Subway Sketch: Authoritarianism on the cheap

Five cellphones stand between me and the compartment door. It's rush hour, and the compartment is packed. The doors slide open, time and time again, and the people standing out on the platform look in and decide to wait. In a few stops, however, I'll have no choice. I'll have to run the gauntlet.

Until then I bide my time, reading this week's Spectator. I have to say, whenever I read book reviews in the Spectator I feel a tad guilty. I really ought to be reading more, making time for the classics, making the most of the Spectator's advice. Instead, intransigent, I continue scouting on my own accord, trying to discover some gems hidden in the muck.

But that's not what today's sketch is about.

In the morning, on my way to the subway station, I watched as Chengguan (City Management) made their rounds. They were checking storefronts, making sure they weren't spilling out onto the pavement -- as shop owners the world over are prone to do. At every shop, one of the Chengguan stops, pulls out his smart phone, and snaps a picture. They've been doing this for years; it's a thankless job.

In America police departments probably still issue special cameras for this sort of thing. China does it on the cheap. Bring your own tools of oppression, comrade.

A curious detail you might overlook is how the chengguan take their pictures. The one snapping shots waits until his partner is in frame. Then and only then does he snap away. Some chengguan somewhere, I suppose, must have got creative, taking a bunch of snaps of storefronts and doctoring the timestamps and submitting them whenever they claimed to make their rounds.

At the station all our bags are x-rayed, and some of us get worked over with wands. Every ticket entrance down to the platform has an x-ray machines and four security guards. Inside the station, somewhere, a police officer prowls, spot checking IDs. They never check foreigners for passports. They never check women. And they never check the elderly. Instead they limit their spot checks to young men. It seems to work.

The devices the police use to perform these checks are a little bulkier than the typical cellphone but not quite the size of a graphing calculator. In a few years, no doubt, such devices will be relics, and the police will just use their smart phones. Progress of a kind.

Down on the platform, a subway worker stands watch, making sure nothing goes amiss. Nothing does. Balloons are banned, but this rule is breached more often than I like.

On the way back home, I imagine what would happen if the trains kept running but the turnstiles stopped turning. It would take only a few trains, ten minutes worth, before we'd have a huge problem. The station is crowded as it is at the best of times. If a sudden blockage developed, some unfortunate would find themselves crushed.

I suppose that's what I get for living in the suburbs. Yes, rent is cheaper, and we have much more house than before, but rush hour is truly something special.

Maybe I should leave earlier.

Two-Child Policy Not Working

The Chinese government is desperate to increase the birthrate, but it's just not working. Why? Simply put, economic development and birthrates seemed to be inversely related. As Chinese people become richer, more and more of them are postponing having children to pursue jobs or other opportunities, like graduate study.

Also, speaking from personal experience, I know quite a few women resent the government flip flopping. Just a few years ago, they were coerced into getting abortions. Now they can't go to a Buddhist temple without seeing posters denouncing abortion.

Why does the government want to increase the birthrate? For the same reason Ponzi schemes are always looking for fresh victims. In short, China's pension system. In coming years, government will be forced to reallocate more government money to funding these pensions, as China's population gray. As a result, it will be forced to divert money away from economic development.

To try about combat this looming crisis, the government introduced a Two-Child Policy in 2016. THe birthrate did increase, but not enough. According to a survey conducted by the All-China Women's Federation, more than half of Chinese couples had no interest in having a second child. Simply put, children are expensive to raise in China, especially if you want to educate them properly. Even public schools aren't free. Most charge tuition fees. This isn't exactly kosher, but most schools do it.

A delegate to this year's Two-Sessions meeting in Beijing has suggested instituting a Three-Child Policy. Good luck with that, comrade.

Trash or Treasure: The Girl With Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

From the get go, I was hesitant to read this book, not because I thought it was trash, but because I was wondering how to judge it. In the end, I decided to give it a try. I must confess, it is a very interesting autobiography.

Hyeonseo Lee is my kind of person. She's an unabashed patriot, and her autobiography provides a perspective on one of the most repressive regime known to man. North Korean society, she informs us, is divided into 51 different rankings, depending on perceived loyalty to the Kim family. Your ranking can go down, but it's impossible for it to go up. People in the highest rankings get to live in the capital. People in the lowest ranks spend their lives in prison camps or labor camps.

Your ranking is determined by your family's actions during the Korean war.

Given the hellish conditions they live under, why don't they rise up and rebel? I'll let Hyeonseo Lee answer that one:

I thought life in North Korea was normal. Its customs and rulers only became strange with time and distance.

In short, they've been conned into thinking the entire world is shit, too.

What makes the book appealing is that Lee is her self-evident love for her homeland. She finds it painful living abroad and fears that by the time she is able to return to home:

I will probably be a stranger in my own land.

 Aside from detailing her live in North Korea, she spends a third of the book discussing life as an illegal immigrant in China, and a third of her book discussing life in South Korea. I hope someday she can return to her country, and I hope America does its utmost to liberate the North Korean people.

Verdict: Insufficient Evidence
Related books: The Logic of Political Survival and The Dictator's Handbook  

If you want to learn more, watch the video below.

Comment

In Shanghai, I once went to a Korean restaurant, which was a very uncomfortable experience. My wife and her coworkers were conversing in Chinese. The waitresses Chinese had an obvious accent. So they asked, are you Korean? To which the waitress replied, yes. Trouble is, in Chinese when you ask about the ethnicity of a Korean person, you use the word that also refers to North Korean. So I spent the entire meal wondering if she had said she was ethnically Korean or North Korean.

Happily, I latter clarified the issue, but it was a very uncomfortable, thinking you were being served by someone in such a precarious position. If she had been North Korean and found out, the Chinese would have deported her in a heartbeat.

Subway Sketch: Sea of Proles

         

Transferring lines at Xujiahui, an old woman, very elderly, jostles me on the stairs. She and her husband offer no apology. This isn’t America, after all. But being American, I do feel a tad annoyed. I get over it quickly, reminding myself how hard her life has been.

Given that they’re strangers, I can’t pin down their age, but I can give a range. This old couple, with their dim black and gray hair, bundled in as many layers as an onion, are in their 70s or 80s. They’re frightfully short. They come up to about my elbow.

When they were young, Mao took his Great Leap Forward. Tens of millions died. The countryside starved.

My mother-in-law and aunts were little back then. There were four of them. When the madness ended, there were only three; the youngest had died. The three sisters that survived also come up to about my elbow.

Their father, a landlord, had been well-off. He had two wives, but neither gave him a son. So he adopted one, which is quite expensive. The villagers envied him. During the Cultural Revolution, they made his daughters suffer.

Today, the son has nothing to do with his adopted family. Doesn't visit. Doesn't call. He gives his birth family his undivided attention. I wonder if they hate him for it. After all, they went half-starved and their sister died so he might live.

Whatever the case, it’s not his fault. He’s had a hard life, too; his wife has been in a coma for twenty some years.

The train stops. A pair of construction workers come on. Their burnt red skin is hidden under a layer of dust, giving them a faded look. They seem happy, dignified even.

One of them wears a red hardhat with China Construction printed on the side. They must be lucky. China Construction has a habit of not paying their workers. They can go months without pay, receiving nothing but food, a cot, and a shipping container for a dorm. Chinese New Year has only just ended. Maybe that explains their contended looks.

I think it must be the work itself. Unlike factory workers, construction workers get to think on their feet, tackling different problems, working in different environments. They get exercise both body and mind. They’re not like factory workers or the pale wraithlike mind-workers that surround them.

Around eight years ago, I lived in the Pearl River Delta. The school was surrounded by factories, mostly garment factories. It was a very gloomy place, where the young workers looked exhausted and depressed.

The train stops. The compartment doors slide open. A wave a people push on. A lot of them with luggage. Chinese New Year is over. Back from their holiday’s or trips home, they embrace the hurly-burly of city life by pulling out their cellphones and quickly zoning out.

I wonder if they’re happy. Is their infatuation with images and illusions freely chosen or fostered by the state? In Animal Farm, the pigs distract the sheep with slogans and campaigns. In 1984, the Party distracts the proles with pop culture, sport, and smut. 1984, that’s the world I’m living in.

But look on the bright side, at least no one’s starving.            

VPNs: Free Alternative to ExpressVPN and Astrill

I've been living in China for almost a decade now. One big headache has always been getting over the Great Firewall.

In the past I used Astrill for years. Last year I switched to ExpressVPN. Both services experience frequent outages, especially when things get politically sensitive. There is, however, a free alternative: Opera.

That's right, the browser Opera comes with a built in VPN service. If you want to access to Youtube, Facebook, or Gmail, it is perfectly adequate--oftentimes outperforming paid services. The only downside is that Opera servers aren't country specific. In other words, you won't be able to use it to access Netflix or BBC iPlayer or anything with country specific restrictions.

Still, it's free. And it's a great backup. Even if you have a paid service, get Opera on your computer just in case. Over the last two months, as my ExpressVPN subscription was winding down, I have repeatedly used Opera's VPN when Express was acting up.

It's a great service. Do yourself a favor, use it.

China: Term Limits to Be Abolished for Xi Jinping

According to Xinhua, there is a proposal to limit the term limits in place on the President and Vice-President of the People's Republic of China. Under the current constitution, the President and Vice-President are limited to two five year terms.

This isn't much of a surprise. Many China watchers have assumed Xi would try to remain in power. Some speculated that he would pull a Putin, switching formal roles but remaining in control. Other suggested that he might bring back the position of chairman.

Xi just entered his second term last year. Looks like we will be dealing with him for decades to come.