愤青: The Angry Youth of China
Posted on July 30, 2008 at 9:56 pm by kyliu
Tags: china, culture, fenqing, good journalists, newyorker, patriotism, stupid journalists
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I’ve often written about “stupid journalists” on here, and you might come away with the impression that I hate all journalists. Not so. I appreciate good journalists. But they are as rare as pearls of great price.
(Photograph should be credited to the New Yorker)
Evan Osnos is one of them. In “Angry Youth, The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists”, a Letter from China column in the July 28, 2008 issue of the New Yorker, Osnos writes about the 愤青, or the angry young people of China, mostly my age and younger, who have rekindled the patriotic fervor in China long repressed by the Chinese Communist Party.
The 愤青 face criticism from people within China as well as the West. Many Chinese intellectuals who wish to emphasize their opposition to the Chinese government fear that the 愤青 are defending the actions of the Chinese government to the detriment of the shared goal of ultimately achieving political change and produce a more democratic, clean, and responsive government.
The West, on the other hand, treats the 愤青 as fearful ultranationalists mainly because they do not adhere to the West’s script for the ideal, educated young person in China. A young person who has been exposed to the West’s values and benefits, the theory goes, ought to accept the West’s judgments about China without question and ought to be dedicated to the task of overthrowing China’s government for the West’s benefit — a script that some dissidents who have escaped overseas do follow and which the West has come to expect. It’s shocking when the 愤青 don’t, and so most Western commentators assume that they must somehow be brainwashed.
But why should we in the West be surprised? The West’s desires for China do not always proceed from noble goals and sentiments, and it would be strange to think that the West wishes the best for China or that the interests of the people of the West and the interests of the people of China coincide. If we have somehow managed to fool ourselves into thinking that we noble, selfless Westerners are criticizing China only because of our belief in universal human values — rather than a combination of those and much more base and dark desires — then the joke is on us. We should expect the Chinese to disagree, and we should expect the Chinese to want their own path — that is true freedom.
In reality, the critics of the 愤青 are missing a critical piece, which is the positive role (and even the necessity) for nationalism to achieve true liberal democratic governance. It’s often comical to note that the most vociferous critics of China’s “rising nationalism” are often from the most patriotic and nationalist countries in the West: the United States, Japan, Australia. They seem to forget that the American Revolution is itself a nationalistic struggle, or that the course of freedom and anti-colonialism was paved and spurred on by the patriotic fervor and nationalism of the young. Unless the young people of a country love that country and wish to achieve a brighter future for it, real change cannot come. And those who think that democracy and liberalism can survive and grow where there is no love of country and sense of community and mutual regard — merely aspects of nationalism — are living in fantasy.
In any event, it’s important for the Western observer to understand 愤青 as a sign of hope rather than something to be feared. The 愤青 are the successors of the students protesting at Tiananmen back in 1989 — those students were not, as Western wish-fulfillment would have it, trying to overthrow the Chinese government. They were in fact the first 愤青, patriotic youths seeking a more responsive, democratic, and better government that can carry out the dream of the Chinese people.
The 愤青 do not defend the Chinese government blindly. In fact, they are harsh critics of China’s government, and they are working harder than anyone to try to create political change. But they also have no illusions about what the West really wants from China — a weak, divided, and compliant Chinese state (or states) that excels at nothing except providing cheap labor and a large market for Western goods. Their critique of the Chinese state proceeds from the perspective that China must itself be strong and prosperous in order to guarantee freedom — the very same position that the United States takes for itself. But this desire is fundamentally opposed to certain Western interests who do not wish to see such a strong and prosperous China, an equal to the Western powers. Thus, when faced with external threats from the West, the 愤青 may project the image of defending China’s government and its policies without question. But this is an illusion. Beneath that apparently negative appearance of “blind nationalism” is a very carefully considered philosophy of how to most effectively achieve liberalism and freedom in China.
It is important for us in the West to listen carefully to what the 愤青 have to say and to understand their critique of the West. They point out our blind spots and our biases and where we in the West are simply arrogant, foolish, or wrong about China. They represent an important independent voice on Chinese affairs, and they can become an important, independent political force for change in China — in fact, the Chinese government fears them as much as they did the student protesters of 1989. We in the West should be humble and pay attention to their critiques and rejections of Western criticisms of China because, frankly, they do know better than we do, and we ought to show some critical thinking skills and learn something new.
This brings us back to Osnos. Osnos’s article may be one of the most balanced and fair treatments I have ever read of the rising nationalism in China that has caught the West by surprise this past spring, when the violent uprisings of the ethnic Tibetan Chinese against the ethnic Han Chinese in China were echoed by the violent attacks committed against Chinese athletes by anti-China thugs and goons in Paris and London, and which in turn rallied Chinese students (the 愤青) across the world to the defense of the Olympic torch and their motherland. Osnos is the first to give the 愤青 a clear voice in the West and portray them as people rather than monsters.
The views of the 愤青 are diverse and complex, and cannot be simply summarized. But this is a good vignette:
They discovered that they shared a frustration with China’s unbridled Westernization. “Chinese tradition has many good things, but we’ve ditched them,” Wan told me. “I feel there have to be people to carry them on.” She came from a middle-class home, and Tang’s humble roots and old-fashioned values impressed her. “Most of my generation has a smooth, happy life, including me,” she said. “I feel like our character lacks something. For example, love for the country or the perseverance you get from conquering hardships. Those virtues, I don’t see them in myself and many people my age.”
The 愤青 are, however, united in their patriotism:
“China was backward throughout its modern history, so we were always seeking the reasons for why the West grew strong,” Liu said. “We learned from the West. All of us who are educated have this dream: Grow strong by learning from the West.”
Tang and his friends were so gracious, so thankful that I’d come to listen to them, that I began to wonder if China’s anger of last spring should be viewed as an aberration. They implored me not to make that mistake.
“We’ve been studying Western history for so long, we understand it well,” Zeng said. “We think our love for China, our support for the government and the benefits of this country, is not a spontaneous reaction. It has developed after giving the matter much thought.”
Western journalists who write about the 愤青 typically take a patronizing attitude and deny the authenticity of their views. This is mostly accomplished by claiming that they are “brainwashed” so that the writer does not have to answer the uncomfortable questions posed by the 愤青 about the Western world’s quite shaky claim to moral legitimacy. For example, here’s Orville Schell of Newsweek, who is certainly a “stupid journalist,” also writing about the 愤青:
Equally surprising was the fact that many of the most indignant counterdemonstrators—those flooding the BBC and CNN with angry Internet threats, or shouting down protesters along the torch route—were young Chinese, born during the booming post-Mao era. Because they are better educated and more worldly than their elders, one might have expected them to have been exempt from the China-as-victim syndrome. But, perhaps because they, too, have been subject to the party’s propaganda, many have turned out every bit as nationalistic as older Chinese.
Claiming that these youths are “subject to the party’s propaganda” does not explain anything except revealing the writer’s ignorance and giving the Chinese Communist Party magical powers. In reality, the 愤青 are probably the only people in China not subject to propaganda. As Osnos writes in his much more insightful take:
When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China’s official media. Like others his age, he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. Younger Chinese friends of mine regard the firewall as they would an officious lifeguard at a swimming pool—an occasional, largely irrelevant, intrusion.
To get around it, Tang detours through a proxy server—a digital way station overseas that connects a user with a blocked Web site. He watches television exclusively online, because he doesn’t have a TV in his room. Tang also receives foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad. (According to the Institute of International Education, the number of Chinese students in the United States—some sixty-seven thousand—has grown by nearly two-thirds in the past decade.) He’s baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship.
“Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed,” he said. “We are always eager to get other information from different channels.” Then he added, “But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.”
Another reaction that Western journalists have to the 愤青 is fear — as though they are some kind of ultranationalists prone to the kind of fascist excess that prevailed during the Cultural Revolution. In reality, the anger of the 愤青 does not tend to channel itself towards acts of violence. Again, as Osnos writes:
In the end, nothing came of the threats to foreign journalists. No blood was shed. After the chaos around the torch in Paris, the Chinese efforts to boycott Carrefour fizzled. China’s leaders, awakening to their deteriorating image abroad, ultimately reined in the students with a call for only “rational patriotism.”
“We do not want any violence,” Tang told me. He and his peers had merely been desperate for someone to hear them.
The 愤青 want that most basic of human rights which has been denied them: the right to be heard. When people like Schell dismiss them, silence them, condescend to them, and deny them the authenticity of their feelings and voices, it is they who have deprived the 愤青 of their human rights.
It is all the more remarkable that Osnos has managed to write such a wonderful piece of balanced, insightful, and thought-provoking journalism when you realize that he was the recipient of an anonymous death threat from one of the 愤青: “An anonymous letter to my fax machine in Beijing warned, ‘Clarify the facts on China … or you and your loved ones will wish you were dead.’”
Journalists like Osnos should be greatly admired for their courage. It took courage to stand up to that death threat, but it took even more courage to not let that threat taint the objectivity of his analysis, and to stand up against mainstream American opinion so that the voices of the 愤青 can be heard. Would that all of us can emulate his example.
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