The Broken Country

Definition: (phrase) "The country is broken, and only the mountains and rivers remain."



Unicode Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿷匚⿱山河



Formation: 匚 (broken 囗, or enclosure) + 山 ("mountain") + 河 ("river")



Notes:



On Chinese Irredentism



Today's character is inspired by the first line of the following poem, written by the Tang Dynasty poet 杜甫 in 757 A.D.:



国破山河在，城春草木深。

感时花溅泪，恨别鸟惊心。

烽火连三月，家书抵万金。

白头搔更短，浑欲不胜簪。

A non-poetic, prosaic rough translation would be something like this:



The country has been broken, and only the mountains and rivers remain.

It's now spring in the capital, and though the grass and woods are verdant, few walk in the streets.

My heart is so full of sorrow at the fate of the country, that even seeing the flowers brings me to tears.

And I hate, hate this feeling of being separated from my family, that the cry of birds startles me.



The flames of civil war have raged for three months.

A letter from home is worth ten thousand gold pieces.

I have scratched and pulled at my white hair,

Until I am almost bald.

As you've probably figured out, this is a poem written after Changan, the capital of Tang China, was captured by rebels, imprisoning 杜甫 in the process. He was writing both about the breakup of the country ("国") and about his family (“家"). For the Chinese, the two concepts have always been linked as simply the same thing at different scales.



This poem has always remained popular in China since its composition, and it is invoked whenever China is broken apart by foreign conquest or domestic strife. It expresses eloquently the Chinese yearning for reunification.



It is, in other words, the anthem of Chinese Irredentism.



Today's China remains broken and unredeemed. With the recovery of Hong Kong and Macao in the 90's, there was a brief period of hope. But the prospect of reunification with Taiwan, whose division from China remains one of the greatest tragedies of the Cold War, equal with the partition of Germany and Korea, seems to have only receded further into uncertainty. And to add to that sorrow, ethnic strife in Tibet and Xinjiang have only added to the prospect that the country would be further broken rather than healed. It does not seem possible that I will live to see a free, prosperous, united China that would again gladden the hearts of all people of Chinese descent, and all humankind.



Only the mountains and rivers remain the same.



In the West, Chinese Irredentism is usually misunderstood. Some of this comes from a genuine ignorance of what China's goals and ambitions are, in light of its history and tradition. The Chinese people's desire to heal the wounds from a series of Western invasions and slaughters dating back to 1840 is often misconstrued as "expansionism." Others, however, do not wish to see a free, prosperous, strong China that can be an equal of the Western powers. For them, Chinese Irredentism provides an excuse for continuing the injustices of 1840 in the present and into the future.



On Taiwan's Human Rights Abuses in China



One small aspect of this Western misunderstanding (deliberate or unintentional) bears commenting: the unconditional "support" for Taiwan. In the Western media, it is typical to hear reports that decry the inhumane conditions in China's sweat factories and equally typical to hear reports that praise the prosperity and "dynamic democracy" that exists in Taiwan. But few reports link the two phenomena together even though they really are simply two sides of the same coin.



The latest example of this is the death of Sun Danyong, a young Chinese worker who committed suicide after his employer, the Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn, applied both physical and mental "pressure" to him because of suspicion that he was responsible for losing one of Apple's secret iPhone prototypes.



It bears re-emphasizing that Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, not Chinese. Some Western reports mention this fact, but do not explain the significance of this. For most readers, this is presented as simply another “China is a terrible abuser of human rights” story without context.



In reality, most of the manufacturing of electronics in China is done in factories owned and managed by Taiwanese and Hong Kong firms. The factory managers and company executives are almost always from Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is true at Foxconn as well. I understand that the company in fact has a policy (perhaps only implicit) that executives above a certain level must be from Taiwan or be Chinese-Americans of Taiwanese origin (both for security reasons and for reasons of prejudice).



Due to Taiwan's independence from China -- and China's official refusal to recognize this as a matter of law -- Taiwanese businesses enjoy a peculiar position in China. They are not subject to laws that would govern domestic companies -- since they are not, in fact, Chinese companies -- but they are also not in reality subject to laws governing foreign enterprises. Thus, they are subject to virtually no constraints whatsoever in China in terms of what they can do to their Chinese workers.



As a result, these Taiwanese businesses subject their Chinese workers to inhuman conditions which they cannot get away with anywhere else. (The conditions go beyond typical sweatshop abuses, and also include humiliating body searches and other policies that would offend both Chinese and Western ideals of human dignity.)



I would not be surprised if the senior security policy makers at Foxconn are all exclusively non-mainland Chinese. The kind of humiliating searches and other abuses that they put their Chinese workers through would not be tolerated at all in Taiwan itself. Yet, due to the unique position of Taiwan vis-a-vis China, these Taiwanese owners and managers have no qualms about imposing them on Chinese workers.



So why doesn't the Chinese government do something about this? It is one of the great ironies of China that the supposedly all-powerful "authoritarian" Chinese government is in fact quite weak and powerless when it comes to realities on the ground.



Since these Taiwanese businesses bring desperately-needed capital investment to areas of China that are very poor, the local Chinese governments dare not touch them. After all, the businesses have the option of leaving at any time because they are heavily courted by local governments everywhere in China -- and "lax regulation" is as much an incentive as local tax breaks to lure these businesses there (and I won't even mention the role of bribery and corruption where local governments and these businesses jump into bed together). Moreover, it is often literally true that the alternative to having these businesses there is worse: with the businesses there at least the workers are employed and being paid something, in exchange for great human suffering; without the businesses there the workers would be unemployed, with no income, and suffering even more. It's a devil's dilemma for anyone involved.





In fact, leaving is what the Taiwanese firms often do when they actually have to step up to their obligations. (The firms from South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in China all do the same thing). Last year, during the height of the economic crisis, hundreds, indeed thousands, of Taiwan businessmen simply packed up and locked the doors to their factories, leaving the Chinese workers without pay and demanding justice (and back pay) from their local government.



The local governments, of course, can do nothing: how are you going to go after the businessmen from Taiwan, a separate country which does not even recognize the People's Republic?



In some ways this simply highlights the weakness of the People's Republic's international position. A normal, unbroken country like the United States or Japan would be able to demand that other countries hand over these fleeing businessmen or otherwise punish them, but China can do no such thing to South Korea, Taiwan, or even Hong Kong -- nominally a part of the People's Republic -- to protect its own citizens. The real story of today's China is indeed its utter weakness, not its supposed "rise." It is as though things have not changed one iota from 1840, and the People's Republic is simply the late Manchu court reincarnated.



Indeed, the trouble with manufacturing in China isn't that there are no legal protections for workers, but rather that the legal protections are meaningless. As I have mentioned, one of the biggest (though not the only) obstacles in the way of effective legal protection of workers is the complete lack of jurisdiction and enforcement power by local Chinese governments over owners in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Due to the People's Republic's policy of trying to "engage" Taiwan, Taiwanese businessmen cannot be prosecuted or punished by local Chinese authorities, and they are responsible for a large portion, if not the majority, of the investment and consequent human rights abuses in the Pearl River Delta and other coastal regions of China.



Taiwanese and Hong Kong owners and managers run these electronics factories in China as virtual fiefdoms, and disregard with utter contempt any and all Chinese law. Rumors have surfaced even of Foxconn forcing all of its Chinese employees to be in formal ritualistic mourning for a death in the family of owner 郭台铭, as though employees are merely owned servants or slaves of the family. (See, e.g., this thread.) This is the kind of thing that you wouldn't even have expected of despots in olden times. In Confucian China, no insult to the dignity of an individual man can be greater than the kind of arrogant megalomania shown by this story.



It has often been the case that the Western press emphasizes the independence of Taiwan in certain contexts (such as when praising Taiwan as a “dynamic democracy” to contrast it with China), but sweeps this independence under the rug when it throws unfavorable light on Taiwan (under some misguided attempt to be "pro-Taiwan" and "anti-China"). But this is neither consistent nor honest: a human rights abuse is a human rights abuse, no matter who commits it. And it is wrong to refrain from shining the light on the darkness of the inhumanity of these Taiwanese firms for temporary political expediency.



The fact that a great deal of the wealth of Taiwan has been built on the human rights abuses of Chinese workers by Taiwanese managers and owners who have taken advantage of the People’s Republic’s incoherent Taiwan policy is a great tragedy for all ethnic Chinese populations in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Diaspora. Indeed, it is a great tragedy for all humankind. Taiwan's prosperity and stability, and indeed its domestic legal protections rest on a foundation of exploitation, misery, and human rights abuses in China.



Taiwanese businessmen treat their mainland workers, who are often literally their cousins (I still have cousins in Taiwan) and people who share the same skin, genes, history, and culture, as a colonial power might treat a colony’s coolies. This casts a dark shadow over the supposed freedoms and democratic principles of Taiwan, and this is a story that the West should expose and criticize.



You will never see the Chinese official media criticize the Taiwanese and Hong Kong businessmen, as doing so would be inconsistent with the PRC’s Taiwan policy. Of course, courting the human rights abusers to prevent formal independence is a loser’s game, but Beijing seems insistent on playing it. But the Western media must step up and reveal the truth of these businessmen, the supposed citizens of a “dynamic democracy” who behave as the worst of the worst in trampling over the human rights of Chinese workers.





(Of course the local governments and the not insignificant number of Chinese who are aware of these issues but do nothing are also to blame. Poverty, apathy, and a lack of a strong sense of nationalism are the greatest obstacles in China's slow, meandering crawl to freedom. A country with a strong sense of nationalism would not have one class of citizens tolerating, indeed, promoting the suffering of another class of their fellow citizens for their own selfish gain. The Chinese local officials and the Chinese middle class who have also benefitted from these abuses have much to answer for.)



The trouble with Chinese manufacturing has its roots not only in Beijing, but also in Taipei and Hong Kong.



We are all one people, and though our country is broken, yet the mountains and rivers remain the same.





[Note (8/24/09): Just to be perfectly clear, irredentism does not mean support for the use of violence or a "military solution" for reunification. What could it possibly mean to say that we are "one people" if any disagreement must be resolved only by the use of force? For brother to take up arm against brother it must be a last resort when all other hopes have died, and only if foreign intervention and invasion are implicated. I oppose the use of military force for independence, for unification, and any form of foreign intervention. Independence or reunification must occur primarily through peaceful means.]