Chris Eberhardt was an India China Institute Fellow at the New School in 2008. He is now conducting his dissertation research in China
A fellow of the India China Institute (ICI) has been arrested. He was privately eating dinner with others in Beijing, celebrating that Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After hearing that the ICI Fellow had been arrested, I decided to read an article by Liu Xiaobo that was published in 2006 in the journal Social Research titled “Reform in China: The Role of Civil Society.”
The work reminded me of Neither Gods Nor Emperors by sociologist Craig Calhoun, who analyses the student protests of 1989 that culminated in demonstrations on Tiananmen Square and the military response. What I see in both works is an effort by the Chinese people to challenge China to be better at what it claims to be, linking back to movements that emerged when the dynasty system collapsed in the early 1900’s.
While Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China was celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic. During the celebrations I went multiple times to Tiananmen Square. One night I saw a couple posing in front of flashing lights (pictured), behind which was Tiananmen Gate and Chairman Mao’s picture. I imagine that this man was probably wearing similar clothing when Mao was still alive. Every time I see a man wearing the blue hat and suit, it gives me pause. In Beijing, I am most likely to see people dressed like this fresh off the train or lined up by the thousands at 6am (2hrs early) on Tiananmen Square to view Mao’s remains.
I always wonder to myself how these people who line up for hours to view Mao, sleepy-eyed and just off a bus, understand a China where students pay almost as much or more than my rent to buy name brand clothing. It is these people who come from the heartland of China who are still thought of as the backbone of the country, still composing the majority of the population.
Perhaps it is not as well known, but every day the common people struggle to address problems in their life, with annual figures for protests greater than 80,000. (Against the Law by Ching Kwan Lee and Popular Protest by Kevin O’Brien are two accounts of protests in China.)
I particularly enjoyed Ching’s work, documenting the balance between those in China’s rustbelt that expect China to live up to a social contract that drove the founding of the People’s Republic of China and those in the South, home to the world’s factories, that expect China to live up to a legal contract that links with China’s efforts to create a market economy.
The People’s Republic of China that is celebrated every October 1st had its roots in a small group including Mao who met in a small room in the French Quarter of Shanghai in the early 1900’s who founded the Chinese Communist Party. What Mao and the Chinese Communist Party was able to do in a way that the ruling Kuomintang could not or did not want to do was connect their vanguard struggle with the struggle of the proletariat during the Chinese Revolution. It was Mao and the Chinese Communist Party who victoriously declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, having made a bridge with the common people.
Although China does not have elections in the same manner as the United States, changes still take place in response to citizens concerns. While individuals like Liu are awarded prizes by outsiders, I will continue to humbly observe how it is that the common people of China respond to their rapidly changing China, and if bridges are made between the common people and the intellectuals.
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