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‘Created in China’ series

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China’s Communist Party has been celebrating 60 years in power. During those decades, the party has shown a remarkable ability to reinvent itself and pragmatically adjust to the times, without letting go of the core levers of authoritarian power. But now it says it wants to transform the People’s Republic into a more innovative society – and the question is how much it can do that without also allowing a freer flow of ideas, and more checks and balances on its own power. In the final part of the series, Mary Kay Magistad reports on whether China’s Communist Party can continue to deliver economic growth and still maintain tight political control.

• ‘Created in China’ series page
• Mary Kay’s 2007 series on ‘Young China’
• Pictures of China’s anniversary celebration

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman.  And this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston.  China’s Communist Party is celebrating 60 years in power this week.  The Party has shown an ability — through the years — to reinvent itself and adjust to changing conditions, without letting go of control.  That’s the general idea behind China opening up its economy — with limits — and under the watchful eye of the Party. But now Chinese leaders say they want to transform their country into a more innovative society.  The question is how can they innovate without allowing a freer flow of ideas, and more checks and balances on their power?  From Beijing, The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has the final report in our series, “Created in China.”

[SOUNDS OF A TV PROGRAM IN CHINESE]

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: This week, China’s state-run television has been trumpeting how much the Communist Party has achieved during its 60 years in power:  There have been impressive gains in health and literacy, in technology and prosperity…and openness.  But this week’s celebrations have skipped over the dark side of the history of Communist rule – the political movements and persecutions that destroyed or ended tens of millions of lives.  Try to find information about them online here in China…

[SOUND OF TYPING ON COMPUTER KEYPAD]

MAGISTAD: And you’ll find that many sites that mention these things are blocked.  So are Youtube, Facebook and other sites the government isn’t sure it can trust, sites with information the government doesn’t want Chinese people to see.  The government also tries to silence its critics.  Lawyer Li Heping has been detained and beaten up for taking on human rights cases:

LI HEPING: [In Chinese]

MAGISTAD: Li says there are a lot of problems in Chinese society, and government leaders should realize they can’t solve all the problems by themselves.  At the same time, he says, Chinese citizens have a growing awareness of their rights.  More than 300 million Chinese now use the Internet and twice that many have mobile phones.  So the government can’t easily control things anymore.  In fact, it’s paying more attention to public opinion.  It monitors chat sites and blogs, and even asks for public feedback.  That approach may help China’s leaders reach one of their goals.  They say they want China to become an innovative society, one that will come up with new inventions that those outside of China will be willing to pay for.  But Arthur Kroeber, the editor of The China Economic Quarterly, doubts all this can happen without political change…because you can’t have cutting edge innovation without a free flow of ideas:

ARTHUR KROEBER:  …Because essentially innovation is unbounded.  You can’t set up a system that says it is fine for you to innovate in areas A, B, C, but areas D and E, hands off. Because an awful lot of innovation is essentially about sticking different ideas together and making combinations of ideas from different fields that no one had previously thought of.  And this is something that people who are in the planning mindset never get, right?  You can’t plan innovation.  That’s a logical impossibility.

MAGISTAD: Filmmaker Chen Li has come up against the Chinese government’s ambivalent attitude toward the free flow of information.

[SOUNDS OF CHEN LI'S FILM PLAY IN BACKGROUND]

MAGISTAD: He recently made a film that explores some thorny issues of village life -such as coercion to enforce the one-child policy, and party manipulation of village elections.  Chen says the original script passed the censors – who must approve every film before it’s shot in China.  But the censors didn’t like the finished film:

CHEN LI: And they told me that there is no way to rectify it. They offer no suggestion for me to rectify the film.

MAGISTAD: So they said, “Just forget it?”

CHEN LI: Forget it and wait.  Wait for, I don’t know. Wait. They told me to wait.

MAGISTAD: Chen’s professional partner, actor Nick Li, says it’s not just the censors in China’s film world who resist controversial, politically-charged films:

NICK LI: Like sometimes, we deal with a bunch of artists and when I think about something, I think it is creative and original they will just question me and ask you know, “Why are you doing that?”  They have never done before.  So is that a risk or something, and is that weird or something?  And I said, you know, we are born to be weird.  Really, as a true artist, you have to be.

MAGISTAD: As an innovator, you sometimes have to be weird, too.  Internet entrepreneur Jin Xiaofeng says in her lifetime China has become far more open to new ideas.  But there’s still room for improvement, especially in a culture that shows little tolerance for failure:

JIN XIAOFENG: I think to certain degree, innovation requires the courage to make mistakes, the courage to break what the society said is right.  If you still have a strong a frame in your mind:   “This is something I don’t want to touch it, otherwise I will be in big trouble – not like small trouble,” that will have certain kind of limitation in terms of speed, how long it’s going to take for you, for the whole generation, for the whole society to become more innovative.

MAGISTAD: The good news for China’s leaders is that China’s economy can still grow for a decade or more, just by doing the kind of low-level innovation China does now – cutting costs, developing efficient supply chains and tweaking existing products for the Chinese market.  Economists say this will both drive China’s growth and pull Chinese innovators up to a higher level.  Dan Brody heads the Chinese social networking site 360-quan.  He says there’s also another dynamic at play that could help boost Chinese innovation in the future:

DAN BRODY: If you look at the annual list of richest Chinese businessmen, you know, the Internet sector probably accounts for a larger proportion than any other industry.  The average age is much younger.  So it’s cool to have these young, successful Silicon Valley types, many of whom are now funding the next generation of Chinese Internet entrepreneurs, because they are now so wealthy themselves.  So if we look at the founding teams of the big Chinese Internet companies, whether their Internet company itself was innovative or not might not be the most important thing, the most important thing is you have this young, very innovative person who now has enough wealth, they can begin investing in the next generation, in the next round.

MAGISTAD: China’s leaders hope that will happen before China’s baby boom generation starts to retire, and the working age population shrinks.  It’s then that China may have to start relying on innovation to drive economic growth.  Meanwhile, the Party has time to do a few things.  It could better protect intellectual property, and allow courts to become independent of Communist Party control.  It could – and is already starting to – strengthen the social safety net, so Chinese consumers feel confident spending more and saving less.  And it could take the brakes off of free speech, and the free flow of ideas – so Chinese innovators can access, discuss and debate ideas freely, like innovators anywhere else in the world.

DUNCAN CLARK: I think there is a debate going on about what the limits are, how far should China liberalize to allow innovation to happen.

MAGISTAD: Duncan Clark is the chairman of the hi-tech consulting group BDA, in Beijing:

DUNCAN CLARK: But the end goal is, the Communist Party in China knows they can only stay in power provided that it can deliver on the economy.   There is nervousness, certainly, with the Party about how far liberalization can go.  And if the Party can’t deliver, as a result of its own attempts to control, then I think there are many in the Party who realize that it’s “game up.”

MAGISTAD: So we’re back to an important question.  Can the Party keep delivering, without allowing more pluralism?  A study at Harvard University has found that in society after society, pressure for more pluralism grows once the average income hits about $13,000 a year.  China’s average income now is just $3,000 a year.  But it’s closer to $13,000 in China’s big cities, where many of the best minds are drawn, and where much of the innovation happens.  Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged repeatedly that China will allow more pluralism.  He said it at again at this year’s National People’s Congress in March:

PREMIER WEN JIABAO: [In Chinese] We will strengthen the development of democracy and legal system, carry out political restructuring in an active yet prudent manner, and develop socialist democratic politics.  We need to improve democratic institutions, enrich the forms of democracy, expand its channels, and carry out democratic elections, decision-making, administration and oversight in accordance with the law.

MAGISTAD: But censorship continues, the courts remain under the Party’s thumb, and intellectuals are still jailed for speaking their minds.  If China’s leaders really want to foster innovation, they’ll have to make a game-changing move.  It’s something previous Chinese leaders have done.  Mao Zedong saw he couldn’t follow the classic Marxist strategy of rallying the working class, because China didn’t have much of a working class.  The vast majority of Chinese were farmers.  So Mao innovated.  He rallied the farmers, and led the Communists to power.  Thirty years later, Deng Xiaoping saw the mess Mao’s policies had made, and he innovated.  He allowed capitalism back into China.  He just camouflaged it by calling it “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” and the Chinese economic miracle began.  China’s current leaders have yet to take so bold, so innovative a step.  They could.  They could take the chains off the curiosity and creativity of China’s best young minds, and unleash the true potential of Chinese innovation.  For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

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