Changing China
Giant on the move
A Hu-Ma summit in 2012?
When Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou was elected ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman in July, pundits jumped on the idea that he would use his new title to help secure a meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao. The first-of-a-kind summit would follow six decades of strained relations including China’s threats of military force against the island.
Ma’s new job, which he will take in mid-October, allows him to meet Communist Party Chairman Hu in a party-to-party role, laying aside each side’s presidential title. China does not recognise Taiwan’s presidency or other government institutions as it claims sovereignty over the self-ruled island.
Beijing’s state-run China Daily newspaper said such a meeting would signal “great reconciliation.”
A meeting would best take place in 2012, according to a KMT spokesman, Lee Chien-jung.
Before then, Ma will be wary of Taiwan’s divided public, Lee said. Taiwanese generally favour closer economic ties with China but oppose rushing into a relationship with the long-distrusted Communist government on fears that Beijing would compromise Taiwan’s self-rule, including its democracy. Ma will monitor opinion polls for any change in sentiment, the spokesman said, ruling out any meeting in the short term.
Ma could also be embarrased at home if Hu declined to acknowledge his title as president.
Odds of a meeting will surge in 2012 if Ma wins re-election by a big margin in March of that year, which would be an endorsement of China-friendly economic policies that have characterised his administration since he took office in May 2008.
From Canada, looking back
I first visited China in June 1997. It was eight years after the Tiananmen crackdown, weeks before the Hong Kong Handover back to China marking the end of British rule, and over a decade before the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was a family trip — my parents were looking forward to a college reunion with classmates they hadn’t seen in decades and I had just finished my second year of university. I was looking forward to finally seeing the place I’d heard so much about.
Born and raised in Canada, I grew up listening to stories of the past — lessons in history, humanity, tragedy and survival. And like many children of immigrant families, there is a constant search for a balance and a place between the different worlds that shape our identity.
(Caption: Neon lights from skyscraper and 1997 Handover signs cast a glow over Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and the extension of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (R, foreground) in this long exposure zoom photograph. Picture taken June 21, 1997. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez)
Over the years I’ve witnessed a dramatic change in my parents’ attitude toward China. For them, the changes in China since they left — over 45 years ago for my father and 35 years ago for my mother — have been beyond anything they could have imagined in their lifetime.
Born just before Japan invaded China in 1937, my parents were children during the Sino-Japanese War and teenagers when Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Over the next 25 years, the dramatic upheavals, failures and deaths from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution spared no one.
In the spring of 1952, my grandfather was falsely accused of corruption and was executed about a month later. He was posthumously cleared and declared a victim of the anti-corruption movement at the time.
The biggest piece of hardware on earth is Tiananmen Square and the Chinese government has it ; the biggest piece of software on earth is human mind and we Chinese citizens have it. Software shall overrun hardware, no matter what.
Surely I won’t get nominated to the Central Committee too?
I’ve been a China watcher for much longer than I’ve been a journalist — Chinese language, literature, history and politics were my passions and the objects of my academic study before I ever found my vocation. And for a watcher of modern Chinese politics, few texts in my 30 years in the field have been as important as the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.
With a circulation of three to four million, it is one of the world’s biggest papers; with its direct ties to the top Party leaders, it has long been the way official policy shifts have been announced or hinted at.
When I was Reuters China bureau chief from 1991-94, the unalterable start of every day’s routine was to study the newspaper from front to back, trying to piece together the hints contained in an article, an editorial, in the choice of words or in the selection and placement of pictures.
This was the practice of journalists and scholars from the very founding of the newspaper in 1948, a year before the People’s Republic of China was formally established.
Even today, China watchers and journalists believe little gets into the newspaper by accident
Imagine my surprise, then, when my own face appeared on page 17 of today’s edition above an interview on Reuters coverage of the Olympics.
In the old days, such a presentation might have meant I was destined for high office — today, it just signifies how China has changed its attitudes towards the foreign media.
