Xi Jinping found himself in a tight spot towards the end of last year. A struggling economy, the Covid debacle and then street protests that even openly demanded his resignation – some might wonder how China’s most powerful man wants to calm the situation before the National People’s Congress this March.
He went on the offensive and made some spectacular 180-degree turns. Zero-Covid turned into full-Covid, strict supervision of tech corporations gave way to more support for the private sector. Even the open threats against the US have since turned quieter – at least until the recent balloon incident. What are the reasons behind Xi’s radical policy shifts and how lasting are they? In his analysis, Michael Radunski sheds light on the months of transition – a special phase before the National People’s Congress gathers in March, in which the “old” cadres are still in office, but not for much longer, and therefore dare to oppose Xi behind the scenes. Because many are disgruntled: Those who have to resign from their posts or were deprived of a hoped-for promotion.
While Xi is able to tackle such ongoing political problems through pragmatic policy changes, this is clearly not the case with births. There is no denying that the one-child policy in China had been a severe intervention. Two generations had been unable to start a large family. Now Chinese are even allowed to have three children again, but they do not. The birth rate is incredibly low. China is aging. And that has serious consequences, not only for the country but also for the global economy. The leaders were simply wrong in their assumptions from the 1980s, says scientist Yi Fuxian in an interview with Felix Lee. The outlook is bleak. And, he says, China’s entire economic, social, defense and foreign policy is based on faulty data.
Mr Yi, for the first time since the great famine of 1961, China’s population decreased last year, nine years earlier than predicted. Is that not a reason to celebrate for the communist leadership? After all, the threat of overpopulation was the reason why the one-child policy was introduced in 1980.
No, not at all. According to official figures, the birth rate has fallen below the ten-million mark for the first time. This is the lowest figure since 1790, when the population was around 300 million, but today it is over one billion. Each woman of childbearing age recently gave birth to an average of only 1.0 to 1.1 children, not 1.8 – which the government had expected. However, about 2.1 children per female are necessary to keep the population of a country at the same level. This means that each generation in China will be only half the size of the previous one. And even this low figure is exaggerated. I believe that China’s population has already been declining since 2018 and that the actual fertility rate is 0.8. China is aging on a scale and at a rate that no country has ever experienced.
If the population is declining nine years earlier than expected, surely the problems are just brought forward and are not completely unexpected?
The outlook is much bleaker than expected. China’s entire economic, social, defense, and foreign policy was based on incorrect data. Everything must now be realigned. This is also shown by the current economic data: Many attribute the lower economic growth to the strict Covid measures of recent years. But that is only half the truth. The economy is growing at a slower pace because the population is declining. We are seeing this development in other countries as well. However, unlike over-aged industrialized countries like Japan or Germany, China is far from the level of prosperity needed to have developed a stable social system. China is aging before it has become wealthy.
But weren’t these social upheavals foreseeable when China introduced the one-child policy?
The government was simply wrong in its assumptions made in the 1980s. The idea back then was: China is poor, there is not enough food for a billion people. Famines ensued. Song Jian, a rocket expert, predicted that China’s population would exceed 4.2 billion by 2080. This terrified the Chinese leadership. In 1970, the fertility rate was still an average of 5.8 children per woman of childbearing age. What the leadership had not considered at the time was that with rising education, better health care systems, and growing prosperity, the fertility rate would decrease on its own. In fact, with the onset of the economic upswing from the mid-1970s onwards, the fertility rate was already declining and by 1979 it was only 2.75 on average. The one-child policy with its social distortions – forced abortions, male surplus – was totally wrong and completely unnecessary. Even if China had not introduced the restrictive one-child policy in 1980, the population would have reached a maximum of 1.6 billion and then declined.
But had the fertility rate declined on its own, the problem of over-aging would have occurred as well.
Yes, but not as abruptly. Around 2030, a third of the population will be older than 60. The percentage of the working population has already been shrinking since 2012. We see the development in neighboring Japan, where the population is also declining. Japan’s contribution to global manufacturing exports has declined from 16 percent in 1986 to 4 percent in 2021. In 1995, 149 Japanese companies were among the Fortune Global 500; in 2022, only 47. In Japan, we can also see how much higher health and social spending swallows up an old society.
And what does such a development mean for China specifically?
Universities and colleges will be closed, China’s innovation will be weakened. Many factories are already short of workers. China’s shrinking labor force and the recession in manufacturing will in turn lead to high labor costs. As a result, prices will rise. The recent high inflation in Europe and the US may already be partly related to the shrinking workforce in China. With a shrinking and aging population, domestic demand and imports from the West will also decline. With no demand for homes, the already inflated housing bubble could burst, possibly triggering a global financial crisis worse than that of 2008.
Does this crisis jeopardize the communist leadership’s grip on power?
On the contrary. The CP will probably feel safer because China will not have enough young people to protest against the government. It is mainly young people who take to the streets.
Since 2016, couples have been allowed to have two children, and since last year, three. Yet the fertility rate continues to decline.
One reason is the high cost of living, especially in the big cities. But above all, the high costs of education and raising children are a heavy burden on many young parents. In all East Asian countries, education and careers are very important nowadays. In China, however, this is particularly extreme. Everyone wants only the best for their child. But that costs money. That is why most people decide to have only one child.
Maybe it will just take a while for people to change their minds and start thinking about having more children again.
I am skeptical about this. The one-child policy has changed the Chinese view of offspring so fundamentally that the idea of having several children is foreign to many. For two generations, it was drilled into their heads from pre-school onwards that the one-child family is the ideal. People know nothing but single children.
What does this development mean for China’s aspirations to become the global leader?
Between 2031 and 2035, China will perform worse than the US in all demographic parameters. And the older the population, the slower the economy will grow. By then, however, China’s economic output per capita will have reached less than 30 percent of the US economic output. So the People’s Republic will probably never surpass the United States economically. India, on the other hand, has already caught up with China in terms of population and will also overtake China’s economy and even the US economy. This will take decades, of course.
And Africa, with its young population …
… has a bright future. More and more companies will discover Africa and settle there.
Yi Fuxian is head of the demography department specializing in obstetrics and gynecology at the US University of Wisconsin-Madison. He authored the book “Big Country with an Empty Nest”, in which he criticized China’s population policy. The book was banned in Mainland China until 2013.
No more zero-Covid, no more wolf-warrior diplomacy, and no more crackdown on the private sector. China’s state and party leader Xi Jinping has decreed three dramatic policy reversals for his country. All within a few weeks. And some of them completely unprepared. But discontent has not only broken out on the streets; within the Communist Party, too, there is great frustration about Xi’s policies. And now also the balloon incident.
Some see Xi Jinping’s power shaken, while others perceive his about-turns as the pragmatism of a cool-headed power politician. Regardless of weakness or deliberation, Xi Jinping is under pressure. He would rather stick to his decisions for a while once he has made them. But now he has to generate economic growth at all costs.
He goes on the offensive with radical policy changes. These are fundamental turnarounds that Xi is currently imposing on his country:
Klaus Muehlhahn draws one conclusion in particular from all these about-turns: “Xi’s position has been significantly weakened,” says the President of the German Zeppelin University in an interview with China.Table, pointing to the current phase, which is unique to China: The turbulent months of political transition.
It is true that the 20th Party Congress already made all staff appointments for the future. Last October, Xi ousted all opponents and filled the Politburo with loyal followers. But until the 两会 (liǎng huì, also called “Two Sessions” – the meetings of the National People’s Congress and the associated Consultative Conference) in March, the “old” cadres are still in office: People who, according to Muehlhahn, now dare to oppose Xi Jinping behind the scenes. “Whether under Mao, with Deng or now with Xi – the months of transition offer the greatest opportunities for discussion,” explains the sinologist.
Now the time has come for the disgruntled: The old, like Li Keqiang, who will soon step down; the rejected, like Hu Chunhua, whose hopes for promotion have been crushed; and their networks, such as the Youth League. “And when the problems are as big as they are at the moment, all these people see their chance in this particular phase to turn some things back in their favor,” explains Muehlhahn.
However, the fact that there will not be an open revolt against Xi can be explained by the most recent showdown in Chinese politics. Bo Xilai openly challenged the CP establishment. Bo was defeated – and has been behind bars ever since.
“Xi is currently weakened and has therefore retreated somewhat in his policy,” says Mühlhahn and demands: “Now the time has come to become active and resume talks.” Because the alternative is not very tempting. “One must fear that Xi will strike back all the harder when the transition ends in March.”
Zhang Junhua also sees China at a critical juncture. “The sudden shift away from zero-Covid is a gamble,” the political scientist and former professor at Jiaotong University in Shanghai tells China.Table. “But with deliberate opacity, deliberate falsification of data and massive intimidation of the population, the odds are quite good for Xi to win this gamble.”
The renowned China expert Zhu Zhiqun, on the other hand, is convinced that Xi simply reacted to the country’s many challenges with calm pragmatism:
“It was mainly the street protests and the death of Jiang Zemin that prompted Xi’s policy change,” Zhu, who conducts research at Bucknell University in the US, tells China.Table, referring to scenarios from the past that Xi may have feared: The Chinese leadership did not want the public to turn its mourning for Jiang into a nationwide protest against the regime, as it happened in 1976 and 1989 following the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang, respectively.
Thus, Xi’s radical decisions are not necessarily rooted in a possible weakness, but rather in the magnitude and simultaneity of the problems. China is currently under more pressure than it has been for decades. At the same time, Xi has exposed himself so much that he now has to quickly come up with solutions.
Under these circumstances, he even shelves his ideological convictions – if only temporarily. Instead, Xi is resorting to the tried and tested solution: economic growth. At all costs. The words of a former US president inevitably come to mind: It’s the economy, stupid.
Qian Sun’s work is a balancing act. After all, the native of northern China works as an investigative journalist in Berlin and for Chinese television. For Phoenix TV, a majority state-owned television station from Hong Kong and Shenzhen, she explains the broad lines of German politics to the Chinese. Things get more nuanced when Sun pursues her work as a freelance investigative journalist, for example when investigating China’s construction projects in Africa. This balance between official narratives and in-depth investigation is not always easy when you come from an authoritarian country like she does, Sun emphasizes: “You really have to think through the risks. Are you willing to put your family in danger?”
As an investigative journalist, Sun tries to minimize her personal risk, for example by using aliases. But even without such precautions, she feels reasonably safe. This is because she is not an activist, but merely an observer, she explains. “I want to document what’s happening, and what people feel about it.” For her balancing act, however, Sun would generally appreciate more understanding, including from her German colleagues.
And she suggests that her colleagues fly to China and learn Chinese. She herself has not been to her homeland for three years and realizes how easy it is to dehumanize a country if you only look at it from the outside. “That’s very dangerous, you need to understand the emotions of Chinese to report about it.” She considers herself to understand both sides: The Chinese view of Europe and the European view of China. The fact that she earned her master’s degree in Global Studies and International Communication at the University of Leipzig in 2011 is a help in this regard.
Qian Sun grew up in Shanxi Province in the 1980s and experienced the last years of China’s planned economy. And as a teenager, she witnessed the economic opening that also quickly reached her family and improved their living standards. During this time, Sun achieved an excellent score in the Gaokao exams and decided to study sports journalism in Beijing.
Conveniently, the 2008 Olympic Games are just around the corner, where the sports enthusiast Sun was helping as a volunteer. “I was very excited about the Olympic Games, that’s where you feel: China is getting so strong.” Sun’s enthusiasm quickly turned to boredom, as the crowds of young volunteers sat around most of the time. But it hasn’t dampened her love for sports and journalism. As often as she can, she covers sports events for FIFA or the Olympic Games.
Nor does she regard China’s regained strength as a flash in the pan. Unlike Sun back then, China’s young generation is now growing up in a confident nation. These young people have never seen China’s weakness, Sun explains. And yet, the pandemic, the harsh lockdowns and the protests have chipped away at this image of strength. And Sun has also changed her view: “I had an unjust impression of the younger generation. Some of them are a lot more critical and independent than I thought.” Jonathan Lehrer
How’s your Chinese? Do the characters curl up in your noggin like lettuce? Is their pronunciation as crisp as wilted water chestnuts? Do you go limp like an old lettuce leaf as soon as you brood over your vocabulary book? And do you immediately run tomato red whenever you stammer a few painstakingly rehearsed phrases? Then at least shine in the next conversation by giving a brutally honest and highly idiomatic summary of your learning progress. And do so with the following authentic statement: “My Chinese is very vegetably!” (我的中文很菜 Wǒ de Zhōngwén hěn cài.).
In China, the character 菜 cài, meaning “vegetable,” not only guides nutrition-conscious guests to greens and other vegetable items on the menu. In Chinese Internet jargon, it has recently also been used as a trendy adjective, signaling that one is either a greenhorn in a particular field or has a poor grasp of a particular skill. The young vocabulary seedling is a derivative of 菜鸟 càiniǎo “vegetable bird” – the Chinese slang version for “newbie”. Meaning either a beginner or a hopeless incompetent. Other descriptive expressions for newbie in Chinese also include the “new hand” (新手 xīnshǒu) and the “raw hand” (生手 shēngshǒu) or someone for whom “the smell of mother’s milk has not yet dried” (乳臭未干 rǔ xiù wèi gān), i.e., who is still wet or green behind the ears, we would say.
The Chinese opposite of “vegetable”, by the way, is “beefy”, (derived from beef, 牛 niú), someone who has “got it all together” or something that is “top-notch”. Here is the praise you should aim for as a little motivator: “Your Chinese is really very beefy!” (你的中文真的很牛, nǐ de Zhōngwén zhēnde hěn niú).
Things get really beefy, however, once you realize that in colloquial Chinese, many other nouns can simply be converted to adjectives. This is made possible by the lack of word class markers in minimalist Mandarin. Here, for example, there are no declension endings. And this results in a new streaming series that can be “really fiery” (这部网剧很火。 Zhè bù wǎngjù hěn huǒ. “This streaming series is really awesome.” – 火 huǒ “fire,” as adjective: “hip”) or the new teacher “totally watery” (新老师太水了, xīn lǎoshī tài shuǐ le. “The new teacher is so incompetent.” – 水 shuǐ “water,” as adjective: “incompetent, miserable”).
If you translate literally first in such cases, you will certainly have a lot of fun and, incidentally, more vocabulary will root itself in your memory. A small step for mankind, and yet a big step for us language learners – on the path from vegetable bird to Chinese beef.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
Xi Jinping found himself in a tight spot towards the end of last year. A struggling economy, the Covid debacle and then street protests that even openly demanded his resignation – some might wonder how China’s most powerful man wants to calm the situation before the National People’s Congress this March.
He went on the offensive and made some spectacular 180-degree turns. Zero-Covid turned into full-Covid, strict supervision of tech corporations gave way to more support for the private sector. Even the open threats against the US have since turned quieter – at least until the recent balloon incident. What are the reasons behind Xi’s radical policy shifts and how lasting are they? In his analysis, Michael Radunski sheds light on the months of transition – a special phase before the National People’s Congress gathers in March, in which the “old” cadres are still in office, but not for much longer, and therefore dare to oppose Xi behind the scenes. Because many are disgruntled: Those who have to resign from their posts or were deprived of a hoped-for promotion.
While Xi is able to tackle such ongoing political problems through pragmatic policy changes, this is clearly not the case with births. There is no denying that the one-child policy in China had been a severe intervention. Two generations had been unable to start a large family. Now Chinese are even allowed to have three children again, but they do not. The birth rate is incredibly low. China is aging. And that has serious consequences, not only for the country but also for the global economy. The leaders were simply wrong in their assumptions from the 1980s, says scientist Yi Fuxian in an interview with Felix Lee. The outlook is bleak. And, he says, China’s entire economic, social, defense and foreign policy is based on faulty data.
Mr Yi, for the first time since the great famine of 1961, China’s population decreased last year, nine years earlier than predicted. Is that not a reason to celebrate for the communist leadership? After all, the threat of overpopulation was the reason why the one-child policy was introduced in 1980.
No, not at all. According to official figures, the birth rate has fallen below the ten-million mark for the first time. This is the lowest figure since 1790, when the population was around 300 million, but today it is over one billion. Each woman of childbearing age recently gave birth to an average of only 1.0 to 1.1 children, not 1.8 – which the government had expected. However, about 2.1 children per female are necessary to keep the population of a country at the same level. This means that each generation in China will be only half the size of the previous one. And even this low figure is exaggerated. I believe that China’s population has already been declining since 2018 and that the actual fertility rate is 0.8. China is aging on a scale and at a rate that no country has ever experienced.
If the population is declining nine years earlier than expected, surely the problems are just brought forward and are not completely unexpected?
The outlook is much bleaker than expected. China’s entire economic, social, defense, and foreign policy was based on incorrect data. Everything must now be realigned. This is also shown by the current economic data: Many attribute the lower economic growth to the strict Covid measures of recent years. But that is only half the truth. The economy is growing at a slower pace because the population is declining. We are seeing this development in other countries as well. However, unlike over-aged industrialized countries like Japan or Germany, China is far from the level of prosperity needed to have developed a stable social system. China is aging before it has become wealthy.
But weren’t these social upheavals foreseeable when China introduced the one-child policy?
The government was simply wrong in its assumptions made in the 1980s. The idea back then was: China is poor, there is not enough food for a billion people. Famines ensued. Song Jian, a rocket expert, predicted that China’s population would exceed 4.2 billion by 2080. This terrified the Chinese leadership. In 1970, the fertility rate was still an average of 5.8 children per woman of childbearing age. What the leadership had not considered at the time was that with rising education, better health care systems, and growing prosperity, the fertility rate would decrease on its own. In fact, with the onset of the economic upswing from the mid-1970s onwards, the fertility rate was already declining and by 1979 it was only 2.75 on average. The one-child policy with its social distortions – forced abortions, male surplus – was totally wrong and completely unnecessary. Even if China had not introduced the restrictive one-child policy in 1980, the population would have reached a maximum of 1.6 billion and then declined.
But had the fertility rate declined on its own, the problem of over-aging would have occurred as well.
Yes, but not as abruptly. Around 2030, a third of the population will be older than 60. The percentage of the working population has already been shrinking since 2012. We see the development in neighboring Japan, where the population is also declining. Japan’s contribution to global manufacturing exports has declined from 16 percent in 1986 to 4 percent in 2021. In 1995, 149 Japanese companies were among the Fortune Global 500; in 2022, only 47. In Japan, we can also see how much higher health and social spending swallows up an old society.
And what does such a development mean for China specifically?
Universities and colleges will be closed, China’s innovation will be weakened. Many factories are already short of workers. China’s shrinking labor force and the recession in manufacturing will in turn lead to high labor costs. As a result, prices will rise. The recent high inflation in Europe and the US may already be partly related to the shrinking workforce in China. With a shrinking and aging population, domestic demand and imports from the West will also decline. With no demand for homes, the already inflated housing bubble could burst, possibly triggering a global financial crisis worse than that of 2008.
Does this crisis jeopardize the communist leadership’s grip on power?
On the contrary. The CP will probably feel safer because China will not have enough young people to protest against the government. It is mainly young people who take to the streets.
Since 2016, couples have been allowed to have two children, and since last year, three. Yet the fertility rate continues to decline.
One reason is the high cost of living, especially in the big cities. But above all, the high costs of education and raising children are a heavy burden on many young parents. In all East Asian countries, education and careers are very important nowadays. In China, however, this is particularly extreme. Everyone wants only the best for their child. But that costs money. That is why most people decide to have only one child.
Maybe it will just take a while for people to change their minds and start thinking about having more children again.
I am skeptical about this. The one-child policy has changed the Chinese view of offspring so fundamentally that the idea of having several children is foreign to many. For two generations, it was drilled into their heads from pre-school onwards that the one-child family is the ideal. People know nothing but single children.
What does this development mean for China’s aspirations to become the global leader?
Between 2031 and 2035, China will perform worse than the US in all demographic parameters. And the older the population, the slower the economy will grow. By then, however, China’s economic output per capita will have reached less than 30 percent of the US economic output. So the People’s Republic will probably never surpass the United States economically. India, on the other hand, has already caught up with China in terms of population and will also overtake China’s economy and even the US economy. This will take decades, of course.
And Africa, with its young population …
… has a bright future. More and more companies will discover Africa and settle there.
Yi Fuxian is head of the demography department specializing in obstetrics and gynecology at the US University of Wisconsin-Madison. He authored the book “Big Country with an Empty Nest”, in which he criticized China’s population policy. The book was banned in Mainland China until 2013.
No more zero-Covid, no more wolf-warrior diplomacy, and no more crackdown on the private sector. China’s state and party leader Xi Jinping has decreed three dramatic policy reversals for his country. All within a few weeks. And some of them completely unprepared. But discontent has not only broken out on the streets; within the Communist Party, too, there is great frustration about Xi’s policies. And now also the balloon incident.
Some see Xi Jinping’s power shaken, while others perceive his about-turns as the pragmatism of a cool-headed power politician. Regardless of weakness or deliberation, Xi Jinping is under pressure. He would rather stick to his decisions for a while once he has made them. But now he has to generate economic growth at all costs.
He goes on the offensive with radical policy changes. These are fundamental turnarounds that Xi is currently imposing on his country:
Klaus Muehlhahn draws one conclusion in particular from all these about-turns: “Xi’s position has been significantly weakened,” says the President of the German Zeppelin University in an interview with China.Table, pointing to the current phase, which is unique to China: The turbulent months of political transition.
It is true that the 20th Party Congress already made all staff appointments for the future. Last October, Xi ousted all opponents and filled the Politburo with loyal followers. But until the 两会 (liǎng huì, also called “Two Sessions” – the meetings of the National People’s Congress and the associated Consultative Conference) in March, the “old” cadres are still in office: People who, according to Muehlhahn, now dare to oppose Xi Jinping behind the scenes. “Whether under Mao, with Deng or now with Xi – the months of transition offer the greatest opportunities for discussion,” explains the sinologist.
Now the time has come for the disgruntled: The old, like Li Keqiang, who will soon step down; the rejected, like Hu Chunhua, whose hopes for promotion have been crushed; and their networks, such as the Youth League. “And when the problems are as big as they are at the moment, all these people see their chance in this particular phase to turn some things back in their favor,” explains Muehlhahn.
However, the fact that there will not be an open revolt against Xi can be explained by the most recent showdown in Chinese politics. Bo Xilai openly challenged the CP establishment. Bo was defeated – and has been behind bars ever since.
“Xi is currently weakened and has therefore retreated somewhat in his policy,” says Mühlhahn and demands: “Now the time has come to become active and resume talks.” Because the alternative is not very tempting. “One must fear that Xi will strike back all the harder when the transition ends in March.”
Zhang Junhua also sees China at a critical juncture. “The sudden shift away from zero-Covid is a gamble,” the political scientist and former professor at Jiaotong University in Shanghai tells China.Table. “But with deliberate opacity, deliberate falsification of data and massive intimidation of the population, the odds are quite good for Xi to win this gamble.”
The renowned China expert Zhu Zhiqun, on the other hand, is convinced that Xi simply reacted to the country’s many challenges with calm pragmatism:
“It was mainly the street protests and the death of Jiang Zemin that prompted Xi’s policy change,” Zhu, who conducts research at Bucknell University in the US, tells China.Table, referring to scenarios from the past that Xi may have feared: The Chinese leadership did not want the public to turn its mourning for Jiang into a nationwide protest against the regime, as it happened in 1976 and 1989 following the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang, respectively.
Thus, Xi’s radical decisions are not necessarily rooted in a possible weakness, but rather in the magnitude and simultaneity of the problems. China is currently under more pressure than it has been for decades. At the same time, Xi has exposed himself so much that he now has to quickly come up with solutions.
Under these circumstances, he even shelves his ideological convictions – if only temporarily. Instead, Xi is resorting to the tried and tested solution: economic growth. At all costs. The words of a former US president inevitably come to mind: It’s the economy, stupid.
Qian Sun’s work is a balancing act. After all, the native of northern China works as an investigative journalist in Berlin and for Chinese television. For Phoenix TV, a majority state-owned television station from Hong Kong and Shenzhen, she explains the broad lines of German politics to the Chinese. Things get more nuanced when Sun pursues her work as a freelance investigative journalist, for example when investigating China’s construction projects in Africa. This balance between official narratives and in-depth investigation is not always easy when you come from an authoritarian country like she does, Sun emphasizes: “You really have to think through the risks. Are you willing to put your family in danger?”
As an investigative journalist, Sun tries to minimize her personal risk, for example by using aliases. But even without such precautions, she feels reasonably safe. This is because she is not an activist, but merely an observer, she explains. “I want to document what’s happening, and what people feel about it.” For her balancing act, however, Sun would generally appreciate more understanding, including from her German colleagues.
And she suggests that her colleagues fly to China and learn Chinese. She herself has not been to her homeland for three years and realizes how easy it is to dehumanize a country if you only look at it from the outside. “That’s very dangerous, you need to understand the emotions of Chinese to report about it.” She considers herself to understand both sides: The Chinese view of Europe and the European view of China. The fact that she earned her master’s degree in Global Studies and International Communication at the University of Leipzig in 2011 is a help in this regard.
Qian Sun grew up in Shanxi Province in the 1980s and experienced the last years of China’s planned economy. And as a teenager, she witnessed the economic opening that also quickly reached her family and improved their living standards. During this time, Sun achieved an excellent score in the Gaokao exams and decided to study sports journalism in Beijing.
Conveniently, the 2008 Olympic Games are just around the corner, where the sports enthusiast Sun was helping as a volunteer. “I was very excited about the Olympic Games, that’s where you feel: China is getting so strong.” Sun’s enthusiasm quickly turned to boredom, as the crowds of young volunteers sat around most of the time. But it hasn’t dampened her love for sports and journalism. As often as she can, she covers sports events for FIFA or the Olympic Games.
Nor does she regard China’s regained strength as a flash in the pan. Unlike Sun back then, China’s young generation is now growing up in a confident nation. These young people have never seen China’s weakness, Sun explains. And yet, the pandemic, the harsh lockdowns and the protests have chipped away at this image of strength. And Sun has also changed her view: “I had an unjust impression of the younger generation. Some of them are a lot more critical and independent than I thought.” Jonathan Lehrer
How’s your Chinese? Do the characters curl up in your noggin like lettuce? Is their pronunciation as crisp as wilted water chestnuts? Do you go limp like an old lettuce leaf as soon as you brood over your vocabulary book? And do you immediately run tomato red whenever you stammer a few painstakingly rehearsed phrases? Then at least shine in the next conversation by giving a brutally honest and highly idiomatic summary of your learning progress. And do so with the following authentic statement: “My Chinese is very vegetably!” (我的中文很菜 Wǒ de Zhōngwén hěn cài.).
In China, the character 菜 cài, meaning “vegetable,” not only guides nutrition-conscious guests to greens and other vegetable items on the menu. In Chinese Internet jargon, it has recently also been used as a trendy adjective, signaling that one is either a greenhorn in a particular field or has a poor grasp of a particular skill. The young vocabulary seedling is a derivative of 菜鸟 càiniǎo “vegetable bird” – the Chinese slang version for “newbie”. Meaning either a beginner or a hopeless incompetent. Other descriptive expressions for newbie in Chinese also include the “new hand” (新手 xīnshǒu) and the “raw hand” (生手 shēngshǒu) or someone for whom “the smell of mother’s milk has not yet dried” (乳臭未干 rǔ xiù wèi gān), i.e., who is still wet or green behind the ears, we would say.
The Chinese opposite of “vegetable”, by the way, is “beefy”, (derived from beef, 牛 niú), someone who has “got it all together” or something that is “top-notch”. Here is the praise you should aim for as a little motivator: “Your Chinese is really very beefy!” (你的中文真的很牛, nǐ de Zhōngwén zhēnde hěn niú).
Things get really beefy, however, once you realize that in colloquial Chinese, many other nouns can simply be converted to adjectives. This is made possible by the lack of word class markers in minimalist Mandarin. Here, for example, there are no declension endings. And this results in a new streaming series that can be “really fiery” (这部网剧很火。 Zhè bù wǎngjù hěn huǒ. “This streaming series is really awesome.” – 火 huǒ “fire,” as adjective: “hip”) or the new teacher “totally watery” (新老师太水了, xīn lǎoshī tài shuǐ le. “The new teacher is so incompetent.” – 水 shuǐ “water,” as adjective: “incompetent, miserable”).
If you translate literally first in such cases, you will certainly have a lot of fun and, incidentally, more vocabulary will root itself in your memory. A small step for mankind, and yet a big step for us language learners – on the path from vegetable bird to Chinese beef.
Verena Menzel runs the online language school New Chinese in Beijing.
