36 China The EconomistNovember 28th 2020
2 ple are more attracted to Japan culturally—
they like the manga, anime and online
games,” says Kerry Brown, the college’s
professor of China studies. China’s soft
power is weaker. Its censorship of the in-
ternet and other media and the polluted air
of its cities put students off, academics say.
After Phil Entwistle, a British former ac-
ademic, finished his phdin 2015, he was
hired by an Irish university to teach a
course on relations between China and Eu-
rope. He found that many colleagues with
non-China specialisms were horrified by
his interest in the place. “They asked, ‘Why
do you want to study this really awful re-
gime? We don’t want anything to do with
China—look at what’s going on there.’”
Having lost hope, for the time being, of
pursuing any rewarding work on China
“given everything that is going on”, Mr En-
twistle now works as a headhunter.
For those who stick at it, studying China
is getting ever tougher. Minxin Pei of Clare-
mont McKenna College in California calls
it “the hardest it has been since the end of
the Maoist era”. Gone are the relatively
open days of the late 1990s and 2000s. After
Xi Jinping took over as China’s leader in
2012, the country began tightening restric-
tions on work there by Western academics.
Archives and databases in China became
harder to access; visas and interviews more
difficult to arrange.
In 2018 a survey of China-studies schol-
ars in several Western countries as well as
Hong Kong found that, in the previous de-
cade, one-third of them had been denied
either entry to China or permission to use
its archives. Nearly one-tenth said they had
been “taken to tea”—a common euphe-
mism for being summoned for a warning
by Chinese officials. Many academics tell
their phdstudents that they may be better
off moving to another field because of the
risks or the difficulty of doing research in
China, says Jean-Pierre Cabestan of Hong
Kong Baptist University.
Some scholars now stay away from Chi-
na because of the risk of being detained
there. Their fears have been heightened by
the arrests in 2018 of two Canadians—Mi-
chael Kovrig, a political analyst, and Mi-
chael Spavor, a businessman. The two
men’s continuing detention has been in-
terpreted by many Western observers as a
sign of growing willingness by China to use
flimsy national-security charges against
foreigners from countries with which it
has quarrels. Academics specialising in
sensitive areas such as politics are particu-
larly wary. Iwatani Nobu, a historian of
modern China at Hokkaido University, was
held for over two months last year on sus-
picion of spying. According to Japanese
media he was accused of buying books in
China relating to historical events before
the Communist takeover in 1949.
The risks are even greater for China-bornacademics,whomakeupa growing
share of staff in China-studies depart-
mentsintheWest.Chinesepoliceoften
treatémigrésasChinesecitizens,regard-
lessofanyforeigncitizenshiptheymay
haveacquired.Thatcanmeanevenharsher
treatmentshouldtheybearrested.Evenin
thesafetyoftheircampusesabroad,they
oftenkeepquietabouttopicsdeemedsen-
sitivebyChinaforfearthatChineseoffi-
cialswillharasstheirrelativesinChinaor
banthemfromtravellingthere.
For Westerngovernments and firms,
copingwithChinaisanevermorepressing
concern.Torespondwisely,theyneedto
understandwhatmakesChinatick.If there
arenotenoughSinologiststoguidethem,
theywillsurelymakemistakes.^7F
ew chinese television programmes
command as loyal a fan base as “If You
Are The One”, a matchmaking show now in
its tenth year. In its early days, some 50m
viewers tuned in to each episode—an audi-
ence second only to the evening news bul-
letin produced by the state broadcaster. To-
day “If You Are The One” is the
sixth-most-watched show in China. But
this modest dip in its domestic ranking has
been offset by gains overseas. Broadcasters
in Australia and Malaysia have picked it up.
Episodes on YouTube attract millions of
views around the world.
Each instalment features a male contes-tant and 24 prospective female dates. The
charismatic moderator, Meng Fei, a former
news anchor, invites the bachelorettes to
grill the bachelor on any topic they like.
The main draw of the show lies in their
questions, which often focus on the man’s
financial standing. In one of the show’s
first episodes, a female participant fam-
ously quipped that she would rather “cry in
a bmw” than smile on the back of her boy-
friend’s bicycle. In another one a woman
refused to shake a contestant’s hand be-
cause he made less than 200,000 yuan
($30,400) a month.
Such unabashed hankering after wealth
on a programme watched by legions of
young Chinese made the Communist Party
feel uneasy. Media regulators promptly or-
dered the show to stop “showcasing and
hyping up money-worship” on pain of can-
cellation. The ostensible reason was that
glorifying gold-diggers contravened the
party’s socialist values. Officials, however,
may have been concerned about another
danger. Chinese men outnumber women,
thanks to sex-selective abortion, so many
poor males are doomed to remain single.
Reminding them that rich blokes have far
more romantic options might make them
envious—and angry.
These days, female candidates on the
programme are no longer allowed to ask
male contestants how much they earn or
which car they drive. Hobbies from rugby
to rap have become the go-to topics of con-
versation. Yet “wealth fetishism” remains
an undercurrent, notes Siyu Chen, a Chi-
nese scholar. The questions are just
phrased more diplomatically. Bachelors
are probed about their jobs rather than
their salaries.
Tactfulness is not always observed. In a
recent episode one bachelorette asked
whether the man was willing to subsidise
her monthly rent of 6,800 yuan. Incidents
like this often prompt angry (male) viewers
to dig up and publish private information
about the “female offender” on Baidu
Tieba, a social-media forum which hosts a
fan page for the show containing 16m user-
generated posts. Many female commenta-
tors ridicule these “insecure” men.
Censors reckon the show could try
harder to tone down the money motive.
Last year the government published an
“Outline for the Moral Construction of Citi-
zens in the New Era”. It identifies “money
worship” as a cause of “moral failure”. In
February regulators hinted that dating
shows were not helping. But “If You Are The
One” keeps going. Perhaps officials deem
that Mr Meng, the host, has done just
enough to restrain his contestants’ im-
pulses. Or perhaps the party reckons that
crushing the life out of such a popular
show could infuriate people. Enraged citi-
zens may be a more unsettling prospect
than people lusting for wealth. 7BEIJING
The party frowns on money-worship.
A popular dating show glorifies itTelevision entertainmentLoaded questions
Meng Fei, matchmaker extraordinaire