Middle class action
A REUNION of classmates isn't unusual - unless you happen to be an American who studied in China in the 1980s. Journalist John Pomfret studied history at Nanjing University in 1980 as part of a Stanford University East Asian Studies course. In 2003, after two lengthy stints working as a reporter in China, Pomfret decided to seek out his former classmates to document how their lives had changed.
Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China tells the story of a transitional generation - those who were old enough to bear the scars of the Cultural Revolution, yet young enough to take advantage of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. Pomfret spent time rekindling relationships with five former classmates to find out how the Chinese managed the shift from communism to capitalism.
Pomfret documents what happened to his classmates before and after he was at university with them. The idea is to see how their experiences during the Cultural Revolution influenced the way they reacted to the reforms of the New China. His interviewees all shared hard times under the Red Guards. Some become entrepreneurs, one becomes a Communist Party boss, another moves to the US and becomes a staunch Christian.
This group has often been dismissed as a confused 'lost generation' caught between old China and new China. Pomfret disagrees with this. These people are actually the engines of China's change, he says. 'If you look at who are in the vice-ministerial positions, and who will be the ministers soon, it's clear that this generation are going to be running China in five years,' he says. 'Hu Jintao and his group are a little bit older. But soon these guys are going to be running the show.
'They are China, the ones who turned the county into what it is. The switch to capitalism happened, they made that switch, and they profited. If you look at the decision makers all over the country, it's these people. Every foreigner who does business in China is going to be sitting opposite someone from this generation.'
The idea that New China really belongs to the generation that was born during Deng's post-socialist order may be premature, he says. 'The new generation is actually going to have to wrest power from these people. They are incredibly tough. The young generation in China is not as strong mentally as these people are - they have innards of steel.'
The horrors of the Cultural Revolution steeled them, Pomfret says. The terrible events of those 10 lost years gave his friends an instinct for survival. They developed ways of protecting themselves from the whispering campaigns and the ravages of the Red Guards. These methods have served them just as well in the harsh free-for-all of modern Chinese capitalism.
'Society threw a lot of troubles in their direction,' Pomfret says. 'But they found ways of dealing with those troubles. Nothing that they face now could compare with what they had to face then.
'Many people were ruined, but some of them were steeled to move into the future. The ones that have been successful are willing to do anything to succeed. Call them Machiavellian, but they'll do anything they can to get what they want'.
Pomfret prefers front-line reporting to backroom analysis. He began working as a correspondent for Associated Press in Beijing in 1988 but was expelled in 1989 after Tiananmen - he wrote 107 stories in the lead-up to the massacre, and was in the square when the tanks rolled in. Between 1989 and 1998 he was based in Hong Kong, flying out to cover war zones such as Bosnia.
A good word from former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger helped clear the way for him to return to China, and he headed back to Beijing in 1998, working for The Washington Post.
Pomfret spent two years researching Chinese Lessons inside China. He wrote letters to 60 of his former Nanjing University classmates, and received about 50 replies. He whittled down the subjects of his book to five. 'I went and saw these people in China, and just hung out with them,' he says. 'I made myself a real pain. I lived in their houses, met their kids.'
The idea was to write about individual's stories rather than general ideas. 'There are a lot of great books about China with a capital 'C' - China as a basic enemy, China as a basic friend, China as a basic business partner, China as a basic business competitor. But there aren't so many books about Chinese people and the road they've had to travel to get to today. I wanted to write those stories.
'They wanted me to tell their stories. Their kids aren't interested in them - their experiences are so different to what their parents went through, they just don't think they're relevant. Society's not interested, either. The Chinese party-state doesn't want to look into the past, it just wants to move into the future. So they wanted to tell them to me. I was part therapist, part confessor and part cheerleader - because I think they're amazing.'
Pomfret, who now works for The Washington Post in Los Angeles, still feels affection for China. His wife, Zhang Mei, is Chinese, and he says they may move back one day. He admits that China's current obsession with cash and power politics has made it into a harsher, less attractive, place than during the 1980s.
His former classmates say communism was an anomaly that has now disappeared from China forever, he says. China was the world's biggest market in the late 1800s, and now it looks as if it will be again. 'They look at the Communist period - 1949 to 1976 - as an incredible waste of time,' he says. 'The country was put on this incredible detour. But now they feel it's back on track.'
Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China by John Pomfret (Henry Holt, HK$203). John Pomfret will speak at the FCC, Oct 12, 7.30pm, HK$175 (members), HK$225 (guests), 2521 1511, and the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, Oct 13, JW Marriott Hotel, Queensway and Victoria Rooms, Level 3, Pacific Place, Admiralty, 12pm luncheon, HK$340 (Asia Society members/students), HK$440 (non-members and guests). Inquires: 2103 9511
