Date published: 2005/03/10
BBC Question Time held a special edition in Shanghai, China, tonight. It was interesting mostly to see what some people were prepared to say and what the government spokespeople were not prepared to say. David Dimbleby (the chair) said at the beginning that the Chinese government had allowed the audience to be picked by the BBC (some of these were expats) except for some small (unstated) percentage "suggested" by the Chinese goverment. It was pretty obvious during the show which of the commentators from the audience were independent and which were government plants. (In the UK version of the programme there are always low-level representatives from the various political parties in the audience, so it is only subtly different.)
The five people on the panel were Chris Patten (the ex-governor of Hong Kong), David Tang (a fashion designer), Long Yongtu (chief Chinese negotiator on trade), Isabel Hilton (journalist) and Liu Jianchao (government spokesman). Needless to say the two Chinese government representatives were the most regressive. But of the two, Jianchao was much more reasonable, perhaps because he was younger, or perhaps because he was just better at spin. Tang stood out above all the other panellists because he went against the party line, although always carefully.
There were five questions discussed. The first one was about whether Hong Kong should have democratic elections and when. (Or course the current chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, has just resigned, so now is an opportune moment.) Pretty much everyone said yes, there should be elections, at least eventually, although Yongtu gave the usual party line of "what is democracy anyway?". (This is not a totally vacuous question because the US claims to be "one person one vote" but ex-felons in America are not allowed to vote because the Republicans want to lower the Democratic vote. So the US is not really "one person one vote".) Of course the fact that the British had ruled Hong Kong for a hundred years without having any elections was mentioned several times. So British views carry no weight in China.
The second question was about the Chinese view of Taiwan, and in particular whether China should have passed a recent law saying that if Taiwan proclaimed independence then China had the "right" to invade. This is the kind of question where the Chinese prove they are just as petty and stupid as all the other peoples of the world. (Tang excepted.) The bottom line for most Chinese people is "Taiwan is China". Whether or not Taiwan wants to be with China is not considered to be relevant. A couple of people brought up Argentina/The Falklands/Britain and Spain/Gibraltar/Britain to supposedly prove that Britain is just as bad as China. Unfortunately (which Patten and Hilton stupidly did not point out) these are examples which show the exact opposite. The people of both the Falklands and Gibraltar want to be British. The people of Taiwain (currently) do not want to be Chinese. It is Argentina and Spain that are more like China. (But of course the UK behaves stupidly nationalistic on other issues.)
The third question was about whether Chinese kids today are too spoiled and too materialistic. This is the kind of dumb thing which many people like to claim in all societies. The Romans and Greeks no doubt claimed the same. One person in the audience remarkably said he had come back to China after ten years in the States and he was actually impressed with the Chinese youth. And another person in the audience unbelievably claimed that actually many kids of rich people were more interested in spiritual matters rather than money, and it was those horrid poor people who were so materialistic. Yeah, right.
The fourth question was about a recent US State Department report that human rights were being violated in China. Of course nobody takes anything the US says seriously any more, and here this is especially true given the serious US human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and in all US prisons. Indeed Patten said that if the West wanted to be treated seriously by China on human rights then perhaps the West should get its own act together first. Both Patten and Hilton said that China did indeed abuse human rights, and in ways more seriously than in many other countries. (Dimbleby mentioned an Amnesty International report on China which Hilton certainly took more seriously than anything the US government said.) Jianchao gave a lame excuse that China had human rights enshrined in law. (Well, that's ok if the rule of law is obeyed.) Yongtu took an even harder line, comparing human rights name-calling between countries with similar name-calling on trade, but refusing to admit there were any problems in China. Tang again made the bravest stand. He said that he did not know about specifics but said that when he went abroad he was constantly questioned about human rights abuses and at those times he felt ashamed to be Chinese.
The final question was about whether China would overtake the US to be the world's number one economy by 2030 or 2040. Well several people mentioned that this depends whether you are counting GDP or GDP per capita, but even on the latter count it seems China could pass the US by 2050. Patten claimed that in pre-industrial times (so presumably in the 17th century) China created 30% of the world's GDP (well, he said wealth, but presumably he meant GDP), but by 1950 that was down to 5%, however it was expected to climb to 20% by 2030. So fairly amazing.
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