Blood & Treasure

not on the reading list

I had a pretty good winterval; holding satanic lesbian black masses with me and my Muslimonazi comrades dancing around a bonfire comprised of the canonical works of English Literature. That kind of thing. And I can tell recent and soon to be fathers that bending down over the cot every night and whispering ‘buy me a bottle of single malt for Xmas when you grow up, you mewling little sod’ into the dozing infant’s delicate ears actually works in the long run, big time. Plus, it stimulates ambition and an entrepreneurial attitude.

However, I seem to have lost my book buying nous. First offender: Thaddeus Russell’s Renegade History of America. Now, I’m all in favour of corrections to the historical record pointing out that many of Our Freedoms, including especially the ones that are fun to do, come from a bunch of ne’er do wells persisting in their habits in the teeth of official opposition. But writing about this presents a false equivalence problem between the various kinds of authority rebelled against; and a comparison between Nazi concentration camps and the assimilationist tendencies of Jewish Hollywood magnates is the most spectacular instance of false equivalence I’ve ever come across. Ech. Russell’s a libertarian of the North American type, and his book tends to confirm a conviction I have that the only people around actually incapable of imagining what dictatorship is like call themselves libertarians. ‘I know exactly what you mean, Mr Solzhenitsyn, we have speed cameras.” Stick to Linebaugh if you want your heroes louche. 

Second offender: Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark. Billed as a cultural history of the depression years, this book is in fact a cramped, narrow and detailed analysis of Professor Dickstein’s favourite books and films, which happen to be products of the 1930’s. It’s the longest book ever on the subject of why my favourite things are important; the longest and least convincing.

Anyway, my last seasonal choice was Daniel Okrent’s book about Prohibition. I’m almost scared to crack it open.

after his death, he gave his people fish

examining the selectorate

Recommended: this long essay (pdf) on the selection process for next year's transfer of power at the top echelons of the CPC, and the factional interests and growing policy divides behind it. If you only read one thing on China over the next year, then obviously you should be reading more things. But this is one of them.

bargain hunters

Well, as I noted on twitter, if you thought that a lot of the people shown on TV storming Selfridges and suchlike purveyors of overclass accessories looked kind of Chinese, well, they were. This phenomenon has now also been noted in China.

Standing in line outside of Louis Vuitton, Mss. Wang said, “What are we here to buy? One word – luxury. Everything will be more expensive in China, these designer brands were never discounted, therefore buying them in the UK is much cheaper.” “My mom asked me to bring her some Lancome cosmetics, a Gucci or Louis Vutton handbag and a belt. I got myself some Estee Lauder produces (cosmetics). Doreen bought a Prada hand bag for her mother. Chinese people made a special trip to the UK for the sales.”

Dan Li, 22 years old, and his mother Zhang Ya Guan who is 47 years old came to shop here from Beijing. Miss. Li said, “We came especially just for the sale. I already bought a Prada bag, cost 644 pounds, original price was 999, much cheaper than in Beijing.” 

Positively Veblenian conspicuous consumption there: everyone who's everyone flies to London, to pick up posh trash cheaper. The opportunity for Britain here lies in the field of appointing oneself as a consultant to advise the Chinese nouveaux riche that Doreen is not an appropriate English name for their daughters, though this may be tempered by the fact that it's unlikely many of them give a fuck.

 

Derek and Clive and Joseph

So I get my LRB and find that Alan Bennett is reading a review of the latest Ian Kershaw book:

I turn the page and there is a photo of Joseph Goebbels inspecting some troops of the Volkssturm in Silesia in March 1945, he's shaking hands with Willi Hubner, a child of 16, which is unbremarkable except that next to Hubner (and also in the Volkssturm) is Peter Cook. He is looking at Goebbels with the ghost of a smile...

And my word, so he is. Photo via.

urban-rural gap illustrated

Things Ms. Blood believes about animals

a) Pigs have horns.

b) Horses have paws.  "Like a cat!  Otherwise, why would they have to wear shoes?"

sealed with a punch

Yu Hua's China in Ten Words doesn't really have anything that a reasonably knowledgeable resident here shouldn't already know, but I think it's still taken a spot on my "Intro to China" reading list.  From a description of fighiting over official seals during the Cultural Revolution -

Whoever seized the official seal would be the possessor of true power; they could issue orders right and left and allocate funds with surpreme confidence, destroy the lives of people they disliked, and use public money to bankroll their expenses. [...] As a result deadly struggles developed between different rebel factions and Red Guard organizations, with both sides intent on seizing official seals. Sometimes several organizations would launch somultaneous attacks on government offices, all eager to be the first to seize the seal. They would scale walls and jump through window - whatever it took to get the jump on their rivals. It sometimes looked a lot like a game of American football, for as one group tried to break into the offices, another group would fearlessly hurl themselves at them, tugging on their jackets and wrestling them to the ground so as to enable their comrades to enter the building first. Sometimes a rebel faction had just managed to seize the government seal, only to discover that other rebel organizations already had them surrounded." 

I feel there's a small-scale wargame here, or possibly a boardgame around control of a small Chinese city's politics from 1966-1976 (Baoding would be a good model).  I'm thinking something along the lines of Tom Wham's Junta, where the aim is to have the most money in your Swiss bank account at the end of the game.  

the ugly chinese voter

Boy wonder Han Han put up three posts recently about revolution and democracy. While well-written, there's a lot of Asian Authoritarian Argument B in there, namely "Chinese are too uncivilized and coarse to be ready for democracy."  (AAA: A is "Chinese are too civilized for democracy, because of their advanced communal Asian values."  Don't see a lot of that nowadays.) 

The habit that always get cited is spitting.  (Han Han has spitting, jaywalking, and failing to dim your headlights while driving.)  But is there really a negative correlation between spitting and robust democracy?  After all, the streets of London and New York were richly festooned with saliva in the late 19th century.  

Plus I've always thought "Ordinary people want stability and clean government, not freedom" to be an odd argument, because, generally speaking, freedom (of speech, in particular) is how you get clean government.  There's a brilliant book called Albion's Seed, which is, in part, about different American notions of liberty and how they stemmed from 17th-century British culture; I'd like to see a similar take on the varying Chinese notions of "freedom" and "stability."  

On a side note, I've often heard people from second-tier countries here (Mexico, South Africa, India ...) praise the Chinese system on the grounds that the "peasants" in their own country are stupid and backwards and sell their vote to the highest bidder. This seems to rather miss the point; surely if you're a subsistence level farmer in a system with any number of entrenched interests, selling your vote is often the smartest thing to do with it?  

not that they wanted it

Americans probably won't be seeing a huge ticker-tape parade anytime soon for troops returning from Iraq, and it's not clear if veterans of the nine-year campaign will ever enjoy the grand, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue homecoming that the nation's fighting men and women received after World War II and the Gulf War.

Officials in New York and Washington say they would be happy to help stage a big celebration, but Pentagon officials say they haven't been asked to plan one.

If we're talking symbolism in the interests of soft power, here's a plan: plant a minefield; arrest the planners and proponents of the war; dress them in clown suits; turn them loose in the minefield; tickets available free to all civilian and military veterans of the war, Iraqi employees in seats of honour; live feed in all Iraqi cities. Badabing: hands across the ocean.

 

for fear of something worse

It looks like we just had the intellectual event of the season in China: Over to John Kennedy at Global Voices:

Race car driver, author and one of China's most popular bloggers, Han Han dropped a bomb this weekend with three new blog posts, respectively discussing the possibilities for revolution, democracy and freedom in China.

Unlike Chen Wei, who was just sentenced to nine years in prison for writing four essays, Han and his views on the reform vs. revolution debate and Chinese citizens' ability to survive institutions such as freedom or democracy have, at least for the moment, brought discussion of a more open future China from the academic and ‘dissident' spheres to the top of mainstream blog portals and all throughout microblog sites.

Between the three essays, Han frankly addresses questions that Chinese public intellectuals are often criticized for shying away from, but is himself now being accused of misrepresenting the many people in China who do advocate serious political change.

Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth has translated two of Han's essays, On Revolution, On Democracy with the third, ‘Wanting Freedom', here.

All three are definitely worth reading if only because they encapsulate a fairly classic dilemma. Young, louche, zeitgeisty individual makes a name for himself by mocking the pieties and hypocises of authoritarian government. But when the crunch comes, or at least when the question is put, he decides to cling to nurse. You can imagine the same essays being written in Bismarck’s Germany, say, or under one of the more lackadaisical Czars. His third essay says that reform is necessary, and it should definitely start with measures that benefit him and people like him. He is, in short, the 24 hour party-person of moderate progress within the bounds of the law.

I’m being a bit cynical here. Surely the consequences of an unguided collapse of authority in China would be catastrophic, and not just for local media superstars. At the same time, it’s disappointing to see him trot out the classic apologist trope that the people of China aren’t ‘high quality’ enough to sustain a freer society, and also that any uprising would rapidly turn into a quest for Han Han’s money. It’s worth noting as well that this is what a Marxist would predict a man of his social and economic class to believe.

The impact here for activists in China lies in the fact that he and his fans, generally young, well-offish, male and urban, are one of the constituencies that they, in general,  feel should be on their side. Han has certainly offered a lot of sympathy for various Chinese activist causes in the past. But then he makes his position clear in the second essay - "If there is a revolution in China in the future, I will stand with the side which is weak and vulnerable.  If this side should grow strong, I will stand with its opponents". In other words, whatever support for the powerless he offers is conditional on them remaining that way.

Anyway, read the whole thing. And remember it next time you hear about the middle classes of such and such a place bringing democracy to it.