august philippic

I was walking around Central Park this morning, watching neighborhood teams play softball. Actually, I imagine that many teams have a pretty good subway ride to get there. It got me thinking about public spaces — or really, a more simple question: what do people do in parks, and why does it matter?

There is, of course, the famous “Bowling Alone” argument that civic activity fosters voting. If you are one of the folks playing softball, the story goes, you are more likely to vote, more likely to join a political party, more likely to join the PTA or one of the many political clubs in New York city.

Although Chinese authorities punish any formal association, informal gatherings of people are evident in all Chinese cities. There are old women giving each other back rubs. There are kids playing soccer (that seems to be the country’s most popular outdoor sport). Some folks practice calligraphy, others Tai Chi, sword dancing, or other martial arts. Dancing and singing are extremely common — if there are any anthropologists reading, please write an article about this.

Also, there are inevitably groups of old men, airing their songbirds.

My favorite spontaneous association was English Club, an enormous gathering in Nanjing, where people simply show up and start speaking English to one another. If you looked like a native English speaker (which in Nanjing basically meant that you were caucasion), you’d be surrounded by people happy to chat about issues of the day. It was a good way to meet people, and people definitely expressed honest opinions regarding issues of the day.

Political Engagement?

There are two ways of looking at these activities in light of the Bowling Alone argument. One is that they show the argument does not work for China — that groupings of people do not make them politically active. Another way of looking at things is that these neighborhood associations are signs of nascent engagement in government — that the middle class will grow more engaged and more difficult for the current regime to accomodate.

I tend to favor the first argument. I imagine it’s true that in certain scandals, information spreads among folks hanging out in public parks — but cell phones seem to be the more common form of communication when people want to scream about Japanese textbooks or U.S. spy planes. The argument for real activism is often based on the example of East Germany, where church groups were indeed active in bringing down the KPD (German Communist Party).

But the current rulers of China are all too aware of the East German precedent, and they while they tolerate a fairly high level of discussion, they don’t allow any hint of organized activity. It’s a perhaps an open question whether they can maintain such a level of surveillance — but urbanization tends to help the government, making it possible to deploy a very large amount of force in a very short time.

If democratization comes to China, I imagine the more likely path will be splits within the Communist party — between factions, between geographical areas. Party leaders may adapt voting as an anti-corruption measure. I see a splintering of the state, not a splitting of state and society.

Tags: cities, China //