Jun 27, 2004 18:00
I'm in Suqian, a smallish city in northern Jiangsu province about 120 km east of Xuzhou. Suqian is the personal fiefdom of one of the most interesting and controversial characters in Chinese politics today: Qiu He, the secretary of the Suqian Municipal Party Committee, radical reformer extraordinaire. He's gone off the reservation, most Party faithful will tell you, in his eagerness to privatize everything and build towns to yank the desperate poor out of agrarian idiocy. But he's got a loyal following here. On my way here, as I opened my dossier on Qiu to re-read various clips, I kept thinking that I should write a parody of Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness for that's Beijing about my mission. "It may have been my mission, but it sure as hell was his taxi," that sort of thing.
I've taken a room at a hotel quite close to the municipal government office, and after having spent most of the day today talking to various folks around Suqian about their famous dangwei shuji I'm planning on ambushing him outside the humble apartment compound where he lives as he makes his way to work, and pestering him until I get an interview. I decided that it was worth risking because a) if I had called ahead and tried to make an appointment I would have likely been routed through the Waiban and the whole gig would then be up, what with me being unaccredited and all, and b) even if I can’t get to him I can at least gather enough local color and vox pop on the man to make the story work. There’s been tons written about him in the Chinese press; he’s been on the investigative reporting show Jiaodian Fangtan twice, has made the front page of Nanfang Zhoumo (where I first heard about him), and he and his phenomenon-the "Qiu He xianxiang"-was even supposedly the subject of special sessions of the NPC in March.
Everyone in the area knows about his guy. On the train from Beijing to Xuzhou, I shared a soft sleeper compartment with a professor of management from Xuzhou Engineering Industries Institute who was quite up on Qiu and all the controversy surrounding him - the contradiction between his autocratic means to democratic ends, the inherent paradox in his promotion of rule of law through personal charisma. He knew all the same anecdotes about Qiu that I’d heard - how he chased down a woman for jay-walking and cornered her in a women’s bathroom, summoning his female secretary to come drag her out and fine her; how he’s mandated that all municipal Party committee meetings be televised; how he’s downsized the Suqian Party and forced 2/3 of them to either start enterprises or go out in search of investment; how he made all Suqian Party cadres do 8 days of road-building work, levying corvee labor Tang Dynasty style; how he took on the local cops after discovering corruption, reassigning the captains of 41 precincts overnight to pull their personal networks out from under them. Like just about everyone else I’ve talked to, Professor Zhang didn’t come down as for or against him
The city is as I expected: It's obvious still that the population was recently poor, but evidence of prosperity is everywhere: clean, well-ordered streets, lots of name-brand retail shops, huge well-stocked department stores, a fair number of private autos, nice housing developments (and less that 2000 rmb a square meter! Maybe Fanfan would consider... nah). It seems to be more than just a Potemkin village-type façade, but I'm left with many questions about what actually sustains it. Suqian itself is quite new: it was formally given city status only a few years ago. This part of Jiangsu is near the area where the Nian Rebellion broke out in the 1850s, if I remember correctly. It's near the juncture of Shandong, Henan and Anhui in an area that historically was a bandit breeding ground. There are no real tourist spots to speak of: Not too far from here is the place where Xiang Yu, the Hegemon of Chu and archrival of Liu Bang who founded Han, was born. There's also a palace that the Qianlong Emperor built here in the 18th century. Other than that, nada.
I’ve got a long list of questions I'm hoping to ask Qiu He, and God willing I’ll get my interview before Tuesday as I already miss the family.
For the full story, you'll have to wait for the August issue of Asia Inc!