==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Wednesday, February 23, 1994 (Issue No. 9408) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is a journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= # of Table of Contents Author | Lines ============================================================================ 1. The East and The West a. Two Great Traditions (Part 1)............................Wan Bin 133 b. Missionary and Cowboy Attitudes: --America's "Special Relationship" with China (Part 1)........J. K. Fairbank 117 2. Future of Taiwan and Hong Kong a. Hong Kong and "One Country with Two Systems" -- Talking to some Hong Kong residents.................Lai Anzhi 124 b. Democracy in HK and PRC's Constitution...................J. Chen 23 c. Taiwan and China: End of a Fiction?................The Economist 58 3. Trade and Politics a. Prison Blue: A Fashion Statement?.....................Daniel Qiu 62 ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== From The Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most important challenge facing the world after the Cold War is probably to cope with the cultural, religious and ethnic diversities. No time in the history it was like today that the world is no longer divided clearly by a line of good and evil, black and white. Therefore, it becomes extremely important for us, the Chinese community in the Western world, to understand the culture we are living in and to realize the way we have been understood by the people in the West. While Professor Wan Bin's article in 1992 tells us the disaccord and the harmony between Eastern and Western cultures, John King Fairbank's book-review in 1983 enlightens us historically how we were portrayed by the American. Economic development and international trade have become the center of post- Cold War politics. One of the intriguing dramas in Sino-US relation is the annual renewal of the Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status of China. Bill Clinton had set a series of conditions last year for its renewal of this year. Will the Chinese government make further concessions? If not, will MFN be in jeopardy? Or will Clinton find a way to "box himself out"? We invite our readers to join our discussion on this matter in the coming months. In this issue an article on US's prison labor export is presented as a cross-reference to our previous discussions on the issue of China's prison labor export. In a little more than three year, Hong Kong will no longer be the colony of a foreign power. Will that be a blessing to the people in Hong Kong? What would be the future of Taiwan after Hong Kong returns to China? No easy solution or clear future can be seen at this moment. One thing for sure: peace and prosperity are the mutual hope of the Chinese people all over the world. One of our readers recorded his conversation with several Hong Kong residents, while another reader sent us his thought on the democratic process in Hong Kong. You are invited to send us your thought on this issue. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. The East and The West 1a. Two Great Traditions (Part 1)............................Wan Bin 133 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Attempting to understand the European Christian tradition of thought is a complex and challenging experience for the Chinese mind This article endeavors to answer a difficult question: How does Christianity differ (beyond purely religious differences) from the Chinese tradition? Focusing on collective thought patterns, I shall attempt to explore a number of non-religious phenomena that are deeply rooted in Christian doctrines but are notably absent from Chines intellectual life. It is these phenomena, the article will argue, that not only differentiate Western culture from Chinese culture, but also illuminate the contributions Christianity has made historically to the general development of the human mind. A transcendent deity emerges when the potential believer separates himself or herself mentally from the external world and attempts to establish a system of interpretation capable of affording a final answer to all the mysteries represented by nature. What impresses a Chinese reader of the Bible is not so much the image of God as His relationship to humankind. The notion of "covenant" is particularly difficult for the Chinese mind to grasp. According to Genesis, man, created by God, separates himself from God through the Fall and devotes life-long strivings to an attempt to be reunited with God in another world. The covenant between God and man not only holds out the hope of achieving that ambition but presupposes a separation of man mentally from the Truth, the Good and Beauty, the whole external world pertaining to or created by God. As for visible cosmic nature, God encourages man to subjugate it by exercising "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the Earth" (Genesis 1:28). Stripped of its doctrinal content, the covenant reveals a deep-rooted thought pattern whose archetype can be traced back to ancient Greece and serves as a unique link between the pagan tradition and contemporary intellectual life. The characteristic features of this pattern are, on the one hand, the detachment of man (the observer) from the external world (the observed), and on the other a constant effort to achieve the final yet impossible recombination. Ultimately, man is separated from himself as an object of study. No revolution in the West has ever altered this basic thought pattern. The Chinese counterpart to this thought pattern is its precise opposite. In defining man's relationship to the universe, Confucius, Lao Tzu and his modern critics share a single framework: that of man in the universe. The term "universe" refers mainly to cosmic nature in Taoism and to society in Confucianism. (The former finds its fullest expression in artistic creation while the latter has its roots in Chinese political-moral doctrines.) The man-in-the-universe thought pattern has survived many generations of revolutionary change. The overlapping shadows of Confucius and Lao Tzu still guide the thought processes of the Chinese intelligentsia and circumscribe their imagination. TRANSCENDENCY VERSUS IMMANENCY When the Chinese and the Western traditions meet, the Chinese mind tends to appreciate the Greeks and to reject Christianity, disregarding the intellectual process which made the transition from paganism to Christianity possible. To the modern Chinese, passages in the Bible that encourage the conquest of nature might be acceptable. But the results of the separation described above go much further than the exploitation of cosmic nature and do not form part of the Chinese mental landscape. They include: a persistent quest for the ontological meaning of human existence; a way of verifying the truth, divine or scientific, which in the historical continuum encompasses not merely modern individualism but a deep Christian sense of the individual's soul identified only with God; man's challenge to the Almighty (as in the story of Job); the formula "I think, therefore I am"; the progress from equality before God to equality before the law; a contractual tradition that binds two separate parts: God and man, a King and his subjects, a state and its citizens; and so on. To understand these ideas, the Chinese mind has to adapt to a new perspective. In addition to a mental state preoccupied with the separation of man from God, a sense of transcendency is indispensable to Christian faith. Without it, it would be impossible to conceive of reunion in the other world. As a concept imported from the West, transcendency is frequently used by Chinese scholars as well as Western sinologists to describe Taoism. This conceptual misplacement, a common phenomenon in contemporary Chinese intellectual life, neglects the basic fact that Chinese "transcendency", restricted as it is to the "man-in-the-universe" framework, is totally different from what is meant by transcendency in its strict Western sense. Christian transcendency takes the individual (his soul) as the point of departure as well as the final goal of fulfillment. It rises above objects which reveal themselves to experience and moves towards God or the absolute truth in the other world. It focuses on the fulfillment of the individual and points to the infinite. Chinese "transcendency", on the other hand, requires the individual to transcend himself so as to merge into nature or society. When there is perfect harmony between man and the universe, the absolute truth can be grasped through sense-perception and intuitive reason. To the Chinese mind, the truth is here and to the Christian mind, the truth is there. The two truths are incommensurable, though they may agree on some specific points. The most obvious manifestation of this difference is to be found in theoretical reflection on artistic creation. From Plato on, classical theories of art and literature attribute the source of inspiration to the divine or the supernatural. In modern times some theorists have seen inspiration as originating in the irrational self (the emotions or the subconscious) as opposed to the rational self, thus postulating a microcosm within human nature of the separation of man from God. Both these ideas involve a transcendent movement from one opposite towards the other. Modernism seeks pure truth in life, a truth which, it maintains, has been polluted and distorted by civilized society. But it remains a truth which is always there, not here. All this contrasts sharply with the way in which the Chinese understand inspiration. In ancient Chinese, there is no such term as inspiration because such an idea is totally absent from Chinese spiritual and intellectual life. However, classical Chinese theories of art and literature do describe a mental state in which the artist suddenly finds himself confronted with a spiritual spark triggered off as a result of the inexplicable harmonization between the artist and his object to be expressed. Scholars of comparative literature who lack philosophical insight have simplified this situation and wrongly described it by attaching to it another Western label, "expressionism" or "empathy". Chinese expressionism, if we must adopt this term, emphasizes a constant reciprocal movement and recognition between subject and object within a shared space, the universe. It is two in one. As for the source of inspiration, the difference might be summarized as inspiration out of ontological transcendency versus inspiration out of cosmological immanence. (To Be Continued) From The UNESCO Courier, July/Aug., 1992 (Wan Bin is a Professor of Language and Culture at the University of Canton) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1b. Missionary and Cowboy Attitudes: --America's "Special Relationship" with China (Part 1)........J. K. Fairbank 117 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The American sentimentality about China, which so appalled Churchill when he visited Roosevelt in 1941, is still alive in the White House forty-five years later, even though reduced to a residual concern for Taiwan. It is still a special case that challenges historians to explain it. One must begin by putting the United States' China policy in the general context of American conservative wishfulness about today's outside world. American-Soviet rivalry, a white-and-black drama pitting Hollywood against the KGB, brings out the American stereotypes regardless of their utility. Behind Mr. Reagan's playing to his audience of the moment loom the missionary and cowboy attitudes that informed America's transcontinental and trans-Pacific expansion--the righteous exhortation to shape up democratically, but in any case the readiness to support the assumed good guys with firepower. These culture-bound attitudes of evangelism and righteous violence, so often combined in the American neighborhood, did not at first combine in the special case of China; Victorian Britain did the original dirty work there by fighting for unequal treaty privileges, and so the Americans could enjoy the opportunities of trade and proselytism without the stigma of having secured them by force. This, I think, lay at the heart of the enduring American sentiment about China as an outlet for the Christian impulse unimpaired by the onus of coercion. The British navy supplied the gunboats. The Americans could preach. Today Mr. Reagan's atavistic concern for Taiwan like Mrs. Thatcher's for Hong Kong, echoes the Palmerstonian era when the unequal treaty system was imposed on the Manchu dynasty so that foreign trade with China could prosper under foreign law, and foreigners' human rights in China could be protected by extraterritoriality. Let us not deride our predecessors. Human rights are still a militant issue. The American warfare in Korea, the Taiwan straits, and Vietnam can be traced back to what Michael Hunt calls "the Open Door constituency," by which he means "a set of interest groups--American businessmen, missionaries, and diplomats--with a common commitment to penetrating China and propagating at home a paternalistic vision of defending and reforming China." The early American profits from opium, tea, and silk in the old Canton trade after 1784 founded the never-realized myth of the China market. After 1830, Protestant missionary pioneers, finding no converts, developed their two-way function as image makers. They told the Chinese of the triune benefits of Christianity, democracy, and material progress, while describing to their home constituents the faded grandeur of a Chinese civilization sinking in decay, sin, and heathenism. The commercial and evangelical interests coalesced by the 1890s in demanding an open door of opportunity to seek Chinese buyers and believers. This "special relationship" is noteworthy because it was so especially unequal. By mid-century, Cantonese surplus labor had discovered California, and soon the Chinese arriving there greatly outnumbered the Americans going to China. There were curious parallels: the Chinese coolie laborers in the United States and the American missionaries in China were both immigrants and brought their cultures with them. This produced among the local and normally xenophobic populace some "strikingly mirrored anxieties [about] the supposed proclivity of depraved missionary and immigrant alike to defy sexual taboos and to make use of drugs and potions to seduce unwary women and children... The mission compound no less than Chinatown was regarded as a hotbed of subversion " In the 1880s and 1890s, when American missionaries sometimes suffered from mob action in China, Chinese laborers hired to build the western American railways suffered from mob action by American workers. In these parallel but unrelated riots, scores of Chinese died but almost no Americans. The Chinese were only ordinary foreigners, quite lacking in gunboats. As the American missionary-cum-legation secretary, S. Wells Williams, noted as early as 1868, "If the Americans in China had suffered one tithe of the wrongs that the Chinese have endured within the United States since 1855, there would certainly have been a war on account of it." Sino-American treaties gave reciprocal rights of trade and residence, but the American labor movement, still struggling for its right to exist, denied any such right to Chinese labor. The movement for Chinese exclusion grew steadily in the American West and the open door from the Canton region to California was summarily closed, while the movement in China to get rid of missionaries led only to the futile Boxer rising in 1900, after which the missionaries became more numerous and the Open Door in China became an American shibboleth. Meanwhile, Chinese statesmen accustomed to utilizing eastern Mongols against western Mongols and vice versa could seldom resist trying to use the Americans to offset the British, Japanese, or Russians. Yet throughout China's long wooing of American good offices, mediation, neutral support, or outright alliance against other powers, the Americans by temperament consistently led the Chinese on to expect more American performance than ever eventuated. Feeling themselves free of the taint of imperialism and honest in their intentions (they had no need for dishonesty), America representatives official and otherwise confided to the Chinese their distrust of the other powers, their devotion to peace and friendship, and their readiness to help. Since the American posture was almost entirely one of talk without any intention of or capacity for Realpolitik, all this friendly flatulence came to nothing and merely misled the Chinese. Time after time, when it came to action, the Americans remained passive. Take, for example, the efforts of Li Hung-chang to make use of the United States in his hope of warding off disaster by having a foreign policy in Korea. Every time, the American naval officers, diplomats, advisers, or ex-presidents like U. S. Grant proved more quick with words than with useful action. Secretary of State John Hay made a good thing out of the British Open Door idea, but he never bothered to consult the Chinese about it. During the 1900s Chang Chih-tung and other statesmen trying to save the Northeast (Manchuria) from Russo-Japanese condominium repeatedly turned to the anti-imperialist United States, but never with any success. In these same years the U.S. Bureau of Immigration regularly harassed and humiliated Chinese students, scholars, and even officials seeking to enter the Golden Gate. Hunt exhumes an appalling record of American racist arrogance that in 1905 triggered China's first patriotic boycott movement against American goods. (To Be Continued) [This article was written in June 24, 1983, as a review of Michael H. Hunt's "The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)" and of James Reed's "The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1983)". This article was collected in "China Watch (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1987)"] ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 2. Future of Taiwan and Hong Kong 2a. Hong Kong and "One Country with Two Systems" -- Talking to some Hong Kong residents.................Lai Anzhi 124 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "One Country with Two Systems" was regarded as one of the most significant inventions of Deng Xiaoping in dealing with the problem of unification of China. It indeed sounded a very creative, if not the only, approach to ensure the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong after it reverts to China. However, I have been puzzled with this phenomenon: the majority of the Hong Kong people still have little confidence in this post-1997 frame. If the capitalist system can be secured, as Deng Xiaoping explained, "horses will still be raced, dances will still be danced", why should the people in Hong Kong worry? Recently, I happened to have chances talking to a few Hong Kong scholars. The following is a summary of my impression of their points of views. Of course, they were just a few individuals, which means that no gross generalization can be made from these points of views; however, I do believe what they were worried about may well reflect the opinions of certain fraction. Therefore, I would like to share their concerns with the readers. * Who has the right of definition? (Mr. Victor Kwang's worry): "One Country with Two Systems" is like a warranty, or an agreement, because it is not dealing an issue inside China where the central government could simply order; otherwise, there is no need for one country to have two systems. The reason to have this approach, as I understand, is that the traditional socialist system would not work in Hong Kong. Now, how such an agreement can be carried out, or will be broken? It will be broken when one side violates the terms of the agreement. Then, one naturally asks the question: who has the right of definition of the terms in the agreement. The problem for us to have no (or little) confidence comes from here and the practice since the signing of the Basic Law. The current situation in Hong Kong, as far as I can feel, is that we do not have the right of definition on what is capitalist, instead, it is in the hand of the Chinese government, who will continue to enjoy a communist system. I see this a very uncertain status. It is just like in a family. The Chinese parents of the family declare one day that two types of meals are allowed in the family: western and Chinese. However, only the parents who eat Chinese meals have the right to say what is a western meal. Whenever they feel that their children who want western meals are talking about improving their meals, the parents start to interfere: you guys broke the agreement because what you want to cook is not the western meal, and will destroy our appetite for Chinese meal. It is just funny that what is western meal should be defined by those who do not eat western meal. This is what is exactly happening in Hong Kong. I guess this is the basic reason that we do not have too much confidence in "One Country with Two Systems", no matter how good it sounds, because our capitalist system has to be defined by the communists. * Rivers won't flow into wells. (Mr. Richard Lo's worry): I was quite excited a few years ago as I heard about the statements of the Chinese leaders: rivers (or wells) won't flow into wells (or rivers), when I was visiting China in 1990. However, the practice since then has been very disappointing. Honestly, I do not quite like what Chris Patten is proposing to Hong Kong people for its extremely low pace of democratization; but I am totally surprised when seeing the attacks he is getting from the Chinese side. As you know, we have two left-wing newspapers in Hong Kong: Da Gong Bao and Wen Hui Bao. Everyday you will see some articles in these two newspapers attacking whatever Patten says. On the other hand, I am wondering if the Chinese people can read anything defending him in China. This is not only that the rivers are flowing into the wells, but simply destroying the wells. As a Hong Kong resident, I can't help thinking what it is going to be after 1997. Do we have a voice inside China that will dictate almost everything concerning us? Do the water in the wells have a chance to flow out, or have a chance to keep its cleanness? I doubt. * Cultural conflict. (Ms. Eva Ho's worry): Honestly, I am not as concerned about Hong Kong as before because my family left that land and settled down in Canada in 1989, and I came to the US in 1990; however, I have a feeling that the cultural conflict between Hong Kong and China will bring serious trouble to us. Not long ago, CNN had an Asian Week. Larry King interviewed Chris Patten during that week. In his interview with Patten, he was somewhat critical to what Patten was doing there. He asked him if his proposal broke the prior agreement between China and Britain. Patten responded by saying that there was no specific regulation whatsoever in any of the documents between Britain the China regarding what he proposed. As a matter of fact, what he proposed was in the line of the principle of the Joint Declaration: gradually increase democracy in Hong Kong. Here we see a cultural conflict. In the western, if there isn't a regulation saying that you cannot do something, you can do it; but it is the opposite in China, if there isn't a regulation saying that you can do something, you cannot do it. Patten did not know the Chinese value, and the Chinese did not understand the western value. I am sure there are going to be lots of this kind of cultural conflicts in the future. If the Chinese government insists on its practice applicable inside China in Hong Kong, it will change the life style of the Hong Kong people. I am not sure that is what the Hong Kong people want to see, although they may have to accept this (what else can they do?). Lots of Hong Kong people are not really concerned with the political structure as long as they will have a decent life, but they are very concerned about changing their life style, especially, if they are forced to. I guess this adds very much to their lack of confidence. * Democratic rights. (Mr. Eugene Chang's worry): I think Victor's concern is the crucial thing. The current political structure in China can not guarantee a fair definition of what is capitalism. For ordinary Hong Kong citizens, they may not know too much about capitalism in theory, but they are living in such a system, good or bad. They know this very well: if something is concerning us, we should have a voice. The situation in Hong Kong really gives them an impression that they may not have their voice heard in the future, because whether they can do something now, still under a capitalist governor, is largely depending on whether the Chinese government is happy or not. What is going to happen in the future? Some Chinese people are saying that the British government has never given Hong Kong people sufficient democracy in the past, which I agree; but the current situation in Hong Kong is telling us that we are going to have even less democracy in the future. To restore the confidence of Hong Kong people, the Chinese government should let us feel that we will have at least the some amount of democracy, as well as the same amount prosperity, after 1997. Somehow, I have felt just the opposite. * * * Note: I sincerely thank Victor, Richard, Eva, and Eugene for letting me share their opinions with the readers of the CCF, who are mostly native Chinese. They have read what presented here and agreed that it reflected their concerns properly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2b. Democracy in HK and PRC's Constitution...................J. Chen 23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hong Kong will be a part of China after 1997. Democracy in HK must follow the PRC constitution. According to PRC constitution, members of Hong Kong People's Deputy Conference (Congress) will be elected by residents in Hong Kong. All of Hong Kong People's Deputies must sware in public that they are loyal to the People's Republic of China and fight against any enemy who threatens the national security and integration, and do their best to serve Chinese people and Hong Kong people. The Standing Committee of Hong Kong People's Deputies Conference is to be elected by Hong Kong People's Deputies and is in charge of daily operation of Hong Kong People's Deputies Conference. Hong Kong People's Deputy Conference will also elect People's Deputies in Guangdong Province representing Hong Kong people. Based on PRC Constitution, the governor of Hong Kong is to be nominated by the governor of Guangdong Province and to be approved by Hong Kong People's Deputy Conference. If the nomination is rejected by Hong Kong People's Deputy Conference, then the nomination is returned to the chairman of People's Deputies Conference of Guangdong Province for final decision. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2c. Taiwan and China: End of a Fiction?................The Economist 58 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHINA, says the government in Beijing, is a prime number. It cannot be divided, except by one. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan may not be directly under Beijing's control, but that is a temporary arrangement. All are part of China, a proposition accepted in the cases of Hong Kong and Macau by the colonial powers, Britain and Portugal. And, up to now, Taiwan's government has been content to play along with the fiction that there is one China--of which it claims to be the one true government. So its minister of economic affairs, P. K. Chiang, caused a stir on November 21st when he said that there were now "two sovereign nations across the Taiwan Strait". Speaking in a comparatively unobserved corner of the Asia-Pacific summit in Seattle, Mr. Chiang added that Taiwan was now pursuing what he called a "transitional two-Chinas policy". Back home, his colleagues scrambled to insist that there had been no change in policy. They had a point. Taiwan has been pursuing a two- Chinas policy for years. It actively, but mostly unavailingly, seeks diplomatic recognition from other countries. And since May Taiwan has, with equal lack of success, been trying to join the United Nations, where China is a permanent member of the Security Council. Formally, the ruling Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang, has remained committed to a one-China policy, and eventual reunification with the mainland. But in practice it is doing its best to preserve Taiwan's de facto independence. Nevertheless, the government's first public utterance of the two Chinas heresy represents a significant shift of tactics, if not of strategy. Qian Qichen, China's foreign minister had said in Seattle that China had nothing to learn from the "Taiwan experience". He and President Jiang Zemin repeatedly referred to Taiwan as a province of China. Jason Hu, a spokesman of Taiwan's government, explained Mr. Chiang's comment by saying that not to react to this "gross distortion" would have implied acceptance of it. But, so as not to provoke the regime in Beijing, which has threatened to invade Taiwan if it declares independence, Dr. Hu argues for "healthy ambiguity". For internal consumption there is "one country with two political entities", but the world must be reminded of Taiwan's existence. The richer and more powerful China gets, the more important it is for Taiwan to nudge the elbows of the world's leaders. Bill Clinton's urge to cosy up to the boys in Beijing may also have helped to bring about Taiwan's assertion of independence. Mr. Clinton reaffirmed America's commitment to its one-China policy, and to previous agreements with China, including a 1982 pact limiting arms sales to Taiwan (which George Bush conveniently forgot when he agreed to sell fighters to Taiwan). In Taiwan, they like to recall that Mr. Clinton is an old friend. He visited the island five times when he was governor of Arkansas. On one visit, the Taiwanese claim he downed 42 toasts with Lee Teng-hui, now Taiwan's president. But this did not stop President Lee from sharing with Chris Patten, the governor of Hong Kong, the distinction of not being invited to Seattle--in deference to Chinese sensibilities. (From: The Economist, November 27, 1993) ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 3. Trade and Politics 3a. Prison Blue: A Fashion Statement?..........Adapted by Daniel Qiu 62 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [The following is written after a segment of ABC World News Tonight on Feb. 10, 1994. All the facts are based on the report in that segment.] It is again, this time of the year that the Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status of China granted by the US will be up to annual renew. Again, we will hear a lot of debate in the US Congress on the human rights abuse of Chinese government, on the "unfair" trading practice conducted by the Chinese government, including the export of prison labor products to this country. To a lot of people who are concerned with all of these, everything else in this world seems irrelevant. Nonetheless, one night, a "fashion statement" on ABC World News Tonight caught my attention, and inevitably was linked to the getting hotter MFN debate. What was that about? Blue Jeans! It's long been an American look: a pair of lean Levis or Lee. But the slim fit from 50's has become the baggy look of 90's. It's the gangster style! ABC's Charlie Murphy tells us: Baggy jeans are the coolest cloth all over the America for kids and betters of all are Prison Blue. They are made by inmates in a medium security prison in Oregon, under the slogan "Made only inside for those only outside". Kids like Prison Blue because they are all thick. Other companies are cashing in on the gangster look, but these are the only jeans on the market made by the real criminals. Inmates earn $4.75 to $7.00 an hour. they can save a fresh start when they get out. One inmate told the corespondent: "You have money in your pocket. You can get a home, or apartment or what ever you'll be able to live, to survive, so you can find a job." One of the inmates made 10 thousand dollars. He will get to keep a couple thousand. The rest went to the State for his up-keep and counseling, to a victim fund and to taxes. It seems that he does not mind "sitting there paying taxes while doing hard time." It's the most popular working program in this Oregon prison. Only 43 inmates in the population of 1500 get to work in the shop. There is a long waiting list. But should a prison get profit while serving time? Mr. Frank Hall, Oregon Dept. of Correction, told the reporter: "We think this promotes responsibility. We think this promotes work. It certainly does not promote gang activities, very much to the contrary." If it's hip in America, it is hipper in Japan. Young Japanese love American labels and the Prison Blues have the ultimate label--INMATE. This label is on export jeans only. Blues sell for $72 in Japan. That's a lot, only because it's now fashionable for law obeying citizen to dress like a convict. In the US, the Blues are only twenty bucks, a bargain. They are rough and tough, like the guys who make them. They'll last an inmate three or four years unless he tries to cross the razor wires surrounding the prison. Well, by now you will not have trouble to figure out why I linked this to the MFN debate. It is very interesting that the US Congress is making all those noises regarding to the "prison labor products" exported from China to the US, the US prison labor products are exported to Japan to make more than three times the profit they can make in this country. While the prison labor in China is accused as "human rights abuse", the prison labor in this country is to "promote responsibility", "promote work." Isn't it interesting? +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Changqing Yang Executive Moderator: Huang Tang + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++