Source: Sinosphere, NYT (1/4/16)
Leveling Criticism at China’s Elite, Some Borrow Words From the Past
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By KIKI ZHAO
A phrase from a story by Lu Xun, one of China’s most revered writers of the early 20th century, has made its way into online commentaries as a disparaging reference to the country’s rich and powerful. CreditKim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
BEIJING — Once again, the early-20th-century writer Lu Xun, whose scathing critiques of the pre-revolutionary Chinese social order won him a place in the Chinese Communist pantheon, even though he himself was not a Marxist, has provided a popular phrase for much that is amiss in China today.
In recent weeks, “Zhao jia ren,” or “Zhao family,” from Lu Xun’s novella “The True Story of Ah Q,” has resurfaced as a disparaging term for China’s rich and politically well-connected.
The phrase attracted broad attention after an article titled “Barbarians at the Gate, Zhao Family Inside” began circulating online. The article, published anonymously, describes the recent attempts by China Vanke Company, a real estate developer, to fend off a hostile takeover bid by Baoneng, a property and insurance conglomerate and Vanke’s largest shareholder.
Vanke suspended trading in its shares on Dec. 18, saying it wanted to restructure its assets. The move was widely seen as an effort to reduce Baoneng’s shares and thwart a takeover. Wang Shi, Vanke’s chairman, referred to Baoneng as “barbarians,” and Vanke welcomed moves by another shareholder, Anbang Insurance, to increase its shares.
A portrait of Lu Xun, whose scathing critiques of the pre-revolutionary Chinese social order won him a place in the Communist pantheon. Credit EYEPRESS NEWS, via Agence France-Presse
While the “barbarians” in the article’s title refers to Baoneng, “Zhao family” refers to Anbang, as a signal that the company has backing from Communist Party elites. Anbang’s chairman, Wu Xiaohui, married the granddaughter of the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The company lists Chen Xiaolu, a son of the revolutionary military commander Chen Yi, on its board.
The use of “Zhao family” to refer to powerful figures has since gone viral.
“It is a rebellious deconstruction of official language in the Internet age,” Qiao Mu, an associate professor of communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said in an interview. “In the past we called officials public servants, but in fact, it’s still a case of crony capitalism. In China, rich and powerful families are often the offspring of the Communist leaders. But it’s politically sensitive to say this out loud, so people are using ‘Zhao family’ instead, as a form of ridicule.”
Mr. Qiao published three articles on a WeChat account he managed discussing the “Zhao family” and its members’ dominance in what some mockingly call “their country,” or China. The account has since been deleted, but the articles have been reposted elsewhere.
“ ‘Zhao family’ refers to rich and powerful families in China,” he wrote. “Their fathers seized political power, so their children are called ‘second-generation red,’ people who have used their connections to retain power or amass enormous wealth in business.”
“Zhao family,” as Mr. Qiao pointed out, derives from Lu Xun’s celebrated novella. Ah Q, who is from a poor rural family, bullies those weaker than himself while currying favor with the powerful, who despise him. When Ah Q cheers with the Zhaos, a rich landlord family whose son has just passed the imperial examination, the Zhao patriarch slaps him and asks: “Do you think you are worthy of the name Zhao?”
Even before this article appeared, “Zhao family” was occasionally used online to describe China’s Communist elite. Discussions on Zhihu, a Chinese website similar to Quora, in which questions and answers are posted, suggest that one earlier application of the term might have been a Weibo post in May 2013 by a user calling himself Muhaogu. In it, he wrote, “Over the weekend, while dining with a friend who works in the provincial propaganda department, I asked, ‘What do you guys, actual cadres working in ideology, think of those volunteer 50-centers?’
“50-centers” are commenters that the government has hired to steer online discussion in favor of state policies. Those who praise the party even without being paid are sometimes called “volunteer 50-centers.”
Muhaogu quoted the propaganda official as responding: “It’s like what Master Zhao said to Ah Q: ‘Do you think you are worthy of the name Zhao?’ ”
The use of “Zhao family” represents “resistance to false patriotic propaganda, and dissatisfaction with the current situation,” the columnist Zhao Hui wrote in Oriental Daily, a publication in Hong Kong. (Neither Mr. Zhao nor the author of this post is a member of a rich and powerful clan.)
“‘The world is ours, the world is theirs, but ultimately it belongs to the ‘Zhao family,’ ” he wrote. “This saying might seem simple and crude, but in a nation where rights are suppressed, it is spot on.”
China’s tightly controlled state news media cannot publish exposés on the country’s leaders, and websites of The New York Times and Bloomberg were blocked after they ran investigative reports on the vast holdings of the families of former Premier Wen Jiabao and President Xi Jinping.
“The spirit of Lu Xun’s writings is so, so, so strong,” a user wrote on Zhihu. “His satire is so on target,” another wrote.
This is not the first time a phrase by Lu Xun, who died in 1936, has been revived to comment on contemporary events. After the 1989 military crackdown on student-led protests around Tiananmen Square, which left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead, many reached for the writer’s remarks on the 1926 shooting of student protesters by Beijing security forces: “Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.”
In 1990, the Chinese writer Zha Jianying commented on Lu Xun: “The fact that he’s so relevant is very sad.”