It's not often we get such stark, compelling, evocative descriptions of the high and low, the light and dark, the yin and the yang -- but here, from two unlikely sources, we're given powerful glimpses inside modern China, in all its dynamism and desperation.
What is it like to be part of the noveau riche in China, to experience the surge of wealth and power, to ride the wave of revolutionary capitalism? David Brooks of the New York Times, in a scintillating piece of Op-Ed journalism, gives us one answer.
On the other side, what it is like to be caught in the backwater eddies of China's social and economic tumult, dragged down by an irresistible undertow of crime, perversity, and unrelenting squalor? For that, we'll look to the cinema.
Writing from Shanghai, Brooks says:
Whether you are in business or government, you will be members of the same corpocracy. In the West, there are tensions between government and business elites. In China, these elites are part of the same social web, cooperating for mutual enrichment.Your life is governed by the rules of the corpocracy. Teamwork is highly valued. There are no real ideological rivalries, but different social networks compete for power and wealth. And the system does reward talent. The wonderfully named Organization Department selects people who have proven their administrative competence. You work hard. You help administer provinces. You serve as an executive at state-owned enterprises in steel and communications. You rise quickly.
When you talk to Americans, you find that they have all these weird notions about Chinese communism. You try to tell them that China isn’t a communist country anymore. It’s got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army.
This is a government of talents, you tell your American friends. It rules society the way a wise father rules the family. There is some consultation with citizens, but mostly members of the guardian class decide for themselves what will serve the greater good.
The meritocratic corpocracy absorbs rival power bases. Once it seemed that economic growth would create an independent middle class, but now it is clear that the affluent parts of society have been assimilated into the state/enterprise establishment. Once there were students lobbying for democracy, but now they are content with economic freedom and opportunity.
Meanwhile, for those millions and millions who are not part of the elite, nor even in the rising middle class, what is life like?
For that we turn to Yang Li, creator of a gripping, disturbing, award-winning, semi-documentary film made illegally inside China in 2003. Set within the hardscrabble makeshift coal-mining industry, it's called Mang jing, also known as Blind Shaft, and it follows the "fortunes" of two fictional but eminently believable con men and a naive youth that they encounter.
I saw the movie recently on CUNY-TV in New York, and it's definitely worth seeking out. Among many unforgettable scenes and great lines, this one best captures the film's bleak message: "China has a shortage of everything but people."
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