 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Okay, Bingo, if you didn't know it, it's Friday. Yes, it is Friday. And you know, there's no fake news there. It's really Friday. Okay, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. And this is what Think Tech Asia we're doing today. And with our special guest, Michael Davis. Michael Davis is in faculty at Jindal University in India. He's also a senior fellow at Hong Kong University and at Notre Dame. Right now, today, as we speak, he's like a three-legged stool all over the world. That's right, exactly. So the last time we met, a couple of weeks ago, I was so happy to talk to you. And again, we talked about human rights in Hong Kong and how this is all evolving after the turnover and how China is playing the game and how Hong Kong is reacting and what that means on the world stage. Since we spoke, two things have come across my bow and I want to mention them to you and see your thoughts. One is we had sort of a disagreement among two guests who were on the show. One found a news article in the China News. China Daily. China Daily, which is a newspaper run by the... Yeah, an English-language newspaper run by the government. The Beijing government, an English-language. To the effect that there had been a shift in policy on in-migration in China. And now they wanted to see people come in. They wanted to offer them visas, extended visas, I don't know about permanent residence, but long-term visas and be easier on them to let them live and work and play in China on a more open basis. We had another guest come on who says, that's really not true. That's not true at all. Then I want to add one more fuel to the fire here. Yesterday, Richard Hornick, who was a journalist in China for a long time, now teaches things Chinese at Stony Brook and the State University of New York, was out here, he comes out here and he speaks to the Friends of the East-West Center. That is the China seminar he meets every month. And his talk was really interesting to me. It sort of deals with that same issue. And what he said was that Xi Jinping, especially Xi Jinping in the last four or five years, had been focused not so much on corruption. That was an earlier phase. But on mind control, and he wants to control what you see on the internet, what you write, what you talk, think, teach at the universities. And if you don't follow the party line, you're in trouble. He is trying to shape the thinking in China. And wow, that was chilling to hear him talk about that. Yeah, well I think Xi Jinping has become known to be sort of a hardliner on human rights. He's arrested, as we know, many reports have been put out about lawyers being arrested. So there was this evolution where street activists, people basically whose land was confiscated and so on, were protesting and then they would get arrested and the lawyers would come in often from Beijing, come into the rural communities somewhere and represent them and so on. And it seemed that, you know, that wasn't what the government wanted. So then they started going after the lawyers as well. The lawyers that were representing people and the lawyers were accused of fomenting street protests and so on in conjunction with cases and so on. Many of them fled into exile and the rest are in jail or put in and out of jail. And so Xi Jinping, and then at the same time he's trying to control the internet. So he passed new laws that regulate the internet and in effect make people responsible for what goes up on the internet and make the companies that run internet sites to register and so on. And then of course the public media has never been free. It's run by the government. And so yeah, in a sense then, universities now have come under more and more attack and more and more intense pressure. It's interesting, several years ago, there was something called document number nine where university professors were forbidden to teach liberal constitutionalism and human rights. The topic's very familiar to me. And so I would, as a professor in Hong Kong, I would tell my students, you know, this class, you can decide whether you want to stay in it or not, but I can tell you that what I'm teaching here would be illegal, you know, ten miles away, you know. And there would be sanctions. That court you would be picked up and arrested. That course on constitutionalism in emerging states was essentially what the government was telling professors they couldn't teach. Now Chinese professors are... This is exactly what you and I talked about last time. Right, yeah. Chinese professors are all dedicated and many of them are and want to teach things that are important and critical thinking and so on for their students. And many of them find ways to get around these hurdles and to, you know, gently come into subjects and so on. But it's very difficult for them and many of them have gotten into trouble. The easy move is to push them into a university somewhere off in Xinjiang or somewhere in an obscure area, alternatively to just fire them outright. And so they get into trouble. Some of them flee into exile and so on. So wherever people are thinking or expected to think, the idea seems to be that they not be exposed to anything critical of the government and that everything be in effect supportive of the regime. And so this raises the question in communities at large and among scholars, you know. Well, Chinese people opinion surveys say they don't care about human rights. They just want to make money and so on. But how do you gauge a society's views on subjects like free speech and so on if they don't have it? Can we just credit, you know, that they've been all repressed. They're not allowed to speak. They're not allowed to do this and not allowed to do that. But if we ask them, oh, we just want to make money and leave us alone, is that an accurate measure of what people want in that society? So does that leave us free to say, well, Chinese are happy with this kind of government. So we shouldn't criticize it or we should just get along with China and not pay attention. And our political leaders, we would say, shouldn't bring up human rights because the Chinese people don't care. I don't think that you can really judge a society's views on something if there's not any space for discussion of it. Yeah, and you also can't find the potential of the society. I mean, I think the fundamental point is that if you have free speech, if you have the right of expression, you have a better economy ultimately. You have people expressing themselves, innovating, creating all that entrepreneurial kinds of things. And if you don't have free speech, you don't get there. So if you don't get there, how do you know what you're missing is the problem? Yeah, it's interesting. I've written a number of articles over the years on what I call the political economy of human rights and, in effect, why human rights matters. And one of the arguments in the past against sort of guys who promote human rights is, look, authoritarian developmentalism worked in Asia. Korea became rich. Taiwan became rich and so on. These countries earlier on, Thailand and so on. So they all succeeded with rapid growth in China as well. They call it the economic miracle. But my argument was that authoritarianism of this type becomes its own grave digger, that it works to a point, and I think Amartya Sen would agree with this, the Nobel Laureate in economics who has spoken on these issues as well, that to a point maybe a government that can just keep chaos at bay and that wants to support the production of cheap goods that don't take a lot of talent or skills can succeed. And the economic growth can be rapid. If you're really impoverished, having a double digit growth rate is not that hard. It's almost any growth. There's going to be a double digit growth rate. As the economy becomes richer, then sustaining 2%, 3% would be extraordinary, right? It's something the United States is trying to do right now. And so this, I would argue, at a certain point it becomes hard to go to the next stage of development. They call it a middle income trap, that they get stuck there and they can't go forward. And of course economics is not a precise science. So we hope these are theories and arguments that people make. But in the cases of the countries that I was looking at at the time in these articles, South Korea, Taiwan, and so on, it's not that some professor sits back and says, now you have to change if you want to succeed. People on the street say that. When people start becoming half free, if you will, and have more and more wealth and ability to do what they want, they want to be free and left alone to do what they want. And if governments can't deliver that, then they start objecting. So a couple years ago there was an argument, will China defy gravity? This gravity would say that this will happen, that as the country reaches a certain level of development, the public will demand more and more democratic institutions. And of course the US bet on that. For years supporting, bringing China into the World Trade Organization, everything was betting that China would follow this pattern as well. And we would see reform and the Communist Party has dug in its heels. And this is where the first part of your first question intersects with the second. Xi Jinping, we all see China as a rich place, and what are they whining about? They're doing okay. But Xi Jinping sees the government as insecure. He's afraid that exactly what I just described, in which your question- Is that a legitimate concern? I think it is a legitimate concern. So he's digging in his heels because his view is the Communist Party is the only thing that can keep China orderly and safe and so on. And so he doesn't want to move towards the kinds of reforms that would fundamentally change the system and call into question the power of the Communist Party. So this is the tension that's going on. It goes on in other developmental contexts as well. It strikes me the miracle you talk about happened before Xi Jinping. Largely, right? It started out and it went on for 10 or 15 years and it was a miracle every day watching it. And things were more open then, believe it or not. Now he's closing it down. So query, you know, is the miracle his or was the miracle something he inherited? And doing this, is it really necessary or can the miracle do well without this kind of repression? Right. And this is the question that comes out of the analysis I just gave. Do you, you know, can they, is it that China's reaching that point? You know, maybe Jiang Zemin didn't have to worry about this because they were in the early stages of development and they could make lots of widgets and make money. But now they want to have high tech development. They want to be more independent. They want to be more assertive militarily. Are all these things at risk if the Communist Party loses power? Yes. Then as they fear becoming sort of a system of chaos. But my view is that clinging to power in some ways I think puts it more at risk. Because it causes the government to dig in its heels in a sense put itself at odds with the natural sort of expectations of a public in an evolving middle level income economy that wants to be a first tier economy. It should be that his sense of manifest destiny, you know, not only stand up China, but stand up more, stand up tall, stand up globally. I mean, he's much more ambitious about that, seems to me than his predecessors, Hu Jintao for example. So, you know, the question is, is there a linkage here? I am more ambitious. Therefore I have to do more repression. Right. I think that's the case. And he, you know, they want to be the world's number one power. And they think this is the path to it. That they dig in their heels and they push their system of government that their leadership would not be tolerated if they open up the society. So it creates a paradox as you become more economically free in a sense. People have their own money. They're not living in communes anymore in rural China. That they may demand more so we need to control them more. And I think this is sort of the dynamic that's going on. Now will it work? That's the question, will China defy gravity? Will they somehow pull this off? And it's tricky, but I suppose if you were trying to say, what are their best chances, you know, how would you analyze it? Probably you would say, well, they're not a Ferdinand Marcos. They're not a one-man dictatorship. Historically you would say that. And that the Communist Party is inclusive of a large sector of the elites in the society. And therefore maybe it can sort of satisfy these people and take away risk of overthrow. You know the interesting thing is that in 1979 and thereabouts, it's a cultural revolution and all, if the people who were there in 1979 were running the show, they would be troubled because they would see this as returning to a bad time. But they're not there. And what's there is the millennials. What's there is the guys who have a taste for consumer goods, who love their WeChat, who love all the automation around them and all these splendid things that have been built over the past 10 years. So they may not care. It's a generational shift, isn't it? Well, yeah. And it's interesting. It occurs everywhere. It occurs in the United States and the Western countries. It was interesting that a foe and monk, these two authors wrote a piece last year in the Journal of Democracy, where they looked at survey data around the Western world and they found in the Western developed countries something like 17% of millennials think military rule would be better than democracy. So, I mean, this explains why people vote the way they do, but there's different views where during the Cold War where communism was a direct threat, people were more conscious of the dangers of this kind of authoritarianism. That's Michael Davis. Michael Davis is in the faculty of Jindal University in India and he's a senior fellow at Hong Kong University where he used to teach plenty and Notre Dame all at the same time. Quite remarkable and look at him. He's here with us now. When we come back from this break, we're going to talk about how this affects one Belt One Road, how this affects India, for example, how it affects the United States in terms of the changes in China around civil rights rather human rights and freedom of speech. Let's get back. I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark and every Monday at 1 o'clock I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So, hopefully you can join me 1 o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. Good afternoon. My name is Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Code Green, a program on Think Tech Hawaii we show at 3 o'clock in the afternoon every other Monday. My guests are specialists both from here and the mainland on energy efficiency, which means you do more for less electricity and you're generally safer and more comfortable while you're keeping dollars in your pocket. Okay, ni hao ma again. Also, xin yin kuai la, that's early. Yeah, that's right, exactly. That's Michael Davis. And we're talking about some pretty interesting things. We're talking about the change, you know, the approach to First Amendment freedom of expression in China under Hu Jintao which seems to be actually accelerating in recent months and years. And, you know, at the same time we had this manifest destiny thing going on where he's trying to connect up with Europe, one belt, one road, trying to, you know, deliver and consolidate Chinese influence in the continent coming to you. Right. And so the question is, you know, how does this affect that? If I'm in India, for example, this is a good place to begin, how do I see this? And Indians, you know, are very happy with constitutional government. They're very happy with human rights, I think. And democracy in general, they're a success story in that regard. And so the question is, how do they see their big neighbor in the northeast, you know, as a greater threat because of this or what? Well, it's interesting. India, of course, is a sort of test case of the reach of democracy. When I teach a course on this, I actually, one week, say, we'll try to defy gravity. And the next week, the heading is, did India defy gravity? Because gravity would tell us that if it's a very poor country, the chances of success at democracy may be very low. You know, that it's challenging to build a democracy with poverty. A little bit of economic development feeds a democracy better. And India has succeeded that. And I've always been stunned when issues come up, and Indian people are debating them so hotly. And there are a lot of issues now from beef bands to the treatment of women in India and all kinds of human rights issues. I find that Indians really are willing to defend their constitutional system. I'm sure there's plenty of room for cynicism. But for the most part, somehow they've woven constitutionalism and democracy into Hinduism. And India has a democracy. It's corrupt. It has all kinds of problems. Tumultuous. Yeah, it's very tumultuous. I always feel like, because I spent a lot of time both in China and India, India almost makes me think like China on speed. It's just so much going on. Your wealth is a gap. Why not? Did I really see all these things? It doesn't have the same kind of stability that Hu Jintao is establishing no matter that the treatment thing is established. Right. Yeah, this would make the Communist Party leaders extremely wary. And so there's this tension between the two countries that's sort of inherent in their very fundamental political systems. But it's also inherent in the fact that they're neighbors. And of course, their neighbor borders are over. There's a controversy around the area of their borders, which is Tibet. And of course, the Dalai Lama, who I've had the pleasure of meeting a few times at his home in India, is a very ardent supporter of India and appreciates the kindness. He lived in India for a long time. Yeah, he's lived there since 1959. Yeah. And the Tibetan leadership in exile are very careful to always respect India and their exchanges there. And so then there are some border disputes, which would otherwise be Tibet, India border disputes have become Sino-Indian border disputes because of China's occupation. China's taking over Tibet. Yeah, Tibet. And so all this is there. And then the One Belt, One Road is trying to go around India and reach Sri Lanka and basically the whole region, Central Asia region, China's in bed very much with Pakistan. And that's very controversial in India. And threatening. Yeah, it's perceived as threatening. And in some ways all of this sort of pushes India a bit more into the American orbit, although Indians don't really want to be in anyone's orbit. They want to be independent. They're very rich, intense tradition of sovereignty and independence but at the same time the current government is very much wanting to get along with the United States but I've been to India about three times over the last semester and it'll be two weeks from now it'll be there for four months. But when I'm there I'm always, they're very perplexed about the current U.S. government. I mean no one gets Trump. Not anybody I know really. That's right. I'm sorry Mr. Trump but this is the first question you get in any political discussion that I've found myself in India over the past few months. And I guess the attitude outside the United States is maybe we can just ride this out and this guy will say enough to get himself in trouble and not stay in office. But he's a very perplexing individual for can you rely on him for anything? It's kind of the way Indians look at it. We should look at it the same way. So there's a hesitance to build their foreign policy too much around the United States. You're waiting him out. Yeah, right. So just moving to the west a little bit, Africa. We know that the one belt, one row it goes to Europe but it also goes to Africa. And the Chinese have substantial influence in Africa. It started out economically but it has military bases now and all this is going on. And I wonder if this affects the chemistry if you will the political chemistry the democratic chemistry in Africa because if they have a lot of influence and they deliver the same message as we are going to control what you think and if you're outside the box we're going to punish you in some way is that going to affect their approach to developing countries like in Africa? Yeah, I think the most developing countries we don't even have to go as far as Africa Southeast Asia is a very good case. But there's a similar dynamic and that China pours money there's the whole thing money can't buy you love well China has decided it can. So is the American political system by the way. So China's sort of soft power is not very good at soft power because what it has to offer the global market other than widgets and goods and machines is not as attractive say as Hollywood. There's not that much interest the fact that China's an authoritarian regime makes soft power a difficult item for them and I think they sort of gave up I mean they still have Confucius Institutes and all this in these countries and try to reach out in cultural ways but for the most part they realize that if they're an investor then it can buy them some love and this creates a kind of dynamic I guess where these countries tend to hedge they want the Chinese money but at the same time they want to preserve their own independence and not be dominated by China. So I think across Southeast Asia in particular there would be a lot of interest in the United States remaining present and being reliable the reliability part now is a bit under question but in Africa I think it gets down to you know because the Chinese One Belt One Road initiative often involves debt it's not just giving money away it's lending money and so these countries have you know in a democracy you ask current elected leader has to deliver something so delivering a new airport delivering new buildings, highways and so on is good for the guy but at the same time along with it comes debt I mean China's famous for building infrastructure where none is needed you know they build cities that no one lives in and in Africa they may build things offer things that political leaders who want to win elections might like to have but then along with it comes these debt obligations and I think a lot of pushback from the societies because often the Chinese investments come with Chinese workers and maybe not enough employment opportunities for locals. And if I'm your creditor I have leverage over you I have influence over you if I can you know call my notes so to speak I can put lots of pressure on you economically and politically and so if you're thinking outside of my box I suppose the same notion about don't talk China down if you talk China down we're going to find a way to pull a rug out from under you. Right, I think there's an implicit threat there and so people will try to hedge in dealing with Chinese it becomes almost a kind of colonialism it has many of the sort of mercantilist feel of the European colonialism. All that considered Michael let's return for a moment to the place where you spent a good party of life, Hong Kong. And let's visit you know the umbrella movement and people you know I mean I remember how impressed I always was to find out that Hong Kong have retained freedom of speech it seems that freedom of speech is you know like threatened now because of what's going on in mainland China ultimately the Chinese own Hong Kong they're going to they have a long plan on Hong Kong and that long plan does not include a lot of freedom of speech I think don't you agree? Well I think yeah what we've seen under Xi is they've tightened the screws as it were it was I think the first you know well 1997 handover up until 2010 2012 something like this a general view was to leave Hong Kong alone just let it take care of business things happened along the way there were massive protests over national security laws in 2003 and 4 I was one of the lawyer scholars involved in that movement and then China says oh well maybe these youngsters aren't many of those protesters for young people they don't understand China enough so let's have patriotic education and then that caused another pushback and protest on the streets and that was shelled and then the Hong Kong people kept pushing for democracy because they fear the Chinese government will interfere more and more in Hong Kong and Hong Kong's autonomy will be lost Hong Kong's autonomy in the Hong Kong mind equals the rule of law and that means China doesn't have the rule of law so the fundamental you do public opinion surveys in Hong Kong the most core value of all is the rule of law no one understands that that's when it comes to human rights the rule of law is the most important interest and implicit in that is freedom of speech and so that package of core value seems to be under threat so the Chinese didn't like what the youth were doing so they tightened the screws more then they started attacking our universities they have ways of attacking the media by defunding not supporting advertising for press that criticized China not allowing reporters from say the Apple Daily a very pro-democracy newspaper to even go into China as reporters and so they have all that and then they have a united front tactics to reward their supporters in Hong Kong which are business elites who want to do business in China then go you know you have to go along to get along and they they are rewarded so and then they started attacking the universities and it came up in very concrete ways one of the dean who was with me the two academics in the article 23 concern group was Johannes Chan and myself Johannes Chan was up for promotion to a higher position in the university the Chinese old press started attacking him and so all these attacks were made and then they tried to control the university council and even though the independent committee that was evaluating candidates chose him the council overread that under all this pressure from China because Johannes Chan was viewed as a kind of pro-democracy figure and he shouldn't be given a high position in the university of Hong Kong so these are there's all these kinds of things going on and then after article 23 movement democracy is frozen the idea of democracy so Beijing's people run the government and these government officials are made more and more subordinate so that nowadays many people feel in the old days what we call the western district that's where the offices of Beijing are in Hong Kong the western district of Hong Kong island we used to say the western most protests wouldn't waste time on the western district they'd go to government house not anymore most the protest now go to western district because western district is now viewed as a kind of shadow government telling the appointed Hong Kong government what to do and in all of this there's still a free press I mean it comes under various kinds of pressures I've mentioned and even some editors were beaten up by thugs you know on the street but still there's a free press and so this Hong Kong government somehow has to it can't go too far if it looks like I mean it's now it has gone too far practically it looks very submissive to Beijing but somehow they have to pretend they're not and they have to and just one last question Michael I mean where does this go it sounds to me like Beijing has a multi-pronged full court press on this issue as they did before except they haven't forgotten and the generations will change and the economies will change and you know the global history and all that will change it's a kaleidoscopic observation and so I'm really wondering if we look five years or ten years into the future that as far as freedom of the press is concerned it works the same way in Hong Kong as it does now in Beijing don't you think well this is the danger and you know I didn't mention that the latest move has been to make sure that these activists are arrested and sentenced to jail and there's a case right now before the Supreme Court of the three young leaders who were time magazine covers and I'm not forget which may I think time had a cover on them Joshua Wong so these lead guys were all put in jail so activists are now getting a strong message that they're going to be prosecuted and sent to jail so this certainly has a chilling effect on being outspoken in this society and a lot of you know the cynics in Hong Kong feel that Hong Kong is dead already that pretty much this vibrant the most vibrant city in the world number one ranking freedom forum number one ranking on the rule of law all these rankings have gone down now and this extraordinary city this New York of Asia could be turned into just another mainland city so that's the cynical view on the street though the young activists still you know it is good for Hong Kong that our activists are actually youngsters now the old generation of activists who are now in their 60s and 70s you know wouldn't be around to guard against these kinds of things so it's almost time for you to go back and go full-time and get involved again well I stay involved as much as I can but I think it's you know I'm a foreign I was a foreign academic in Hong Kong for over 30 years a local resident but you know I think my world is the world of ideas try to help people to understand things during these protests I've spent most of my time explaining what was going on to the international press I came here and explained it to you a few times as well so I think that's the kind of role I play but I look with some hope to what these young activists are trying to do and the only question in my mind which I bring up because I do shows on RTHK the local public broadcaster frequently I'm a regular on that and I try when I'm on there with pro-Beijing people I actually point to them I think if Hong Kong is to maintain its integrity and its autonomy they have to try to explain why Hong Kong people are concerned about free speech why they're concerned about the rule of law and so on they have to find their voice and so far they haven't done that they've been pandering to Beijing more because they get appointments and this and that we have to continue to have this conversation Michael alright Michael Davis from Hong Kong University as a senior fellow and also Notre Dame but Jindal is where he's at most it's well four months four months four months yeah that's right thank you so much for coming down we'll do this again very good, happy to thank you