成人论坛

Chinese Democracy

• James Reynolds
• 25 Nov 08, 10:50 AM GMT

If the Chinese Communist Party is looking for a house band to play at one of its next study sessions, latest album . Chinese Democracy, you can be sure, will not be uploaded onto official Politburo iPods.

One newspaper editorial here says that the album venomously attacks China. When we mentioned the in a Chinese internet forum, the administrator quickly deleted the reference. The record hasn't been released in China - unofficially we've been told this is because the material is too sensitive. The album's official website Chinesedemocracy.com has also been blocked.

The Chinese government prefers a different kind of music. Before its press conferences, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing plays generically unthreatening acoustic guitar music over its loudspeakers. I asked the spokesman, Qin Gang, what he made of the new Guns N' Roses album.

"According to my knowledge, a lot of people don't like this kind of music - because it's too noisy, and too loud. James, I think you are a mature adult, aren't you?" he said (with what seemed to be a definite half-smile).

But if you look around a bit, you can find something even louder and more provocative than Guns N' Roses.

In a small bar on the Pacific coast, a Chinese heavy metal band called Ordnance perform their new album. The four band members perform with their backs to the audience of 40 or 50 people. Their songs go just as far - if not much further - than Guns N' Roses. The band attacks the Chinese police for not defending ordinary people, they criticise corruption and oppression in their own country.

"Take pride in freedom of speech," the band sings, "take pride in guaranteeing human rights, Take one party dictatorship as a disgrace."

This small band singing in a small bar can get away with saying things that would never be allowed anywhere else in this country. I wonder what they think of the American band thousands of miles away also singing about China.

"Guns N' Roses are in the US - they have never lived in China," says Ying Peng, the band's lead singer, "They don't really know what China is really like. They try to understand it in their way, but it's one-sided. I may like the music, the melody. But for lyrics, everyone thinks differently, and stands on a different side. It's a different place, different culture."

"If they came to China to tour, what would you say to them?" I ask.

"Though we're not on the same level band, we have the same spirit," says the guitarist Liu Li Xin, "The rebellious spirit is the same. We try to discover problems in societies. We respect Guns N' Roses, because they took notice of China's democracy. For that, they deserve our respect. But we do have the same attitude and spirit, hoping to make China better."

In the end which band will have the greater impact on China? The Americans performing in stadiums outside China? Or the four men in their own country yelling out their own concerns to their own people?

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The Deal

• James Reynolds
• 25 Nov 08, 08:56 AM GMT

You won't find it written down anywhere. The government would deny that it exists. But it's one of the first things that you learn about when you get to China. Everyone here understands it. And it helps to explain why the Communist Party has been able to stay in power.

It's The Deal - sometimes known as The Bargain or the Pact.

The Deal is an unspoken agreement between the Chinese government and its people. It was reached in the aftermath of the crushing of the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989. It goes like this: the people leave the politics to the government; in return the government makes the people rich.

A crude way of looking at it is that the Communist Party has simply bought off its people with money and jobs. But there's more to it than that. For more than a century, until the late 1970s, China lived in almost constant chaos: a collapsing empire, foreign invasion and occupation, civil war, famine (any Chinese person over 35 can still remember some of those years). Many people here want a break from the anarchy they once knew. So, a more accurate way of seeing The Deal is this: everyone has agreed to leave behind years of chaos by focusing all of their efforts on the economy. Getting rich feels better than being hungry and anarchic.

For years, The Deal has governed how life works in China. Today's students haven't protested like their predecessors a generation ago partly because there have always been enough jobs for them when they graduate (and partly because they know that demonstrations end badly). Workers and farmers haven't risen up in mass revolt because the Party's given them the chance to escape from poverty. In other words, if you keep quiet and put your faith in the system, you can get a good life.

In recent years, there have been thousands of small-scale protests. But these demonstrations (or "incidents" as the government calls them) have been about localised issues (eg officials in a certain village have stolen money, or migrant workers on a specific project haven't been paid). Until now, there's been no one single issue for people to protest about.

But now, the world's financial crisis has hit China. As I wrote last week, many Chinese companies which export goods to the West have had to shut down. Migrant workers who left their villages to get jobs are now having to go back home to nothing. We've been getting word of more and more protests in different parts of the country. The government admits that the unemployment situation is "grim."

If hundreds of millions of farmers and migrant workers no longer feel that the government can give them a better life, the government runs into trouble.

Here's the thought that may keep China's leaders awake at night: No Jobs, No Deal.

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