Golden Mao statuette as displayed at HongQiao Shanghai airport China 2014
At a first view, today Chinese looks like all-confident about their economy and the feeling that it will continue to improve, that the new generations will be better off, and there are not real problems looming around, so apparently the situation is rosy.
Then you read on newspapers (abroad, that is) that basically any Chinese when start to feel particularly well–off is doing anything to get an Australian or Canadian passport, or try to get a Cyprus passport (even though in China double passports are not allowed as double citizenship it is not, so this remains a mystery how something so blatantly illegal is actually openly done, and what could be the reason behind the Chinese government to close both eyes in front of this).
Then you talk to Chinese friends around and start to realize how much they are worried about inflation, the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, the inequality of the educational system, the worries about the safety of food and medicine, the worries about pollution in general and water pollution in particular… and there is something else, which I guess can be a fact witnessing the growing middle class of China: people want or would like to talk, to voice their concerns, they would like to be more outspoken, or maybe there is at work a mix of the two factors. I mean the above mentioned issues are getting worse, and people are also trying to be more outspoken.
Problem is to be allowed to voice concerns freely is clashing directly with the Chinese (Party) Government idea of a healthy way of life of not allowing anything that “may disrupt public order and peace”. Please remember that this is a country where:
1) There is not an International Film Festival (some evil movies not following the right social ideals coming from abroad, or Heavens forbid, from Chinese directors, can talk about issues disrupting public order and peace). Chinese directors can get their movies premiered and awarded in Europe, ignored by most of the Chinese media.
2) There are almost not music concerts in stadium, especially of rock music: too many people in the same place can have the bad idea to maybe voice some concerns that may disrupt public order and peace. And anyway, rock it is not music, isn’t it? Chinese can get booze and music in closed venues or watch the ever growing number of watered down pop music contest program on tv.
3) Novels and literature are carefully controlled, so they may be following the rule that public order and peace shall not be disrupt even in printed letter. Writers they can still write about contemporary issues en travesty, using bold metaphors that even them, after the third reading, will fail to figure out what they wanted to talk about.
4) Visual art is better when it is expressed with Calligraphy or having as a subject landscapes, birds, fishes, kids playing, men and women toiling for the Nation and all the other Great Traditional ideals and concept that are sure not to disrupt public order and peace. Some contemporary art, including videos, can be showed once in a while in private museums and even better if abroad, and can be talked over in some art magazines, usually read by not more than 10000 people, surly this 0.00000066% of the population will not disrupt public peace and order and the Government can prove that people in China can write about almost anything. The mass can follow the wonderful television programs, including, just as example, the sublime Cultural Revolution Ballet broadcasted during the special program for the Chinese New Year night of the 30th of January 2014.
and so on…
The contradiction of this great country are growing at least as much as the amount of money taken out of the country during the last 10 years, the years that maybe in the future will be remembered as the “Great Sack of China”, done not by invading barbarians, but by Chinese citizens (in the right position, thought…) amassing money, sometime of dubious provenance, abroad. The fact is that all these contradictions begin to be perceived and analyzed even from a (tiny) part of the Chinese people. We are in for some interesting times in China, and maybe not only in China. By sure in China there is still no space for declarations like the one that Spanish director Pedro Almodovar recently voiced, talking about the cutting of State support of Spanish cinema. In his article, Almodóvar defended his right to speak out on public policy stating. “When I hear it said on talk shows that people who work in the arts should not express political views, I shudder,” he wrote. “Does that mean that we don’t have the same rights as any other citizen to express what we think? … Political protests should be understood as a civic act and a sign of the health of our democracy.” In a clear reference to the Franco dictatorship, he evoked a past in Spain “guided by one single idea, and where other forms of thought were considered a crime, and therefore punished”.
Clearly, you may say that and sleep as a log in your bed in Spain, not in China.
And the Chinese people that would like to voice their concerns are quite aware about this simple fact of the Chinese way of life.
marcomauriziogobbo 