CHINA DREAMS 梦 EDITED BY Jane Golley, Linda Jaivin Ben Hillman, WITH Sharon Strange C HINA S TORY YEARBOOK : C HINA D REAM S Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760463731 ISBN (online): 9781760463748 WorldCat (print): 1145684061 WorldCat (online): 1145684091 DOI: 10.22459/CSY.2020 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ legalcode Design concept by Markuz Wernli; ‘Power’ cover design and chapter openers by CRE8IVE Typesetting by Chin-Jie Melodie Liu and Sharon Strange; copyediting by Jan Borrie Printed by Union Offset Printers, Canberra, Australia The Australian Centre on China in the World is an initiative of the Commonwealth Government of Australia and The Australian National University This edition © 2020 ANU Press 揭秘错综时事蓄 美梦 民族伟大复兴之梦对中国与世界民众而言为何种图景因编辑婴儿事件续镇压维吾尔族群倡导中国公民应在国际场合﹃维护国家荣誉﹄压破碎学生运动三十周年整庆祝中华人民共和国成立七十周年弘扬革命与国家富强之梦2019 ， 多元视角呈现政经文化与人文社会之一脉相连、 。 泡影 2019年 、 ， 凌云壮志与梦魇于中外大地上相吸相斥之画卷 为中国在全球日渐隆盛势力与影响提供解惑之匙， 拓展南极与称霸太空的雄心亦甚嚣尘上、 有鉴于此 日益恶化中美关系成为媒体焦点， ， 各领风骚年中国恰逢几个划时代意义的周年纪念日 几多旧﹃梦﹄重回民主与言论自由在凌晨的梦乡中被政府的安定团结之梦碾 ， 。 ︽中国故事年鉴 五四运动百年祭重温爱国情怀与文化革新之梦 ， 粉墨登场 。 ： 香港暴力抗争风起云涌 梦︾钩沉是年重大事件 。 ， 。 。 本年鉴以浅显易懂的笔触一时庙堂江湖舆情四起人工智能的突飞猛进与基习近平主席权倾天下 。 ; 习近平脑海中的中华 。 并一如既往兼容并 是年亦距1989， 。 新旧﹃中国梦﹄ 、 ， 新疆持 展示 ， 。 并 ; Translation by Yayun Zhu and Annie Luman Ren Contents INTRODUCTION viii . Dream On · JANE GOLLEY, BEN HILLMAN, and LINDA JAIVIN xviii . Acknowledgements xviii . The Cover Image FORUM · ILLUSIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS: THE MANY MEANINGS OF MENG 夢 5 . From the Land of Illusion to the Paradise of Truth · ANNIE LUMAN REN . 11 Zhuangzi and His Butterfly Dream: The Etymology ofMeng 夢 · JINGJING CHEN CHAPTER 1 . 19 A Dream of Perpetual Rule · GLORIA DAVIES FORUM · ENFORCING THE DREAM . 37 Xi Jinping’s War on ‘Black and Evil’ · BEN HILLMAN . 43 The Changing ‘Dream’ in the Classroom: Literary Chinese Textbooks in the PRC · ESTHER SUNKYUNG KLEIN and VICTOR FONG CHAPTER 2 . 51 Hong Kong’s Reckoning · ANTONY DAPIRAN FORUM · UNDER OBSERVATION . 73 Legalism and the Social Credit System · SAMUEL J. PARSONS . 79 ‘Evil Cults’ and Holy Writ · BENJAMIN PENNY CHAPTER 3 . 87 Meridians of Influence in a Nervous World · BRENDAN TAYLOR and RICHARD RIGBY FORUM · PROJECTING THE DREAM . 105 Dreams in Space · ADAM NI . 111 Antarctic Ambitions: Cold Power · BEYONGO MUKETE DYNAMIC CHAPTER 4 . 119 Conscious Decoupling: The Technology Security Dilemma · DARREN LIM and VICTOR FERGUSON FORUM · CONSCIOUS COUPLING! . 137 Queer Dreams · JAMIE ZHAO THE CHINA STORY YEARBOOK: CHAPTER 5 143 . AI Dreams and Authoritarian Nightmares · OLIVIA SHEN CHINA DREAMS FORUM · LIFE AND DEATH 161 . Dream Babies · JANE BROPHY 梦 167 . Recurring Nightmare: The Plague Visits Beijing · JANE BROPHY CHAPTER 6 175 . Urbanising Tibet: Aspirations, Illusions, and Nightmares · GERALD ROCHE, JAMES LEIBOLD, and BEN HILLMAN FORUM · FORGOTTEN HISTORIES 191 . ‘Prairie Mothers’ and Shanghai Orphans · UCHRALT OTEDE CHAPTER 7 199 . Schemes, Dreams, and Nightmares: China’s Paradox(es) of Trust · GERRY GROOT FORUM · VIGILANTE JUSTICE 217 . Taking Justice into their Own Hands: ‘Netilantism’ in Hong Kong · LENNON YAO-CHUNG CHANG CHAPTER 8 223 . Hong Kong and the Tiananmen Playbook · LOUISA LIM and GRAEME SMITH FORUM · SHARING THE DREAM? 241 . South Korea and the ‘China Effect’ · HYUNG-GEUN KIM 247 . Taiwanese Dreams: Security, Sovereignity, and the Space to be Seen · CHIUNG-CHIU HUANG CHAPTER 9 255 . Campus Conundrums: Clashes and Collaborations · JANE GOLLEY, PAUL HARRIS, and JAMES LAURENCESON 269 . NOTES 305 . PREVIOUS CHINA STORY YEARBOOKS 299 . CONTRIBUTORS vii vi Dream On Jane Golley, Ben Hillman, and Linda Jaivin CHINA DREAMS CHINA STORY YEARBOOK CHINA STORY INTRODUCTION DREAM ON Jane Golley, Ben Hillman, and Linda Jaivin x xi Dream On Jane Golley, Ben Hillman, and Linda Jaivin CHINA DREAMS A pig lantern lights up the streets in Singapore for Chinese New Year celebrations in 2019 Source: Choo Yut Shing, Flickr CHINA STORY YEARBOOK CHINA STORY According to legend, the Jade Emperor called all twelve celestial animals to his palace to assign them their place in the zodiac. The Pig, a lazy if intelligent creature, was still in dreamland when the other eleven turned up to claim their places. He ended up last. And so 2019, the eventful Year of the Pig (coincidentally also marked by swine fever and a severe pork supply shortage in the mainland), ended a zodiac cycle that began with the Year of the Rat in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics — often referred to as the official ‘coming-out’ party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). By 2019, China had well and truly arrived. It boasted the second biggest economy in the world and could claim significant global influence and power. Yet the ongoing tit-for-tat trade war with the United States afflicted an economy already undergoing its own difficult internal readjustments — even if, by the year’s end, the two sides had signed a (precarious) ‘phase one’ of a peace deal. In Hong Kong, the nightmarish and increasingly violent cycles of protest, police suppression, and popular reaction that began with peaceful mass demonstrations in June showed no sign of abating. The US Congress infuriated the Chinese leadership by passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act. While Beijing did its best to show a unified and defiant face to the world, three spectacular and unusual leaks of secret documents revealed the possibility of cracks beneath the surface of unity. These leaks included two tranches of documents concerning Xinjiang, one published by The New York Times and the other by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, as well as a collection of speeches made by China’s top leaders immediately following the events of 4 June 1989, in which they discussed what amounted to a playbook for dealing with future mass movements. * The Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi 莊子 once dreamed he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he realised he was just a man. Then he wondered whether he was not in fact a butterfly dreaming he was a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly. As Jingjing Chen writes in ‘Zhuangzi and His Butterfly Dream: The Etymology ofMeng 夢’, the Chinese character for ‘dream’ (as seen on the cover) can be a metaphor for transformation.1 To speak of a dream in Chinese is also a common way of signifying nostalgia. The character meng has historically also been used to indicate the darker side of palace politics. It would later acquire, from the Western notion of ‘dreams’, the meaning of ideals and aspirations, as in the China Dream 中国梦. Dreams are also illusions, as in another of Chinese culture’s most famous dreams, The Dream of the Red Chamber (also translated as The Story of the Stone). Annie Luman Ren’s forum, ‘From the Land of Illusion to the Paradise of Truth’, looks at the relationship between reality and illusion in both the classic Qing dynasty novel and the ‘post-truth’ media in the contemporary Chinese world. The year 2019 encompassed dreams in every one of these senses, from transformations to illusions and aspirations — and nightmares, too. When we sat down in February 2019 to plan this China Story Yearbook, it struck us how many significant anniversaries would occur over the xii course of the year — each representing a different kind of ‘Chinese xiii dream’. These included the seventieth anniversary of the PRC — a dream of national revolution and renewal that, by the end of 2019, had become a dream of empire, with Xi Jinping’s proclamation of the ‘new frontier’ 新境界 of ‘Chinese rule’ 中国之治. Xi’s own power continued to grow in 2019 in both practical and symbolic ways. A set of ‘morality guidelines’ issued to all citizens in October not only defined the etiquette for singing the national anthem and the proper sorting of rubbish and recycling, but also called for all to ‘defend China’s honour abroad’ and adopt Xi Jinping Dream On Jane Golley, Ben Hillman, and Linda Jaivin Thought as their moral ‘core’. The guidelines made no mention of Mao or Deng Xiaoping, unlike their last iteration in 2001. The Party also quietly eliminated a passage from literary Chinese textbooks that had been part CHINA DREAMS of Chinese students’ education for decades, apparently for fear that its message of righteous rebellion might be taken too literally, as Esther CHINA STORY YEARBOOK CHINA STORY Sunkyung Klein and Victor Fong write in ‘The Changing “Dream” in the Classroom: Literary Chinese Textbooks in the PRC’. Another highly significant anniversary is that of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. As Gloria Davies discusses in ‘A Dream of Perpetual Rule’, the May Fourth Movement expanded from a patriotic protest into a movement encompassing workers’ and women’s rights, universal education, and cultural renewal. Xi Jinping, however, in what Davies calls an ‘ahistorical privileging of patriotism’, has narrowed its significance to its anti-imperialist beginnings while expanding it to endorse his own administration as drawing on its ‘powerful spiritual force’. She also makes the point that it is ‘perhaps more important to pay attention to what Xi’s China Dream does rather than what it means’. The May Fourth Movement resonated deeply with the broad movement of pro-democracy petitioners and protesters in 1989 — a movement that ended in bloodshed