Pride & Tiananmen

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged, that a society in possession of political prisoners, must be in want of justice and improvement.

However, many people in China do not want to talk about repression and injustice, but only what makes them proud of their country. They are not keen to dwell on the past, least of all events like the Tiananmen incident when, on June 4 1989, hundreds of unarmed civilians in a peaceful protest at the centre of Beijing were killed when the army was sent in. Many others were imprisoned for voicing their demands for democratic reforms. Politicians sympathetic to such demands were removed from office, and in the case of the former Premier Zhao Ziyang, put under house arrest until the day he died.

To ignore atrocities of the past tends to be a recipe for being ill prepared for their recurrence in the future. But talk of the Tiananmen Massacre – especially when coming from foreign political figures who have responsibilities for ensuring their countries’ interests are not eclipsed by China’s – tends to provoke a reaction against what are viewed as attempts to belittle China. Since 1989, many in China would like to believe, their country has moved on. The humiliations heaped on their motherland for much of the 19th and 20th centuries have at long last been eradicated. They are now one of the most powerful nations on earth. Economic strength and military might are joined by achievements such as the spectacular 2008 Olympics hosted by Beijing which fittingly witnessed China topping the medals table for the first time.

Yet with all the indisputable progress, what about basic quality of life issues such as being able to question how the decisions of the powerful in society may affect one and one’s family? Being able to obtain information and contest proposals without having to bribe corrupt officials? Being able to air reservations without fear of being arrested and imprisoned? Why shouldn’t Chinese people be able to do these things?

One answer is that these are Western notions which distort what life should be like for China. It was the spread of such ideas – allegedly alien to Chinese culture – that led students to assemble in Tiananmen Square, demand reforms from their government, and stay defiant in the face of approaching soldiers and tanks, forcing a showdown which could easily have been avoided if they had been more submissive. And it is the persistence of such an outlook that prompts questions about the lack of basic freedom when quiet obedience is the best guarantee of prosperity.

But what has something being Western or non-Western got to do with any of this? Western dictatorships long pioneered repressive measures, ordering troops to fire on their own citizens, and locking civilians up for questioning their government. So China would therefore never adopt such ‘Western’ methods? Western critics of liberal reformists have led the way in condemning them by invoking patriotic sentiments. So China would not substitute ‘anti-American’ by ‘anti-China’ in deploying such ‘Western’ style anti-liberal propaganda?

Ultimately, the Western/non-Western distinction is just a smokescreen. Whether something originated in the West has no bearing on whether it should inherently be adopted or rejected in China or anywhere else in the world. All those who protested in Tiananmen twenty years ago wanted was to have a peaceful system of accountability so there could be a stable and responsive state. China could be justly proud, when that day eventually arrives.

Know Thy Goal

Being a progressive can be like being a member of a lost tribe. You wander around with others, all yearning for that moment when the foundation can be laid for a new just society. But one false turn after another, and you begin to doubt if you would ever get to where you will truly belong.

It doesn’t help when those claiming to have the skills and vision to lead the way so often end up being disorientated themselves. If you follow them unquestionably, you could find yourself stuck in a cul-de-sac handing even more power to those who already dominate society through their corporate networks; pushed together near a pit of quicksand where the unlucky victims are left to sink to the bottom; or marched towards a cliff edge with cries of courage in your ear and echoes of madness all around.

Is this the avoidable fate for those who want to build more inclusive communities? No, not if we hold on to what we should really bring about – a relentless reduction of power inequalities in every sphere of life. That is the essence of a better world. People being able to interact and cooperate with mutual respect and without fear of intimidation from anyone amassing sufficient power to subjugate them. Take a step forward only where that would lead to a retreat of power imbalance, and that would surely guide you to making the right progress.

If you use this as your moral compass, you would not allow the police to hurt innocent people in the midst of peaceful demonstrations; you would not hand power to the meat industries so that they could create the repulsive conditions leading to BSE, bird flu, swine flu and much besides; you would not deregulate financial institutions so they could take more and more irresponsible risks at the expense of ordinary people’s savings and livelihood; and you would not embrace the arms manufacturers as esteemed exporters of fear and death.

Instead, you would map out where the balance of power has shifted too far towards one side in any significant form of social or economic relationship, and rally support for rectifying it. In some cases, this could mean that despite their protest that they have been too tied up with red tape, corporations are to be regulated more tightly and their offshore havens closed off. In other cases, for all the talk of parental right, aggressive parents who are abusive to teachers would need to be prevented from doing so in the future.

Our journey is not about tracking populist hotspots which the media would favour, nor is it about hoisting a few symbolic flags of defiance for its own sake. It is about changing power relations. Find out where conditions give rise to some being able to use their power disadvantage to deprive others of a fair chance to share in and contribute to the common good, and transform them.

There is a saying that at 50 one reaches the age when one can fully grasp one’s mission in life. The progressive struggle – as a deliberate challenge to unjust power distribution – has been going on for not just 50, or 500, but 2500 years since the Chinese Mohists and Athenian democrats systematically started pressing for more inclusive power structures back in the 5th century BC. Anyone who hasn’t grasped the goal of rolling back power inequalities is perhaps not meant to be a progressive after all.

King John’s Lesson for the G20

In the early 13th century, King John sat on the English throne and thought nothing of deciding what was to be done in his domain without consulting anyone. After all, that’s what rulers were supposed to do – they acquire power and exercise it as they see fit. What he didn’t pick up was that the mood of the people was changing. They were increasingly agitated by their ruler taking decisions which took little account of their concerns. They were not prepared to put up with it anymore.

Those who had no chance of getting King John to hear them out took direct action. Some, such as those who came to be immortalised as Robin Hood and his followers, robbed from the powerful, fought their local Sheriff, and handed money to the poor. Others ambushed and confronted defenders of the establishment just to express their anger.

Higher up the social hierarchy, the barons were getting fed up with John’s ‘know it all’ hubris too. In 1215, they forced their King to sign the Magna Carta – a charter which would limit the powers of the ruler and make his right to take decisions on a wide range of issues conditional on proper consultation with the leading aristocrats in the land. Two vital consequences followed from this. First, once it was conceded that no ruler had any special power or wisdom to lead infallibly, there was no going back. Anyone trying ever again to reclaim the right to rule without letting others have a say would be overthrown by an implacable opposition.

Secondly, and even more importantly, the principle of engagement in decision making – it would come to be increasingly recognised – could not be ring-fenced to apply to just a few aristocrats. Each declaration that the ruling group could not possibly allow anyone else to join in was to be met with resistance until, eventually, everyone, regardless of race, gender, income or creed could vote, scrutinise, and stand for office.

The G20 is no King John. But in a globalised world, people can see that there are transnational institutions like the banks and energy suppliers whose actions have caused havoc and distress everywhere. Any international political grouping, be it the G20, G8 or any other combination, positioning itself as the vehicle to deal with these institutions and tackle other worldwide problems, will inevitably draw to itself the questions, “who do you speak for? And how have you given them a say?”

When the world’s most powerful people gather together to decide what is best for the world, the people who have not been given a say would be concerned with their interests being ignored by those decisions. What will be the investment priorities to revive the world economy? Why should the call for an independent global reserve currency be dismissed out of hand? What actions will actually be taken to close the offshore tax havens? Will more be done to tackle climate change? These are important issues which only a global authority can help to address, but no one individual or group can assume that authority without recognising that it has to be grounded on a global democracy to make it sustainable.

Sending the Sheriff out to catch Robin and the hoodies is not a long-term solution. Some day those in control of the world’s fate would have to face up to the need for a global Magna Carta which sets out transparently how people everywhere, regardless of their nationalities or socio-economic status, can vote, scrutinise, and stand for office in relation to the global authority acting in their name.

Powerlessness can damage your health

How power is distributed in society can put innocent lives at risk. The less powerful you are in relation to others, the more likely you are to suffer ill health. We are not talking here about how the powerful may abuse their positions and inflict harm on those who cannot stand up to them. It is the mere fact that by virtue of being in a subordinate position that one becomes more prone to sickness and deterioration.

A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology study found those having to take more overtime tended to develop signs of cognitive impairment known to be a risk factor for dementia. Members of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health carried out the study by tracking more than 2,000 workers in the UK since the 1980s, and cross-referenced their scores on a range of brain function tests against their overtime records. Those who had done the most overtime had lower scores than others in terms of their reasoning and word-use ability.

Why would anyone keep working long hours with all the associated stress and exhaustion? They may be desperate to earn more to make ends meet, or they are simply not in a position to say no. In either case, they have to endure it because no other option is open to them.

The study did not differentiate between the seniority of the workers concerned, but anyone wondering if this has any bearing on the power-health relationship can refer to the study by Rose and Marmot (published in ‘British Heart Journal’) which looked at 17,000 workers with the same employer and found that death rates from heart disease were four times as high amongst the most junior workers as amongst the most senior administrators working in the same offices.

The reality is that the higher up you are in an organisation, the more control you would have over what you would spend your time doing, and how you would deal with the issues you face. By contrast, the lower down you are, the more you have to take orders you may not agree with, the less say you have over what hours you work, and any influence you have over key decisions dwindles unless you work for a very progressive employer.

This is mirrored by the impact of power distribution across society more widely. According to the study by Donkin, Goldblatt and Lynch (published in ‘Health Statistics Quarterly’), those with lower socio-economic status have shorter life expectancy than those with higher status – indeed by a margin of almost seven and a half years shorter for men (in England and Wales in the late 1990s).

So next time someone tells you that it is up to powerful people to amass resources and control for themselves and it’s nobody else’s business, remind them that any act of power distribution which intrinsically cuts down the life chances of other people is everyone’s business. We have a common interest in getting it right.

Year of the Invisible Ox

The third largest minority ethnic group in Britain have just started celebrating the Chinese New Year. It’s the Year of the Ox, an animal that embodies many of the characteristics often ascribed to the Chinese: quiet, hard-working, high on productivity and low on maintenance. You can let them get on with laboring to get things done, and you don’t really need to pay too much attention to them.

Not surprisingly, in the struggle between the white establishment and the champions for the ‘black’ minorities, the Chinese have been cloaked with invisibility. It is notable that in professional or entrepreneurial roles where a practitioner’s skills and commitment are directly rewarded by appreciative clients or customers, many Chinese have achieved success for themselves. But where progress depends on getting through a large organisational hierarchy, few make it up the corporate ladder. Culturally disinclined to blow their own trumpet, they seldom if ever question being overlooked.

On the other side of the fence, ‘Black & Minority Ethnic’ consciousness hardly stretches to the Chinese either. Black (covering African and Afro-Caribbean) and Asian (covering those from the Indian sub-continent) groups are the ones to be given more support. Though the Chinese are the ones with the lowest participation rate in civic engagement and voting – and let’s not forget, there is not a single MP of Chinese descent in the House of Commons – little is done to rectify that anomaly. Indeed one highly influential advocate of BME rights had been quoted as saying that more must be done to increase the representation of Black and Asian – not Chinese or any other group – in public life.

There are two possible lessons here. One is that the Chinese should learn to adapt. They must stop cultivating in their children outmoded deferential attitudes, and all the meek and mild nonsense of getting on with their responsibilities quietly. Instead, they should teach them to be far more assertive, make their presence felt, sell themselves to those in senior positions to get on.

The other lesson is for the champions of equality and diversity to open their eyes and see what needs to be done to counter the neglect of Chinese people. No, they are not all successful business leaders. Many live in poverty. A large number have to put up with dreadful working conditions. They suffer the slings of prejudice and arrows of discrimination, but their ill fortune is seldom if ever covered by the media. Many have no prospect of career progression because their cultural diffidence is interpreted as signs of limited abilities. They have no political role model, because Parliament has no place for a single one of them.

So what is going to be the way forward? As we know, on Animal Farm, not all animals are equal. Between pigs and human, black and white, the ox will have to speak out before others take it seriously.

Happy New Year.

Unite or Perish

Why do you think the old British American colonies declared in 1776 that they would act in unison to build a new independent nation? Many feared being subsumed into a united America could cause its own problems. In the end, they were persuaded by the succinct eloquence of Benjamin Franklin: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Today the citizens of the world don’t have mad George (the eighteenth century monarch or his contemporary namesake – not after the end of his term of office anyway) sending troops all over the globe demanding submission. But the threat we’re having to face is no less daunting.

For decades now business giants have made themselves the ruler of the seven seas. Their plutocratic regime has a wider span and firmer grip than the British Empire ever attained. In pursuit of their own short-term profit, they have pressed ahead regardless of the dire problems they cause for others. Unions can no longer protect workers when corporate bosses can cut pay or move jobs abroad at will. The media fuel a consumerist culture so that parents not endlessly buying new products risk being seen as failures by their own children. Allies in governments help to block environmental action and allow pollution to reach ever more dangerous levels. And to cap it all, financial transactions became so deregulated that irresponsible lending plunged the world into a deep recession.

What the plutocrats fear is concerted democratic action – citizens of the world acting together through a global government capable of challenging the cynical hegemony of powerful corporations. And that is precisely what we must press for above all else.

Of course you will be told that there are many more urgent issues governments have to turn their attention to. But none of them acting alone stands any chance of delivering the solutions we need. To have real long term employment prospects (instead of the ‘hired today, fired tomorrow’ flexible jobs), to replace destructive consumerism by a sustainable planetary future, and to stop the senseless recurrence of economic crises, we must have a government with worldwide jurisdiction and accountability to all citizens to stop business powers from trampling on us.

What about the threat posed by a world government? In truth, decisions affecting the entire world have been made by an unaccountable elite for decades. Arms sold to oppressive regimes, carbon emission increased, tax havens protected, these things happen because the people giving the go-ahead do not have to account for them to the global public, or think about losing their positions of power at the next election.

Ultimately, the United States were stronger and prospered because the separate colonies decided to join forces. Democratic arrangements made sure the federal government would on the whole act in the interests of all. A democratic global government would likewise safeguard the interests of citizens around the world. Time is running out. The world must learn to unite, or most assuredly, it will fall apart.

The Pension Pirates

The pirates are out again, leading their followers to attack all that serves the public good. Their latest target is public sector workers and their pensions. Their strategy is simple: make working for the public sector as unattractive as possible, state institutions will be weakened, and piracy can flourish on the high sea of laissez faire.

For decades public sector workers were told to put up with lower pay than their private sector counterparts because they had better job security. Then with privatization and outsourcing, job security plummeted. They were then told that they still had their reliable pension scheme. In any case, they should not complain about being paid less than private sector people who were the real wealth creators of society through their devotion to peddling cigarettes, weapons, alcohol, gambling, vacuous status symbols, and environmentally destructive products. They should accept that as mere teachers, nurses, social workers, police, and servants of democratic institutions, it was their duty to lead a modest life. To obsessively point to the gap between themselves and the better rewarded commercial class would only lead to the politics of envy.

How the politics of envy has been turned. Now the pirates want to destroy the pension scheme of public sector workers by inciting private sector’s jealousy and resentment. By using preposterous language like ‘pension apartheid’, they want to stir up enmity against the one distinct benefit left to public sector workers. They know that if they could sink the public sector pension scheme, it would go a long way to cut down the recruitment package for public sector workers. And the more difficult it is to attract good candidates for public service, the more they can deride the quality of public sector workers. The vicious vortex would drown all belief in the values of public service, leaving the pirates to raid and plunder for private profit.

What is to be done? A counter-attack has to be launched. These pirates thrive on people’s fear. Barely concealing their nasty vindictiveness, they seek to put their intended victims on the defensive. If they were allowed to press on unchallenged, they would grow bolder until they come within striking distance and the public realm would be blown out of the water.

A key tactic is to expose their intentions. They have always despised public servants upholding the public good. If only the ruthless could roam freely, without being taxed, without being regulated, without being prevented from exploiting the weak, without being prosecuted for their thoughtless transgression, they could have complete control over the world. If they were able to undermine the public sector, they would then say that everyone should turn to the private sector for medical care, good education, basic security, decent housing, and all else that matters. Those on low income would have to suffer in silence, and hope at best the odd charity might just about keep them afloat.

So don’t just look on in despondency as the pirates approach. Speak up and tell the wider world that society would truly be broken if these scoundrels get their way. Ring out the alarm bells to warn of the consequences of deprecating people who serve the public good.

But remember, these pirates won’t be found sailing around in battle-weary ships with ‘skull and bones’ flapping in the wind. They are more likely to be spotted on billionaires yachts, flanked by champagne and caviar.