Her Story

Does Chinese liberalism have a future?

The past 10 years have been quite depressing for Chinese liberals, as Xi Jinping has pushed Chinese politics toward authoritarian nationalism. There has been a notable decline in the freedom of speech, increasing repression in places like Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and of course the Covid lockdowns.

That’s not to suggest that everything in China is getting worse. It’s still getting richer, greener, less polluted, less dangerous (including less crime), and freer in areas such as the ability to have multiple children or to move from the countryside to the city. Those things matter a lot to average people. Nonetheless, given China’s impressive economic development, you’d expect at least some political liberalization to be occurring.

A few days ago, I saw a film that gave me a bit of hope. Her Story is the sort of “indie crowd pleaser” that you’d expect to get a standing ovation at Sundance, if it were an English language film. Unfortunately for me, it’s in Chinese and the subtitles moved by too fast for me to catch everything. After the film was over, my wife explained many of the jokes that I missed. But I understood enough to see that it was more than a bittersweet comedy, it was a forceful defense of liberalism.

Here’s the New York Times:

The movie calls out stigmas against female sexuality and stereotypes about single mothers. It name-drops feminist scholars, features a woman recalling domestic violence and laments Chinese censorship.

This is not some indie film, streamed secretly by viewers circumventing China’s internet firewall. It is China’s biggest movie right now — and has even garnered praise from the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

The success of “Her Story,” a comedy that topped China’s box office for the last three weeks, is in some ways unexpected, at a time when the government has cracked down on feminist activism, encouraged women to embrace marriage and childbearing and severely limited independent speech.

The film’s reception reflects the unpredictable nature of censorship in the country, as well as the growing appetite for female-centered stories.

To say that Chinese censorship is “unpredictable” is an understatement. China will often ban things that to a westerner seems relatively uncontroversial, and then allow things that seem like a direct attack on the CCP. Here’s Peter Hessler, who recently taught at Sichuan University and used Animal Farm as one of his texts:

A publisher in Shanghai told me that translations of Animal Farm generally sold around a hundred thousand copies every year, and 1984 sold twice as many as that. Despite the political climate, there was no campaign to censor Orwell, whose works remained on many university reading lists.

Less than two weeks after the Weibo attacks, some students from another department at Sichuan University invited me to attend their dramatic performance of 1984.

BTW, Hessler’s new book is his best, and one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Hessler and Yasheng Huang are my two favorite writers on modern China.

Here’s The Economist:

[Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson] say China’s economic institutions have become more inclusive since the era of Mao Zedong. This has enabled China’s astonishing economic expansion in recent decades. But they say China’s political institutions remain extractive, making it “likely to run out of steam”.

It is remarkable that such an argument can be aired in China, especially under Xi Jinping, who took power soon after the book was published in English and swiftly moved to silence the type of liberals who would be its natural fans. The Chinese version omits much of the authors’ argument about China, especially parts that are critical of its political system. Mr Acemoglu says he and his co-author felt “it was still worth trying to reach the Chinese audience in this form” even though it was a “very painful episode”. Readers could still deduce their point. And striking elements remained, for example that “authoritarian growth is neither desirable nor viable in the long run, and thus should not receive the endorsement of the international community as a template for nations in Latin America, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa”. Mr Xi would beg to differ.

Since the Nobel prize was awarded, there has been renewed interest in the work, with some Chinese netizens recommending it (and nationalists attacking it).

Note the term ‘remarkable’.

During a recent trip to China, I visited a large bookstore in the university area of Beijing. I was quite surprised that the selection of books looked a lot like what you’d see in Harvard Square. There were some Marxist texts, but also liberal authors like Habermas, Sontag and Brad Delong:

What surprised me the most was the large selection of libertarian authors. There was an extensive selection of works by Hayek and Mises, as well as a Chinese version of David Friedman’s textbook, all prominently displayed in a table.

The New York Times is surprised by a film that clearly advocates greater liberalism. Peter Hessler is surprised by the great interest in Orwell. The Economist finds interest in Acemoglu and Robinson’s book to be “remarkable”. I am surprised by the diversity of views at a Beijing bookstore.

So what’s going on here? Are claims of Chinese repression just CIA propaganda? I don’t think so. The specific examples of Chinese repression are well documented. (That’s not to say there isn’t some overheated anti-China rhetoric, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Hessler suggests that Orwell may be the wrong model for the Chinese bureaucracy, and that a better model might be Kafka. (Although he is careful to exclude Xinjiang Province from his observation.) Perhaps Hessler’s book will wake up the sleepy censors and lead to China banning Orwell.

Another possibility is that it isn’t ideas that the CCP fears, but independent organizations. There have been recent crackdowns on NGOs that promote feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, etc. The motivation seems not so much worry about their ideology, rather a concern that any large organization might evolve into a focus of opposition to the government. Recall that opposition to Poland’s communist government began in labor unions and the Catholic Church.

Chinese politics no longer fits into a neat left-right box. Instead, you have authoritarian nationalists that could be viewed as either far left or far right, depending on whether you think they are better described as “communist” or “fascist” (neither label fits all that well.) And then you have the “liberals”, which in terms of our politics would include everyone from Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders. They tend to be better educated and live in the wealthier cities.

If you are a conservative, don’t be put off by the fact that Her Story is a “feminist” movie. If you don’t like the Xi Jinping regime, you’ll find much to like in the film. The director is clearly opposed to censorship, and the film is not particularly left wing by American standards. There’s no “defund the police”.

But there are a lot of references to American cultural developments. You see people using terms like “toxic masculinity” and “friends with benefits”. Watching this film, I began to see why some people see more similarity between young professionals in San Francisco and Shanghai than between people in San Francisco and West Virginia. There really is a global elite emerging, and I don’t think we understand quite yet what the implications of that will be. I suspect the effects will be far-reaching.

The film also made me think about recent cultural trends in East Asia. In places like South Korea, rapid gains to women in areas like education and employment have clashed with a highly patriarchal traditional society, leading to a big gap between men and women (as well as sharply falling rates of marriage and fertility.) China is a decade or two behind South Korea, but this film suggests a similar problem:

Ticket sales were initially slow, but the women who did watch became fervent evangelists. The film soon became ubiquitous. It now has a 9.1 rating out of 10 on the Chinese film-rating site Douban . . .

On Hupu, a sports forum popular with male users, the movie has a rating of 4.9.

But generally, the response has been positive — even from somewhat unexpected quarters.

A commentary in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, praised the movie’s depiction of “humorous and absurd” aspects of daily life. It did not explicitly acknowledge specific women’s issues the movie raised, such as domestic violence but it said that directors should, like Ms. Shao, reflect what audiences cared about.

Authoritarian nationalists face a dilemma. Their instincts favor a muscular economy of steel and coal, dominated by men. They favor traditional values, which are strongest in rural areas. But in the 21st century, national greatness increasingly comes from utilizing highly educated men and women in softer fields like services and tech, living in big cities.

Thatcher’s reforms led to London becoming a rich, cosmopolitan city, with cultural implications that many conservatives did not like (and the subsequent backlash contributed to Brexit.) I wonder if China’s rapid gains in wealth and education will eventually lead to cultural changes that the CCP doesn’t like. Let’s hope so.

PS. Her Story is a good film and an important political milestone. The much less popular So Long, My Son was also an implied critique of government policies such as the one child policy. It’s less of a crowd pleaser, but a greater film from an artistic perspective.

Merry Christmas! If it’s snowing outside, stay inside where it’s cozy. (Woodblock print by Hasui):