:36,930 --> 00:40:40,569 brother-in-law. There's also a way in which both Xi Jinping and 504 00:40:40,569 --> 00:40:45,669 Chiang Kaishek have liked to present themselves as associated with military 505 00:40:45,669 --> 00:40:50,890 values. Chiang kai-shek most clearly as a military figure but Xi Jinping also. 506 00:40:50,890 --> 00:40:54,969 Both have also made efforts to present themselves as in touch with a more kind 507 00:40:54,969 --> 00:41:00,939 of gentle side of Chinese masculinity or scholarly side of Chinese masculinity. 508 00:41:00,939 --> 00:41:06,369 Xi must obviously by talking about his reading and his writing. 509 00:41:06,369 --> 00:41:10,419 Chiang Kaishek, in different ways though, by talking about trying to elevate respect 510 00:41:10,419 --> 00:41:16,269 for Confucius and other kinds of general things. Here's the long list of 511 00:41:16,269 --> 00:41:21,309 Chiang Kaishek's official titles from the book "Thunder out of china" which I should have covered 512 00:41:21,309 --> 00:41:27,309 up just before. It was one of the most important Theodore White and 513 00:41:27,309 --> 00:41:32,469 Jacoby's book about what was wrong with the Nationalist Party, 514 00:41:32,469 --> 00:41:36,400 what implicitly was driving people toward the Communist party and the kinds of 515 00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:42,099 problems that led to the transition but this is a list of all the Chiang Kaishek's 516 00:41:42,099 --> 00:41:45,669 titles which really could give the Chairman of Everything a run for his 517 00:41:45,669 --> 00:41:50,799 money. Maybe you see there's a little asterisk there and it continues and so 518 00:41:50,799 --> 00:41:58,929 there really is - it's a lot of fun to read all of these titles. 519 00:41:58,929 --> 00:42:04,479 So the idea that Chiang Kaishek's China had some things in 520 00:42:04,479 --> 00:42:08,409 common with the current China is not something that was only thought of 521 00:42:08,409 --> 00:42:11,289 when Xi Jinping came to power, and certainly not something only 522 00:42:11,289 --> 00:42:15,069 thought of by me. Rana Mitter in "Modern China: A very short introduction", 523 00:42:15,069 --> 00:42:20,279 a book that came out in 2008 imagines Chiang kai-shek's ghost 524 00:42:20,279 --> 00:42:26,109 and Mao's ghost looking down on the China around the time of the Olympics 525 00:42:26,109 --> 00:42:30,909 and wondering which side was really in control and Chiang Kaishek imagining 526 00:42:30,909 --> 00:42:34,539 that somehow his side must've eventually won because of things like 527 00:42:34,539 --> 00:42:38,409 Confucius being celebrated which was something that Chiang Kaishek 528 00:42:38,409 --> 00:42:45,249 did in his time and Mao clearly didn't. There is also a comic book that started 529 00:42:45,249 --> 00:42:51,230 to circulate on the Chinese internet in 2012. 530 00:42:51,230 --> 00:42:54,619 This is again before Xi Jinping. It was a series somebody who had found in their 531 00:42:54,619 --> 00:42:59,240 attic of a bunch of before-and-after images of what China was like before 532 00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:06,010 1949 and after 1949. So before 1949 women were cast into 533 00:43:06,010 --> 00:43:11,210 sexualized and oppressed roles but supposedly after 1949 they were 534 00:43:11,210 --> 00:43:24,050 completely equal. Before 1949 there were 535 00:43:24,050 --> 00:43:28,790 supposedly corrupt officials and then after there were selfless cadres. Before 536 00:43:28,790 --> 00:43:34,760 1949 there's discrimination against the lower classes and after 1949 there was 537 00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:38,480 complete equality. When this was put up on the internet somebody said wait a 538 00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:43,190 minute which one are we living in because there's a credible amount of 539 00:43:43,190 --> 00:43:49,240 inequality in China now and there's a return of mistress cultures and 540 00:43:49,240 --> 00:43:55,940 there are sexualized images of women abounding in China. It is no longer the kind 541 00:43:55,940 --> 00:44:04,579 of image of a more, kind of, emphasis on male-female equality. Here was the 542 00:44:04,579 --> 00:44:09,200 corrupt officials before. Now corrupt officials are a big issue again. 543 00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:14,180 Of course Xi Jinping has dealt with that. Oppression from Chiang kai-shek of the 544 00:44:14,180 --> 00:44:20,930 American imperialists before but then after China in control his own thing so 545 00:44:20,930 --> 00:44:23,510 one of the things I think the Chinese Communist Party has done under Xi 546 00:44:23,510 --> 00:44:27,770 Jinping in particular but a bit before is they say they realize they have a problem 547 00:44:27,770 --> 00:44:30,619 with some of these ideas. They haven't done away with corruption 548 00:44:30,619 --> 00:44:34,550 so they'd better do something about that very publicly and Xi Jinping has. 549 00:44:34,550 --> 00:44:38,390 They've got problems with inequality that's going to drive Trump but the one 550 00:44:38,390 --> 00:44:41,690 part of the story of what's different from before and after that really works 551 00:44:41,690 --> 00:44:46,790 is a weak China being bullied before 1949 and a strong China not being 552 00:44:46,790 --> 00:44:53,810 bullied after 1949. The Communist party has tried to do things to mitigate the 553 00:44:53,810 --> 00:44:57,970 kind of rubbing of those stories that don't work and double down on the stories 554 00:44:57,970 --> 00:45:05,170 they think do work. Now in China series of images of the sort of what the good 555 00:45:05,170 --> 00:45:08,880 society is now that I took recently. These were on a few different streets - 556 00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:13,839 images of equality trying to emphasize that this is something that's going on 557 00:45:13,839 --> 00:45:17,800 now, images of democracy -I like this one 558 00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,849 because democracy under Xi Jinping means you get to vote but y'all to vote 559 00:45:21,849 --> 00:45:28,750 the same way. Freedom - there's an ad on people being freer in the sense of 560 00:45:28,750 --> 00:45:33,220 being able to enjoy a good life less than in the sense of kind of political 561 00:45:33,220 --> 00:45:39,790 freedoms and then there are these images that are sort of invoking old ideas but 562 00:45:39,790 --> 00:45:44,230 trying to put a new spin on them rather than denigrating old ideas 563 00:45:44,230 --> 00:45:47,380 and suggesting something totally different and again these were the 564 00:45:47,380 --> 00:45:52,240 ones I showed earlier and this is the kind of image around a lot about filiality. 565 00:45:52,240 --> 00:45:55,960 as a new thing and this is the kind of image that I imagine even more 566 00:45:55,960 --> 00:46:00,280 than when Rana Mitter was writing if you had Chiang Kaishek and Mao's ghosts 567 00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:05,680 somehow looking down on in China this would not be one that Mao would recognize as 568 00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:10,720 his side. If we say the ghosts actually know something about how they died and 569 00:46:10,720 --> 00:46:15,099 you can tell the two ghosts where is this a picture of, they would 570 00:46:15,099 --> 00:46:22,390 say it must be Taiwan. It can't be the mainland but it's of course the mainland. 571 00:46:22,390 --> 00:46:25,990 Now on the other hand say okay maybe this is the mainland, this guy looks kind of like 572 00:46:25,990 --> 00:46:30,130 the way I was presenting - faces everywhere. This is when I wanted to check in 573 00:46:30,130 --> 00:46:35,890 to a flight, going across the TV screen with three different images of 574 00:46:35,890 --> 00:46:43,300 Xi Jinping's face, images of his book. You can never forget who is in power now 575 00:46:43,300 --> 00:46:50,410 in the way that you could when Hu Jintao Tao and Jiang Zemin were there. But one of the ways in 576 00:46:50,410 --> 00:46:55,990 which I think is worth going back to Chiang Kaishek, certainly more than to 577 00:46:55,990 --> 00:47:01,690 Hu Jintao or Jiang Zemin or Deng Xiaoping and to some degree even to Mao 578 00:47:01,690 --> 00:47:07,420 even though Mao did have a wife who was an important political figure. 579 00:47:07,420 --> 00:47:09,720 One thing you have now with Xi Jinping that you haven't had 580 00:47:09,720 --> 00:47:15,450 since Chiang Kaishek is a woman playing a role that's similar to a First Lady 581 00:47:15,450 --> 00:47:19,980 in the American system and there's a kind of parody when you see 582 00:47:19,980 --> 00:47:26,370 Trump and Xi Jinping meeting with their stylish wives both of whose fashion is 583 00:47:26,370 --> 00:47:30,960 analyzed. This was not something than you saw you know in Chinese leaders and 584 00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:36,060 with a less of a historical memory sometimes there have been references to 585 00:47:36,060 --> 00:47:41,750 Peng Liyuan as China's first First Lady, forgetting this earlier period. 586 00:47:41,750 --> 00:47:47,880 Soong Meiling, Madame Chiang kai-shek, came to the United States, gave an address in 587 00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:55,020 English to Congress that Wild Magazine talked 588 00:47:55,020 --> 00:48:00,930 about how beautifully she was dressed and how stylishly she spoke. She was 589 00:48:00,930 --> 00:48:06,380 such a representative of the country and they were impressed by her English. 590 00:48:06,380 --> 00:48:12,960 Peng Liyuan came to address the United Nations in English that impressed people 591 00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:18,810 very much and her grace and her elegance and her fashion sense 592 00:48:18,810 --> 00:48:23,040 were celebrated as well and I'll mention back here is that Life 593 00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:29,100 magazine and Time magazine Henry Luce at the time was saying of Chiang kai-shek, 594 00:48:29,100 --> 00:48:34,620 here's the reformer, the moderniser that will make China the country we want it to 595 00:48:34,620 --> 00:48:39,120 be - in step with the world in step with US, that we've long been waiting for very 596 00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:43,230 much within the same tradition as Thomas Friedman's discussion of the crown 597 00:48:43,230 --> 00:48:49,170 prince and Nicholas Kristof of Xi Jinping early on. There were images of Chiang 598 00:48:49,170 --> 00:48:56,130 Kaishek and his wife as this kind of admirably domestic couple. In China 599 00:48:56,130 --> 00:49:00,480 there have been discussion focusing on Xi Jinping as a kind of 600 00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:07,530 representative of family values and the love story of XI Dada and Peng Mama went 601 00:49:07,530 --> 00:49:14,580 viral in the same way that so we didn't have viral things for Chiang Kaishek and 602 00:49:14,580 --> 00:49:18,849 Soong Meiling but Time magazine and Life magazine did a story saying 603 00:49:18,849 --> 00:49:23,920 the one thing that makes Chiang Kaishek that smile is his wife. He called his wife 604 00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:30,160 darling so much that security details thought her name was darling and 605 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:37,869 started calling her that so I'm going to end with one final thing, switching back 606 00:49:37,869 --> 00:49:44,769 to Cornell at this point. I'm not the first one to have said these parallels. 607 00:49:44,769 --> 00:49:51,099 China's destiny has been compared to Xi Jinping's "On governance" in this 608 00:49:51,099 --> 00:49:56,890 book about China in 1943. There's an idea that there are, that 609 00:49:56,890 --> 00:50:01,119 the parallels in nationalist ideology and China's destiny in Chiang Kaishek's book and 610 00:50:01,119 --> 00:50:06,249 contemporary CCP rhetoric are striking and one superficially the CCP has embraced 611 00:50:06,249 --> 00:50:10,119 China's past and encourages the people to embody traditional values 612 00:50:10,119 --> 00:50:14,680 especially in respect for order. The connection there is that was published 613 00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:22,359 by Cornell, a Cornell volume there and then I will end. I bring you back to Cornell 614 00:50:22,359 --> 00:50:26,319 and now I bring you back to the moment and the thing that would definitely make 615 00:50:26,319 --> 00:50:31,960 Chiang Kaishek's ghost think that this picture being shown must 616 00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,440 be a place the Nationalist Party controlled not the Communist Party is 617 00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:39,609 a recent headline talked about Peking University threatening to close 618 00:50:39,609 --> 00:50:47,789 down society devoted to the ideas of Karl Marx. Thanks for your attention.