China curls its lip in face of foreign advances

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 17

China curls its lip in face of foreign advances

By

STEPHEN NISBET,

of Reuters, in Peking

China’s vaunted open-door economic policy has created the closest contacts for decades between Chinese and foreigners, but personal friendships still face formidable barriers. Some of the barriers are cultural, with xenophobia in China enjoying a long pedigree. More than 2000 years ago the Chinese built the 5000 km Great Wall to keep foreigners out. Other barriers are put up by the communist authorities. The latest is a clampdown on sexual liaisons between foreigners and Chinese citizens.

Posters went up outside the United States Embassy recently warning Americans against sexual relationships with Chinese. The warning came after foreign men suspected of having transgressed an unwritten no-sex rule were detained by police. A

West German was told to leave the country. Discotheques in Peking have barred their doors to foreigners, apparently believing prevention of sexual misconduct is better than cure.

One Peking citizen said he thought this flurry of censoriousness was part of the build-up to the national Communist Party congress, a period like Christian Lent or Muslim Ramadan when moral laxity is frowned upon. China has long treated foreigners with disdain,, an attitude suggested even by the country’s name, which means “middle kingdom” or country at the centre of the world. That wariness was reinforced by China’s sufferings at the hands of nineteenth century European invaders and twentieth

century Japanese ones. The isolation China experienced after the 1949 communist revolution was broken only when Peking needed foreign investment and technology to help its backward economy. But the foreigners, who have arrived in increasing numbers since Deng Xiaoping launched the open-door policy in earnest in 1978, have never been fully trusted. The Indian writer Vikram Seth has said Chinese officials regard foreigners much as they would valuable pandas. They must be well cared for but have to be watched in case they get up to mischief. “We have friends all over the world,” proclaims a sign in the

lobby of the Peking Hotel, but a Belgian sinologist, Simon Leys, once said China sought friendship between peoples, not individuals.

The apparatus of China’s campaign for friendship between peoples often strikes Westerners as a stilted programme of formalities in which delegations from most countries are nonetheless pleased to take part.

“No-one can put a tour and propaganda package together as smoothly as the Chinese,” an Asian diplomat said.

But the comforts and attention showered on foreigners the Chinese want to impress can be misleading, according to Sun Longji’s book, “The Deep Struc-

ture of Chinese Culture.” “The more distant the friends, the greater the hospitality shown,” he wrote. . The Chinese attitude toward foreigners is at its most studied and cautious at formal public occasions, where there appears to be a taboo against expressing a personal opinion of any kind. The following exchange took place at an embassy lunch between a Reuter correspondent and a Chinese journalist who had just returned from a seminar in England.

“What was the most valuable thing you learned at the seminar?”

“We had many prominent lecturers.”

"But what did you learn that

was of most value?” “We exchanged views.” “What did you think of the British press?” “That is a difficult question.”

“Which British newspaper did you prefer?” “A friend of mine works for the ‘Daily Mail'.” That cautious approach is understandable, especially from Chinese people who recall the xenophobic extremes of the Cultural Revolution, when even having relatives abroad could be grounds for punishment. Many foreigners who speak fluent Mandarin are equally cautious about establishing close relationships with Chinese people to avoid trouble for them.

The risks Chinese people run, which can include interrogation by police after an innocent dinner party, vary according to job and status, says a young Peking intellectual.

“If you’re high up, it’s no problem. You can justify having foreign friends on the grounds of your job. If you’re a nobody, the police don’t care either,” he says. It is people in the middle, such as journalists, who get into trouble.

Sexual intimacy is not the only thing discouraged. One Chinese employee of a Peking-based foreigner told him he had been forbidden by the authorities from inviting the foreigner to attend a family gathering, under pain of losing his job.

A tradesman who allowed a foreign journalist into his home

was told by neighbourhood Communist Party officials not to do so again without permission, because his house was too humble and would give an impression of poverty. Decades of this kind of pressure mean that many Chinese will avoid contact with foreigners at all costs.

A foreigner out driving recently saw two men by the side of the road, one with blood spouting from a wrist wound. His companion was trying to flag down passing cars to take him to hospital. The foreigner stopped and opened the passenger door. But the wounded man’s friend waved him on, apparently preferring to risk seeing his friend bleed to death rather than court trouble by accepting a ride with a foreigner.