On Compromise: Democracy and Hong Kong

It is striking how difficult it has been to come to a compromise in the debate over the proposal for electing the Hong Kong Chief Executive . From one point of view, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (SCNPC) refused to compromise with pro-democratic forces in Hong Kong when it announced a very restrictive format on 31 August 2014. Even pro-establishment figures admitted that the format is restrictive and not what Hong Kong had hoped for, but they recommend that HK “pocket it” first—implying a better mechanism is achievable down the road (but inadvertently admitting the package is not satisfactory). But one could also go further back and note that the pan-democrats painted themselves in a corner by demanding “civil nominations” when the Basic Law clearly calls for CE candidates to be nominated by a Nominating Committee. Instead of compromising and seeking to change the makeup of the Nominating Committee (which is the same 1200 people who made up the Electoral Committee in 2012, a committee made up mostly of pro-establishment figures), which could have been broadened and made more democratic, pan-democrats sought a much more open nominating system.

The problem with the Nominating Committee is that, with the restriction that only 2-3 candidates can be nominated, and a high threshold of 50 percent support for nomination, it basically decides the election before it is put to the public. The 19th century New York City Democratic Party machine leader Boss Tweed is famous for having said, “I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.” So while the pan-dems’ objections are understandable, the push for “full universal suffrage” was always going to be difficult. Many argue that it made Beijing less willing to compromise.

There is no evidence, however, that Beijing would ever have compromised. C.Y. Leung even said as much, when he admitted to the NY Times and WSJ that real democracy would mean that the CE would have to listen to poor people. It is interesting that he did not understand how this elitist and anti-democratic argument would sound, both abroad and back in HK.  He made clear something we have long known, that neither the oligarchs who run Hong Kong nor the Party in Beijing are willing to allow full democracy in Hong Kong.

The best hope was for some compromise. As I’ve mentioned above, the pan-democrats pushed too hard for civil nomination, and the SCNPC pushed too hard in the other direction. Moderate democrats like Ronny Tong who had offered compromises were literally in tears on August 31, 2014, when the proposed framework was announced. Their attempts at compromise had been ignored.

Now pro-establishment politicians want the pan-democrats to be more pragmatic and realistic. But the members of the Democratic Party who compromised back in 2010 on the 2012 election with the promise that they would have “universal suffrage” in 2017 feel betrayed. This proposed system is not what they had envisioned when they agreed to “universal suffrage.” Having been criticized by the more radical elements of the pan-democratic movement, they now feel stabbed in the back by Beijing. The radicals can say, “See, you were wrong to compromise.”

Pro-establishment figures have repeatedly claimed that pan-democrats need to be more pragmatic, that they need to compromise (see here and here). They say opponents need to accept Bejing, and balance idealism and pragmatism. This is true, but it seems to ignores that Leung and Beijing have no intention of allowing free elections.

Is compromise possible in the future? Beijing officials have ruled out any compromise now, but the government has had a campaign to “pocket now” the proposed reforms and revise them in the future. But Beijing officials have refused to consider any future revisions. Thus, the government’s own campaign recognizes the proposals are not ideal, and by refusing to make any compromises now or promises for changes in the future, it makes them seem uncompromising. They also insist that the same framework will imposed for the 2022 elections.

This is all very sad for Hong Kong. Beijing and pro-establishment figures refuse to compromise for fear of looking weak, and pro-democracy leaders fear attacks from the radical fringe if they seek compromise. The 31 August decision made compromise impossible. Elections could produce a more legitimate CE and can change the politics of a place because candidates have to make promises to the public to get elected. On the other hand, if the elections are “North Korean style”, then they would not have this positive effect. We will never know whether a compromise would have been possible. But we do know that Hong Kong will continue with a deadlocked legislature and an unpopular and weak Chief Executive, whether C.Y. Leung runs for reelection or not. The weakness comes from the institutions, not the personalities, and failure to compromise means we will continue muddling along.

Ants and Superstition

I came back to my office after two weeks away to find ants. Not a line of ants, or an ant colony, but about 10 "explorer ants" per hour crossing my desk in different directions and on different parts of the desk. They are distracting, and also worrisome: where are they coming from? Will they eat my books? Since there is no food, and I have not been eating my sandwich at my desk for two weeks, it is quite a mystery.

I mentioned this problem to our office secretary, so she could have someone deal with it, either by putting some sort of pesticide or checking where the ants are coming from. I don't want them spraying pesticides while I'm here, but in a week I'll be away again so I told her they could perhaps wait until then.

The next day, when I went to the main office, my secretary asked me if I had seen the office tea lady yet (she is the woman who cleans, delivers mail, and brings water to the offices for making tea), and I said no. My secretary then told me that our tea lady had bought some poison. It is the kind that ants take back to their colony so that it kills off all the ants, not just the one who came upon the poison. She tells me that the tea lady says it is very effective, but then laughingly adds that the tea lady told her that we should not talk about the poison in front of the ants while in my office. The tea lady says that if the ants hear people talk about the poison, they will not eat it.  My secretary and I laughingly exchanged comments on how odd it is to think ants could understand us. Since I did not know how to actually use the poison (which looked like dry coffee grounds inside a small clear plastic box the size of a stamp), my secretary said the tea lady would come by my office to help.

About a half hour later, the tea lady came to my office wearing rubber gloves (she sometimes uses them for cleaning too) and holding a box cutter. To my astonishment, she spoke to me in English (we always speak in Mandarin, though I have long known that her English is actually very good) and talks about the poison. Then she says, laughing, that the ants don't understand English, so it is OK for us to talk about the poison in English. She was saying this while laughing--she clearly realized the absurdity of what she was saying, yet was also serious and "believed" it.

Anthropologists have also long discussed the nature of "belief."  The tea lady's belief in the ability of ants to understand Cantonese is not complete. There is some doubt in her mind, and she surely knows I, as a foreigner, cannot be expected to believe such a thing. Her belief in the ability of ants to understand Cantonese is not the same as a faithful pilgrim's belief that a deity can heal her son, or protect her family. It is not the same as the belief that the world is round, or any other "self-evident" belief that would make us become emotionally upset if we met someone who denied it.

Anthropologists have long critiqued the idea of "superstition" because one person's superstition is someone else's religion. The idea of virgin birth and resurrection can seem as preposterous as the idea of luck coming from a rabbit's foot or horse shoe, to those of another culture. But here is a case where the term "superstition" is actually useful: the tea lady herself recognized that the idea that the ants could understand her talking about poison was preposterous at one level. It was not an idea she was completely attached to. At the same time, she behaved as though it was "better to be safe than sorry" so did not want to talk about poison in front of the ants, at least not in Cantonese. Some scholars have defined superstition as a belief that is recognized as not part of the culture's mainstream. There are problems with this definition, but it can be useful, especially for ants who can understand Cantonese.

I wonder if the ants can read blogs on the internet. I'll have to change the password on my office computer to make sure they can't read this.

Bricolage or Ignorance

This year's American Chamber of Commerce Ball (a charity fundraising event) has the theme "La Carousel Amercano." There is something about this "name" that I find annoying, even offensive. I do not insist that "Mexico" should be pronounced in Spanish, as "MEH-hee-ko," but this is too much.

First of all, what language is this supposed to be? At first I thought it might be French, but carousel is spelled "carrousel" in French. Plus, it is "le carrousel" no "la." But of course, "Americano" is not French (that would be américain), so perhaps it is Italian? (no: il carosello) Or Spanish? (no: el carrusel). Even if it is a fake Romance language, the article should agree with the adjective (i.e. la ... americana or le ... americano). There are so many mistakes in these three words that they almost had to do it be design!

So when is it OK to just be creative, hybridize and do some bricolage? Maybe if no one knows better, it does not matter. But anyone with even just a first year level of any Romance language should be annoyed by this mixing. It does not come off as creative, but as a sign of ignorance, even a lack of respect for other cultures.  English speakers laugh at others when they make mistakes in translations (see here, and here and here). I admit some mistakes are very funny, but I laugh uncomfortably because they are mostly in attempts by foreigners to communicate using what to them is a foreign language, and we should respect that and give them some slack. But this theme is just an attempt to be, what, exotic? "European"?  Why not get a proper translation? Even Google translate would not make this gross mistake.

I can predict many people to whom I will mention this "translation fail" will accuse me of being too much of a purist. But no one likes to see their language teased like this. And it makes Americans look bad to all who do know Romance languages. And if you say it is no big deal, you are saying it is OK to show your ignorance.

Divination and Economics

Today's NPR Planet Money podcast (listen here or transcript here) combines two of my favorite topics: magic (specifically divination) and economics. Essentially they show that the consumer sentiment index does not really seem to predict anything, but some people like to use it because it is so difficult to foresee the future that they'll latch on to anything. It was developed in the 1940s, after WWII, and was ignored until the 1970s, when people worried about--and could not explain--the economy. So as the podcasts illustrates, by beginning with a psychic, people turned to an index that has little or no support, though it has its believers (hmm, where have I heard that pattern before?)

Also amusing to an anthropologist is that the creator of the consumer sentiment index was only able to convince the Fed to ask the questions for his index by telling them they had to ask some polite, "How are you?" type of questions at the start of the survey to build rapport, before the interviewers would go on to ask "How much money do you have?"  So he asked four questions:

1. Are you better or worse off financially than you were a year ago?
2. Do you think the economy will be better off a year from now? 
3. What about five years from now? 
4. Is this a good time to make a big purchase?

He combined these into an index, and voila, an index that we use to this day.  I'm not sure these questions really build rapport, at least in the sense anthropologists understand the concept. I also wonder how much people lie in answering the economic questions. But like all indices, they may ask a silly question but if you ask it every month for many years, it gives a pattern that can be meaningful.  It's just that in this case, no one can decide what it means, though it does help businessmen make decisions. Just like psychics.

Year of the Yang

February 19th was the lunar new year. It has variously been called year of the goat, sheep, or ram. I myself preferred "ram" because goat and sheep have negative connotations. But I now say "year of the goat."

Goats can symbolize virility, but because goats are promiscuous, they have been symbols of licentiousness. The goat is also the player on the team that makes a mistake and costs his team the match--the opposite of the hero. Sheep follow blindly, and are seen as timid. C.Y. Leung, Hong Kong's chief executive, was widely derided for calling on Hong Kong people to be sheep in the year of the sheep.  So "ram" seems like a good substitute. But when Americans say "ram," they are thinking of the male bighorn sheep; it is a different species of sheep, but it is still just a male sheep; the female is a ewe.  So it is not appropriate to say "year of the ram," as Chinese University's Art Museum among many others has done, because it excludes females.

Of course, this is only an issue in English; in Chinese the word yang 羊 includes both goats 山羊 (literally "mountain yang") and sheep 綿羊 (literally "wool yang"). Some scholars (see NY Times article here, for example) have noted that since goats were more common in northern China, while sheep were raised in the south, the original horoscope yang probably referred to a goat.

Goats and sheep are actually different genera, not just different species; they even have different numbers of chromosomes. But that does not mean every culture will name them differently; there are plenty of animals that are lumped together or distinguished as separate without regard to the linnaean taxonomy.  I suspect the reason Chinese uses a common word yang for both genera is that in traditional China, goats and sheep seem to have been raised in different parts of the country, so it was not necessary to distinguish clearly between them.

This is just an example of differences in what anthropologists call cultural domains. Different cultures divide the world in different ways. Many cultures do not make a clear distinction between the colors green and blue, using a word sometimes translated as "grue" to describe the two together. Taiwanese Hokkien uses 青 to describe both green and blue; this would sometimes confuse me when native Taiwanese speakers, while speaking in Mandarin, would point to something "obviously green" 綠 and call it "藍 blue."

It is laughable, then, that the folklorist Zhao Shu of the Beijing Institute of Culture and History tries to take this quirk of taxonomic difference and make out of it a general principle of Eastern v Western mentalities. The NY Times articles says:

He also drew a lesson about the virtues of Chinese tradition. “In Western culture, things are subdivided into more and more detailed categories, and that’s why Europe has still not been unified after so many years,” he continued. “If you want to say whether it’s goat or sheep, then why not also ask whether it’s a ewe or a ram? But Chinese culture has an inclusive spirit and stresses harmony.”

A wonderful "just so story," essentializing "the Chinese" as harmonious and inclusive. All revolutions and wars are wiped out as anomalies. Factionalism, also often seen as characteristic of China, gets wiped out by "Chinese inclusiveness." The fact that "rice" in Chinese can be 米 (polished rice) or 稻 (husked rice) or 飯 (cooked rice) but is only "rice" in English is ignored. It seems these ridiculous cultural generalizations will never be overcome. They are too comforting. And amusing.

Dongzhi in China

In the invention of tradition category, it seems that Dongzhi 冬至, or Winter Solstice (22 December), is becoming a new holiday in mainland China.  A friend recently forwarded me the following drawing.

What is interesting about this picture is that the party portrayed looks like a cross between New Year's Eve (with the streamers and funny glasses) and  Octoberfest (with the steins of beer). But Dong Zhi in Hong Kong is a very family-oriented holiday. Families try to have the meal together, and with grandparents and grandchildren there, there are no funny glasses or beer steins. The party in the picture is among friends and peers, not a family event. The characters say "Happy Dongzhi," but no one says that in Hong Kong.

Dong Zhi is celebrated as a special holiday in Hong Kong, and offices close early so that employees can go home and prepare large family meals. Though it is on the Chinese lunar calendar, it is not celebrated as a holiday elsewhere. It seems that as the holiday is being promoted in the mainland, it is being transformed from a family holiday to a peer-group holiday.  Some anthropologists have been arguing that there has been increasing focus on the individual in the mainland, and this "holiday" seems to fit that pattern.

Earlier religious symbols at the protests

Pictures from 11 October 2014, Mong Kok

The first shrine, near Argyle St. on Nathan Rd.

Not very nice: funerary offerings for CY at Admiralty.

15 November 2014, Mong Kok after re-occupation, when the shrine was rebuilt two blocks south.