In Japan there was a real sense of euphoria when the party was ousted by the opposition Democratic Party three and a half years ago. However, a series of blunders, but also tough policies (such as an increase in the consumption tax, which some specialists asserted was necessary in order to balance the national budget) made the Democratic Party extremely unpopular, and the party was resoundingly defeated by the LDP in the general election of 2012. Backed by its simple majority in the House of Representatives, the LDP is now pursuing an aggressive monetary and fiscal policy, which some pundits regard as ‘a gamble’, and also, more alarmingly, flexing its muscles to revise the pacifist Constitution under the leadership of the hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Nationalistic rhetoric and provoking behaviour by some members of the party, such as their regular ceremonial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo which commemorates the Japanese war dead, are aggravating its already strained bilateral relationships with China and Korea.

Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. On 23 April 2013, 168 Japanese lawmakers including three high-ranking cabinet ministers visited the controversial shrine to offer prayers for the country’s war dead. Picture by dtpancio

This is happening against the backdrop of a myriad of domestic problems that the country now faces. These include the mounting national debt, the rapidly aging population, and the decline of local industry. All have been aggravated by the recent natural and man-made disasters, the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011, and come with international challenges, such as the rise of China and Korea as strong economic rivals amid unsettled regional security.

Some observers point to a general sense of malaise in today’s Japan, ‘a loss of hope’ as the Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe described it nearly two decades ago, a society which is still wealthy but unsure about its place and destiny. A most worrying sign is that many young people have become even more inward-looking and apolitical than previous generations.

Some fear that the LDP’s aggressive spending policy and its populist and nationalistic rhetoric may be a sign of the party’s reluctance to tackle more fundamental questions. They fear that under the veneer of the determined posture of the party lies the working of an opportunistic and populist group, who are trying to preserve the old-style of politics, an economics-centred, big-business-friendly modern-day policy of ‘Fukoku Kyohei’ (Rich Nation and Strong Army), and to preserve the monopoly of power of a self-elected few. More generous observers might say that they cannot identify persuasive alternatives, so stick to familiar policies on a larger scale. Either way, the LDP’s nationalistic posture may be dangerous, as it may work to agitate and manipulate an already vulnerable population. And if it lasts too long, this belligerent policy is also detrimental to Japan’s further transformation into a fully participatory democracy and to a more open and cosmopolitan society.

At the moment, Japan resembles a boat drifting in a rough sea without a competent helmsman, an image that may conjure up the Japan of the late 1920s and 1930s for more pessimistic observers.

And yet the resources of Japanese civic life seem to remain intact. There are many signs of a more assertive citizens’ politics, as demonstrated by the large numbers who travelled to the quake-hit areas to help recovery operations, and by citizens’ anti-nuclear movements in the wake of the Fukushima Disaster. Shortly after the disaster struck, a group of citizens began to stage regular anti-nuclear demonstrations on Fridays in front of the Prime Minister’s Official Residence; these continue to this day. More importantly the Japanese judiciary, the heart of the Japanese politico-legal system, which has long been criticised for its inaction, has also begun to produce some noticeable rulings which are more in tune with the spirit of the Bill of Rights. As ever, however, progress here is slow.

At present Japanese democracy is facing one of its hardest tests, which has to be borne by the generations who have no first-hand experience of the major events that have shaped modern Japan, namely the Second World War and its aftermath, to say nothing of the remote, epoch-making, yet still crucial transformations and aspirations of the Meiji period (1868-1912).

At a time of such uncertainty, history is often a useful guide to gauge the present. It is high time to examine Japan’s democratic legacies (it is one of the oldest democracies in Asia) and to measure the strength of its foundations so as to judge where it is heading. What therefore were the major mistakes that the country made in the pre-war years that led it to war? What were the alternative paths that Japan could have taken so as to avoid it? How, in the past, did individuals learn to confront the state, and what principles sustained them in criticising their own government and society?

My forthcoming monograph, Power and Dissent in Imperial Japan , juggles with these questions with a deep concern for the present and future of the country. The Japanese tradition of dissent may also be relevant to other Asian countries which are also pursuing their own democratic futures. The claims of the rule of law, parliamentary politics, and individual rights, are intensely relevant to divided Korea, Burma, and elsewhere, too. The Japanese experience the book tries to recover is full of cautionary tales, but it can also provide inspiration and hope for a better and fairer future, both within and outside Japan.

Hiromi Sasamoto-Collins

……………………………….

BIO DETAILS: Dr Hiromi Sasamoto-Collins is a former lecturer in modern Japanese history at Durham University, and is currently a tutor in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her monograph, “Power and Dissent in Imperial Japan: Three Forms of Political Engagement“, will be published by NIAS Press in August.

Malaysia’s thirteenth general elections (GE13) will be a battle of the coalitions, pitting the world’s most successful ruling coalition – the 13 party Barisan Nasional (BN/National Front) against the 4 year old, three party Pakatan Rakyat (PR/People’s Pact/People’s Alliance).

It is not easy to categorise the two opposing coalitions and its members as they are disparate, complex, and, with multiple agendas, often fractured. This is primarily the outcome of Malaysia’s recent history. The disparate regions and people that make up Malaysia today are, after all, an artificial construct whose only common denominator was that they were all subject to British Imperial power. A peninsular with 9 Malay kingdoms at the end of Asia’s land mass whose citizens were populated in majority by a polyglot of people from the Malay Archipelago, the Chinese and South Asian subcontinents, with a sprinkling of Arabs, Turks, remnants of past colonialists, various unique groups that were created through inter-marriages, and not to mention the many indigenous peoples aggregated together with two geographical entities on the island of Borneo, that is separated by 800 kilometres of the South China Sea, and whose people have greater cultural affinities with the peoples of the Philippines and Indonesia, and who themselves are disparate in culture, ethnicity and language.

However, all these societies did have one feature in common – feudalism. This was buttressed by British efforts to violently suppress progressive elements in the Malayan polity, preferring instead to hand over power after independence to conservative elements, primarily as a means to protect British interests. The feudalistic nature of these societies gave rise to what has become a very successful model of politics practised by the ruling coalition since the first elections before independence in 1955: Consociational politics, where the elites bargained and struck a deal where each group – first three, then rising to 14, now 13 political parties – had some share of political and economic power under the hegemonic power of the Malay and increasingly Islamised United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). This system has served BN well, chalking up electoral victory after victory at the past 12 general elections.

More importantly, the BN and its predecessor, the Alliance, were able to monopolise power because they were able to forge a ‘syncretism’ in their style of government i.e. governing via a variety of ideological orientations and political practises. The BN was successful not only because of its competent stewardship of the Malaysian economy but mainly because they were able to straddle competing (social, economic and political) interests within their coalition as well as address competing interests outside it by either co-opting them into BN, stifling them through draconian measures or skilfully manipulating these competing interests. The opposition parties and coalitions of the past were not able to successfully mount a challenge to the Alliance and BN partly because the electoral process and system was stacked against them, but also because the opposition parties could never successfully find a way to manage the competing interests that they each represented.

In the past decade or so, especially since the sacking of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/98, the BN appears to have lost this unique ability to straddle the competing interests of its members and the communities they represent, while the opposition, led by, ironically, the sacked former Deputy Prime Minister, appears to be increasingly adroit at managing these tensions.

Therefore, one big question at GE13 is how the two coalitions are projecting themselves as true representatives of the people’s wishes, and how they go about addressing the key challenges that Malaysia as a country and Malaysians as a people face, in a way that satisfies the myriad competing interests.

The key reasons for widespread dissatisfaction with the present situation are manifold, but the key issues that both coalitions have to address are the rising living costs, demographic change, rapid urbanisation and increasingly uneasy race-relations.

The BN, in the past, has been very successful with their politics of development and key among these has been the reduction of absolute poverty to below three per cent and shaping Malaysia into a middle income economy by 1994 on the back of a low-cost, export-oriented economic model whilst at the same time creating a Malay middle class, primarily through the expansion of the public sector and government linked corporations (GLCs) jobs that is financed primarily through Malaysia’s revenue from non-renewable resources.

However, this particular model has two unintended effects: widespread relative poverty and high income inequality. The low-cost model has seen wages for 80 per cent of Malaysian households stagnate over the past three decades. These households earn less than RM3,000 (around AUS$ 1,000) a month in a country where the average monthly income is RM4,025 (around AUS$ 1,250). More critically, the bottom 40 per cent of households earn on average RM1,440 a month (around AUS$ 450). Most shockingly, the vast majority (71 per cent) of people in the bottom 40 per cent are bumiputeras – literally sons of the soil, a designation that includes Malays and a range of indigenous groups – despite 40 odd years of affirmative action for this group. Indeed, their well-being is and has been the raison de être of UMNO, the backbone of the ruling coalition.

People have been able to get by in spite of rising living costs, because they have been kept at bay by infusing government funds into basic social services, food staples and a fuel subsidy. The last especially has proven effective, but any attempts to rein in costs have been met by popular resistance as a motorised populace has become addicted to cheap petrol.

There is also a significant demographic change in Malaysia. 71 per cent of Malaysians are under the age of 40 with 34 per cent aged between 20 and 40. They face a major challenge. Malaysia is in a middle income trap and must either develop or procure high quality human capital as a pre-requisite to transition into a high income economy. However, Malaysia’s poor quality education has not prepared them for the necessary challenges of a knowledge intensive economy. International benchmarks and surveys shows that the quality of education in Malaysia, at all levels, is no match to the successful East Asian economies that Malaysia has chosen to emulate. 80 per cent of Malaysia’s labour force has no more than the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM – equivalent to year 10 or O’levels qualifications), and the 57 universities and the more than 500 colleges are producing large numbers of graduates that the Malaysian labour market deems unsuitable or poorly skilled. This in an economy experiencing full employment since the late 1980s, and severe skills shortage since the early 1990s. Ironically, unemployment among graduates was highest. In 2007, graduates accounted for more than one-quarter of those unemployed, while unemployment among new graduates was 24. 1 per cent in 2008. With limited employability, mediocre wages and loans to be repaid, young Malaysian graduates end up saddled with enormous debt. The bloated civil service and GLCs, which are also perceived to be inefficient and a fiscal drag on the economy, are unable to provide the expected middle class jobs for bumiputeras long accustomed to getting them as part of a perceived social contract with UMNO.

However, perhaps ironically, it has been rapid urbanisation, that has brought these once disparate communities closer together. While many urban areas are still stratified by race and class, the sheer density has increased the interaction. 71 per cent of Malaysia is now urban. Only Kelantan, Pahang, Perlis, Sabah and Sarawak have rates or urbanisation below 55 per cent.

Better infrastructure, especially information communication and telecommunications, in urban areas have also provided a platform for dissatisfied Malaysians to hear alternative views and to connect with each other. 65 per cent of Malaysians were using the internet in 2010. As the internet largely remains uncensored, the opposition coalition and civil society movements have used it effectively to mobilise support for their causes. These groups have used social media, technology and the internet to also penetrate into rural areas through free radio, websites, but also the audio-visual recording of government scandals in DVDs, and other forms. While the ruling party has also joined the information technology revolution, the opposition has been quicker and more able to marshal support online despite being out-resourced by the ruling coalition.

These developments, whose impacts were first experienced at the 2008 general election, have impacted the coalitions in different ways, and have prompted different reactions. It appears that the BN continues to rely on its tried and tested race-based, trickle-down economic growth, and welfarist approach to policies while PR sensing that the ground has shifted, appears to focus on class-based and rights-based policies.

The BN possibly believes that it is best to straddle the competing interests among ethnic, religious, cultural and regional groups by addressing their needs individually, while PR appears, in general to address issues more holistically.

In the BN, the president of UMNO and Prime Minister of Malaysia now takes precedence over the other political leaders in the coalition. Different interest groups today, do not go through their “representative” political leaders or parties to seek government support, but approach the Prime Minister directly, who then, channels the support to these communities through the “representative” political parties. This, however, applies only to Peninsular Malaysia, and not in Sabah and Sarawak which have different dynamics.

PR’s approach is markedly different. Although Anwar Ibrahim is the leader of the opposition coalition and is most likely to be the Prime Minister should PR win, several factions in PAS have indicated some misgivings, preferring their own candidate. This suggests a more equal distribution of power in the opposition coalition members. But most significantly, Anwar Ibrahim is the first mainstream Malay politician to persuasively argue for the dismantling of the race-based affirmative action and has committed to it in the PR manifesto. This alone stands in contrast to BN’s continued reliance on continuing and expanding affirmative action for bumiputeras (although the Prime Minister has made contradictory statements on this).

PR also appears to be moving towards depoliticising contentious issue such as education and language issues. While BN has made side payments to vernacular schools on a piece-meal basis, PR have promised to embed these into government budgets should they come into power. While BN has demonstrated inconsistency in its language policy in primary and secondary schools, PR has been consistent in promoting the right of communities to use their preferred language in education in vernacular schools. This was in the context of using English in the teaching of Science and Maths, that former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed introduced, and which has since been reversed succumbing to strong popular protest.

Both coalitions however have resorted to populists strategies. PR’s strategies such as free education, removal of excise duties on cars, etc. all show that they are targeting the young and lower and middle income earners, much like the BN is doing now by handing out cash bonuses to Petronas (the national oil company) workers and through its many 1Malaysia initiatives, one of which provided a cash payment to low income earners to purchase a smartphone.

Handouts and their associated media attention are economic and visual reminders of a party in trouble and a party seemingly still able to resource its mass redistribution of wealth according to the principle of affirmative action and poverty reduction rhetoric. The former has been shown to have benefitted those in power (the now infamous 1 per cent) much more than the majority it is meant to aid. The latter, too, has been critiqued, especially in Sabah and Sarawak where poverty rates remain high.

And yet, BN has maintained a strong showing in polls and a support base that does not wish to change the way Malaysian society, economy or politics is structured. The status quo is highly reassuring for many who have yet much to gain from it as well as those who deeply believe in it. And belief is crucial in a country where mosque sermons are written by politics, ‘race’ is used as an everyday descriptor of ethnic background and ‘class’ is not uttered since the crackdown on the communists in the 1950s and 1960s. Who will Malaysians believe come the next elections? Personal attacks against political leaders has been a mainstay in Malaysian politics and lurid stories abound, backed up by court cases, exposes as well as much rumour, gossip and coffee shop talk.

Malaysia today is not the feudalistic society it once was, but the political is still dominated by communal topics such as race and religion and the need to ‘secure’ both against some unknown and often unnamed threat. Many people are willing to move beyond the politics of fear into a brave new world, but will there be a job, a car, cheap petrol and cheap food for them?

Only after the election will we see.

Greg Lopez is a visiting fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University and the New Mandala’s Malaysia section editor, an academic blog hosted by the College of Asia and the Pacific, also at the Australian National University.

Gerhard Hoffstaedter is a lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. He has recently published Modern Muslim Identities with NIAS Press.

This article was previously posted on the New Mandela website

Gender inequality is not simply the unfair treatment of men and women. It is a complex issue tied to a whole range of disparities in society at large, argues Professor Min Dongchao, who has just been awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship and will be a guest professor at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies for the next few years. Her object of study is the travels of gender theory between the Nordic countries and China.

Professor Min Dongchao

Just another day at the factory

Like many other researchers and academics of her generation, Professor Min Dongchao was young during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Most of China’s schools and universities were closed down during that period, and the youth were sent to the countryside or to factories to learn from the working class. Professor Min spent the Cultural Revolution as a worker at the Tianjin Machinery and Tool Factory, beginning her factory career at the age of 15 in 1969 and staying there for eight years.

“During the Cultural Revolution, society was turned upside down. We grew up in a transformed environment with no language to talk about gender or differences between the sexes, because there wasn’t supposed to be any difference. Everybody wore the same kinds of clothes, did the same job, got the same pay, and so forth. There was basically no sexual division in society — at least not on the surface,” says Professor Min Dongchao.

The open door

It was only after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 that schools and universities reopened, and it became possible for at least some of the so-called “sent down youth” to return to the education system. Once again, society was turned upside down: Foreign cultures and influences entered the country, spurring an irreversible development of Chinese society.

“Suddenly we could watch films and television from abroad, films that often demonstrated a clear gender differentiation, where men looked like men and women looked like women. So we wanted to look good, and we wanted to look different from men. Women started wearing makeup, and clothes in general became more colorful. Suddenly, a more diverse expression and mode of behavior were allowed again,” explains Min.

But there was another side to the new developments. It soon became more difficult for women to find employment, and they were paid gradually less, as men were generally favored in job situations. The factories started to lay off workers, and women were often the first to go. Other problems such as prostitution and men taking second wives also resurfaced and, according to Professor Min, this laid some of the foundation for why women and gender studies started taking off in China in the 1980s.

Professor Min returned to China in 2004 after almost ten years in the UK, and discovered a country in rapid transition. The new generations of young girls had reversed the Cultural Revolutionary tradition of going to the countryside. Instead, they were heading to coastal cities to work in factories — a mixed experience, to most. On the one hand, they experience the freedom of getting their own job, earning their own money, and freeing themselves from the pressure of country life. On the other, they work under exploitative conditions, are paid very little, and without any unions to protect them.

The introduction of gender

United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Opens in Beijing, September 1995. Photo: UN Photo/Milton Grant

United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Opens in Beijing, September 1995. Photo: UN Photo/Milton Grant

Gender as a concept was introduced into China in connection with preparations for the Fourth UN World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995. There was growing awareness of increasingly visible gender inequality, and a new conceptual language to discuss these issues was made available to concerned academics and activists.

One of the gender-related issues under discussion in recent years is quotas. During the Mao era, the sex ratio was 50-50 in most party and government organs. In 2008, the government introduced gender quotas stipulating that 22% of the congress should be female, and last year, in collaboration with the All-China Women’s Federation, it was decided that there should be at least one woman on village committees. Professor Min, however, argues that the solution to gender inequality issues doesn’t lie only in quotas or the recognition of gender issues. Rather, it is a matter of general inequality in society at large:

“Gender equality should be addressed as a very important issue, and by this I don’t just mean gender difference — it is not a matter of achieving complete similarity between the sexes. Gender inequality has to do with general inequality in the society at large, the gap between rich and poor, inequality between the regions, between city and countryside. There are males and females of all classes and walks of life, so there are very rich females and very poor males. Gender inequality exists and can only be understood in the context of all levels of society, and within all classes. The inequality gap in general is growing bigger, which in turn affects gender inequality. When you conduct your research you may forget this, you may think in different categories, but you always have to see the society as a whole. The conditions for life in China are so dependent on geography and class. In many rural places, there are no proper schools, and children run around hungry. And then you have Shanghai with its multimillionaires — even billionaires. If you only look at one class or one geographic location, you get a skewed picture of what is actually going on in China,” Professor Min emphasizes.

The local is not subordinate to the global

Many academics agree that you cannot separate globalization and the local; they are two sides of the same coin. In other words, you cannot take the local out of the global. Globalization happens in the local. Professor Min argues that this is the case even for places with myriad global connections, like London: Even though all the money flowing through the financial center influences London from abroad, there is still a feature of something “local.” Understanding the global in relation to the local is a way to give prominence to people, because they are the ones who experience the changes on an everyday basis, and they are the ones who actually “practice” globalization.

As Professor Min notes, “We often see the railway as a symbol of globalization, because it links places together, but what we tend to forget is that there are places and people in between the stations. As with railways, there are different routes for gender studies in China. Some people go to Beijing and Shanghai and read Judith Butler, and then others go to the poor areas, like Yunnan. In Yunnan they have gradually changed the gender discourse and related practice, and as a result, the Yunnan Province Women’s Federation has managed to obtain more funding for larger projects than they have in places where they have not yet incorporated the new discourse.”

“Yunnan Province Women’s federation is a good example of how the global and the local are linked, of how things change in a local environment,” she argues.

The next generation

Female students protest gender quotas at Guangzhou University. Photo from http://www.whatsonshenzhen.com

The new generation of women has begun to stir up radical performances and protests in the big cities. One example is a domestic violence protest last year in which young women painted their faces so it looked like they’d been beaten, and posted pictures of it on the Internet. Another incident was the Occupy Toilet Movement, where women occupied men’s rooms to protest the lack of women’s toilets in most public places.

“They might have gotten the idea from Taiwan or Hong Kong,” Professor Min adds.

Last year, some universities refused female applicants even though they had the same scores as their male counterparts. The Ministry proclaimed that for the sake of the country the universities needed more men, not girls. The women reacted by staging a happening where they shaved their heads and stood out on the street in defiance.

“Because of the Internet, this protest became a big deal. I think it’s good that young women have started to react to society’s gender inequalities; it is a good sign. I think it’s important that they protest, that they fight for something. My generation is about to retire, and we need the younger generation to take over and do the job. I hope that is what we’re seeing now,” Professor Min concludes.

Professor Min Dongchao, director of the Centre for Gender and Culture Studies at Shanghai University, has received the Marie Curie Actions International Incoming Fellowship and will be a guest professor at Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University of Copenhagen from April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2015.

Professor Min’s project is titled “Cross-Cultural Encounters — The Travels of Gender Theory and Practice to China and the Nordic Countries” and is concerned with the cross-cultural translation of knowledge and practices that may or may not take place when different cultures interact, and the resulting production of new knowledge. Taking the travelling routes of gender theory and practices to, and also between, China and the Nordic countries as the empirical object of study, the project will focus on the crucial questions of why and how knowledge travels or fails to travel.

This interview with Professor Min Dongchao can also be found on ThinkChina.dk – Blogging on Denmark and China.

Despite that, the Laotian government still went out with a full denial of any knowledge as to why Sombath Somphone was detained…by their own officers. Since then, there has been no sign of the director, and no explanation as to why he disappeared.

Just weeks before, another activist had a run-in with the Laotian authorities – the director of the Swiss NGO Helveta, Anne-Sophie Gindroz, were expelled with a 24-hour warning for writing a critical letter.

The Laotian government explained that she “dismayed” the government with her “improper behavior.” Whatever that means – a quite surprising argumentation for throwing a peaceful activist out of a country.

Somehow , though, Laos has still managed to successfully present themselves as a charming little nation with a slow pace and idyllic farm life for the ever-smiling population. Relaxation, leisure and spirituality are key words in any glittered tourist brochure on Laos.

Truth is that the life in Laos is far from idyllic, and the pace is very, very far from slow. Since the 90s, the Laotians have built dams, constructed hydropower plants and made deals with neighbors Thailand, China and Vietnam so efficiently that the economy is today the fastest growing economy in ASEAN.

The country has recently joined the World Trade Organization, hosted an ASEM-summit – the biggest diplomatic event ever to take place in the country – and they have co-signed a range of international agreements, putting them into a world market that they could only dream of entering just a few years ago.

The main reason for the excellent economical performance is the energy sector. 30 percent of the country´s BNP comes out of natural resources converted into energy, mainly hydro electricity from plants and dams on Mekong and it´s many tributaries.

And while making this profit and shining in the spotlight of international recognition, Laos – quite on par with the behavior in the cases of Somphone and Gindroz – ignores that there are people living on and off these rivers.

Right now, Laos is constructing a dam called the Xayaburi Dam. Since the proposal of the project in 2007  it has been met with protests from experts, governments, activists, NGOs…pretty much everyone, who knows anything about water: It will hurt the migration of fish, it will endanger a number of species of fish – including the rockstar of Mekong; the Mekong giant catfish – and it will affect crops cultivated in and near the river. WWF estimates that a whopping 60 million people will be affected by the dam in its present form.

Naturally, there are negotiations going on, both with international experts and with the neighboring countries, on how to construct the dam with minimal damage. Both Vietnam and Cambodia have officially called for a halt in construction.

The Laotian response? Well. They ignore all the fuss and carry on building.

Laos has risen from dirt-poverty into a flourishing trading nation, and the fact that it will hurt some groups in the population – namely the poor and the minorities – seems to be of minor importance. The logic is: You cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

But you know what, Laos? Economy is not an omelet and people are not eggs. There are ways to have economic growth without shattering the lives of the most vulnerable groups in your nation.

It is so, though, that the cases of horrible governance, the breaches of basic human rights, the bypassing of negotiations and good advice – all these things factor in, when you new lucrative, international friends are to do business with you.

You don´t seem to realize it, but the spotlight is on you now, Laos. What are you going to do with it?

Anya Palm, Journalist and NIAS Associate

Palm Writings

The term ‘Iqbal’s Pakistan’ is frequently used in the Pakistani media – both electronic media such as television and radio, and Pakistani daily newspapers. If you search on the internet, you will come across several results under the term ‘Iqbal’s Pakistan’ in online papers, articles published in local journals or magazines and on sites reviewing seminars and conferences held in the country. You will find the term on YouTube and other similar websites where video recordings of talk shows, sitcoms, and Urdu plays are posted with the theme – Iqbal ka Pakistan – the Urdu term for Iqbal’s Pakistan.

What does the term ‘Iqbal’s Pakistan’ mean? And what is the relationship between Iqbal and Pakistan? Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, popularly known as ‘the spiritual father of Pakistan’[1] and leading Persian and Urdu poet of undivided India, presented the idea of “the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State” in his presidential address to the 25^th session of the All-India Muslim League held in Allahabad on 29 December, 1930.[2] He also stated that: “Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India”. This idea presented by Muhammad Iqbal was later adopted by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan as a proposal for the establishment of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent. Mohommad Iqbal has ever since been revered in Pakistan as a national hero just like his political counterpart Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher, was born in Sialkot (now in central Punjab, Pakistan) on 9 November 1877. Iqbal was engaged in the study of Arabic and Persian in his early years but later on the advice of Sir Thomas Arnold, his teacher of philosophy at the Government College of Lahore, he travelled to Cambridge in 1905 to continue his studies. He also studied at Heidelberg and Munich universities in Germany. Upon his return to India, he both taught at the Government College and worked as a lawyer in Lahore. In 1922, Iqbal received the knighthood from the British Crown. In 1928, he delivered a series of lectures in various universities in India which was later published under the title The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, a work that provides significant context and guidelines for his ideas expressed in his poetry. Written in both Urdu and Persian, Iqbal’s poetry continues to inspire Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent and beyond. Iqbal died on April 21, 1938 in Lahore and his mausoleum beside the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore is visited by many today[3].

Iqbal’s poetry has been used in several national contexts. Muhammad Iqbal claims admiration among intellectual Pakistanis, both intelligentsia and young students. To this day, in Pakistani schools, each morning students, teachers and other staff assemble and sing one of Iqbal’s famous poems written for children ‘Lab pay aati hai du’a ban ke tamanna meri’ (My longing comes to my lips as supplication of mine-O God! May like the candle be the life of mine). Similarly, speech contests related to Muhammad Iqbal and his vision of the Indian Muslim state are held in Pakistani schools and colleges while his poetry is frequently quoted in public talks. Pakistani politicians, leaders and other professionals often quote Iqbal’s poetry to support their own progressive ideas. Iqbal’s poetry has also been frequently used by religious scholars and Islamic hardliners to articulate their own religious views. His works have been translated in several regional languages of South Asia as well as several European languages, among others English, German, and Spanish.

Annemarie Schimmel, a famous scholar, pointed out that Muhammad Iqbal “… has been regarded as the unsurpassable master of every virtue and art; he has been made a forerunner of socialism or an advocate of Marxism; he was anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist; he was the poet of the elite and of the masses, the true interpreter of orthodox Islam and the advocate of a dynamic and free interpretation of Islam, the enemy of Sufism and a Sufi himself; he was indebted to Western thought and criticized everything Western mercilessly. One can call him a political poet, because his aim was to awaken the self-consciousness of Muslims, primarily in the Indian Subcontinent but also in general, and his poetry was indeed instrumental in bringing forth decisive changes in the history of the Subcontinent. One can also style him a religious poet, because the firm belief in the unending possibilities of the Koran and the deep and sincere love of the Prophet (in both his quality as nation-builder and as eternal model for man) are the bases of his poetry and philosophy”.

The question is – why do the Pakistanis use the term ‘Iqbal’s Pakistan’? What would be Iqbal’s Pakistan like?

A large part of Muhammad Iqbal’s poetry is dedicated to the youth. He wished to see the Muslim youth vibrant in its ideals, determined in its actions and high-aiming in its approach to life. He said,

“I have love for those youngsters who pull the stars down.”[4]

Using the analogy of ‘Shaheen’ (the Urdu/Persian terminology used for an eagle) in his poetry, Muhammad Iqbal draws his readers’ attention to the qualities of an eagle ‘the king of birds’. An eagle, Iqbal says, has a sharp vision, it does not live on the prey that has been hunted down by other birds or animals, it lives on the peaks of high mountains and finally, it does not build a nest. These qualities of an eagle that Iqbal describes in his poetry symbolize a life of independence, dignity, freedom, and self-reliance. By using the symbol of a ‘Shaheen’ in his poetry, Iqbal attempts to inculcate in the Muslim youth an approach towards life that contains high ideals followed by action. In addressing the youth he wrote,

“You can only claim a universe to be yours that is created by you

Do not consider this world made of stone and wood that is in sight, your universe!”[5]

Muhammad Iqbal attempted to create self-consciousness among the Muslims of India so that they might free themselves from the British control on the one hand and the domination of Hindus on the other.  In his poem, ‘Shaheen’, Iqbal expresses his ideas using the example of an eagle:

East and West ‐these belong to the world of the pheasant,
The blue sky—vast, boundless—is mine![6]

This symbolism in Muhammad Iqbal’s poetry is not merely an expression of his mystical thoughts but, he invokes the Muslim youth, these ideals can be and must be achieved through a transformed knowledge about the Self. Many of Iqbal’s poems talk about the Self: “…the system of the universe originates in the Self, and that the continuation of the life of all individuals depends on strengthening the Self”[7]. The human identity, according to Iqbal, is boundless, if realized to its true worth. Iqbal challenges the youth to realize their real worth by tapping into the qualities that belong to al-insaan (the perfect human) present in each human being. Iqbal’s concept of mard-e-mo’min (a man of conviction, belief) which he uses a number of times in his poetry seems to have become an ideal for the Pakistani youth.

“He (mo’min) is mild in speech and wild in action.
Be it battlefield or the assembly of friends, he is pure of heart and action.”[8]

There are examples of constructive criticism in Iqbal’s poetry as a means of creating a feeling of restlessness amidst the youth so that they may become actively engaged in productive contemplation that ultimately leads to action. In several examples of his poetry, Muhammad Iqbal addresses his own son, Javaid (then a young boy below the age of 10) but indirectly he is addressed to the youth in general, an example of which are the following verses,

“Create a place for thyself in the realm of Love

Create a new age, new days, new nights

If God grant thee an eye for nature’s beauty

Create poetry from the silence of tulips and roses (Converse with the silence of flowers, respond to their love)

My way of life is poverty, not the pursuit of wealth

Barter not thy Selfhood, win a name in adversity”[9]

Iqbal’s Muslim hero “…is a man of action and a man of the world, but his approach to the world is non-materialistic. According to Iqbal, it is through love and through a focus on one’s inner self that man can achieve the absolute form of freedom”.[10]

“Unflinching conviction, eternal action, and the love that conquers the world

These are the swords (weapons) of the brave ones that fight the war of life.”[11]

Iqbal considers the knowledge of the Quran, the best knowledge for his youth. This idea is more clearly expressed in the following verses taken from his collection Armughan-i-Hijaz (1938):
Keep the Qur’an as a mirror before you.
You have completely changed, run away from yourself.
Fix a balance for your deeds [so that you may be able to],
Stir a commotion which your forbears stirred in the past.[12]

Iqbal challenges the youth to rise above the national, ethnic and factional groupings and invites them to break loose of these limited references of identity. Whereas Iqbal professed the idea of unity among Muslims in his poetry, he also criticized a series of vices among Muslims. He attacked hypocrisy, sectarian and ethnic divisions. Iqbal’s Mard-e-Mo’min can claim his rule over the universe rather than be overpowered by meager emotions of nationalism or religious fanaticism. Iqbal’s inculcates important values of life through his messages to the youth,

“Here are Indians, there people of Khurasan, here Afghans, there Turanians—
You, who despise the shore, rise up and make yourself boundless.[13]”

Muhammad Iqbal considered Turkey a good example for modern Muslim states. In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam[14], he writes:

“The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real – a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle”.

Iqbal also laments about the situation of Muslim countries,

 “Such is the lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to creating new values. He has passed through great experiences which have revealed his deeper self to him. In him life has begun to move, change, and amplify, giving birth to new desires, bringing new difficulties and suggesting new interpretations”.[15]

In his writings, Iqbal attempted to instill amidst the Muslims a need for change in the ways that reflected a backward approach to life and to end all kinds of subjugation for progress. He aspired to see Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent and beyond regain success and revive their glorious past.

Iqbal had widely read and frequently made references to European philosophers, intellectuals and poets such as Hegel, Kant, Goethe, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and others in his poetry. He wrote his famous Persian poem Payam-e-Mashriq (‘Message of the East’) to Goethe’s West-Ostlicher which contains many fascinating remarks about European philosophers and politicians.

Iqbal’s poetry is considered to provide a ‘synthesis of both eastern and western thought and art’. He makes comparisons between Muslim and Western scholars in the fields of philosophy, science, and religious studies. Comparisons have been made between Iqbal’s message and Goethe’s ideas as well as interesting parallels are drawn between Iqbal’s and Kirkegaard (the Danish philosopher). Iqbal also compared Nietzsche’s Superman with his own Mard-e-Mo’min (Man of unflinching faith and belief) exemplified by Prophet Muhammad who “in the most exalted state of his ascension, was called ‘abduhu’” [16] His (i.e. God’s) servant’ (Quran 17:1). Similarly, parallels between Muhammad Iqbal and Søren Kierkegaard mainly focus on the idea of ‘the Self’ that both philosophers had presented as their philosophic vision.[17]

In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal makes a detailed analysis of the history of Islam and its past glory and compares it with the recurring supremacy of the Western thought in the fields of education, technology and science during the past 500 years. At times, one finds a dispassionate analysis in the writings of Muhammad Iqbal of the downfall of the Muslim empires and the rise of the European empires and Western supremacy.

Iqbal was also subjected to fierce criticism from different sides within the Indian Subcontinent. He has been criticized by Hindu authors who consider him “neither a philosopher, nor a poet nor a politician but only a fanatical Muslim nationalist who has sympathy only with his own nation and his coreligionists”.[18] Iqbal also received strong criticism from the Muslim hardliners for writing poems such as “Shikwa” (A Complaint). However, he countered this criticism by writing a response to his own poem titled “Jawab-e-Shikwa” (Response to the Complaint) from God.

Through talk shows and other media representations under the term Iqbal’s Pakistan, the Pakistani youth look for answers to a variety of questions regarding Pakistan’s future. One finds a diversity of points of view on these online blogs, discussion forums, talk shows and online publications that use Muhammad Iqbal’s ideas for awakening both feelings of national pride in the youth and Islamic values. One can find an element of revolutionary zeal in their ideas and a dissatisfaction with the Pakistani leaders and politicians – in the way that Muhammad Iqbal himself who challenged the oppressive British colonial regime. These young Pakistanis refuse to look up to the west. Instead, they talk about building a Pakistan that has dignity in the community of nations, a Pakistan that moves ahead side by side with the developed nations of the world, not depending on the developed nations for economic aid alone. Voicing Iqbal’s vision of a nation, the Pakistani youth aspire to see a Pakistan where Islam and modern advancement go hand in hand and aspire for democracy not only as a political system but as a social system. They seem to encourage positive ideas and attitudes among the Pakistani youth.

Maybe the term ‘Iqbal’s Pakistan’ does not represent the original idea of Muhammad Iqbal about a separate state combining the Muslim-majority areas within India. However, the youth in the 21^st century Pakistan seems to associate the future of Pakistan with Muhammad Iqbal and his vision about a land that provides opportunities for a life with freedom and dignity. In this way the youth in contemporary Pakistan seem to find guidelines in Iqbal’s writings for such a life and aspiration for a bright future of Pakistan,

“Come, so that we may strew roses and pour a measure of wine in the cup!
Let us split open the roof of the heavens and think upon new ways”[19].

Uzma Rehman
NIAS Associate and PhD History of Religion, Copenhagen University

1. North Korea, surprisingly, became the first of the two Koreas to successfully place a satellite into orbit by utilizing solely indigenous technology. South Korea made unsuccessful attempts in 2009 and 2010 and twice postponed a planned launch in 2012.[1] This undoubtedly comes as a slap in the face for researchers in South Korea’s space program, some of which even claimed that North Korean space technology was “at least 20 years behind the South’s”.[2]

2. 2012 marks the only time North Korea has conducted two launches in the same year, but more importantly the two launches under Kim Jong-un’s rule have shown a significant difference from the launches under the leadership of Kim Jong-il in that the rockets were launched towards the south and not towards the east. Why is this significant? Because it could indicate that Pyongyang is showing an unprecedented wariness of Tokyo’s concerns and warnings of shooting down the rocket were it to pose a threat to Japan. In this context it’s important to note that southward bound launches present a far bigger challenge than eastward bound launches, both financially (more fuel) and technologically (stronger engine). Due to the centrifugal power generated by the Earth’s rotation (west to east) an eastward bound launch would be given a gravitational boost and thus require far less propellants than launches in other directions (the Earth rotates at a speed of almost 1700 kilometers per hour along the equator). Launching towards the south also presents Pyongyang with another disadvantage: the satellite would orbit around the Earth from south to north instead of following the Earth’s rotation from west to east. This means that the satellite will cross North Korea only a limited number of times a year, making North Korea’s satellite practically useless for weather observation purposes.

   By launching the rockets towards the south, North Korea has thus demonstrated a willingness to take a more technologically challenging, expensive and ineffective approach arguably in order to ease Japanese concerns. This is a new development since Kim Jong-un came to power. It could of course also be interpreted as North Korea’s lack of confidence in its own technology and resultant concerns that an eastward bound launch could fall down over Japan and create an unfavorable international environment.

3. North Korea did indeed place a satellite into orbit. What implications will this have on the language of future references to North Korean rockets? Japan, for example, has up until now consistently referred to North Korea’s launches as “the missile which North Korea calls a ‘satellite’” [北朝鮮による「人工衛星」と称するミサイル ][3], implying that North Korea has had no intentions to place a satellite into orbit, but simply has used the satellite claim as a pretext to test missile technology. This may still be true, but North Korea nonetheless succeeded in placing a satellite into orbit and future references to North Korean launches will possibly be changed. If the international community changes its vocabulary from “missile” to “satellite”, it will perhaps become increasingly difficult to deny North Korea the right to test its rocket technology for use in a peaceful space program, especially as long as South Korea pursues exactly the same goal.

4. Regarding North Korea’s motives for the launch, there has been a tendency among analysts to over-analyze the reasons for North Korea’s launch. The multiple power transitions in the region might of course have played a role, but what “message” could North Korea possibly have hoped to convey to the various regional actors who all have differing interests and probably interpret the launch in widely different ways? “Don’t forget about us”, could that be it? North Korea hardly needs satellites to prevent its fading into oblivion. If North Korea’s launch was a message, it seems unlikely that it was addressed to other countries than the US. The launch demonstrated once and for all that North Korea has the potential (however limited) to reach US mainland. For Japan and South Korea the launch does not pose a new threat as both these countries allegedly have been within the North Korean missile range since 1993.[4] If this was a message, it was aimed at the US. This also correlates to North Korea’s warning in October that North Korean missiles could reach “not only South Korea and Japan, but also the US”.[5]

   Rather than interpreting the launch as a cry for attention directed at the international community, it seems reasonable that domestic factors were most instrumental this time around. Obviously the launch coincided almost on the day with the one year commemoration of Kim Jong-il’s death on December 17 2011, but 2012 was also the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth and North Korea had announced many years in advance that 2012 would mark the watershed moment when North Korea transforms itself into a “strong and prosperous nation”. The international situation notwithstanding, North Korea would probably have conducted some kind of symbolic act in 2012 to showcase its technological prowess in the new “strong and prosperous” era regardless of outside factors. Its spectacular launch failure in April created, if nothing else, a sense of urgency for achieving something grandiose before the end of the watershed year of 2012.

Ulv Hanssen
Fellow, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation,
The Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI)

Photo taken in a small village in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta: children curious to see what is happening at our meeting inside the monastery.

Having spent a month (restricted time period for tourist visa) collecting empirical data for a master’s thesis in Myanmar, the general picture of ‘openness’ has become more nuanced and complex. The mysterious Myanmar is a country known for a variety of reasons ranging from its beautiful landscapes decorated with golden pagodas, Buddhist monks dressed in saffron-coloured ropes to a repressive military rule followed by fear and poverty. As a master’s student in International Development Studies and Communication I had a desire to explore the country and to study how the development of civil society in Myanmar is influenced by the political changes in the country, and what role development organisations play in this process. This required a field visit to Myanmar.

With the help of the Danish Embassy in Bangkok a collaboration with ActionAid Myanmar was established. ActionAid Myanmar is managing two projects, amongst others, implemented by a consortium of local (and international) NGOs named the Thadar Consortium. The two projects are implemented in the Dry Zone, in the central part of Myanmar, and in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta, in the southern part of Myanmar, respectively, and both projects focus on the strengthening of civil society and improvement of livelihood.

The field visit was an eye-opening experience, based on positive as well as negative surprises, and by sharing this experience I am hoping to give the reader a deeper understanding of what it is like to do fieldwork in a country like Myanmar that has just “opened up” to the outside world. What challenges can you expect to meet when working under these circumstances?

Background

Before getting into a detailed description of my fieldwork I consider it necessary to briefly describe the country Myanmar and to highlight the most important historical and political events. In 1962 a military coup led by General Ne Win and the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP) changed Myanmar from being a wealthy country to a country of repression, isolation and gradually increasing poverty. From 1962 – 2010 the situation in Myanmar was characterized by a number of uprisings against the military regime. One of the most well-known uprisings was in 1988 where large groups of students took to the street and, despite continued military ruling, managed to generate the resignation of the unpopular General Ne Win. However, the uprising was violently suppressed, and a large number of students died.

Seeing her country in that stage of repression, Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s national hero Bogyoke Aung San (assassinated in 1948), made her entrance into the political arena to fight for a free and democratic Myanmar. She established the political party NLD ‘National League for Democracy’, but in 1989 she was placed under house arrest. 1989 was also the year when the government decided to change the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar, which caused further anger and frustration. In 1990 an election was held and the NLD won a landslide victory, but unfortunately, the military regime refused to recognize the election results, allowing the regime to stay in power.

The second well-known uprising, named the Saffron Revolution led by monks dressed in saffron-coloured ropes, took place in 2007. This event was violently suppressed and the action made the outside world aware of the critical situation in Myanmar.

Another event that attracted the attention of the outside world was when Cyclone Nargis struck and killed around 150.000 people in the southern part of Myanmar in 2008. For months NGOs were denied access to the areas.

From 2010 onwards the country started changing. In fall 2010 Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest – by this time she had been in house arrest for 15 years. A week before her release the government held a Parliamentary Election, but the NLD decided to boycott it. In 2011 a new democratic government was officially formed, with the leadership of the pro-democratic president Thein Sein, and this gave birth to a number of democratic reforms. In April 2012 the NLD won a landslide victory in a by-election, which meant that the party was now represented, although with a minority part of Parliament.

Fieldwork in Myanmar

 Freedom of speech

Judging by national and international media channels it appeared that Myanmar had actually opened up, allowing tourists, development aid and foreign investment to enter the country. This, however, didn’t necessarily mean that the Burmese people were ready to express their opinions on sensitive issues like politics, the military government, civil society or democracy, topics upon which my master’s thesis is based. In order to adapt to these circumstances the research and interview questions were moderated accordingly.

 The streets of Yangon: a young nun talking on her blue smart-phone

On arrival in Yangon, and all during the two weeks spent in Yangon, the picture given by the media appeared to reflect reality. To my surprise the changes in the country were visibly and audibly reflected in the city-life in Yangon. The majority of the taxi-drivers were eagerly explaining, in well spoken English, how the new government is better than the old one, and that they believed this transition would change their lives to the better. Many had a picture of the national hero, Bogyoke Aung San in the car, indicating that they were now free to voice their opinion. Others explained how Aung San Suu Kyi had saved the country. Judging by the Burmese history the people have been suppressed and restricted for the past 50 years, particularly in regards to freedom of speech. In my opinion, this openness characterizing the people of Yangon is an indicator of the changes in the country.

The prospects of the fieldwork now appeared more promising, as open-minded people are easier to interview. Unfortunately, the hope for success faded already after the first meeting with the Thadar Consortium. The Consortium emphasised the need to be extremely cautious with sensitive issues, like the political reforms, when entering the project areas. This obviously came as a surprise to me, as I got the impression from people in Yangon that they were now free to voice their opinion.

Village in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta Region

Permission

Obtaining permission to enter the project areas turned out to be more challenging than expected. Through correspondences prior to the field visit to Myanmar it was decided that the empirical data should be collected in the Dry Zone project, as this project seemed more relevant for the research. However, after arrival in Yangon, the Thadar Consortium didn’t succeed in obtaining permission to visit this area. In fact, no foreigner apart from project staff had ever been granted permission to enter that area, and even local people have to apply for permission to enter. After this discovery, which also seemed to be a surprise for the Consortium, efforts were made to obtain permission to visit the Delta project. Unfortunately this did not prove successful in the first place, and after a new attempt was made for the Dry Zone (also unsuccessful), a visit to the Delta finally worked out. This process cut a week off the limited time available for fieldwork.

Based on the impression from the media that Myanmar has opened up, it came as a surprise to me, and apparently also to the project staff, that it was this difficult for foreigners to enter certain areas of the country. In fact, before leaving Denmark a Burmese friend of mine, living and working in Denmark, encouraged me to stay a couple of nights in the homes of local people, as this would give me a deeper understanding of the Burmese culture. With this encouragement in mind it was particularly surprising to discover that even local Burmese people need to apply for permission to stay at the house of a friend or relative – and foreigners shouldn’t even bother applying, as they would not get the permission. This is today’s Myanmar.

Going “undercover”

During the preparatory meetings in Yangon I was briefed by the Consortium on how to present myself and on what to be aware of when operating in the field. First of all, I could not introduce myself as a student doing research in the villages. Apparently, the word ‘research’ is extremely sensitive, as it may raise suspicion among the local authorities of interference in local affairs. Under these circumstances I was given an “undercover” title as employee from the Thadar Consortium, and the purpose of my presence in the local villages was to collect information to write the Thadar Consortium newsletter. On the one hand, this new title made it possible to travel and conduct research in the project area. However, on the other hand, these precautions may have affected the answers given by the interview persons. They considered me as part of the Thadar Consortium, placing them in a position where they did not feel free to express their true opinions, for fear of jeopardizing their relationship to the organisations supporting them. This was of course unfortunate, but without the support of the Thadar Consortium it would not have been possible to enter the villages.

Photo taken in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta: poor family

Furthermore, words like “political reforms” and “democratic reforms” could not be used – not during the interviewing and not even casually. In fact, it was extremely important that the interview questions were not in any way political or critical of the former military regime. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, ActionAid as a non-political organization is emphasizing the importance of not interfering with national or local political affairs. Secondly, the local authorities do not want outsiders spreading political information, possibly for fear of local resistance or unrest. Thirdly, despite the fact that the country has opened up the villagers living in the local communities still may feel insecure when being confronted with political issues. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the villagers to obtain information about the changes in the country, and they therefore may have a lack of knowledge about which rules have been abolished and which still apply. For example, during the fieldwork it turned out that the term ‘civil society’ was banned until after 2008.

These restrictions made it challenging to obtain comprehensive information from the interview persons. As an alternative to the sensitive terms I used the term “change” anticipating (and hoping) it would be understood as “political changes”. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. However, despite the restrictions and different understandings of “change” it was possible, by re-phrasing the questions and thus approaching the central issues in alternative ways, to achieve satisfactory outcomes of the interviews.

Travelling by boat to the villages in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta: interpreter and interviewer taking a nap after a long day in the field.

One morning, when travelling by our usual motorised boat to one of the small villages, one of the project officers received a phone call from the police. He explained to me that he functioned as the contact person for the police in the township where we were staying, because they wanted to know our exact whereabouts every day, and they wanted to make sure that we returned from the villages before nightfall. The project officer assured us that there was nothing to worry about. Whatever the reason for their concern, I now decided to save the interviews recorded in the villages on three different digital devises – two of them located on our bodies. If the recordings of the interviews were confiscated by the police it would of course be devastating for my research, but my greatest concern was the safety of the interview persons. Later that night, when returning from having dinner at a small restaurant, our trishaw driver told us that the police were in our hotel. They were concerned because a Californian project officer, the only other foreigner in the township – and entire area, had not returned from the villages. We, on the other hand, didn’t need to worry, because the police knew where we were – having dinner at the small restaurant by the water. This constant surveillance emphasised the necessity in saving the interview recordings in a number of different places. This could have been an over-reaction, but after thus far having encountered numerous surprises in this country I was not going to take any risks.

It appears that the authorities have a need to constantly be in control by knowing the exact whereabouts of foreigners staying within their area of responsibility. Before the country started changing the NGOs, international NGOs in particular, were denied access to the rural areas. Today the situation has changed, but in my opinion it seems that the fear and need of control is still evident in the behaviour of the authorities.

The changes in Myanmar

Without doubt, Myanmar is changing. In cooperation with Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD, the pro-democratic president Thein Sein and his government is working to democratize the country, a political development that was unimaginable a few years ago. However, it appears that these changes are mostly evident on a national level. In the poor villages in the rural areas the changes are still tentative, and as a foreigner it is extremely difficult to get access and to operate in these areas. There is still a long way to go.

Photo taken in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta: grandma smoking a cigar

Marie Ditlevsen
Master’s student in International Development Studies and Communication, Roskilde University
Workplace student at NIAS

by

Stig Toft Madsen
Senior Research Fellow
NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

This intervention will cover the period from the return of Benazir Bhutto in 2007 till now. I am speaking as a person who has worked as a sociologist and anthropologist mainly with India, but who has kept an interest in Pakistan as well. For lack of time I have not been able to study the UN reports (e.g. A/HRC/WG.6/14/PAK/1) presented elsewhere today.

Pakistani politics has always had periods of military rule and democratic rule alternating in rather long cycles. Therefore, the return to democracy in 2008 would not necessarily mean the institutionalization of democracy in Pakistan once and for all. But at that time there was a hope that this time around Pakistanis had finally realized the benefits that democracy could bring, that they had learnt to recognize the problems of military rule, that they had become better informed by the electronic media, that they had come to desire the rule of law as, indeed, it appeared at the time from the wide support given to the dismissed Chief Justice Iftikar Mhd. Chaudhary and the Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan and, if nothing else, that middle class Pakistanis had amassed sufficient property that they would support democracy to secure political stability.

In fact, the elections held in 2008 were technically fair confirming that the Election Commission is one functioning institution in Pakistan. After the elections, President Musharraf made a rather dignified exit. For a time, the two main political parties stood together in their common opposition to military rule. I remember TV-footage of political leaders joking among themselves and with assembled journalists, and exchanging Urdu couplets in those golden days. But as Shaheryar Azhar reminded his readers, “great beginnings are not as important as the way one finishes”.

What does a democratic transition entail? When does a transition get consolidated? When is it completed? According to an article by Schedler

“The consolidation of democracy concludes when democratic actors manage to establish reasonable certainty about the continuity of the new democratic regime.… While the task of transition is to push open the window of uncertainty and create opportunities for democratic change, the challenge of consolidation is to close the window of uncertainty and preclude possibilities of authoritarian regression. Transitions create hopes of democratic change, processes of consolidation confidence into democratic stability” (Schedler 2001).

Transitions, he also argued, may be gradual and even, or they may contain a few defining moments or focal events, or they may be more erratic and fuzzy with many high and lows.

How does Pakistan look in this perspective? Elections put democracy back on the rails in February 2008. That marks a shift, but not a full shift. There was a controlled or guided democracy even under Musharraf with parties and elections, but without the two main civilian leaders in the country, i.e. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. It was the return of these two persons to take part in the elections that marked the beginning of the transition.

The reinstatement of Iftikar Mhd. Chaudhary as Chief Justice in March 2009 was a further focal point. Another was the transfer of power from the office of the President to the office of the Prime Minister by the 18th Amendment in 2010. As regards the troubled frontier regions, one may note that for the first time ever political parties have been allowed to operate there. Moreover, one should note that the present regime is now completing its 5-year period in office. That is no mean feat considering that no elected government in Pakistan has ever completed its full term![1] Do these events add up to a consolidation of democracy in Pakistan? I would say “no”, they do not create full confidence in democratic stability.

Why not?  For a start, there has been no systematic reform of the military which would include reducing the economic privileges that officers enjoy, reworking its “doctrines” to further de-escalation rather than escalation in Pakistan’s relation with its neighbours, and breaking the close links with the militant organizations that the military has cultivated.

The attack on Mumbai, it should be remembered, took place not under Musharraf, but in November 2008 after the return of democracy. Investigations have testified to the continued links between the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was behind the attack, and the Pakistani military, but the LeT still operates more or less as it has done before.

It is true, on the other hand, that the Pakistani military did stage a major counter-offensive against the Islamic militants in Swat. The operation was relatively successful, but the attack on the pro-schooling activist Malala Yusufzai shows that the same militants are still around.  Indeed, militias of various hues have grown stronger in many parts of the country.

The transition, therefore, involves not only the political parties and the military, but also the militants, whose capacity to intimidate and harm, and to set the agenda, and to rule in many areas and across many institutions precludes the consolidation of democracy in Pakistan and even in parts of Afghanistan.

How much of a threat are the Islamic militants? In early 2009, a leading human rights activist, IA Rehman, known for his long work for human right in Pakistan, was willing to give up FATA and PATA (the federally and provincially administered tribal areas), if not the whole of the NWFP. He wrote:

“The sole option will be to buy a truce by separating the Shariah lobby from the terrorists and creating FATA and PATA as a Shariah zone, which may quickly encompass the Frontier province. The question then will be whether Pakistan can contain the pro-Shariah forces within the Frontier region… In such an eventuality, the hardest task for the government will be to protect the Punjab against inroads by militants”. (Rehman 2009).

Pakistan did not break up, but Rehman’s willingness to consider dividing the country stands as a sad testimony to the despair at that time. Remember also that the Government of Pakistan actually did sign an agreement with the militants to turn Swat into a Sharia zone (Shah 2009).

But it was to get worse. The breaking point to me and, I suspect, to many others, was the murder in January 2011 of Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab. It marked a new low even by Pakistani standards because the murder was done by his own bodyguard, because the other bodyguards did nothing effectively to stop him, because the assassin was affiliated to the ostensibly moderate Barelwi-branch of Islam, because the bodyguard was lionized by members of the legal community otherwise supposed to be a relatively enlightened class, and because many clerics boycotted Taseer’s funeral. The bodyguard killed Taseer because of his support to Asia Noreen Bibi, the poor Christian woman accused of blasphemy about whom we will probably hear more today. This was followed in March by the murder of another Christian Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minority Affairs. These murders did not occur to further the return of military rule. They occurred for religious reasons. They were the harbingers of a possible transition to theocratic rule which already affects not only Christians: Ahmadiyas, Ismailis, Hindus, Shias, and Barelwis as well as Jews, Americans, Danes and many others, including schoolgirls, are among the legitimate targets.[2]

To deal with this threat to democratic consolidation and to human rights requires an efficient state, and here lies another fault-line. The conflict between the legislative and the judiciary has been carried over from Musharraf’s time, most obviously in the conflict between President Zardari and the Chief Justice who wants to re-open old corruption cases with roots in Switzerland against Zardari. These old cases have been zealously pursued by the judiciary in a manner that has made an ex-member of the Supreme Court of India chastise his Pakistani colleagues for not exercising judiciary restraint (Katju 2012).

In Pakistan itself, the unofficial Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted in its 2011 report that

“While this expanded role gained the SC immense popularity, it also raised many questions regarding the impact of frequent and extensive invocation of suo motu powers on the courts’ normal work, the difficulties in avoiding the side effects of selective justice, and the consequences of the executive-judiciary or parliament-judiciary confrontation.” (Taqi 2012)

What emerges is the image of a Chief Justice and a Supreme Court overreaching their allotted space within the division of powers, whether for reasons good or bad.

Let me add to this that the fourth pillar of power has also not been as efficient in furthering democratic consolidation as one could hope for. Reasoned political debate is not absent in the Pakistani press. Since I come from Norden, I will take the opportunity to draw your attention to a book written by a Pakistani living in Sweden, i.e. Ishtiaq Ahmed’s The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed about the period around 1947. This book has been meticulously and reasonably debated in both the Pakistani and Indian press. One may also come across provocative and humorous interventions in the Pakistani press, such as Ziauddin Sardar’s little article “Why Are Muslims So Boring?”, and the daring satire/desperate sarcasm in the online magazine Viewpoint. However,Pakistani political debate is often an exercise in mud-slinging and venom-spitting which belies any hope that the Pakistani obsession of securing a world without defamation of the Prophet will limit other forms defamation.[3]

Similar unprofessional conduct extends into “the fifth pillar” of the state, i.e. academia, where most recently the journal Nature has written about “predatory journals” where publications-hungry academics pay large sums to be published in sham journals emerging from especially Pakistan, India and Nigeria (Beall 2012). To round off this lament let me mention also the rot in Pakistani sports exemplified by the two Pakistanis who were jailed in the UK and banned from cricket for a period for fixing a cricket match at the Lords in London – only to reappear later as TV commentators in Pakistan (Dawn.com 2012).

I do not think I need to belabour the point any more. What I have been saying is that while a democratic transition from a largely military regime to a largely civilian regime has occurred, there has been little in the way of democratic consolidation. Pervez Musharraf in 2004 said he wanted “enlightened moderation”, but unenlightened extremism is what the Pakistanis still get as the country moves from Crisis to Crisis, in the process earning a bad name for democracy.[4] I have been able to give you only a limited number of examples of this. However, they are no mere incidents. They form a coherent pattern.

(Slightly revised 6 November 2012)

References

Ahmed, Ishtiaq, 2012, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford University Press.

Azhar, Shaheryar “The Way Forward”, Daily Times, 27 February 2008, www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C02%5C27%5Cstory_27-2-2008_pg3_6

Beall, Jeffrey, “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access” Nature 489: 179, 13 September 2012, http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385

Dawn.com, “Butt and Amir on TV as pundits during World T20”, 18 September 2012, http://dawn.com/2012/09/18/salman-butt-mohammad-amir-tv-experts/

Feldman, Herbert, 1972, From Crisis to Crisis: Pakistan 1962-1969, London.

Katju, Markandey, “Pakistan’s Supreme Court has gone overboard”, The Hindu, opinion, 21 June 2012, www.thehindu.com/opinion/article3553558.ece?homepage=true

Noorani, AG, “A right to insult”, Frontline, 2 November 2012, pp. 80-86.

Rehman, IA, 2009, “Shariah Zone: One Solution for Pakistan?” Dawn.com, 12 February,  http://archives.dawn.com/archives/142170

Schedler, A, “Taking Uncertainty Seriously: The Blurred Boundaries of Democratic Transition and Consolidation”, Democratization, 8:4, 1-22, 2001.

Shah, Waseem Ahmad, 2009, Pak govt signs Malakand sharia deal”, Dawn.com, 16 February,  http://archives.dawn.com/archives/124111

Taseer, Shehrbano, “The Girl Who Changed Pakistan”, Newsweek, October 29, 2012, pp. 30-35.

Sardar, Ziauddin, “Why Are Muslims So Boring?”, Emel, November-December 2004, www.emel.com/article?id=9&a_id=1830

Sulehria, Farooq, “Pakistan awaiting the clerical tsunami: Pervez Hoodbhoy”. Viewpoint, online issue 125, November 2, 2012, www.viewpointonline.net/pakistan-awaiting-the-clerical-tsunami-pervez-hoodbhoy.html

Taqi, Mohammad, “Judging the Judges”, View from Pakistan”, Outlook India, 19 April 2012, www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?280620

Det är paradoxalt. Om tio år kan Kina vara världens största ekonomi, och mer transparens kommer att vara en nödvändighet. I en globaliserad, ömsesidigt beroende och allt mer direktkommunicerande värld, med Folkrepubliken som en av de viktigaste noderna, framstår kommunistpartiets mörkande som mycket märkligt. Varför så mycket förtegenhet om den 18:e partikongressen och vad säger hemlighetsmakeriet om Kinas nya ledarskap?

Redan kommunistpartiets allra första nationella möte 1921 organiserades i skymundan på en båt i en sjö i Zhejiangprovinsen. Den första generationens kommunister, som Mao Zedong småningom blev ledare för, greps ofta av myndigheterna eller utsattes till och med för attentat i städer som Shanghai, Wuhan och Kanton.

Att verka i det fördolda är därför en gammal tradition, närd av tanken och erfarenheten att landsförrädare och utländska makter griper varje tillfälle att förgöra partiet. Och faktum är att under åren 1934–35 lyckades Maos bondearmé endast med nöd och näppe undkomma nationalistpartiets elittrupper, som var dem i hasorna under den kanoniserade långa marschen genom inlandsprovinserna.

För ett parti som var förföljt från 1921 fram till segern i inbördeskriget 1949 var alltså diskretion en ren överlevnadsstrategi. Men förmågan att dölja information blev under 50- och 60-talen också allt nödvändigare för att manövrera mellan vänner och fiender också inom de mot omvärlden slutna partileden. Kinesisk elitpolitik har visserligen alltid handlat om en balansgång mellan olika partifalanger, men dagens avsaknad av en karismatisk senior ledare bidrar till mindre jämvikt.

Att obalans råder i partitoppen är just nu tydligt. Det nya ledarskap som ska stega in framför kamerablixtarna på partikongressen borde vara fastställt vid det här laget. Slutgiltigt beslut brukar fattas när den avgående politbyrån och ännu äldre partiveteraner samlas på badorten Beidahe under sommaren. Men uppenbarligen fanns i år ingen enighet om hur de sju eller kanske nio platserna i politbyråns ständiga utskott – Kinas de facto högst beslutsfattande organ – skulle fördelas på olika partifalanger. Maktkampen är med största sannolikhet inte avslutad.

I samband med det förra maktöverlämnandet, 2002, från Jiang Zemin till Hu Jintao kunde forskningen skönja en viss institutionalisering av denna process, ibland kallad midnattstimman eftersom leninistiska politiska system historiskt haft ytterligt svårt att skapa legitimitet för en arvtagare. Kanske är det ännu för tidigt att tala om institutionalisering? Eller är kanske leninistiska politiska system inte alls kapabla till att effektivt institutionalisera ledarsuccession?

Eftersom 80-talets partipatriark, Deng Xiaoping, före sin död 1997 bestämde att Hu Jintao var näste man vid statsrodret efter Jiang Zemin, och inga skuggkandidater fanns, överfördes legitimitet till Hu. Efter Hu Jintao skulle normer om mandatperioder, åldersgräns och röstning inom centralkommittén kompensera för förlusten av högste patriarkens välsignelse. Men denna önskan om jämvikt materialiserades aldrig helt och krypskyttet mot Hus position har tilltagit med åren.

En av dem som har forskat mest om de stridande partifalangerna är Bo Zhiyue, verksam i Singapore, som i boken ”China’s elite politics: Political transition and power balancing” (2007) ingående belyser maktbalansen inom kommunistpartiet. En viktig poäng är hur lite den starka men väldigt nischade falang som brukar beskrivas som ”furstesönerna”, det vill säga barnen till partiets adel av revolutionära hjältar, egentligen har gemensamt. Kartläggningen av kinesisk elitpolitik med dess myriader av personrelationer är nog mest fascinerande för ett fåtal besatta av ”pekingologi”. Dock intresserar denna systematiserande forskning sig sällan för vad falangerna faktiskt representerar ideologiskt.

Men i Bo Zhiyues bok framkommer ändå att partiets i dag tre viktigaste falanger kan läggas på en vänster-höger skala: ortodox gammelvänster som delvis övergår i en nyvänster, mittenfalangen som önskar ekonomisk tillväxt men begränsad politisk liberalisering, och en allmänt reforminriktad grupp med nuvarande premiärministern Wen Jiabao som språkrör. Falangerna består av olika personliga nätverk som till exempel den förra presidenten Jiang Zemins ”Shanghai-gäng”, Hu Jintaos falang med rötter i det kommunistiska ungdomsförbundet eller den tillträdande nye ledaren Xi Jinpings mer amorfa maktbas av ”furstesöner”.

I den politiska tideräkning som börjar med Mao Zedong lämnar alltså nu den fjärde generationens ledare, med president Hu Jintao som ”det kollektiva ledarskapets” kärna, över makten som partiets generalsekreterare till den femte generationens centralfigur, den 59-årige Xi Jinping. Även runt honom, vars far Xi Zhongxun innehade höga poster under ordförande Mao, har informationen varit tunn på senaste tiden. När han oväntat ställde in ett möte med USA:s utrikesminister Clinton och därefter försvann helt ur kinesisk medierapportering under två septemberveckor kom ryktena snabbt i rullning. Hade Xi hjärtproblem? Var han offer för intern maktkamp? Eller befann sig Hu Jintaos efterträdare på hemlig ort för att förbereda politiska reformer? Efter hans återkomst och möten med bland annat USA:s försvarsminister Leon Panetta har ryggont efter simträning varit den officiella och mest trovärdiga förklaringen till Xis frånvaro.

Men en hård maktkamp inom kommunistpartiet har verkligen pågått under hela 2012. Parallellt med hemlighållandet av all information rörande den 18:e partikongressen har statspropagandan serverat noggrant förpackade nyheter om den under våren utrensade vänsterpopulisten Bo Xilai. Den tidigare handelsministern Bo började 2007 bygga upp en populistisk flank genom att främja ”röd kultur” i Chongqing som är en av Kinas största städer.

Tillsammans med sin hårdföre polischef Wang Lijun krossande han mäktiga maffiagrupper utan att själv bry sig om lagen, beordrade stopp för tv-reklam, och ansåg att statstjänstemän skulle leva med fattiga och tillsammans med dem sjunga maoistiska revolutionssånger. Den populism som kom att kallas för ”Chongqing- modellen” liknande allt mer Bos personliga kampanj för att inväljas i politbyråns ständiga utskott. Självaste Xi Jinping besökte Chongqing och betygade krafttagen sin vördnad. Men reformfalangen och premiärministern Wen Jiabao oroades av Bo Xilais stigande popularitet som börjad anta drag av personkult.

Men så uppstod ett gyllene tillfälle att komma åt honom! Hans polischef Wang Lijun flydde plötsligt till det amerikanska konsulatet i Chengdu den 6 februari i år. Han sökte asyl och lämnade information om att Bos hustru Gu Kailai hade giftmördat den brittiske affärsmannen Neil Heywood. Premiärminister Wen varnade då inför statsmedierna om de risker för kaos som flirten med maoismen innebar. Kort därefter fråntogs Bo Xilai sina poster inom partiet, hans hustru Gu har sedan dömts för mord och polischefen Wang dömdes den 24 september till 15 års fängelse för sin inblandning. Och efter att kommunistpartiet rensat ut Bo ur såväl partiet som den nationella folkkongressen är det troligt att en rättegång mot Bo själv kommer att hållas under hösten.

Faktum är att processerna kan uppfattas som knytnävsslag riktade mot hela Kinas nyvänster och dess krav på ett jämlikare Kina. Slagen kan anses besvarade under de mycket uppmärksammade antijapanska protesterna över hela Kina under september. På ytan handlar det om den territoriella konflikten om ögruppen Senkaku i Östkinesiska havet. Men förekomsten av bilder i demonstrationstågen på den första generationens ledare landsfadern Mao Zedong var något nytt. Mao är en central del i kinesisk nationalism eftersom han symboliserar Kinas motstånd mot Japan under det andra världskriget.

Men Maoporträtten är också ett starkt uttryck för längtan tillbaka till ett ekonomiskt jämlikare Kina. Två tydliga signaler går från gatunivån till politbyråns höjder. För det första: Mao stod upp för fosterlandet och det förväntar vi oss av er också! För det andra: många av oss känner otrygghet inför den ekonomiska inbromsningen och ilska över att välfärd bara är för de rika!

De hårt regisserade rättegångarna mot klanen Bo utmynnade trots allt i relativt milda domar, vilket antyder någon form av kompromiss mellan olika intressen. Så även om Bo Xilai kanske är ute ur bilden, är nyvänsterns krav på ökad ekonomisk jämlikhet tillsammans med folklig nationalism definitivt starka krafter att räkna med under kommande år.

Under Hu Jintaos nu tioåriga maktinnehav har kinesers dröm om stormaktsstatus befästs, genom allt från eget rymdprogram till en moderniserad armé. Landet som nu är världens andra största ekonomi har fått en större betydelse för avgörande frågor om global handel, klimatförändring, och utvecklings- och säkerhetsfrågor.

Men i kölvattnet av global finanskris hopar sig allt fler problem för kinesisk ekonomi och sysselsättning. Såväl den skoningslösa maktkampen inom partiet som de framtida socioekonomiska utmaningarna faller i den inkommande generalsekreteraren Xi Jinpings knä. Han kommer som centralfigur att försöka inta en mittenposition liksom generalsekreterarna före honom sökte – för att kunna stabilisera både kommunistpartiet och ett mer spänningsfyllt samhälle.

Vid det vägskäl som Kina och det nya ledarskapet står inför måste ändå en ny vision formuleras. Xi Jinpings företrädare Hu Jintao myntade idén om det ”harmoniska samhället” och hans premiärminister Wen Jiabao har talat många gånger om nödvändigheten av att bryta de statliga företagens strypgrepp på ekonomin samt förordat politiska reformer. Men på grund av motstånd från andra partifalanger har deras mål inte uppnåtts. Det är därför högst osäkert om Xi kommer klara av att balansera en starkare nyvänster, en nationalistisk militärmakt, statskapitalistiska särintressen och den marginaliserade reformistfalangen. Som Bo Zhiyue hävdar i sin bok om den kinesiska elitpolitiken är Xi Jinping inte heller kärnan i den lösa konstellation som furstesönerna utgör. Han har alltså behov av allianser med många olika nätverk och även om han skulle sitta på en hemlig reformagenda åstadkommer han inte några reformer i en handvändning.

Det finns alltså historiska förklaringar till det kinesiska kommunistpartiets hemlighetsmakeri runt den 18:e partikongressen. I stället för en vidare utveckling mot en interndemokrati inom kommunistpartiet tog en mer kampanjande kinesisk elitpolitik sin början med Bo Xilai i Chongqing 2007. Vissa bedömare tror att Kina efter en lång period av tråkiga teknokrater på kommandobryggan behöver mer karismatiska politiker som kan samla folk kring en gemensam agenda igen. Problemet är bara att den tydligaste sammanhållande visionen stavas kinesisk nationalism. Om den nye ledaren Xi Jinping lyckas hantera alla starka repellerande krafter i samhället och inom det politiska systemet kanske han lyckas sitta tiden ut för sina två partikongresser – fram till år 2022.

Johan Lagerkvist är docent i kinesiska och forskare vid Utrikespolitiska institutet i Stockholm.

Detta är en uppdaterad version av en artikel publicerad i Svenska Dagbladet 29 September 2012

At the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of China to be held in November 2012, China’s Vice President Xi Jinping is expected to be elected as the new Secretary General of the party.

In August 2000, Xi Jinping gave a rare interview to the Chinese magazine Zhonghua Ernü. NIAS, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies hereby issues a translation of the interview in Danish and English. To our knowledge this the first time the interview has been translated into a Western language. The Danish version is a translation of the original interview in Chinese while the English version is translated from the Danish version. The translated interview was published in the Danish newspaper Politiken on Sunday 28 October 2012.

In the interview Xi Jinping tells about his background, his upbringing and his perception of good governance. In a personal and at times riveting way Xi Jinping explains how he during the Cultural Revolution only 15 years old was sent to the countryside for 7 years – 1,000 km away from Beijing – in order to learn from the peasants while his father was under political criticism. Moreover, Xi Jinping talks about the promotion of officials and corruption.

The interview is translated by the sinologists Carsten Boyer Thøgersen and Susanne Posborg. Carsten Boyer Thøgersen is a former Danish diplomat and Consul-General in Shanghai, posted for 20 years in China and now an associate of NIAS. Susanne Posborg, University of Aarhus, is the most often used Danish translator of Chinese novels and literature.

Researchers and news media are welcome to quote from the English translation if NIAS is stated as the source.

Geir Helgesen,
Director
Nordic Institute of Asian Studies,
University of Copenhagen

On the Xi Jinping interview in 2000.
By Carsten Boyer Thøgersen and Susanne Posborg

Officially, the interview has never been promoted by the Chinese authorities. Neither in 2000 nor today. The interview is accessible on Chinese web-sites and was in February 2012 once more published in another Chinese commercial magazine, owned by a Xi’an based Chinese shareholding media company.

If interviewed today, Xi Jinping would probably have phrased himself differently. But the interview was already published 12 years ago, has been available since then and known to an increasingly larger Chinese public. What can the Chinese authorities do? They do nothing and do not comment on the interview.

Xi Jinping was 47 years old and governor of Fujian province when he gave the interview in 2000. At the time he was relatively unknown and not even a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It is not often but neither unusual that a governor of a Chinese province gives a long personal interview to a Chinese magazine. Looking back Xi Jinping gave the interview two years before the party leadership –known for its long-term planning – was to decide on younger candidates to be promoted at the party congress in 2002 and later – at the following party congress in 2007 – to select the possible successor of Hu Jintao in 2012. In 2007 Xi Jinping became a member of standing committee of the Politbureau, indicating he was to become Hu Jintao’s successor in 2012.

Giving the interview back in 2000, the purpose of Xi Jinping was hardly to make himself known as a potential young candidate for promotion. The party itself is fully aware of possible candidates for the party’s top positions and does not welcome reminders. Most likely Xi Jinping wanted to make sure that his background was fully understood, told properly and to stress three things: 1) During the Cultural Revolution he stayed for seven years in the countryside under difficult conditions and only by his own efforts became a member of the party and enrolled at university. That is to say not by political connections and in spite of the fact that his father at the time was under political criticism. 2) In 1982, he chose to give up a comfortable career in Beijing and instead started from the bottom as deputy secretary in a small provincial district. 3) To appear as a person in close contact to ordinary people.

The extraordinary thing about the interview is to hear what China’s new leader said in 2000 in an open and direct conversation. There is nothing unusual in what Xi Jinping said in 2000. Neither read in 2012. But we hear Xi Jinping tell about personal experiences in words he hardly would use today. We hear about his views on good governance, promotion of officials and corruption. The interview gives the reader a more authentic and unfiltered picture of the person to become China’s next leader.

On the Xi Jinping interview in 2000.                       

Interview from the summer of 2000 in the Chinese journal Zhonghua Ernü.

Xi Jinping at the time was 47 years old and governor in the Fujian province.

Yang Xiaohuai was the editor of Zhonghua Ernü.

Copyright © 2000 by中华儿女,北京市朝阳区东三环南路98号韩建丹阳大厦15层,邮编：100021

Xi Jinping: Welcome here.[1] I have previously said no thank you to personal interviews innumerable times. We all have different tasks. If you do not mention everybody, then you are only emphasizing yourself. You can also put it differently: When we are all doing our duty within our respective area of responsibility, then it is the community that creates the results. Therefore it makes no sense mentioning the individual. That is the reason why I have refused giving personal interviews. There are also people who write autobiographies. I do not do that either.

Yang Xiaohuai: I thought so. That kind of thing can easily lead to misunderstandings.

Xi: Particularly if you look at the popular media. You write about a person’s background. Who are his parents? Who is he married to? He is such and such a person. What’s the use of that? That kind of information is not news. It is something everybody knows already. You make a little soup of it. It is immaterial.

Yang: Obviously that kind of publicity is immaterial and superfluous. But as a high-level official you are in the focus of the formation of public opinion. The press and the media can help people better understand your work. That kind of public mention I think is important.

Xi: Of course you can write about leading officials. To a certain extent. But you must preserve the sense of proportions. There is a tendency to write that a leading official is so and so perfect and so and so excellent, but in reality nobody is perfect and consummate. Take a person and describe him as excellent. Nobody will believe it. An individual’s ability to get results on his own is limited. Without the community and without cooperation you will achieve nothing. Therefore I believe that it is better to focus on the community and cooperation.

Yang: You recently took the post as governor of the Fujian province. What new political initiatives did you consider, and what parts of the politics in progress did you wish to continue?

Xi: When I became governor in August last year, the members of the provincial government emphasized two points: Firstly that I was to continue working on the foundations laid by the previous governor. It was my task seeing to it that the plans laid down at the beginning of the year were carried through. In addition I could come with my own plans. When you have just taken over a new job you will also want to set your own agenda in the first year. But it must be on the foundations of your predecessor. It is like a relay race. You have to receive the baton properly and then yourself run it in goal.

The second point: Of course a provincial governor has an important position. But he is just one person. A provincial government consists of a governor, several deputy governors and many colleagues in the various departments. If you are to achieve results, everybody must pull in the same direction. Furthermore it is important that you make sure you have the cooperation and back-up of the whole province.

Yang: When you were sent to Ningde county[2] as a leader, I have heard that you did not tear along ostentatiously, as many other leaders do when they come to a new place. You did not come sweeping with new brooms to make room for your own special projects. You did not use big words but proceeded slowly and patiently.

Xi: When I was sent to Ningde, I had been vice mayor in Xiamen[3] for three years. For a brief period I was also acting leader of the city. I had worked to develop Xiamen’s economic reform policy and to build the city’s large industrial zone. The provincial leadership was happy about my efforts and my experiences getting things going, so they decided to appoint me leader of Ningde county. At the time Jia Qinglin[4] was deputy secretary of the party committee of the Fujian province. He called me for a meeting and said: “We want you to go to Ningde county to get things going and change the profile of the county. The level is low and development has been far too slow. We have had many meetings, bur Ningde is still the poorest county of the province. There is no spirit there, just empty words. You must do something extraordinary, so that the situation in the county will be changed.” Both the party leader of the province Chen Guangyi[5]  and governor Wang Zhaoguo[6] supported me with much advice.

The first thing I did in Ningde was familiarizing myself thoroughly with things. I was filled with admiration for its people. They had for several years worked hard and laboriously and had made a great effort. In Ningde they had built the first medium-sized hydroelectric power station of the province. From here electricity was led on to the whole province and to the urban centres. You could see that people in Ningde had diligently given their contribution to the economic development of the province. It wasn’t that people did not work, but the natural conditions of the county had its limitations. Of course there were also things that could be done better. Many things were still in the old grove, and original thinking was lacking.

But just as I had come to Ningde inflation rose, the economy became overheated, and the central government implemented a strict economic policy. The economic situation allowed no extraordinary economic initiatives. Everybody wanted a change and hoped that I could contribute to it. But I had no smart theoretical solution and did not come with a miracle. Therefore the only thing I could say was that the economic crisis was an occasion and a motivation for everybody to join hands. My greatest worry was that we should plunge into unsafe projects. The time was not for that. It would have been easy to make a rousing and enthusiastic speech, arouse their enthusiasm and utilize everybody’s motivation to pitch into work. But that might easily have resulted in grave disappointment. So that wasn’t what I did.

My procedure was to light a small fire to warm up the water, keep the fire burning and now and again pour some more cold water in, so that the kettle did not boil over. People told me that they wanted to get three great projects going: Building a harbour at Sandu´ao[7], establishing a railway-line to Ningde and putting greater emphasis on developing the cities in the county. I answered that that kind of project needed developing slowly, as our economic foundation was still weak, and that we should not aim too high. At first we had to analyse the facts and create a robust economic foundation. Even if it takes a long time even ‘a drop can hollow out a stone’.

The last thing I have heard is that my plans for the development of the county did not miss the mark. After 12 years of thorough preparations the State Council has now approved prioritizing developing the cities. A railway line has been projected, while building a harbour is still being made researches into. Praxis has shown that with Ningde’s conditions no miracle will happen overnight.

There were several challenges, and it was a steady pull. But as in the race between the tortoise and the hare you may finally reach the goal and win. Carrying out the plans took a long time, and I myself did not count on leaving Ningde at once.

I set four goals for myself: To encourage thinking along new lines, building a solid group of leaders, taking initiatives to fight poverty and exploiting Ningde’s special economic possibilities as a mountainous area near the coast.

I left Ningde after two years because the provincial government wanted me back here in Fuzhou. Even if my time in Ningde was brief, I came to love the place very much. Now many years later, Ningde is still one of the places that I am greatly attached to.

Yang: These years several people talk about many officials coming with ‘new brooms’ to a new job, get a couple of new projects going to leave again after a short period. You yourself have talked about how important it is having patience. I have visited a good many places but have only met very few officials thinking like you. Many people believe that officials first and foremost aim at a success to get promoted and to create results to further their own career. Do you have any comments on that?

Xi: Promotion is only something external. If a promotion is well founded, it is only one of several signs that the individual has achieved results in his work. A promotion can be seen as an expression of recognition from management and colleagues. But you must remember that promotion in itself is not the full and true assessment of an official as a person. Promotion alone does not tell the whole story about an official. Our system of assessment is still not perfect and makes evaluating an official very difficult. Both subjective and objective factors come in, and in the final analysis that means that the assessment is imperfect.

When I have left a post, I have always thought back on my colleagues, I have summed up my impressions and found that I also sometimes have posted my colleagues wrongly. Some were posted wrongly because I thought they were better than they actually were, others because I thought they were poorer than they actually were. That was because I did not compare their efforts and immediate progress with their personal motivation. Therefore one may easily happen to promote the wrong colleagues if one does not view their efforts in a larger perspective. As an organization and as management we do not have a final set of criteria when it comes to assessing a colleague and deciding if the person in question is to be promoted.

Yang: Of course I do not know your entire background, but you have had a career as an official for over 20 years. Is it not true that – unlike some officials who have promotion as their ultimate goal – you have a fundamental wish to do something good for society?

Xi: That is true. It is a highly relevant question. It is about a decisive choice in life, which I myself – already before I went into politics – thought a lot about. First and foremost over such questions as: Which way do you want to go? What do you want to do with your life? What goals do you want to achieve? Personally I set several goals. One of them was doing something important for society. When that is the goal of your life, you must at the same time be aware that you can’t have your cake and eat it. If you go into politics, it mustn’t be for money. Sun Yatsen[8] said the same thing, namely that one has to make up one’s mind to accomplish something and not go for a high position as an official. If you wish to make money, there are many legal ways of becoming rich. Becoming rich in a legal way is worth all honour and respect. Later the taxation authorities will also respect you because you are contributing to the economic development of the country. But you should not go into politics if you wish to become wealthy. In that case you will inevitably become a corrupt and filthy official. A corrupt official with a bad reputation who will always be afraid of being arrested, and who must envisage having a bad posthumous reputation.

If you go into politics to make a career, you must give up any thought of personal advantages. That is out of the question. An official may not through a long career have achieved very great things, but at least he has not put something up his sleeve. He is upright. In a political career you can never go for personal advantages or promotion. It is just like that. It can’t be done. These are the rules.

You do not promote a person just because he has good qualifications and experience. Of course qualifications are important, as are a great sense of responsibility and a great knowledge. But it must be seen in a larger context. When you are to choose a person who is to get an important position, and who can make a difference, you must also see it in connection with the time, place, other colleagues and the situation in general. So there is no definite formula which you can use to figure out who is to get promoted.

If throughout your career you have unsuccessfully tried to achieve success, it may be a great personal disappointment that you fail to get promoted. But as the old Master Guan[9] said: Do not try to do the impossible, do not strive for the unobtainable, do not rest on the transient, do not do what cannot be repeated.

You should not be afraid of difficulties and challenges when you have prepared yourself thoroughly. Politics is both unsafe and risky, and wilfulness is no passable road. Many who have experienced failures are hit by self-reproaches thinking: “I have helped so many people, I have done so much, and all I get is ingratitude. There are so many people who do not understand me. Why must it be like that?” Some of my colleagues who started at the same time as I have given up their jobs for that reason. If you have a position somewhere, the thing is to stick to it and continue one’s work. Then, in the final analysis, it will give results. The germ of success is to fasten on and continue one’s work. Once you have gone into politics, it is like crossing a river. No matter how many obstacles you meet, there is only one way, and that is further on. I myself have also come across many difficulties and obstacles. That is simply inevitable.

Yang: I have been told that you originally worked in The Central Military Commission in Beijing. For many people this would be an ideal job. But nevertheless, after a brief employment, you chose to leave your job to work at grass-roots level. Why?

Xi: There were many who did not understand me at the time. Before I went to the county of Zhending in the province of Hebei, I worked as a secretary for defence minister Geng Biao,[10] who was also a member of the Politbureau. He said that if I wanted to work at a grass roots level, I might follow the army on its exercises. I did not have to work for a local government.[11]

Before leaving Beijing I was around saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances. Many of them had been sent to the countryside during the “Cultural Revolution” – to all kind of places – and were now at length back into town again. Some of them thought that they had had a very hard time. There were also those who thought that now their time had come. Now it was their time to live a good life. It disappointed me to hear that. They would not move outside a radius of 50 kilometres from Beijing, for then they would lose their official register address in Beijing. But I said that we should go out with the same commitment and enthusiasm as generations of officials before us had done.

During the “Cultural Revolution” we were sent out into the countryside. We had no choice; it was something we were forced to. It is a part of our history from which we have learned a lot. Today we have good times and have put that kind of ‘leftist’ policy behind us. But we still need to go to the countryside, be diligent and do a good job.

The old poet and calligrapher Zheng Banqiao[12] wrote in his first poem “when your roots are deeply anchored in the mountains, no storms from any corner of the world can blow you down or make you surrender.” I would like to change some of the words based on my own experiences from my stay in the countryside saying: “when you are close to the grass roots and close to the people, no storms from any corner of the world can blow you down or make you surrender.” My seven years in the countryside have meant a lot to me. I have gained a deep knowledge of people, and that has been a decisive precondition for my later work. If I again am to work at grass roots level, I will not hesitate for a moment and do it with great confidence. Even if much always will be unpredictable, every day will be rich in experiences and challenges. I would certainly again like to work at grass roots level if I am asked to and my health is all right. In the final analysis anyone can assess my work and my successors will be able to evaluate my achievements. I need not think of that.

Yang: I have understood that through more than 20 years – whether it was at a village level, in counties, in regions or in cities like Fuzhou – you have always had a very good cooperation. How did you manage to achieve that cooperation?

Xi: Cooperation was something I learned at home as a child. My father often talked about it, telling us children already when we were quite small that we should be good at cooperating. “Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.” “Behave decently to others and then you yourself are a decent human being.” These were the phrases he would use to emphasise that you should not just think about your own view of things but also about what others believed. When you live with other people and only follow your own opinion, things will go badly. What my father said has meant a lot to me. No matter whether it was at school or when Í worked in the countryside, I have had a strong feeling that if everybody cooperates, then you will achieve good results. If cooperation is bad, it is bad for everybody.

But I have also made mistakes that I have learned from. When I was sent to the countryside, I was very young. It was something I was forced to. At the time I did not think very far and did not at all think of the importance of cooperating. While others in the village every day went up the mountain slopes and worked, I did as I chose, and people got a very bad impression of me. Some months later I was sent back to Beijing and placed in a “study group”. When six months later I was let out, I thought a lot about whether I should return to the village. At last I called upon my uncle, who before 1949 had worked in a base area in the Taihang Mountains.[13]  At the time he, my aunt and my mother were active in revolutionary work. All of them are people who have meant a lot to me. My uncle told me about his work then, and about how decisive it is to cooperate with the people among whom you are.

That settled it. I went back to the village, got down to work and cooperated. In a matter of a year I did the same work as people in the village, lived in the same way as they and worked hard. People saw that I had changed. They accepted me and began passing by the cave in which I lived,[14] which soon became a rendezvous. It must have been around 1970. Every night people of all ages would turn up. I would tell them what I knew of China’s history and the history of the world. They would like to hear someone from the city tell them about something they did not know about. At last the leader of the village came and listened. He said that young people knew much more than he himself. Slowly the village gained confidence in me. Even if I was not more than 16 or 17 years old, several of the old people began asking for my advice. Today writers write about how miserable lives the young students led in the countryside then. It wasn’t like that for me. In the beginning it was hard, but I got used to life in the village, and as people got confidence in me, I had a good life.

Yang: I have been told that you were promoted in the village. First you became a member of the production team[15], then a member of the party, and at a time you became party secretary in the village, although your family background was a political problem. Can you tell me some more about that?

Xi: It was around 1973. The entrance examinations to the party were taken place, but those who had a family background like mine were not accepted. At last I was permitted to go to the Zhaojia He production brigade in the Fengjia Ping people’s commune to study. It was very exciting. At the time I had become a member of a production brigade but not yet a member of the party. I had already written ten applications for membership of the party, but because of my family history my application was not approved. The people’s commune then sent my application on to the party secretary of the county to hear his opinion. He said that my family background was a great problem. Finding a solution was difficult for them. On the other hand he also thought that the village needed me to lead the work, so he ended deciding that my father’s situation should be of no importance for my admission into the party. He approved my application and then sent me back as party secretary of the production brigade of the village.

Before that I had also had great difficulties becoming a member of the production team. I only succeeded after having applied eight times. When I had written the first application, I invited the leader of the production team of the village home and offered him omelette and steamed wheat balls. After we had eaten I asked: “Have you sent my application on?”

“How sent on? From above everybody say that you should teach children.”

“What do you mean by saying that I should teach children?”

“From above they say that you have not distanced yourself clearly from your family.”

“So what is the decision? It is about a human being. There must be a decision. What is the decision about my father? What documents have you had from the central authorities?”

“No, the application has not been sent on, but now it will be.”

When he came back from the people’s commune he told me that the secretary of the people’s commune had scolded him saying that he had not understood a thing, and had asked if he really wanted to send the application on from such a person? I asked:

“Such a person? What does that mean? Have I written something reactionary or shouted reactionary slogans? I am just a young man asking to be admitted into a production team. Tell me what is wrong with that?”

I was not knocked out and wrote my second application in the next days, gave it to the production team leader asking him to send it on. I continued like that until I had written eight applications. I did not lose heart and had no feelings of inferiority. I just thought that there were more good than bad people in the party and the commune. I told the production team leader that without his accept I would not become a member. When I had written eight applications I was finally approved as a member. But it only happened after I had had the support of the leader of the production brigade of the people’s commune. He came to the village and talked to me for five days. We came close and became really good friends. When shortly afterwards he took over the job as the leader of the out-of-school education of the people’s commune, he was also the one who took the “black material’’ about me and simply burned it. It happened in the way that he took me up into the mountains to a small ravine. We sat down, and he said:

“I have all the “black material” about you right here.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll burn it.”

“You must be out of your mind.”

“May be, but I can see that it was sent from your school in Beijing.”

That was true. For I had been expelled from the high school for children of high ranking party members and then caught by Kang Sheng’s[16] wife Cao Yi’ou’s red guard group, who accused me of all manner of bad things. I was called a gang leader because I was stubborn, and because I said that I had done nothing wrong. I did not want to be kicked around and did not give in to the red guards. I was only 14. The red guards asked:

“How serious do you yourself think your crimes are?”

“You can estimate it yourselves. Is it enough to execute me?”

“We can execute you a hundred times.”

To my mind there was no difference between being executed a hundred times or once, so why be afraid of a hundred times? The red guards wanted to scare me saying that now I was to feel the democratic dictatorship of the people, and that I only had five minutes left. Afterwards they said that I was to read quotations from Chairman Mao[17] every single day until late at night. Then they decided to send me to a youth prison. But it turned out that the youth prison did not have a study program for “black gangs”, and moreover, that there were no vacancies until a month later. At the same time – it was in December 1968 – Chairman Mao issued a new instruction: Young students should be sent into the countryside to learn from the peasants. I immediately went to the school to be sent into the countryside so that I could follow Chairman Mao’s instruction. They considered that at the school eventually deciding that I was to go to Yan’an. It was like being sent into exile.

After many difficulties one way or another – problems because of the “Cultural Revolution” and problems with the decision to send students to the countryside – it turned out that the village actually needed me and would not do without me. So I felt at ease in the village. If at the time I had been in the cities, as a worker or anything else, I would have been criticized every single day, as the “Cultural Revolution” was a lot more violent in the cities.

In the village in northern Shaanxi we also participated in meetings criticizing Liu Shaoqi’s and Deng Xiaoping’s[18] representatives in north-western China “Peng, Gao and Xi”, Liu Lantao, Zhao Shouyi and others. “Peng, Gao and Xi” were Peng Dehuai, Gao Gang and Xi Zhongxun.[19] During these daily meetings of criticism the praxis was that those who could read were asked to read aloud from the newspapers. I was asked to do that as well. That was all. The villagers were very understanding. It was my father’s old base area. Before 1949 he had – 19 years old – been president of the “Shaanxi-Gansu Soviet.”[20] Therefore many people would care for me and help me. I myself was also very motivated. That was what it was like.

Yang: You have told about your seven years’ experiences in the countryside. Can you tell me about the most important experience you have had?

Xi: I grew up in the seven years I was in Shaanxi. I learned two important things. First I had the opportunity to understand what real life looks like, what is right and wrong, and who ordinary people are. These were experiences for life.

Right as I had arrived at the village, many beggars would often appear. As soon as they turned up, the dogs would be set on them. At the time we students had the opinion that all beggars were “bad elements” and tramps.  We did not know the saying “in January there is still enough food, in February you will starve, and March and April you are half alive half dead”. For six months all families would only live on bark and herbs. Women and children were sent out to beg, so that the food could go to those who were working in the fields with the spring ploughing. You had to live in a village to understand it. When you think of the difference there was at that time between what the central government in Beijing knew and what actually happened in the countryside, you must shake your head.

Second, I had my self confidence built up. As they say: the knife is sharpened on a stone, people are strengthened in adversity. Seven years of hard life in the countryside developed me a lot. When later in life I have encountered challenges, I have thought about the village, and that then I could do something in spite of hardships. When later I have come across problems, I have never experienced them as big as then. Every man is to find his own strength. When you meet hardships you mustn’t panic, no matter how big the challenge is.

Yang: How did you manage to get admitted into university while you were in the village?

Xi: At the time I was one of the leaders in the village, but all the time I thought that I would study further. Although I read far too few books, I had not given up my greatest wish – to go to university. At the time the Tsinghua University[21] had given two places to the Yan’an county. One of them went to the district in which I lived. There were three of us who applied. I said that If you choose me, I will go, if not, never mind. The education committee of Yan’an supported my application. But the people from Tsinghua University who had come to Yan’an, and who were responsible for the procedure of admission, dared not make a final decision and asked for instruction from the management of the university. At the same time – it was in the autumn of 1975 – a political campaign started against what they called “the attempts of the right wing to change the foundations of the Cultural Revolution”. At the time my father worked in a factory in Luoyang. The factory submitted a document stating that the political question of Xi Zhongxun was a contradiction within the people and should have no influence on his children’s careers. The document meant that I was admitted into the university. When I left the village, some of the other students were envious of me. They were all of them top students, but they did not have a case that needed re-opening, and all of them were admitted later.

The experiences from my time in the countryside have left a deep impression. They have given me an understanding of the concept of The yellow earth.[22] When later I have had problems and thought of The yellow earth, then these problems have all become smaller.

Yang: That is to say that the most important thing in life is the conviction that you have a clear purpose with your life. That you know what to do and what not to, so that you never go the wrong way?

Xi: That is very true. You have to make your own decisions yourself. You can only make the right choice if you are true towards your own ideals and your convictions. If you are not, your surroundings may easily lead you in a wrong direction.

Yang: As far as I know, you are still in close contact with the group of former students who are closely attached to The yellow earth. With them you do what you can for the local people, and the group has done a lot to promote local development.

Xi: In my village there was no electricity. After I had left it, I helped seeing to it that a transformer station was built, so that they had electricity. Some years ago I also helped the village repairing the school and a bridge. I did not have the money to help them myself, but I helped them formulate and introduce the projects and discuss them with local leaders, so that they could understand how important the projects were. Later on they decided to carry them through. Even if poverty was massive in the village, they cared well for me for many years. Therefore it is natural that I should do something for the peasants in Yan’an.

Yang: I noticed that as Fujian’s provincial governor, in your speech to the people’s congress in January this year – according to the media – you emphasized that the government must make sure that every single official must remember that the power of the People’s Government comes from the people, that they must represent and be of benefit to the people, and in particular that they should not forget that before the word “government” there is another word “the people’s”. The applause of the assembly was great. The media also emphasised the fact that you were re-elected with a large majority.

Xi: To us communists it is so that ordinary people[23] are like our father and mother. They are the ones to feed and clothe us. We must understand the full significance of the expression Serve the people. The total policies and directions of the Party and Government must be in full agreement with the people’s interests and be of the highest standard. We must always remind ourselves that we are the people’s servants, that we have the people’s need for clothes, food and decent living conditions at heart, and that we have the people’s support, backup and approval in everything we do. As you love your father and mother, you should love the people, be of use and create a good life for everybody. We should not be above the people, but should make sure that the people lead decent lives. Even in the old feudal society they said that “an official must create progress for the people.” So it cannot be too much to demand that we communists must be aware of the welfare of the people, can it?

Yang: It has been an interesting conversation. Thank you very much for the interview.

Translated from Danish into English by Torben Vestergaard©, professor in English Literature and Language, University of Aalborg, Denmark

The Danish text was translated by Carsten Boyer Thøgersen and Susanne Posborg© from:

文章刊登于《中华儿女》2000年第7期

大众文摘，2012年2月下总第163期，新商报社，西安新华印务有限公司.

陕西华商传媒集团有限责任公司ISSN: 1009-8747, CN: CN61-1381/C.

Around 95 per cent of the full interview is translated. Expressions and concepts which are primarily only understood by Chinese readers have been either omitted or modified. Footnotes have been added by the translators.

Click here for Danish  version

Denna längtan är starkt förknippad med erkännande och upprättelse. Ända sedan den kommunistiska revolutionen 1949 har generationer kineser genom skolböcker och av statligt kontrollerade nyhetsmedier internaliserat ”de hundra åren av förödmjukelse” som tiden från det första opiumkriget 1842 via kejsardömets fall 1911 till Mao Zedongs bonderevolution har beskrivits.

Kina och den kinesiska kulturen som västerlandet dömde ut som ”Asiens sjuke man” i slutet av 1800-talet hade visserligen rest sig, som Mao yttrade när Folkrepubliken Kina utropades den 1 oktober 1949 på Himmelska fridens port i Peking. Men kineser drömde fortfarande om att komma ikapp väst på alla de sätt om utmärker en moderniserad och avancerad kulturnation, inte minst inom litteraturens domän.

Döm därför om den besvikelse som det officiella Kina och kommunistpartiet kände när Nobelpriset i litteratur år 2000 gavs till den regimkritiske författaren Gao Xingjian, som har franskt, inte kinesiskt, medborgarskap. Det priset har regimen länge tigit som muren om, även om det inom intellektuella kretsar visserligen finns de som uppskattar Gaos författarskap. Tio år senare tillfogade den norska Nobelkommittén enpartistaten en än värre kalldusch, när man beslutade att tilldela Nobels fredspris till regimkritikern och dissidenten Liu Xiaobo.

Sedan 2010 har det verkat som att Kina närmast gett upp hoppet om att få ett ”riktigt” erkännande av kinesisk kultur trots de senaste årens allt starkare ekonomiska och politiska ställning i världen. Bara några dagar innan Svenska Akademiens ständige sekreterare Peter Englund stegade ut inför den samlade världspressen och den kinesiska statstelevisionens kameror, kritiserade kommunistpartiets populistiska flaggskepp Global Times de humanistiska Nobelpriserna, det vill säga fredspriset och litteraturpriset, för att vara bemängda med västerländska värden, per definition endast sken-universalistiska och egentligen diskriminerande av andra världskulturer.

Efter beskedet om att 2012 års litteraturpristagare blir den 57-årige författaren Mo Yan syns den negativa kritiken och dåliga stämningen vara som bortblåst. I kommunistpartiets språkrör Folkets Dagblad, den statliga centraltelevisionen CCTV, temasektioner på kinesiska nyhetsportaler och i deras kommentarsfält kan man bevittna den stolthet och glädje som helt självklart följer på erhållandet av ett så oerhört prestigefyllt pris.

Frågan är om Kinas Nobelkomplex slutligen har övervunnits. I varje fall fylls de traditionella massmedierna och de sociala medierna som till exempel mikrobloggarna med nationalistiskt färgade yttringar i stil med ”Otroligt glädjande, grattis Mo Yan, grattis Kina” och ”För ett gammalt land och en gammal civilisation som Kina är detta stora pris alltför sent kommet. Men trots det – mina varmaste gratulationer till Mäster Mo Yan”.

Hur ska man tolka denna stolta nationalkänsla – som andas ett ”äntligen” och ”till slut” – som är såväl folkligt förankrat som statssanktionerat? Betyder somligas suck av lättnad och glädjen över att icke-västliga värden, den kinesiska ”verkligheten” och kinesiska sanningsanspråk erkänns av en länge ointresserad, okunnigt, och ovänligt sinnad västvärld? Kanske upplever de röster i de officiella medierna som har uttryckt att Kinas ekonomiska och politiska uppstigande medför att utlandet måste intressera sig mer för allt kinesiskt nu viss upprättelse?

Dessa frågor är ytterst angelägna när Kinas inflytande i, men också starka nationalism gentemot, omvärlden ökar. På Kinas största nyhetsportal Sina toppade nyheten om Mo Yans Nobelpris nyhetsagendan den 11 oktober, och som nummer två fanns nyheten att kinesiska utrikesdepartementet hårt kritiserar Japans ”illegala kontroll” över Senkaku-öarna som Kina anser vara en del av Kinas territorium.

Under hösten 2012 har den territoriella konflikten mellan Kinas och Japans regeringar om ögruppen trappats upp, ivrigt påhejad av nationalistiska hetsporrar i både länderna. I kinesiska städer demonstrerade under september tusentals människor som brände japanska bilar och manade till bojkott av örikets varor. På kinesiska internet fällde hundratusentals människor hatfyllda uttalanden mot grannen i öst. Många hävdade att krig med Tokyo inte alls var otänkbart, utan tvärtom nödvändigt och till och med önskvärt.

Denna nationalism har inte uppstått ur tomma intet. Som i många andra kinesiska författares och konstnärers verk finns också hos Mo Yans ”Det röda fältet” realistiska skildringar av den japanska arméns grymma frammarsch över den kinesiska jorden under motståndskriget mot Japan mellan 1937 och 1945. Inom kommunistpartiet gillas kanske inte hur Mo beskriver partiets relativa, och alls inte absoluta, betydelse för de kinesiska styrkornas militära framgångar mot japanerna. Men ändå framstår hans ämne som patriotiskt korrekt, i en tid och samtidskontext när nationalism alltmer blir det kitt som håller samman både kommunistpartiet och det omgivande samhället. Det går därför inte heller att bortse från den nye Nobelpristagarens medlemskap i kommunistpartiet.

Bortsett från hans obestridliga litterära kvaliteter och den kritik mot sociala strukturer, lokalt maktmissbruk och ekonomisk vanskötsel som finns i Mo Yans verk, finns det någon vidare politisk betydelse i författarskapet för Kina i dag? Hur ser han som författare i ett auktoritärt styrt land på brännande frågor om censur och kontroll av massmedier och internet? Finns det alls ett moraliskt ansvar att utkräva eller är det endast en störande fråga som skymmer hans bokproduktion?

Den världsberömde konstnären och ständige nageln i ögat på den kinesiska regimen, Ai Weiwei, uttryckte på sitt Twitterkonto att ”Författare som inte förmår stå upp för sanningen inte kan skiljas från lögnare”. Den kände bloggaren Bei Feng var ursinnig över den kinesiska internetcensur som helt spärrade ut honom ur internetlandskapet efter kritik av Mo Yans Nobelpris: ”Efter en avvikande åsikt på Sina Weibo om att Mo Yan tilldelats priset utraderades mitt konto – medan Mo Yan sade att priset illustrerar en tid då man kan yttra sig fritt. Jag anser de här händelserna bäst illustrerar nivån på den Svenska Akademien”. Troligen kommer åsikterna mellan liberala konstutövare och mer systembevarande nationalistiska intellektuella att brytas hårt under kommande månader – på internet där de i väntan på censurens näve ibland kan mötas i debatt.

Vissa hävdar att man ändå bör vara försiktig med pekpinnar. Och det finns förutsättningar för att kinesisk politik kan förändras också genom reformsinnade krafter som verkar inom kommunistpartiet och genom det som den amerikanske sinologen Timothy Cheek har kallat för ”de etablissemangsintellektuella”. Men om dessa personer utomlands får frågor om arbetsläger, dissidenter och mänskliga rättigheter blir det förstås plågsamt. Att yttra sig kritiskt om tillståndet för mänskliga rättigheter i Kina skulle innebära utraderade möjligheter för dem att verka för det fria ordet inom etablissemangets strukturer.

Detta gäller också för Mo Yan. Ombedd att kommentera statens behandling av Liu Xiaobo, mottagaren fredspriset 2010, blev svaret att han ”visste för lite om det hela”. Vid något anat tillfälle ska han ha uttryckt att ”skrika på gatorna är något för vissa, medan andra försöker förändra genom arbete på kammaren”. Det är en hållning som den berömde kinesiske idéhistorikern Wang Hui i ett samtal med mig anslöt sig till: ”Vad tycker ni i väst att vi borde göra, springa ut på gatorna och demonstrera? Inte säkert det är mödan värt!” Inte bara kan offentliga protester innebära slutet på en yrkeskarriär, menade Wang, det kan också vara mindre effektivt än att gradvis påverka partikulturen inifrån.

Och även om en författare som Mo Yan helst håller sig på armlängds avstånd från dagsaktuell politik och frågor om dissidenter, är han i romaner och noveller starkt kritisk till sociala missförhållanden på landsbygden i Shandongprovinsen. Bitande sarkasm och beskrivningar av lokalt maktmissbruk och översitteri finns också i ”Vitlöksballaderna”. Landsbygdens kvävande patriarkala ordning är något som Mo Yan kritiserar i sina verk, liksom hur ettbarnspolitiken i inlandsprovinserna leder till överskott på pojkar.

Dessa förvisso vassa skildringar av Kinas sociala liv och lokala pampvälden gör honom dock inte till en subversiv samhällsskildrare. Kritik mot samhällsfenomen som korruption, maktmissbruk, miljöförstöring och landkonfiskation är möjlig att framföra i dagens Kina bland fler än författare. Den subversive kritiserar kommunistpartiet som ”samhällets ledande kraft”, organiserar religiösa, politiska eller arbetarintressen i syfte att genomdriva politiska reformer för sin sak. Men kritik mot kommunistpartiets maktutövning på landsbygden är faktiskt relativt vanligt inom statskontrollerade medier och det finns reformsinnade krafter som premiärminister Wen Jiabao till och med i politbyråns ständiga utskott.

Mo Yan får Nobelpriset i litteratur när Kina befinner sig i en brytningstid mellan gammalt och nytt. Kommunistpartiets ömsar ledarskinn i år. Ekonomin är skakig och spänningarna mellan olika grupper och intressen i samhället ökar, inte minst mellan stad och landsbygd. Den nya politbyrå som tar form efter den 18:e partikongressen som inleds den 8 november kommer att regera landet och influera världspolitiken fram till år 2022. Det kommer att bli ansträngande. Under detta decennium ska svåra utmaningar hemmavid och från omvärlden pareras.

Den kanske största och svåraste frågan är hur länge ett alltmer pluralistiskt samhälle och dess intellektuella – konstnärer, författare och forskare – kan begränsas i sitt sanningssökande av den leninistiska enpartistaten. Kommer kraven från ett framväxande civilsamhälle med rötter i både arbetar- bonde-, och medelklass mötas med våldsam repression – eller med ny vilja till kompromisser, dialog och reformer? Kommer förväntningar från utlandet på ett ansvarstagande och än öppnare Kina mötas av lyhördhet, eller mer av det nationalistiska trummande som ljudit under den senaste tiden?

En stor berättare och skildrare av den kinesiska samtiden som Mo Yan skulle ha mycket intressant att säga om dessa viktiga frågor. Men troligen tiger han hellre, som när han tillfrågades om författarkollegan och numera Nobelpriskollegan Liu Xiaobos belägenhet i fängelse. I så fall ger det eftertryck åt pseudonymen som mannen som föddes som Guan Moye 1955 bär. På kinesiska betyder nämligen Mo Yan ”tala inte” eller om man så vill – ingen kommentar. För två år sedan stod Liu Xiabos stol tom under prisceremonin i Oslo. När Nobelpriset åter tilldelas en kinesisk medborgare kommer någon att sitta på avsedd stol, men vad kommer den som sitter där att säga? Vad kan han säga?

Johan Lagerkvist är docent i kinesiska och forskare vid Utrikespolitiska institutet.

Denna text är ursprungligen publicerad i Svenska Dagbladet 12 oktober 2012 .

It is true that political reform efforts have stalled since 2008. As late as 2007, Wen had said: “Political reform, with the development of democratic politics as its goal, is one of the great reforms China is carrying out, the other one is economic reform.” Yet this year he is still only talking about it.

If we accept that there has been a lull in progress towards political reform, how can we explain it? I think many factors may play a part, whether historical, cultural, political, societal or international.

First of all, a lot has happened over the last 30 years, and the system may be in the process of digesting not only the five elections carried out in 660.000 villages since 1988, but also the reforms of elite politics introduced by Deng (rotation, age limits, etc), the increasing pluralism of institutions, the increased channels for political participation, the demise of the danwei, and the rise of associations and societies. Add to this the many local experiments with further reform, whether in transparency, more consultative elements, anti-corruption or intra-party democracy. Even the legal system has been strengthened by many different measures, and in spite of the persistence of party interference, there were 11 million ordinary and unremarkable court cases in 2010 in which people settled their differences, with the state too. The result is a changed political atmosphere, in which a wide range of opinions and lobbying compete, and the spectrum of debating positions rivals that of the US: from the strongly neo-liberal to the orthodox maoist. With the change to collective decision-making, away from one- man rule, an element of checks and balances has also been introduced. In the view of some researchers the result is a kind of “shadow pluralism”.

Secondly, the huge economic success China has had since 2003, with GDP increasing five-fold, and real income per capita 3-4 times, may also have delayed democratic reform. The increased self-confidence may have stimulated the view that China should find its own institutions, in the political sphere too. It takes more time, if you want innovation that is adapted to tradition, history and culture, rather than to copy somewhere else, like some East Asian states have done. Economic success is also a success for ‘incrementalism’, gradual reform, and so this is likely to be the preferred method. China is generally less hurried than is the case for western politicians plagued by short-term goals and impatient for immediate results. It is also likely to look for its own variant of democracy, probably a non-liberal, elitist democracy, a la Singapore, particularly after the disappointing recent performances of existing Western systems. Additionally, both its big philosophies, Confucianism and Daoism, stress stability and balance in the development of society. My point being that there are cultural factors affecting our perception and evaluation of China’s progress in the area of political reform.

Thirdly, a number of political factors may be affecting the progress of political reform. The ‘shadow pluralism’ and the existence of at least two different main factions may have had the effect of ‘representing’ interests and channelling important demands into the political system, in spite of its non-democratic character. The wide use of surveys, hearings, consultations, even deliberative democracy, has enabled the regime to be responsive. In David Shambaugh’s view, it has moved towards being an “eclectic state”, pragmatically drawing on a wide range of experiences, in an almost Darwinist “adaptive authoritarianism”. The fairly competent leadership and the ‘performance legitimacy’ maintained over the last decades: showing in economy, infrastructure, urbanisation, poverty reduction, global profile, etc. has increased regime legitimacy from other sources than democratic credentials.

Fourthly, more socio-politically grounded explanations of the delay in major political reform would look at its constituencies, the forces that would carry democratisation. The first problem is that there is low public interest: both winners and losers of reform and globalisation look to the Communist Party to protect their interests, whether in protection of private property, or in provision of some welfare. Their no. 1 priority is the legal system, equality before the law. The many justified local protests do not challenge the party or the system as such. The progressive parts of the middle class, which could be expected to champion political reform, ask what it would do for them. They are willing to demonstrate for their own interests, but not to riskily empower the 1000 mio people below them. In this way they are reminiscent of the elites in 19.th century Europe: “Democracy is a good thing, but let’s wait”. Class-alliances among Chinese workers, or across the urban-rural divide are also notoriously difficult. Actual opponents of democracy are perhaps mostly found among ministerial level functionaries and in government in the provinces. They are not pressured by the grass-roots, and would prefer to remain unaccountable technocrats. The leadership at the top can have a variety of interests in democratic reform: soft power, fighting corruption, surviving in power by adapting to the democratization of information, easing unification with Taiwan, stability in succession,etc.

Fifthly, international factors can also help understand the stasis in political reform efforts. A regime that feels safe and unthreatened is more likely to reform. Authoritarian regimes democratize when they do not feel threatened, like Taiwan and South Korea did. In the post Cold War period ‘liberal internationalism’ with its financial and other support of ‘colour revolutions’ and its military interventions, has delayed reform and strengthened hardliners. It seemed clear to the leadership that China was on the US list for ‘regime change’ too, and the result was extreme vigilance towards NGO’s and civil society phenomena. As late as April 2008, a White paper on political democracy was published, but then came the Tibet crisis, the Olympic circus, and finally the US financial crisis, which in itself was an argument for delaying reforms. There may also be an aspect of learning, namely from the experience of the “East Asian Model” prescribing economic modernisation first (under authoritarian or 1-party rule) and avoiding premature democratisation which has meant collapse in a number of countries, but waiting till it has a prospect of holding (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore?)

Summing up, democracy in China’s context is not an ideology, but a tool. It is likely that incrementalism will continue and that perhaps the most likely scenario for successful political reform is via the direct parliamentary elections in the 2600 counties becoming ‘real’ free from party meddling, then gradually moving upwards to national level. As for a multiparty system, one seasoned observer sees the appearance of powerful groups, each lobbying for the interests of their own group or region, these groups coalescing into permanent and open lobbies, and the lobbies one day converting themselves into full-blown parties. In any case, it will happen because an adaptive regime sees that it will advantage its own (elite) survival.

There could also be much less optimistic predictions of course. The reform-drive being bogged down by vested interests of the remaining big SOE (State Owned Enterprises), of leading families or of the middle class. The driving forces for reform –intellectuals, the private sector, the ‘new men’ of the presumed ‘Communist Youth League faction’ – weak because lacking a strong policy-entrepreneur and faced with a generally content urban population. In this case the most likely scenario is not collapse, but rather ‘muddling through’ – unless faced with a severe crisis which could affect legitimacy and make a platform for a renewed reform-drive.

Clemens Stubbe Østergaard
Aarhus University and NIAS Associate, Senior Research Fellow

As a Swedish national of Pakistani origin, I did manage to visit both Punjabs and do extensive field research. Therefore now for the first time after 65 years a holistic, detailed and penetrating research on the events of 1947 have been published under the title, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2012, ISBN 9780199064700, pages 640).  It is theoretically and empirically a very distinctive study, because it seeks to solve the Punjab partition puzzle as part of a general phenomenon that has appeared elsewhere in the world as well.  More than 250 interviews were conducted over a period of 15 years, though the most intense period was 2003-2005 when a very generous research grant from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskaprådet) enabled me to do field research in both the Indian and Pakistani Punjabs. In some cases I traced people from both sides of the divided Punjab after 50 and more years to check the same incident.

Punjab was partitioned in mid-1947 as part of the overall partition of British India into two independent nations of India and Pakistan. The main party of Indian Muslims, the All-India Muslim League, had argued that the Muslim minority (roughly one-fourth) constituted a separate nation from other communities of India. Therefore they were entitled to a separate state in areas where they were in a majority. This was reluctantly agreed to by the Indian National Congress, the main secular-nationalist party, which was dominated by Hindus. The British, who had decided to withdraw from India by June 1948, also agreed to the partition of India. However, the partition of India was also to include the partition of two Muslim-majority provinces, Bengal and Punjab.

Map of Punjab 1941

The total population of undivided Punjab was nearly 34 million living in 357,692 sq. km. Of it more than 28 million lived in territories directly administered by the British and its territorial expanse was 256,640 sq. km.  The Muslims constituted a slight majority of 53.2%, while Hindus and Sikhs together formed a very large minority. Less than 2% belonged to other religions. In the directly administered British territories the Muslim percentage was slightly higher, 57.1%. The Sikhs, who were a minority of around 14%, were essentially a Punjabi people – their religion and history and most of their community was located in Punjab. On the other hand, Punjabi Hindus and Muslims could link up with their communities in all nooks and corners of India.

The Sikhs were insistent that if India is partitioned on a religious basis then Punjab should also be divided on the same basis. They feared persecution under Muslim rule based on a religious notion of nationhood. The problem was that the Sikhs were not in a majority anywhere in Punjab. They were, however, an important community because they were disproportionately overrepresented in the British Indian Army and were also a propertied community with regard to agricultural land and even business and commerce. When it became clear that India could not remain united because the Muslim League and the Congress would not agree on a mutually acceptable formula the latter threw its full weight behind the Sikh demand for the partition of Punjab. While the western regions had a clear Muslim majority and eastern regions of Punjab a Hindu-Sikh majority the central areas, even though mostly comprising Muslim majority, had substantial Hindu-Sikh minorities and in some districts even majorities.

The book argues that if India had not been partitioned Punjab would also not have been partitioned. However, that did not mean that if India were partitioned then Punjab must also be partitioned. Had the Muslim League and the Sikh leaders agreed to keep Punjab united even if the Punjabi Hindus did not they would have made up such a large majority that Punjab could have remained united. Why could not the Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs agree to that? That is the main puzzle I have tried to solve.  No division of Punjab would have been a satisfactory to all three main communities – Punjabi Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Moreover, any partition of Punjab would have inevitably divided the Sikhs into the two states. The British governors as well as the chief secretaries, who from 1945-47 were Indians, were warning that Punjab would explode into unprecedented violence if it was partitioned and pleaded for a power-sharing formula that could prevent its division.

Historically Punjab had excellent record of inter-communal relations as Sufi Islam, the Bhakti Movement of Hindus opposed to the caste system and the early Sikh Gurus (spiritual leaders) had over the centuries preached communal harmony. In the 20^th century religious revivals took place, which instead of bringing Punjabis closer drove them away from each other on the basis of religious purity as compared to the folky forms of Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Yet, from 1923 onwards when the Punjab Unionist Party, headed by Muslim leaders and supported by Hindus and Sikhs, was founded on shared Punjabi values and interests the three communities had managed to live in peace and harmony. Both the Muslim League and the Congress had no major following in Punjab before the 1940s.

Trouble started in Punjab during the 1945-46 election campaign. The Muslim League had to wrest Punjab away from the Punjab Unionist Party and that necessitated portraying it as an agent of anti-Islam forces. Consequently, ‘Islam in danger’ was launched as the battle cry, the Muslim League was projected as the saviour and Pakistan as the utopia where no exploitation would exist, moneylending would be abolished and a model Muslim society based on Islamic law would come into being. Pages 81-106 of my book The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed provide the details. Islamic slogans, of which the most famous, Pakistan ka nara kiya? La Illaha Illillah (What is the slogan of Pakistan? It is that there is no god but God), were used profusely. The pirs (custodians of Sufi shrines) and ulema (Muslim clerics) told the Muslims that voting for the Muslim League would be voting for the Prophet Muhammad; those Muslims who did not do so, their marriages would be annulled, they would be refused an Islamic burial, and so on. The Hindus and Sikhs were told that they would be tried under Islamic law and they would have to bring their cases to mosques. Governor Sir Bertrand Glancy noted on September 13, 1945, “Muslim Leaguers are doing what they can in the way of propaganda conducted on fanatical lines; religious leaders and religious buildings are being used freely in several places for advocating Pakistan and vilifying any who hold opposite view. Communal feel is, I fear, definitely deteriorating. Sikhs are getting definitely nervous about Pakistan, and I think there is no doubt that they will forcibly resist any attempt to include them in a Muslim Raj” (page 84).

He noted on February 2, just days before the elections, “there seems little doubt that the Muslim League, thanks to the ruthless methods by which they have pursued their campaign of ‘Islam in danger’ will considerably increase the number of their seats and unionist representatives will correspondingly decrease” (page 88). The Muslim League swept the reserved Muslim seats. It won 73 seats (later increased to 75) out of 86. Its tally, however, fell short by at least 10 to form the government in the 175-member Punjab Assembly. The Congress swept the general vote getting 50 seats, and the Sikh Panthic parties secured 23 reserved for the Sikhs. The Unionists were reduced to a rump of 18. The rest were reserved seats for the scheduled castes, Christians and Anglo-Indians. A coalition government comprising the Punjab Unionist Party, the Punjab Congress and the Panthic Parties was formed with Khizr Hayat Tiwana as premier. The Muslim League felt deprived of the chance to form the government but it could not produce evidence that it enjoyed a majority in the Punjab Assembly.

Meanwhile, violence elsewhere in India increased sharply in 1946. The Muslim League ordered ‘Direct Action’ or mass agitation in Calcutta in August 1946. It resulted in thousands of deaths. The violence was unleashed by Muslim groups but later the Hindus and Sikhs struck back with equal savagery. Thousands of people were killed. Violence then spread to Bihar where the provincial Congress government was involved in a butchery of Muslims.

Punjab too was heading towards a confrontation and Chief Secretary Akhtar Hussain reported that “private communal armies” were being recruited. In December 1946, the Sikhs and Hindus of Hazara district, NWFP, were subjected to unprecedented savagery of Muslim mobs. Thousands fled to Punjab, some got refuge in Rawalpindi, but most went eastwards where Sikhs were in substantial numbers. On January 24, Tiwana ordered police raids on the headquarters of the Punjab Muslim League and the RSS. Muslim League leaders who resisted were arrested. It triggered a mass movement of defiance of authority by Muslim League agitators. Every day Muslims courted arrest and the jails were filled with them. Slogan mongering against Tiwana was conducted in the filthiest of Punjabi abuses and taunts. The agitation also became increasingly violent. Glancy’s successor, Governor Sir Evan Jenkins noted in his report dated February 28, “The Sikhs have been profoundly moved by the obvious desire of the Muslims to seize Punjab for themselves and would not permit them to do so. The agitation has shown Pakistan in all its nakedness and was a fair example of the kind of treatment that the minorities, including the Sikhs, might expect from Muslim extremists”(Page 124). Chief Secretary Akhtar Hussain wrote on March 4, 1947, when direct action was over and an uneasy peace had been established, “Muslims in their stupidity disgraced Sikhs, singled out Sikh policemen for their attacks and brutally murdered a Sikh constable. The effect of this was grave in the extreme and, as has been stated, communal strife between Sikhs and Muslims was almost inevitable if the League movement of defiance had continued” (page 125).

On February 20, 1947, the British government had announced the transfer of power to Indians by June 1948. Although the Muslim League agitation ended on February 26 and all Muslim League detainees released, Premier Tiwana had lost heart because British rule would soon end. He therefore resigned on March 2, 1947, precipitating an acute political crisis. On March 3, Master Tara Singh famously flashed his kirpan (sword) outside the Punjab Assembly, calling for the destruction of the Pakistan idea. That evening, Hindu and Sikh leaders gathered in Lahore and made even more extremist speeches (pages 128-135).

Next day Hindu-Sikh protestors and Muslims clashed in Lahore, the capital of undivided Punjab. The same day in the evening, Sikhs and Muslims clashed in nearby Amritsar. On March 5, violence spread to Multan in south-western Punjab and Rawalpindi in north-western. The same day, Governor Jenkins imposed governor’s rule. Punjab remained under governor’s rule until power was transferred to Indian and Pakistani Punjab administrations on August 15, 1947.

In Multan, the fight was uneven from the first day. There were very few Sikhs and the Hindu minority was also heavily outnumbered. Almost all casualties were those of Hindus and a few Sikhs. The gruesome murder of Seth Kalyan Das, a highly respected gentleman, whom all communities respected, is narrated by old-timer Ataullah Malik (pages 160-161).

In Rawalpindi, Hindu-Sikhs and Muslims clashed on March 5. In the evening of March 6, Muslim mobs in the thousands headed towards Sikh villages in Rawalpindi, Attock and Jhelum districts. Until March 13, they had a free hand to kill, burn, rape, and forcibly convert mainly Sikhs but also Hindus. I have given eyewitness testimony of Muslims, and a Sikh survivor from Thamali, interviewing him in Kapurthala city in the Indian East Punjab (pages 165-193). The pictures of the interviewees are also given.

According to British sources, some 2,000 people were killed in the carnage in the three rural districts. The Sikhs claim 7,000 dead. Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League and founder of Pakistan, committed a major blunder when he did not issue any condemnation of those atrocities. An exodus of Sikhs took place in the thousands to the eastern districts and Sikh princely states from Rawalpindi, where they narrated their woes, and set up the nucleus of a revenge movement.

The Sikh leaders had been working on some Sikh princes to convince them to try establishing a Sikh State. If India could be partitioned for two nations based on religion, then why could it not into three for the Sikh nation as well? To achieve that, a compact Sikh majority was needed and that could be achieved only by expelling nearly six million Muslims from East Punjab. However, 1947 was too early for such a bid; it emerged in the 1980s as the Khalistan movement.

By May 1947, it dawned upon Jinnah that the Sikhs were not going to join Pakistan. For a while he argued that Punjabis and Bengalis shared a common culture and identity. However, since it contradicted his basic stand that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations who did not share any national character, the discovery that Punjabis (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) and Bengalis (Hindus and Muslims) shared the same culture was the weakest argument in his brief for the Two-Nation Theory. He then demanded that a corridor should be provided through more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory to connect East and West Pakistan!

Nevertheless, Viceroy Mountbatten brokered talks between Jinnah and the Sikhs during May 14-16 with a view to keeping the Punjab united. Jinnah offered very generous terms. Hardit Singh Malik who acted as spokesperson of the Sikhs reported the following concluding remarks:

“This put us in an awkward position. We were determined not to accept Pakistan under any circumstances and here was a Muslim leader offering us everything. What to do? Then I had an inspiration and I said, ‘Mr Jinnah, you are being very generous. But, supposing, God forbid, you are no longer there when the time comes to implement your promises?’ His reply was astounding…He said, ‘My friend, my word in Pakistan will be like the word of God. No one will go back on it.’ There was nothing to be said after this and the meeting ended” (page 213).

Meanwhile, the British military had on May 12, 1947 come round to the view that if Pakistan was created it would be good for their interests in South Asia and the Persian Gulf. On page 209, I have quoted verbatim the memorandum the British heads of the three branches of the armed forces and Field Marshal Montgomery prepared in support of the creation of Pakistan.

In any event, on June 3, 1947, the British government announced the Partition Plan. It brought forward the transfer of power date to India and Pakistan to mid-August 1947. On June 23, the Punjab Assembly voted in favour of partitioning Punjab. It was followed by the deliberations of the Punjab Boundary Commission, which culminated in the Radcliffe Award of August 13, which was made public on August 17. In June, the Hindu-Sikh locality of Shahalmi in Lahore was set ablaze. I traced one of the culprits whose confession is given in detail on pages 237-243. Until July, the East Punjab Muslims were not attacked. On August 17, when the Radcliffe Award became public, all hell broke loose on the East Punjab Muslims. In India, scores of studies exist on the suffering of Hindus and Sikhs in what became West Punjab. The fact is that more Muslims were killed in East Punjab than Hindus and Sikhs combined in West Punjab. 500,000-800,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lost their lives altogether. The macabre dance of death that took place in western Punjab until June 1947 was now played out in East Punjab more pitilessly and on a much grander scale.

The evidence is based on heart-wrenching interviews I conducted over a period of 15 years with many Muslims. Pages 411-525 highlight the slaughter of Muslims. The book also documents cases of extreme magnificence as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs saved lives across the communal divide, sometimes of complete strangers and at great risk to their own lives. Humanity was debased in 1947 but not without outstanding examples of sublimation as well.

At the end of the day, 10 million Punjabis had been driven away from their ancestral abodes: it is the greatest forced migration in modern history. Except for the tiny Malerkotla State, Indian East Punjab was emptied of all Muslims; equally, from the Pakistani West Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs were driven out to the last man almost.

I have developed a theory of ethnic cleansing, which is tested in the Punjab case. It has also served as the theoretical framework to explain and analyse the events that transpired in Punjab in 1947. The theory can be usefully employed to analyse the events of ex-Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iran and other such cases. Each case has its unique characteristics but they also share some essential common features. Among them the main are the end of a particular type of state system without a power-sharing formula being agreed among apprehensive communities suffering from great anxiety about an uncertain future. When state functionaries assume partisan roles ethnic cleansing and genocide can take place as organized force and terror can be used against the enemy groups.

by Ishtiaq Ahmed

The writer has a PhD from Stockholm University. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest publication is: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com

Photo courtesy is Ministry of Tourism, Government of India.

In 2002, the government of India embarked upon a highly ambitious image campaign to create a new brand identity for the nation. The idea was to transform India into “a global brand, with worldwide brand recognition and strong brand equity” that will bring high end tourists and investors to the country. But how does one establish a unified image of a country like India? And how does cohere India’s image as an ancient civilization in a new globalised world? The policymakers and designers with faced with an “extremely difficult and complex (project) to establish a clear, precise identity for a multiproduct destination like India. India is a land of contrasts, a combination of tradition and modernity, a land that is at once mystical and mysterious. India is bigger than twenty-three countries of Europe put together and every single state of India has its own unique attractions.” During my fieldwork in Delhi, I was often reminded of these challenges by the advertising professionals who had been entrusted with the task of creating a “global identity without losing the essence of the nation.”

The result of this exercise was a campaign called ‘Incredible !ndia’ that attempted to re-visualize India in a contemporary context. The campaign was released in major foreign markets in both print and digital media, and in a very short time gained a high visibility and recognition with its distinctive ‘!’ logo mark. The most remarkable aspect of this campaign is that even though it was aimed at foreign markets, it has gained a far wider popular constituency among the Indians living in India as well as in diaspora. The seductive pictures and mocking, witty words have created a narrative of India that conveys a contemporary feel and global sensibility. The reason for its popularity precisely lies in the fact that this newly designed India can now be ‘shown’ and ‘seen’ in the outside world with pride.

In India’s recent history, this is the most expansive image making exercise that seeks to manufacture a global identity on one hand, and on the other, to subvert the identities given by the colonial powers. The distinctive ‘!’ has become a visual unifier and a sign of post-reform India that is recognized both at home and abroad.

Ravinder Kaur, PhD
Associate Professor,
Director, Centre of Global South Asian Studies
University of Copenhagen
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

………………………………..

Ravinder Kaur is one of the organizers of the workshop Spectacle of Globality which is  taking place 29-30 August 2012 at National Museum, Ny Vestergade 10, Copenhagen. The workshop which focuses on India’s makeover as a global power is a part of the research programme Nation in Motion and the first in a series of four international workshops organized within the programme.

More information about the workshop and the research programme

Nobody likes the Rohingya here, though:

Since the group was collectively stripped of citizenship in the 80s by Burmese strongman, Ne Win, they have been systematically persecuted by authorities, and denial of basic human rights, humiliation, slander and ethnically motivated violence are existing circumstances in the life the Rohingya.  This does not differ them from a range of other minorities, especially not in Burma, where the government frequently is at war with rogue militias representing repressed ethnic groups in the country.

But the scale of it does. The above is the preexisting condition. This is the current situation:

In May this year, a young Buddhist girl was raped by three Muslim. It happened in the Northern province of Arakan and that is an absolute disaster. It is horrible to that girl and her family.

But the retaliation… The retaliation for the incident was brutal and frightening:

A mob of Buddhist Burmese attacked a busload of Rohingya people, killing 10 of them. Fighting erupted and spread, and this is what happened over the next few weeks:

The already overwhelmingly larger group of Buddhists was aided in carrying out organized attacks on several Rohingya villages by the military. The attackers rounded up the villagers, put them in vans and took them to concentration camps. Several girls were raped, houses were burned down, people were beaten and tortured.  650 Rohingya is confirmed dead, 50,000 have been displaced and an unknown number is simply: missing.

The main reason why this was frightening was not the violence itself though, although that is certainly frightening enough.

The main reason was that these attacks are largely supported by the Buddhist people of Burma.

Yup. That´s the same dudes that marched so beautifully peaceful in their orange robes in 2008, and for the first time really gave the Burmese people the international focus it needed to make changes. It is the same people who through 20 years waited quietly and took abuse from a self installed government, only to turn out by the thousands at the house of Ang San Suu Kyi to see her released.

Those are the people, who, when asked, cannot see anything particularly wrong with ridding Burma of Rohingya all together. Burmese bloggers have deemed them “thieves, dogs, terrorists and black monsters.” Burmese historians have challenged their “burmeseness” due to their aforementioned black skin, dialect and religion.

Even The Lady is hesitant to denounce the violence, knowing that by doing so she will estrange a large part of her followers.

So congratulations, Burma, on all the positive changes you have achieved in the past year or so. Hooray for brave monks, for the Saffron Revolution, for the free Lady and for finally starting to move towards democracy.   That is fantastic, no one in their right mind will argue otherwise.

By the way, the definition of Genocide, as per the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is:

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Sound familiar?

Anya Palm,

Freelance journalist and NIAS Associate, Bangkok

One of example is the South China Sea, where the interplay between nationalistic and regional tendencies produces a new balance as China’s maritime law dominates as opposed to international law. China’s assertion of exclusive sovereignty involved the conquest or occupation of island, the enforcement of a fishing ban, the confiscation of Vietnamese and Filipino fishing vessels and detention of their crews, and the sabotaging of Vietnamese and Filipino oil explorations. Part of Vietnam’s tactic is to emphasize the status of international waters and the history of free navigation in the South China Sea, which courts the support of major players like the US, India and ASEAN. While most analysts assume that the various claims to the – mostly uninhabited – Paracels and Spratlys and the surrounding SCS are motivated by the presence of submarine mineral resources like oil and gas, the conflicts evoke strong nationalist feelings in various countries, fueled by narratives regarding the historical presence of fisheries.

Downplaying internal differences and contestations, the South China Sea dispute drags the various ASEAN members into an argument against the strongest regional claimant, China. At the same time, the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over maritime sovereignty in parts of the Gulf of Thailand shows that in the absence of a strong outside claimant like China, territorial contestations and national sentiments come to the fore in a heated debate among the ASEAN members. Perhaps at this point, it is worth mentioning another revealing example of such territorial disputes and sentiments of a new-found patriotism: the Bay of Bengal.  Here India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Burma enforced a fishing ban in their waters, confiscating foreign vessels and detaining their crews in order to secure the supply of marine and especially submarine mineral resources, including oil and gas. In particular, the Palk Strait with its relatively shallow sea-subsection of the Palk Bay between India and Sri Lanka has emerged as a territory of increasing conflict and violence. Since the India-Sri Lanka Maritime Boundary agreement of 1974 and 1976, agreed upon by the governments of India and Sri Lanka, the whole area has become a heavily contested fishing territory between Tamil fishermen on both sides. For centuries, these two communities enjoyed shared fishing rights and cultivated relations through annual festivals and trade. However, with the demarcation of maritime boundaries based on the concept of national sovereignty, the Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen have entered into an acute conflict over the fishing grounds in the Palk Strait.

Following James Scott’s recent study on the highland areas connecting Central, South, East and Southeast Asia, we can conceive of the sea as one of the last zones of ‘non-governance.’  However, in the South China Sea or in the Bay of Bengal this concept is now being challenged due to increasing enclosure by surrounding states. The cases of the two regions are comparable examples of complex maritime disputes in which historic fishing rights are often ignored and fishermen – who inevitably become involved in border making – seem to be instrumentalized by their governments. Paradoxically, different stakeholders may use customary fishing practices as legal arguments in the international conflict, thus affecting enclosures of commons. At the same time, the resulting enclosures suppress the voices and interests of these fishing communities.

One such community is Ly Son Island, to which I had unparallel access during my doctoral field research. Ly Son is an atoll lying close to the Vietnamese mainland and about 400 km west of the Paracel Archipelago. Because of its historical association with the Paracels and Spratlys, Ly Son Island is considered a restricted border zone and an important defensive position to Vietnam. From 1974 onward, when Chinese forces overran a South-Vietnamese military station on the Paracels, China and Vietnam have confronted each other over the control of the Paracels and Spratlys, resulting in the sinking of three Vietnamese naval ships by Chinese forces in 1988. After the discovery of submarine deposits of natural oil and gas, China does not only claim the islands, but seeks to extend its sovereignty over the entire continental shelf, hoping to incorporate the South China Sea and its mineral and marine resources under its control. Ly Son Islanders directly bear the historical, geopolitical and economic consequences of the dispute. The already difficult economic situation of Ly Son Island worsened when the Chinese navy denied Ly Son fishermen the rights to use fishing grounds near the Paracels which for generations they had considered their own. Moreover, its sensitive ‘border’ location also hampered other forms of economic development, like international tourism.

On the other hand, the Vietnamese State turned its attention towards Ly Son as a valuable source of information about the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) navy, which was established by the Nguyen lords around the turn of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries the Nguyen dynasty continued to carry out naval activities there. In 2001 the state issued a directive establishing a commemorative site for the two flotillas. Facing competition from China over control over the archipelagos, the Vietnamese Party-State chose to frame its claims to sovereignty not in economic terms but with reference to historical, emotive stories of Vietnamese sailors who shed their blood on the islands. At the same time, Vietnam does not seem much concerned about  Ly Son fishermen being denied free access to the fishing grounds on which they depend. Consequently, Ly Son fishermen feel abandoned by the central State, who has a stake in maintaining good diplomatic and political relations with its main trading partner and the region’s dominant military force, China.

The transformation of the political and ecological environment, livelihood and the culture of fishing communities due to the recent territoralization of the sea calls for a deeper knowledge of how local people deal with coastal and environmental damage of marine areas, which are important factors in the loss of the ecological basis for their livelihoods. This is an important question since the growing impact of global competition over energy security, overfishing and the destruction of marine resources via unsustainable forms of coastal development give rise to speculation over the global and local consequences of this process. As such, the need exists for deeper knowledge about the growing competition over marine resources and its consequences on coastal communities and local ecologies in developing countries, where small-scale fisheries are still central in providing people’s food and economic welfare.

Edyta Roszko. “From Spiritual Houses to National Shrines: Religious Traditions and Nation-Building in Vietnam,” East Asia: An International Quarterly, vol.29. no 1 March 2012, pp. 25-41.

________. “Commemoration and the State: Memory and Legitimacy in Vietnam,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol.25. no. 1 (April 2010), pp.1-28.

Migration and Overseas Filipin@s [1]

by Niklas Reese

Close to eleven million Filipin@s across more than a hundred countries around the globe—that was the picture of Philippine outmigration at the end of 2009. This figure represents more than ten percent of the total Philippine population and a little more than one fifth of the working-age segment. Each passing day, more than three thousand Filipin@s leave the country to seek greener pastures elsewhere, registering a 42 percent increase in the span of just ten years. Of this eleven million, three million have settled overseas, having married nationals of the host country and/or those who have taken on foreign citizenship. Since they continue to nurture their ties to the Philippines, they are included in the statistics as overseas Filipin@s.[2]  However, with a headcount of 8.5 million, Overseas Filipino Workers (or OFWs for short) represent majority of these migrants.[3]

There is a steady demand for Philippine labor at the international level, given Filipin@s’ high levels of education and excellent English language skills. However, there is a two-class system in place. There are those who make it to “Western” countries in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand and mostly work as nurses, caregivers or special education professionals. Also included here are Filipino priests who fill in the gap of declining numbers of Catholic priests at the global level. And then, there are those sixty percent “second class” migrants who work in the Middle East and other parts of Asia. These include domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore, construction workers in the Gulf states and so-called Japayukis or “entertainers” in Japan whose daily grind sometimes borders on prostitution. It is also a fact that Filipin@s represent 20 to 30 percent of seafaring staff on high seas.[4] About one to two million OFWs do not enjoy legal migrant status in their host countries and lead a life of “TNT” or tago nang tago, meaning that they are always hiding and on the run from authorities. A more recent phenomenon are Filipin@s’ deployment as drug mules.

While Mexico boasts of the highest number of migrants in terms of absolute numbers and El Salvador and Tadzhikistan carry the distinction of having up to 40 percent of their population living and working outside their respective national borders, Filipin@s are the most highly dispersed workforce across the globe. Filipin@s are thus the most globalized working population of the world. Taking a closer look at remittances reveals another interesting pattern. While remittances sent back home to India, China and Mexico are higher in terms of absolute numbers, what is remarkable about the Philippine economy is that total remittances represent more than ten percent of the Gross National Product (GNP), which is not the case for the other three countries above.

The important point to be made here is that given the massive extent by which the Philippines is shaped by outmigration, it is almost impossible to understand Philippine realities outside the context of this phenomenon.

During the time of the American colonial administration, at the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Filipin@s were deployed to the pineapple and sugarcane plantations of Hawaii.

Mass migration began in the 1960s and 1970s due to employment opportunities in the industrial countries of Europe and North America as well the booming oil economies in the Middle East. This created a big demand for manual labor and domestic helpers. Former president Ferdinand Marcos recognized that supporting labor migration was a way of getting hold of foreign currency to repay the country’s debt without having to initiate long overdue structural and economic reforms. This meant that the selective opening up to the world market as witnessed in the neighboring tiger economies was not forthcoming. While the Philippines and Japan were considered the most economically promising and developed in 1950, a number of Asian economies overtook the Philippines by the 1980s. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan sought more and more cheap labor from overseas, including from the Philippines.

The effects of migration are found everywhere. Overseas employment agencies and brokers are found everywhere, offering jobs for construction workers and domestic helpers in Dubai or Hong Kong. It is not uncommon to find plaques attached to school buildings, village plazas and churches indicating the generous financial donations of their native sons and daughters who have made their fortune abroad in the renovation of public spaces and development of their hometowns. In the provinces, only landowning elites used to live in houses made of concrete. Nowadays, however, many a nipa hut has been replaced by a modern abode. These new houses have become status symbols that reflect the success of their owners overseas. In the provinces of Batangas and Laguna, just south of Manila, there are several villages built in Italian style (see box). In the big cities, gated communities and subdivisions have mushroomed all over, accompanied by the construction of shopping malls—all made possible by the spending power fueled by overseas remittances.

These remittances have become the most significant source of foreign currency for the Philippines. In 2010 alone, government figures indicate that OFWs sent home 20 billion dollars through banks and other financial institutions. This figure represents one tenth of the GNP. According to the estimate of journalist Rodel Rodis (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 09 September 2009), however, the actual figure could be closer to 40 billion dollars. This includes the value of all goods and services that reach the country through informal channels, whether in the form of cash (padala), souvenirs (pasalubong) or mailed packages (balikbayan boxes) and even voluntary services rendered by OFWs. This amount not only surpasses any foreign direct investment or development aid package. It is, in fact, the equivalent of the Philippine government’s national budget. No wonder then that politicians hail OFWs as the “new heroes” and rally support behind labor migration. Sadly, this outpouring of support is not matched by the level of official commitment and government initiative when it comes to the protection of migrant workers’ rights abroad.

In 2009, one in five Filipin@s agreed in a survey that they would emigrate to another country, if given the opportunity to do so.[5]  Many observers, such as the journalist Marlen Ronquillo (Manila Times, 27 August 2008), feel that the actual number is much higher, reaching as much as 99 percent of the population. A student of medicine, Kris Mangunay (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 August 2011) puts it this way: “…most people believe that going abroad is the only way to a better life. Who would not know about the overseas worker who just built a house in the town proper, or the young woman who at a relatively early age already provides for her family? It is a story known to the tambays [the ones hanging around – the Ed.] at the sari-sari store.”

The push abroad is not just a result of economic factors, even if these are important reasons.[6] The Philippine economy has been undergoing a prolonged period of stagnation and job opportunities are far from bright. The local labor market is unable to absorb highly qualified Filipin@s. Seeking for employment overseas is often seen as the only chance to find a decent job if at all. Plus there is the added prospect of sky-high salaries compared to the local rates. Migration has become a standard response to this bleak outlook that goes largely unquestioned. Indeed, those who have the necessary qualifications must often justify to friends and family why they do not wish to migrate.

Moreover, migration has become a way of “voting with your feet” or giving expression to one’s dissatisfaction with conditions at home. The seemingly hopeless state of affairs in politics and public service, corruption and criminality and the lack of opportunity have resulted in a “let’s just get out of here” attitude. Given the seeming bankruptcy of the state and the rudimentary features of the present social security system, the decision to send a family member abroad seems like the only feasible solution to these problems. It is often the only way to sustain one’s family, to finance the education of one’s children and siblings, and support one’s parents in old age. Working abroad also presents a way of saving up some capital to be able to start one’s own business upon returning home.

For all intents and purposes, remittances assume an important socio-economic function, representing a de facto pillar of social policy. In the year 2006, based on figures of Asian Development Bank (ADB), 23.3 percent of households received direct remittances from abroad—compared to only 18 percent in the year 2000. For nine percent of families, these remittances are their main source of livelihood, while 60 percent of the population belong to the wider network of beneficiaries (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 16 February 2010).

Even if it is difficult to ascertain the internal breakdown of household expenses (Weninger cited in Reese/Welkmann, 2010), only 44 percent of those who receive remittances are able to put aside some money in the form of savings, according to the Central Bank of the Philippines. For the rest, all money is spent, mostly on food (93 percent of households), paying off debt (46 percent), education (72 percent) and for “out of pocket” health expenses (63 percent). Nevertheless, 29 percent were able to buy household appliances and 7.7 percent a car. Only six percent were able to make investments (The Philippine Star, 14 December 2010).

Only those whose family members work as professionals in the West or in the booming economies of Asia have the spending capacity to go beyond the bare essentials (about 15 percent of all migrants). Seafarers are also included in this count. Seafarers may only make up 3.3 percent of all OFWs, yet their earnings account for 15.3 percent of all remittances (Camroux 2008). It is also interesting to note that although only about 13 percent of overseas Filipin@s live in the USA, a whopping 40 to 50 percent of total remittances originate from there.

How much a single household receives is determined by the amount the relative abroad is able to earn and how much thereof he/she is able to send back home. This may range from to 300 to 350 US dollars from domestic workers in Hong Kong or the Middle East to several thousand dollars earned by highly qualified medical professionals in the West.[7] According to ADB estimates in early 2011, there would be two to three million more Filipin@s below the poverty line if it were not for the dependable flow of remittances.[8] For “second class” migrants, remittances compensate, at least partially, for the lack of livelihood opportunities and social security at home. However, once destiny deals them a blow, such as sickness in the family, any savings generated by migration are quickly wiped out.

The class background of migrants also merits closer examination. Internal migrants who move from poor provinces to urban centers are largely from very poor families. Overseas labor migration abroad, by contrast, is a phenomenon of the “not so poor” of the so-called D class.[9] These migrants originate from urban centers. Almost half are from Metro Manila and neighboring provinces. The poorest of the poor who belong to the so-called E class and rural populations are largely outside the loop of remittance flows because they do not have family members who work abroad. While the richest 20 percent of the population received 44 percent of the remittance share, the poorest 20 percent received just seven percent, based on ADB figures from the year 2006 (Manila Times, 03 May 2011).[10] This is because this segment lacks the formal educational requirements or else, because they are unable to cough up the funding for the pre-departure expenses.[11] These “non-migrants” live in nipa huts, often without electricity, subsisting as peasants and upland farmers. In the cities, the poorest populations live in marginal settlements, scraping by in the informal sector. The luckier ones among them work minimum wage jobs where they earn about 250 to 400 pesos a day or equivalent to 5 to 6 euros. They are employed for example as casual sales personnel at shopping malls, where they provide services to migrants and their families. As early as 2001, columnist Belinda Aquino already warned of the gaping social divide between those who can depend on remittances from abroad and those who are left to fend for themselves (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 06 June 2001).

Contrary to the commonly held assumption that migrants from the global south are less qualified and educated than their counterparts in the north, majority of Filipin@ migrants have had at least some college education.[12] Majority of them have also reached higher levels of job competence, labor productivity and quality as a result of years of job experience. The economic and social development of the Philippines is thus severely affected by this brain drain and the resulting lack of well-trained professionals and experienced workers. This lack of assurance of higher levels of labor productivity makes it unattractive for more foreign as well as local investors in search of new production sites to consider the Philippines. And as these skilled professionals and workers leave, it is instead the economies of the richer countries which benefit from all these years of accumulated working experience.[13] A jarring example from the health sector: in the time period from 2005 to 2007, five thousand medical doctors left the Philippines to seek employment overseas and another six thousand took additional nursing courses to qualify as nurses in other countries. While the United States and other Western countries actively recruit nurses from the Philippines, there are many obstacles for doctors who wish to practice their profession elsewhere. This is because there is still no shortage of doctors and so the job market is protected from outsiders.

While more and more students from countries such as India, Iran, Malaysia and Indonesia come to the Philippines to enroll in medical school, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that no other country in the world exports as many medical professionals as the Philippines. While the demand for nursing graduates has been declining for a long time, new nursing colleges mushroomed all over place at the beginning of the new millennium. And while the number of new students of medicine declined by 40 percent from 2006 to 2009 (Manila Times, 26 August 2009), more and more made nursing their course of choice. Nursing students readily admit that their motivation for their choice is to be able to work abroad. According to the Department of Labor (DOLE), the number of new nursing students increased from 28,000 in the year 2000 to 454,000 in 2006.  At present levels, Philippine nursing schools train more than 90,000 applicants a year, out of which 50,000 to 70,000 later become licensed registered nurses.  There are more nursing board examinees per capita in the Philippines than in any other country in the world. Yet the reality is that year by year, only about 10,000 nurses clinch contracts abroad.[14] Consequently, there are now about 300,000 registered nurses who are unable to put their training into practice. Since working experience is an important criteria in applying for a nursing job abroad, many local hospitals take advantage of this surplus. They expect inexperienced nurses to first undergo a fulltime practicum (meaning they are asked to work for free) or even pay the hospital for training them.

“It’s time to serve myself!” These were the words of a highly qualified doctor when he trained to become a nurse in 2004. At the level of the individual, such a choice may be understandable and in full accordance with the neoliberal notion of the enterprising self. Yet at the societal level, this single decision represents a painful loss. Mass outmigration of nurses has weakened the Philippine healthcare system– not because there are not enough nurses, but because there are not enough experienced nurses. They are the ones who are in high demand abroad and where they can earn about twenty times as much as they would receive in a government hospital at home.[15]

Better working conditions for medical professionals are found only in the private hospitals in the big cities. These are those which cater to the small upper class and family members of migrants who can pay for services that remain beyond the reach of ordinary Filipin@s. These hospitals then are the only ones who are in a position to pay better salaries to prevent their employees from looking for greener pastures elsewhere—at least for the time being. Save for some idealists, Philippine hospitals are therefore staffed with nurses with less training (who do not yet qualify for employment overseas) or with those who do not want to be separated from their families. This results in a situation where novice nurses are deployed in operating rooms. The few experienced ones have to work more by doing double shifts.

These trends in the health sector are mirrored in the education and other fields. Students enroll in special education, hotel and restaurant management or information technology courses with eyes firmly fixed on lucrative opportunities at the international level. They enter university with one foot already outside the door. This means that numerous local positions for specialists and professionals in various fields are not filled.

To make matters worse, returning overseas Filipin@s do not find outlets for the skills and talents honed elsewhere because there is a lack of opportunity at home to make the potential brain gain a reality. The lack of positions and inadequate working conditions prevent this from happening. The government actively supports outmigration, but is less interested in creating an enabling environment so that returnees can apply their knowledge and experience for the good of the home country.

While women represented only twelve percent of Philippine OFWs in 1975, their number increased to 47 percent in 1987. By 2002, the percentage of women shot up to 69.  Although the construction boom in the Middle East has since somewhat offset this trend (at present women account for about 55 percent of OFWs), the feminization of labor migration is undeniable. The reason for this is the big demand for “caregivers”, which is considered to be a “female” domain. Nurses, domestic helpers, nannies, caregivers and sex workers are much sought after.[16] In Taiwanese factories, Filipinas’ renowned dexterity and nimble fingers likewise gained a good reputation.

The demand for female labor from the Philippines must be seen in the light of the dominant social relations wherein women shoulder a large financial responsibility in supporting the immediate, as well as, their extended family. The international labor market thus provides much needed opportunity for them. According to the Philippine sociologist Belinda Medina, female migrant breadwinners show greater commitment to their family compared to their male counterparts, i.e. females send a proportionally greater allotment back home than males.

Labor migration can also become an attractive option for women because it allows them to break free from conservative, discriminatory gender relations. This is especially true for women who do not fit the traditional mold, such as those who have gone through marriage break up or an experience of prostitution.[17] This re-positioning, however, is only partially successful since migration re-casts them into specific gendered relations of labor and reproduction. They may earn more money abroad, but it is at the expense of a diminished social status. Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, Singapore or the Middle East often become victims of verbal, physical and sexual violence. A study in October 2004 revealed that every fifth Filipina returning from work abroad was subjected to physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of her employer.

The feminization of migration profoundly changes the order of the traditional patriarchal gender relations.  Because of their relatively high incomes abroad, women (mothers, daughters, sisters) take on the role of providers and de facto decision-makers of the family. In cases where the mother, not the father, leaves for abroad, the family unit undergoes more extensive adjustments than if it were the other way around. Women are still seen as the primary caregiver and homemaker and men are supposed to work outside the home. Although some fathers do step up and take on the responsibilities of care work, most often, other female relatives are tapped to take on the mothering role in absentia.

The general consensus in the public discourse is that children suffer psychologically if left behind by their mother. Women migrants are blamed for causing families to break up, for driving their husbands into alcoholism and the youth into delinquency. Given these bleak scenarios, a mother forced into the role of breadwinner is plagued by guilt. Yet this doomsaying may not be entirely reflected in real life. Interviews of children with absentee parents show that they are indeed capable of coping with the situation, even without their mothers around (Rhacel Parreñas in Reese/Welkmann 2010).[18]

Filipin@s seem to have internalized their position in the international division of labor, that it is their part to supply the rich countries of this world with cheap and compliant labor with a compassionate touch. Numerous children and young people probably identify with a sixth grader who, when asked about her future ambition, declared, she wants to work as a domestic worker in the United States.

The government is a beneficiary of migration. The billions of dollars remitted by OFWs each year decrease the deficit in the balance of payment and thus lessen the pressure to institute sustainable reforms. It is in the interest of those pushing these shortsighted policies that there is no ebb in the stream of migrants to the West. The dependable flow of remittances ensures that families of migrants are able to afford private education and health care and therefore pose less of a burden on the state and mute calls for improving public service in the country.[19]

Putting an abrupt end to labor migration would not just be unrealistic but would also most likely trigger a revolt in the country. “Migration remains a necessary strategy in the short and medium term,” writes Fernando Aldaba.[20] His suggestion for the short term is to ensure that the gains of migration are used to effectively protect OFWs in foreign countries. In the medium term, the government should refrain from its intention of expanding migration as a policy. “In particular, the government must find ways to channel remittances into productive investments to create more jobs locally. Education and training must be linked to the building of a dynamic economy that produces goods for local and international consumption and is not just geared towards overseas markets.”

These proposals would mean furthering structural reforms, increasing labor productivity and the base for wealth creation, expanding infrastructure, supporting local medium enterprise (to complement ecological re-tooling in the global north), increasing tax collection and strengthening consumer spending—premised on  the democratization of Philippine politics. What is needed is the fundamental transformation of the status quo and a renunciation of neoliberal economic policy. Only the assurance of a decent existence is able to stop mass migration, population growth and rural exodus.

Removing migration as an option would not be a welcome development. Forced migration may have its downside, but the Philippines would surely be less culturally exciting without migration. The country’s history is profoundly shaped by movements of people and various colonial and cultural imprints from all over the globe. At present times, OFWs are the conduits of cultural impulses from all the corners of the world. These are transmitted back home and amplified to the world in a colorful cultural mélange. What would the world be without Pin@ys?[21]

 Niklas Reese is a social scientist and researcher in the University of Bonn (Germany) as well as lecturer for South East Asian Studies at the University of Passau (also in Germany). 

This article is an advance publication taken from Niklas Reese/ Rainer Werning (Ed.): Handbuch Philippinen.  The German edition will be published in September 2012 (Horlemann Verlag: Berlin); the English edition will be published later this year in the Philippines.

Suggested Reading

Katrin Bennhold: From afar, moneymaker and mother: Women who left families behind have become a global force, in: International Herald Tribune, 08.3.2011 – available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/world/europe/08iht-ffhelp08.html?ref=thefemalefactor

David Camroux (2008): Nationalizing Transnationalism? The Philippine State and the Filipino Diaspora – available online: www.ceri-sciencespo.com/publica/etude/etude152.pdf

Mary Lou U. Hardillo-Werning (2000) (ed.): TransEuroExpress – Filipinas in Europe. Bad Honnef.

Niklas Reese/Judith Welkmann (Hg.) (2010): Das Echo der Migration. Wie Auslandsmigration die Länder des globalen Südens verändert. Bad Honnef.

IBON Facts and Figures, Special Release (15.5.2008): OFWs, Remittances and Underdevelopment.

Aung San Suu Kyi has just left Myanmar (Burma) for the first time in 24 years visiting Thailand and Europe and calling for more foreign investment in Myanmar. Meanwhile, ethnic tensions in Myanmar continue to erupt to the surface in a country that is slowly shaking off its pariah status in international affairs.

The recent by-elections in Myanmar, in which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy claimed 43 of the 45 seats available, have awakened hope and a flurry of activity around the world to weaken if not dissolve the Western sanctions regime against the ruling military junta.

For now, Suu Kyi will take her seat in a parliament that remains firmly in the hands of the military-backed ruling party.

The by-election follows extensive market reforms, the release from house arrest of Suu Kyi, the re-registration of her party that allowed her to contest the election, the freeing of political prisoners, and the relaxation of media censorship controls.

It seems like Myanmar is coming in from the cold. More than that, Myanmar is open for business and everyone is lining up to enter a large domestic market of 60 million untapped consumers and a largely un- or underdeveloped natural resources sector.

Thailand has a long trading history with Myanmar, dominated by logging and the import of natural gas among other natural resources. It is, however, the access to cheap labour in Myanmar that is seen as a great drawcard for manufacturing industries. Already Thailand is profiting from the cheap labour of Myanmarese refugees in Thailand who work illegally in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, most often on an itinerant basis.

Long the preserve of Thai business interests and cross-border trade, Myanmar is of great geo-strategic importance to the region as a whole, and its other neighbours are entering the fray. Two global players are increasingly overtaking the Thai special relationship: China and India.

At the forefront of this regional engagement is the Dawei Deep Seaport currently under construction in Myanmar’s south. It will offer an alternative entrée into the Indian north-east and Chinese southern markets. It will also be the country’s first special economic zone as well as the entire region’s largest combined port and economic zone.

Thailand stands to gain most from this endeavour. Firstly, as its closest neighbour, long-time investor and main trading partner, Thailand will have direct access to cheap labour, resource abundance and offer itself as a transit point for goods to Cambodia and Vietnam. Already, a Thai construction company is the main contractor for the first phase of the project and further investments in the energy and manufacturing sectors are in the offing. The figures are staggering. The first phase alone of the $US58 billion project is worth $US8.6 billion.

Secondly, Thailand still houses millions of irregular migrants in its borders, most of whom have fled or left Myanmar for Thailand. This massive scheme offers a way to resettle and offer opportunities to, especially, the economic migrants.

Indeed, some have begun to trickle back to Myanmar, including political exiles. The government is wooing them back for their expertise and capacity to support the burgeoning economy.

However, the Myanmar government has its work cut out to capitalise on these opportunities. On the one hand, China, in particular, will require order and stability in Myanmar to provide safe transport links for their products as a viable alternative to the South China Sea. On the other, the West and some ASEAN members will require Myanmar’s rulers to, at least, offer some vestiges of democratic governance (as we are seeing at the moment) and a durable solution to the refugee crisis along the Myanmar/Thai border and wider ethnic tensions.

Some of these tensions have resulted in all-out wars with intermittent ceasefires. The situation in the uplands and ethnic held areas continues to be tense, and despite the recent political changes in the capital, the situation for ethnic minorities has not changed significantly.

Thousands are still fighting insurgencies and vast stretches of the country remain off limits to government troops. These conflicts continue to elicit a steady stream of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing the fighting to Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India and beyond. The diaspora networks of these refugee populations span the globe with small minorities settling in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia.

Since last June, for example, the army has been in a protracted war in Kachin state, again displacing thousands of civilians. While some ethnic conflicts have calmed and ceasefires have been in place, the Kachin conflict is again causing destruction in the poorest, remotest and most disadvantaged areas of Myanmar.

Asked about the tens of thousands of refugees living in Malaysia recently, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said that it was too early to return to Myanmar as, “They have got to have something to return to.”

Indeed, but the situation for them in refugee camps in the region or living as illegal immigrants in places like Malaysia, which does not recognise refugees, is no solution either. Late last year, Malaysia introduced a new registration program for illegal migrants, called the 6P program.

The program was designed to find out how many undocumented workers are currently in Malaysia and whether they can be retrenched into specific sectors that are in need of labour, or repatriated.

The program has been aided by the mass mobilisation of the army, police force, immigration department, and RELA, an auxiliary police force that is undertrained and poorly resourced but ideologically driven.

In addition, the Malaysian home minister proposed an immigration detainee swap program last year, no doubt inspired by the so-called Malaysia-swap agreement between Australia and Malaysia. The deal would see Myanmar nationals detained in Malaysia ‘swapped’ for Malaysian nationals detained in Myanmar.

The Malaysian government’s attempt to systematically register illegal immigrants living and working in Malaysia is aimed at enabling better law enforcement. However, the final part of the program is ‘repatriation’, i.e. deportation of those not needed in the Malaysian economy and those deemed unsuitable, e.g. those with criminal convictions. Caught in the midst of all this are the thousands of asylum seekers, political exiles and refugees who have fled Myanmar’s enduring conflicts.

It is they who fear ‘repatriation’ most, as they have no homeland to return to, much less interest in doing so.

Author’s note: The people I work with, mostly ethnic refugees from Myanmar, call the country Myanmar because calling it Burma invokes the notion that the country belongs to the Burmese Bamar, the dominant ethnic group. Most Western governments refer to the country as Burma.

Gerhard Hoffstaedter is a lecturer in anthropology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. His first book Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia is published by NIAS Press.

This article was first published by the ABC Drum.

On April 19^th India test-fired a long-range ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear bomb. With a range stated to be more than 3.100 miles, the missile would be able to reach not only large Chinese cities beyond the Tibetan plateau.  It could reach even further. The distance from say Srinagar in Kashmir to Vienna in Austria is 3.114 miles or 5.011 kilometer. In other words: Vienna is within its reach.

The missile has been developed by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and other defense organizations and laboratories often located in science- and IT-cities such as Bangalore and Hyderabad.  As the name Agni V indicates the missile is the latest in a series of missiles with progressively longer range.  Already in 1971, Indira Gandhi reportedly directed the defense ministry and the DRDO to start developing long-range ballistic missiles (Kampani 2003). Agni V is the fruit of that labor, but some Indian strategic thinkers are not content with this. They have urged India to develop a missile (called Surya, the Sun) that may reach even further. Some argue that India should develop thermonuclear bombs in the megaton class. India has so far not capitalized much on its powerful weapons through sales to other countries. Some argue that India should do so.

Why, one may wonder, does India persist in developing and buying these and other weapons? Looking at such questions somewhat anthropologically, I will have a closer look at a few commonly used phrases, which say something about how Indians think about themselves and their role in the world today. The test-firing of a missile, the testing  of nuclear or thermonuclear bombs in 1998, and the launching  of a satellite into space are occasions, which lead Indians and others to make statements to the effect that India is now a superpower and that others should recognize it as a superpower. On such occasions three phrases are commonly used:

• India is now taking its rightful place in the Comity of Nations
• India is now a member of an Exclusive Club
• India is now sitting at the High Table

The High Table is an institution found in old British universities or colleges such as Oxford and Cambridge. Senior faculty members or fellows and their guest would sit at the raised table above and separately from the students. By contrast, in other universities (such as Princeton in the US) dining was used as an opportunity for students to interact with the faculty members (www.princeton.edu/~gradcol/perm/hightable.htm).

In India, the partaking of meals has been used since time immemorial to unite and differentiate people, often along caste lines.  Historically, commensal rows or “feeding lines” consisting of people of the same caste or sub-caste have repeatedly defined or objectified group identity (Madsen and Gardella 2012). When Indians say that their weaponry entitles them to sit at the High Table, they thereby evoke notions of superiors sharing a meal. The image does not imply that only Indians may eat under conditions of grandeur. But it indicates that Indians may eat only with their equals and not with others.

Being the member of an “exclusive club” implies an even greater degree of inequality. While students at Oxbridge may not sit at the High Table, they can at least see the table from where they sit. An exclusive club is closed in a more radical manner. Its charmed circle entirely sealed, an outsider cannot even enter the club. Such exclusive clubs have an aura of secrecy. Their members probably wine and dine, but others cannot really tell what they do. The members set their own rules which may not be in conformity with the rules that others follow. Evoking the image of an exclusive club signals power, non-transparency, and even the ability to act with impunity.

In contrast, to achieve one’s rightful place in the comity of nations does not imply exclusivism or secrecy. All countries, big and small, are entitled to a place as equals in the United Nations where, in principle, discussions are held openly and where every nation has a voice. In that sense, India already enjoys its rightful place in the comity of nations. It does not need to lay claim to it by demonstrating its power back-up in terms of weapons of mass destruction. But then the “rightful place” may be understood to mean something more than a place like any other nation. India’s rightful place – taking into consideration it size, it military muscle, its growing economy – then may turn out on closer inspection to be an elevated position. In short, what India claimed it achieved by test-firing the Agni V and similar acts was a rightful place at the High Table in an Exclusive Club for the select among the nations of the world. Not a very democratic vision but more inclusive than the idea of “the peaceful rise of China”, which portrays China’s rise as a form of “reemergence” whereby China is about to regain the all-encompassing hegemonic status that it presumably once possessed.

Gaurav Kampani, “Stakeholders in the Indian Strategic Missile Program”, The Nonproliferation Review, Fall-Winter 2003.

Stig Toft Madsen and Geoffrey Gardella, “Udupi Hotels: Entrepreneurship, Reform and Revival”, in Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas (eds.) Curried Cultures, Globalization, Food, and South Asia, Berkeley, Los Angeles London: University of California Press,  2012.

With thanks to Sasikumar Shanmugasundaram for comments.

This weekend’s big event in Bangkok was a concert with the colorful pop artist, Lady Gaga. The star is doing her “Born This Way Ball” 2012 tour in Asia, and while Lady Gaga is in the region purely to perform and entertain, her visit has stirred quite a bit of political attention.

Most notably, she may be banned from performing in Jakarta, Indonesia next month due to her revealing costumes, which according to the Indonesian police will “corrupt” young fans.  She is currently in a dispute with Indonesian authorities on whether or not she will get a permit to perform there next month.

That was expected though. Indonesia, as well as disturbingly many other places, does have powerful religious hardliners with little understanding of modern pop culture.  And Lady Gaga is no wallflower.

But in Bangkok, something a little more subtle – and in a way considerably more significant – happened.

Upon arriving to Bangkok the night before her show, Lady Gaga tweeted to her 24 million fans on twitter:

“I just landed in Bangkok baby! Ready for 50,000 screaming Thai monsters. I wanna get lost in a lady market and buy fake Rolex.”

The comment offended her Thai fans. A lot.

“She came to our home, but instead of admiring us she insulted us”, said one commenter, while another sarcastically retorted: “I’m sure there are plenty of fake Gaga CDs, too.”

“We are more civilized than you think,” tweeted Surahit Siamwalla, a well-known Thai DJ. He declared that he, despite owning a ticket, would boycott her show.

 Lady Gaga will probably survive that.

But the reaction is interesting – there ARE a lot of fake Rolexes floating around Bangkok, and the city IS famous for counterfeit products. This is no secret. Why can’t she say that out loud?

Not too long ago, it was Angelina Jolie that was the subject of the Thai wrath. She had gotten herself a tattoo in Thailand, a religious symbol, and the Thai authorities felt that the actress disrespected a sacred image by inking up. So they went ahead and banned tourists from getting “sacred images” as tattoos altogether. Before that, the Hollywood blockbuster “Hangover in Bangkok” was scorned for giving Thailand a bad reputation, because the movie revolves around a drunken night, set in Bangkok.

But the reputation that Thailand has – for being a counterfeit haven and for being a party-city with red-light districts a plenty – has nothing to do with Gaga, Hollywood or Jolie.

It has to do with a corrupt and useless police force. It has to do with an incompetent, nepotistic government. It has to do with a collective state of mind of “problems are never MY fault”.

Acting angry and insulted will not stop the sale of fake Rolexes in Bangkok, nor will it do any good to the country’s reputation.

What will then? Putting down the coffee mug and start dealing with problems so obvious that even a passing-through pop star mentions them will.