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Beijing minds China's manners By Daniel K. Gardner Friday, June 13, 2008 On Feb. 7, Xinhua, China's official news agency, reported: The "civic index" of Beijingers, calculated using several parameters, was 73.38 in 2007, up from 65.21 and 69.06 in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The index reflects compliance with rules involving public health and public order, attitudes towards strangers, etiquette at sports events and a willingness to contribute to the Olympic Games. I haven't a clue what 73.38 on the civic index scale means or how it was arrived at, but at the moment the trend sure is looking positive. The Xinhua report goes on to cite some encouraging specifics: The percentage of Beijingers who spat on public sidewalks and streets in 2006 was 4.90; in 2007 that percentage fell by almost half, to 2.53 percent. The news on the littering front was equally upbeat; in 2006, 5.30 percent of the people threw trash on the streets, but in 2007 only 2.86 percent did. (Queue-jumping numbers were promising as well, down from 6.0 percent in 2006 to 1.5 percent in 2007.) How these particular surveys were conducted is not disclosed, but the resulting numbers - down to the second decimal point - suggests a scientific precision that is pretty darn convincing. The improvement in the civic index didn't just happen, however. It's the consequence of systematic initiatives sponsored by the government as part of a "campaign of civilization improvement," which it launched in 2002 just after winning the rights to act as the host of the 2008 Olympics. The initiatives include: Queuing Day - On the 11th of every month government employees fan out to hundreds of bus and subway stations, public lavatories and ticket booths exhorting people to form orderly lines (Slogan: "it's civilized to queue, it's glorious to be polite") Seat-Giving Day - On the 22nd of every month the young and healthy are asked to offer their bus and train seats to others. The government is also conducting an anti-spitting campaign, also known as the Green Woodpecker Project (long story); an anti-litter campaign; a smile campaign; the Beijing Workers' Civilization Cheering Squad; and a smoking ban in all 66,000 taxis and most public spaces. Chinese leaders anticipated from the outset that the Olympics would be a splendid occasion for China's "coming-out party," a festive celebration where the country could show off its best, most modern and progressive face to a watching world. The capital's gleaming skyscrapers, Olympic venues, new subway lines and updated network of highways would be sure to wow onlookers. Yes, they anticipated, the rising prosperity and sophistication of the 21st-century China would be on full view for all to see. Then dread set in the realization that so too would the etiquette and manners of the Chinese people. Belching at tables, slurping soup, shooting phlegm balls onto sidewalks and streets, jostling to get to the front of subway and lavatory lines, and chain-smoking everywhere, even in hospitals and schools - these were the sorts of practices, authorities concluded, would offend the sensibilities of foreign visitors. This was not the face they wished the world to see. This was not the face of a great, world power. It was the face of an "uncivilized" people. For three millennia, since 1000 B.C., the Chinese had been supremely confident that they were the center of civilization, the Middle Kingdom. Other peoples, all other peoples, because they didn't have the good fortune of sharing in the bounty of Chinese culture, were "barbarian" and "uncivilized." When their representatives came to the imperial court and performed the kowtow to the emperor they were merely acknowledging what all knew to be true: that China, in the person of the emperor, possessed the most perfect virtue, benevolence, and sense of propriety. But when Western nations, backed by powerful naval forces, imposed unequal treaties on China in the 19th century, this ethnocentric arrogance began to wane. Then, in the 20th century, Chinese civil wars and, later, the establishment in 1949 of the People's Republic by Mao, cut the country off from much of the world. Only with Mao's death and the ascendancy of Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s did the world again open up to the Chinese. Ever since they have been trying to define what it means to be a civilized, modern people in a world that has dramatically changed in the last two centuries. Foreigners in vast numbers will soon be visiting China's capital again. Chinese leaders know that there will be no kowtows this time, that the language of etiquette has changed. They have been trying since the 1980s to forge a new "modern" language, one mutually comprehensible to Chinese and foreigners - which would serve China well in an increasingly globalized world. The Olympic "campaign of civilization improvement" may be superficial, even humorous, but it invites a few serious observations: Since the 1980s China has developed a sort of ethnographic awareness, a new willingness to observe the "other," tolerate the "other," and even to appropriate behavior from the "other." Chinese authorities, though hugely proud of the country's material prosperity, regard body language as an equally important signifier of "modernity." And, finally, while Chinese officials understand that China is no longer the Middle Kingdom, they want no one to mistake their country for "barbarian" or "uncivilized." They know all too well from their own people's traditional arrogance and condescension just what that implies - and that would be way too much face to lose. Daniel K. Gardner is professor of Chinese history at Smith College.
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