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Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China by Ian Johnson
Reading about China can be a depressing activity: various and wide-ranging kinds of political and economic inequity and injustice, much of it, it would appear, with a considerable degree of official tolerance if not sanction.
The stories in Pulitzer Prize winning journalist IAN JOHNSON's new book on China will probably not be news to anyone who lives next to China, and certainly not to anyone who read Johnson's reporting when he was Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
However, while Johnson documents injustice and, in excruciating detail, how it affects a narrow slice of ordinary Chinese, he does so with an underlying sense of optimism that it is precisely these Chinese who will, ultimately and after great struggle, achieve change, if not perhaps for themselves then perhaps for their progeny.
- With prosperity and better education, Chinese people have begun forming independent centers of power outside government control -- trade unions, churches and clubs... Now these groups are eroding the power the power of China's Communist Party.
One rather surprising instrument of this erosion that re-occurs throughout the book is the Chinese equivalent of the "class action lawsuit" which even when unsuccessful has the consequence of teaching large number of people about the Chinese Government's failure to obey even its own laws.
Johnson's three stories are of a peasant lawyer who files lawsuits against illegal taxation, a Beijing architect who tries to save Beijing's dwindling heritage from the bulldozer and of a woman whose mother was beaten to death in prison for failing to renounce Falun Gong.
For those of us who pretty much already know these stories, or at least stories like them, for there are many, but may have depersonalized them as part of a political point of view, Johnson's clear and insistent narratives reminds us that all politics is ultimately about individuals, individuals with parents, children, friends and colleagues.
Johnson does not, it seems, put much stock in politics, even good politics -- but he has great faith in people, "people we rarely hear of": small-town lawyers who screw up the courage to sue the government or ordinary women, daughters and mothers, who find that that they cannot stomach the brutality meted out by the authorities.
Johnson writes well, wielding a remarkably gentle pen against the grossest injustices or when describing the most remarkable instances of personal bravery. The people written about here could wish for no better chronicler. (The Wild Grass of the title is a reference a reference to an early 20th century work of Lu Xun, of the great men of modern Chinese letters, and an early indication that this is no ordinary work of journalism.) Even those who do not agree with the Johnson's political perspective -- and there are of course many who feel that everyone and Westerners in particular should just let China get on with business -- will find much to inspire them about China's long-term future.
Perhaps inadvertently, Johnson raises some interesting second-order questions. Is it, for example, really through the exercise of law (as opposed to creeping democracy or organized political resistance) that Chinese will gain their rights?
His second subject, the architect, seems as concerned about saving old houses as the people who live in them. Liberty has often come at the expense of tradition; what if one had to choose?
And finally, the Falun Gong. What does one in fact learn from the trials and tribulations of this movement? Was the crackdown on the Falun Gong different in some way from previous crackdowns on other religions or political movements? Was the crackdown inevitable or did the Government miscalculate? And within China, is the Government (even temporarily) stronger of the crackdown, or has it politicized large numbers of previously apolitical people? Through his choice of subject, Johnson suggests the latter, but it's a small statistical sample.
One cannot really fault the writer for leaving so many questions unanswered; perhaps they don't have answers. And Johnson makes it clear that -- this time -- he wants to write about people, rather than philosophy or politics.
- Editor's note: Pulitzer Prize winner Johnson will be appearing at The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival
Peter Gordon
03/03/2004
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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