 In the Asian Review, I'm your host Bill Sharp. Our show today, China's Confidence, You Xiao Bo. And our guest is a figure well known to think tech viewers, a fellow host, Asia expert with 25 years of experience in Asia, Ray Tsuchiyama. Great to be here. Great to have you, because I'm sure that we'll all benefit from your insight. Before we get to the show, we'd like to take just a minute or so to offer our condolences to the survivors of Professor William Theodore de Barry, one of America's preeminent experts on Asia. Professor Emeritus, Provost Emeritus of Columbia University. His scholarship certainly benefited everyone, just not Columbia University students, but students regardless of which university they might have been studying and be it in the United States, Europe, Asia or wherever. He certainly opened many of our eyes to the foundations of Chinese and Japanese civilization. So again, our condolences go to the de Barry family. Bill Xiao Bo. Wow. What a figure. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2010 by the likes of the Dalai Lama, Bishop Tutu of South Africa. And of course, unable to accept it because he was incarcerated in China. The author of the Charter 08, which really struck at the whole foundation of the People's Republic of China. What's your take on Bill Xiao Bo? He's a man of the post-culture evolution, I would see him as one of those who kind of... That's a great way of looking at it. Yeah, and he came of age during Tiananmen Square, 1989. But the thing that really distinguishes him, and he has a literature background. He wrote many, many critiques of modern and traditional Chinese literature. So he has a research background. He comes from the northeast, and even today people are talking about his rough giling accent. He's not a bourgeois or aristocratic Beijing or of that class. And he remained in China after Tiananmen Square. That distinguishes him again among many student leaders who left China and went abroad to Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Berkeley, or London. They left. War, Kai-Ci, Kai-Ling. Yeah, they're very famous people. But he remained, and he continued to work in the literary field, yet he expanded and became not more like Andrei Sakolov, in a sense, a Russia who identified political kinds of areas where China should become more like the West introducing the 2008... The document is remarkable because it is a focus on the new constitution, independent judiciary, elections, human rights, religious freedom. Can I add a couple things? This really strikes at the heart of the people who were called to China. He wanted to privatize land, and he wanted to privatize state-owned enterprises, which really gets to some of the... In today's world, some of the Xi Jinping's strongest supporters who run or have control over the... Who want to continue state enterprises. Because for their own economic benefit. Right. Even though they're bleeding and there are hindrances to economic growth. Well, that's an excellent point. I quite agree with you. The SOEs are an encumbrance to future Chinese economic development and also, obviously, decentralization of the economy. But one of the things about China is that how they grew with small enterprises, when you look at China today, there's a lot of private enterprises, is because of the great leap forward. People look back and say, oh, the communists are a bad thing with... Every commune should have their steel mill, their own manufacturing, their own consumer electronics. Well, when things got liberalized, there were a whole huge number of these firms became privatized into business. Unlike Russia and India, where they relied on large state enterprises for a long time. Right. Right. Well, it's interesting today we're talking about Liu Xiaobo. We've also, you know, extended our condolences at the theater, William Theater at the Barrier. These are two really inspirational people. And as you said, Liu Xiaobo remained behind. He didn't run. Right. Fang Lijue, another big dissident figure, he left. Let me see. I can think of the same. Wei Jincheng, the leader of the democracy-law movement, he left sensibly for medical reasons. I don't know how true that might not have been. But Liu Xiaobo remained behind. He really did pay the price, didn't he? And he, among the dissidents, also critiqued other dissidents. Right. There was a way. He was called Heima, or, you know, a black horse, a unusual horse. Okay. A kind of critic in his own right. So he was what we would call a very individualist character within China. Now, this is really interesting that you mentioned this. And I'm glad that you got up on this track. Now, I haven't really met any Chinese dissidents from in China, but I met a host of so-called dissidents in Taiwan. These are people who got stuck in prison, sentenced to prison for their participation in the Taiwan independence movement and that sort of thing. And they all are very independent. It's, I think, hard for them to work for other people. Right. And the truth of the matter is, when you say he critiqued other dissidents, there's a lot of animosity between dissidents, because they're all, I think, striving for fame. It's less like sort of like, there was competition between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. And so while, in one hand, not to speak ill of Niu Xiaobo, or other dissidents, but there is this phenomenon about, like, they want to be at the top of the, how should you say, shine others. Yeah. And I've heard some really sarcastic, non-existing comments in Taiwan, without mentioning names, about people who were in jail, political prison for participation in the Taiwan independence movement, but other people shared a similar fate. And I think it's kind of a shame, because they're all working for the same goal. Well, you're correct. And in other countries, in reconciliation, after a very divisive struggle of many years, and you can point to one man who outshines also all, Nelson Mandela, for example. Right. And he tried to, you know, say the past is a past, but let's move on and get everybody working together for the future of South Africa. And he did a tremendous job, except that South Africa has not seen, you know, really a stable economy of political time right now. And they did try very hard to get people together now. But going back to your point, I think, you know, the reason why there's been a lot of spotlight, media spotlight on Liu Xiaobo, is that there aren't too many people that we can identify who are speaking against the government within China or even outside China. Usually for the media, they go to Ai Weiwei, the artist living in Paris or in London or other places, and you get kind of an artistic kind of response. But he has spoken out on, say, the number of the truly injured and people who died during the Sichuan earthquake, for example. And there are people trying to say that the government must be more transparent with its own people. And I think that's what really hurts me a lot about the Chinese government, that it doesn't trust its own people to really enjoy full human rights, you know, in the long term. Well, you know, I had a couple of reactions. You know, I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a minute or two. Okay. I think, well, maybe our first comment is not so much in the camp of devil's advocate, but it does seem that, you know, once dissidents leave China, they're very prominent in the media for a short period of time in the United States or Western Europe. After that, they sort of fade away. And I think the other thing is, too, is as China's economic clout grows in the world, it seems other countries are not as prone to hold China's feet to the fire on human rights because they're all afraid that it's going to undercut the financial economic relationship with China. And it does seem to me, too, it's been said of Niu Xiaobo that he romanticized Western civilization. He really didn't understand it as thoroughly as perhaps he thought he did. So I just offer another side of the story. Well, for the majority of China, they've enjoyed great economic wealth. Yes, for the last 30, 40 years, ever since Deng Xiaoping and looking at Pudong and bringing that up in Shenzhen and the flowering of small enterprises and privatization. Now, since after Tiananmen Square into the 90s and 2000s, the whole economic, you know, the middle class have emerged. You're absolutely right. Now, and you're correct that for many of my friends in China, we have this argument all the time. They would say, oh, economics first, politics second. Right, right, right. And so the fact that you can't vote for the mayor of Beijing or the mayor of a village at all, they're appointed by the Communist Party. There's only one party. So isn't that strange? Can't you have other parties? No, they just don't go into that. So I think you're correct on the domestic area. That is still true for many people. However, having said that, the outpouring of messaging in WeChat about the death of Liu Xiaobo has been outstanding. And the censorship, Tencent, Sina, Baidu, other internet web engines and so forth have been tremendous. So the government really is afraid of more outpouring of any kind of recognition about this person. I would agree with that. And I think the reason his ashes were scattered at sea is because they did not want any monuments built to his memory where they could create opportunities for pilgrimages for followers of Liu Xiaobo. On the other side of the coin here, trying to see this on both sides as hard as it might be at times, it does seem to me, I remember this conversation I had when I go to China, I'm usually very busy running from one appointment to another, so I spend a lot of time in taxicabs because they know where they're going and I don't. And you get into the talks, these long chit chats with taxicab drivers, and I remember this one right. This guy was complaining about the government left and right for 30 or 35 minutes. And then he goes, but you know, we have more freedom now than we ever had. And you know, when I think about that, I think there's truth to that. I mean, when did China ever have really much freedom? And yeah, okay, things are not at so-called Western standard. But by China's standard, it's come a long way. Well, correct. So we say that China, we're giving them on this level so that beyond this level, there won't be any Christian churches or Buddhist temples or Taoists. So we can't be free to, you know, to- Does the Xi Jinping's- Yeah, to carry bibles. Or abutions. Yeah, carry bibles, or for Tibetan Buddhists to run their own monasteries. So you're going to be very careful when you say that. So in America or the West, we have, or in Japan, we have this type of level in China. Well, they have- I'm being told we need to take a break. Hold it right there. I'm going to come back and pick up this point in just a minute. You're watching Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharpe. My guest today is a well-known raid, Suthiyama. And we're having a very lively, vibrant conversation about Lioxial Ball. So do not go away, because we'll be right back and we promise to be equally as vibrant. Welcome back to Asian Review. I'm your host, Bill Sharpe. I show today the conscience of China, Lioxial Ball. My guest, well-known raid, Suthiyama, a fellow think-tech host, an Asia expert with 25-plus years of experience in Asia. And we were having a very lively discussion about Lioxial Ball. During the break, Ray brought up a really important point that something that Lioxial Ball stood for emphasized that China's ultranationalism, well, I'll let you pick up the thought. Yeah, well, he was, in his writings, an ardent writer on the evils of ultranationalism in China. That he thought that by using this in the society, it will lead ultimately to a bad, negative end for China. So he wanted to have people think about other things rather than this ultranationalist trend that was sweeping the society. You know, it seems to me, like we were talking about during the break, ultranationalism, according to Lioxial Ball, leads to autocratic rule. You know, I think I'd go a step further and say it also creates the preconditions for corruption, especially in societies where traditionally criticism of the leadership has been a big taboo. Such is the case in most Asian societies. So ultranationalism really ushers in a lot of problems. I think the government, of course, wants it. It seems to me, especially in China's case, because given China's history of being a very fissile Paris entity and more of a culture than a country in some people's minds, that anything that enhances unity, as the Chinese say, is to be promoted. And ultranationalism will do that, but it definitely has some downsides to it. And again, why can't China take the lead in drawing people, countries together in the South Chinese East to discuss this issue of the line that they've created in the maps and all kinds of things. And it's dialogue with a multilateral approach. And now they're pursuing bilateral approaches with each country. I wonder if there's a difference there between ultranationalism and ethno-nationalism. The two are part and parcel of each other, I guess, but it is true. China always has a kind of a superiority complex. Well, from the Ming dynasty and into the Qing dynasty, when the British came, there was nothing for China to buy from the rest of the world, because China had everything. Take your OPM and your manufacturing goods back to England. You're correct, though, but from the late 19th century, of course, at the end of the Qing dynasty, the colonial imperialist powers, the carving up of China, they always go back as China's victim and the destruction of China, the warlords and so forth. That's a really good point, because China certainly plays up that victimization. We are victims. But I think a lot of Asian societies do that, too. And that's not China, but maybe China plays the card a little bit better than other countries. Well, I'd like to move on. One more point before we move on to Hong Kong. 20 years after. What's Yosef Weil's legacy? I think that in the West, there's always going to be people who look at the dissident as promoting democracy, human rights in China. But in the long term, I don't think that his legacy under the current government will endure. It's going to be really tough for that. It's not going to be taught in schools. It's not going to be in the media. It's expunged. You cannot even look up his name in the Internet. So I think it's going to be very challenging for that legacy and for younger people to continue that struggle or continue his writings or continue his charter and so forth. So it's very difficult to be a dissident in China. It really is. It's especially hard. I mean, there's so much security in China and China is so tight. I mean, just to get on the subway, you have to go through security. And we go to places like Tibet. The security is 100 times more complex, 100 times more complete. Well, let's move on to Hong Kong. Just recently, Hong Kong celebrated 20 years of revision to, reversion to China. It was a striking to me that Xi Jinping doing his visit, his first official visit to Hong Kong as chairman made a big thing about visiting the military troops, reviewing the troops. And the troops used to be fairly frequently rotated in and out of Hong Kong. Now they're pretty much a standard future. I don't know. That's one thing that stuck out to me. But what's your take on Hong Kong 20 years later? Well, let's look at the economy. Okay. And the economy has, I think, suffered. The financial services are still there. But a lot have gone to Shanghai. There's the buildup of so much manufacturing, financial services, new companies and businesses on the mainland. That has taken much of Hong Kong as a middleman kind of figure. However, there's Hong Kong also as a place to live for the people of Hong Kong. And for the majority of Hong Kong people, I think it's business as usual. There's not much change. I think that's a good one. The beginning of, from 97 onwards, was the influx of Chinese mainland tourists. They made a huge impact buying up things because they knew it wasn't counterfeit. It's true. And there was a big buildup, as you know, in middle class in China. They wanted cameras, wanted all kinds of fashions, all kinds of electronics, the goods that they could get in Hong Kong. So that happened. There's a lot more people living for the mainland in Hong Kong that they didn't, I think, expect. They're doing business of so forth. There's fewer expatriates, I think, in Hong Kong. I think that's for sure. Far fewer number than before. And because there's a large number working for the British colonial government, in the police, in finance, and so forth. They're no longer there. I guess the big concerns, you know, this is in a way, we have five minutes left, I just been told, and so much to talk about. It's kind of hard to balance things out. Now, okay, Hong Kong was a British crown colony, and that's not exactly the bedrock of democracy. But there was substantial press freedom. The court system was held up as a model. And these freedoms, privileges, how everyone would label them, are being sort of chipped away at. Yeah, there's some kind of election. Some people call it sham. It's not based on universal, universal ballot. But as far as I can recall, it supersedes anything the British had to offer. And, you know, on the other hand, it does seem that there is this kind of, I don't know what you would call it, animus amongst top leaders in China about Hong Kong. And they really want to build up Shanghai to the kind of the... Unspoken detriment of Hong Kong. It could be some of the attitudes of Hong Kong. Some of the attitudes of Hong Kong towards people in the mainland are not very nice. They sort of look down at them. Well, there's several layers going on here that Hong Kong, from the very beginning, was a Guangdong-Wa Cantonese-speaking region. And that Beijing was very much Pudong-Wa, Mandarin-focused country. And in fact, even today, they're focusing on even in the South and West to become Mandarin-speaking. That's number one. Number two... You're not a popular move. No. Number two... People who can't do these speakers. Right. But remember, in 1997, the big slogan was two systems, one country. Two minutes, right. And that would continue on and on for a thousand years. Now, that is still there. But I think the Beijing government wants to see Hong Kong really have the image of being part of the mainland. You know, that's a really good point. I think the foundation for that, you know, the agreements that were signed were negotiated at the time they reverted. The foundations are kind of shaky right now. And, you know, they're beginning to get lines coming out of Beijing. Well, that's all obsolete now. That's, you know, 20 years later, that doesn't really have the relevance that it one time did. But I agree with you. I think Macau, I think Hong Kong are kind of going to disappear after a certain period of time. And they're going to become amalgamated into what you might call the greater Pearl River Delta region or something like that. I don't think that there'll be amalgamated with Guangdong province, because then that would make Guangdong province extremely powerful. And as you suggested, I don't think Beijing really wants that. But I think Hong Kong, I think Macau are slowly over the period of time, they're going to lose their identities. And they're going to be rolled into the greater Pearl River Delta region or they might call it something like Al Pan West region, which means nothing. Well, last 20 years, many people left Hong Kong and gotten Canadian or Australian or UK passports and come back to working there. Many families are living in Vancouver or Sydney or Singapore, et cetera. So they have a way out if that happens. But still, there's still a tremendous amount of business still a tremendous film, media excitement in Hong Kong that's nowhere else in China. I just can't hold back. I have to get into a sarcastic comment. I wonder what passport Lika Singh has. This guy really kind of sucks up the Beijing. I imagine he's got a Canadian passport, maybe an Australian one, maybe an American, maybe one of each. But he's certainly not the only person there. The so-called patriotic capitalists, they're always, you have to be really cautious with these guys. Yeah, I think what's going on in Hong Kong is really a bad advertisement in terms of if Beijing ever really wants to unify with Taiwan because this one country, two systems idea has never been popular in Taiwan. And as people see the umbrella movement on fold and things that go on in Hong Kong and greater power being exerted by Beijing, Carrie Lam was just so co-elected as the administrator of Hong Kong. I mean, she's just a Beijing puppet, in my view. Well, ironically, during the last 20 years, I think among young people in Hong Kong, a Hong Kong identity that never was really there has flourished dramatically. I think that's a really good point. And also young people in Taiwan. And that's cut away from the Japanese colonial period. Cut away from the Kuomintang period. And it's a new Taiwan for young people that is quite separate and quite exciting in its own world. Ray, we've got about 10 seconds left here. What's your parting thought? Well, I think this area of the world still requires a lot of focus by America. And we still have to continue teaching, learning, educating, and research by Americans. Great, great. Well, you've been watching Asian Review. I'm your host Bill Short. My guest today has been Ray Tsuchiyama. Ray has given us a lot to think about. He's extremely well informed, very incisive. And I'm sure we've all benefited from his joining us here today. I want to thank you for joining us. We'll see you again next week. My guest next week will be Miss Natalie Tsou. Natalie is a host for Radio Taiwan International, which is Taiwan's equivalent to Voice of America. And I'm sure you'll enjoy her visit with us. So we'll see you then.