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Illustration: Lau Ka-kuen

Is the deglobalisation writing on the wall? How China is reversing cultural openness with the West

  • In the decade or since Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics, the country’s relationship with developed economies has descended into antagonism and confrontation
  • Public sentiment, official rhetoric and general contact has shifted as well amid the belief that others are trying to stop China’s rise

In the last two months, staff at subway stations in the Chinese capital Beijing and the neighbouring city of Tianjin have been on a mission.

Signs and route maps with English names at the stations have come down and been replaced with ones with pinyin, or romanised, transliterations of the Chinese characters.

Instead of maps pointing out the stop for Tianjin Binhai International Airport, the directions are now to Binhai Guo Ji Ji Chang. Beijing Railway Station is now referred to as Beijing Zhan, and Olympic Park is Gaolinpike Gongyuan.

Instead of maps and signs pointing out the stop for Tianjin Binhai International Airport, the directions are now to Binhai Guo Ji Ji Chang. Photo: Handout

China has a literacy rate of over 97 per cent, but pinyin is only recognisable to around 70 per cent of its 1.4 billion population, according to official data. So the question is, just who are the target readers of pinyin? Many foreigners have complained that it is an inconvenience and Chinese have said they do not get the point.

In response to the public concerns, the Beijing municipal government said the change was made to conform to national standards – The Guidelines for the Use of English in Public Service Areas, which took effect in December 2017.

Not all English names have been abandoned – some exceptions include the Summer Palace and the Military Museum, which are both places of interest with widely accepted English names.

But it is still unclear why the changes are taking place now.

With the Winter Olympics just days away, commenters and commentators have asked what it says about Beijing’s openness, and noted the contrast with the friendly atmosphere in 2008 when Beijing was hosting the Summer Olympics. Some have suggested that it signals a process of “cultural deglobalisation”, in which China and the West are retreating from each other.

02:38

Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton

Global brands face backlash in China for rejecting Xinjiang cotton
Publicly, the Chinese leadership has shown unremitting support for globalisation and opening up. At the annual World Economic Forum on January 17, President Xi Jinping urged other powers to discard the “cold war mentality” – a veiled swipe at the United States – and touted China’s efforts to share Covid-19 vaccines, fight climate change and promote development.

“We should stick to openness and inclusiveness. We should say no to isolation and exclusivism,” Xi told world and business leaders in the virtual conference, warning the attempts to “isolate, intimidate, decouple and sanction” others would “only push the world into division, even confrontation”.

However, in the three-plus years since the China-US trade war started, the trend has been in just one direction – China and the West appear to have drifted apart culturally, as antagonism and confrontation have dominated relations.

Clashes have erupted over trade, technology, the military and ideology, as well as the origins of Covid-19.

China’s response to the United States has been unyielding and combative, widely described as a Wolf Warrior style by overseas political and foreign relations observers. Nationalism has also grown at home against the backdrop of Beijing’s considerable efforts to warn the country of espionage and infiltration, especially from Western nations.

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That shift is apparent on the streets.

“Welcome to Beijing!” 48-year-old Beijing taxi driver Wang Hao said in English, reciting a greeting he learned in 2008 during compulsory English lessons put on by his employer.

“My pals and I made fun of each other’s accent [back then]. And we were really enthusiastic about greeting foreign visitors in those couple of years around 2008. We were encouraged to speak English and showcase the hospitality and openness of China,” he recalled.

“In recent years, things have been quite different,” Wang said. “To be honest, foreigners are not my favourite passengers. Most coronavirus cases in China are imported cases. Many Western countries don’t befriend China. I don’t like bullies.”

Wang’s remarks dovetail with the official line and reflect broader confidence in the administration at home. The Chinese public generally trusts its government, a recent survey suggests, thanks to the economic miracle in the past decades, a forceful control of the pandemic and the Communist Party’s publicity campaigns.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer conducted in November, 91 per cent of Chinese citizens trust their government, the highest rating in China for a decade and among the 28 countries in the survey. The barometer was the 22nd annual trust and credibility survey conducted by consultancy Edelman, and based on 30-minute online interviews conducted with 36,000 respondents from 28 countries.
To be honest, foreigners are not my favourite passengers. Most coronavirus cases in China are imported cases.
Beijing taxi driver Wang Hao

Contributing to the cultural decoupling trend, China last year banned the use foreign textbooks in schools providing K1-K9 education. It also prohibited foreign teachers outside China from giving online English sessions, and tightened scrutiny over schools with an international curriculum.

“These changes and moves may not be game changers in and of themselves, but taken together and in conjunction with the political winds of the moment, they probably represent a sort of cultural deglobalisation,” George Magnus, research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre, said.

“In what most people regard as a rivalry that extends to values, beliefs and standards, this is not so surprising, if still regrettable.”

The drift is also affecting otherwise routine background exchanges.

Foreign diplomats have told the South China Morning Post that it is getting harder to reach Chinese researchers from state-affiliated institutions to share insight with embassies.

Most invitations filed to government institutions in the past year had been turned down, even when discussions were on traditionally safe ground such as the economy, a foreign diplomat said on the condition of anonymity.

“In several cases, we were asked to seek approval from various departments. After a long wait of several weeks or even months, we often got a ‘no’ in the end,” the diplomat said.

Another foreign diplomat said many invitations were declined for the sake of “Covid-19 control”, although most of his colleagues had been in China for at least a year and were fully vaccinated. “I don’t understand why we pose a threat to the ‘pandemic prevention and control work’. I’m not sure if it’s an excuse.”

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Magnus said the pandemic, unfortunately, gave cover for separation and distancing especially where, in China’s case, there was a particular emphasis on zero-Covid and mass quarantine in response to even modest prevalence.

“It feeds the fears and paranoia of those who cannot visit, travel or move freely inside and in and out of China. Hopefully this will end sooner or later but while it persists, it certainly underpins an attitude of closure rather than openness,” he said.

Stringent pandemic policies and tax law changes are also driving expatriates away, eroding business and diplomatic foundations.

In Shanghai, the number of expatriates fell to around 163,000 in November 2020 from more than 208,000 over the previous decade or so – a drop of more than 20 per cent. In Beijing, the number of foreigners has fallen by more than 40 per cent to about 63,000, according to China’s census data.

“Today, people-to-people exchanges between the US and China are on the wane, reversing momentum towards better mutual understanding,” said Ker Gibbs, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

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Opinion polls also suggest a high level of distrust of the US among Chinese, especially among the young. In a survey published in November by the Carter Centre’s US-China Perception Monitor, 62 per cent of Chinese held unfavourable views of the US, rising to 63 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.

At a conference last month, Yan Xuetong, director of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Studies, warned that China’s Generation Z was displaying a high level of overconfidence in the country’s power and hostility towards Westerners.

“Post-millennial students ­usually have a strong sense of superiority and confidence, and they tend to look at other ­countries from a condescending perspective,” Yan said.

“[They] look at international affairs with a make-believe mindset, thinking it’s very easy for China to achieve its foreign policy goals. They think only China is just and innocent, while other countries, especially Western countries, are evil, and thus have natural hatred towards Westerners.”

Such nationalism was driven mainly by opinion leaders on the internet, and students were heavily influenced by conspiracy theories and economic determinism, Yan said.

He suggested that his fellow lecturers on international affairs should try to focus on hard facts so that students did not develop overconfidence in the country.

Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said he expected the nationalistic tendencies to persist as long as China believed the US was determined to suppress China’s rise.

“There is much to lose and less to gain by harbouring this nationalism and overconfidence-borne tendencies,” Gupta said.

“China needs more rather than less internationalism, especially as it aims to become a shaper of global rules and norms. It needs broader engagement with the world at the societal level to better understand the role of China and the contributions it can make to global society.”

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