There is no dispute that China has become more wealthy and more modern over the last four decades, its current struggles notwithstanding. But however advanced, it is a walled-off modernity and an inhospitable modernity, where you have to play by its increasingly rigid rules. It’s a modernity that serves as a constant reminder of who is a foreigner and who is one of its own.

“Inhospitable modernity”. The quote is from an article by The China Project and describes how the author, Kevin Xu, went back to China with his (foreign) fiancée to visit family. It summarizes where China is now, twenty years later after I first stepped on the Great Wall in 2004. Changes I discussed with friends recently, changes I saw in other sinology and diaspora writings, changes I observed since Xi Jinping ascended to become Chairman of Everything. The people here often express dismay and distress how China (together with Hong Kong) has changed. I usually answer that it is simply where we were headed all along back in 2012.

The changes have been small, incremental. Here real-name registration, there revised laws end regulations, another tightening of the noose, another sheet to suffocate diverging opinions. It was and is most obvious if you speak Chinese as a foreigner. Xu mentions some of the same issues I encountered more with every other trip to China. No Chinese ID? No easy way to buy train tickets. No random choice in Hotels. No to increasingly more amenities that make up modern Chinese life. It’s inhospitable modernity for everyone who does not play by the Chairman’s rules.

History moves in cycles, dynasties rise and fall, and one day another modernity will come. Not now.

Essays and Writings

Here’s a couple of essays and writings on the changes:

“The Chairman of Everything” was coined by Jeremy Barmé nearly ten years ago. Paywalled article by The Economist, undated entry in The China Story (probably 2014).
“Conducting Research in Xinjiang” by Elise Anderson, 2018
“China’s growing threat to academic freedom”, 2019
“Ugh, here we are” by Jeremy Barmé, 2022
“Tactical compromises” and the debate on doing field research nowadays in China, 2023, tweeted (x’ed?) by Andreas Fulda
“In a retro mood: The ethical dilemmas of cutting a deal with Xi Jinping’s China” by Jeremy Barmé, 2023
“What happened to the China dream?” by David Ownby, 2023 (paywalled)

I saved similar articles over the years and will add them once found in my deep archives.

Image source: “winnie the pooh in an inhospitable modernity city landscape”, Nightcafe / SDXL 1.0.

Last modified on 2023-11-04