May 2012

In recent weeks, China has emitted glints of intensifying anti-Western xenophobia. Last week, following the announcement of a three-month crackdown on foreigners without valid visas, CCTV anchor Yang Rui (杨锐) encouraged police to “clean out the foreign garbage”. Yang seemed to revel in China’s recent decision to expel Al Jazeera reporter Melissa Chan (“that foreign shrew,” he called her), the first case since 1998 of a foreign journalist kicked out of China. Like the last wave of populist anti-Western sentiment to hit China back in 2008 (remember the “Cafferty Affair” and the controversy over the Olympic torch relay?), these recent remarks — including a number of editorials in state media — stem from a foundational sense of victimization at the hands of the West. And Western media, once again, are bearing the brunt of the attack.

Harvard and China have one thing in common: They both consider themselves to be the center of the world. So, it was always inevitable that when the scandal that brought down Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai broke, the repercussions would be felt, somehow, in Cambridge. The connection, it turned out, was Bo Guagua, the son of the disgraced Communist official. The younger Bo was a graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In April, he stopped attending classes and was seen leaving his off-campus apartment with what appeared to be a security detail.

The Chinese government is shocked – shocked, they say – to discover one of its own rising stars, Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party boss in the southwestern city of Chongqing, was deeply corrupt. Many ordinary Chinese were less surprised to read the lurid details of how much money Bo and his family allegedly embezzled. After all, while Bo was preaching socialist values in Chongqing, his playboy son, Bo Guagua, was spotted buzzing around Beijing in posh cars. (I won’t dare to wade into the debate over the model and colour of Guagua’s wheels, but there seems to be agreement he didn’t take taxis.) The Chinese Internet is filled with tales of government officials who take a cut of any money that passes through their department, often funneling their ill-gotten gains to accounts overseas. But in a system where nearly everyone relies on under-the-table earnings (President Hu Jintao, who presumably would be at the top of the scale, officially receives just $11,000 per year), and deals are often sealed by red envelopes stuffed with cash, how can anyone prove the corruption everyone suspects is rampant? Just look at their cars, many say. Do the flash cars with government plates on the streets of Beijing look like the wheels of officials living on modest salaries? We’re able to let you make your own judgments, thanks to a longtime foreign resident of China (he’s asked not to be named) who forwarded us a few snaps he took of the all-day auto show that is the streets of Beijing: