Chapter 8: China: Human Rights Vs. The Party

Shanghai boys on the subway. Notice his jacket says “Future”

Great works such as The Animal Farm and truth-telling sites like the Vietnamese BBC never have a chance to reach Vietnamese people. I did not even know that there were freedom of expression advocates being house arrested, attacked or jailed secretly. The amount of information hidden by the government is just unbelievable! Therefore, my childhood was perfectly happy and simple. It doesn’t mean that I turn my back to my country. No matter where I go in the future, that’s the only place that I would call home. Khue, 17, f, Vietnam (going to school in the US)

We don’t need no thought control. Leave them kids alone.

Hong Kong protesters’ signs quoting the British rock band Pink Floyd

If students don’t stand on the front line of democracy, who else can?

Joshua Wong, 17, m, Hong Kong

 We are the post-90s, you say we are immature, we are rebellious, we are wild. But we are definitely not brain-dead! In fact we are passionate, we are rising, we are ready to take on responsibility. Student demonstrators against the arrest of a Chinese civil rights lawyer in 2014.

Contents: Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan

Communist countries replaced a philosophy of proletariat solidarity with materialism and nationalism led by a few patriarchs, Vladimir Putin in Russia and the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Both approaches inhibit youth activism for freedom of expression. Youth activists recently led political movements in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. All are motivated by economic recession and fears for their future careers, lack of affordable housing and a moral concern that elders are undermining democracy.[1] A smaller generation than older ones means more older voters have political power. Youth unemployment is higher than for older workers and their jobs are more precarious. . A Japanese survey of people ages 15 to 34 reported that 40% depend on their parents as their main source of income.[2]

    Vietnam

In Vietnam the communist government sentenced democracy activists and bloggers to long jail terms in 2012 and 2013 for spreading “antigovernment propaganda.” It fined a state-run newspaper for “untrue information” included in a 2014 article stating that four of history’s famous communist leaders were notorious dictators: Lenin, Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Mao Zedong. A blogger was sentenced to 15 months in prison for “vilifying and smearing” leaders. The government invested in an Internet social network to educate young people in “patriotism and the love for the nation and the love for the government.” To get uncensored news, people turn to Facebook with 22 million members out of a population of 90 million people. About 100,000 students are studying abroad and learning new ideas.[3] Lily is one of the many middle-class teens studying abroad, as she discusses on our video.[4] A Vietnamese foreign policy expert explained these connected youth are demanding to be heard in policy decisions. A student, 19, told reporter Thomas Friedman, “We get many different sources of information from the world. It opens eyes.”

Khue, 17, answered my question about growing up in of the few (Laos, China, North Korea, Cuba) at least partially communist countries—Vietnam. Her comments are similar to those I heard from Chinese teens. She attends high school in the US.

             I never learned about Marx’s ideology for it’s only taught in university. However, my friends and I were taught about Hochiminh’s ideology, which is basically based on Marx and Lenin. As you can imagine, everything is one direction. It’s different from how I learned about Christopher Columbus’s discovery, as well as his cruelty, in my US history class in the States. I was taught only good or victorious things about Hochiminh and the party. There were communistic organizations for youths, which every student must join and I didn’t like them because I had to learn, again, about Hochiminh and other soldiers/politicians’ victories.         

                        In my country, we have a saying, C.O.C.C, an abbreviation for a phrase describing people who don’t have much talent but loftily sit on the top. Actually, this happens to many people and everywhere that I witnessed at a very early age. When I was younger, I usually felt angry and unfair when thinking about that, but speaking against the government is something to fear here. In short, I think the system has created people like me, who choose to secure their life by either shutting up or going abroad, not changing the system even though we see its weakness.

When I came here to the US, I started to notice that many books were never translated into Vietnamese because of their contents and many websites were prevented in advance by government-controlled Internet. Great works such as The Animal Farm and truth-telling sites like the Vietnamese BBC never have a chance to reach Vietnamese people [similar to China]. I did not even know that there were freedom of expression advocates being house arrested, attacked or jailed secretly. The amount of information hidden by the government is just unbelievable! Therefore, my childhood was perfectly happy and simple. It doesn’t mean that I turn my back to my country. No matter where I go in the future, that’s the only place that I would call “home.”

            Similar to other Asian countries, students complain about 12-hours-a-day spent studying. Middle-class preschoolers study in computer rooms and learn English from an early age. Wealthy Vietnamese aim to send their children to colleges abroad, including Moscow. Quinn, a young Vietnamese man living in the US, told me after a visit back home in 2010, “There’s still a big gap between the poor and the rich. The education system is not strong. They are still trying to figure out how to change it. The rich families send their kids to rich schools or half and half: community and private. Poor kids struggle to keep up with community schools or drop out and work.” Returning home in 2014, Khue emailed,

This year, I am amazed at the rapid influence of Starbucks, McDonalds and foreign supermarkets after their debuts last year. Also, the city is under a big construction for the new pedestrian area and first subway system. I agree with Quinn that there is still a very big gap between the rich and the poor. The education system, as well as the healthcare system, tries, sometimes fruitlessly, to mimic the developed countries without any long-term strategy. Therefore, many families choose studying abroad, and you hear the term “ethical degradation” a lot. 

Reporter Roger Cohen found that hypercapitalism without Western checks and balances produces “new Asian elites, often party-connected, whose dream is an American lifestyle and education for their children.”[5] On the other end of the social spectrum, he saw Vietnamese women on bicycles searching through the trash of the rich looking for items to sell. It’s paradoxical that communist countries like Viet Nam and China focus on capitalist entrepreneurship, profit making, and consumption rather than the good of the proletariat.

China

Asia is the region with the fastest growing economies, including emerging markets in Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines. China is the single largest contributor to world economic growth, averaging 10% growth during the three decades from 1980 to 2015, compared to global growth of 3%. It contributed a quarter of global expansion in 2015 and was forecast to grow faster than the US economy in the future. (However, India is moving ahead with the fastest economic growth, the largest youth population, but inhibited by the most polluted cities, inadequate infrastructure and as numerous as the US population lifted out of poverty and a number of billionaires second only to the US.[6]  The government almost doubled life expectancy since 1950 with public health programs. With nearly $4 trillion in currency reserves, China is the world’s second largest economy,[7] the largest owner of US debt, and second only to the US in its investments abroad.

However, the slowdown in its economy and stock market crashes in 2015 negatively impacted economies around the world that rely on Chinese purchases of their raw materials such as oil. China’s debt load is a higher percentage of GDP than in Germany or the US, rising to $28 trillion by 2014.[8] The debt almost quadrupled between 2007 and 2015. Autocratic nations’ economies grow faster than democratic ones up to the level of income per person where China is now, indicating growth will slow without reform and improvement of poor quality rural education.[9] With economic slowdown, predictions were 20% to 30% of the 6.8 million recent college graduates won’t find jobs: About 700,000 graduates in 2012 were unemployed the following year.[10] Unlike Western countries, educated youth are more likely to be unemployed than less educated youth, with an unemployment rate of 10% for all youth aged 16 to 24.[11]

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has over 80 million members, millions of soldiers. The CCP survey of 25,000 students at 140 universities reported that about 80% were willing to join the party’s more than 80 million members.[12] The party explained that a small number of young people join for selfish reasons “due to the rampant materialism and consumerism of modern society,” but the main draw is the party gives an answer to the quest for the meaning of life. Since its inception, the CCP maintains that it has been a youthful party because, “The Party’s faith and belief gives young people a wider, more meaningful, more stirring and more forceful answer to a certain degree.” A survey revealed that young university graduates’ top job choices are to work for the government or state-owned businesses that favor CCP members. See young Chinese for yourself on my video interviews with a student from a well-to-do family in central China, students in a Shanghai international school, and my main contact, Yuan.[13] I started corresponding with him via email when he very thoughtfully answered the book questionnaire as a college freshman and now he’s 28 in graduate school in Europe. Some of our correspondence over the years is on the book website.[14]

In the largest youth uprising, young Red Guards led the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to Mao’s death in 1979, fighting against old traditions and power bases. At first a student had to be from a “red” family of elite CCP cadres and members of Young Pioneers, but then students from other families were allowed to join, even “black” former rich families.[15] One of their first posters stated, “Beat to a pulp any and all persons who go against Mao Zedong Thought.” “Snake demon” teachers accused of bourgeois thinking were subject to humiliation like wearing dunce hats, having their homes looted, being beaten, and even murdered. The CCP shut down all classes so students could devote themselves to the Cultural Revolution, one of the few times in history government backed a student revolt.

Two years after Mao’s death in 1976, CCP party leader Deng Xiaoping decided to reform the economy but not the one-party political system. He allowed more local elections, public hearings, term limits and required retirement age for top leaders for the first time in thousands of years. Innovative local democracy efforts were awarded, such as a public poll to evaluate local government performance, livestreaming public meetings on the Internet or childcare for immigrants. “Accusation centers” and confidential phone lines permit anonymous complains about party members, although corruption is still pervasive. The CCP gave Chinese new freedoms to move, own property, choose their career, go on the Internet (albeit censored) and gave up the campaign for “socialist purity.”

The People’s Republic of Amnesia by Louisa Lim (2014) describes how young Chinese nationalists don’t know their history, such as when over 3,000 students conducted hunger strikes for democratic reform. Most Chinese young people don’t know about the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989 and that “June 4” is deleted from the Internet in China. Students called for Deng Xiaoping, the architect of capitalist reforms, to resign. They built a tent city in the square, making art (a 37-foot sculpture called the Goddess of Liberty) as in other global uprisings. Reporter Nicholas Kristof witnessed the Chinese army crush the student democracy movement, “shooting at anything that moved.”[16] He said the protesters demanded not just rice, but rights. It was the most polite protest movement he’s ever seen with protesters thanking police and returning lost shoes to their owners as student marshals controlled the crowds. Rickshaw drivers risked their lives to pick up bodies of injured or dead demonstrators.

Youth discontent helped fuel the democracy protests in the square, famous everywhere but China. Former US military officer Colonel Robert Helvey (a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Pentagon) used Gene Sharp’s tactics to train Chinese student leaders in Hong Kong in techniques they later used in Tiananmen Square. Students demonstrated against corruption and nepotism, encouraged by party chief Hu Yaobang’s statement that modernization required democracy. Hu was ousted in early 1987 for failing to crack down on students. Thousands of peaceful Beijing residents went to the streets to stop the 200,000 troops from harming the million students and other demonstrators who protested corruption and call for freedom of the press, to no avail. They also gathered in squares in other cities to call for freedom of speech and elections.

When the USSR fell apart in 1991, the CCP sent teams of researchers to study the former republics to find out how not to repeat Russian mistakes. They also sent thousands of officials to study abroad in outstanding universities in the US, England, Japan, Russia, and so on. Deng didn’t want Chinese perestroika as led by Gorbachev because he warned in 1992, “Liberalism and turmoil destroy stability.”[17]

Millennial Eric Fish went to Nanjing, China, to teach and study in 2007. He described his students as apolitical and submissive, part of the 250 million Millennials.[18] The People’s Liberation Army indoctrinates freshmen university students of both sexes in weeks of military drill and patriotism. However, he found brave young protesters an argued that activism is increasing with a disillusioned Millennial “Want Generation” no longer pacified by a growing economy and nationalistic education.[19] When a civil rights lawyer was arrested in 2014, a dozen students posted a photo of themselves on Sina Weibo (a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook) holding Pu Zhiqiang’s photo, with the caption, “We are the post-90s, you say we are immature, we are rebellious, we are wild. But we are definitely not brain-dead! In fact we are passionate, we are rising, we are ready to take on responsibility.”[20]

Helen Gao is a Beijing journalist who compares her generation born in the late 1980s and 90s with the more liberal youths growing up at the start of economic reform led by Hu Yaobang in the 1980s the hero of the liberals.[21] To prevent similar democracy rebellions like the Tiananmen Square in 1989, Gao said the government “kept politics out of our lives.” The goal was to acquire one the refrigerators that became available with the increase in electrical grids in the late 1980s and eat at a new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Gao said she and her peers studied hard and on weekends tried on jeans and sneakers in malls or sang Chinese and Western songs in karaoke parlors. They focused on memorizing information from texts for all-important two-day gaokao college entrance exam and then on finding a good job, not on social issues. They know what their textbooks tell them, although they mocked Marxist philosophy in private. They don’t know about Tiananmen, rebels like artists Ai Weiwei or “barefoot lawyer” Chen Guangcheng, repression of Tibetan Buddhists, or military crackdowns against Muslim Uighurs in the autonomous region of Xinjiang.

Gao also reported that Chinese people are reading fewer books than they used to, averaging 15 minutes a day on reading, compared to almost 100 minutes watching TV and 45 minutes on the Internet.[22] Gao’s dismal portrait of superficial Chinese youth makes me appreciate thinkers like SpeakOut respondent Yuan. He emailed about a friend who teaches middle school, “She said if I ever go to her school, which is a traditional Chinese school that crams students with exam answers day in and day out, I would freak out,” although he attended such schools as a boy in central China.

The percent of students from rural areas who made it to prestigious universities decreased although China experienced the largest rural to urban migration in history; about 300 million farmers moved to cities in the past two decades. Only 10% of students from the countryside attend prestigious Peking University, down from about 30% rural students in the 1990s. Rural schools often lack qualified teachers and modern buildings, and their poorly educated grandparents care for about 60 million “left-behind” children while their parents work in cities. Children who migrate with their parents don’t have the right to go to public schools because of the hukou system that links services to birthplace.

In late 2014 the government discussed gaokao reforms to raise quotas for student from poorer regions, spreading out the exams to three different times and considering “moral character” in university admission. It threatened to jail cheaters on the test for up to seven years. Expansion of universities to house more than 26 million students in 2015 is part of President Xi’s slogan the “China dream.” In 2016 the government planned to admit more students from poor regions (about 6% of spots in the best schools that lead to the best jobs) into the higher quality universities in prosperous urban areas, leading to demonstrations against the plan by parents in those cities.[23]

Elite urban high schools often require “voluntary donations” for admission and students pay for after-school tutoring. The typical undergraduate at Tshinghua University (China’s MIT) is urban, went to high school, watches US TV series like The Big Bang Theory and House of Cards and has parents who are civil servants and teachers.[24] Gao gives the example of a 16-year-old girl she knows who attends a private school costing around $24,000 a year. The girl’s mother prepared her to study in the US by playing her English tapes of Disney movies and hosting exchange students from the US. In 2014, more than 274,000 Chinese were studying at US universities, and less than half will return to China.[25] They like the freedom to dialogue in class and the emphasis on critical thinking, stating that Chinese teachers sound like they’re reading a book. A Stanford University study of computer science and engineering students found that Chinese university students lose their advantage in critical thinking skills over US and Russian students, although they start university two or three years ahead of their peers.[26]

By 2017, Chinese high school and college students were almost half of international students in the US, contributing over $11 billion to the US economy in 2015.[27] The “parachute kids’” parents want to save their offspring from the pressure of doing well on the college entrance exam and want them to have more creativity in the classroom. The benefits are mixed: One of the Chinese students was told “Cool kids never study,” and started lifting weights to build muscle to attract a girlfriend. At the same time, President Xi campaigns against foreign influences in China.

Recent Activism

Recent graduating classes belong to the much less political jiu ling hou or post-90s generation. Similar to their Western peers, their critics stereotype them as self-centered, naïve, spoiled, rebellious, lazy, promiscuous and confused. Their fans describe them as intelligent, innovative, curious and tech-savvy.[28] They’re the majority of the 632 million Chinese with online access and two-thirds (69%) of 18 to 29 year-olds have a smart phone.[29]

Youthful rebellion is minor in China now with feminists the most outspoken, described in my Brave: The Global Girls’ Revolution. Interviews with older feminist activists are available online.[30] Graduating university seniors celebrated by posting naked photos running or standing in front of their university with the sign “you f***ed my youth.”[31] The photos garnered much criticism but a young blogger posted, “This picture shows the spirit of fighting for freedom in this so-called ‘harmonious’ country.”

The Chinese government acknowledges “social conflict” associated with the growing gap between rich and poor and urban and rural areas and the need to fight corruption, as mentioned in the final address of President Hu Jintao to the National People’s Congress in 2012. While he was speaking, petitioners seeking justice where sent back to their hometowns, activists questioned, lawyers placed under illegal house arrest and thugs hired to harass protesters.[32] Thousands of petitioners travel to Beijing or provincial capitals to report injustices but are often harassed by officials. President Hu said that the CCP must “make people’s democracy more extensive” as they travel the path of socialism but, “We will never copy a Western political system.” The CCP warned in 2015 that Western values such as constitutionalism, judicial independence, respect for civil society and press freedom are a “ticket to hell” and warned against them infiltrating into university classrooms.[33]

After the Tunisian Jasmine revolution, small protests called “Jasmine Rallies” were planned in China in February 2011, advertised on www.Boxun.com and other sites. They demanded, “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness.” A blogger posted after Mubarak resigned in 2011, “Even though the people we are watching are Egyptians…our ears are ringing with the echoes of history. This is the sound of the German people tearing down the Berlin Wall, of the Indonesian students taking to the streets, of Gandhi leading the people down the road of justice.”[34] A group called “Organizers of China Jasmine Rallies” posted a message for people who “have a dream for China” to stroll at 2:00 PM on Sundays in specific locations in more than a dozen cities, such as McDonald’s in Beijing. This tactic of strolling was used by Poland’s Solidarity movement in 1980 instead of a demonstration in one place because how can police arrest you for strolling? Before the first Sunday stroll, dozens of activists and human rights lawyers were detained or put under house arrest.

The word jasmine was blocked on the Internet, flower stores were prohibited from selling the flower, and people referred to it as “that flower.”[35] The CCP is the most powerful political organization in the world, yet they were afraid of a flower symbol. Texters weren’t able to send to multiple recipients and Facebook remained blocked. An editorial in the Beijing Daily dismissed the Arab Spring protests as “a self-delusional ruckus,” but the government increased media censorship and excluded reporters from areas where gatherings might occur. Security forces detained hundreds of activists, harassed foreign journalists, and occupied protest sites to prevent a Jasmine Revolution in 2011. Activist Zhu Yufu was jailed for attempting to subvert the state with his poem called “It’s Time.” A translated excerpt is:

It’s time, Chinese People!

It’s time,

The square is ours,

The feet are ours,

It’s time to use our feet to go to the square and make a choice.

In 2011, cameras were installed on squares where demonstrators might gather; the government banned most foreign films and increased censorship of journalists, and jailed more dissidents. It routinely blocks Western social networking sites although some Internet users find a way to use proxy services to get around the blocks. Banned keywords blocked from display on search engines include “occupy” followed by the names of Chinese cities. Novelist and blogger against censorship, Murong Xuecun (born in 1974) reported, “I have seen China change. I have seen the Internet awaken its people.”[36] Yuan emailed this account of Chinese reaction to the Arab Spring:

They briefly reported the fact that there was protest and government change [in the Middle East] and not much details as 99% of the results focus on the economics aspect. Not much update after early February. There are one or two stories about the current Egypt, but no analysis. Of course the news of demonstrations in China are blocked. I can’t open the pages of the search results. I used proxy to read something.

China has the world’s most sophisticated techniques to censor the Internet from “hostile foreign forces,” according to Al Gore, as well as the most Internet users—more than 500 million people. China had the worst score for Internet censorship out of 65 nations according to a study called “Freedom of the Net 2015.” it blocks Google, Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times and jails dissenters for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”[37] Researchers can’t reach academic sources such as Google Scholar. Historic photos of Mao’s generation are altered to leave out leaders who fell into disfavor; a Sina Weibo tweet went viral showing the before and after photos.[38] Chinese activists use their phones and social media to get around censorship, substituting images for censored words, and using walkie-talkies. Instead of searching June 4^th, the anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre and the most taboo topic, activists used Six Four or May 35, but those too are blocked. Censors try to disable software such as Astrill and other virtual private networks (VPNs) used to get around the Great Firewall. Thousands of “stability maintenance” offices are staffed by around 300,000 government employees who hire neighborhood informants to nip protests in the bud. Some of these problems are illustrated in the Chinese film A Touch of Sin (2013, English subtitles), including one man’s campaign against the village chief who got rich selling the village’s collective property.

A Chinese observer commented online about lack of activism:

As long as the government continues with its censorship of the Internet, it will be extremely difficult for a Jasmine Revolution to take root in China. Continued censorship has meant, sadly, that many ordinary Chinese have little interest in domestic or international affairs, and are only interested now in how to make money. With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that so many foreign observers have argued that the biggest success for the Chinese government as a result of 30 years of economic reforms is that people are now simply chasing money, and have forgotten about chasing political ideals.[39]

The fires of Chinese youth rebellion burn low partly because it’s difficult to get past government censors and security forces; the 2012 security budget was $111 billion, more than spent on the military. Also, the employment rate is high, keeping discontent low. Youth unemployment was only 7.6% in 2012, compared to 25% in Europe’s “lost generation,” rising to 10.5% in 2014.[40] Only Southeast Asia has such low youth unemployment. Youth are busy working long hours and have hope they can be upwardly mobile, despite corruption and large gaps between the rich and the poor. A young Shanghai English teacher told CNN’s Anthony Bourdain that youth don’t have dreams other than to buy an apartment and a car. They’re so obsessed with their cellphones, it’s common to see a couple in a restaurant not talking to each other as they look at their phones—a global addiction. (He also said US TV shows are very popular, naming House of Cards, a show about politics.) Asian American novelist Kevin Kwan described “wealth porn” in his novels about newly rich Chinese young people who conspicuously consume in Crazy Rich Asians (2013) and China Rich Girlfriend (2016).

Citizen protests are common, usually about local officials’ corrupt actions and the environment. The government estimated that citizens initiated around 180,000 “mass incidents” of protests and demonstrations in 2011 to oppose pollution, corruption, unfair prison sentences, land thefts, and unsafe food, stimulating a bigger budget on international security than defense.[41] The largest protest since 1989 occurred in coastal Xiamen in 2007 against a proposed chemical plant. It succeeded in stopping the construction and sparked youth-led environmentalism such as a student-led demonstration against a copper plant in Sichuan. Many universities have environmental clubs and NGOs, coordinated by the China Youth Climate Action network.

A vehement protest by a fishing village called Wukan succeeded in their demands at the end of 2011, refusing to allow the sale of their farmland to developers—a frequent problem in rural areas with thousands of protests against rural land grabs.[42] What’s unusual is the villagers threw out their corrupt local government and police and built barricades around their town, temporarily establishing self-government. A 27-year-old villager, Zhang Jianxing posted photos of the protests online and explained that due to lack of response to their appeals from government departments, “We were forced to take action ourselves. When we started the whole thing, we knew we had to succeed.” However, the Wukan villagers posted a sign “We are not a revolt. We support the Communist Party. We love our country.”

An advisor to China’s State Council told a forum in 2011 that China averages 500 large-scale protests called “mass incidents” each day over issues like pollution, corruption and land grabs.[43] About half of the large 2013 protests centered on environmental problems.[44] Nearly one-fifth of China’s arable land and most of its rivers, underground water, and lakes are polluted due to industrial toxins, raising concerns about food safety.[45] Only three of 74 Chinese cities monitored by the government met minimum standards for air quality in 2013.  Businesses dump their waste at night and bribe law enforcement agencies. Environmental protests increased along the industrialized coast. Villagers in Baha, a village in the southwest, were so fed up with the polluting metalwork factory that they smashed its offices and equipment in 2014, leading to clashes with police. China is both the world’s foremost contributor to global warming and the largest investor in renewable energy. Wealthy people flee pollution by migrating to other countries. Despite poor air quality and indoor wood fires in rural areas, Chinese men smoke one-third of the world’s cigarettes, sold by the government monopoly.[46] Some areas report increases of teen girls who smoke.

President Xi promised to make renewable power 20% of energy production by 2030 and cap greenhouse gas emissions. China planted over 66 billion trees to stop the spread of the desert, using aerial seeding and cash payments to farmers.[47] The government announced a plan in 2013 to invest $16 billion over three years to reduce the capital’s pollution and required that coal be reduced to 65% of energy production by 2017.

Use of Social Media for Rights Campaigns

Protesters use Weibo to communicate with photos and words, with around 600 million Internet users. The censors tried to inhibit this communication tool in 2012 by requiring users to include their id number and real name. By 2014, Weibo lost popularity to WeChat, which is like Facebook in providing messaging among followers, a more private communication and therefore less censored. Also, comments are deleted after a few days. An impetus for the change was the government detained hundreds of popular commentators who had millions of followers on Weibo. An environmental activist, Hu Jia commented, “Weibo and WeChat are gifts from God [interesting word choice in an atheist country]. Despite all the government surveillance, the benefits we get are even greater for people trying to organize society.”[48]

 A common saying is if you post something the government doesn’t like you’ll be invited to have tea with the police and asked to remove sensitive material, as I heard in Shanghai. Censors moved to crack down on instant messaging on smartphones in 2014. Yuan says the CCP has eyes and ears everywhere. The government ordered videostreaming websites to shop showing four popular US shows (The Big Bang Theory, the Good Wife, NCIS, and The Practice) in 2014 preferring that views watch national TV. The US shows’ contents were deemed “inappropriate.” Yuan added, “Some news say that means 80% of US TV shows are about to be banned soon.” South Koran shows were also banned in 2017, but Chinese viewers see pirated copies. The most popular TV shows in 2017 were produced on the mainland.[49]

A daring newspaper called the Southern Weekly called for a strike in 2013 to protest censorship of its editorial advocating constitutional rights, sparking support from university students, celebrities and others who spoke out online in favor of free speech.[50] The newspaper reported that 1,034 of its articles were censored in 2012, leading to national discussion. Hundreds of people demonstrated outside the paper’s headquarters in Guangzhou carrying signs and flowers calling for less censorship. Author Eric Fish was “shocked by the fearlessness of the young protesters,” as police took photos of them. Actress Yao Chen (age 33) posted a quote from Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “One word of truth outweighs the whole world” along with the Southern Weekly logo. She has the largest fan base with 32 million Sina Weibo followers. The following year, Yang Maodong, a well-known activist in the “rights defense” movement (Weiquan) was arrested, partly because he was one of the Southern Weekly demonstrators.

The government jailed an increasing number of human rights advocates in one of the harshest crackdowns since the Beijing Olympics in 2008, as reported by Amnesty International.[51] In August 2013, the government jailed some bloggers who have millions of followers. An official editorial on the Xinhua website warned that bloggers will be “dealt with like rats scurrying across the street that everyone wants to kill” (similar language was used by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi). One of those netizens, Murong Xuecun, said the most infamous arrest was jailing a 16-year-old boy who posted “All officials shield one another.”[52] Xuecun and friends joke about who will be next on the government hit list. As part of the crackdown to insure “ideological purification” under President Xi Jinping, Peking University fired an economics professor in October 2013 for being “an extreme liberal” who advocated “freedom and democracy,” according to the government’s Global Times newspaper. The Youth League and its 87.5 million members were also brought under CCP control to reach out to young people more effectively, along with their media channels China Youth Network and Beijing Youth Weekly.

One of the activists jailed in 2013 was Yang Hui, a 16-year-old student in Gansu. He was arrested for “creating a disturbance” after he challenged police reports that a man had committed suicide when his family said police beat him to death. In response to public protests, Yang was released after a week. Other young activists were lawyers including an increasing number of women, who joined together to form “China Human Rights Lawyers Group.” The rights movement began in the early 2000s led by intellectuals and is the main focus of the Chinese democracy movement.[53] It works to increase rights through litigation, petitions, blogs and other Internet publicity. Rights lawyers are punished by the government, monitored, detained, and jailed.

President Xi decreed, ”Never allow singing to a tune contrary to the party center.”[54] His Document No. 30 warned in 2015 that Western ideas of free speech, “universal values,” and criticism of Mao threaten the CCP’s survival and should be cleansed from universities and other cultural institutions. In 2015, a 71-year old journalist was sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking Document Number 9, a government strategy paper calling for aggressive silencing of civil society, press freedom, and Western democracy. TV shows were censored further in 2016 with a long list of prohibitions including sex, overly sexual clothing, homosexuality, luxurious lifestyles, and feudal beliefs such as reincarnation, deviance, and vulgarity. Xiao Shu, a writer and visiting scholar at a Taiwan university said, “On the mainland, as long as you control the streets with enough soldiers and guns, you can kill a protest, because everywhere else is already controlled: the press, the Internet, the schools, every neighborhood and every community.”[55] A survey of Chinese young people studying in the US discovered that Chinese media has a negative impact on support for democracy, while foreign media consumption increased support as did social science education.[56]

The most popular blogger in China (some say in the world because of the large number of his readers) somehow gets away with critiquing government corruption, censorship, and exploitation of young workers, as well as poverty, pollution and the education system. Han Han, born in 1982, dropped out of middle school because, “The education system tries to create homogeneous personalities.” He said the education system is as absurd as taking a shower wearing a padded coat. “The problem with our education is that no one will go take a shower naked.” He wrote a best-selling novel about middle school when he was 18, titled the Triple Door, followed by other novels, along with being a racecar driver. “You can write whatever you want on the Internet,” he explained to an interviewer, “so long as you are not afraid.” He stays safe by supporting one-party rule, avoiding direct attacks on the party, and not trying to organize on the streets. Like racecar driving, if you push too hard you crash, he stated, adding that it’s a long process to arrive at democracy, but he believes that if the people change so will the CCP.[57] If the people really want something, they can get it in 20 years at the most, according to Hans.[58]

A hopeful 19-year-old who protested against building a polluting metals plant in the city of Shifang, Li Yonglin observes, “I see Chinese people’s civic consciousness building. Thanks to the spread of information, more people are aware of their rights. . . . The people will not continue believing what the government feeds them and simply follow it.”[59] An example of using media to protest is a vendor who stabbed two municipal officers to death because they arrested and beat him for not having a license—reminiscent of the angry Tunisian vender who set off the Arab Spring. To support him, the Internet was flooded with almost three million comments, similar to this one: “Hero Xia, rest in peace. Your anti-repression spirit will continue to inspire the repressed.”[60] After his execution, his wife and 12-year-old son continued to publicize the case. An exiled blind activist, Chen Guangcheng reported that he reads Internet chatter saying if Ukraine can overthrow their government overnight, it can happen in China.[61] He said the number of demonstrations is increasing along with the number of arrests. He was arrested for opposing forced abortions as a self-taught lawyer. China is “missing” about 24 million girls under age 20 due to selective abortion or infanticide of girls, according to UNPF.[62]

A large strike at the Yue Yuen Dongguan shoe factory was one of the largest strikes, one of 1,171 strikes and labor protests between June 2011 and the end of 2013.[63] In April 2014, workers at the shoe factory protested the company’s failure to pay their full social security and housing allowance and not being able to enroll their children in local public schools. Censors deleted media reporting of the protest. Because unions are controlled by the CCP, workers organize horizontally in their factories and join independent labor rights organizations. University students supported the 40,000 striking workers by posting pro-strike posters as repression of civil society groups increased.

The Beijing Yirenping Center worked for gender equality and fought discrimination against people with HIV and physical disabilities, but was shut down in March 2015. The catalyst was their support of five young feminists who were arrested for planning to demonstrate against sexual harassment on International Women’s Day, arrested for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, explained, ”Even though these organizations have tried to stay within the red lines of normally tolerated activism, the government still sees them as fomenting [foreign backed] color revolutions.”[64] That’s a problem for reformers because the majority of the around 2,00 to 3,000 social justice groups rely on foreign funding. Many of them register as private businesses rather than be sponsored by a state entity as a nonprofit group. By August of 2015 over 250 human rights activists and lawyers were arrested, including Wang Yu who defended the Feminist Five. Will young people find consumerism or freedom more appealing, keeping in mind the economy slowed down in 2015 and the stock market and currency was precarious? Like Russian youth, will nationalism and materialism prevail over democracy? (More on censorship on the book webpage.)[65]

Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s (HK) population of seven million includes more than 78,000 undergraduate students who suffer from increasing youth unemployment and difficulty being socially mobile. Many think of themselves as different from mainland Chinese, illustrated in Hong Kong is Not China Facebook book by an artists’ collective called Local Studio Hong Kong.[66] University education has been more westernized since the 1990s so that human rights and freedom of speech are not considered subversive.

Scholarism—The Alliance Against Moral & National Education was founded by a group of HK secondary school students in May 2011, with no political affiliations, to oppose Beijing’s efforts to control curriculum. Scholarism opposed new nationalistic school courses to generate patriotism by teaching about Chinese political system and history. With more autonomy than on the mainland, HK protesters carried signs in 2012 quoting the British rock band Pink Floyd, “We don’t need no thought control. Leave them kids alone,” shown online.[67] A group of young girls chanted, “We want the truth, we don’t want brainwashing.” Beijing’s proposed curriculum would teach how to respect political leaders, how to “speak cautiously,” be self-disciplined and get along well with others.  The international hacker group Anonymous leaked classified education documents in September 2012 when a HK university student emailed me,

In the introduction of patriotic education, there is a guidebook circulated among Primary and Secondary Schools called The China Model, published by Hong Kong Baptist University, funded by the Education Bureau. It described members in power in China as “selfless, progressive and in solidarity with Chinese people,” and US party politics as “a bad fight in which citizens suffers.” It provided a clear picture to media and people to know what it exactly is, though Education Bureau said it is only for reference.

Protests mushroomed to tens of thousands of HK’s chief executive Leung Chun-ying revoked a 2015 deadline for every school to start teaching the new subject. In September 2012, he suggested instead that school principals would be responsible for deciding whether to teach it, leaving them open to pressure from Beijing. Crowds of young people wearing black T-shirts continued to protest around government headquarters. Sam Chan, a 19-year-old college student, said, “We just want to cancel the whole subject…to protect our future and our sons’ futures.” Three days later more than 1,000 university students boycotted class to demand withdrawal of the curriculum. They occupied the park in front of government offices and conducted a hunger strike. I assumed that mainland press wouldn’t cover the news, but checked with Yuan who emailed disguising words from censors, “I did find something. Of course the word p ro te st is taken away, just something about they are delaying the m o r a l edu ca tion.” 

Sophie Ping-Ya Hsu emailed from her vantage point in Taiwan,

In previous discussions with some Hong Kong people, I got a sense that the majority was more concerned about stability, grow the economy even more capitalistic, and did not seem that having the right to vote was a top priority. As HK was handed over to China, the HK people started to feel more pressured into looking at themselves and realize that they were unhappy to be subjected to the system of government influenced by China. I didn’t like watching China making false promises to let the people of HK decide for their own leader, but didn’t deliver. I think the last straw for the HK people was when China tried to use its influence to change the school curriculum into a more Chinese-centric one. I feel regret though, that it had to be youth to carry on the responsibility of protecting the region’s interest instead of the entire HK people as a whole. It was regrettable to see police violence, the elder generation and the working-class react the way they did. I was appalled by seeing women being sexually harassed as a suppression tool for their beliefs. 

A poll conducted in December of 2013 found that 82% of people in their 20s were dissatisfied with how Beijing managed HK, compared to 52% of all residents surveyed.[68] A former government official explained that students “are more sensitive to this great division of wealth.” Another executive explained, “Hong Kong nowadays becomes corrupt, and becomes not performance-driven but relationship-driven.”

More than a fifth of the electorate, almost 800,000 HK citizens, voted mostly online in an unofficial referendum held in June 2014 in favor of choosing their own chief executive without Beijing’s approval of the candidates. They referred to the Basic Law that was supposed to stand at least until 2047, the principle of “one country, two systems” established after Britain turned control over to Beijing in 1997. The movement was called Occupy Central with Love and Peace, led by professors and students. Law professor Benny Tai asked the crucial question, “How can a government govern if the whole society refuses to cooperate with you?” Leaders called for 10,000 protesters to blockade the financial district if Beijing didn’t abide by the referendum and remove Beijing control of nominees. Student members of Scholarism encouraged a big turnout for the vote and marches, and helped formulate one of the three proposals on the ballot.

Joshua Wong, 17, a well-known co-founder of Scholarism along with two other high school boys, said on video that “us students hold the key to the future,” and are willing to risk legal consequences to push for democracy in civil disobedience.[69] He explained that to change society, they need to use activism rather than words to influence politicians. He was inspired by previous activism that he learned about on the Internet. Wong became an activist at age 14 when he founded Scholarism with secondary-school students opposed to Beijing’s attempt to impose political curriculum. He was raised in a middle-class Christian family. He described his parents as, “They are not helicopter parents and do not spoil me. . .. They have given me freedom, which has shaped Joshua Wong as he is now.”[70] He attends the least prestigious university because, “Teachers have always said my only strength is talking and that I talk very fast.”

Protesters used familiar slogans in 2014, “power to the people” from the 1960s and “the people want….” and “Democracy Now” heard in the Arab Spring. They chanted, “our own government, our own choice.” Wong said the people want “to fight for civil nomination,” where the voters decide their representatives, not Beijing. At age 18 Wong was portrayed as Batman on a banner hung from a bridge. He was featured in a documentary, Lessons in Dissent (2014)[71] and a TIME magazine cover titled “The Face of Protests.” The people are willing to dream with the students who have more time and energy, he said. He went on a hunger strike to force the government to talk with protesters about reforms, saying, “We will use our bodies to wake people up.” His generation wants a say in their future, believing that they have to do radical action because leaders do nothing: “I don’t want to follow the games of adults” and chit chat.[72]

Wong is an example of framing political issues with youthful identity and scholars’ observations that young HK activists tend to be more confrontational and rebellious than their elders, using new forms of protest in “transgressive contention.”[73] Of course Wong rejects being called the leader, because “If Hong Kong just relies on me, the movement will fail.”

The Chinese government withdrew a promise to allow free elections in 2017, resulting in protests in September 2014. After the referendum, the biggest march in a decade was held in the financial district, mostly young people, and was extended to an overnight sit-in. Organizers claimed 510,000 people participated. Police arrested 511 of them. The Hong Kong Federation of Students organized the sit-in, chanting, “Hope [or change] is with the people,” “Say No to Communist China,” and “We need to fight to make change.” The Federation posted their photos on Facebook.[74] Five members of the Civil Human Rights Front were arrested for blocking traffic, etc. I asked Yuan if he had heard about these protests: “Not hearing anyone talking about the H K pro tests.  I just got the news from you. Google is totally gone now. It was blocked but now, gone.”

Protests continued on September 22 with over 80,000 demonstrators, again mainly students, on the streets and in front of government buildings and around the city. They boycotted classes for over a week. Leading organizations were the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism. The crowd was young and angry about growing inequality and increasing cost of living. One of them told BBC TV, “We won’t go home until we’re free at last,” in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. The president of his university student union said, “University students must shoulder the responsibilities of these times” and a member of the legislature, age 62, said, “Now the younger people have taken control and used their advantage of surprise.”[75] The larger coalition called Occupy Central with Love and Peace supported the student-led protest.

 Police responded with tear gas, pepper spray, long-barreled guns and arrested hundreds of demonstrators, displaying banners saying “Disperse or We Shoot.” Innovative students wore raincoats and swim goggles and carried umbrellas to protect against tear gas. My HK student contact emailed,

The dramatic effect of tear gas has to be contextualized into Hong Kong protest history, that it is about the reminiscence of June 4 incident in Beijing, which is in commemoration every year in Hong Kong. The first time tear gas was used against locals was after 1984 protesting against the spike in first registration tax of taxis. The last time police used tear gas is during the 2005 WTO conference.

The demonstrations were called the #UmbrellaRevolution, the term coined by Adam Cotton in New York on Twitter, with hashtags like “Umbrella is Everywhere.” They also used #OccupyCentral. Although more than 200,000 demonstrators protested on the streets of HK on the peak day of September 29 with over 2,000 tents, most of the US media ignored the 75-day occupation. Protesters photoshopped a photo of President Xi Jinping holding an umbrella at various protest sites, portrayed on TIME magazine’s October 19 cover and widely reposted. It survived for more than 24 hours on WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app without being censored, but more than a dozen netizens in Hong Kong were arrested and charged with using a computer with “criminal or dishonest intent.” Some of them were accused of assisting Anonymous Asia’s call for attacks on HK government websites. The international hacker group Anonymous warned on October 1 they would attack the HK government’s websites if protesters were harmed or harassed.

Protesters waved cell phone lights to create a visual effect at night, wore black T-shirts with yellow ribbons to symbolize hope, and held up their arms in the “don’t shoot” gesture that spread around the world from Ferguson, Missouri, after police shooting of teenager Michael Brown in August. Another international reference, a yellow banner quoted John Lennon’s song, “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.” New songs were created such as “Raise the Umbrella.” They picked up their trash and recycled it and handed out bags of snacks and water.

Beijing said the protesters were “a gang of people whose hearts belong to colonial rule and who are besotted with ‘Western democracy,’” influenced by the UK and the US and by activists in Taiwan.[76] The government heavily censored any reference to the youth uprising on the mainland by removing key words from sites like Weibo and blocking Instagram. To prevent mobile phone networks from being disabled by the government after a malware attack, students used FireChat, an app that relays messages from phone to phone, a flashpoint mesh network transferred from node to node. The app was also used in Taiwan and Iran earlier in 2014.

Protesters feared the Chinese army would be sent in a repeat of Tiananmen Square: A sign read “A good day to die in Hong Kong.” Senior officials refused to meet with the Hong Kong Federation of Students and chief executive C. Y. Leung refused to obey demands that he resign for being under the thumb of Beijing. During the 2015 New Year celebrations of the Year of the Sheep, he asked that people be “more mild and gentle” like sheep. Protesters displayed posters of Leung with fangs like a devil and decided not to meet with officials on October 3 in order to protest clashes with protesters and opponents where some students were beaten or sexually molested while police stood by. Hi opponents refer to Leung as 689 because that’s the few number of votes he received from the selection committee to be Chief Executive in 2012. After several months of occupation, in early December the older leaders of Occupy Central with Love and Peace asked the students to take their tents and leave the streets, not wanting to alienate residents and risk violent clashes with police. My informant emailed after reading this section:

            As you reported, till 3 October, from participants’ point of view, the scale of movement is in fact far larger than what Occupy Central with Love and Peace expected. Hong Kong Federation of Students, which united universities in Hong Kong territory, worked as the representative and central coordinator throughout the movement, among pacifists and radicals.

A survey of 1,562 demonstrators in October 2014 found that over three-quarters were between 18 and 39; over a half had university educations, a third were under age 25 and 26% were students.[77] Umbrella Square at the Admiralty site was mainly students. What motivated them was the right to elect their own representatives, they felt ignored by the government and they were angry with police, in that order.

The authorities got court injunctions to clear the streets of tents, art, and a classroom in December 2014, after cleaning the Admiralty camp on November 18 and the Mong Kok camp on November 26. Authorities cleared the third site at Canton Road on December 11 after 75 days of occupation and thousands of tents, peaking on November 1, as seen in photos.[78] Students chanted, “We’ll be back,” “I want true democracy,” and “It’s just a beginning.” They left sticky notes on the Lennon Wall, a side of the government building facing the camp that was covered with notes. Police said 209 people were arrested for unlawful assembly and obstructing police officers. Despite the end of the three occupation sites, the students and their allies organized the biggest challenge to Beijing in decades. Student leader Nathan Law, 21, said although they didn’t achieve their goal of free elections, they awakened consciousness that “will help us fight in the future.”[79]

They marched again carrying yellow umbrellas on February 1, 2015, demanding democratic representation in “general elections.” By 2015 over half of undergraduate students favored independence from Beijing.[80] People called them children, “but they were the only ones who showed any leadership,” said political commentator Frank Ching.[81] Authorities again blamed hostile outside influences that were part of the “color revolutions,” similar to Turkey’s and Russia’s leaders’ tactics.    

Wong, age 18, and two other democracy leaders, Alex Chow and Nathan Law of the Federation of Students, were arrested in August 2015 and faced prison sentences for leading 79 days of sit-ins. They were charged with inciting unlawful assembly. Wong’s comment was, “I believe we will have another Umbrella Movement. What matters is that we better prepare ourselves for the next one.” Derek Lam, a member of Scholarism, was charged with assault for breaking into a square. Earlier Wong was barred from entering Malaysia in May to speak about the Umbrella Movement, as the government feared his influence on restive young people. (Three months later, students in yellow T-shirts turned out for protests in Kuala Lumpur to demand that Prime Minister Najib Razak resign due to corruption scandals. A primarily Muslim nation, Razak said the protests were harem, forbidden.) Some activists in the Umbrella Movement ran for district council elections in 2015, which at that time had pro-Beijing majorities. One of the candidates, Steve Ng said, “It felt like once the Umbrella Movement was over, we didn’t know which way to go from there. I wanted to see if I had the ability to continue to push the democratic movement.” [82]

The first major demonstration in 2016 involved thousands demonstrating against the disappearance of the fifth bookseller who sells literature banned on the mainland. Protesters marched through central HK and stopped in front of government buildings, sure that Beijing had kidnapped the men. Agnes Chow’s Facebook video to protest disappearance of the booksellers went viral.

 Chow and Wong, both age 19, organized a new political party called Hong Kong Demositsto in 2016 to push for self-determination for HK with one vote per one person, raising money for Demosisto at gatherings like the  observance of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. Tens of thousands marched on the annual anniversary of Tiananmen, demanding that the CCP change its condemnation of the demonstration as a “counterrevolutionary riot.” In Victoria Park they were accompanied by the Goddess of Democracy facing Chairman Mao’s portrait. Co-founder Agnes Cow is shown in a poster seen on this book cover holding a bow and arrow like Katniss Everdeen, the hero of The Hunger Games. The title of the poster is “The Younger Games.” The four characters in old Mandarin that mean “the people will surround the city.” The first two words can mean “people” or “people’s determination/will.” Other young activists formed the Hong Kong National Party to achieve independence from the mainland, meaning the pro-democracy advocates lack unity.

Wong was convicted of “illegal assembly” in July 2016, along with Alex Chow and Nathan Law, sentenced the following month to public service for unlawful assembly, which he appealed. Nathan Law (age 23) successfully ran on the Demosisto party in September 2016 elections, advocating “self-determination” for HK. Law said, “Young people have a sense of urgency when it comes to the future,” and want change. At age 19, Wong was too young to run. The pro-democracy or “localists” advocates won 30 out of 70 seats in the legislature: Only 40 seats are elected by the public while special-interest groups like businesses elect 30 legislators. Thousands of protesters protested Beijing’s November 2016 ruling to prevent two pro-independence legislators from taking their seats. They revived the use of yellow umbrellas. Some who were frustrated with lack of results from previous protests threw bricks.

Another young woman leader was elected to the legislature: Yau Wai-ching became an activist in the Umbrella demonstrations when she saw high school students demonstrating in in the streets. At 22 she was working in an office job. She explained, “I thought I had to fight, to have a war with the government,” rejecting the “festival” atmosphere of the demonstrations by the main government buildings. Her colleague Baggio Leung reported she changed from a “quiet nerd” when she first started demonstrating into an outspoken leader.[83] She joined Youngspiration, a group formed after the Umbrella Revolution. The group sponsored nine candidates for the 2015 District Council elections, including Yau. She lost by only 300 votes and won in September 2016, at 25 the youngest woman ever elected to the council.

Yau and her fellow Youngspiration candidate, Baggio Leung (age 30) caused a firestorm when they demonstrated their desire for independence from Beijing by changing the oath of office, more typical of young activists than older ones. Yau mispronounced “People’s Republic of China” as “people’s re-fucking of Cheena,” a derogatory pronunciation used by the Japanese during their conquest during World War II. The two would-be legislators also carried flags that stated “Hong Kong is not China.” Beijing refused to recognize the two young people as legislators, judging their oath illegal. The government’s anger was compounded by the two democracy advocates’ visit to Taiwan the previous month to meet with pro-independence students. Yau considers Taiwan a better custodian of Chinese traditions and Confucian values than the CCP. The People’s Daily called the two “pustules” that had to be removed and they were called fascist traitors. To protest this interference, more than 2,000 lawyers and activists marched in silence dressed in funereal black. Some protesters shouted “Hong Kong independence.” Updates are available on the Facebook page Hong Kong Democracy Now.[84]

Taiwan

Taiwan is not a former communist country and Hong Kong is shaped by British rule from 1841 to 1997, but I included them in this chapter because of their Chinese populations. A student protest occurred in Taiwan from March 18 to April 10, 2014, in Taipei. A predecessor was the Wild Lily student movement, a six-day demonstration for democracy in 1990, with the lily as their symbol. In 2014, they opposed a trade agreement that students feared would lead to closer ties to China, and would favor large corporations, undermine their democracy and jeopardize their future job prospects. They opposed the Kuomintang Party for adopting the deal without bipartisan discussion. Sophie Hsu from Tapei, explained after reading this chapter, “It is important to note that this revolution was not anti-Chinese, but a growing generation in Taiwan that strongly supports democracy and stands against any type of government action undermining it.” She emailed,

                        The Sunflower Movement in 2014 was a result of the government’s policy failure, especially its economic ones. The general public, especially youth, seeing their employment opportunities lessened with lowering wages and rising housing prices, became extremely disappointed by the government throughout the years, especially from the end of 2012. The government spent too much emphasizing the benefits for opening trade, mostly with China, but did not resolve the issues of unemployment, rising food costs, skyrocketing housing prices and lowering wages.

In addition, out of fear that the public would oppose strongly against the trade deal with China, they passed it in the legislature with a lack of care for democratic procedure. Therefore, the people reacted mostly to let the government know that Taiwan has struggled and fought hard for democracy, the government must not forget that this is the system that the people wanted for Taiwan.

The media called it the “Sunflower Revolution” because students carried the flowers as a symbol of hope and shining light on secret negotiations. They marched with banners stating: “If we don’t rise up today, we won’t be able to rise up tomorrow,” “Save democracy,” “Free Taiwan,” and “We will let the world know you suck [President Ma Ying-jeou]” (see their signs and mod clothes[85]). Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched. Punk bands played at rallies and several hundred students occupied the parliament building for 23 days. A number of student groups worked together in the Sunflower Revolution, including the Black Island Youth group.

When police surrounded the building to prevent food and water getting to the occupiers, a large crowd kettled the police, chanting, “If the police don’t move, we won’t move.” Supplies were lifted up through a second story window. Many were injured as police extracted the demonstrators and student union groups from major universities called for a national strike. Students cleaned the building when they left on April 10, then formed a new organization called Taiwan March. The speaker of parliament promised to introduce a law to monitor agreements with China. The pro-Beijing Nationalist Party did poorly in November 2014 elections and President Ma said he would make changes.

One of the leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was a Peking University student named Wang Dan, age 20. He organized a group to demand democracy using sit-ins, boycotts and hunger strikes. He was sent to prison at the top of the list of “black hand” organizers, then went into exile to the US where he earned a Ph.D. at Harvard. He became a professor in Taiwan where in 2014 he said that Chinese “democratization is still far off.”[86] Wang feels the most important contribution he can make is to ensure that the “ideals and passion of youth” are kept alive. Some of his students were active in the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, which he said demonstrated the force of “people power” for democracy. Wang observed, “Following the student movement, Taiwan has seen a new generation of youth who are concerned about public affairs and are no longer indifferent.”

The issue of economic ties with China and sovereignty played out in the 2016 presidential elections, between two women candidates, along with the state of the economy. The new president, Tsai Ing-wen, emphasized Taiwan’s democracy and independence, supported by enthusiastic young people. Her opposition party became the majority party for the first time. Voters rejected the Beijing-friendly party that led for the previous eight years. As well as being the first woman president of Taiwan, she’s also the first of Hakka of aboriginal descent and the first unmarried president. She promised young people that she would address their economic insecurity with a new model of economic development. In addition, a new youth-oriented party developed out of the Sunflower movement when death metal band star Freddy Lim started the New Power Party (he also directed Amnesty International in Taiwan). He was elected to the legislature in 2016 despite his opponents criticizing his long hair and advocacy of lowering the voting age from 20 to 18. He wants Taiwan to stay independent from the mainland, to avoid having freedoms eroded as is occurring in Hong Kong.

Chun Yi, a 22-year-old young woman wrote on the Goodreads feminist book club in 2016, “I got to know feminism after the Sun-Flower Movement on March 18, 2014, which inspired and encouraged me. I met new people who showed me lots of new things including international relations, sociology and, most important of all, feminism. Feminism attracts me not only because I’m female but also it gives reasons and solutions to many social issues including decreasing birth rate and increasing crime rate. One can’t make her life better without knowledge of feminism.”

                                    Japan and South Korea

In Japan, the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster of 2011 generated protests against the government. Japanese young people protested Prime Minister Abe’s 2014 plan to permit the country’s military to engage in offensive action in violation of the constitution. The main groups, Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs) and Teens Stand Up to Oppose War Law, aim to protect democracy with street demonstrations, livestream broadcasts, humor and slogans written in English. They use horizontal organizing like other global youth activists.

SEALDs called for unifying opposition parties “who share liberal values such as constitutionalism, social security and peace diplomacy. This unity will create a new political culture which encourages citizen’s political participation and revitalizes representational democracy.” Secondary school students joined university students in the protests, but couldn’t prevent passage of Abe’s law. Youth also protested a tax raise that went into effect in 2017

In South Korea, an online letter posted at the prestigious Korea University in 2013 protested the lack of youth representation in government and neglect of their concerns about job prospects. They coined the phrase “Hell Joseon” about the lack of social mobility, a reference to a dynasty known for inequality and the current need to have family connections to advance. Another new term is “Sampo Generation,” meaning they have to give up marriage and parenting because of economic problems. Youth also protested restrictions of freedom of speech under the banner of the National Security Law. President Park Geun-hye’s conservative party suffered a surprise defeat in April 2016 elections because of the large turnout of voters in their 20s and 30s. Youth groups organized frustrated young voters to go to the polls. They turned out to protest presidential corruption in what was called South Korea’s Umbrella Revolution, a reference to Hong Kong democracy movement led by youth. The first female president was impeached in 2017.

Russia’s teens weren’t afraid to protest government corruption in 2017, looked at as a new generation. Will Chinese teens follow in their footsteps and rebel against pollution and corruption?

Discussion Questions and Activities

1. Russia and China have replaced Communist ideology and social supports with nationalism and consumerism. Agree or disagree? Which country would you rather live in? Why?
2. Why hasn’t China had large youth-led uprisings when masses of people are unhappy about pollution and environmental destruction and growing numbers of college graduates can’t find jobs?

Activities

 Read Yuan’s emails and compare and contrast his issues with young people you know.[87]

Films

Analyze the Urban/Rural Divide in these films

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.  During the Cultural Revolution, two intellectual city boys are sent to the countryside. We see the impact of the country on them, and visa versa, especially the young seamstress who falls in love with reading the forbidden books they secretly brought with them. 2005
2. Mao’s Last Dancer: An Australian film about a peasant boy—the sixth son in his family—who was raised during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, trained in Beijing to be a ballet dancer. The film is based on his autobiography, with flash backs from his rural boyhood to dancing in Texas. 2009
3. Owl and the Sparrow. A 10-year-old orphan girl lives on the streets of Saigon. American director. 2006

Endnotes

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[1] Paul Park, Maeve Whelan-Wuest and Katharine Moon, “Youth and Politics in East Asia,” Brookings Institution, June 30, 2016.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/06/30-youth-politics-east-asia-moon

[2] KK Miller, “A Surprising Number of Japanese Youth Get Most of their Income from their Parents,” Rocket News 24, November 6, 2014.

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/11/06/a-surprising-number-of-japanese-youth-get-most-of-their-income-from-their-parents/

[3] Thomas Friedman, “The Square People,” New York Times, May 13, 2014.

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21xBOJeW4mw

[5] Roger Cohen, “Little Genius, Vietnamese Style,” New York Times, May 5, 2014.

[6] Nick Jepson, “The End of the Long Twentieth Century? The Rise of China and the Possibilities of a New Global Fordism,” Global-E: A Global Studies Journal, July 7, 2014.

http://global-ejournal.org/2014/07/11/vol8iss5/

William Dobson. The Dictator’s Learning Curve. Doubleday, 2012, p. 256.

[7] Murong Xuecun, “I, Too, Will Stand UP for Tiananmen,” New York Times, May 22, 2014.

[8] Andrew Ross Sorkin, “A Warning on China Seems Prescient,” New York Times, August 24, 2015.

[9] Eduardo Porter, “Political Risks May Foil Economic Reform in China,” New York Times, August 25, 2015.

[10] “Chinese Market Trends for 2014,” ICEF Monitor, March 12, 2014.

Looking at Chinese market trends for 2014

[11] Terence Tse and Mark Esposito, “Youth Unemployment in China: a Crisis in the Making,” CNBC, February 20, 2014.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101433696

[12] Jin Cang, “Why Does Communist Party Still Appeal to Youth After 90 Years?” People’s Daily Online, July 4, 20

http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/7428433.html

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GIRLmYQsYAhttps://www.youtube.com/user/TheGlobalyouth/videos?view=0&flow=list&live_view=500&sort=dd

[14] http://wp.me/p47Q76-J

[15] Karen Wells. Childhood in a Global Perspective. Polity Press, 2015, p. 142.

[16] Nicholas Kristof, “Tears of a Rickshaw Driver,” New York Times, May 17, 2014.

[17] William Dobson, pp., 261-262

[18] Eric Fish. China’s Millennials: The Want Generation. Roman and Littlefield, 2015, p. ix.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., pp. 2014-215.

[21] Helen Gao, “Tiananmen, Forgotten,” New York Times, June 3, 2014.

[22] Helen Gao, “Why Aren’t Chinese People Reading Books Anymore?” The Atlantic, August 15, 2013.

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/08/why-arent-chinese-people-reading-books-anymore/278729/

[23] Javier Hernandez, “China Tries to Redistribute Education to the Poor, Igniting Class Conflict,” New York Times, June 11, 2016.

[24] Helen Gao, “China’s Education Gap,” New York Times, September 4, 2014.

[25] Adam Minter,“Clearing Skies,” Sierra, April 2015.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/feature/clearing-skies

[26] Javier Hernandez, “Study Finds Chinese Students Excel in Critical Thinking. Until College,” New York Times, July 30, 2016.

[27] Brook Larmer, “The Parachute Generation,” New York Times, February 2, 2017.

[28] Jaime FlorCruz, “School’s Out: Chinese Graduates Fight to Be Heard,” CNN, June 12, 2012.

www.cnn.com/2012/06/12/world/asia/china-college-graduates-florcruz/index.html

[29] “Emerging Nations Embrace Internet, Mobile Technology,” Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, February 13, 2014.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/02/13/emerging-nations-embrace-internet-mobile-technology/

[30] “Global Feminisms: Comparative Case Studies of Women’s Activism and Scholarship,” University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

http://www.umich.ed/~glblfem/

[31] Jaime A. FlorCruz, “School’s Out: Chinese Graduates Fight to be Heard,” CNN, June 12, 2012.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/12/world/asia/china-college-graduates-florcruz/index.html

[32] Gillian Wong, “China Hauls Away Activists in Congress Crackdown,” Associated Press, November 6, 2012.

http://news.yahoo.com/china-hauls-away-activists-congress-crackdown-104519219.html

[33] Christopher Bodeen, “China State Media Seen Stepping-Up Anti-Western Rhetoric, Thai Visa Forum, March 3, 2015.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/805238-china-state-media-seen-stepping-up-anti-western-rhetoric/

[34] William Dobson, p. 287.

[35] Ibid., pp. 255-256.

[36] Murong Xuecun, “I, Too, Will Stand Up for Tiananmen,” New York Times, May 22, 2014.

[37] https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedom-net

[38] Oiwan Lam, “Two Versions of Mao’s China,” Global Voices, January 13, 2013.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/01/30/two-versions-of-maos-china-history-retouched-as-propaganda/

[39] Mu Chunshan, “How Jasmine Looks to Chinese,” The Diplomat Blogs, March 2, 2011.

http://the-diplomat.com/china-power/2011/03/02/how-jasmine-looks-to-chinese/

[40] http://skills.oecd.org/informationbycountry/chinapeoplesrepublicof.html

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SLUEM1524ZSCHN

[41] Joel Brinkley, “Shredding China’s Gag on Dissent,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2012.

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

[42] Tania Branigan, “Chinese Villagers Clash with Police in Land-Grab Protests, The Guardian, April 3, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/chinese-police-land-grab-protests

[43] Economist Niu Wenyuan, cited in Austin Ramzy, “Simmering Discontent: The Biggest Challenge to Social Harmony, “ TIME World, June 7, 2012.

http://world.time.com/2012/06/07/chinas-simmering-discontent-the-biggest-challenge-to-social-harmony/

[44] James Smart, “A New Wave of Environmental Protest Rocks China,” ROAR Magazine, April 18, 2014.

http://roarmag.org/2014/04/china-maoming-px-protest/

[45] Jennifer Duggan, “China’s Choice,” The Guardian, April 18, 2014.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/chinas-choice/2014/apr/18/china-one-fifth-farmland-soil-pollution

[46] Sophia Yan, “One Chinese Company Makes One-Third of the World’s Cigarettes,” CNN Money, November 26, 2014.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/26/news/china-tobacco-cigarettes/index.html

[47] http://www.trueactivist.com/china-is-combating-desertification-by-planting-a-great-green-wall-of-trees/

[48] Ian Johnson, “An Online Shift in China Muffles an Open Forum,” New York Times, July 4, 2014.

[49] http://www.whatsonweibo.com/overview-chinas-2017-top-tv-dramas/

[50] David Pierson, “China Newspaper Dispute Sparks Protest, Tests New Leaders,” Los Angles Times, January 7, 2013. http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-china-southern-weekly-protest-20130107,0,4086092.story

Video: http://globalvoicesonline.org/specialcoverage/chinas-press-censorship-protests/

[51] “A Nightmarish Year Under Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Dream’,” Amnesty International UK report, March 2014.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/countdown-china/nightmarish-year-under-xi-jinping%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cchinese-dream%E2%80%9D-2013-annual-report

[52] Murong Xuecun, “Busting China’s Bloggers,” The New York Times, October 15, 2013.

[53] Feng Chongyi, “The Rights Defense Movement, Rights Defense Lawyers and Prospects for Constitutional Democracy in China,” a research paper, 2009.

Click to access feng_chongyi_brief.pdf

[54] Chris Buckley and Andrew Jacobs, “Maoists in China, Given New Life, Attack Dissent,” New York Times, January 4, 2015.

[55] Edward Wong and Chris Buckley, “For China, Limited Tools to Quell Unrest in Hong Kong,” New York Times, September 29, 2014.

[56] Donglin Han and Dingding Chen, “Who Supports Democracy?,” Democratization Journal, June 4, 2015.

DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2015.1017566

[57] Eric Abrahamsen, “Han Han’s U-Turn,” International Herald Tribune, January 26, 2012.

http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/blogger-han-han-controversy-on-democracy-in-china

[58] David Pilling, “Lunch with the FT: Han Han,” Financial Times, April 21, 2012.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3be0e84e-8896-11e1-a727-00144feab49a.html#axzz20f7m0eeI

[59] Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, “Protests Rising Within China, Inter Press Service, July 11, 2012.

Protests Rising Within China

[60] Barbara Demick, “China’s Execution of Street Vendor Sets Off Outrage,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 2013.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/25/world/la-fg-china-execution-20130926

[61] Nina Larson, “Activist: Ukraine-Like Revolution could Happen in China at ‘Any Time’,” Business Insider, February 26, 2014.

http://www.businessinsider.com/china-revolution-ukraine-2014-2

[62] John Poole, “Where the Girls Are (And Aren’t): #15Girls. National Public Radio, October 20, 2015.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/20/448407788/where-the-girls-are-and-aren-t-15girls

[63] Michael Caster, “A Striking Pose: Labor Resistance in China,” “Circumnavigations Ruminations” blog, May 4, 2014.

http://michaelcaster.com/

[64] Andrew Jacobs, “China Raids Offices of Rights Group as Crackdown on Activism Continues,” New York Times, March 26, 2015.

[65] http://wp.me/p47Q76-wd

[66] https://www.facebook.com/localstudiohongkong/posts/911512712220379

[67] http://www.danwei.com/photos-of-hong-kongs-anti-national-education-protest/

[68] Chris Buckley and Michael Forsythe, “Hong Kong’s Democracy Supporters Chafe at Inequality and Beijing’s Sway,” New York Times, June 27, 2014.

[69] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/world/asia/hong-kong-china-democracy-march.html?emc=edit_th_20140702&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=68143430&_r=0

[70] “Joshua Wong: The Teenager who is the Public Face of the Hong Kong Protests,” The Guardian, October 1, 2014.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/joshua-wong-teenager-public-face-hong-kong-protests

[71] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-Y8R57eg7Y

[72] Emily Rauhala and Hannah Beech, “The Voice of a Generation,” TIME Magazine, October 8, 2014.

http://time.com/3482556/hong-kong-protest-teenagers/

[73] Nick Hin Kin and Calvin Hiu Ming, “The Rise of Transgressive Contention by Young Activists: Recent Cases In Hong Kong,” Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2014, pp. 57-74.

http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/page.aspx?i=7167&locale=en-US

[74] https://www.facebook.com/search/134831859884416/photos-of

[75] Chris Buckley and Alan Wong, “Pro-Democracy Group Shifts to Collaborate With Student Protesters in Hong Kong,” New York Times, September 27, 2014.

[76] Wong and Buckley, New York Times, September 29, 2014.

[77] “Umbrella Movement,” Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_Movement#cite_note-47

[78] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30390820

[79] David Pilling, “Hong Kong Protesters Seek Solace After Defeat,” Financial Times, December 12, 2014.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/28dbdd08-81ea-11e4-b9d0-00144feabdc0.html#slide0

[80] Suzanne Pepper, “An Independent Hong Kong,” “China Elections and Governance” blogs, March 3, 2015.

http://chinaelectionsblog.net/hkfocus/?cat=3&paged=2

[81] David Pilling, op.cit.

[82] “Hong Kong Holds First Elections Since ‘Umbrella’ Protests,” TeleSUR, November 22, 2015.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Hong-Kong-Holds-First-Elections-Since-Umbrella-Protests-20151122-0002.html

[83] Michael Frosythe and Alan Wong, “From Hong Kong Pencil Pusher to Political Firebrand,” New York Times, November 4, 2016.

[84] https://www.facebook.com/HKDemoNow

[85] https://medium.com/taiwan-now/ca727991203b

http://qz.com/191285/to-mainland-china-taiwans-student-protests-prove-that-democracy-doesnt-work/

[86] Wen Chun-hua, “Tiananmen Reflections: Interview,” Taipei Times, June 3, 2014.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2014/06/03/2003591899/2

[87] http://wp.me/p47Q76-J