Identity is a slippery, deceitful condition to define, even amongst ourselves. Look at your reflection on a Monday and you’re decisively one thing. Come Tuesday, that same image will provide different results. In reporter Emily Feng’s powerhouse new book Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, the question of who we are as reflected by our political surroundings and defined by our cultural baggage is clearly delineated through the narratives of approximately two dozen people in China. Feng makes clear that this is not a history book so much as an examination of ordinary people in China dealing with their identity-based culture
In her preface, Feng lays out an argument about Pres. Xi and the current state of China that is eerily parallel with our nation’s current condition of creeping, inevitable totalitarianism. The cherished diversity that was at the heart of her nation had become a liability under Xi Jinping. Surveillance of dissidents, and the expanded definition of what it meant to be a dissident, meant everything was up for reconsideration. Where Chairman Mao had once compelled his people to “let one hundred flowers bloom; let one hundred schools of thought contend,” the China of the early 2020s would be willing to “let only red flowers bloom.”
It’s within this context that Feng provides a format for a diverse number of Chinese people with different political ideologies and geographical origins. True to Feng’s peripatetic style as a reporter (including stints as a Beijing-based foreign correspondent for the Financial Times and since 2019 a China and Taiwan international correspondent for NPR), she covers the Chinese mainland, the Xinjiang region, the provinces of Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, as well as Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora in the United States.
Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is a stunning book made even more powerful by Feng’s strong commitment to her subjects. In 12 chapters with general names like “The Chained Woman,” “The Bookseller,” and “The Asylum Seeker,” these characters are people on the margins who have spoken out at great risk to their lives and reputations. Born in the United States to Chinese parents, Feng found herself in 2022 no longer welcome in China, where she had been living and working for seven years. Feng spoke with Sampan (via e-mailed questions):
Sampan: Your preface describes “Document Nine,” an initiative set forth by Xi Jinping whose goal was to take control of culture, identity, and thought, restricting any “…opportunity or outlets for incorrect thinking or viewpoints to spread.” Do you see parallels between this approach so common to authoritarian cultures and the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 25”? Trump has methodically attempted to suppress and threaten academia and the fourth estate by any means necessary — mainly financial. College students are being disappeared for being signatories to editorials asking for justice for Palestine. Do you fear we might be on the verge of prosecuting citizens for thought crimes as seems to be the case in mainland China?
Feng: You are not the only person to point out the similarities between China and the U.S., two superpowers that I often say have more in common than they would like to admit. I actually recently did a piece for NPR about how American watchers of Chinese politics with decades more experience than I do following studying China are noticing what they say are “eerie parallels” between trends in Chinese politics over the last decade and American politics over the last few months.
As I write in the book, China’s Xi Jinping is not the only world leader who desires a strong, unified national identity. He is also not unique in making the connection between perceived fissures along lines of identity and perceived threats to national security. Document 9 stood out to me at the time because it indicated how Xi Jinping understands his political control over Chinese society as starting first with having ideological control over the realm of ideas, identity, and culture. But of course, the particulars of Chinese identity Xi is concerned with and how China has chosen to address them are path-dependent and different than how I hope the U.S. would react.
Sampan: We are a bilingual newspaper serving Chinese immigrants, a forum for American-born Chinese, and an outlet for immigrants from all lands. That said, it’s perhaps unavoidable to examine the psychological pathology of Xi Jinping in China as it relates to Trump here in the United States. Do you see any way that Trump may be looking to Xi as well as Putin for pointers in how to deal with dissent? How are dissenters like lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Yang Bin managing these days? It seems law firms like Paul Weiss could have taken inspiration from these human rights lawyers and not so quickly surrendered their principles.
Feng: China and Russia have influenced each other to a high degree in political governance, but their modern-day systems now deal with dissent in very different ways. Russia is in many ways much more brutish and clumsier. It was poisoned and shot political opponents to the regime in high-profile assassination cases. An astonishing number of dissident people “fall out of windows.” Political repression is extremely obvious in Russia and yet there is extraordinary room for civil society to continue to resist and get out information about Putin’s government. China has become much more subtle and sophisticated in its repression. It has no need to assassinate its opponents or doom them to exile, which would be covered by the media. Instead, it is able to control nearly all economic, political and legal levers of society when needed so as to manage dissent where it can never scale and where it never achieves any meaningful visibility. On the surface, it thus appears Chinese society is remarkably calm and “harmonious.”
On what we can learn from the resilience of the characters in my book, I would say this: their stamina in the face of repression is remarkable. But meaningful dissent is a long-term commitment. And takes a toll. Dissent is a long, hard slog for these people, and it imparts trauma on not just the activists and dissenters themselves, but their family, friends, and their children.
Sampan: Is the strive toward “sinification” — to “sinify” ethnic groups — only marginalizing non-Han Chinese? Is diversity a curse for Chinese officials or a benefit? What’s happening with ethnic Mongolians in China these days? Are they at risk of disappearing for the sake of expediency? You write: “Sinification or ‘becoming Chinese’ could be seen as a parallel to becoming American.” Is it too great a leap to think that the current slide in this country toward unrelenting monoculture and groupthink has roots in Chinese and Soviet history? What can we learn here from the lessons played out there?
Feng: I wrote it could be seen as a parallel to becoming American but with a big caveat, which I have to mention or my point in the book is lost. Becoming American is not meant to come at the expense of distinct other identities they may also have. By contrast, sinification is wholly intended to come at the expense of maintaining any other distinct identity, whether cultural or linguistic or political.
The U.S. is not sliding toward monoculture in any way that is comparable to China. What I have always loved about coming home to the U.S. is the undeniably raucous, in-your-face diversity of the U.S. that — despite the inherent diversity of China — was much more suppressed in public spaces in China. Must we stay vigilant in maintaining our much-vaunted American ideals of diversity and inclusion? Yes. And are we guarding enough against potential threats against those ideals? Perhaps not.
Sampan: Xi’s 709 crackdown against Chinese lawyers and human rights activists will mark 10 years in July. How is its legacy today? How much were you at risk when meeting with Zhang Xiaohui and others in the world of Chinese business? You continued to be at risk when reporting on poverty alleviation efforts. Was this common for reporters like yourself and even more so for female Asian reporters?
Feng: The round up and detentions of hundreds of human rights lawyers in 2015 was a watershed moment. It signaled a willingness of the Communist Party under Xi to take a harder political line. It also marked the end of what had been an incredibly influential constitutional reform movement in China that notched real legal wins that were slowly but surely working within China’s political system to liberalize the same system and create real protections for civil liberties in China.
After the 705 crackdown, with many of the most effective lawyers in prison or disbarred from practicing, Chinese civil society experienced more blows it was unable to defend itself again – more cases of censorship, arrests and detentions over political charges including the all-too-common “picking quarrels and provoking troubles”
This political clampdown affected foreigners, in particular journalists like myself, working in mainland China, and yes, it was especially concentrated on Asian female journalists like myself. For years, I was in denial that the pressures and harassment I experienced in China were related to my ethnicity – I prided myself on speaking Mandarin well and loving Chinese culture and brushed off accusations of being a “race traitor” – but looking back I think my gender and ethnicity played a big role.
Sampan: “The Chained Woman” is a particularly resonant, haunting story in this book. She is, as advertised, a chained woman, abused and humiliated for TikTok clicks in 2022. She became emblematic of the thousands of women trafficked over the decades and her identity remains unknown. Who was she? You refer to the online internet sleuths, the “human flesh search machine” and their numerous theories as to the woman’s identity. Was she Yang Qingxia? Was she Xiaohuamei? Do you know her status now?
Feng: Her story haunts me because we still do not know who she is, or how she is doing. She had been discovered in the dead of winter, chained by her neck in an outdoor shed, and for many Chinese people, in her anonymity, she came to represent the collective trauma people had suffered under the One Child Policy, from human trafficking in and around China exacerbated by these state controls, and now from the current pro-natalist policies of the state.
Sampan: Your chapter on the Uyghur people, “The Detained,” refers to controls put on that population, and not the ethnic Han Chinese.” I felt guilty each time bored security guards let me through at the many checkpoints when fellow Uyghur people were stopped and hassled.” The plight of the Uyghur certainly seems to have slipped under the radar over the past few years. What’s happening with them now?
Feng: The chapter you’re referring to has been one of the stories that has stayed with me the most over the years, regarding a Uyghur family forcibly separated by the Chinese state in the region of Xinjiang. After much perseverance from the father and grandmother of this family, they were partially reunited – though each member of the family bears deep emotional scars from the experience. Sadly, the father died this year of cancer, and his children have never been able to see their mother again, as she remains imprisoned in Xinjiang. The last I saw them, the two Uyghur children were doing well in Istanbul and have a good support structure around them. However, the degree of suffering they have had to endure is unimaginable.
Sampan: You write eloquently about Taiwan: “For many Chinese dissidents living in political exile…the island was proof that the dream of Chinese democracy…was already a reality for 23 million people.” Hong Kong has a “one country, two systems” structure that’s set to dissolve in 2047. Taiwan remains a disputed entity, for some an appendage of mainland China and or others an independent nation. Is there fear that Xi will do to Taiwan what Putin did to Ukraine?Your final scene about Weiming Chen’s CCP VIRUS 2 sculpture brings together a collection of dissidents for the June 4th. 2022 opening, including pro-Taiwan independence advocates, Hong Kong exiles, and dissidents from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Where do you see this freedom movement going in the future? Where do you want to go in the future as a reporter still fighting the good fight?
Feng: Taiwan and Ukraine are incomparable in the political legacies which they inhabit and present very different challenges militarily and logistically in the event of invasion. Yet in principle, Taiwan certainly has drawn a direct comparison between itself and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and largely as a result, Taiwan has initiated some of its most significant military reforms. It also has noticed and been extremely alarmed by the Trump administration’s Russia-friendly rhetoric and recent criticism of Ukraine. China surely has taken note as well of the U.S.’ foreign policy about-face and will take American deterrence much less seriously in the future – another reminder that nothing the U.S. does on the world stage occurs in a vacuum and instead has stark consequences for other democratic societies.
