China Pressures U.S. Journalists, Prompting Warning From Biden

Mr. Biden’s comments were the first time a senior American leader had publicly accused the Chinese of aiming at entire journalistic institutions. 

By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER

BEIJING — China appears ready to force nearly two dozen journalists from American news organizations to leave the country by the end of the year, a significant increase in pressure on foreign news media that has prompted the American government’s first public warning about repercussions.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised the issue here in meetings with President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders, and then publicly chastised the Chinese on Thursday for refusing to say if they will renew the visas of correspondents and for blocking the websites of American-based news media.
“Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences,” Mr. Biden said in a speech to an American business group.
At a meeting on Thursday with Beijing-based reporters from The New York Times and Bloomberg, Mr. Biden said that he warned Chinese leaders, in a formal session and over dinner, that there would be consequences for China, especially in the Congress, if it forced out the journalists. 

But he said Mr. Xi appeared unmoved, insisting that the authorities treated reporters according to Chinese law.
Between them, The Times and Bloomberg have nearly two dozen journalists whose visas are up for renewal by the end of the month, and China has declined to act on them.
The growing tension with China over its treatment of American news media outlets comes at a moment when Washington and Beijing are increasingly at odds and publicly more critical of each other than at any time in recent memory.
The Obama administration has refused to recognize China’s recently declared air defense identification zone over disputed territory with Japan — a subject that dominated Mr. Biden’s visit — and the countries have sparred over what Washington regards as the organized daily intrusion into United States government and industry computer systems by Chinese entities, mostly to steal intellectual property. 

A two-day summit meeting in June between President Obama and Mr. Xi, intended to calm the tensions, was followed by a series of actions that have accentuated the rivalry between the world’s established superpower and its fastest-rising competitor.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, responding to Mr. Biden, said on Thursday that it managed foreign reporters “according to law and regulations.” 

A spokesman, Hong Lei, said, “As for foreign correspondents’ living and working environments in China, I think as long as you hold an objective and impartial attitude, you will arrive at the right conclusion.”
Chinese officials have all but said that American reporters know what they need to do to get their visas renewed: tailor their coverage.
The Times has been in regular contact with the Obama administration on the issue; with time running out on the current visas for its correspondents, repeated efforts to obtain new ones have so far been unsuccessful.
Jill Abramson, The Times’s executive editor, said in an interview that “unfettered coverage of China is a crucial issue” and that she was determined to continue “the highest quality journalism about China,” whether or not the visas were renewed. 

Asked about the Chinese argument that its authorities were enforcing laws that apply to all journalists in China, she noted, “Our laws make clear there is respect for freedom of expression.”
A spokesman for Bloomberg News declined to comment.
Over the decades, there have been periodic crackdowns on news organizations in China. 

But the pressure has increased since China emerged as the world’s second-largest economy, and scrutiny of its government and business practices — and Western-style investigative reporting — has led the Chinese government to both protest and threaten foreign news organizations.
Chinese officials have privately told reporters that the refusal to deal with their visa applications was linked to their reporting. 

Mr. Biden intervened during his trip, his aides said, partly out of a concern that Beijing might be trying to drive entire news bureaus — including The Times and Bloomberg — out of the country and harm their business prospects in one of the world’s most booming news markets.
Tensions worsened last year, after The Times and Bloomberg ran extensive articles about the wealth accumulated by the families of China’s leaders. 

In Washington, Chinese diplomats have also complained about coverage of Tibet, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and reports linking units of China’s People’s Liberation Army to cyberattacks.
In his public comments, Mr. Biden offered no specifics about what kind of retaliation the United States government was considering.
But in interviews over several weeks, American officials have acknowledged that their options for pressuring the Chinese are limited. 

While they could cancel the visas of Chinese correspondents, one administration official said “that could be counterproductive, because we want more reporting about the United States to become available in China.”
Visa approvals for Chinese news media executives trying to visit the United States could be slowed, officials say, or the administration could initiate trade actions in response to China’s decision to block the English and Chinese-language websites of Western news organizations. 

Yet so far there appears to have been little work done on preparing such actions, and it is unclear whether they would succeed. 

American officials, for example, were stymied on how to help Google after it dropped its practice of censoring its own search-engine results, after a Chinese hacking attack on the company. 

Its share of the Chinese search market has plummeted to 3 percent.
Bloomberg’s English-language website was blocked after it published an article in June 2012 on the fortunes amassed by relatives of Mr. Xi. 

Sales of Bloomberg terminals dried up in China, and the government issued no further residency visas to Bloomberg reporters. 

Pressure from Beijing, some Bloomberg employees said, played a role in its decision not to publish a subsequent article investigating the ties between Wang Jianlin, one of China’s wealthiest men, and Communist Party leaders. 

Bloomberg’s editor in chief, Matthew Winkler, has insisted the article was not published because it was not ready.
The Times’s website, including its Chinese-language edition, has been blocked since October 2012, when the paper published articles about the enormous wealth accumulated by the family of Wen Jiabao, then in his last months as China’s prime minister. 

Traffic to the Chinese-language site has dropped substantially, the company has said, though a growing number of Chinese have learned to evade the electronic blockades.
Last month, the authorities also blocked access to an online Chinese-language lifestyle magazine started weeks earlier by The Times. 

The paper had just reported that JPMorgan Chase had paid $1.8 million to a consultancy secretly run by Mr. Wen’s daughter, Wen Ruchun, and that American prosecutors were examining ties between Ms. Wen and the bank as part of a bribery investigation. 

The government also stopped processing the visa applications of The Times’s journalists in China after that report.
While the United States has periodically intervened on behalf of specific journalists whose visas were denied or who were detained after visiting sensitive places or dissidents, Mr. Biden’s comments were the first time a senior American leader had publicly accused the Chinese of aiming at entire journalistic institutions. 

Until now, such issues have usually been dealt with quietly.
His decision to go public was a reflection, officials said, of the far more aggressive posture China has taken toward foreign journalists over the past two or three years. 

To some degree that reflects a shift in Chinese diplomacy: In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Japan began its slow decline and a large international press corps began to migrate to Beijing and Shanghai, the Chinese often tried to court foreign reporters.
The turn can be traced to 2008, when many Chinese objected to foreign reporting of protests in Tibet, and what Chinese authorities felt was negative news media coverage of the 2008 Olympics, an event China saw as its coming-out party as the world’s rising great power. 

New, ad hoc restrictions began to be imposed, especially after 2011, when the Communist Party leadership feared that the Arab uprisings could sow unrest in China, and security authorities cracked down.
“It’s looking increasingly like as a media company you have a choice in China: You either do news or you do business,” said James McGregor, chairman of Greater China for APCO Worldwide, a consultancy, and former Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. 

“But it’s hard to do both.”

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Q&A: Paul Mooney on reporting in China

It's time for foreign governments to adopt a tit-for-tat policy in approving visas for Chinese journalists and to speak out forcibly about the abuse of foreign correspondents. 

By Bob Dietz

I've known Paul Mooney since we worked together at Time Warner's Hong Kong-based magazine Asiaweek, which closed in December 2001. 

After that we'd overlapped in Beijing for several stints. 

A lot has been written about China's refusal to give him a visa to let him go back to Beijing to work as a features writer for Reuters --- a dream job for a reporter with as many clips as he has built up over the years. 

He's been quoted widely about what happened, but I haven't seen his full account anywhere else. 

So here is an email exchange with him from today (I've dropped a reference to some foreign journalists Mooney named who are also having visa problems and most likely wouldn't want to be mentioned):

Q: Paul, why were you refused a visa to China? You worked there for years, the most recent stint was for the South China Morning Post.
A: I don't know the exact reason for the rejection of my journalist visa. 

China didn't give a reason, which is puzzling. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) issued a faxed statement to one news organization afterwards saying that the decision was in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations. 

But if that's the case, why is the government too embarrassed to say what laws or regulations were violated?

Q: How did the refusal to give you a visa play out? Was there much animosity on the Chinese government's part? Or was it more a case of them just not responding, using no response as their response? How did you manage to stay so long in China, anyway? They're known to be tough on issuing visas.
A: Reuters offered me a position as a features writer in Beijing in February and they submitted my visa application in early March. 

I had an interview with the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco in April, which is a now part of the process of getting a journalist visa. 

After that, the ministry provided no information at all. Nothing. So there was no animosity, from what I know. 

Reuters checked with MoFA from time to time to see about my visa, but the answer was always that they were working on my background investigation, which didn't make much sense as I'd lived in Beijing for 18 consecutive years. 

From their monitoring of me during my more than two decades of reporting on China, they knew quite a bit about me. 

I assume that MoFA, which actually lacks any real power in things like this, was waiting for security agencies to give their approval for my visa. 

When MoFA informed Reuters on November 8, which is Journalists' Day in China, by the way, that they would not grant me a visa, no reason was given, and that's because they don't have a valid reason for doing this. 

In the entire 18 years that I worked as an accredited journalist in China, and during the past eight months, no one from the government had ever made any critical remarks about my work, although, as I said, I'm sure they were not happy with my reporting. 

The purpose of not giving any justification for the delay in granting a visa is part of their program of intimidation, a way for them to make journalists squirm.
While working in China, I had to renew my visa every year, and each year I expected to have trouble -- but I never did. 

Things are different now, however. 

The situation around the country is getting worse and the Chinese leadership is getting increasingly nervous. Their decision to keep me out of China now is an indication of how much the Chinese leadership has regressed in recent years. 

This is the worst atmosphere for freedom of expression that I can remember since the early 1990s. 

Also, I believe that they think refusing to renew the visa of someone inside China is far more sensitive than not issuing a visa to someone who is applying from outside the country -- I was forced to leave China in September 2012 because I was not able to get a new journalist visa before my previous visa expired. 

Once I was in the US, Beijing was less afraid of the fallout from not giving me a visa.

Q: What's it like working as a journalist in China these days? Do you have a sense of increased surveillance? Are other people in the same sort of situation you were in, on tenterhooks, worried about being allowed to stay? Are they being called into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be lectured more often? How about staffers who work for well-known companies? Stringers? How closely knit is the foreign press corps now?
A: I believe it's gotten much worse, but that's been the trend for several years now. 

Beginning about three years ago, they began delaying annual visa approvals until the final week of December -- visas must be renewed by the end of each year. 

I know of two people who didn't get their renewals until December 31, which puts a great deal of pressure on journalists and their organizations. 

If his or her visa is revoked, a journalist has less than a day to pack up and fly out. 

This is childish. 

And Chinese staff are often under pressure as well, with security agents frequently inviting them to tea or lunches, where they are asked, with veiled threats, to report to the police about what their bosses are doing. 

It frightens many of the staff.
When I renewed my visa two years ago, they asked me to bring my wife for the meeting with the police who oversee visa renewals. 

I balked, saying my wife is not a journalist. They insisted that she come in. 

At the Entry and Exit Bureau, the police in charge of foreign journalist visa approvals took us into a small back interrogation room where they asked us intimidating questions. 

I'm used to such treatment, but it frightened my wife. 

I can take any kind of abuse, but my family is off-limits. 

The following year, a police officer responsible for monitoring me told me when I renewed my visa that he'd been tailing me, and he described the Chinese friends he'd seen me with. 

These are pure scare tactics and really outrageous. 

I've not heard of people being called in more often for lectures, so I can't comment on that.
On the night that Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, I was invited to a dinner with some rights lawyers and other activists who were celebrating the news. 

More than 40 police stormed into the restaurant and dragged the 17 participants to police stations. 

I was held for more than three hours and interrogated. 

I believe that the plainclothes officers who tried to first interrogate me were members of the notorious National Security. 

They refused to identify themselves and I refused to answer any questions, which upset them. They took off in a huff. 

Uniformed police with identification badges then interrogated me, trying to get me to reveal information about the people attending the dinner. 

I refused as there was no legal obligation for me to answer these questions. 

In the end, I agreed to sign a statement saying I'd neglected to carry my passport with me, which is a law in China for foreigners. 

When I was allowed to leave at close to 11 pm, one police officer said to me, "We know where you are in case we need you." 

I interpreted that as a threat.
While visiting AIDS villages in Henan province in August 2012, I was harassed by local officials and police everywhere I went. 

In one case, Party officials entered the home of AIDS victims where I was conducting interviews. 

As I didn't want to get my sources into deeper trouble, I left immediately. 

In some villages, I was advised not to even try to enter. 

One AIDS activist who helped me meet people received a call from her local officials as we were driving in a car. 

They ordered her to return to the village immediately, and when she went back, they questioned her and asked why she was helping a foreign journalist. 

I worried about her safety. 

In the city of Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, I barely escaped my hotel after AIDS activists informed me the police were going to my hotel to detain me.
In Kashgar, in Xinjiang Province, police forced me to check out of my hotel and to stay in a hotel they designated. 

Foreign journalists in China all have journalist visas, and our arrival is immediately reported to local security people as soon as we check in. 

During my three days there, police stayed with me from morning to night and prevented me from reporting. 

I was not allowed to leave the hotel on my own or to take photographs other than tourist shots. 

On the fourth day, they escorted me to the train station and put me on a train to Urumqi. 

I was prevented from doing any reporting while I was there. 

This despite new rules implemented during the Olympics that made it possible for journalists to travel outside our home cities without government permission. 

Tibet is the one exception to this rule -- foreign journalists cannot travel to Tibet unless they have special permission, which is difficult to get. 

I applied several times, and was refused permission each time.
In two other incidents, when I was reporting in Tibetan areas, someone entered my hotel room when I was outside reporting and they took things from my room. 

I interpreted this as a signal to let me know that they were watching me.
I always worried about my photographs being erased from my camera cards, and so I often switched cards, and I frequently put my photos into the cloud so I'd still have copies. 

Likewise, with my notes. 

I often wrote on scraps of paper that would be easier to hide, and I had a habit of typing my notes up and sending them to various email addresses so I wouldn't lose them.
Traveling was always stressful, and when I returned home to Beijing, I often breathed a sigh of relief for getting home without incident, and I wondered if my luck would not run out the next time. 

My family always worried about me when I traveled in China and so I would keep in constant contact.

Q: We're getting lots of questions along the lines of "Is China cracking down on foreign media?" The FCCC (Foreign Correspondents' Club of China) released a report in mid-2013 that things were either bad or getting worse for foreign correspondents. Have you noticed a disintegration, or has it just been as difficult for years? Has it gotten worse under the Xi government?
A: I left China in September 2012, before Xi Jinping came to power, so I can't speak from personal knowledge. 

However, based on what I mentioned above about people being forced to wait long periods to get visa approvals, my own situation, and based on the steps China has taken to retaliate against media organizations that they don't like, I feel the situation has gotten much worse. 

One can also see this in the crackdown on freedom of expression among Chinese citizens. 

In the past few months, some 300 Chinese rights lawyers, activists, dissidents and others have been detained or arrested, including a 16-year old middle school student who was briefly detained for several days under the new law prohibiting the spread of so-called rumors.

Q: The FCCC also had reports of physical assaults and harassment of foreign reporters. It's a problem, but is that really the primary issue for foreign reporters? Are journalists walking around afraid of getting roughed up?
A: There have been physical assaults on journalists, but only occasionally. 

That said, it's something one fears when reporting in out-of-the-way areas or when doing sensitive stories. Despite this happening rarely, I was always conscious of the possibility.

Q: Let me ask, as a former working journalist who hasn't been able to get a visa into China for a while now, to a guy who is still making his living writing and reporting: What are you going to do next? Your expertise is China, it seems like any employer would risk antagonizing China if they were to hire you, especially to cover anything China-related.
A: I've spent the last 28 years writing about Greater China: Taiwan between 1985-1990, Hong Kong 1990-1994, and Beijing from 1994 to 2012. 

I've occasionally done reporting in Mongolia, Vietnam, and South Korea, but I've always considered myself a "China person." 

In some ways, I'm more that than a journalist. 

A lot of people are assigned to China for a few years and then move on to another place. 

I thought I'd write about China until I couldn't hold a pen and notebook anymore. 

I'm 63 now and expected I would do another seven years of the rough reporting around difficult parts of China. 

I didn't expect my China career to end this way. 

Reuters has kindly offered to see if it can find another suitable position for me. 

Right now I have no idea where that will be. 

Once a journalist is banned from China, it normally takes three to five years to be allowed back in to work. Some people are never allowed back in. 

I have no idea when or if I'll ever return to China.

Q: Is there much interaction between foreign journalists and local Chinese reporters? Are they two separate universes, or do they overlap? Do you get a sense of how they are feeling about the media environment these days? Do you feel they speak frankly with you?
A: These are two separate universes. 

I had far more local reporter friends in Taiwan and Hong Kong than I had in China, despite spending triple the years in China. 

The more experienced foreign correspondents who are knowledgeable about China, and who speak good Chinese, have more contacts with Chinese journalists and they benefit from these contacts. 

I've learned a lot from my friendship with Chinese colleagues. 

I wish there was a lot more interaction. 

I've heard that the government has a regulation forbidding Chinese journalists to mingle with Western reporters, and this may explain the reticence I've seen among some Chinese. 

There's a real risk for Chinese journalists who are willing to have interactions with foreign reporters. 

The Chinese reporters that I've become friends with have spoken to me frankly. 

I have great admiration for many Chinese journalists who have risked their jobs and security to write the truth. 

Despite the controls on the media, there are more and more Chinese journalists who are bravely pushing the line. 

Even in places like CCTV and the People's Daily, the main propaganda arms of the Party, there are a growing number of Chinese journalists who are privately critical of the controls on the media. 

The many Chinese journalists who dare to push the line, despite the risks, are one of the things that give me hope for the future of China. 

I have tremendous respect for them.

Q: And the classic interview-ending question: Is there anything I have missed? Something you want to say that I haven't touched on?
A: The treatment of foreign journalists in China, from visa intimidation to harassment and threats, is outrageous, and it's gotten worse in recent years. 

It's time for foreign governments to stand up to China on this issue. 

In my country, the United States, there are more than 700 Chinese correspondents working -- many of them propagandists or actual intelligence agents. 

This number far exceeds the number of American journalists in China. 

Yet, Beijing continues to limit our access. 

As far as I know, Chinese journalists in the United States are treated with respect and are not made to wait excessively long for visas. 

Nor are they threatened, intimidated, or prevented from doing their work. 

It's time for foreign governments to adopt a tit-for-tat policy in approving visas for Chinese journalists and to speak out forcibly about the abuse of foreign correspondents. 

Some China experts don't think this is a good policy as it would mean we were limiting the freedom of the media. 

But this is already happening in China. 

There's no doubt in my mind that if the United States, for example, sat on the visa applications for senior correspondents from CCTV, the People's Daily or Xinhua News Agency, that Beijing would stop its unacceptable behavior and that the result would be more freedom for the media.

China has made great strides over the past few decades and people now refer to it as a super power. 

It's time for Beijing to abandon its childish policies and act like a responsible state. 

These are not the policies the world expects from a leading power and they show an extreme lack of confidence.

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China’s Crazy Decency Police Take on ‘The Network’

Filmmaker Eva Orner was shocked—and mystified—when censors informed her that two seconds-long moments from her movie would have to be cut for it to be shown at a Chinese film festival.
by Lloyd Grove

Academy Award winner Eva Orner talks about her new documentary 'The Network', that follows the staff and family members behind Afghanistan's first independent television network, TOLO TV, launched in 2004, three years into the war.

It’s no longer called Red China, and the formerly Maoist People’s Republic has embraced capitalism with a vengeance, but that doesn’t mean the powerful Chinese bureaucracy is big on freedom of expression.
Indeed, the cultural apparatchiks of the planet’s most populous country can be—what’s the expression?—inscrutably touchy.
A case in point is the official demand, masquerading as a polite request, that documentary filmmaker Eva Orner delete two seemingly innocuous moments from her acclaimed movie The Network — which chronicles how media mogul Saad Mohseni’s Tolo TV is transforming Afghan society — if she would like it to be shown at the 2013 Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival.
“It was hilarious and sort of sad as well,” Orner told me about an email that was sent last week to her film’s London sales agent by the government-run festival’s international liaison, Sun Wei, who goes by the Western nickname “David.”
“We are very glad to tell you that we are considering selecting your film The Network as one of the finalist[s],” David wrote from the Chinese port city historically known as Canton. 

“However, the jury considers parts of your film controversial and need you to cut that parts [sic]…If you agree to cut this part, the jury may be able to select your film into the final list. We need your swift response.” (David didn’t respond to my email seeking an explanation for the jury’s objections.)
Orner, who shared the 2007 Best Documentary Academy Award as a producer of Taxi to the Dark Side, Alex Gibney’s expose of the American use of torture in Iraq, said she’s clueless as to why the Chinese censors were so upset.
In one apparently objectionable portion, Tolo TV personality Mujeeb Arez, the bubbly host of a popular travel show, gushes about a trip to New York City. 

“I’m telling everyone that the best city in the world is America, and I think it is,” he enthuses.
“That doesn’t even make sense,” Orner commented, noting that America is not a city, “and it’s hardly pro-American propaganda.”
In the other unacceptable segment, Afghan journalist Ahmad Shafi discusses how living through the Soviet invasion and the subsequent Taliban dictatorship influenced his perspective. 

“It made me believe in myself as opposed to an ideology,” he says. 

“I don’t need Communism, I don’t need Jihadism, I don’t need anything to make me believe in something.”

“It’s just so stupid—comically stupid,” Orner said of the proposed cuts.

“It’s not like he’s denouncing Communism,” Orner said. 

“I found it so extraordinary that they had people watching this film and pulling out anything that could be seen as anti-Communist or pro-American. It’s like old-school Communist China.”
Orner, a seasoned veteran of film festivals the world over, said this is the first time in her experience that officials of any festival have demanded deletions of material deemed too controversial. 

Stranger still, she added, is that the two offending sections, amounting to a few seconds total, are among the milder moments in a film that shows real-life executions by gunfire and hanging, and documents the violent abuse of women in oppressively patriarchal Afghanistan.
“It’s just so stupid—comically stupid,” Orner said about the proposed Chinese censorship. 

But as long as the bureaucrats at the Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival agree to foot the bill for the demanded deletions, they’re so trivial Orner said she’s willing to accept them.
“I wrote back to sales agent, ‘Tell them they can knock themselves out,’” Orner said. 

“I’m not precious about it. I would love for people in China to see the film, as along as they don’t think it’s about how lovely Afghanistan is.”

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Challenges to China's Sustainable Growth and Implications to Investors

By Junheng Li

When foreigners visit China, they are often impressed by the country’s spectacular hardware: the modern architecture of the coastal areas, the fancy international hotels and luxury shopping malls, a high-speed railway that runs at more than 180 miles per hour while still providing passengers with Wi-Fi access.
The continuous news cycle that contrasts China’s economic success with the lukewarm economic recovery in the U.S. and E.U. reinforces this view.

A poll released in July by the Pew Research Center shows that many people around the world believe China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower. 

China’s economy continues to chug along at more than 7.5%, with projections showing that it will surpass the American economy by 2030. 

Many Americans think that it is merely a matter of time before China takes over the world.
But what is conveniently dismissed, amidst the popular American declinism, is that China still lacks the “software” to support and sustain the impressive hardware. 

By software, I refer to the rule of law, accountability, governance, and most importantly the quality of its people, as citizens, workers and managers. 

China’s educational system has failed to produce either an honorable or an innovative labor force – defined broadly to include those who make their living by their hands and by their brains.
Investing in a business is ultimately about investing in the people who run it. 

I learned from my investment career on Wall Street that a business is only as good as its managers and its corporate leadership. 

Assessing the integrity and quality of management should be an investor’s priority in performing due diligence, especially in emerging markets such as China. 

If the manager is a crook or has serious character flaws, none of the other business factors will make the target a good investment.

***

China’s success story is based on a single economic mode, that of mass production of low-value manufacturing products using abundant and cheap labor, massive capital investment and endless economies of scale.
That growth prescription has lost its efficacy.
The country’s changing demographics make this system increasingly unsustainable, as China’s aging population and rising wage costs eat away at the abundant supply of cheap labor.
The policy of accelerated urbanization, using carrots as well as sticks to cajole 200 million sometimes reluctant rural residents into the cities, will not reverse the trend of rapidly rising cost structure.
In fact, unheeded urbanization could turn into a costly economic, human and political failure.
After all, China still has yet to deliver equal rights to approximately 250 million migrant workers in its cities, rural citizens who are denied access to many urban social services under China’s restrictive household registration system.
In addition, the environmental degradation that is a byproduct of the country’s capital-intensive, externality-ignoring development model is undeniable.
Chinese citizens are seeing their life spans cut short by the poisonous air in the largest cities – most pronounced in the capital Beijing – the worsening water quality, and the polluted soil and food grown out of it.
The weakness of China’s civil society, including the absence of free media, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, is another manifestation of how the lack of human and social capital hurts the quality of life and sustainable growth prospects. 
China’s leaders increasingly view the formation of a civil society as a threat to the government – a sort of insecurity on view in ongoing crackdown on social media and the mid-September arrest of a Chinese businessman known for promoting civil society.
These measures show Chinese society is moving in the wrong direction, with negative implications for its economy.
To upgrade and invigorate its current economic model, China has to adopt a more open, pluralistic political system.
To transition to a more value-added, service-oriented economy, the country needs a society with a judicious mix of what Albert O. Hirschman, a development economist, termed “exit, voice, and loyalty”: freedom of choice, freedom of expression and the ability to work together toward a common goal.
Last but definitely not the least, China’s ultracompetitive education system, which continues to prioritize propaganda and memorization above independent and critical thinking, weakens the country’s workforce.
Major changes—some of which will compromise the state’s tight control over its citizens—are called for to produce a labor force compatible with the advancement of the economy.
Drawn to the American values of individualism, freedom and social mobility, I left China in 1996 to pursue a liberal arts education at Middlebury College in the rural Vermont.
During the 17 years since I left China, it is astonishing to notice that education remains first and foremost a device for drilling party ideology into impressionable minds, despite the dramatic changes in the society and economy.
Textbook material exemplifies and glorifies the party—how it takes care of its people, the way a parent does for a child, and how society should therefore be appreciative and obedient, ready to put self-interest aside when the party asks.
Teaching ideology in itself is not a problem, but dictating which idea is right or wrong is a problem.
Every school in the world teaches some sort of ideology.
American schools prioritize freedom of choice and individualism, for example.
They encourage students to dare to be different, to think out of the box, to take risks, and to lead.
The products of those ideologies include some of the world’s greatest innovators, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs.

***

China today is essentially caught in a prison of its own past success—the staggering and unprecedented achievement of lifting 500 million people out of poverty in 30-plus years.
Chinese people are energized and anxious at the same time.
Outsiders are awed, and they assume past glory is indicative of future achievement.
But the country’s trajectory seems similar to that of an athlete on steroids.
As with most athletes on steroids whose temporary outperformance is likely to followed by a long period of underperformance.
To avoid this fate, China’s singular focus on fast growth and the purely quantitative bottom line in the past ought to be shifted to the quality of economic growth, of the country’s citizenry, and of the society.
Wresting control from vested interests and carrying out the dramatic reform to institutions necessary to make this shift will be difficult, but it is the only way maintain China’s spectacular economic performance.
Many transitional economies, including Japan in the 1960s and 1970s and Korea in the 1980s and early 1990s, have gone through a period of super growth and succeeded in advancing to a new model.
A rich history of the developed world gives China an advantage: it can learn from other countries’ history and avoid some of their mistakes, if it chooses to.
Within the country, a consensus is beginning to form, from the top leadership in Beijing to corporate executives to average citizens, that the country is nearing an inflection point that will force it to reflect and reform.
Yet the vested interests that have enriched themselves on the country’s old growth model have so far mostly succeeded in putting on the brakes.
This conflict of interest should send a clear message to investors: buyer beware at this tipping point of China’s growth.
Assuming that the past rate of growth is the norm for the future may only invite costly mistakes.

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