China's Great Wall of Silence. Beijing, November 2008. Part VIII

I asked Mr. Gao what he thought when he heard that Mao had died.

“An era ended."

In context I understood Mr. Gao to mean that madness and violence was finally over. Others have expressed similar views. Ms. Ma told me that “the root cause [of the violence] lay with Mao’s CR ideas and policy,” and she and others saw the beginning of a new, bright era,

The disaster of the CR taught the Chinese people the importance of universal values like human rights, democracy, freedom and equality.

We took Kitty back to Renmin with us in our cab. Her boyfriend at university had come from the countryside and had grown up very poor. She was very proud of how far he had come.

I asked her what she thought of China’s future. “I am very proud of my country,” she said in her soft voice. She then spoke at length and with great knowledge of the inequality between city and countryside, of how workers come from the countryside, do the same work as city dwellers, but are paid less by the government. The discrimination against country folk is well-known and of ancient practice in China. I asked her why she thought her government would do that. Her response indicated that the communist government of China had adopted a tactic of exploitative capitalists. “People in the country are so poor, and the wages that the government does pay are so much greater than what they can make in the country, that the government can get away with paying them less.”

One of the most memorable exchanges I had with anyone in Beijing occurred with Kitty in that cab. I asked her what the Chinese people thought of the election of Barack Obama as president. Kitty was sitting to my left. There was a brief pause and then she turned and looked at me with her big eyes and said, “It is a miracle.”

She said that it had been inconceivable to Chinese that a black man could ever be elected president given America’s history of slavery and racial discrimination. She told me that Chinese students are taught in middle school to memorize Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.

Kitty had made me proud of my own country.

The night of the 26th was when Ye Youyi called me to say that Mr. Wang wanted to meet again because he “has something to tell you.”

Carmen was right, there was no naming of names, but I learned more about whey there was no naming of names. I think I also learned much more.

The venue for the second interview of Mr. Wang had to be changed because of a logistical snafu. The surreal alternative setting was the waiting area of a Bally’s fitness center. Tape-recording this session was hampered by the pump-you-up background music so I took notes as a backup.

After my first interview with Mr. Wang I made it a point to ask others for their thoughts on individual responsibility. I asked indirect and open-ended questions to guard against being told what people thought I wanted to hear. Mr. Wang and I were talking about Mao’s responsibility for the Cultural Revolution violence and the effect on individual Chinese. He said to me that Chinese have a “slavish mentality." I started at the phrase because I had read others using similar phraseology. (1) I had once begun to write an article on it, my formulation was "slave's mentality." Mr. Wang also said that he thought that the slavish mentality was changing.

I do not think that Mr. Wang spoke literally, that all Chinese have a slavish mentality. We speak more simplistically than we really mean.

Human beings are complex things. Societies are more complex. The earliest of our species recognized the utility of simplifying the complex in order to understand. We continue to utilize the tool of simplification but most of us realize that its powerful attraction can pull us far off the path of understanding and onto that of misunderstanding.

Simplifying and simplistic both have the same root.

But neither imprecise speech nor the pitfalls of simplification should deter us from using a construct that truly does contribute to understanding.

Maoist China had characteristics of a slave state. Literal slavery did exist. Mao’s regime may have been the most totalitarian regime in human history. The extraordinary oppressiveness and the constant attempts at thought control help to explain how one could walk to the gallows without protest, or watch one’s wife walk to her death without intervening.

However, simplifying Maoist China by calling it a slave state is simplistic. The control of the master over the slave is more personal, the danger of disobedience more immediate; the slave has even less freedom, and no opportunity for advancement out of his position.

There was a subtle but significant distinction between the two formulations of the idea. My word was “slave;” Mr. Wang’s was “slavish,” “slave-like.” His was much better.

The effects of oppression are not uniform. A victim (Bian) is affected one way, the loved one of a victim (Mr. Wang) another. Perpetrators (Red Guards), uninvolved witnesses to violence, the state, and the general populace are all affected differently.

The first time that I went to Beijing in 2006 I was astonished at how western the city looked and how western was the behavior of the residents. Deng Xiaoping had said “To be rich is glorious,” and by God Beijingers sure seemed fully committed to the glory of getting rich.

How could this be in a country that had been arch-communist under Mao, where even Russian communism was considered “revisionist?” How could people so suddenly and completely shift from hatred of capitalists to being uber capitalists? Because the leading authority figure in the country had said so. A “slavish mentality” produces obedience. This, I suggest, helps explain the abrupt one hundred eighty degree turn.

A key corollary follows: If Mao was obeyed because he was the leading authority figure in the country and Deng was obeyed because he was the leading authority figure in the country then Beijingers were communists then and are capitalists now out of obedience, not out of commitment to the ideals of communism or the benefits of capitalism.

Ye Youyi once said to me with disappointment and disapproval, “Chinese don’t think for themselves, Ben.”

Where there is oppression one would also expect to find passivity and passive-aggressiveness. An author has made the observation that Chinese are neither confrontational nor argumentative. I would offer up the behavior of urban motorists as an excellent index of aggression among a people.

New York City taxi cab drivers will cut you off, honk their horns obnoxiously to get you to move (when there’s no place for you to move), and will get out of their cars and scream at you if you want to argue. “Road rage” is well known among ordinary drivers in the U.S. Many people have been murdered for the offense of cutting another driver off in traffic.

Beijing taxi drivers are as aggressive as their Manhattan brethren. However, they rarely honk their horns. I have thought on many occasions that a collision with another vehicle or a pedestrian was imminent but the Beijing drivers seem to have some secret Chinese anti-collision device planted somewhere. If there is such a device it is not connected to the ocular nerves however. They don’t look at each other, classic body language of the passive. Drivers don’t look at other drivers or pedestrians and pedestrians don’t look at drivers. But somehow, and often at the last possible opportunity, doom is averted. And the result of these near misses is never road rage.

Chinese have a reputation for being polite and my experience is consistent with that. I have communicated with a good number of Chinese in the Great Wall of Silence project. No one has ever been argumentative. All of this would seem to be good: no road rage, no traffic accidents, no arguments.

However there are downsides. I read somewhere that one has to be careful when interviewing Chinese people because they are so conditioned to say whatever they think their interviewer wants to hear. Agreement negates confrontation, which precludes punishment. Agreement of this kind requires no thought.

I would suggest a “please mentality” as the term to apply to those conditioned by oppression to agree or please. I think that Mr. Wang said he wanted to tell me something because he knew that it would please me.

During the American civil rights movement northern white volunteers went into the Deep South to register African-Americans to vote. The former slaves or descendants of slaves would unfailingly accept the registration forms enthusiastically and promise to fill them out and mail them in. Civil rights workers were therefore astonished when few new eligible voters showed up on the registration rolls. The oppression of Jim Crow conditioned them to avoid anything that could lead to a confrontation with white people. They followed up on the avoidance with the passive-aggressive behavior of not registering to vote to avoid confrontation with Southern whites.

Wouldn't a please mentality also be consistent with the Chinese government's actions vis a vis the Beijing Olympics? The government badly wanted the imprimatur of world approval that conferring the games on Beijing symbolized. They remade the city, bull-dozed the hutongs and replaced them with modern buildings. They had artifically reduced air pollution by shutting down factories and restricting the driving of ordinary Beijingers. They instructed Beijingers to smile, not expectorate, and taught them this amount of English (while smiling): "Welcome to Beijing."

The Chinese government did all of this to please, to please the International Olympic Committee, and foreign visitors.

These are all gross generalizations. One can not talk or write seriously about a Chinese mentality. However, I would suggest that there is a sense in which one can seriously talk or write about an American mentality; or an English, Japanese, French, or Indian mentality because those societies freely choose their leaders. The results of an election are at least a meaningfuly snapshot of the mentality of a society. A span of elections over a century or more does, I suggest, enable meaningful generalization about the mentality of a people, their hopes, values, ideals, and taboos.

Chinese don't have the freedom to choose the kind of government that they want. If they ever get that freedom the choice that they make, and its chances for permanent success, will require political freedom of thought. Chinese don't have that freedom either. What will that free election show the hopes, values, ideals, and taboos of Chinese to be?

In the second interview with Mr. Wang I saw that there is still fear. I had been concerned about using the Bally’s waiting area for the interview as soon as we sat down. Here were two Chinese people talking to two foreigners, the foreign man in the suit asking all the questions and the foreign woman holding a microphone. However I didn’t voice my concern since Mr. Wang and Ye Youyi, or interpreter, had chosen the site. Still, I paid attention to other people in our vicinity.

Mr. Wang spoke freely at first. People walked by but didn’t seem to pay us any mind. After about an hour a man sat down in our vicinity. He was to my right but directly in Mr. Wang’s line of vision. I turned to check him out. Mr. Wang paused and with squinted eyes looked carefully at the man. We continued to talk for a little while but Mr. Wang was no longer at ease and we finished up and left.

Fear produces false agreement. Fear also produces silence. One would expect false agreement and silence to be most pronounced in people of Mr. Wang’s generation, who lived through all of the brutality of Mao. The Great Wall of Silence surrounding the murder of Bian Zhongyun is a consequence in part of present fear and residual fear from the past.

There is also evidence to support the second part of Mr. Wang’s statement that the slavish mentality is changing. There was no evidence of a slavish mentality in the protests of Spring 1989. Those were bold, courageous, and widespread in participation and public support. The protesters of 1989 had the mentality of those willing to rebel against oppression, just as their forefathers had in 1644, 1911, and 1949. The June 4 massacre showed that Deng Xiaoping's regime still had a "slavish mentality," that is the mentality of the slave's master. The problems that the current regime has had in the countryside demonstrate that some Chinese still have the will to rebel.

However, there seems insufficient evidence for Ma Lisen’s positive assessment of the change. China is free only in the economic realm. Precisely the values that Ms. Ma mentioned--human rights, democracy, freedom, equality--are those that are still missing. China remains a civic communist state.

Human rights is a misnomer in a sense. A people have to demand them. Human rights cannot be gained by pleasing those who deny them.

(1) This and the other footnotes in the next post on this subject are in no way intended to be comprehensive. Dr. Li Zhisui, in The Private Life of Chairman Mao, uses it in a variety of contexts, as it is used in this post also: On the general public: " 'The people' were nothing but a vast multitude of faceless, helpless slaves [to the C.C.P.]" (355); On Zhou Enlai: "Suddenly, I realized that Zhou Enlai was Mao's slave..." (258);” 'We shouldn't do everything according to the books, slavishly copying every word,' “quoting Mao.”He traced the party's slave mentality to China's Confucian past." (234)