Valerie Niquet is Senior Research Fellow at The French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Sinologist and Japanologist, Doctor in political science and writes about the evolution of regional balances and strategic issues in Asia since the end of the Cold War. Funded in in 1979 by Thierry de Montbrial, IFRI is France’s leading independent international relations center, dedicated to policy-oriented research and analysis of global political affairs.

This is how she describes her work:

Thirty years after the start of the policy of reform and opening up launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the political system and Chinese society are considerably more open. However, there still are many gray areas, one of which is the question of decision-making: the way the decision-making process is concretely implemented remains opaque. Between statements of principle and apparent inconsistencies, an analysis of the decision-making process helps to shed light on the conflicts within the political apparatus, the debates on the evolution of the regime, the interests at work, and the power games that take place.

This is a very interesting piece of work if you are interested in how complex and opaque the decision-making process at the top political level in the Middle Kingdom is. Above all, she deserves all the credit for bringing to the mass – me (sic)- in less than 30 pages:

- The management of the Olympic Games

- How China is handling the international financial crisis and social challenges

- Environmental issues and the promotion of the “China” brand

- Last but not least, corruption and the power of influence networks

p/s. All the credit goes to Arnaud de la Grange who first spotted this article. You can download it here (PDF-122Kb).

Arnaud de La Grange from Le Figaro asks whether this is going to turn into the “New President Security Services’ Nightmare“, Aujourd’hui La Chine collects Chinese reactions in Beijing here and ChinaSmack has translated an impressive list of Chinese reactions there.

BTW, you noticed Wen is speaking in Chinese… at Cambridge !

It started all here on Dec. 26th by ChinaSmack, when Chinese Netizens noticed in pictures the Commissioner of the Nanjing Housing Administration Bureau was smoking very expensive cigarettes and wearing an expensive watch that a government official should not be able to afford [Read: on his salary]. ChinaSmack has translated in his post the numerous comments originally from Tanya. [Update: this link has been "harmonized"]

Yesterday, The Strait Times revealed this Government Official had been dismissed and that authorities in Jiangsu province where Internet users exposed an allegedly corrupt official’s taste for luxury have made posting information about private life illegal.

The ruling Communist Party’s parliament in eastern Jiangsu province approved a law making it illegal for people in the city of Xuzhou to publish ‘private information’ on the Internet, the China Daily reported.

But now, anyone in Xuzhou who posts ‘private information’ online will be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be barred from using the Internet for six months.

Today the news has been reported by Shanghaiist and China Digital Times [Proxy required] as well.

There is still something of the petulant 3-year-old here, brazenly pursuing something that is decidedly not in her [China] interests. It illustrates the fact that China’s foreign policy, its strategy and its world view are anything but mature.

First, it’s not like China doesn’t need friends right now. It’s economy is in crisis. Over the weekend President Hu Jintao told a gathering of Communist Party members that the global crisis could undermine the country’s economy and threaten the party’s capacity to rule China. Europe is China’s largest market. But the Europeans are restless. European businesses want to know why they sell more stuff to Switzerland than to China. Cancel a summit and these questions will only grow louder.

So why did Hu really blow off Sarko, Pomfret asks?

The stated Chinese reason in this case bears scrutiny because of its brazen honesty. According to wire service reports, Qin Gang, a spokesman at the China’s foreign ministry, acknowledged to reporters that France was being held to a higher standard than, say, the United States, whose leaders routinely huddle with the Dalai Lama and barely suffer a slap on the wrist.

Chinese tea-leaf readers have focused on another reason: They’ve wheeled out the old bogeyman of Chinese political calculus, claiming that unidentified “hard-liners” were behind the cancellation. That’s rich.

The reality is that China just screwed this one up.

I am sure Sarkozy will feel less lonely after this…

Le Monde: Do you think the China-EU summit has been canceled because of the Tibetan question only ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: The Dali Lama is just a pretext. China is focusing on France but the real target of all this is the unity of the Europeans countries. Chinese politicians think they can manage bilateral relations – except with the United States – but they know how much harder it is to manager multilateral relations. Since the French obtained an embargo on weapon trade in 1989, China tries to hamper the EU, because of its capacity to impose economic quotas, currency reevaluation, etc. They identified Nicolas Sarkozy as the weak point. Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel both received the Dalai Lama or did not assist the Olympics opening ceremonial.

Le Monde: France is the weak point then…

Jean-Vincent Brisset: It is, historically. When I was doing my time in the military, there was a saying, “Keep harassing one guy only, you will have one guy only yelling”. This is exactly what China is doing, as France is currently leading the UE Presidency.

But this attitude dates back to long ago, since French diplomats always had a deep admiration for China and and a total outdated understanding of this country. French believe that by being kind to people you can be paid the same in return. Amongst the countries which played a preeminent role in history, France has always been the weakest. France is considered as a female country and as the same time, China does respect powerful nations only.

Le Monde:The Olympic torch incident in Paris doesn’t help as well…

Jean-Vincent Brisset: France has been apologizing only since the beginning of this affair, following the chinese diplomatic tradition. Historically, a vassal State was submitting to China by offering presents. This is exactly what we did by sending Raffarin offering a present to Beijing.

Le Monde: How this was interpreted by Chinese ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: To them, it is very clear ! France is a vassal State. This will be very difficult to catch up.

Le Monde: How to regain confidence and trust between the two countries ?

Jean-Vincent Brisset: Fortunately, a lot of European people begin to understand China is not such a friendly country. It’s a selfish country maintaining rough relationships with the rest of the world, and we should keep our distance with it. China is testing the power of the EU, not France. Should China gain to imposing economical retorsion measures toward France without any EU reactions, it would be a victory. On the contrary, if France puts the EU in front of the battle, this affair can find a smooth settlement. But if the EU shows some weakness, China could step then towards each of the European counties, except the UK which will always resist.

Ouch ! I told you this guy was rough… Interesting times indeed, let’s see what’s next for French.

“We will face more deadly terrorist attacks in the region, especially targeted against NATO forces as China is massively flooding the country with sophisticated armaments” an expert reports. US satellites reports shall confirm direct trade contacts between China and the Taleban, even if generally the arm supplies would rather go through Iran with the support of Hezbollah.

As China is doing its best to step back on the international scene as a superpower and keeps repeating to neighboring countries this power is not a threat, I am quite dubious regarding the real game behind the official diplomacy.

I heard this from a friend and wanted to find out if Yan Jiechi really meant this… Thanks to Danwei and Countdown To Beijing, I did.

At a press conference in March, China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi said:

I believe that Chinese is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn. Otherwise, how can you explain why 1.3 billion people have chosen it as their mother tongue?

How do we take this ? I did not really had the choice of my mother tongue myself, did you ?

Maybe Yan was just joking… maybe not !

I have Just finished reading “Wolf Totem” by Jiang Rong, largely based on the author’s experience and written under a pen name, who only recently revealed himself to be former political prisoner.

Just loved it…

Written in 2004 but translated in English and French only in March 2008, the book, set on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, has been a publishing phenomenon in China, where it has sold twenty million copies in its legitimate imprint and several million pirated copies since its release in 2004, despite Rong’s desire to keep a low profile, as reported by the Herald Tribune.

The NYT reports:

“Wolf Totem” engages the foreign reader only in its attempts to diagnose the spiritual malaise of contemporary China.

The main line of inquiry is announced on the very first page when a suitably old and wise Mongol tells Chen: “You’re like a sheep. A fear of wolves is in your Chinese bones.” As if on cue, Chen is soon “saddened to have been born into a line of farmers” who have “become as timid as sheep after dozens, even hundreds, of generations of being raised on grains and greens, the products of farming communities; they had lost the virility of their nomadic ancestors.”

Jiang Rong tries to defuse Chinese pride in their splendid agrarian civilization, even disparaging Confucius, now belatedly embraced by the Communist Party. There are laments about how timid Chinese peasants fell prey to canny Westerners who, as “descendants of barbarian, nomadic tribes such as the Teutons and the Anglo-Saxons,” have the blood of wolves in their veins. Chen concludes that the Chinese “are in desperate need of a transfusion” of such “vigorous, unrestrained blood.”

The LA Times gives a different outlook:

It could have been a spectacular novel. Instead it fails to rise above ordinary and at times ventures into the realm of batty.

There is an odd calculus at work throughout this much-heralded book. It basically goes like this: Han Chinese ethnicity, bad. Mongolians, good. Being the sedentary, agrarian people that they are, the Chinese naturally hate wolves. The nomadic, spiritual Mongolians revere them. Why do the Chinese hate wolves? The Chinese are like sheep — weak, complacent, docile and easily led — and sheep hate wolves, that’s why. Mongolians are not like sheep. They are brave, fearless, wise warriors; you can’t fence them in. Why are the Mongolians like this? They have a wolf as their totem, of course. How else could Genghis Khan have conquered most of the then-known world? The Chinese, the poor saps, have a dragon as their symbol.

The most remarkable point, as reported by the NYT is that:

It seems strange that the Chinese censors missed this indictment of Han imperialism. It’s even more remarkable that a novel so relentlessly gloomy and ponderously didactic has become a huge best seller, second in circulation only to Mao’s little red book. This success may be due, at least in part, to its exhortations to the Chinese to imitate the go-getting spirit of the West. However, “Wolf Totem” also captures a widespread Chinese anxiety about their country’s growing physical and moral squalor as millions abandon the countryside in search of a middle-class lifestyle that cannot be environmentally sustained.

Let’s have a look at the conclusion by the Times Online:

The underlying allegory – that people should cease being led about like sheep and should instead emulate the wolf’s fierce independence – seems hardly in keeping with China’s usual heavy-handed emphasis on conformity.

More articles available in French here, there, also here, and there.