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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: An American, an Englishman, and an Australian walk onto a submarine. I forget how the joke goes, but France is pissed. Last week, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announced a new trilateral partnership. AUKUS. It sounds strange, there's all these acronyms, but it's a good one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The agreement calls for Australia to buy a nuclear submarine fleet. Australia then scrapped an existing 2016 deal to buy diesel-powered subs from France. This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision looks a lot like what Mr. Trump used to do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does your government feel betrayed by the United States? Yes, we have this feeling where it's disappointing. It's disappointing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We can try and explain bruised egos and big defense deals on the show today, but instead, we figured we'd try and get to the heart of the matter. And that's China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The reason President Biden and Boris Johnson are making submarine deals with Australia is to counter China. So it felt like a good time to ask, what's up in China? And it turns out, a lot.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Xi Jinping is overseeing this sprawling rectification campaign that is targeting ride-hailing services, tech companies, insurance companies, education, and even the amount of time that kids can play video games.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what we're seeing in this great rectification is really the redrawing of the boundaries of business and society in China today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lily Kuo is the China bureau chief for the Washington Post, based in Taipei. We asked her what exactly she meant by rectification campaign.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So, I mean, some people have called this a kind of second cultural revolution. So it's a correction of all the ills of society. So I think rectification has a connotation of moral principles to it.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So what are the correct values that should be promoted in Chinese society? What are the correct values that businesses should be operating by? So the rectification that we're seeing is an effort to kind of draw those principles and have the party determine, you know, what those values are.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Give us an idea, Lily, of what exactly is being changed here. What's going on?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So we can think of this in sort of three categories. The first is that we have a reining in of the private sector, mainly the tech sector in China. Then you have new restrictions and controls over the culture sector. So this is entertainment, celebrities. And then lastly, you also have changes in the education system and the push of certain values in society directed at young people.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Okay, well, let's start with education. What's going on there?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Many parents invested in tutors to help their children boost their results in hyper-competitive exams known as Gaokao that they need to pass to get into universities.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So the education system in China is incredibly competitive and incredibly intense. And all parents put their kids into hours and hours of these extra classes.
--:-- Lily Kuo: The authorities have banned for-profit private tutoring and overnight basically eviscerated this multi-billion dollar industry.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And so the thinking on the part of the Chinese authorities is that this for-profit industry has upset the ideals of education. And by banning this, then they are helping level the playing field for parents and families who can't really afford these classes.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And also the idea is that you take some of the pressure off of the students and the kids. So it's an incredibly competitive education system. And by banning part of that system, you're going to make it more fair for people.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Is that right?
--:-- Lily Kuo: I've asked people, you know, parents that I know in China what they think of this. And people say, you know, it's the right spirit and it makes sense.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And, you know, this industry really is out of control and the pressure is too much. But one teacher that we talked to, she was describing how at her school, all these teachers are out of work.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And, you know, just it seems to be a counterproductive policy because there's still as much competition to get into the best universities in China.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And these students still need this tutoring and teachers also need the extra money from tutoring. And she made this point that, you know, if the point is really educational quality, then why didn't the government make universities or all school fees free?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So that sounds like a pretty big cultural shift in terms of education, but it sounds like there's a lot more cultural shifts afoot here.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yes. So another crackdown that we're seeing is on what authorities have called the chaotic celebrity culture in China.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Chaotic celebrity culture So you have certain celebrities that have basically been wiped from the internet You have new rules about what content can be promoted online and what kind of content should be in movies and TV shows.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And the other big focus of this campaign is these things called fan clubs. So China has these really extreme fan clubs where especially young people are in these groups where they support a certain celebrity and they donate money to them.
--:-- Lily Kuo: They'll fight members of other fan clubs for them. Wait, the fan clubs are fighting?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, the fan clubs fight. They're really intense.
--:-- Lily Kuo: One example that I think is seen as possibly a tipping point for this fan club culture is that this Canadian Chinese pop star named Chris Wu. In early August, police in Beijing detained Chris Wu, a dual Chinese-Canadian citizen on suspicion of rape.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And his fans went crazy. And they supposedly were hatching these plans to break him out of prison. And so this was seen as, you know, going too far because they were going to go against the government and try to get him out of prison.
--:-- Lily Kuo: But they didn't, right?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Why do Xi Jinping and the Chinese government feel like they need to crack down on fandom?
--:-- Lily Kuo: It seems like a low priority. Some people say that because China is a place where you can't discuss politics, there's not a lot of sensitive issues that you can really debate openly.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And celebrities is one of those things that you can really go at it with people and get in these big fights with people. and so that this is sort of an outlet for people.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So one interesting question is, you know, what happens if you shut that off for people?
--:-- Lily Kuo: But the reason why this is being targeted, I think one has to do with the values, this idea that celebrities are the ones in control of the value system in China and the party wants to have that control.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So they want to be able to determine what is okay in popular culture. And this isn't just about fandom. It's also about how long kids can play video games online.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So now there are limits on the time that kids can play. The crackdown also extends to what images kids should be seeing in movies and online and TV.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And one of those images that the government has deemed unacceptable is something called niang pao. Which in your article, like you say roughly translates to like sissy men. Is that right?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yes. So this is I mean, so this is a derogatory term in China also. And it refers to feminine men or sissy men is the most common translation.
--:-- Lily Kuo: What are they actually trying to crack down on here? What the trend of crackdown is this trend in Chinese pop culture where you have young men who are kind of known for their adrogynous looks.
--:-- Lily Kuo: They might wear jewelry or makeup and, you know, they're just very attractive and very pretty. What's wrong with that? That sounds nice. Pretty men? What's not to like?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, I think they're trying to promote a very narrow idea of what it means to be a man in China. And they have ideas of masculinity that are culturally conservative and they want to present a certain picture of China as strong.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And they think that to present a strong China, you can't have men who are so-called sissy men. Make a man out of you. That feels like it'd be really hard to enforce.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, so the way that they are enforcing that is by telling broadcasters and content providers not to promote these kinds of images and not to promote content that includes men like this.
--:-- Lily Kuo: One thing that's certainly going to be a lot easier for the Chinese government to control is the economy.
--:-- Lily Kuo: How is Xi Jinping tweaking the Chinese economy?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So the main thing that's happening in the economy is that over the last 12 months, the private sector, the tech sector, has really been reined in.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And this is under the name of cracking down on what the government has called the disorderly expansion of capital.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And it means weakening some of the country's biggest tycoons. In recent months, Beijing has targeted some of China's most successful companies, imposing harsh regulations and fines on ride-hailing company Didi and tech giants Alibaba and Tencent.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And so with these tech companies, the idea isn't to destroy them or to wipe them out or for them to not play a big role in the economy, but rather to kind of harness them and have them serve the state and serve the party's agenda.
--:-- Lily Kuo: It's interesting to hear that, thinking about the United States, where there's all this talk about reigning in big tech. Is this like a version of that in China?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, I think it is a version of that, because one of the questions is, what are they doing with all this data that they amass and how are they using that?
--:-- Lily Kuo: The other thing is that one of the reasons that tech companies have been so successful in China is that there's sort of been this gray zone and regulation.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And so the tech companies could kind of advance first and then regulation catches up with that. So some of this is an effort to kind of bridge that gap and make it so that the regulators are behind.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Is there like a broader strategy with this rectification campaign, these changes to education and Chinese culture and the economy?
--:-- Lily Kuo: All of this is happening under this big banner of common prosperity. It's the new buzz phrase in Beijing.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Many of the policy changes rolled out by the Communist Party of late could be lumped in under the common prosperity theme.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Which is a slogan that Xi has used to express his commitment to dealing with income inequality and the lack of social mobility in China.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So on the one hand you could see this as a kind of populist move by Xi to rally support for him being in power for a third term and you know staying in power indefinitely
--:-- Lily Kuo: And how do the Chinese people feel about this All of these measures they are a way for the party state to assert control over the economy the private sector and society
--:-- Lily Kuo: It's also important to remember that this issue of income inequality and social mobility is a real problem in China.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And because of that, people have responded actually pretty positively to a lot of these measures because they see it as contributing to income redistribution or, you know, making things more equal.
--:-- Lily Kuo: It sounds like this might be about like the rural-urban divide in China.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, this rural-urban divide. There's also the social mobility question.
--:-- Lily Kuo: I mean, it has, it manifests in lots of ways. So you have couples that don't want to have kids, even though the government keeps trying to encourage families to have more kids and they keep changing.
--:-- Lily Kuo: You know, they've recently changed the family planning policy so you can have three kids instead of two. But people don't want to have kids because it's too expensive in cities.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Or you have young people who are burning out and they're sort of checking out of the rat race and talking about this other slogan that's called lying flat.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So, you know, obviously the government doesn't want that. They don't want people to check out from society and not be productive members of the economy.
--:-- Lily Kuo: One of the criticisms that has been made about these huge number of measures and crackdowns is that they're actually surface level solutions at a very real problem.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So income inequality is a real problem. But is banning for profit education really going to fix inequality in the education system?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So I think overall what we're seeing is the result of the consolidation of Xi's power over his first two terms.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So he launched this massive anti-corruption campaign that helped him, you know, eviscerate any real opposition.
--:-- Lily Kuo: He shut down any remaining space for public dissent or rejection of human rights.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And he also put himself at the core of, you know, Communist Party ideology.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Quick break, then we'll talk about Xi's foreign policy strategy and the submarines.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, Lily, with Xi Jinping tightening his hold on power in China and setting himself up for a third and maybe, who knows, fourth, fifth, sixth term, I'd love to talk a little bit more about where China stands in the world right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's got friends and frenemies. Let's start with China's friends.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the Belt and Road Initiative is Xi Jinping's landmark foreign policy. So this is supposed to be China's contribution to the world and its kind of real mark in the international community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chinese companies are building roads, pipelines and railroads around the world. But the initiative is also building China's influence. It's basically about China providing cheap infrastructure and cheap financing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here on the outskirts of Bandung, the commuter train is old and slow. They're power plants. They are media companies. There's financing. But now, cutting through the hills that lead to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, there's a tunnel for a high-speed train.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the engineers and managers who lead this billion project are Chinese And any other projects that it can offer to potential friends in Asia the Middle East Africa and Europe So basically everywhere
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It feels like China's been promoting this policy for almost a decade now. I mean, how successful has it been in expanding the country's influence around the world?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Well, in some ways you could say that it has not been that successful because China has still been isolated on the international stage by the U.S. and its allies.
--:-- Lily Kuo: On the other hand, you could say it has been pretty successful because anytime something comes up at the UN, China is able to get a long list of countries that support its statements or measures.
--:-- Lily Kuo: 64 countries have issued a joint statement at a UN Human Rights Council meeting to express support for China's policies in Xinjiang.
--:-- Lily Kuo: In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China's policies in Xinjiang are not about human rights, ethnicity or religion, but about combating violent terrorism and separatism.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You mentioned the United States, and it feels like the United States for years now has been trying to combat China's ever-expanding influence around the world.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Where do U.S.-China relations stand right now?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So U.S.-China relations right now are pretty bad.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Biden has continued a lot of Trump's policies, And I think there was this question in China of what would the Biden presidency be like and how much would he continue Trump's, what was viewed in China as a very anti-China policy.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And Biden, his approach is to rely more on allies and countering China's influence.
--:-- Lily Kuo: But fundamentally, at least to the Chinese, it seems to be the same.
--:-- Lily Kuo: China has an overall goal. And I don't criticize them for the goal. But they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world. the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world.
--:-- Lily Kuo: That's not going to happen on my watch.
--:-- Lily Kuo: It seems to still be treating China as a threat.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And of course, the biggest news on this front as of late is that President Biden's going to supply some submarines to Australia, much to the chagrin of France.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's going on there?
--:-- Lily Kuo: Right. So the U.S. and the U.K. and Australia have started this new defense alliance where they will share nuclear submarine technology.
--:-- Lily Kuo: China is also very upset about it. China's foreign ministry said the three countries were, quote, severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race and damaging international nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's also interesting is that China's response has been to pressure different allies of the U.S.
--:-- Lily Kuo: But in some ways, they don't really have a lot that they can do now because relations with the U.S. are already at a low.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Relations with Australia are very bad. They've been locked in a trade war for more than a year.
--:-- Lily Kuo: In the U.K., they've got this trade deal that is needed. But if the U.S. and the U.K. strike a trade deal, which I think this pact kind of paves away for that, then that leverage is gone, too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So some people say that actually the submarine deal is, you know, it's a reaction to China being more aggressive and that China's backed into a corner.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: because the future of each of our nations, and indeed the world, depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific, enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just so interesting to think about this sort of like escalation militaristically and in terms of economic competition with China because the two economies are really essentially tied to each other, right?
--:-- Lily Kuo: And this includes everything the former president was trying to do with China on trade.
--:-- Lily Kuo: Yeah, I think that is correct.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And, you know, Biden keeps saying he keeps using this term strategic competition, that China is a competitor.
--:-- Lily Kuo: The language is different in terms of framing China as a competitor and that strategic competition will always be there.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And on the Chinese side, I think there's also some acknowledgement that that competition is always going to be there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Internationally, you've got China at odds with the U.S. and all these proxy nations taking sides.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: At home, you've got this raft of cultural changes. How is this going to animate Xi Jinping's third term?
--:-- Lily Kuo: So another idea behind these drastic changes that he's making is for China to achieve self-reliance.
--:-- Lily Kuo: And that likely comes from, you know, looking at the international landscape, looking at the deterioration in China-U.S. relations and the knowledge that, you know, those ties probably aren't going to get better soon.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So another big part of the change in the economy is this idea of China relying more on the domestic economy.
--:-- Lily Kuo: So I think a lot of the changes that we're seeing now are actually in response to what's happening with China and the U.S. and what's happening in the international community and attitudes toward China.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lily Kuo reports on China for The Washington Post.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our episode today was produced by Hadi Mawajdeh and Miles Bryan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram, and this is the 900th episode of Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Please give us 900 stars wherever you listen.
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