China’s Richest Area Practices Politics of Silence

One Love, a reggae bar in the chaotic southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou, couldn’t have existed five years ago.

Pulsing music spills out onto the street, where most of the customers cluster on plastic stools around foldaway tables, drinking beer and chatting. There are entrepreneurs and expatriates, English teachers and African students. In a corner, Chinese twentysomethings puff hashish bought from Muslim traders who have drifted here from Central Asia.

One of these smokers is a secret police officer whose day job is investigating “enemies of China.” By night, he says, he is a different man.

“If it were day, I could probably charge him as a subversive,” he says grimly, pointing across the table to a surprised drinking companion who has been talking politics. Instead, the policeman shrugs, orders another round of beers and joins in the debate about democracy.

Six years after the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, there is little work for the secret police in Guangzhou. In this commercial city, it literally does not pay to be politically active.

One former student who was in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square six years ago had trouble finding a place here to hold an anniversary event. Even a fellow activist who now runs a bar refused to host a party Sunday night, fearing for his business.

“We all understand,” says a friend. “He’s put a half-million kuai [$62,500] into that place. This is Guangzhou.”

Guangzhou, the capital of China’s richest province, adjacent to Hong Kong, has become a commercial frontier where anything goes except politics, and where last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Tian An Men Square crackdown, young people flocked to a memorial concert--not for the demonstrators crushed half a decade before, but for Kurt Cobain, the American rock star who had recently committed suicide.

This is a city where people recite a popular rhyming phrase like a mantra: “ Wo buyao quan, wo jiushi yao qian “ (“I don’t want rights, I just want money”).

Even Guangzhou’s youth, the designated torchbearers for change, seem--on the surface--more interested in making money than in making revolution. But on the margins of society, in the dark hours after their day jobs, China’s young are waging a quieter revolution. Cynical, intelligent, disillusioned and fatalistic, they are also surreptitiously testing the limits, changing the country in their own small ways. It is a silent rebellion, but one that could be more significant in the long run than the dramatic demonstrations in 1989.

In the bloody crackdown at Tian An Men Square, the Communist Party “achieved a lot in terms of regaining control--it strongly affected [the protesters’] confidence,” says X. L. Ding, a political science professor at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology. “But it unintentionally changed the rules of the game.”

The country’s youth has had to find alternative ways to express political discontent since 1989, Ding says. Although there’s not much “positive” political freedom in China, such as public debate or a free press, he says, people do have “negative freedom.” Many of those who are expected to hold the party line--newspaper editors, party members, police--are standing with their hands behind their backs, while others are actively pushing the boundaries.

It is this combination of official withdrawal and underground activity that may eventually lead to a significant shift, Ding says. “People can use silence or withdrawal as a soft way to resist the party,” he says. “It is hard to fight and so, in its way, quite effective.”

Silence can also protect: Those interviewed have selected pseudonyms so that they cannot be identified by authorities.

Tang, 30, is an editor at a small newspaper that has just re-emerged after a yearlong ban for crossing the party line. Something of a tea connoisseur, he can tell at a sip where any kind of tea comes from and the quality of its ingredients. He can do the same with lies.

Each morning, he sifts through government propaganda that the paper is urged to print and rejects what he considers blatant or harmful. Sometimes, the process is not so subtle. “Every day, we receive a paper of the eight points you can’t touch, 10 things you can’t mention--there’s no press freedom.”

Tang says he’s surprised some days that they have a paper at all. “The list of what we can’t print is longer than what we can,” he says, ticking off topics on his fingers: “Protests, inflation, corruption, minorities, anything political. . . .” He starts on the other hand, then throws both in the air with a shrug.

But he writes for a savvy Guangzhou audience that has honed the art of reading between the lines and parsing veiled allusions and what has not been said. The placement of a leader’s photo on the bottom half of the page, for example, indicates a fall in favor if he’s usually on the top half. And what people don’t see in their newspapers can sometimes be seen on Hong Kong TV, whose signal is still strong across the border.

“If we write it, we’ll be in trouble, but [foreign] TV is nobody’s responsibility,” Tang says.

Tang straddles the gap between what’s acceptable and what’s untouchable with his own brand of investigative reporting, turning government campaigns against corruption or drugs from propaganda into exposes.

The latest taboo topic, he says, is inflation, which in Guangzhou has reached more than 20%--close to levels that fueled public anger during the protests in Tian An Men Square.

And then there’s the issue of Tian An Men Square itself. While dissidents in Beijing redoubled petitions and protests last week, Tang says his newly revived newspaper won’t write about it: “We want to stay alive.”

Tony Xi, 21, is pushing the boundaries in another way. Before his show at the newly opened nightclub Louis 18, he carefully applies eyeliner and lipstick and plans tonight’s wardrobe--which he may take off onstage if the vice squad isn’t in the audience.

As a performing drag queen, Xi makes about 3,000 yuan (about $375) a month--about 10 times what he made as a hotel worker in his hometown in central China. There is a long tradition of men playing women’s roles in the opera, but “that is real art,” Xi says. “This is just for fun.”

Onstage, Xi is unpolished yet convincing as he struts, vamps and vogues along the catwalk. He trails a feather boa around the neck of an open-mouthed spectator, blows a kiss, then spins on a stiletto heel and disappears.

The idea of cross-dressers on the catwalk came from the club’s Hong Kong owner; the technique came from smuggled Madonna videos. “[The owner] is corrupting us,” Xi says with a giggle, giving voice to the very fear of Beijing’s leaders: that Hong Kong’s proximity will ultimately infect Guangzhou with its subversive ideas.

In a country where homosexuality is taboo, Xi’s open lifestyle is extremely unusual. “Homosexuality is not officially recognized, so there is no law against it,” he says.

But in a way, he is representative of those who flock to Guangzhou in hopes of reinventing their lives. Like him, millions in Guangdong province are economic migrants.

“Guangzhou is more open than anywhere else in China because there are so many outsiders,” he says. “But I think all of China is changing quickly, not only economically but people’s thinking too. People are becoming more open to new ideas--more curious and more tolerant.”

Xi raises an eyebrow. “It could be homosexuality today, democracy tomorrow.”

Ma, 32, was once a soldier and has been a Communist Party member for 10 years. Handsome and soft-spoken, he chain-smokes Salems as he talks about why he joined the party and why he now dislikes the corruption that pervades the party. Ma admits that his ideals are fading.

“I thought it was an honor to be a member,” he says, politely refilling his friends’ teacups at a quiet, old-style teahouse. “You get good benefits, a better job, higher promotions. I was very idealistic when I joined, but even then, as I was taking my pledge, I knew that there were more practical benefits to being in the party.”

“What do I think now, 10 years later? It’s like the sky and ground, there’s such a big difference. Most people joined for the political benefits, to help their career. Some have gone further and do things that are very bad because they have the power. Party officials are in a very good position to make money. Sometimes you can’t help making money--people just give it to you.”

Such descriptions hint at the corruption that is eating away at China and the temptations gnawing at Ma. He says he would like to resist.

“There is a very popular TV show called ‘Judge Bao.’ The judge is incorruptible--he will even put his best friend to death if that person has broken the law.” He grinds out his cigarette. “There is so much injustice in the world, and so much here. Politicians are crooked, the police are crooked. People just want justice.”

His friend Wong, a factory manager, puts down his teacup and laughs. “Now we have a kind of justice. You don’t have to be in the party anymore to have power. You can just buy it.” Wong was a member of the Communist Youth Party but lost his idealism long before Ma.

“My friends used to say, if you hadn’t joined by 18, you had a physical problem; if you were still a member at 28, you had a mental problem.” He watches Ma consider this and laughs again.

Ding, the political scientist, is watching to see how these post-Cultural Revolution pioneers will affect China when they come of age and move into positions of real power.

“The long-term effects have yet to be seen,” he said. “But I would not be surprised if they were met by a strategically wiser and better-organized opposition.”

He pauses. “Silence can be quite powerful.”