First Impressions of China, Nigel Inkster
Enodo Economics ’ Director of Geopolitics, Nigel Inkster has had a long career as a security and intelligence expert. Understanding China is not just about China in isolation. To understand China, you have to be able to read its long-term strategic intentions, especially at this time of tectonic political change. Nigel is uniquely qualified to do this. He first visited China in 1976 and here’s his story.
‘’I first visited China in October 1976. I had just finished a one-year assignment in Malaysia and had obtained a visa for a two-week visit en route back to London starting in Beijing courtesy of the newly-established Chinese embassy with whose diplomats, uniformly dressed in ill-fitting western suits and knife-and-fork haircuts, I had cultivated relations. My host was the Third Secretary in the British embassy: a talented sinologist who would go on to become British ambassador in China.
I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, crossed the border at Luowu, took a train to Guangzhou then a plane to Beijing Capital Airport, arriving around 8.00pm. To put it charitably the airport was utilitarian and devoid of even basic amenities. There were no taxis or any other form of transport into the city but the embassy had sent a car.
The journey in from the airport was an experience in itself. The car had to drive on sidelights because headlights risked stampeding the endless procession of pack animals bringing supplies into the city and taking nightsoil out to fertilise the crops in the surrounding countryside. So much for socialist modernisation.
For context it should be noted that I had arrived in China the day after the Gang of Four, an ultra-leftist group of the late Mao Zedong’s close associates, had been arrested bringing to an end the ten years of misery that was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Rumour had it that following the arrests China’s liquor stores had run out of supplies, such was the level of popular relief.
The next morning I went with my host into the British embassy, was introduced to his colleagues and provided with clothing coupons so I could buy some winter clothing and grain coupons so that I could eat. I was also provided with a bicycle and a map and set off to explore the city. My first stop was the East Wind market – Dongfeng shichang – near the Forbidden City.
As I rode I noted surroundings that were uniformly drab and utilitarian, the drabness occasionally enlivened by political slogans of the “For oil, study Daqing, for agriculture study Dazhai” variety. There were no commercial advertisements of any kind. It began to dawn on me that this is what George Orwell must have had in mind when he wrote 1984.
The hordes of Chinese cycling along Changan Avenue were dressed in shapeless blue cotton jackets and trousers. They looked tired, malnourished and dirty. A far cry from the elegance of China’s imperial era. Cars were few and far between, mostly black government sedans or military jeeps. The buses were uniformly jammed solid. Even along Beijing’s main boulevard there were virtually no shops, restaurants or other manifestation of what would normally be considered urban life.
At the East Wind market, a ramshackle indoor market where clothes were piled haphazardly on trestle tables, I purchased a large blue padded cotton overcoat with a faux fur collar, a fur hat with ear flaps and some padded cotton boots. My conversations in the market were purely transactional: nobody wanted to engage me in casual conversations for fear of being accused of having illicit relations with foreigners – litong waiguo. And even if they had been ready to talk freely I was taking time to adjust to a Beijing accent very different from the standard Chinese I had learnt at university and the southern intonations I had become familiar with in Malaysia.
Thereafter I cycled to Tiananmen square, parked my bicycle and entered the Forbidden City, once the home of Chinese emperors. The buildings were magnificent and in a good state of repair but with little inside them. In 1949, following the end of China’s civil war, General Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces had decamped to Taiwan taking with them a large portion of China’s civilisational patrimony now housed in Taipei’s National Museum.
On leaving the Forbidden City I found my bicycle had gone. Not knowing what else to do, I approached a policeman standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square controlling traffic. It turned out that he had taken my bicycle which had been illegally parked. Before getting it back I was subjected to a five-minute lecture in the course of which I was enjoined to heighten my vigilance – it wasn’t made clear against what or whom and I deemed it impolitic to ask. I headed back to the embassy then to lunch with my host in a nearby “masses restaurant.”
The restaurant was located on the ground floor of a run-down brick building of indeterminate architecture. We ignored efforts to isolate us in a private dining room, took seats at one of the crowded tables and ordered. The food, when it eventually came, was surprisingly good. We were able to exchange a few words with our fellow diners but again nobody wanted to engage in substantive conversation.
The rest of my visit to China was in the hands of China Travel Service (CTS), the state-operated travel service that was the only means whereby foreigners could organise travel within China. Many areas of the country were still off-limits to foreigners as were many locations in and around Beijing including municipal parks – one did not have to stray far before encountering welcoming signs reading “No foreigners beyond this point.”
The CTS itinerary consisted of Xian, the former Tang capital, the model commune of Dazhai in the loess hills of Shaanxi, Nanjing, Hangzhou and then Guangzhou, all by train. There was excitement with the embassy when they learnt I would be going to Hangzhou which had witnessed some of the most vicious factional fighting during the Cultural Revolution. I would be the first foreigner to be allowed in and I was tasked by the embassy to read as many “Big character posters” and local newspapers as possible, make notes and ring the embassy with my findings.
It would take too long and be too repetitive to describe in detail all the destinations on my itinerary. All were fairly circumscribed in any case with a CTS travel guide – for which read minder - always in attendance, though at least this would be someone with whom I could of necessity have substantive conversations. Instead I will just highlight some of the key events and the impressions I was able to draw.
First China’s trains. At this point all were still pulled by old-fashioned steam engines manufactured in Datong. Once China began to open up Datong became a place of pilgrimage for rail enthusiasts from around the world. As a “foreign guest” I was required to travel in “soft sleeping” compartments which were comfortable and well-appointed in contrast to the “hard sitting” option which was for ordinary Chinese travellers. Fraternisation with my fellow passengers was frowned upon and I became used to hearing over the public address system – which otherwise delivered a combination of martial music and turgid propaganda – a statement at the start of the journey that there was a Chinese-speaking foreigner on board: implied message, stay away.
By far the lowlight of the trip was a visit to the Dazhai model commune situated in the loess hills of Shaanxi – had I but known it, not all that far from where a certain Xi Jinping was undergoing rustication in order to learn from the peasants and workers. Dazhai was being held up nationally as an example of what could be achieved through Maoist voluntarism.
According to the propaganda Dazhai had through hard work transformed an impoverished village into a commune so productive that it was able to provide large quantities of grain to the state. This version of events held that the villagers of Dazhai had carved terraces out of the loess hills by hand and build reservoirs and aqueducts to irrigate them. Chen Yonggui, the semi-literate village head, had been appointed to the Politburo and was always seen wearing on his head a white knotted towel to advertise his credentials as a peasant. And Dazhai was made internationally famous through the writings of the US left-wing anthropologist William Hinton.
Getting to Dazhai involved a long car-ride from Taiyuan. I arrived as night was falling and was taken to comfortable if spartanly furnished sleeping quarters. The next morning I was given a conducted tour of the commune by an elderly lady who was a senior official in the commune. She spoke with a strong Shaanxi accent which was hard to understand, though given that most of her discourse consisted of an endless stream of statistics that made little difference.
I was able to talk to some members of the commune and learn about issues such as work points – the equivalent of salary – and look at the store in which they exchanged work points for food. And I was able to visit the local primary school and watch an English lesson where the students were taught to say “We all love Chairman Mao. Chairman Mao is the bright sun that shines in all our hearts” – just what you need when you’re lost on the London Underground. I also witnessed a sports session called Criticise the Gang of Four which involved one hapless pupil donning a dunce’s cap and having abuse hurled at him by his classmates.
But unless you are an agricultural expert, there are only so many terraces, walking tractors, pig-pens etc. you can look at before the experience begins to pall. And there was nothing else to do in Dazhai so I was really happy when the visit came to an end. The consensus opinion then and now was that Dazhai was a fraud and that most of the claims made for it were simply fictional. Lacking any relevant background knowledge I was unable to judge. But I concluded that though I certainly wouldn’t want to live there, the occupants of Dazhai seemed adequately housed, clothed and fed and were certainly in a better state than had been true of many of their recent forebears.
The highlight of the trip was a visit to Hangzhou, then a sleepy city whose main claim to fame was its situation on the West Lake, one of China’s most famous beauty spots. The location did not disappoint. I was accommodated at a pleasant hotel on the causeway leading to the lake. And the fact that I had read the works of the 17th century short-story writer Feng Menglong, many of which were located around the West Lake, meant that I could actually have a sensible and non-controversial discussion with my CTS guide.
But the main business took place early the following morning when I made my way along the causeway to read the big character posters on display. Luckily there was nobody else there so I was able to take time to get my eye in and make notes. That said the content was disappointing and when I contacted the embassy with my findings they were suitably underwhelmed.
I had known roughly what to expect but the reality of Mao’s China nonetheless came as a shock. It really was just like 1984, so far removed from what I had always considered to be normal life that it was hard to process. The extent to which China’s rich traditional culture had been obliterated came as a massive disappointment. At the same time I could not help but be impressed by China’s sheer scale. And I left reflecting on the words of Napoleon Bonaparte – wake not the sleeping dragon – acutely aware that the dragon was about to wake up.”