Kong Qingdong has gone viral. The Peking University professor of literature and descendant of Confucius has become an overnight celebrity with his televised rant against Hong Kong. In an interview on CCTV, Kong rails against non-Mandarin speaking Hong Kongers, denounces their rule of law system, and calls them “running dogs,” a Maoist-era epithet that typified the class warfare of the 1950s and 60s. What induced this attack was a momentary interchange on a Hong Kong subway between a Hong Kong resident and a mainland woman, in which the Hong Konger told the woman that her child should not be eating on the subway.
While these two events may pass quickly into the Internet ether, what they signify will not – namely how will Hong Kong, China, and even Taiwan come to terms? By all reports, Hong Kong is being flooded by mainland tourists – a good thing if you want to keep your economy buoyant in these difficult times, not such a good thing if these “tourists” are overwhelming your public transportation, schools, hospitals, and more because those things don’t work as well where they come from. So resentment, for obvious reasons, is rising. At the same time, many in Hong Kong are concerned about their freedoms. Despite “one country, two systems,” the right to vote, freedom of expression, and the rule of law all seem perpetually at risk as a result of Beijing’s own political insecurities.
The mainland, in turn, views Hong Kong with a mixture of admiration and envy for its world class services and well-run bureaucracy as well as occasional irritation with the island’s ongoing complaints about mainland rule. When a 2011 University of Hong Kong poll revealed that Hong Kong residents identified more closely as Hong Kong citizens than as Chinese citizens, mainland officials and the media launched a broadside against the poll and its backers.
At the time of the handover, there was much speculation over whether the mainland would change Hong Kong or Hong Kong would act as a model for the mainland. Almost fifteen years on, it seems that neither is the case. Instead, both Hong Kong and the mainland talk about another model – Taiwan. Its recent presidential election caused a stir in the mainland, forcing even the mainland’s nationalistic Global Times to admit, however grudgingly, that the election “touched a nerve of the Chinese mainland,” and the questions that “overwhelmed the Internet” was: “Why can’t the same style of elections be held here?”
The Global Times answered its own question by saying the price for stability and unity is a lack of democracy or more to the point, you can’t have everything. Still, not everyone is convinced. Wealthy mainland businessmen who observed the elections in Taiwan were favorably impressed, with one reporting ”This is an amazing idea, to be able to choose the people who represent you.” And with up to 250 million mainland microbloggers watching the election and all chattering on the Internet, Taiwan may well become the tail that wags that running dog.
Elizabeth C. Economy is C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy and U.S.-China relations and author of the award-winning book, 'The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future.' She blogs at Asia Unbound, where this piece originally appeared. Follow her on Twitter: @lizeconomy
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Reason
I very much doubt that Taiwan will become the “Tail that wags the dog”
Taiwan is under ceaseless United Front Tactics from the CCP and the truth is closer to Taiwan having its democracy battered into a shape that pleases the CCP
Girish
Chinese System is only suitable for Chinese as they are habitual of living under oppression and iron hand of CCP masters. People of Hong Kong must do everything to safeguard their freedom as it is the most important thing one can have.
People from China visit outside and see and learn about freedom. This is leading to more awareness inside china about importance of freedom.
Nervous CCP will do everything to stop this movement in China which includes crackdown of activists, lawyers, censoring internet and running state sponsored propaganda and also it will run the tanks over Chinese if required.
any comments by CCP cadets??
harry
and you manage to get all of that simply from a hong kong guy having an argument on a train with a mainland women about eating. LOL
Girish
Well not really, you just need to spend some time in Hong kong. And if you have friends there, it will be pretty easily to talk with them and what they feel about living under CCP rule or a live a feel life in Hong kong.
just try..
John Chan
@Girish,
You and those busybody foreigners all try to view China in the same hubris lens, anything China does not fit your so called democracy caricature, then there must be something wrong.
You know nothing about Hong Kong. HK and India are the same, they have been colonized so long that they have forgotten how to be proud of their own culture, they identity with their ex-colonial master more than their ancient civilization; like India parliament uses English instead of Indian, and Indians proud to be better in English than Indian.
Before 1997, HK had better living standard than China so they looked down on Mainlanders, they ignored the repressive British colonial rule and did whatever they could to please their colonial master. All the Brits needed to do was to dangle some MBE, KBE, etc., knighthood in front of HK people, then they could herd HK people like flock of sheep. Human right abuse was regard as deserved punishment for the troublemakers, and second-class citizen treatment was regard as the norm.
HK today has more political freedom and rights than under the British, HK has better living standard than under the British, HK is better off than the British nearly in every aspect. The only aspect HK people has lost is the fake superiority they enjoyed before returning to China.
A lot of HK people resent that loss, that’s what you got about what you meant “what they feel about living under CCP rule.” Those so called democracy fighters would be locked up in the “white house’ basement and deported to the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Ocean or Indian Ocean during the British colonial rule long time already.
John Chan
@Girish,
Indians better ask themselves why they are still using their ex-colonial master’s language as primary language for the business in their parliament and law of the land?
Samuel Tan
Wait a second, which country changed their ANCIENT writing to a simplified style. Which country allowed it’s great leader Mao to burn ANCIENT Chinese literature and ban customs that have been around for CENTURIES? You think that by following the CCP, the Chinese people are in tune with their Ancient culture? Laughable. At least the British allowed HK to keep the writing system that dates back thousands of years. Seems that they are more in touch with ancient Chinese culture than the Chinese in China. Ironic. If you are so in touch with your Chinese culture, then demolish all those WESTERN skyscrapers and start building pagodas. You should even try wearing a rice patty hat and traditional chinese clothing instead of a shirt and jeans. Maybe a queue haircut?
William
When I first saw the Kong Qingdong video (through a Facebook link by a HK friend), I was absolutely shocked by the ridiculousness. I even sarcastically thought that the CIA or other so-called hostile Western forces couldn’t do a better job at inciting “splitism” and regionalist identity if they tried. On the other hand, the serious side of me was worried that this incident would unnecessarily increase tension between HK and the mainland.
While living in HK, I have worked with four colleagues from Beijing. All of them like HK a lot, and all speak Cantonese to some extent. This incident is not very representative of their opinions of HK, I thought.
However, I looked through their micro-blogging reactions to see whether my hunch was accurate. It turns out that one of my ex co-workers, a very emotional guy, agreed with Kong. Why? He said that discrimination against Mainlanders in HK was indeed a fact, and that newspapers such as Apple Daily distorted coverage and edited videos of the MTR incident to favor HKers side of things (ie…local opinion).
To some extent, I imagine that some Mainlanders feel like people from the US South –consistently misrepresented in the media and looked down upon by people in opinion-making cities who fail to recognize the progress that their native lands have made.
Of course, it’s easy enough to see how HKers would take huge offense to Kong’s remarks. Also, as mentioned, many resent the fact that mainlanders are using public services to such a high extent. But, HK has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, and for it to be a viable society in the long run, it will need some sort of large-scale immigration policy. Certain political parties and newspapers in HK have also whipped up anti-Filipino, anti-Indonesian, anti-domestic helper resentment, while also stoking anti-mainlander sentiment. Very few people are having far reaching conversations about long term demographic trends and related social issues.
Tritone
Good comment. Thanks for posting.
Orrion
Wow…”Running Dog”
There is a phrase That I have not heard in 40 years! :)
Passerby
I don’t condone Kong’s choice of language in his comments that sadly have led to this uproar.
But the analytical part of me tells me that I must not and will not simply take what’s reported in the media at its face value.
(a) What has gotten spinned out of control is the fact that he did preface his comments to direct his anger towards his targeted Hongkongers, not all HKongers.
(b) But what sparked his anger was a part of the video clip in which a HK man shouted insults towards the mainland woman as in “…mainlanders are like …”. even as the mainland woman’s sister(?) has been apologizing profusely. An important fact that has been ignored was that in fact later on the man who hurled insults toward mainlanders himself wrote on his blog that he was sorry for the remark he made toward mainlanders that probably has partly contributed to this chain of reactions.
shen liang
@Passerby
(a) No, he didn’t. You are completely wrong. He starts off on a tirade denigrating Cantonese speakers and expressing his asinine bigoty with supremacist views that perfectly coincide with the PRC government’s insistence on hegemonic control and cultural/ethnic unity. Cantonese is a lower form of language (a “dialect”), he argues, and people who refuse to use Mandarin are sons-of-**tches. This is everyone who speaks a “fangyan” instead of Mandarin, not just the targeted people, otherwise he wouldn’t need to launch into his patronizing lecture on our “duty” as a Chinese. It is the people who don’t speak Mandarin in China whom he labels “dogs”. So now we get the truth: the people in power in China, and those who ascribe to their supremacist ideology, have now begun to erect signs once again labeling chinese people as dogs. In fact, perhaps they’ve always done so, only this guy is not afraid to admit it.
(b) Sure, it could have been handled much better by both sides. Nevertheless, the way the event has played out has gone a long way toward uncovering the ugly and quite vulgar supremacist ideas of the mainland, and how pervasive they are even among the so-called “intellectuals class”. In fact, apart from the fact that so many Chinese have expressed their agreement with this idiot, that this man can be a professor at one of China’s best universities is perhaps the greatest form of embarrassment China could suffer.
Passerby
@Shen liang
I don’t need you to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. I watched the video myself and has transcribed the whole thing for word-for-word, sentence by sentence, and context by context analysis. As said, I don’t condone his profanity but I don’t want to be part of the usual media hype beloved by the superficial masses either (yes, elitism intended). Most importantly, I am not interested in having any meaningful engagement with someone like you who holds a die-hard anti-China view. In my world, 9.9 times out of 10, there are only shades of grey; no absolute right or wrong.
However, I do agree with him when he said, when two Chinese speaking two different dialects trying to converse, they should speak the language that they both can understand, which is Mandarin. That’s NOT an expression of a supremacist view, that’s just common sense.
shen liang
@Passerby
Whether or not you need me to tell you what’s right and wrong, you still are wrong. If you transcribed and analyzed the whole thing word for word, sentence by sentence, then you will know the use of the term “sons-of-**tches” answered the following question: “What kind of person doesn’t speak Mandarin in handling public matters?” There was no isolation of the incident; rather, it was a sweeping statement. Don’t pretend you can say anything else.
Then this led to using Hong Kongers as and example and calling “a lot” of Hong Konger’s “sons-of-**tches” and DOGS because this stupid professor attributes to them the belief that they think they are British. So you see, we move from people who speak a “dialect” (he never called Mandarin a dialect, though it really is) and who therefore must have malicious aims, to dogs. It’s a natural progression for those who subscribe to cultural supremacy. And of course, they are the ones who get to express their views on State-controlled media.
PS. Your “shades of grey” conceit is an obvious ploy considering how many times you astroturfers support the hard line of Beijing.
John Chan
@shen liang,
A surrogated Chinese should not comment on Chinese culture without a single bit of understand Chinese culture. Promoting a common communication language has been on going long before the existence of PRC for the purpose to make the country stay together more harmonious and efficient. Accusing such movement as “hegemonic control and cultural/ethnic unity.” surly is a distortion of fact.
Dialect will never die away in China, and every dialect will not feel in any way inferior to other dialect in China. Kong probably will be made to feel inferior if he ever ventures into places he could not speak local dialect, he would find out very fast how wrong his statement about “refuse to use mandarin.”
Language bickering is common knowledge in China, China has talk show comedy based on the dialect differences; businessmen form groups based on location and language to compete with each other since the dawn of China, etc.; all of those are just characteristics of Chinese civilization.
Only small nation like Japan with limited culture characteristics will be overwhelmed by the diversity of Chinese civilization, instead of admiring the tolerance and diversity China possesses, people like you from small nations bashing China’s culture as “ugly and quite vulgar supremacist ideas” merely demonstrates how little they know about China and the intention of their comments are insidious.
nirvana
Why don’t the two of you translate “word-by-word” what the man in the tube said, the woman said, and the “professor” commented on CCTV?
And that is between people of the so-called “same country”. On this site we have read repeatedly Chinese bloggers called citizens of other nations “dogs”. Other Chinese bloggers even tried to prove that Chinese discovered the Americas before CB, that 1/3 of scientists and engineers in the US are Chinese, and that in ASEAN countries, the ethnic Chinese are those that are at the origin of wealth.
The “superior race” smell…Goebbel himself would tip his hat to the Ministry of Propaganda that puts this theory back to work.
Passerby
@nirvana
You won’t get a response from me until you can demonstrate some good behaviour to show that you deserve it. I said what I thought I needed to say and that’s all; really not interested in engaging in verbal jabs with those I consider undeserved of my time.
shen liang
@nirvana
Passerby is largely a reflection of Kong Qingdong.
a_canadian_observer
@Passerby: Nirvana and Shen Liang hit the nail on the head. It’s CCP people that mis-behave all the time.
nirvana
If Dr Goebbels were to be around still, how would he react?
He would not condone vulgar language. Sure, he would not spend energy responding to detractors that do not “deserve” it. Yeah, he would take offense of being told he was wrong. And he would take a haughty tone to defend professor Kong, like this:
—-
“Ten years of National Socialism have been enough to make plain to the German people the seriousness of the danger posed by Bolshevism from the East. Now one can understand why we spoke so often of the fight against Bolshevism at our Nuremberg party rallies. We raised our voices in warning to our German people and the world, hoping to awaken Western humanity from the paralysis of will and spirit into which it had fallen. We tried to open their eyes to the horrible danger from Eastern Bolshevism, which had subjected a nation of nearly 200 million people to the terror of the Jews and was preparing an aggressive war against Europe.”
—
In “Nation, Rise Up, and Let the Storm Break Loose”, a speech by Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Feb 1943. Later elevated by Hitler to “General Plenipotentiary for Total War”.
“rise-up”, “total war”, “superior race”, concepts that always go together in mass propaganda/”education”, whether in German or in Mandarin or in Cantonese. More than 60 years ago, but still work.
This is not about a bickering in the Hong Kong tube or elsewhere. This is not about a Peking University professor being rude to HongKongers on state TV. This is not about anti-Chinese. This is about against ultra-nationalist, whether exploited or tolerated by states.
John R.
Haha
typically a mishmash of foreign conception and western, wherea wag the dog means
“Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because the dog is smarter than the tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.
But the chinese term running dog have a negative connotation: it could literally mean a traitor to your own people. It doesn’t figure, to describe Taiwain the smart dog and calling it traitor in the same sentence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_dog
Running dog is a literal translation into English of the Chinese/Korean communist pejorative zǒu gǒu 走狗, meaning lackey or lapdog, an unprincipled person who helps or flatters other, more powerful and often evil people. It is derived from the eagerness with which a dog will respond when called by its owner, even for mere scraps[citation needed].
The phrase running dog has been in use in since the Qing Dynasty, and was often used in the 20th century by communists to refer to client states of the United States and other capitalist powers. Its first recorded use in English was in 1937.
Liang1a
First thing for people to remember is that communism is not Chinese. It is the investion of a German Jew. Communism has never sat well with the majority of the Chinese people. I don’t think even the old Chinese communists understood what it is all about. Frankly, I don’t think there is anything to understand about communism. It is just a crackpot dream of an impractical man dreaming of dominance vicariously. Furthermore, communism is not nationalism. The old communists obeyed the International Communist Organization dominated by the Russians or USSR. It was to the credit of Mao that he resisted the internationalization of China. Patriotic Chinese are not communists.
Everybody loves freedom. The Chinese are even more attuned to freedom than the West and Japan. The Westerners were mostly serfs until very recently. The Chinese were always free men from the beginning of Chinese recorded history who can achieve nobility through good works. One of the first emperors, the Emperor Shun, was a commoner who was made a regent by the old emperor but ultimately chosen by the people through popular acclamation. The Ming Dynasty was established by a defrocked monk. So there isn’t much of a hereditary nobility class in China. That is to say, anybody can become a noble through outstanding service to the empire and not necessarily through birth. Therefore, the Chinese value freedom much more than the West and despite the despotic rule of the dictatorial CCP the Chinese still love freedom.
I think ultimately the CCP dictatorship will end with general election. And a popularly elected government will govern China for the greater benefit of all the Chinese people. Such a government will be much more patriotic and not be subject to domination by a small group of powerful compradors and special interests and party princelings who would gladly sell out China to foreigners for their own selfish gains. In the end, Taiwan should be a part of China but not necessarily more people to be misruled by the CCP.
Grant
Stability is not reliant on whether or not a nation is a democracy but rather on security, providing services and establishing an acceptable social contract between the the government, the governed, the elites, the poor and the social climbers. You tend to see more revolutions and riots in authoritarian states because the social contract is more likely to be abused by the rich and the security organizations*.
*Also movements to greatly alter the government have no opportunities to do so peacefully in authoritarian states. In democracies there is far more acceptance of differing opinions without resorting to state-directed violence.