January 30, 2025 • 46 mins
In a wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Elizabeth Economy and Professor Diana Fu talk about activism and protest in China, how this has changed under the regime of Xi Jinping along with Fu’s upcoming book on how China governs its global diaspora.
The two scholars discuss how a civil society that was allowed to exist during Hu Jintao’s rule has slowly been decimated in the 12 years Xi has been in power as the central government in Beijing has taken more and more control. Economy and Fu analyze the increase in repression over the last decade, from over 150,000 protests in 2010 to there now being minimal space for dissent; even on issues that have little to do with the government, such as the #metoo movement. Lastly, Fu concludes by touching on her current book project which looks at how the CCP monitors the Chinese diaspora abroad.
Recorded on January 22, 2029.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Diana Fu is an associate professor of political science at The University of Toronto and director of the East Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is a non-resident fellow at Brookings and a public intellectuals fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. She is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.
She is the author of the award-winning book “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (2018, Cambridge University Press and Columbia Weatherhead Series). Based on political ethnography inside labor organizations, it uncovers how China’s migrant workers organized for rights without protesting en masse. It received best book awards from the American Political Science Association Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Studies Association.
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-director of the Program on the US, China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021-2023, she took leave from Hoover to serve as the senior advisor for China to the US secretary of commerce. Before joining Hoover, she was the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director, Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of four books on China, including most recently The World According to China (Polity, 2021), and the co-editor of two volumes. She serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
China Considered with Elizabeth Economy is a Hoover Institution podcast series that features in-depth conversations with leading political figures, scholars, and activists from around the world. The series explores the ideas, events, and forces shaping China’s future and its global relationships, offering high-level expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and valuable insights to demystify China’s evolving dynamics and what they may mean for ordinary citizens and key decision makers across societies, governments, and the private sector.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[MUSIC]
>> Elizabeth Economy (00:08):
Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
insights and informed discussion to one ofthe most consequential issues of our time,
how China is changing andchanging the world.
I'm Liz Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellowand Co director of the US-China and
the World Program at the HooverInstitution at Stanford University.
Today I have with me Dr. Diana Fu.
She's associate professor of politicalscience at the Munk School at
(00:31):
the University of Toronto and
a non-resident fellow atthe Brookings Institution.
She's also an award-winning author,
her area of expertise is social activismand political repression in China.
She's just putting the finishingtouches on a new book that looks at how
the Chinese government seeks to manage orcontrol the Chinese diaspora.
That's Chinese who are livingoutside the country, and so
(00:53):
we're gonna be able to talktoday about social activism and
political repression both inside andoutside China.
So, Diana, welcome, and to get us started,
let me ask you to take us backto the pre Xi Jinping era.
I think for many of us,
we've become somewhat consumedwith China over the past 12 years.
And we're beginning to developa collective amnesia about what China was
(01:17):
like during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintaoeras, the sort of 1990s and 2000s.
So take us back and help us understandwhat did Chinese society look like then?
What was front and center in the mindsof the Chinese people in terms of issues
that they wantedthe government to address?
And did they write lettersto the Chinese government,
(01:38):
did they step out ontothe streets to protest?
Give us a sense for what social andpolitical activism looked like back,
more than a decade ago.
>> Diana Fu (01:47):
Yes, thank you so much for having me on your show and for
asking this first question,which we actually don't think about a lot.
Because there's so much emphasison the Xi era that we've almost
forgotten about the era that justpreceded him, which was the Hu when era,
which ran from about 10years from 2002 to 2012.
(02:07):
And at that time, during that period,I was a grad student at Oxford University
and I had witnessed firsthand the changesin state society relations in the Hu era.
Which then the leaders touted asa harmonious society, which it wasn't,
but perhaps more harmonious thanthe decade that we're living in now.
(02:30):
So when Xi was still in hisfirst term from 2012 to 2017ish,
I co-authored an articleon this exact topic for
the China Journal on what changed,if anything,
in terms of grassrootspolitical participation.
And the gist of what that article wassaying was that from the Hu era you
(02:52):
had what we called fragmented control.
Which is that Beijing more or lessallowed local states to deal with local
unrest in whatever way they saw fit,so long as it was kept under control.
And this changed in the Xi era,where you have centralized control,
that Beijing really took reinsinto its own hands to make
(03:15):
sure that unrest was keptat bay in a specific way.
So let me give you some examples,so back in 2009 to 2011,
when I was doing my dissertationresearch in China in the Hu era.
I was spending about 18 months conductingpolitical ethnography on networks
of illegal grassroots organizationsacross the Pearl River Delta and
(03:40):
the Yangtze River Delta.
Which are really the twomanufacturing hubs of China.
And these labor organizationswere very small,
they were operated by migrantworker leaders themselves.
And what they would do is they wouldcoach other migrant workers on how to
get their wages back, how to contendwith the local state for injury payment.
(04:02):
And they were illegal becausethe state only allows one
official union to representall workers in China, and
that's the All China Federationof Trade Unions.
So my 2018 book really theorizedhow it was possible that
these weak organizations could notonly survive in the Huwen era,
(04:25):
but also mobilize workersunder that regime.
And I called that type of mobilizationmobilizing without the masses,
now what changed?
So these groups are emblematic of the typeof grassroots civil society that had been
operating in the Huwen era,under the radar, but still surviving.
Now, when Xi took power and 2012, 2013,
(04:48):
he took very swift actions againstall kinds of grassroots civil
society that had beenoperating in these gray zones.
He arrested labor organization leaders, hedetained feminist activists, he shut down
long operating legal aid organizations,he cracked down on underground churches.
(05:09):
Basically, he broke the backboneof grassroots civil society
that had been allowed to not flourish,but allowed to exist under the Huwen era.
And I think that is one of Xi's legacies,and to date, these grassroots
civil society haven't really beenable to resuscitate under Xi Jinping.
(05:31):
Many of the leaders,as you know Liz, have fled abroad and
are now part of the diaspora.
And when I've spokento them more recently,
they characterized the Xi eraas a very long and harsh winter.
Possibly even harsher than the wintersthat we experience here in Canada.
For which they are currently underhibernation, but are not dead, and
(05:52):
that's a very important point.
Is that I don't think civil society andactivism is dead under Xi,
they're merely in hibernation.
>> Elizabeth Economy (06:01):
Okay, so, but
let me ask you again just a littlebit more about the Hu Jintao era.
Did they just tolerate most of theseillegal migrant labor organizations?
I mean,certainly there were legal organizations,
I did a lot of work myselfon China's environment.
And there were masses of legallyrecognized NGOs that worked on
(06:22):
the environment,you mentioned feminist organizations.
So in that space between what we wouldcall government organized non-governmental
organizations and what you're termingillegal, small scale kinds of NGOs.
That are operating in ways thatare just antithetical to what
(06:43):
government believes to be its interests,there's a broader space.
There was a broader space certainly forrecognized activism, right?
That sometimes then turned intonot just small scale protests,
but mass protests with 10,20, 30,000 people around
(07:04):
issues like the environment,or you had pensioners, right?
Who would complain about notgetting their money, or state owned
enterprises that shut down and didn'tpay the wages that workers were owed.
So there's a lot of different kinds,I think, of dissent,
(07:24):
can you fill in the gaps for what peoplehad in their heads during that period?
It was a period of veryactive economic reform,
I think there was a sense in some casespeople being left out or left behind or
you had, as you mentioned,Hu Jintao's harmonious society, right?
Which was in many respects an effortto rebalance what were considered
(07:49):
to be some of the externalitiesof the Go Go economic growth.
And so what were some of the otherissues that you saw when you were there?
I know you focused on the labor butwhat were some of the other
issues that people caredabout back in the 2000s?
>> Diana Fu (08:07):
Yeah, you're right to bring up environmental organizations,
which your work andyour first book addressed in great detail.
I think a lot of the issues that peoplecared about in the Hu-Wen era were
bread and butter issues.
So the exact issues that you mentioned.
So not only did you have workersprotesting for unpaid wages or
(08:30):
going on strike.
You also had peasants,farmers whose land had been stolen
by property developers incahoots with local authorities,
they would file petitionsup the chain of command.
And you also had middle-classpeople protesting, for example,
the building of chemicalplants in their backyard.
(08:52):
And they were upset about that, and thatwas a huge incident with PX plants, right?
That instigated huge protests in China.
And you also had homeownerscheated by develop developers.
So these were all these kinds of bread andbutter issues that you would find really,
they weren't particular to China,they still aren't particular to China.
They're the bread and butter issues thatprotesters everywhere protest about.
(09:16):
But I think what distinguishedthese forms of protests in the Hu
era from perhaps protests on bread andbutter issues elsewhere
in the liberal democracies is actually theframing that protesters of that era used.
In the sense that you'd find protestslogans back in the days that
(09:38):
lambasted the local authorities forbeing corrupt and wicked and
in cahoots with local property developersfor taking away peasants lands.
But then it would immediately befollowed by slogans such as long live
the Chinese Communist Party,long live the Chinese Communist leaders.
You wouldn't never find, almost never finda slogan that used the words freedom or
(10:03):
citizens, or out with so and so leader.
And I think that's what distinguishesthe sort of the framings,
if you will, to borrow a termfrom social movement scholarship.
The framing of protests fromliberal western protests
that are also around those bread andbutter issues.
(10:23):
And I think that framing suggeststhat Chinese protesters are savvy.
And they knew and they know that thecentral authorities would be more likely
to intervene on their behalf if theyjust blamed the local authorities.
So back then, I remember talking andinterviewing local authorities from
this municipal level all the waydown to the city street level.
(10:46):
And they had a very tough time,
it was a very tough job because they feltpressure from both ends from the top.
They had to meet this criteria thatyou and I know as the one veto system,
[FOREIGN].
Which stipulates that even if theyhad one outbreak of mass incidents,
such as a protest in their area andtheir jurisdiction,
that would negatively affecttheir career trajectories.
(11:09):
And then from the bottom, if the localauthorities often had to deal with very
angry citizens, reporting them upwardto the central authorities, right?
So then, remember when I was talkingto local authorities in the Hu-Wen era,
they would tell me that their strategy forhandling disturbances was big
(11:30):
disturbances, big solutions,small disturbances, small solutions.
[FOREIGN] Which basically meant a strategyof dealing with protests as they come.
They used somewhat flexible techniquesthat sometimes involved coercion and
detainment and arrest.
But they also used things like justpaying people off with cash or
(11:51):
giving other concessions.
And I think this is all in the bigpicture of the Hu-Wen era's promotion of
harmonious society andin dealing with social conflict in a much
more flexible andfragmented way than the Xi era.
>> Elizabeth Economy (12:06):
I think it's really interesting, sort of the divergence in how
officials chose to deal withdifferent kinds of problems.
So, I know it's hard to makean assessment for the entire country, but
just based on your experience, I mean,how successful do you think the local
officials were in actually addressingthe issues that were brought before them?
(12:28):
I mean, was it just, here, take some moneyand deal with this pollution, or was it,
here, take some money andI will deal with this pollution?
And then I did deal with that pollution.
I mean, in terms of reallyresolving the issues at hand,
do you have the sense that the officialswere particularly effective?
>> Diana Fu (12:45):
That's a really hard question to answer because empirically, as we know,
China is such a fragmented state thatit really varies based on issues, and
it really varies based on the locality.
And so I would say that in the case oflabor, which I looked at more closely,
most of the time these wereband-aid redress, right?
(13:06):
So for example, the type ofmobilization that I was describing
is when NGO actually coaches a workerto challenge the state as an individual
rather than as a collective,because that way it's less risky.
So one of the things thatworkers used to do is to say,
(13:26):
I'm going to threaten to jumpoff the dormitory building if
you don't help give me my wages back orto give me compensation.
Now that's an individual challengeto an individual problem.
But there's hundreds of millions ofpeople who facing the same problem.
So those structuralissues were not resolved.
(13:50):
But at the same time, it didn't mean thatthe type of mobilization that these NGO's
were doing was meaningless just becausethose structural issues weren't there.
Because they laid the groundwork foran infrastructure of grassroots civil
society that was thendismantled by Xi Jinping.
>> Elizabeth Economy (14:07):
Right, so let's talk a little bit about Xi Jinping.
Everybody's [LAUGH] favoriteleader to talk about, I think.
So what changed?
I mean, I remember back in 2010, 2011,
I think the figure came out in 2011,it was a professor at Beidaihe,
I think, who said there were180,000 protests in China in 2010.
(14:32):
And I think that's the last sort of numberI've seen publicly released in that way.
I think we've had other numbers come outsince then, but this made a big splash,
of course.
Since then,I think you could look at China and
think there's one protestevery three years.
I mean, for everything that we see,I think in the media.
And part of that is just, as you say,
(14:53):
he dismantled the infrastructure of both,legal and illegal NGOs.
Really cut back in terms of sort ofability of foreign non-governmental
organizations to engage withChinese counterparts through
the law in 2017, andput in a much more repressive apparatus.
(15:14):
So, is it the case that, in fact,really social protest has shrunk so
greatly, have Chinesepeople found different ways
to express sort of activism andtheir discontent?
What's new, what's differentnow in the Xi Jinping era?
>> Diana Fu (15:35):
This is again a hard question to answer precisely
because we don't know the stats anymore,right?
At some point we never reallyknew if the stats that
were published by the state were accurate,they probably weren't.
But then at some point they juststopped publishing stats altogether,
even official stats onthe number of protests.
So it's really hard, I think,
(15:57):
to pinpoint changes in terms of,Empirically, how many?
What are the numbers of protests?
Have they gone up?
Have they gone down?
Have they shifted in terms of issues?
But I think that you can also look at thisquestion through qualitative changes,
not just in terms of quantitative changesin terms of the number of protests.
(16:18):
And one of the interesting dynamics interms of the qualitative changes and
protests that I've noticed in the pastten years is what I would call
a feminization of protests in China today.
Feminization both in terms of genderissues being a focal point, but
also in terms of the large number ofyoung female, non-straight people.
(16:42):
Who are at the front lines of pushing forsocial change on all kinds of issues,
not necessarily just on gender issues.
So take for example the fledgling#MeToo movement in China.
You might recall, Liz,that in November of 2021,
Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai hadposted on Chinese social media Weibo,
(17:05):
that she had been sexually assaulted byone of the former vice premiers of China.
And I think she said something like,like a moth drawn to a flame,
I know this is self-destructive,but I have to say it.
And her words unleasheda firestorm online.
Her post was taken down within 30minutes by the authorities, but
(17:30):
was searched for6.75 million times after it was censored.
And then the tennis star's own namebecame a sensitive censored word.
Now, what's interestingis that Peng herself,
I don't think is an avowed activist.
I mean, she's a sports star,she's a tennis player.
But her act of defiance andcoming out against not just anyone but
(17:52):
a central leader, a former centralleader who had been in the top
leadership circle was, I think,indicative of a broader shift.
And that is that women sexual minoritiesin China are much more vocal in terms of
their discontent and more vociferous underXi Jinping than they previously were.
(18:14):
And they have been insertingthis sort of feminist agenda,
feminist perspective into otherkinds of non-gender movements.
For example, in the #WhitePaperMovementagainst the harsh COVID policies,
I remember that there werefeminist activists in,
(18:34):
I think,based outside of China even who had said,
let's not think of this asjust a anti-COVID movement.
We also have to tackle the history ofpatriarchy and social movements and
seeing men as social movement leaders.
But just as we are against autocracy,we also need to be against patriarchy.
(18:56):
And so I think that's a very interestingqualitative shift in the types
of movements and in the types ofpeople that emerge to participate in
social movements inChina under Xi Jinping.
>> Elizabeth Economy (19:09):
That is interesting.
And I think it also speaks to one of whatwas one of the greatest fears within
the Chinese leadership when it comesto sort of civil society activism.
Which is linkage of differentkinds of issues and
different sets of sort of activiststhat you would end up with something
that would be the environment andfeminists, right?
(19:32):
And something, and COVID,that you would end up with activists
from across several differentdomains coming together and
seeing this as a broader push forpolitical reform or social change.
I think that's also, and
I think given the sort of male dominancein particular of the Xi era, right?
(19:56):
The fact that you have nowomen in the politburo and
such a small percentage, 4 or sopercent of the central committee women.
And we see,I think a much Xi Jinping talking about
not wanting effeminatemen to be in movies.
All of this, I think is a spurto what you've raised, and
(20:19):
I think is really quite interesting.
So you have a differentsort of set of actors,
I think is what you're saying,bringing together issues in
interesting ways is one significantdifference from before.
Talk a little bit->> Diana Fu: That's right.
And Liz, if I may interrupt for a second,I think you're absolutely on point
(20:40):
in saying that this isinadvertently what the state did.
By shutting down civil society is that,
they were the most afraid of civil societydeveloping into these cross-cutting,
cross sectoral networks withenvironmental activists working
alongside feminist activistsworking alongside labor activists.
(21:01):
But by shutting all thesepockets that had been previously
segmented, by shuttingthose channels down.
It inadvertently gave rise to actors who,because they have no other channels,
they've arisen to actually push forcross-cutting issues.
(21:23):
And let me ask you too,
it seems to me that a littlebit of a shift has taken place.
In the Xi era, you made the point earlierabout the sort of the dominance of local
officials as the sort of culpable officialduring the Hu Jintao era that people
complained most about local officials andsought intervention from Beijing, right?
(21:45):
A belief, especially outside Beijing,
that officials in Beijing mustnot know what's happening
out here where I'm sufferingfrom this local official who,
as you said,has stolen the money from my land sale.
But now it seems maybe with COVID andother issues, perhaps there is a greater
(22:08):
sense of responsibility being attributedto central government leaders.
Is that an accurate assessment thatthere's been a little bit of a shift or
maybe within just some segments?
That the central leadership in Xi Jinpinghimself are being held more accountable
for some of the challenges that peoplebelieve that they're facing today?
>> Diana Fu (22:33):
Yes, absolutely.
And I think that the emblematicchange that is observable is
the anti-COVID protest that brokeout just a couple of years ago.
And I say it's a emblematicchange because it's so
different in its messaging interms of comparing to prior,
(22:55):
not just to the prior era, butalso to pre-COVID era protests.
So what happened inthe White Paper movement is
that the discourse thatI talked about earlier,
that had been dominant in termsof blaming the local officials.
But showing deference andshowing loyalty to the central officials,
(23:17):
that was completely dismantledin the White Paper movement.
In the White Paper movement, Chineseprotesters were shouting, we don't want
masks, we want freedom, we need humanrights, we need freedom, we are citizens.
And some went so far as to say,down with the CCP,
down with the Chinese Communist Party,and down with Xi Jinping.
(23:40):
When I saw those words,Liz, I said, you know what?
We are in a different era now.
We had a breakthrough.
We're in a Vaclav Havel moment in China,right?
That these slogans may seem quitecommonplace in any other country,
especially in liberal democracies.
(24:00):
Where people invoke freedom forany kind of demands they have.
But this kind of language is very,very unusual in China.
Freedom, rights, citizen,we're citizens, not slaves.
These are considered to be extremelypolitically sensitive language that
protesters prior to the COVID erawould have never dared to use.
(24:20):
And they're particularly challengingto the Chinese Communist Party
because they consider these ideasto be perilous Western values.
It's so when the Chinese protesters wereusing those words and their slogans,
they knew it was like playing with fire.
But they didn't care,that was their point.
They were trying to denounce notonly the lack of basic rights,
(24:44):
the lack of housing, the lack offreedom of movement, the lack of food.
There was in Shanghai,one of the richest cities in China,
they were not only denouncing thoselack of bread-and-butter issues that
the state wasn't providing during COVIDbecause of their zero COVID policy.
(25:04):
But they were also making a link betweenthose bread-and-butter issues to
political issues.
What I mean by that is the reason whythe White Paper movement is called
the White Paper movement is because peoplewere holding up blank sheets of A4 paper.
Which is symbolic of what they wantto say, but what they cannot say.
(25:26):
So, it was symbolic of not only that, yes,
we are suffering in termsof our livelihoods.
But we can't even say, we can'teven express that we are suffering,
that we don't have food,that we can't move around,
because if we say anything like that,we will be censored by the state.
So, that was a moment in November of 2022when the language of Chinese protest and
(25:52):
the demands that people were makingshifted dramatically from just holding
the local authorities accountable to alsodirectly holding Beijing accountable.
And I think that was what was particularlythreatening to Xi Jinping, and
that was why his administration tooka U-turn within weeks by uplift,
(26:16):
by just basically doing awaywith the zero COVID policy.
>> Elizabeth Economy (26:20):
So have we seen since then any sign that,
I mean, we can imagine, right?
Having seen it once sort ofexplode in the way that we did.
Those feelings, those sentiments,don't disappear,
simply because the Chinese governmentmade a U-turn on this one policy.
What you're talking about is somethingfar more profound than simply,
(26:41):
as you said, just the lockup,which is, of course traumatic.
But it's about the ability toexpress your views, right?
And to freely express your views.
So since then, have we seen anysigns of similar kind of activism,
or should we just understand thatthis is all beneath the surface and
(27:04):
it may just take another kind of crisisissue to provoke another outburst.
But we're unlikely to see thatsort of discontent burbling
up at sort of an elevatedlevel in a consistent way.
>> Diana Fu (27:20):
I think it's the latter, I think since COVID it's only been a couple
of years, we haven't seen anythingquite like the White Paper movement.
But let's not forget thatthe White Paper movement lives on.
And in fact, I was just listening toa number of Chinese people talk on
the New York Times Liyuan's podcast,in Wu Ming Bai, in Chinese.
(27:41):
To talk about people's memoriesof the White Paper protests and
how that the memory of having done that,it lives in people's consciousness.
Once you break the lie, right?
To go back to Vaclav Havel when hewas describing people living under
a lie under Communist Czechoslovakia.
(28:02):
But they were living largely asthe green grocers who put up a sign to
support the regime's policiesjust to participate in that lie.
But once you have the breakthrough,once people stop,
have a taste of what it means to not bethe greengrocers who support that lie,
then I think that memory lives on.
(28:23):
And it is infused in the consciousness ofat least those people who participated or
perhaps observed the White Paper movement.
And I think that does leave a discursivelegacy and a consciousness legacy
that is likely to be brought back oncethe political opportunity opens again.
>> Elizabeth Economy (28:43):
I think it's a really important point.
So, I wanna reserve a little bit oftime to talk about your new work.
And in part, I think we haveseen over the past several years
a number of Chinese leaving the country,
going to places like Tokyo orAmsterdam or even Washington, DC.
Leading intellectuals, people, liberals,in a kind of a Western context
(29:08):
of a liberal sort of people who might haveparticipated in this White Paper movement.
Entrepreneurs, others who coloroutside the lines on a regular basis,
leaving the country and adding, I think,a new dimension to the Chinese diaspora.
Talk a little bit about whatthat diaspora is looking for and
(29:32):
what it is that Xi Jinping is tryingto do in terms of controlling and
managing the voices of Chineseoutside of the country's borders.
>> Diana Fu (29:44):
Yeah, that's right.
So this new book,which is co-authored with my colleague Dr.
Emile Dirks at the University of Toronto,is tentatively titled
How Global China Controls Its DiasporaAbroad, Coercion and Consent.
And I wanted to write this book forboth personal and
(30:04):
intellectual reasons, because personally,
I'm a part of this vast Chinesediaspora that you just talked about.
That are scattered across every singlecontinent and is one of the largest
in the world, I believe surpassedonly by India and Mexico.
And throughout the years that I've lived,now, I'm not a political dissident and I
came with my parents as a first-generationimmigrant when I was younger.
(30:26):
But having lived in various,various parts of the world with large
Chinese diasporas,including Canada, the US and the UK.
I've noticed throughout the yearshow different Chinese, different
kinds of Chinese people abroad, who we intotal call Huaqiao, the Chinese abroad.
(30:47):
But we're very diverse population,
how they maintain their connectionsto China culturally and politically.
And this is not by accident andnot purely by based on ethnic connections
that Chinese abroad feel a deep senseof intimacy and connection to China.
This connectedness to China is actuallypart of a long standing, historic,
(31:12):
continuous and well-funded project onthe part of the Chinese government
to cultivate ties, to continue tocultivate ties with the diaspora.
And in other words, it's a part ofwhat academics would call statecraft.
It's a part of Chinese statecraft.
And so, this book aims to unpackwhat this statecraft entails to
(31:32):
win over the hearts andminds of those that are abroad.
So, the main argument is that if youlook at the strategies that Beijing
uses to govern the diaspora abroad,it's very much the same playbook that
they use domestically, which isa combination of coercion and consent.
And I think it's useful to think ofthe diaspora as being divided into
(31:57):
three categories in the eyes of Beijing.
Enemies, though those are the peoplethat you just mentioned,
the political dissidents,the agitators that have fled abroad and
are now living in all kindsof liberal democracies.
Also in countries thatare closer to China, so
that's easier to stay connectedto those that are still in China.
So those are the people thatthe state would consider as enemies
(32:21):
because they promoteliberal democratic values.
And then you've got the agnostics, orare a large swath of people who may
somewhat identify with Beijing'spolicies but are unhappy.
Perhaps with gender inequity and
perhaps with the way that peoplewere treated under the coded policy.
You've got a large swath ofpeople who are agnostic and
(32:43):
then you've got loyalists, people whoare what we call the little pinks, right?
The patriotic, ultra, national patrioticyouth that are not just limited to youth,
they're also middle age and older peoplewho really feel this connection to
everything that the party says.
Every party position on Taiwan,on the US on anything,
(33:04):
they will speak withthe same voice as the party.
And so if you look at these threecategories, or we find that the party
obviously applies different strategiesto control these different groups.
And for the enemies, they use what isnow termed transnational repression,
(33:25):
which is repression that reaches beyond
one's sovereign borders totarget the enemies abroad.
For the agnostics,they use a combination of persuasion and
propaganda andemotional propaganda, right?
Including like Chinese New Year,that we're looming,
we're about to go intothe year of the snake, right?
(33:46):
This Chinese associations everywhere,just building and
emphasizing the connections tothe 5,000 years of history in China,
so those are forthe agnostics in the middle.
And then the party also rewards the thirdgroup, the loyalists who are abroad,
both symbolically and materially, whovociferously speak for Beijing's agenda.
(34:10):
And so I think it's important, this book,as a follow up to my first book,
which is exclusively on domesticchange makers in China.
To look at this playbook that issimilar between domestic China and
what the CCP carries onoutside of its borders.
And the book also examines, and
(34:30):
this is the intellectual puzzle thatinterested me and my co author.
Which is that what, if anything,distinguishes the Chinese playbook
from other states such as India,Russia, Iran, Turkey.
Because only through comparison, and
I hear I'm speaking as a comparativist,right?
Can we really tease out what isempirically different about things that
(34:52):
are on the minds of policymakers?
Like foreign interference andinfluen from different countries,
cuz China is not the onlycountry who's doing that.
>> Elizabeth Economy (35:00):
That sounds fascinating and
I definitely wanna have you back onthe show when your book comes out.
I'm gonna ask you one little questionhere, and that is, I mean, you're at
the University of Toronto and presumablythere are a lot of students from China.
I mean, have you seen any effortseither at the sort of the outside
(35:23):
on the propaganda, and little pink sideof things, or on the coercive side?
Have you witnessed personally any ofthis kind of behavior by Beijing?
>> Diana Fu (35:34):
I have, and I think in Toronto is one of those interesting places
where we have all threecategories of people.
And just a super,
super diverse classroom where you havestudents from Hong Kong sitting alongside
students from mainland China sittingalongside students from Taiwan.
And then within the mainland Chinesestudents, you have the regular people, or
(35:57):
they would call themselves Lao Dxing.
And then you would also have the[FOREIGN], which are the nouveau riche,
the sons and daughters of really,really rich Chinese people.
And so one interesting anecdotewas that during the pro democracy
movement that really apexed in about 2019,2020.
(36:18):
In Hong Kong, there were all theseHong Kong diaspora people who
are also joining in on the protests andtrying to raise same issues.
And Toronto and Canada actuallybeing the home to one of the largest
Hong Kong diasporas,was a hotbed of that kind of activism.
And so what you had in response to thiskind of activism is largely nouveau
(36:43):
rich Chinese students from a particularcampus of the University of Toronto.
They drove down the highway in theirFerraris and BMWs and Mercedes and
probably some other brands of carsthat I don't even know about.
And all of those cars had Chineseflags waving on them, and
(37:06):
that was their symbolic protestagainst the diaspora from Hong Kong.
And their supporters that look,they're speaking and
they didn't have to say anything,they didn't have to shout.
They were just showing this,their symbolic economic weight,
right, that we made it, andwhat are you guys complaining about?
Look at what the regime has done forus and
(37:29):
look what it can do toHong Kong if it wants to.
And you guys should just shut upbecause of the symbolic goods that
China has brought, that Beijinghas brought to all of us, right?
And so I think that'semblematic of that interesting
tensions within the diasporathat I witnessed at in Toronto.
>> Elizabeth Economy (37:52):
Yeah, it might be interesting to look to see how many of
those students,
the really wealthy students,ended up going back to China, actually.
>> Diana Fu (38:01):
Right.
>> Elizabeth Economy (38:01):
And making their lives there, and
how many of them sought to stay, inCanada or come to United States or UK or
other places and to continue to enjoysort of the benefits of both the money.
That their parents earned fromthe mainland and the freedoms that
they can enjoy outside, butI guess that's a different book.
(38:24):
So I always finish witha couple of quick questions, so
three for you, first,must read book or article on China.
>> Diana Fu (38:33):
Yeah, so I'm gonna go old school and
just refer a 2008 article.
So I guess not super old school, but
a 2008 article by Elizabeth Perrythat I've referenced over and
over again, both in my teaching,but also to unpack headlines.
(38:55):
And that article is calledChinese Conception of Rights from
Mencius to Mao and Now.
And I won't do justice to describeit in a couple of sentences, but
it basically from a tradition thatgoes way beyond the CCP itself,
way beyond the establishment ofthe People's Republic of China.
(39:16):
How subsistence rights, the rightsto livelihoods, the rights to eat,
the rights to have housing has alwaysbeen prioritized before political rights.
Political rights such asthe right to protest,
the right to associate,the right to the right to assemble.
(39:36):
And I think that's really important whenwe're unpacking what's happening in China,
including the official discourse that.
Well, China protects human rights becausewe lifted millions of people out or
hundreds of millions ofpeople out of poverty.
Right, and soI think that would be my go to article.
>> Elizabeth Economy (39:56):
Okay, great, she's a tremendous scholar, so thumbs up for that,
okay what China issue dowe not know enough about?
In addition to the one that I thinkthat you've talked about today,
what else is out there youthink that is underappreciated,
in the United States,in Canada, about China?
>> Diana Fu (40:17):
I think that we focus, we as China scholars, and
especially in the policy world focus somuch on geopolitical tensions like Taiwan,
supply chains, critical minerals tariffs.
That we often forget about exactly what wewere just talking about which is people,
and especially young people,cuz young people drive public policy.
(40:37):
And even in an authoritarian regime whereleaders can't get voted out of power,
they're very attuned to public opinion.
So I think one issue or one group ofpeople that we should pay more attention
to is actually the younger generationof Chinese who are now in college.
Both in China and outside of China, and
will be the leaders inthe next five to ten years.
(40:59):
And I just wanna give a briefanecdote of some of the things
that young people are doing.
Which is that there was a recentphenomenon of university students
in China, just taking to the streetsat night to ride around in bicycles.
Hundreds of thousands of themjust flocking to the streets to
(41:22):
ride bikes around at night.
So, you might think well, that seems likepretty good, it's healthy, it's safe.
They not shouting any slogans, sowhy would the government care?
But the government actually did care andwanted and put a stop to this phenomenon.
And the reason why they were soattuned to this phenomenon is because,
(41:45):
what young people are facingnow it's very threatening to
the regime because of the highrates of youth unemployment.
So the unemployment rateamong 16 to 24 year old's
in the urban areas of Chinahit about 21.3% in June,
(42:06):
and had been rising ever since.
And until recently when the governmentjust stopped publishing statistics on it,
and then republished statisticsthat looked better, right?
So the reason why this isimportant because we know from
history that youth ledmovements have been a political
(42:29):
threat to the power of the state,of the party state.
From Tiananmen 1989-2022,White Paper Movement,
a lot of it was led by young people.
So if you have economic slowdown whereone out of five young people in urban
areas can't find a job, that's verythreatening to political legitimacy.
(42:50):
And it's things like that,domestic trends like that,
that actually have a direct impact onforeign affairs and foreign policy and
on the regime itself that I thinkwe should pay more attention to.
>> Elizabeth Economy (43:02):
Excellent I completely, as a fellow comparativist,
I completely agree with you.
Understanding what's going on insideChina is incredibly important for
understanding how it's foreign policy andsort of opportunities for us.
I think to both engage and potentiallyexploit tensions inside the country,
(43:22):
but basically just to understand.
And then finally on a scale of one to ten,now you live in Canada, but
you are also a non residentfellow at Brookings and
I know also think a lot about the US andUS foreign policy.
How likely do you think it is that we'regonna see a breakthrough in the US China
relationship in the next decade?
(43:44):
And if you think there will be one,what do you think it'll look like?
>> Diana Fu (43:47):
Yeah, I feel like, Liz, you're more of an expert on this than me
and I'm actually teachingyour 2022 policy essay and
the China questions 2 book on whetherengagement with China is still viable.
So I think to pivot,that I think to the extent that we'll see
a breakthrough in US China relations,whether under Trump or
(44:07):
under the next president, it has toreally involve people to people exchange.
And it sounds like such a mundane phrase,but it's so
important that these people topeople exchanges not only happen but
that they're organic in additionto the top level exchanges.
Which remain important butare not always possible due to,
(44:27):
due to politics on both sides of the pond.
And a recent phenomenon reminded me thatthese organic encounters are sometimes
unwittingly introduced by policies thateither Beijing or Washington makes.
So for example,as we just saw with the TikTok refugees
going over from TikTok tothe Chinese app Xiaohongshu.
>> Elizabeth Economy (44:50):
That was incredible.
>> Diana Fu (44:51):
Yeah [LAUGH], I mean it's just young Americans discovering and
Canadians and others,but Americans primarily.
Discovering perhaps for the first timethat those Chinese people over there
have the same interests in cats, in videogames and Taylor Swift, you name it.
And that may provoke them to think,and they are an important voting bloc,
(45:15):
they're an important electorate.
They might provoke them to think well, isChina such a bad national security threat?
If I have so much in common with thepeople over there, and I think these kinds
of people that people encounters thatare organic, not always planned.
Sometimes unwittingly introducedare exactly the types of breakthroughs
(45:38):
that might lead to a broader breakbreakthrough in the next decade.
>> Elizabeth Economy (45:42):
That's a great and
more optimistic note than I'd hoped forto end on.
So, Diana let me thank you once again for
taking the time out of your verybusy schedule to speak with us.
And again I look forward to having youback when your next book comes out it's
a really important topic and
(46:02):
I know it's gonna be full ofreally fascinating insights.
>> Diana Fu (46:06):
Thank you so much Liz, this has been very enjoyable.
>> Elizabeth Economy (46:09):
If you enjoy this podcast and want to hear more reasoned
discourse and debate on China, I encourageyou to subscribe to China Considered via
the Hoover Institution YouTube channel orpodcast platform of your choice.
In our next episode, I'll be speaking withDr. Adam Segal, who heads the Digital and
Cyberspace Policy program atthe Council on Foreign Relations.
And was the principal drafter ofthe US International Cyberspace and
(46:32):
Digital Policy Strategy that just came outlast spring in the Biden administration.
We'll talk about China's cyber hacking andwhat the US is, and
more importantly shouldbe doing to respond.
Thank you.
>> [MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
>> Elizabeth Economy (00:08):
Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
insights and informed discussion to one ofthe most consequential issues of our time,
how China is changing andchanging the world.
I'm Liz Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellowand Co director of the US-China and
the World Program at the HooverInstitution at Stanford University.
Today I have with me Dr. Diana Fu.
She's associate professor of politicalscience at the Munk School at
(00:31):
the University of Toronto and
a non-resident fellow atthe Brookings Institution.
She's also an award-winning author,
her area of expertise is social activismand political repression in China.
She's just putting the finishingtouches on a new book that looks at how
the Chinese government seeks to manage orcontrol the Chinese diaspora.
That's Chinese who are livingoutside the country, and so
(00:53):
we're gonna be able to talktoday about social activism and
political repression both inside andoutside China.
So, Diana, welcome, and to get us started,
let me ask you to take us backto the pre Xi Jinping era.
I think for many of us,
we've become somewhat consumedwith China over the past 12 years.
And we're beginning to developa collective amnesia about what China was
(01:17):
like during the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintaoeras, the sort of 1990s and 2000s.
So take us back and help us understandwhat did Chinese society look like then?
What was front and center in the mindsof the Chinese people in terms of issues
that they wantedthe government to address?
And did they write lettersto the Chinese government,
(01:38):
did they step out ontothe streets to protest?
Give us a sense for what social andpolitical activism looked like back,
more than a decade ago.
>> Diana Fu (01:47):
Yes, thank you so much for having me on your show and for
asking this first question,which we actually don't think about a lot.
Because there's so much emphasison the Xi era that we've almost
forgotten about the era that justpreceded him, which was the Hu when era,
which ran from about 10years from 2002 to 2012.
(02:07):
And at that time, during that period,I was a grad student at Oxford University
and I had witnessed firsthand the changesin state society relations in the Hu era.
Which then the leaders touted asa harmonious society, which it wasn't,
but perhaps more harmonious thanthe decade that we're living in now.
(02:30):
So when Xi was still in hisfirst term from 2012 to 2017ish,
I co-authored an articleon this exact topic for
the China Journal on what changed,if anything,
in terms of grassrootspolitical participation.
And the gist of what that article wassaying was that from the Hu era you
(02:52):
had what we called fragmented control.
Which is that Beijing more or lessallowed local states to deal with local
unrest in whatever way they saw fit,so long as it was kept under control.
And this changed in the Xi era,where you have centralized control,
that Beijing really took reinsinto its own hands to make
(03:15):
sure that unrest was keptat bay in a specific way.
So let me give you some examples,so back in 2009 to 2011,
when I was doing my dissertationresearch in China in the Hu era.
I was spending about 18 months conductingpolitical ethnography on networks
of illegal grassroots organizationsacross the Pearl River Delta and
(03:40):
the Yangtze River Delta.
Which are really the twomanufacturing hubs of China.
And these labor organizationswere very small,
they were operated by migrantworker leaders themselves.
And what they would do is they wouldcoach other migrant workers on how to
get their wages back, how to contendwith the local state for injury payment.
(04:02):
And they were illegal becausethe state only allows one
official union to representall workers in China, and
that's the All China Federationof Trade Unions.
So my 2018 book really theorizedhow it was possible that
these weak organizations could notonly survive in the Huwen era,
(04:25):
but also mobilize workersunder that regime.
And I called that type of mobilizationmobilizing without the masses,
now what changed?
So these groups are emblematic of the typeof grassroots civil society that had been
operating in the Huwen era,under the radar, but still surviving.
Now, when Xi took power and 2012, 2013,
(04:48):
he took very swift actions againstall kinds of grassroots civil
society that had beenoperating in these gray zones.
He arrested labor organization leaders, hedetained feminist activists, he shut down
long operating legal aid organizations,he cracked down on underground churches.
(05:09):
Basically, he broke the backboneof grassroots civil society
that had been allowed to not flourish,but allowed to exist under the Huwen era.
And I think that is one of Xi's legacies,and to date, these grassroots
civil society haven't really beenable to resuscitate under Xi Jinping.
(05:31):
Many of the leaders,as you know Liz, have fled abroad and
are now part of the diaspora.
And when I've spokento them more recently,
they characterized the Xi eraas a very long and harsh winter.
Possibly even harsher than the wintersthat we experience here in Canada.
For which they are currently underhibernation, but are not dead, and
(05:52):
that's a very important point.
Is that I don't think civil society andactivism is dead under Xi,
they're merely in hibernation.
>> Elizabeth Economy (06:01):
Okay, so, but
let me ask you again just a littlebit more about the Hu Jintao era.
Did they just tolerate most of theseillegal migrant labor organizations?
I mean,certainly there were legal organizations,
I did a lot of work myselfon China's environment.
And there were masses of legallyrecognized NGOs that worked on
(06:22):
the environment,you mentioned feminist organizations.
So in that space between what we wouldcall government organized non-governmental
organizations and what you're termingillegal, small scale kinds of NGOs.
That are operating in ways thatare just antithetical to what
(06:43):
government believes to be its interests,there's a broader space.
There was a broader space certainly forrecognized activism, right?
That sometimes then turned intonot just small scale protests,
but mass protests with 10,20, 30,000 people around
(07:04):
issues like the environment,or you had pensioners, right?
Who would complain about notgetting their money, or state owned
enterprises that shut down and didn'tpay the wages that workers were owed.
So there's a lot of different kinds,I think, of dissent,
(07:24):
can you fill in the gaps for what peoplehad in their heads during that period?
It was a period of veryactive economic reform,
I think there was a sense in some casespeople being left out or left behind or
you had, as you mentioned,Hu Jintao's harmonious society, right?
Which was in many respects an effortto rebalance what were considered
(07:49):
to be some of the externalitiesof the Go Go economic growth.
And so what were some of the otherissues that you saw when you were there?
I know you focused on the labor butwhat were some of the other
issues that people caredabout back in the 2000s?
>> Diana Fu (08:07):
Yeah, you're right to bring up environmental organizations,
which your work andyour first book addressed in great detail.
I think a lot of the issues that peoplecared about in the Hu-Wen era were
bread and butter issues.
So the exact issues that you mentioned.
So not only did you have workersprotesting for unpaid wages or
(08:30):
going on strike.
You also had peasants,farmers whose land had been stolen
by property developers incahoots with local authorities,
they would file petitionsup the chain of command.
And you also had middle-classpeople protesting, for example,
the building of chemicalplants in their backyard.
(08:52):
And they were upset about that, and thatwas a huge incident with PX plants, right?
That instigated huge protests in China.
And you also had homeownerscheated by develop developers.
So these were all these kinds of bread andbutter issues that you would find really,
they weren't particular to China,they still aren't particular to China.
They're the bread and butter issues thatprotesters everywhere protest about.
(09:16):
But I think what distinguishedthese forms of protests in the Hu
era from perhaps protests on bread andbutter issues elsewhere
in the liberal democracies is actually theframing that protesters of that era used.
In the sense that you'd find protestslogans back in the days that
(09:38):
lambasted the local authorities forbeing corrupt and wicked and
in cahoots with local property developersfor taking away peasants lands.
But then it would immediately befollowed by slogans such as long live
the Chinese Communist Party,long live the Chinese Communist leaders.
You wouldn't never find, almost never finda slogan that used the words freedom or
(10:03):
citizens, or out with so and so leader.
And I think that's what distinguishesthe sort of the framings,
if you will, to borrow a termfrom social movement scholarship.
The framing of protests fromliberal western protests
that are also around those bread andbutter issues.
(10:23):
And I think that framing suggeststhat Chinese protesters are savvy.
And they knew and they know that thecentral authorities would be more likely
to intervene on their behalf if theyjust blamed the local authorities.
So back then, I remember talking andinterviewing local authorities from
this municipal level all the waydown to the city street level.
(10:46):
And they had a very tough time,
it was a very tough job because they feltpressure from both ends from the top.
They had to meet this criteria thatyou and I know as the one veto system,
[FOREIGN].
Which stipulates that even if theyhad one outbreak of mass incidents,
such as a protest in their area andtheir jurisdiction,
that would negatively affecttheir career trajectories.
(11:09):
And then from the bottom, if the localauthorities often had to deal with very
angry citizens, reporting them upwardto the central authorities, right?
So then, remember when I was talkingto local authorities in the Hu-Wen era,
they would tell me that their strategy forhandling disturbances was big
(11:30):
disturbances, big solutions,small disturbances, small solutions.
[FOREIGN] Which basically meant a strategyof dealing with protests as they come.
They used somewhat flexible techniquesthat sometimes involved coercion and
detainment and arrest.
But they also used things like justpaying people off with cash or
(11:51):
giving other concessions.
And I think this is all in the bigpicture of the Hu-Wen era's promotion of
harmonious society andin dealing with social conflict in a much
more flexible andfragmented way than the Xi era.
>> Elizabeth Economy (12:06):
I think it's really interesting, sort of the divergence in how
officials chose to deal withdifferent kinds of problems.
So, I know it's hard to makean assessment for the entire country, but
just based on your experience, I mean,how successful do you think the local
officials were in actually addressingthe issues that were brought before them?
(12:28):
I mean, was it just, here, take some moneyand deal with this pollution, or was it,
here, take some money andI will deal with this pollution?
And then I did deal with that pollution.
I mean, in terms of reallyresolving the issues at hand,
do you have the sense that the officialswere particularly effective?
>> Diana Fu (12:45):
That's a really hard question to answer because empirically, as we know,
China is such a fragmented state thatit really varies based on issues, and
it really varies based on the locality.
And so I would say that in the case oflabor, which I looked at more closely,
most of the time these wereband-aid redress, right?
(13:06):
So for example, the type ofmobilization that I was describing
is when NGO actually coaches a workerto challenge the state as an individual
rather than as a collective,because that way it's less risky.
So one of the things thatworkers used to do is to say,
(13:26):
I'm going to threaten to jumpoff the dormitory building if
you don't help give me my wages back orto give me compensation.
Now that's an individual challengeto an individual problem.
But there's hundreds of millions ofpeople who facing the same problem.
So those structuralissues were not resolved.
(13:50):
But at the same time, it didn't mean thatthe type of mobilization that these NGO's
were doing was meaningless just becausethose structural issues weren't there.
Because they laid the groundwork foran infrastructure of grassroots civil
society that was thendismantled by Xi Jinping.
>> Elizabeth Economy (14:07):
Right, so let's talk a little bit about Xi Jinping.
Everybody's [LAUGH] favoriteleader to talk about, I think.
So what changed?
I mean, I remember back in 2010, 2011,
I think the figure came out in 2011,it was a professor at Beidaihe,
I think, who said there were180,000 protests in China in 2010.
(14:32):
And I think that's the last sort of numberI've seen publicly released in that way.
I think we've had other numbers come outsince then, but this made a big splash,
of course.
Since then,I think you could look at China and
think there's one protestevery three years.
I mean, for everything that we see,I think in the media.
And part of that is just, as you say,
(14:53):
he dismantled the infrastructure of both,legal and illegal NGOs.
Really cut back in terms of sort ofability of foreign non-governmental
organizations to engage withChinese counterparts through
the law in 2017, andput in a much more repressive apparatus.
(15:14):
So, is it the case that, in fact,really social protest has shrunk so
greatly, have Chinesepeople found different ways
to express sort of activism andtheir discontent?
What's new, what's differentnow in the Xi Jinping era?
>> Diana Fu (15:35):
This is again a hard question to answer precisely
because we don't know the stats anymore,right?
At some point we never reallyknew if the stats that
were published by the state were accurate,they probably weren't.
But then at some point they juststopped publishing stats altogether,
even official stats onthe number of protests.
So it's really hard, I think,
(15:57):
to pinpoint changes in terms of,Empirically, how many?
What are the numbers of protests?
Have they gone up?
Have they gone down?
Have they shifted in terms of issues?
But I think that you can also look at thisquestion through qualitative changes,
not just in terms of quantitative changesin terms of the number of protests.
(16:18):
And one of the interesting dynamics interms of the qualitative changes and
protests that I've noticed in the pastten years is what I would call
a feminization of protests in China today.
Feminization both in terms of genderissues being a focal point, but
also in terms of the large number ofyoung female, non-straight people.
(16:42):
Who are at the front lines of pushing forsocial change on all kinds of issues,
not necessarily just on gender issues.
So take for example the fledgling#MeToo movement in China.
You might recall, Liz,that in November of 2021,
Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai hadposted on Chinese social media Weibo,
(17:05):
that she had been sexually assaulted byone of the former vice premiers of China.
And I think she said something like,like a moth drawn to a flame,
I know this is self-destructive,but I have to say it.
And her words unleasheda firestorm online.
Her post was taken down within 30minutes by the authorities, but
(17:30):
was searched for6.75 million times after it was censored.
And then the tennis star's own namebecame a sensitive censored word.
Now, what's interestingis that Peng herself,
I don't think is an avowed activist.
I mean, she's a sports star,she's a tennis player.
But her act of defiance andcoming out against not just anyone but
(17:52):
a central leader, a former centralleader who had been in the top
leadership circle was, I think,indicative of a broader shift.
And that is that women sexual minoritiesin China are much more vocal in terms of
their discontent and more vociferous underXi Jinping than they previously were.
(18:14):
And they have been insertingthis sort of feminist agenda,
feminist perspective into otherkinds of non-gender movements.
For example, in the #WhitePaperMovementagainst the harsh COVID policies,
I remember that there werefeminist activists in,
(18:34):
I think,based outside of China even who had said,
let's not think of this asjust a anti-COVID movement.
We also have to tackle the history ofpatriarchy and social movements and
seeing men as social movement leaders.
But just as we are against autocracy,we also need to be against patriarchy.
(18:56):
And so I think that's a very interestingqualitative shift in the types
of movements and in the types ofpeople that emerge to participate in
social movements inChina under Xi Jinping.
>> Elizabeth Economy (19:09):
That is interesting.
And I think it also speaks to one of whatwas one of the greatest fears within
the Chinese leadership when it comesto sort of civil society activism.
Which is linkage of differentkinds of issues and
different sets of sort of activiststhat you would end up with something
that would be the environment andfeminists, right?
(19:32):
And something, and COVID,that you would end up with activists
from across several differentdomains coming together and
seeing this as a broader push forpolitical reform or social change.
I think that's also, and
I think given the sort of male dominancein particular of the Xi era, right?
(19:56):
The fact that you have nowomen in the politburo and
such a small percentage, 4 or sopercent of the central committee women.
And we see,I think a much Xi Jinping talking about
not wanting effeminatemen to be in movies.
All of this, I think is a spurto what you've raised, and
(20:19):
I think is really quite interesting.
So you have a differentsort of set of actors,
I think is what you're saying,bringing together issues in
interesting ways is one significantdifference from before.
Talk a little bit->> Diana Fu: That's right.
And Liz, if I may interrupt for a second,I think you're absolutely on point
(20:40):
in saying that this isinadvertently what the state did.
By shutting down civil society is that,
they were the most afraid of civil societydeveloping into these cross-cutting,
cross sectoral networks withenvironmental activists working
alongside feminist activistsworking alongside labor activists.
(21:01):
But by shutting all thesepockets that had been previously
segmented, by shuttingthose channels down.
It inadvertently gave rise to actors who,because they have no other channels,
they've arisen to actually push forcross-cutting issues.
(21:23):
And let me ask you too,
it seems to me that a littlebit of a shift has taken place.
In the Xi era, you made the point earlierabout the sort of the dominance of local
officials as the sort of culpable officialduring the Hu Jintao era that people
complained most about local officials andsought intervention from Beijing, right?
(21:45):
A belief, especially outside Beijing,
that officials in Beijing mustnot know what's happening
out here where I'm sufferingfrom this local official who,
as you said,has stolen the money from my land sale.
But now it seems maybe with COVID andother issues, perhaps there is a greater
(22:08):
sense of responsibility being attributedto central government leaders.
Is that an accurate assessment thatthere's been a little bit of a shift or
maybe within just some segments?
That the central leadership in Xi Jinpinghimself are being held more accountable
for some of the challenges that peoplebelieve that they're facing today?
>> Diana Fu (22:33):
Yes, absolutely.
And I think that the emblematicchange that is observable is
the anti-COVID protest that brokeout just a couple of years ago.
And I say it's a emblematicchange because it's so
different in its messaging interms of comparing to prior,
(22:55):
not just to the prior era, butalso to pre-COVID era protests.
So what happened inthe White Paper movement is
that the discourse thatI talked about earlier,
that had been dominant in termsof blaming the local officials.
But showing deference andshowing loyalty to the central officials,
(23:17):
that was completely dismantledin the White Paper movement.
In the White Paper movement, Chineseprotesters were shouting, we don't want
masks, we want freedom, we need humanrights, we need freedom, we are citizens.
And some went so far as to say,down with the CCP,
down with the Chinese Communist Party,and down with Xi Jinping.
(23:40):
When I saw those words,Liz, I said, you know what?
We are in a different era now.
We had a breakthrough.
We're in a Vaclav Havel moment in China,right?
That these slogans may seem quitecommonplace in any other country,
especially in liberal democracies.
(24:00):
Where people invoke freedom forany kind of demands they have.
But this kind of language is very,very unusual in China.
Freedom, rights, citizen,we're citizens, not slaves.
These are considered to be extremelypolitically sensitive language that
protesters prior to the COVID erawould have never dared to use.
(24:20):
And they're particularly challengingto the Chinese Communist Party
because they consider these ideasto be perilous Western values.
It's so when the Chinese protesters wereusing those words and their slogans,
they knew it was like playing with fire.
But they didn't care,that was their point.
They were trying to denounce notonly the lack of basic rights,
(24:44):
the lack of housing, the lack offreedom of movement, the lack of food.
There was in Shanghai,one of the richest cities in China,
they were not only denouncing thoselack of bread-and-butter issues that
the state wasn't providing during COVIDbecause of their zero COVID policy.
(25:04):
But they were also making a link betweenthose bread-and-butter issues to
political issues.
What I mean by that is the reason whythe White Paper movement is called
the White Paper movement is because peoplewere holding up blank sheets of A4 paper.
Which is symbolic of what they wantto say, but what they cannot say.
(25:26):
So, it was symbolic of not only that, yes,
we are suffering in termsof our livelihoods.
But we can't even say, we can'teven express that we are suffering,
that we don't have food,that we can't move around,
because if we say anything like that,we will be censored by the state.
So, that was a moment in November of 2022when the language of Chinese protest and
(25:52):
the demands that people were makingshifted dramatically from just holding
the local authorities accountable to alsodirectly holding Beijing accountable.
And I think that was what was particularlythreatening to Xi Jinping, and
that was why his administration tooka U-turn within weeks by uplift,
(26:16):
by just basically doing awaywith the zero COVID policy.
>> Elizabeth Economy (26:20):
So have we seen since then any sign that,
I mean, we can imagine, right?
Having seen it once sort ofexplode in the way that we did.
Those feelings, those sentiments,don't disappear,
simply because the Chinese governmentmade a U-turn on this one policy.
What you're talking about is somethingfar more profound than simply,
(26:41):
as you said, just the lockup,which is, of course traumatic.
But it's about the ability toexpress your views, right?
And to freely express your views.
So since then, have we seen anysigns of similar kind of activism,
or should we just understand thatthis is all beneath the surface and
(27:04):
it may just take another kind of crisisissue to provoke another outburst.
But we're unlikely to see thatsort of discontent burbling
up at sort of an elevatedlevel in a consistent way.
>> Diana Fu (27:20):
I think it's the latter, I think since COVID it's only been a couple
of years, we haven't seen anythingquite like the White Paper movement.
But let's not forget thatthe White Paper movement lives on.
And in fact, I was just listening toa number of Chinese people talk on
the New York Times Liyuan's podcast,in Wu Ming Bai, in Chinese.
(27:41):
To talk about people's memoriesof the White Paper protests and
how that the memory of having done that,it lives in people's consciousness.
Once you break the lie, right?
To go back to Vaclav Havel when hewas describing people living under
a lie under Communist Czechoslovakia.
(28:02):
But they were living largely asthe green grocers who put up a sign to
support the regime's policiesjust to participate in that lie.
But once you have the breakthrough,once people stop,
have a taste of what it means to not bethe greengrocers who support that lie,
then I think that memory lives on.
(28:23):
And it is infused in the consciousness ofat least those people who participated or
perhaps observed the White Paper movement.
And I think that does leave a discursivelegacy and a consciousness legacy
that is likely to be brought back oncethe political opportunity opens again.
>> Elizabeth Economy (28:43):
I think it's a really important point.
So, I wanna reserve a little bit oftime to talk about your new work.
And in part, I think we haveseen over the past several years
a number of Chinese leaving the country,
going to places like Tokyo orAmsterdam or even Washington, DC.
Leading intellectuals, people, liberals,in a kind of a Western context
(29:08):
of a liberal sort of people who might haveparticipated in this White Paper movement.
Entrepreneurs, others who coloroutside the lines on a regular basis,
leaving the country and adding, I think,a new dimension to the Chinese diaspora.
Talk a little bit about whatthat diaspora is looking for and
(29:32):
what it is that Xi Jinping is tryingto do in terms of controlling and
managing the voices of Chineseoutside of the country's borders.
>> Diana Fu (29:44):
Yeah, that's right.
So this new book,which is co-authored with my colleague Dr.
Emile Dirks at the University of Toronto,is tentatively titled
How Global China Controls Its DiasporaAbroad, Coercion and Consent.
And I wanted to write this book forboth personal and
(30:04):
intellectual reasons, because personally,
I'm a part of this vast Chinesediaspora that you just talked about.
That are scattered across every singlecontinent and is one of the largest
in the world, I believe surpassedonly by India and Mexico.
And throughout the years that I've lived,now, I'm not a political dissident and I
came with my parents as a first-generationimmigrant when I was younger.
(30:26):
But having lived in various,various parts of the world with large
Chinese diasporas,including Canada, the US and the UK.
I've noticed throughout the yearshow different Chinese, different
kinds of Chinese people abroad, who we intotal call Huaqiao, the Chinese abroad.
(30:47):
But we're very diverse population,
how they maintain their connectionsto China culturally and politically.
And this is not by accident andnot purely by based on ethnic connections
that Chinese abroad feel a deep senseof intimacy and connection to China.
This connectedness to China is actuallypart of a long standing, historic,
(31:12):
continuous and well-funded project onthe part of the Chinese government
to cultivate ties, to continue tocultivate ties with the diaspora.
And in other words, it's a part ofwhat academics would call statecraft.
It's a part of Chinese statecraft.
And so, this book aims to unpackwhat this statecraft entails to
(31:32):
win over the hearts andminds of those that are abroad.
So, the main argument is that if youlook at the strategies that Beijing
uses to govern the diaspora abroad,it's very much the same playbook that
they use domestically, which isa combination of coercion and consent.
And I think it's useful to think ofthe diaspora as being divided into
(31:57):
three categories in the eyes of Beijing.
Enemies, though those are the peoplethat you just mentioned,
the political dissidents,the agitators that have fled abroad and
are now living in all kindsof liberal democracies.
Also in countries thatare closer to China, so
that's easier to stay connectedto those that are still in China.
So those are the people thatthe state would consider as enemies
(32:21):
because they promoteliberal democratic values.
And then you've got the agnostics, orare a large swath of people who may
somewhat identify with Beijing'spolicies but are unhappy.
Perhaps with gender inequity and
perhaps with the way that peoplewere treated under the coded policy.
You've got a large swath ofpeople who are agnostic and
(32:43):
then you've got loyalists, people whoare what we call the little pinks, right?
The patriotic, ultra, national patrioticyouth that are not just limited to youth,
they're also middle age and older peoplewho really feel this connection to
everything that the party says.
Every party position on Taiwan,on the US on anything,
(33:04):
they will speak withthe same voice as the party.
And so if you look at these threecategories, or we find that the party
obviously applies different strategiesto control these different groups.
And for the enemies, they use what isnow termed transnational repression,
(33:25):
which is repression that reaches beyond
one's sovereign borders totarget the enemies abroad.
For the agnostics,they use a combination of persuasion and
propaganda andemotional propaganda, right?
Including like Chinese New Year,that we're looming,
we're about to go intothe year of the snake, right?
(33:46):
This Chinese associations everywhere,just building and
emphasizing the connections tothe 5,000 years of history in China,
so those are forthe agnostics in the middle.
And then the party also rewards the thirdgroup, the loyalists who are abroad,
both symbolically and materially, whovociferously speak for Beijing's agenda.
(34:10):
And so I think it's important, this book,as a follow up to my first book,
which is exclusively on domesticchange makers in China.
To look at this playbook that issimilar between domestic China and
what the CCP carries onoutside of its borders.
And the book also examines, and
(34:30):
this is the intellectual puzzle thatinterested me and my co author.
Which is that what, if anything,distinguishes the Chinese playbook
from other states such as India,Russia, Iran, Turkey.
Because only through comparison, and
I hear I'm speaking as a comparativist,right?
Can we really tease out what isempirically different about things that
(34:52):
are on the minds of policymakers?
Like foreign interference andinfluen from different countries,
cuz China is not the onlycountry who's doing that.
>> Elizabeth Economy (35:00):
That sounds fascinating and
I definitely wanna have you back onthe show when your book comes out.
I'm gonna ask you one little questionhere, and that is, I mean, you're at
the University of Toronto and presumablythere are a lot of students from China.
I mean, have you seen any effortseither at the sort of the outside
(35:23):
on the propaganda, and little pink sideof things, or on the coercive side?
Have you witnessed personally any ofthis kind of behavior by Beijing?
>> Diana Fu (35:34):
I have, and I think in Toronto is one of those interesting places
where we have all threecategories of people.
And just a super,
super diverse classroom where you havestudents from Hong Kong sitting alongside
students from mainland China sittingalongside students from Taiwan.
And then within the mainland Chinesestudents, you have the regular people, or
(35:57):
they would call themselves Lao Dxing.
And then you would also have the[FOREIGN], which are the nouveau riche,
the sons and daughters of really,really rich Chinese people.
And so one interesting anecdotewas that during the pro democracy
movement that really apexed in about 2019,2020.
(36:18):
In Hong Kong, there were all theseHong Kong diaspora people who
are also joining in on the protests andtrying to raise same issues.
And Toronto and Canada actuallybeing the home to one of the largest
Hong Kong diasporas,was a hotbed of that kind of activism.
And so what you had in response to thiskind of activism is largely nouveau
(36:43):
rich Chinese students from a particularcampus of the University of Toronto.
They drove down the highway in theirFerraris and BMWs and Mercedes and
probably some other brands of carsthat I don't even know about.
And all of those cars had Chineseflags waving on them, and
(37:06):
that was their symbolic protestagainst the diaspora from Hong Kong.
And their supporters that look,they're speaking and
they didn't have to say anything,they didn't have to shout.
They were just showing this,their symbolic economic weight,
right, that we made it, andwhat are you guys complaining about?
Look at what the regime has done forus and
(37:29):
look what it can do toHong Kong if it wants to.
And you guys should just shut upbecause of the symbolic goods that
China has brought, that Beijinghas brought to all of us, right?
And so I think that'semblematic of that interesting
tensions within the diasporathat I witnessed at in Toronto.
>> Elizabeth Economy (37:52):
Yeah, it might be interesting to look to see how many of
those students,
the really wealthy students,ended up going back to China, actually.
>> Diana Fu (38:01):
Right.
>> Elizabeth Economy (38:01):
And making their lives there, and
how many of them sought to stay, inCanada or come to United States or UK or
other places and to continue to enjoysort of the benefits of both the money.
That their parents earned fromthe mainland and the freedoms that
they can enjoy outside, butI guess that's a different book.
(38:24):
So I always finish witha couple of quick questions, so
three for you, first,must read book or article on China.
>> Diana Fu (38:33):
Yeah, so I'm gonna go old school and
just refer a 2008 article.
So I guess not super old school, but
a 2008 article by Elizabeth Perrythat I've referenced over and
over again, both in my teaching,but also to unpack headlines.
(38:55):
And that article is calledChinese Conception of Rights from
Mencius to Mao and Now.
And I won't do justice to describeit in a couple of sentences, but
it basically from a tradition thatgoes way beyond the CCP itself,
way beyond the establishment ofthe People's Republic of China.
(39:16):
How subsistence rights, the rightsto livelihoods, the rights to eat,
the rights to have housing has alwaysbeen prioritized before political rights.
Political rights such asthe right to protest,
the right to associate,the right to the right to assemble.
(39:36):
And I think that's really important whenwe're unpacking what's happening in China,
including the official discourse that.
Well, China protects human rights becausewe lifted millions of people out or
hundreds of millions ofpeople out of poverty.
Right, and soI think that would be my go to article.
>> Elizabeth Economy (39:56):
Okay, great, she's a tremendous scholar, so thumbs up for that,
okay what China issue dowe not know enough about?
In addition to the one that I thinkthat you've talked about today,
what else is out there youthink that is underappreciated,
in the United States,in Canada, about China?
>> Diana Fu (40:17):
I think that we focus, we as China scholars, and
especially in the policy world focus somuch on geopolitical tensions like Taiwan,
supply chains, critical minerals tariffs.
That we often forget about exactly what wewere just talking about which is people,
and especially young people,cuz young people drive public policy.
(40:37):
And even in an authoritarian regime whereleaders can't get voted out of power,
they're very attuned to public opinion.
So I think one issue or one group ofpeople that we should pay more attention
to is actually the younger generationof Chinese who are now in college.
Both in China and outside of China, and
will be the leaders inthe next five to ten years.
(40:59):
And I just wanna give a briefanecdote of some of the things
that young people are doing.
Which is that there was a recentphenomenon of university students
in China, just taking to the streetsat night to ride around in bicycles.
Hundreds of thousands of themjust flocking to the streets to
(41:22):
ride bikes around at night.
So, you might think well, that seems likepretty good, it's healthy, it's safe.
They not shouting any slogans, sowhy would the government care?
But the government actually did care andwanted and put a stop to this phenomenon.
And the reason why they were soattuned to this phenomenon is because,
(41:45):
what young people are facingnow it's very threatening to
the regime because of the highrates of youth unemployment.
So the unemployment rateamong 16 to 24 year old's
in the urban areas of Chinahit about 21.3% in June,
(42:06):
and had been rising ever since.
And until recently when the governmentjust stopped publishing statistics on it,
and then republished statisticsthat looked better, right?
So the reason why this isimportant because we know from
history that youth ledmovements have been a political
(42:29):
threat to the power of the state,of the party state.
From Tiananmen 1989-2022,White Paper Movement,
a lot of it was led by young people.
So if you have economic slowdown whereone out of five young people in urban
areas can't find a job, that's verythreatening to political legitimacy.
(42:50):
And it's things like that,domestic trends like that,
that actually have a direct impact onforeign affairs and foreign policy and
on the regime itself that I thinkwe should pay more attention to.
>> Elizabeth Economy (43:02):
Excellent I completely, as a fellow comparativist,
I completely agree with you.
Understanding what's going on insideChina is incredibly important for
understanding how it's foreign policy andsort of opportunities for us.
I think to both engage and potentiallyexploit tensions inside the country,
(43:22):
but basically just to understand.
And then finally on a scale of one to ten,now you live in Canada, but
you are also a non residentfellow at Brookings and
I know also think a lot about the US andUS foreign policy.
How likely do you think it is that we'regonna see a breakthrough in the US China
relationship in the next decade?
(43:44):
And if you think there will be one,what do you think it'll look like?
>> Diana Fu (43:47):
Yeah, I feel like, Liz, you're more of an expert on this than me
and I'm actually teachingyour 2022 policy essay and
the China questions 2 book on whetherengagement with China is still viable.
So I think to pivot,that I think to the extent that we'll see
a breakthrough in US China relations,whether under Trump or
(44:07):
under the next president, it has toreally involve people to people exchange.
And it sounds like such a mundane phrase,but it's so
important that these people topeople exchanges not only happen but
that they're organic in additionto the top level exchanges.
Which remain important butare not always possible due to,
(44:27):
due to politics on both sides of the pond.
And a recent phenomenon reminded me thatthese organic encounters are sometimes
unwittingly introduced by policies thateither Beijing or Washington makes.
So for example,as we just saw with the TikTok refugees
going over from TikTok tothe Chinese app Xiaohongshu.
>> Elizabeth Economy (44:50):
That was incredible.
>> Diana Fu (44:51):
Yeah [LAUGH], I mean it's just young Americans discovering and
Canadians and others,but Americans primarily.
Discovering perhaps for the first timethat those Chinese people over there
have the same interests in cats, in videogames and Taylor Swift, you name it.
And that may provoke them to think,and they are an important voting bloc,
(45:15):
they're an important electorate.
They might provoke them to think well, isChina such a bad national security threat?
If I have so much in common with thepeople over there, and I think these kinds
of people that people encounters thatare organic, not always planned.
Sometimes unwittingly introducedare exactly the types of breakthroughs
(45:38):
that might lead to a broader breakbreakthrough in the next decade.
>> Elizabeth Economy (45:42):
That's a great and
more optimistic note than I'd hoped forto end on.
So, Diana let me thank you once again for
taking the time out of your verybusy schedule to speak with us.
And again I look forward to having youback when your next book comes out it's
a really important topic and
(46:02):
I know it's gonna be full ofreally fascinating insights.
>> Diana Fu (46:06):
Thank you so much Liz, this has been very enjoyable.
>> Elizabeth Economy (46:09):
If you enjoy this podcast and want to hear more reasoned
discourse and debate on China, I encourageyou to subscribe to China Considered via
the Hoover Institution YouTube channel orpodcast platform of your choice.
In our next episode, I'll be speaking withDr. Adam Segal, who heads the Digital and
Cyberspace Policy program atthe Council on Foreign Relations.
And was the principal drafter ofthe US International Cyberspace and
(46:32):
Digital Policy Strategy that just came outlast spring in the Biden administration.
We'll talk about China's cyber hacking andwhat the US is, and
more importantly shouldbe doing to respond.
Thank you.
>> [MUSIC]
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