One Billion Customers - James McGregor [9]
“America is great because guns make everybody equal,” he said. “Freedom in China is a pocketful of money,” he added, showing me a six-inch-thick wad of fifty-yuan notes. “In China, you either have money or you have to be obedient.”
To Serve the People
Given their cultural proclivities, I’m not surprised that I have never met a real Communist in China, somebody who believes in the abolition of private property or the philosophy of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” “Mao Zedong Thought” is still a core part of China’s official ideology, and the “Yan’an Spirit” of self-sacrifice and simple living are still the professed ideal for Chinese officials. The Chinese Communist Party has recently tweaked its liturgy to protect private property and to state that the party is the vanguard of all Chinese people, not just the workers and the peasants. But officials still endure endless speeches and propaganda study sessions where the words of Marx and Lenin are swirled into ever more creative combinations. Then they climb into their Audi or Mercedes sedans and check stock prices on their mobile phones as they head home to apartment buildings named Beverly Hills, Park Avenue, or Palm Springs, where their sons and daughters with Harvard or Wharton MBAs wait to discuss privatization deals.
For most party officials, life is guided by the proverb Zhi Lu Wei Ma, which means “Point at a deer and call it a horse.” Saying one thing and doing another is a way of life because the party believes that to do anything else would risk destabilizing the system. The 1989 Tiananmen Massacre was a tragedy but also a turning point. It was caused by a deep split between conservatives and reformers in the party. Conservatives won the battle but lost the war. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, the Party accelerated privatization and market reforms because its credibility was shredded and could only be rebuilt by quickly improving people’s lives. Throughout the 1990s, in fact, the Communist party has resembled trickle-down Republicans. Private enterprise was not only allowed but the newly rich became celebrated as the country’s new model workers—except when they were being jailed for corruption. The nation’s resources were turned away from social programs and into the construction of mind-boggling amounts of infrastructure aimed at supporting a market economy that can compete in the world. I was once told that an ideal Chinese government should be like a strong water-skier behind a boat. The raging entrepreneurial drive of the Chinese people is the boat. The government is the skier who drags along behind, every now and then yanking on the rope with sufficient force to alter the boat’s direction a bit if it heads off course.
All of this isn’t a cynical exercise. If the business community is the “old boys’ network” in the West, the Communist Party is the “old boys’ network” in China. While few, if any, officials believe in communism, they do believe in the system, that it should be protected and that it should and can be improved. The party today operates much like a corporation in the way it makes decisions and deals with people. Bright young officials are selected for ideological indoctrination and management training, and moved through increasingly responsible positions. Like a corporation, there is some democracy at the top of the party and almost none at the bottom.
This fairly modern system is grafted on ancient attitudes and practices, however. China is ruled by