By Andy
I haven’t written for a while. Evan’s post on the SOE coalmine experience captured the story and insanity of the situation quite handily. The only thing I have to add is a couple thoughts on the separation between the Party and the people and on the definition of LBXs, or laobaixing.
We still have no precise definition for China’s laobaixing. It is most often translated as simply the ‘common people,’ but that doesn’t really do the term justice as it is used in modern Chinese context.
In a slightly less vague context, it is used to mean anyone who is not connected to the Party or the government (the two being approximately the same thing in China). I think this is the way most Chinese people in major cities like Beijing or Shanghai would describe the term if you asked them what they thought about their childhood home being demolished to make way for a luxury mall – “We laobaixing have no power. (我们老百姓没有权利.)” Back in June, an offhand comment made by Lu Jun, a government spokesman in Zhengzhou, a city about 80km from where I write this post, caused an uproar on the Chinese internet, which interestingly acts as one of the few checks against rampant abuses of power by local governments and officials. Lu, when confronted by reporters about the future of a plot of land originally allocated for low-income housing where 12 luxury villas were instead being constructed, first asked, “Will you speak for the Party or for the laobaixing? (你是准备替党说话，还是准备替老百姓说话?)
From our experience so far, it seems obvious that the Party sees itself as an entirely separate entity from the people, an entity tasked with educating and instructing the masses, almost like an inner-city elementary school teacher, close to retirement, who does nothing but teach by rote memorization and discipline. In fact, during our time spent with the Organizational Department (组织部) at the coalmine, we were told that in basically those exact words when our minder for the day, Station Director Wang, noticed us taking pictures of all the (hilarious) planned-birth-related slogans on the walls of the worker housing district. “This is called community education (社区教育),” Wang told me. “We use these slogans to educate people.
On the one hand this is understandable. China has some legitimate challenges to overcome in the countryside, such as the preference for male children over female children. The one major policy aimed at this is the one child per family policy, under which the general population is only allowed one child (unless you can afford the fines and other consequences) and rural families are allowed to have a second child if the first is a girl. But as Little Liu told us back in Chujiawangwu, if you have two daughters, “you are screwed (那就倒霉了).” Besides, this does little to affect perceptions of gender value, and the restriction still results in rampant abortion of female fetuses. This brings up another policy, which is that it is illegal for doctors to tell couple’s the sex of their child before it is born.
But the Party seems to view itself as more of a shepherd in charge of moving sheep around, cracking a whip when they move they walk the wrong way, than the vanguard of a rising world power. There was one rather poignant sign in the coal mine that sums this point up perfectly: “There’s no need to worry that the road is far as long as the direction is correct (只要方向对，就不用怕路远)”. Rather than attempting to cut to the root of the problem and change the perception of the value of sons versus daughters by giving rural females more opportunities to advance to positions of power and value outside of the home as India is trying to do, the Party pays someone to go out and paint ridiculous slogans on the walls of all the houses in any given village, assuming that if people see a slogan on the wall everyday, they will forget 5,000 years of patriarchal society. The fact that there is not a single woman in the highest echelons of the CCP power structure shows they aren’t serious about changing perceptions at the root anyway.
I am deviating from my point here though. This is the stuff of a thesis paper. Getting the facts straight and expounding on all the necessary points would require more research than can be undertaken in the middle of a year-long bike trip.
So I’ve laid out the two most general views of the laobaixing. But I think we are already seeing that it breaks down further than “the common man” and everyone else or the Party/government and everyone else. I would describe China’s laobaixing as anyone without power. In a country where so much depends on guanxi (‘connections’ or ‘relationships’), I don’t think we can simply say laobaixing are those outside of the Party. After all, Party membership is now often seen as simply a way to get a leg up in the business world. Business is the Party and the Party is business. So even if you are outside of the Party, you can exert a lot of pull if you are in business.
A recent example of this view is a statement from our driver at the coalmine, Mr. Zhao, who took us to see the attached brick factory, which they were using to turn leftover rocks into bricks now that “China is concerned about the environment.” As we approached the brick factory, which sat below a towering gray mountain of leftover rocks, Mr. Zhao pointed to a mass of recently constructed courtyard compounds. “This is where our laobaixing live,” he said. It was the first time I’ve personally heard a ‘common person’ in China separate himself from the laobaixing. Having previously worked for a number of years in the mine’s “news department (新闻部), I can only assume Mr. Zhao is a Party member, and if he isn’t, his intelligible Mandarin (the most intelligible we found in our time at the mine) certainly gives him a leg up in life.
We’ll be exploring this topic in much more detail over the rest of the trip, but I wanted to get some initial (if scattered) thoughts out. I’ll follow up with a separate post on our last couple days.
Andy, great post. Still thinking about it, but a quick question: Do you remember how Mr. Zhao said “This is where our laobaixing live” in Chinese? You made a significant point from it and I just wanted to be sure it was true to what he said (of course, I’m thinking you developed that conclusion based on a lot of things he and others have said beyond that one line but it’s a start). Cheers and keep up the interesting blog.
Thanks for putting all the hanzi in! Very instructive.
Kai, thanks for the comment. The three of us discussed this just now, and while none of us can recall the exact wording and verify it 100%, it was a very simple and offhand comment to the effect of, 你看，我们的老百姓就在这里生活. After that we asked where their farmland was, and he pointed to a couple fields below the scrap mountain and said that they were there and on the other side of the village. You’re right that I made a lot out of a simple remark, but as I said, it was the first time I’ve heard a “common person” differentiate himself from the LBX.
[...] above quote comes from the latest post titled “The Party or the People?” In it, Andy shares a few thoughts on how to define the laobaixing and the separation between [...]
Andy, I still don’t think that’s how you should define laobaixing and party. My parents are laobaixing for sure but they are also party members. Not sure if they deeply believe or care what the party does. It’s just easier to live this way if you were in China.
开喜, I think maybe the way I explained my thought process was confusing, and I’m sure my attempt to follow up will be as well.
I was saying that a lot of people, laobaixing included, define the laobaixing as those outside the Party, but that I don’t think that argument holds up (at least in China today). The example I gave in the post was that the Party is so mixed up in business these days that even if you aren’t a Party member, you can have influence through business that allows you to control or take advantage of people, either through your connections with the Party or simply because you have enough money. The other side of the story is that many “common people” like your parents see Party membership as simply a way to get a leg up in life because Party membership is the equivalent of, for example, membership in the American Chamber of Commerce: you get to network and hopefully make some connections that will help you out in business. But simply being in the Party doesn’t make you a cadre (干部), so you don’t necessarily have influence just by being in the Party, and you are not necessarily protected from the whims of someone who has money and influence, whether he or she is in the Party or not.
So, the definition we are arriving at is that the laobaixing are those who do not have power or influence. I think this is what most “common people” are thinking when they say “We laobaixing don’t have any power.” They are pointing at the Party/government as those nominally in power, because they are the ones giving the order for the neighborhood to be demolished, but it is quite likely that there is a politically connected real estate developer behind the demolition that has simply bought influence. Whether the real estate developer is state-owned or private is really irrelevant. The point is they have money, and there is little in the way of a developed legal system to help the laobaixing fight against that.
It’s an interesting, and worthwhile, question to think about for people who aren’t sure. Am I or not?
I myself, even though I’m American, have lived here and made my money working the few channels I can open through my own ability the last 6 years in Beijing. It would be easy to say I’m not one of the laobaixing, but you’d be ignoring the fact that were I arrested for even the smallest infraction (as I have been in the past – don’t drive w/o a license!), I couldn’t bribe or smarm my way out of it. I couldn’t smooth my way to a tax-free enterprise registration if I begged. I couldn’t get my works published if I took off my clothes and danced (that’s not to say I’ve tried, just to say that if I had a book or somesuch, it’d be a struggle – I don’t, lucky for me).
The point is, there are people who can. I know people with connections. I know people who can snap their fingers and make the world turn. The laobaixing aren’t those people. I’ve networked my ass off and done well by it, but everyone I’ve met in my little corner of industry is in the same boat I am – we pray that the boss approves our ideas, we keep the phone on all day in case someone needs to call, and we show up when we’re called to. It makes me wonder, given the networks some people have, what I’m doing wrong that I don’t have those networks, but at the same time, I know I’m clean.
I think if you want to actually pick out the laobaixing, it’s the people who’ve worked their way up, or who are trying to without the hope or desire of an unearned lift up the ladder. While I’ve been fairly successful in my work, I can’t say that I’m in any way someone with a door that I can shoo others I know into up the same ladder. My only answer to people who ask how I’ve got where I am is “hard work”. Those who are there, and those who are working hard to get there, those are your laobaixing. People with the scrunch of stress and the stench of sweat on them. Those are the laobaixing, the ones who are struggling to make it, the ones whose Plan B is collecting garbage and teaching English. “The common people” isn’t an inapt description.