China update

Great Leap Backward

But there is still jockeying, partly because President Hu is weak. Chinese officials are remarkably open about criticizing Mr. Hu, and the critics are said to include the military brass and former President Jiang Zemin. The complaints have little to do with the crackdown on dissent (“That’s just a very small issue to them,” one Chinese official explained to me), and more to do with the way Mr. Hu has frozen or backtracked on economic and political reforms, allowed inflation to stir and harmed relations with the U.S.
Many ordinary Chinese seem to feel the same way. Most Chinese I have talked to don’t care much about dissidents; their main concerns are inflation, corruption and better jobs. Moreover, they feel freer in their daily lives — so long as they don’t challenge the government, it mostly will leave them alone.
Still, the crackdown represents a great leap backward, and it is particularly nasty in two respects.
First, the government is arresting not only dissidents and Christians but also their family members and even their lawyers. Second, after a long period in which police would torture working-class prisoners but usually not intellectuals, the authorities are again brutalizing white-collar dissidents.

Where China Outpaces America

When I lived in China in the 1980s and ’90s, there was always an awkward economic imbalance between me and my Chinese friends. I had a car, and they had bicycles. I paid for our meals together because I was so much better off.
Now there’s a new imbalance: Some of those same people ride around in chauffeured limousines while I get around in taxis. They take me to fancy restaurants whose prices give me headaches.
One Chinese friend took me to a home with private indoor basketball court and personal movie theater. It was a tribute to the stunning improvement in the country’s standard of living. But it also speaks to growing income gaps at a time when, by official figures, 320 million rural Chinese do not even have access to safe water.
Moreover, some of the economic boom appears attributable to a bubble, particularly in real estate. And some of the grand fortunes are linked to corruption by government officials. One friend, the son of a Politburo member, once told me that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by a Chinese company just to be on its board. That way, the company could persuade local governments to give it land at reduced prices.
What are we to make of such a country?
That it contains multitudes. And that at this time of rising China-United States tensions, any simplistic black or white view of it may well be right — but also incomplete and misleading.  

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