Click the picture to scroll through the slideshow.

Photos by Conor Proffitt.

By Neil K. Shenai & Bernard Geoxavier

Two weeks ago, Chinese President Hu Jintao published an editorial in The People’s Liberation Army Daily reaffirming the PLA’s loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. His article pressed the PLA to “resolutely resist the incursion of all kinds of erroneous ideas,” and to “not be disturbed by noise or be affected by rumors.” Another PLA Daily article told the PLA to “strictly observe and maintain the Party discipline” and that the PLA must “stay resolute in resisting non-Party erroneous political perspectives.”

By making public pronouncements about the Army’s subjugate relationship to the Communist Party, Party officials have drawn a line in the sand, renouncing PLA members who are pushing for greater independence from the Party. These statements come on the heels of upheaval within the upper ranks of the Communist Party last month: the ouster of Bo Xilai and arrest of his wife, Gu Kailai, for the murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman, led many to conclude that the Party is showing major signs of internal strife and dissension leading up to November’s much-anticipated first meeting of the Eighteenth Communist Party of China National Congress in Beijing.

Recent pronouncements by numerous PLA Political Commissars reflect the Party’s desire to shore up support for itself among the armed forces as the unquestioned leader of the Chinese state. Despite the asymmetry of power between Party and Army, China’s military is a key instrument of the Party’s hold on power. Without support of the military, the Party could not survive.

China: Threat or Theater?

Some Western observers tend to view China’s rise in a single, solipsistic lens: they believe that China’s military modernization is designed so China canreassert itself in the Western Pacific. Many analysts believe that China’s military modernization is motivated by their fear of the United States. While China is certainly motivated in part by external factors, it also acts according what will keep the Party in power. Viewed from this lens, we can see that China’s military modernization is partially a symptom of the Party’s desire to buy loyalty from the PLA to preserve its own perch atop the Chinese state.

Pronouncements like the ones that appeared in the PLA Daily show that the Communist Party is trying to reassure military cadres that despite the ensuing leadership change this fall, the Party’s power structure and chain of command vis-à-vis the military will remain intact.

Although many in the West tend to conflate the military and the Party, these two bodies sometimes act out of concert with one another, highlighting the potential for discord among Chinese civilian and military authorities. The last five years has born witness to several subtle military bouts of showmanship that happened without the advanced knowledge of Beijing.

The 2011 test flight of the J-20 fighter plane during former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to China and China’s 2007 anti-satellite missile test were prime examples of military displays that took both U.S. and Chinese Communist Party leaders by surprise. Far from being coordinated acts of showmanship, the Party’s stilted response after both events shows that the military sometimes takes actions beyond that exceed their mandate from Beijing, often leading to embarrassing ramifications for China internationally.

To buy the loyalty of the military and bring them into the Party structure, outgoing Party Chairman Hu Jintao pushed for marked increases in the PLA’s budget for pensions, salaries, and pet projects, while China’s national military budget officially increased over eleven percent annually in real terms from 2000 to 2011. President Hu has ensured that each of the PLA branches receive funding for bold and expensive new projects, including aircraft carriers, establishing cyber-warfare units, and developing both stealth and drone aircraft technologies.

Where the Military Goes, So Goes China

In our first article, we argued that a loose equilibrium existed atop the Chinese state, in which the Party, military, and technocratic elites favored the maintenance of the status quo. Economic growth and to a lesser extent, nationalism, holds China together today. As long as the Chinese economy keeps growing, the Party can continue to make positive-sum compromises with the military and other bureaucrats, thus ensuring their hold on power. The growing Chinese military-industrial complex operates much like its counterpart in the United States: even though arguments for military modernization are often couched in the language of looming threats to national security, old-fashioned rent seeking better explains these defense expenditures.

All of this goes to show that the Party is acutely aware of its relationship with the military. Like all closed political systems, single-party rule in China depends on control of the military and domestic security apparatus. Without the support of both the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP), the Chinese Communist Party could not control the Chinese state. As long as economic growth continues, the Communist Party will be the de facto leader of the armed forces. But it is much harder to tell where allegiances will lie if and when the Chinese economy suffers a hard landing.

For these reasons, one should remember that Chinese foreign policy is not always motivated by fear of the United States. China faces numerous potentially destabilizing internal ethnic conflicts and must satisfy rural discontent with cronyism and corruption. External pressure and paranoia inflamed by U.S. foreign policy could embolden those in China who are pushing for an aggressive, nationalistic, PLA-led foreign policy, in turn potentially leading to a self-fulfilling cycle of animosity between the U.S. and China.

The way forward for the United States will require carefully weighing hard power balancing (President Obama’s Asia ‘pivot’) with robust diplomatic engagement. It is up to both the Party’s leaders and their American counterparts to carve out the space necessary for China’s rise, all the while acknowledging that the tensions inherent in the Chinese authoritarian model could bring about radical change inside of China if economic growth contracts.

By Neil K. Shenai & Bernard Geoxavier

On March 15, the Chinese Communist Party announced the removal of Chongqing Party Chief Bo Xilai, a popular ‘Princeling’ leader, famous for his anti-corruption efforts and dogged support of Maoism. Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Bo is only the third Party Chief to be fired mid-term, and his dismissal serves as one of the highlights of an eventful month for the Chinese Communist Party.

Since Bo’s removal, Chinese social media exploded in speculation about the mysterious death of a young Ferrari driver in Beijing, rumored to be Bo Xilai’s son, and even claimed that Bo sympathizers in the Politburo unsuccessfully tried to stage a coup in retaliation to Bo’s removal.

In our last article, we outlined the importance of China’s leadership succession, arguing that underneath the stable veneer of China’s one-Party rule lies a competitive political struggle to control the heart of the Chinese state. In this article, we explain why the Chinese Communist Party removed Bo Xilai and discuss what these events might tell us about the incoming Party Chairman Xi Jinping.

Why the Communist Party fired Bo Xilai

The Communist Party chose to remove Bo Xilai as Chongqing Party chief to sideline a national distraction and expunge one of the Party’s biggest political liabilities. Prior to Bo’s firing, his police chief and confidant, Wang Lijun, unsuccessfully tried to escape to the United States consulate in Chengdu, fleeing charges relating to corruption and harvesting human organs, among other counts.

Only after the United States denied Wang Lijun asylum did it became clear that Bo’s anticorruption campaigns in Chongqing often relied on a host of grislyauthoritarian tactics led by Wang Lijun, including torturing political rivals, appropriating private property in the name of the state, and censuring fellow Party officials for their ostensible lack of ideological rectitude.

The day before Bo Xilai’s dismissal, Wen Jiabao subtly condemned Bo’s heavy-handed approach, claiming that these types of coercive tactics could lead China down a dangerous road of paranoia and political upheaval, much like that of the Cultural Revolution. China’s leaders’ willingness to sack such a prominent member of their own ranks shows their implicit fear of Maoist-style ideological campaigns.

From this perspective, Bo’s firing can be seen as Chinese leadership’s repudiation of Bo’s unique brand of ‘Chongqing School’ revivalism. In all likelihood, key players such as Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping recognize that charismatic leaders like Bo can capitalize on the legitimate desires of the Chinese people – like the goal of anti-corruption – to sow paranoia, encourage politically motivated purges, and aggrandize themselves to feed their own cult of personality and expand their power.

The message is clear: Ideological battles might have turned the Communist Party into the omnipresent force that it is in China today, but these types of old-school conflicts could derail the awesome progress of the Chinese economy over the past thirty years and sink Chinese international aspirations. By overstepping his ideological bounds, Bo set the stage for his own dismissal.

Xi Jinping: Laying low to rise above

In all of the confusion that took place over the last month, many China observers have wondered where Xi Jinping went. The de facto incoming General Secretary of the Communist Party has had a quiet month after returning from his trip to America, which many in China saw as the international legitimization of China’s sixth generation of Party leaders. Even the Global Times, one of China’s more hawkish and nationalist news outlets, openly called for clarity in the face of allegations of party infighting, denigrating the tepid response from the Party about China’s coup rumors.

Despite this criticism, staying quiet may constitute a coherent strategy on behalf of Xi Jinping. In facing these rumors, Chinese leadership encountered the timeless paradox of the strong: To acknowledge rumors is to give them (and their proponents) political credibility; to ignore the rumors creates the space necessary for these rumors to grow and take on a life of their own.

By sacking Bo Xilai and staying reticent about coup rumors, Xi Jinping and his fellow leaders have attempted to triage between both of these competing goals. On one hand, sacking Bo is an implicit acknowledgment of the corrosive effect of Bo’s policies on the Chinese body politic. On the other hand, by ignoring the associated coup rumors that went along with Bo’s firing, Party bosses have been able to give Chinese citizens the impression of normalcy, delegitimizing the coup rumors by not responding to them.

Today, there are no tanks on the streets and no restrictions on how average Chinese citizens can go about their lives. Projecting this image of stability and continuity in the face of challenges to their own power is a coherent strategy employed by Xi Jinping to create distance from himself and the fallout associated with Bo Xilai’s firing.

As the last month has shown, China is far from a unified monolith, seamlessly handing power from one generation to the next. Unlike elections in the West, where every gaffe and conflict among candidates dominates the news cycle, China’s succession is just as fiercely contested but takes place outside the view of the public eye.

The eruption of the Bo Xilai scandal serves as a stark reminder that just as Western leaders fear China’s political regression to Maoism, Party elites also feel threatened by the stark historical memory of the Cultural Revolution.

Further, while many in the West are content to let their imaginations run wild about purported coups and high drama in Beijing, the Party likely realizes that a show of normalcy and strength will give it the space it needs to usher in the 6^th generation cadres and help China navigate this tumultuous period of domestic politics.

A Chinese person asking me if I’m used to using chopsticks and eating Chinese food has always been a sure way to tick me off, especially if that conversation is in Chinese. You would figure they would know that if I speak Chinese, I must have been studying at least a few years, and that in those few years, I would have to have eaten to survive. And in the unlikely scenario that I don’t eat pizza and hamburgers every single day, then I might have picked up a pair of chopsticks. I typically call them out in some way; “If I’m not used to Chinese food AND CHOPSTICKS, wouldn’t I have starved by now?” or something.

After the recent Fujian trip with Professors Fan Ke and Simon and many other HNC friends, I’ve changed my stance a bit. Fujian prides itself on seafood. America also has seafood, and in New England, where I grew up, there is no shortage. And yet Chinese and American seafood are perhaps the most different of parallel cuisines. I grew up on clam chowder and fish and chips. In Fujian, we were slurping slimy bits right off the seashells. I realized that as much as I tried to learn the difference between the Chinese words for clam, oyster, and mussel, that I never would because I don’t know the difference in English.

I admit, I finished a lot of meals unsatisfied. I tried everything, and enjoyed most of it. But I was in no way satiated enough by Fujian seafood to feel like I had had a meal. Of course my friends wanted it everyday, given that it was the local cuisine. I had to order a lot of noodles and come to terms with the fact that, indeed, I was not “used to” all parts of Chinese cuisine.

Which is actually just fine. I take no issue with my good Chinese friends joking about my American tastes. However, when a waitress comes up to my table and says, “You all like this, order this” (“you all” referring to all white people, or, as she sees it, all Westerners), this is a different matter. Whether or not I like Kung Pao Chicken （宫保鸡丁）is beside the point. If you are American or otherwise come from an ethnically diverse society, then I need not preach to the choir.

I’ve asked the waitresses a few times why they assume I’ll like whatever food, but for the most part I let it slide. One time a waitress saw me at the counter, ready to order, and very amiably suggested that I go down a few stalls to the hamburger joint. She was not being rude or curt; she actually thought she was being helpful. So I humored her and asked why she did not think I could eat at her restaurant. “It’s just that most foreigners come here looking for that restaurant, so I wanted to help you.” No harm meant. Still, I pointed out that since I speak Chinese (which she knew already before suggesting I leave) that it should appear that I could also eat Chinese food. She laughed and shrugged.

When I get as used to Chinese seafood as I am with Tex-Mex, if that ever happens, then I’ll have some real ammo for my battle on profiling white people in China. In the meantime, it’s best to keep it simple and use discretion.

“Hey! Hey! Shine your light over here! Look! Look! Shine it here!”

The four hyperactive little boys buzz around me like mosquitoes, distracting me as I try to take a pretentious photo of some old personal photographs lying on the cave floor.

“Yeah, okay, okay.” I turn my flashlight in the direction they’re demanding, and reveal… Nothing. There’s a dead end. Rather than disappoint them, this seems to fire them up even more, increasing their drive to find a passage through the mountain.

“Here! Here! Shine here!” they scream, and I quickly oblige. “Ah! It’s dark!” they yell, and the oldest one grabs the youngest by the shoulders for dramatic effect. The little one responds exactly the way you’d expect a four-year-old to respond when grabbed from behind in a dark cave, and his panic is contagious, shooting through the other three like wildfire (including the one who grabbed him in the first place).

They run away down the corridor screeching giddily, and I continue to eye the passage. It is dark; I think there might be a way through. I squeeze myself into the narrow opening just as a couple of the boys gather up the nerve to return. The sight of me half-disappeared sends them into another bout of noisy excitement.

“Is there a way through? Can you go through?”

I’m looking around, but there isn’t. This is the last tunnel in the complex; there’s nothing to this cave apart from the main chamber. “No. You can’t go through. Come on, I’m coming out.”

I squeeze out of the hole and wander back towards the sunny entrance with my young spelunker apprentices. They charge ahead of me like maniacs, screaming something I can’t understand and pointing up at the right-hand wall of the main chamber. I shine my light up and it looks like there may be another entrance there, but it’s about four meters up. There are pretty good handholds, and I pocket my camera and flashlight and climb up a few feet.

They holler with delight, and begin to clamber up after me. “No, no,” I tell them, but it’s obvious that my leadership role here is only one of instigation; once a game’s begun, it’s not stopping until they decide. I realize that the upper handholds aren’t reliable, and I hop down to the ground, look up at them, and prepare myself to start catching plummeting four-year-olds like some perverse arcade game.

“Hey, come down, little guys. Come down. It’s not safe there!” I’m not sure who I’m kidding. They manage to make it onto an upper ledge, which looks to be simply a narrow ridge of hardened clay, and scurry about like over-caffeinated lemmings, readying for their inevitable death plunge onto the rocky floor below. I’m standing beneath them and imagining newspaper headlines: “Crazed foreigner leads children to their deaths!” “Cavern of Doom: Could your kid be the American cave-killer’s next victim?”

Their need for Olympic-scale sprinting facilities finally outweighs their delight at being suddenly tall. They all manage to scamper down the face of the wall without any falls (little kids are really pretty good at not hurting themselves, all things considered). I breathe a sigh of relief.

I want to take a few more photos of this cave, but at this point will settle for just getting out of here with no manslaughter charges. I say, “Okay, let’s go. Time to go, I’m leaving!” and turn around to find the biggest kid standing right behind me with a giant grin on his face and a pair of even bigger hypodermic syringes in his hands.

“Ha ha!” he laughs with gleeful abandon. I can’t see my own face, but I imagine I’m a little bug-eyed. He’s holding the two enormous syringes straight out in front of him, sticking them into the air diagonally like a flamboyant, pistol-wielding villain in a spaghetti western. The sun shines through the mouth of the cave and glints off the bare, shiny surfaces of the needles. I’m kicking myself for not catching sight of the drug paraphernalia when I first entered the cave, but with this pack of little hellions dangling off of me like a gymnasium, what could I do?

The kid is in heaven: He’s just found something even better than those plastic guns they sell at carnivals! Heroin needles! What fun! It’s kind of sweet, to see how happy he is with such a simple pair of toys… But my only thought is, If you play with toy guns by pantomime-shooting your friends, then how do you play with used syringes?

I manage to keep my cool, and calmly but firmly say, “Hey! No! That is not a toy! That’s dangerous! Dangerous! Not a toy!” I bark a little gruffly at the poor kid, but it works. He puts down the needles and we walked back out to the entrance together.

I think I jarred him a little with my tone. I try to placate him by taking a few pictures of him and his friends. That works just fine for them: Sometimes, it’s really nice that little kids have such short attention spans.

We walk out of the cave, into the stretch of land farmed by the kids’ families. It’s a pretty poor-looking area; the drug paraphernalia in the cave is probably a symptom of this. I hope these little troublemakers end up all right. Assuming they do, I think the community has several future Indiana Joneses on its hands.

Editor’s Note: Gabriel Nelson is a certificate student at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, and spent the New Year vacation traveling in Guangxi province in Southwest China.

Getting up at six in the morning is definitely not something fun or cool. But it was still amazing to see how our center beauties and handsomes dress up nicely in suits when daytime was still yet to come. After sleeping for two hours on the bus, everyone woke up and energetically started talking about this upcoming and mysterious career day. At 11:20am, a group of about 100 center students arrived at the Pullman Skyway Hotel. By then, everyone looked excited and ready for the intense exposure to all their potential career successes. All the anger and tiredness from getting up so early suddenly disappeared.

The lunch banquet was awesome. Panelists from different business areas (e.g., finance, consulting, legal service, government, and NGOs) were assigned to each table, and students could choose to sit and speak with whomever they wished. Looking around, it was clear that students enjoyed the conversations with the panelists much more than than the delicious dishes. Lunch passed quickly, and then students went to different discussion panels that they signed up for. Each session lasted for nearly and hour and a half. There were three to four panels in each session. Panelists introduced their personal professional backgrounds and how their companies function. This was followed by Q&A sessions. Students asked questions about career paths without hesitation, and the panelists all gave very intelligent and experienced answers. Both Chinese and International students alike said that they gained a lot from this event. It was a rare and valuable opportunity for Chinese students to be in such environment, meeting people in such a concentrated and special circumstances. For International students, while it might have been an occasion that they encountered before, this time, however they could learn more about employment with Chinese companies.

“I enjoyed all of the sessions I went to, but I think I got the most out of the alumni panel during the third session. The HNC and SAIS alums on the panel came from totally different sectors–legal, entrepreneurial, finance, and public sector, but they all knew where we were coming from as students,” said Cristina Garafola. She also mentioned that, “I think their advice about harnessing our strengths and skills in our job search was very helpful. Also, I really like the tiny bagel sandwiches!”

“Career day is a rare opportunity for HNC’s students to connect with Alumni. With the communication with presenters, we can understand an industry deeply, such as finance or consulting. Many alumni gave us a lot of useful advice on how to prepare for interviews, and a lot of information about career path development. The information is crucial for us to set out into our careers,” said Shen Jian, who has strong career goals himself as well.

Bonni Brodsky said, “Career Day really opened my eyes to the diverse fields in which HNC alums are working. From consulting to media, it really showed me that the opportunities are endless”.

Anyway, almost all the students we talked to said they benefited from this event and it helped to broaden their horizons in finding jobs. After all the sessions, both students and panelists were invited to a cocktail party (that’s where Cristina had the delicious bagel sandwiches). The cocktail reception was very relaxing; students and panelists were talking, eating, drinking, and laughing. We had to say goodbye to this wonderful day at 8:30pm, but everyone was still very energetic and excited about everything they encountered on career day.

]]> http://www.hncnet.org/2012/03/career-day/feed/ 0 http://www.hncnet.org/2012/03/changes-in-our-cafeteria/ http://www.hncnet.org/2012/03/changes-in-our-cafeteria/#comments Thu, 22 Mar 2012 05:34:29 +0000 Wei Yujia http://www.hncnet.org/?p=515 more »]]> In the first session of the orientation week in last September, Mr. Zhang Suogeng, deputy director of the cafeteria, informed us that our cafeteria was equipped with first-class sanitary facilities for cleaning utensils, and that the ingredients were guaranteed to be clean and fresh. At first, students and professors liked dining there and praised the dishes. However, as time went by, we grew tired of those dishes, since they seldom changed from week to week. At the end of last semester, the number of people eating in the cafeteria had shrunk to half of that in the beginning. Although dishes were cheaper and cleaner than those of the restaurants outside the center, students preferred to eat outside, at least for dinner or at weekends, as they desperately needed some variation in their meals. Because of this, many students requested more variation of dishes in the administration’s survey conducted at the end of last semester.

During the first week of this semester, many students sensed changes in the available dishes, perhaps because the suggestions have been heard. During the first week, we were hit with a new dish almost every day. Thousand-year eggs with appetizing paprika, stewed rice noodles in earthen bowls, beef and vegetables salad, and glutinous rice pie with sweet bean paste inside. There are also more options in the staple food category, including cake, baked sweet potatoes, spaghetti, steamed dumplings, big fried dumplings, shallot pancakes, fried glutinous rice balls, egg pancakes, stir-fried noodles, and so on. In addition to the old staples of last semester such as apple pies, Yangzhou fried rice, and steamed buns dotted with chopped carrot, every day we are served at least four different options.

Some students are satisfied with those changes, but many are expecting still more diversified recipes. According to a recent inquiry with the administration, it turns out that the changes derive from the fact that a new chef has joined the cafeteria this semester, so the chief chef has had more time to prepare various dishes, especially different staple foods.

The appeal of the school cafeteria is of great significance to our school’s social cohesion. To begin with, the cafeteria provides an excellent opportunity for students and professors to communicate with each other. International professors often choose to sit with students and talk with them.  Also, as many students are busy or have differing class schedules, it becomes difficult to arrange a special time to chat with fellow students. Mealtime is an ideal opportunity for that. Students who are not familiar with each other can get to know each other and chat about the news or practice their target language.  As a result, if the dishes are not attractive and people do not like to eat in the cafeteria, this social function of the cafeteria might be wasted.

Because the cafeteria is much cheaper than restaurants, price-sensitive students often find themselves trapped there. In this sense, the quality of a school’s cafeteria matters greatly. And of course, it is more convenient to eat in the cafeteria, which is particularly important when students are overwhelmed by classwork and activities. The quality of a school’s cafeteria means a lot not only to our taste buds, but to our school’s culture as well.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on CNN’s website on March 14, 2012. It can be found here. It is reprinted here with the authors’ permission.

On Wednesday, March 14th, the Chinese Communist Party reaffirmed that Xi Jinping would succeed Hu Jintao as the Party’s General Secretary and seventh President of the People’s Republic of China. Chinese media is mired in speculation about Xi’s mysterious personality and leadership style. The handoff of power between Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping reveals a lot about the nature of governance in China today. Yet these pronouncements come on the heels of high drama in the Chinese Communist Party that could signal some of the vulnerabilities of China’s current political system.

Recent events in Southwest China highlight that the stable veneer of the Communist Party hides a competitive race to control the Party and the state. In early February this year, former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun left his home under the cover of night, disguised as a woman to seek amnesty in the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. It later emerged that Wang Lijun was fleeing an investigation by Communist Party brass for overstepping judicial powers, ordering the harvesting of human organs, and targeting political opponents on flimsy corruption charges. As he absconded, he allegedly took with him proof of a coup d’etat connected to his former boss, the charismatic leader Bo Xilai. Whether you believe Wang’s version of events, or see it as a charade orchestrated by those aimed at marginalizing Bo’s populist agenda, the fallout has scuttled Bo’s preeminence in the Communist Party. More significantly, if the rumors contain a hint of truth, it reveals a dark and dangerous harbinger of a dirty, no-holds barred fight for the heart and soul of China’s future.

Xi Jinping’s appointment to General Secretary places him at the head of China’s most important state organ: the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) – a nine-member committee of the top leaders of China’s Communist Party. The PBSC direct every important aspect of the Chinese state, including China’s foreign policy, the commanding heights of China’s economy, and China’s vast domestic bureaucracy. When China officially announces the entire PBSC in November this year, most observers assume that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will step in for Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao as China’s top leaders.

Even though many Western analysts tend to stereotype China’s leaders as tyrants who rule over China through the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese leadership has come a long way from the domineering ways of Chairman Mao. Xi Jinping’s succession sheds light on both the domestic politics that have developed since the age of Mao and the potential weaknesses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) going forward.

From Deng to Xi

Today, Deng Xiaoping is best known as a forward-thinking economic modernizer, whose pithy refrain, “hide your brightness, bide your time” has guided China’s ascension to the world stage. But when he came to power in the late 1970s, Deng inherited a China ravaged by the whims of Mao Zedong, scarred by the political upheaval and pestilence of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s ill-conceived Great Leap Forward. Deng realized that economic modernization was the only sustainable path to get China out of its funk, and sought to replace old-line ideological battles with a careful governing pragmatism that continues to this day.

Since Deng, three competing political factions rose to dominate the Chinese Communist Party, and each faction represents key political constituencies in Chinese society today. The most conservative faction is the Princelings who arethe descendants of Mao’s political and military allies during the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.  Another faction is the China Youth League (CYL), which consists of former and current rising stars of the Communist Party who endorse ideological Communist purity but who resent the dynastic entitlement of the Princelings. The most economically liberal faction is the Technocrats and Returnees, a bloc made up of businessmen and other party functionaries, many of who have earned advanced degrees abroad. They seek to loosen the Party’s tight grip on the economy, and believe that communist ideology should be a secondary to economic considerations in guiding China’s important industries.

In a pattern that has grown into precedent, as Deng stepped down from the Central Military Commission to make way for Jiang Zemin in 1989, he continued to wield power outside of the public eye. Trying to ensure that his successor did not undo his marquis reforms, Deng used his considerable political clout to influence Chinese policy and to groom Jiang Zemin’s successor, Hu Jintao, a China Youth Leaguer with a strong ideological affinity for Deng’s philosophy of gradual modernization. When Jiang Zemin stepped down in the early 2000s, he too assumed a similar role as backroom power broker, grooming Xi Jinping, a fellow Princeling who, like Jiang Zemin, was the Communist Party Secretary of Shanghai. Today, it is widely speculated that by March 2013, Hu will step aside as Party Chairman but will maintain his position as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, thus ensuring that his top reforms and appointments are honored even out of office. In all likelihood, Hu will appoint one or two individuals to the PBSC who can either counter a Princelings fraction influence or whom Hu can position as Xi’s long-term successors.

A stable equilibrium, for now

Many Western observers claim that China is dominated by an ideologically coherent coterie of Communist Party officials who rule via fiat with little accountability to the rest of the population. While this might have been true of Mao Zedong’s leadership, the careful balancing act among the Communist Party’s leading factions determines China’s governance today. Intra-Party alliance building and old-fashioned bureaucratic jockeying among competing political blocs ensures that no single person can wield disproportionate power over China’s affairs. The above pattern of outgoing General Secretaries grooming their successor’s eventual successor, bringing in business and technocratic elites into the Party, and leaders appointing like-minded political allies to key party posts ensures a semblance of political diversity in China. Today, there is a growing degree of ideological competition inside of the Communist Party that ensures that its policy choices loosely conform to the general desires of China’s population.

Additionally, the Communist Party earns considerable legitimacy for delivering robust economic growth to China. Thus, a broad consensus exists among the Party’s ruling elite across competing factions on the importance of maintaining the Chinese growth engine. The existence of high growth rates allows competing factions in China to make win-win compromises, unlike the seeming winner-take-all negotiations facing the deadlocked electoral systems in the West. All parties recognize that a return to the wars and paranoia of Mao’s revolutions could topple China’s economy and splinter the Party and country. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” will continue to serve as the governing economic mantra of the Chinese Communist Party, with gradual market reforms and Communist Party control over the vital sectors in the Chinese economy, including banking, oil and gas, and infrastructure development.

The Communist Party in the long run

As argued by Mark Blyth and Nassim Taleb in Foreign Affairs, authoritarian countries can appear more stable than democracies. Whereas democracies have a culture of disagreement that bring political tensions out into the open, closed political systems suppress change and make it difficult for governments to deal with unexpected political change like revolutions. Whereas government transitions in the West rarely end up in full-scale revolution, government transitions in authoritarian countries usually lead to state-wide crises, since tensions artificially suppressed during the era of one-party rule are given the time and space to fester under the control of authoritarian rulers, rather than being addressed expediently as they are in democratic societies. While the notion of China as a decisive and pragmatic machine has gained purchase in the West, Blyth and Taleb find that democracies are best suited to handling the kinds of events that are inherently unpredictable in complex environments. This is a long-term risk to the Chinese Communist Party, as attempts to buy-out or suppress dissenters might lead to larger problems down the road.

In a speech commemorating Wednesday’s announcement of Xi Jinping, outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao gave a prophetic warning the need for the Communist Party to adapt to these changing circumstances, arguing that new leadership must guide China through some much-needed and difficult political reforms. He went on to denounce the Party’s factionalism and power struggles like that of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, arguing that tragedies like the Cultural Revolution, as dangerous as it was, can happen again and that tomorrow’s leaders must safely chart China’s future course. The old guard of Chinese leaders recognizes the challenges posed by recent events in Chongqing. Time will tell if the Party’s new leadership is up to the task.

These men and women represent one end of the fortune-telling spectrum in modern China, a spectrum that spans many social gaps, including class status, generation, and the rural-urban divide.

The “street-side” suanmingshi are at the extreme low end of the class spectrum; there is also active and growing belief in (or at least respect for) fortune-telling amongst the upper crust of Chinese society. Owing to its recent uptick in popularity amongst officials, real estate developers, and movie stars, fengshui (风水), a form of fortune-telling based on geography and architecture, has established itself as a major service industry. Rumor has it that the Xianlin campus of Nanjing University was constructed partly on the advice of a fengshui fortune-teller.

Dou Jinlong, a Nanjing University student who practices xingzuo (星座) as a hobby, draws a distinction between the fortune-telling of the older generation and that of young people. He likens it to the divide in cultural tastes and sensibilities, with young people preferring that which is international, fun, and easy to understand. It uses Western-derived astrological symbols, instead of the traditional numbers, times, and abstract concepts of traditional Chinese philosophy. The xingzuo of the young generation suggests worldliness and open-mindedness: “It’s one aspect of studying Western culture,” says Dou. Young people treat it the way they treat karaoke: Not something to take seriously, but simply a way of connecting with friends. The main focus of xingzuo seems to be romantic: Young people turn to it as a fun way of match-making.

The older generation tends more towards traditional, Chinese-writing-based methods of suanming. These involve bazi (eight-characters), time-charts, and a focus on maintaining the balance of wuxing (“the five phases” of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). People frequently consult suanming methods for things that are considered more serious and permanent than dating: Many babies are given names based on suanming predictions.

In the rural areas of the northeast, some fortune-tellers have almost shaman-like roles within their local communities. In villages outside of Changchun, Jilin province, the local daxianr (大仙儿) are said to be able to cure babies’ diseases and predict one’s date of death. These claims are greeted by locals mostly with skepticism, but also an ever-so-slight hint of credulity: Dou Jinlong sums up attitudes when talking about his grandfather, who was predicted to die in 2010, but instead passed away a year later: The prophecy didn’t come true… But it was awfully close.

In contrast to the rural beliefs of the northeast, urban China has found all sorts of interesting ways of updating suanming for the 21^st century. On Taobao, the Chinese equivalent of Ebay, one can hire the services of suanmingshi and never meet them face-to-face. Using coins, personal data, and astrological information, suanmingshi inform their clients of their destinies via the instant messaging service QQ. Some people have named their children based on QQ chats with hired suanmingshi. These chats even take place across oceans, with overseas Chinese talking to fortune-tellers in the mainland.

Fortune-telling has existing for thousands of years in China, and it seems that in spite of widespread skepticism and secularization, it still has a long future ahead of it. Young people may cease to view it with the somber gravity expressed by their ancestors, and they may infuse it with all sorts of Western astrological ideas, but as long as people want a fun alternative to karaoke, the popularity of suanming will continue.

There is no “right” way to get to know a city. A tourist will often spend time visiting popular attractions, eating at the most well-known restaurants, and walking the most commercial streets. Although this method will give you a glimpse into the area’s history and highlights of a culture’s “特产” (tèchǎn), or special local products, it provides little more than a superficial knowledge of the city. To truly blend in to a new place, become part of its ebb and flow, and adapt its rhythm as your own takes time and flexibility. It is difficult to measure this kind of integration. Have you achieved it when you can get from one place to another without a map? When a stranger on the street turns to you as a local for directions? When you know the best local restaurant to frequent? Or do you only know a city when you know its social issues, management problems, or upcoming plans for development? It’s difficult to say. I have met people who have lived in New York for years who have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building, and I have met travelers abroad who can navigate a city like a local.

My Nanjing

No longer a tourist and not yet a local, I find myself somewhere in the middle in Nanjing. The owners of my favorite restaurant know what my favorite dish is before I order it, I have taken the bus from an unknown location without difficulty, and I have developed my own rhythm here, even if it does not match the beat of the rest of Nanjing. However, I have lived my life here within a bubble, seldom venturing outside of 鼓楼 (gǔlóu), which is the “Drum Tower” district in which I live. My sphere is limited, but I am getting to know it well. I do not pretend to know the city intimately, nor do I pretend to know it as well as I “should” (although it is difficult to measure this, too), but I can share with you the little I have discovered in the process. And what better topic is there than food?

The New Place In Town

My sweet tooth started ruling my mouth long ago, but, like much else in China, the dessert scene here is in its developing stage. However, at the beginning of March, as if to welcome HNCers back to school, a link in the Paris Baguette (巴黎贝甜) chain set up shop on Ninghai Road by McDonald’s. The excitement of something new, along with the special opening promotional prices—8 kuai for a coffee and an astonishingly low 3 kuai for milk tea—had the place packed three days straight. I was there all three days. Day one included a delicious milk tea and a so-called waffle. Though pressed with the customary grid that so many of us have used as mini-syrup pools or butter troves, this “waffle” was just decent fresh bread masquerading as something else. Nevertheless, I went back, and day two had me reaching for the small, understated chocolate cake that sat on the top shelf, above two rows of lavishly decorated cake beauty queens that stole the spotlight. However, this simple, little chocolate wonder shocked us all with its creamy frosting covering three moist layers that, surprisingly, did not crumble at the touch of a knife. To top it all, the 20 kuai price tag (in comparison to 100+ kuai cakes that were only marginally bigger) made it the silent winner. On day three I returned to the still packed Paris Baguette for a bagel. Unhappy with the sad, microwaved version at Skyways (another local bakery), I was eager to see what the new bakery could provide. It turns out that Paris Baguette sells real bagels. I skipped over the plain, reached for the cinnamon raison, and knew by its soft give that I was in luck. The one utter disappointment was when I asked for cream cheese and the worker behind the counter not only looked at me as though I was asking for the moon, but also had the nerve to tell me “no, you’re just supposed to eat it plain”. If only Skyways and Paris Baguette could do a bagel-cream cheese swap—we’d finally have it all.