By Staff Reporter Liu Wanyuan

Whilst no longer being new, China’s reform as well as three decades of change are still quite unclear to most foreigners. But for Anthony Saich, the topic seems both exciting and fresh, despite talking about it extensively almost every day.

Anthony Saich has many titles: Director of the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Faculty Chair of the Asia Programs and the China Public Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Yangtze River Scholar in Qinghua University, the highest academic honor given by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China.

In China, However, Saich is the most famous for being the person in charge of a Harvard program first implemented 7 years ago to train Chinese ranking officials above the level of bureau director. As a matter of fact, it was Saich who facilitated this program during his period as the Representative for the China Office of the Ford Foundation in the 1990s.

As an Englishman, Saich does not have a typical British accent; while as a foreigner, he speaks ‘Mandarin with tune’ (The tune in Mandarin is the most difficult part for Westerners when learning oral Chinese). This interview was conducted in English according to this reporter’s request, however, during the conversation Chinese special terms such as ‘ bao chan dao hu’ and ‘xiu zheng ji hui zhu yi lu xian’ kept running out from his lips. (Note: ‘Bao chang dao hu’ means ‘contracting output quotas to households with the production team’, and ‘xiu zheng ji hui zhu yi lu xian’ means ‘revise the political course of opportunism’)

Saich’s China story can be traced back to 1976. In that special year, the young postgraduate from London University walked across the Luohuo Bridge between Hong Kong and Shenzhen to arrive in a country he had been somewhat fancying for a while. In Beijing, he ran into the Tangshang Earthquake, the death of Mao Zedong and the arrest of the ‘Gang of Four’… The mysterious nation that was so isolated and had been left so bewildered by a series of crazy events filled him with a mixture of emotions. Now three decades on and everything in China is totally different, yet Saich still feels the energy and myth of this changing nation, “ This country keeps surprising me.”

“The tension was stronger than I’d ever imagined”

News China:Why did you come to China in the first place?
Saich: I was studying as a postgraduate working on Chinese political and social development in London University. I was lucky enough to get one of the first British Council scholarships to come to study in China in 1976. It was just at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong was still alive, and the ‘Gang of Four’ was still in power.

I was interested to know more about China mainly because at that time there were a lot of student left-wing demonstrations in England and in Europe. I was a part of it. In the movement Mao Zedong was often used as a symbol to criticize the system in the West. But it always seemed to me that there was a huge misunderstanding from the West about what was really happening in China because we couldn’t come here. We could only read Chinese magazines about how wonderful life was in the Cultural Revolution and I was reading the thoughts of Chairman Mao. I thought we needed to understand it, I mean, I really couldn’t believe the propaganda. So I began to study China academically.

News China:What lessons did you learn when you first arrived in China?
Saich:Actually the first impression was very favorable. When we walked across the Luo Hu Bridge, it was very rural. The border with Hong Kong looked peaceful. We saw a lot of buffalos. It seemed quiet and natural.

It was only later when we had come here for a few days then we began to realize there was a lot more tension than we had expected. People were very curious about foreigners, but if you spoke to them they would move away. Occasionally we tried to catch a bus. You know, everyone was pushing trying to get on the bus. When they saw foreigners, they all stopped very fast and let foreigners walk on the bus, sit down, then they’d all rush and try to push their way to get on the bus again! The bus was so crowded, but there was always a 5-meter space around the foreigners.

Later I went to the Nanjing University and became one of the first what they called ‘bourgeoisie students’ there since 1939. I played in the university soccer team. When we played with certain teams, they had obviously been told that there was a foreigner. So our tactic was to pass the ball to me, so all the Chinese in the opposition ran away. They didn’t want to kick and get involved with a foreigner.

In Nanjing University I started studying contemporary history but it was a waste of time, because it was only about ‘the struggle of the two political courses’ and ‘revise the political course of opportunism’. Then I decided to study modern history and that was more interesting, such as the Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion and that kind of thing.

But what I truly learnt was how close-minded China was in terms of contact with the world outside. People really had no idea what was happening in the world outside, they had been taught not to be interested and they had been told that China was really the best place in the world.

For me it was a mixture of emotions: It was very exciting being in a totally different environment, feeling the simplicity of the place, which in some ways was attractive. But it was also very depressing. You could see that people had to live very simple lifestyles, and they had very little choice. The political control was incredibly strong. Every day or every few days there was a political study session, people had to sit there until they fell asleep. It was very disturbing.

“They clearly wanted to re-establish international contacts immediately.”

News China:When was your first time you heard Deng Xiaoping’s name?
Saich: If you studied China and got interested in China, you always heard Deng Xiaoping’s name. The first time I heard Chinese people talking about Deng Xiaoping was probably in the year 1976, almost as soon as the ‘Gang of Four’ was arrested. Chinese Students started to talk about how Deng Xiaoping would come back, which would make things better. Deng would give people a wage rise; Deng would bring Zhi Qing (the youth who were sent to the countryside to get ‘re-educated’) back so families could be reunited; the political struggle would stop.

The teachers in Nanjing knew that we were very favorable toward Deng Xiaoping but they certainly didn’t want to say anything.

Until one day in June or July the next year after Deng had been restored to his position a teacher ran in very happily and said, “Oh Tony, I can tell you something that would make you very happy….”

“Yes, Deng Xiaoping has been restored to his position.”

“How do you know?”

“ I heard it on BBC.”

When the ‘Gang of Four’ was still in power, we were not allowed to have Chinese roommates. But as soon as they got arrested, we native English speakers immediately got Chinese roommates who were older and had studied in the Soviet Union. They were in a rush to study in England and Australia so they were sent to stay with us to practice English. It seemed to me that they clearly wanted to re-establish international contacts immediately.

News China: Then the Third Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was held in 1978, did you expect it to change China so dramatically?
Saich: I think everyone realized it was a huge event and a turning point for China. The fact they talked about economic modernization, stopping political struggles, focusing on the future rather than focusing on the past, made it an incredibly important meeting. Obviously it didn’t settle lots of things but it provided the main momentum to the reform.

Anyway, I don’t think anyone had expected China to change as fast as it has. The country had been locked in the Cultural Revolution and poverty for so long, so many people had been denied education, and had been denied international contacts for so long.

In fact a lot of the most important changes really came from the bottom up. It was really the rural areas in those early years that provided the impetus for development. Farmers were shifted from low productivity agriculture to high productivity in manufacturing, so small-scale industry really took off. That increased people’s living standard. I remember in the 1980s people in the urban areas were all jealous and complained about ‘wan yuan hu’ (people who have a fortune of more than ten thousand yuan). “It was the farmers who got all the money, we were held back,” they said. It’s ironic if you look at it now: all the big money is in the city, not the countryside. Things have changed.

News China:Back then what did you think was the most difficult problem for China to overcome?
Saich: I think the most difficult problems to overcome in some way are still the same problems today. I think from the beginning most of people abroad thought the biggest problems would be in two areas. One would be reforming state-owned sectors. And I think the second area would be the development of a modern governance structure for China. Modern society is moving, the economy is becoming more market-oriented and also the government would have more accountability and more transparency.

I think the development strategy China adopted was very wise. It left the most difficult part of reform alone and dealt with easier things first, otherwise it could have led to economic collapse and significant social unrest. I argued a lot about state-owned-sector reform. Some people said you needed to privatize the enterprises immediately; my argument was what would you do with all these people out of work? China was not ready at that time. It didn’t have a welfare system in place, so if people were thrown out of their factories, they didn’t have a decent pension system, there were no jobs for them to go to. So there was a reason to hold those people in the state-owned sectors. Until the mid 1990s when it was the next phase of reform, the state-sector reform became more urgent.

China managed that part of reform pretty well. The pity in my view is in the mid 1990s it really started to focus much more on urban development reform than reform in the rural areas. As a result the rural areas were neglected a lot, for 15 years or so.

And as for questions of governance, I think perhaps it really took a while for the policy makers to understand what markets do well and what markets don’t do well. So even though there was a very heavy sate presence here, there were a lot of areas just left to the market. Things like rural health care, they just let the market look after. Lots of us abroad are very concerned about the social cost of reform. You are not investing efficiently in education and health, especially education in rural areas, and just believe somehow the economic growth would just cure the problem. That created the basis for lots of inequalities in china.
I think the new leadership, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaba, identifies this as a priority to improve equality in rural areas. Certainly this is a generational problem, which you can’t resolve in a few years.

“The only thing I can say is that China is continuing to surprise me.”

News China: Everyone said that it’s so hard to predict the future of China. But I still want to ask you this tricky question: what do you think China will be like in another 30 years?
Saich: Haha, that’s an impossible question!

The only thing I can say is that China is continuing to surprise me. If you had asked me 30 years ago whether China would develop like this, I would just have said you were insane, crazy, that’s impossible.

Each time we saw something difficult and we were not sure if China could deal with it or could change that, they actually turned out to be able to do it. It always came up with a solution along the way. That makes my optimistic side think China will be able to keep developing, will be able to keep finding solutions for problems to come.

But the pessimistic side of me says in some way the challenges are getting tougher and tougher and I wonder whether it’s possible to still keep moving ahead so easily when things are so difficult. As I said earlier that the part that has been done was not the most difficult part; the last part of reforming state-owned enterprises, the challenges of governance, and also some new challenges such as environmental concerns, energy concerns, inequality in reform, all make the future uncertain.

Anyway China has done a good job. Thinking about all the changes, it’s not only economic, but also the freedom people enjoy. It would have been impossible to have this interview 30 years ago, not 15 years ago, not even 10 years ago. Changes are continuing to happen. Over 30 years of development Chinese Officials and people have shown extreme flexibility. That’s remarkable.

News China:Is there anything you miss about China?
Saich: I miss riding my bicycle around Beijing. (Laugh)
I think there is a problem. Changes have been so fast. Now there’s something I personally don’t like about Chinese society. I think probably in some way there is more selfishness. I think there’s a big challenge for people in what to believe in. Making money is one thing, but making money, what else? I do find in some way that over 30 years of reform, some social fabrics have really been torn out.

Now the whole generation of people who grew up after the reform and who never experienced the Cultural Revolution are coming of age. They have a different attitude and thinking from those of their parents and they tend to question values and beliefs. I think it will be a very interesting thing to watch in China.