The Economist October 9th 2021 China 59
ments of support for Taiwan from the
European Union, the g7, Japan and South
Korea. September was an especially irk
some month: Taiwan sought entry to a
transPacific freetrade group just after
China had made the same request (see
Chaguan) and American and British naval
ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait. On
September 15th America, Britain and Aus
tralia agreed to a security partnership, au-
kus, that is viewed in Beijing as an alliance
aimed at keeping China in check. In the
days that followed, China ramped up its
flights into Taiwan’s adiz.
If China’s planes were to edge closer to
airspace over the island itself, it is unclear
how Taiwan would respond. Tsai Ingwen,
Taiwan’s president, has said that Taiwan
ese pilots should not be the ones to shoot
first—at least not without explicit orders.
Taiwan’s latest Quadrennial Defence Re
view, produced this year, was vague about
this, saying only that the island’s respons
es should get stronger the closer that Chi
nese aircraft get to the island.
Some analysts wonder whether a Tai
wanese fighter would be authorised to fire
anything more than a warning shot, even if
a Chinese plane were to fly over Taiwanese
land. In a forthcoming article, two think
tankers in America, Bonny Lin of the Cen
tre for Strategic and International Studies
and David Sacks of the Council on Foreign
Relations, note Taiwanese press reports
which say that Taiwan may have divided its
airspace into three zones of engagement: a
“surveillance zone” of 30 nautical miles, a
“warning zone” of 24 nautical miles and a
“destruction zone” of 12 nautical miles. Ms
Lin and Mr Sacks say that if any engage
ment were to lead to the death of a pilot,
even accidentally, “both sides would be ill
equipped” to keep tensions under control.
There has been no such casualty since
1958. But accidents have happened nearby.
In 2001 a midair collision off the coast of
southern China between a Chinese fighter
and an American naval spyplane killed
the Chinese pilot. The crippled American
plane landed at a Chinese military airbase.
Ten days of tension ensued before the crew
were allowed to leave. Twenty years later,
such an encounter may be far harder to re
solve. Relations between America and Chi
na are considerably worse. China suspend
ed official contacts with Taiwan after Ms
Tsai became president in 2016 and she
failed to endorse the view of leaders in
Beijing that there is only “one China”.
Should a crisis occur in Taiwan’s skies,
nationalist sentiment in China could fur
ther complicate matters. Global Times, a
jingoistic party tabloid in Beijing, declared
in April that if Ms Tsai’s government were
to continue its “hostile” behaviour (work
ing closely with America counts as such, it
suggested), China’s fighter planes would
be prepared to fly across the island and dis
regardthe“redline”relatingtoterritorial
airspace.MsTsaiappearsunfazed.Inan
upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, she
writes that Taiwan hopes to “shoulder
moreresponsibilitybybeinga closepoliti
calandeconomic partneroftheUnited
Statesandotherlikemindedcountries”.
ShewarnsthatpeopleinTaiwanwill“rise
upshouldtheveryexistenceofTaiwanbe
underthreat”.Suchwordswillnotstopthe
sorties, norassuagefearsthatamishap
couldturnintosomethingfarbloodier. n
OldBeijing
Bells and whistles
W
ithone’seyesclosed,Beijing’smain
roads sound like any Chinese city. All
around is the roar of traffic, punctuated by
honks from delivery scooters, recorded
safety warnings from buses and the occa
sional bell of a rentalbicycle. But in the
capital’s last hutongs, as its ancient grey
walled alleys are known, fragments of an
older soundscape can be heard.
The chirping of caged crickets is one.
Hung in the doorways of courtyard homes
or small shops, the insects bring a rural
note into the city. A quartercentury ago
their song was common. Beijing was still
home to cycle rickshaws and delivery tri
cycles. Some riders hung crickets from
their handlebars, inside spherical cages
woven from reeds. Today, cricketsellers
cling on, lurking near a motorway bridge
in southern Beijing. A big specimen sells
for 20 yuan ($3). They are heirs to a grand
tradition. In imperial times, bored court
iers and Manchu army officers spent for
tunes on caged crickets and songbirds.
Another relic is the musical clanking of
steel plates strung on a cord, announcing a
knife sharpener’s arrival. Several such spe
cialists still work Beijing’s streets. Their
soundingplates, sometimes supplement
ed with a distinctive cry, summon custom
ers from hutonghomes and highrise flats.
But numbers are falling. “What young man
would study this?” asks Craftsman Liu, a
sharpener for 40 years, as he hones a cleav
er on a whetstone mounted on his bike.
An almostvanished Beijing sound is
one of the strangest. An eerie thrumming,
like the noise of flying saucers in an old
sciencefiction film, it is made by homing
pigeons, or more precisely by pigeon whis
tles. Tiny flutes made from bamboo or
gourds, these are sewn into the tail feath
ers of pigeons kept in rooftop coops. The
birds are released twice a day to circle in
the sky. Even 20 years ago, it was possible
to hear this melancholy noise in the hu
tongs.It was particularly associated with
cold winter skies, for pigeons moult in
summer, making feathers too weak to hold
whistles. Alas, modern Beijing is a city in a
hurry. Many hutongshave been razed to
make way for wide avenues and shiny sky
scrapers, leaving no room for pigeon lofts.
Zhang Baotong is one of Beijing’s last
master pigeonwhistle makers. As a child
in the 1950s he heard the dong of camel
bells as dusty caravans carried coal to a
nearby railway station. He learned to make
whistles in boyhood from a famed master
who shared a courtyard with his family. To
day Mr Zhang has apprentices and a work
shop lined with certificates calling him a
living treasure. But many of his whistles
are sold to collectors and never see the sky.
Mr Zhang is advising a museum of
sound that will open next Mayin Song
zhuang, a suburb of Beijing that is popular
with artists. A rooftop coop is planned,
with more than 100 pigeons that will take
to the skies for visitors. It is hoped that pi
geonwhistles will be heard each day over
Songzhuang, at least in cooler months.
The cofounder of Fen Sonic hq, a cul
tural institute that will run the museum, is
Colin Siyuan Chinnery, a BritishChinese
artist and collector of Beijing’s sounds. He
lists the gongs, rattles and rhythmic cries
used by fortune tellers and medicine sell
ers, doctors, barbers and knife sharpeners,
until private enterprise was crushed in the
1950s. Many of these will feature in an ex
hibit about old Beijing narrated by an ani
mation of Mr Zhang, among others. Other
places had hawkers’ cries, but true Beijing
ers dismiss peddlers elsewhere as mere
bellowers, Mr Chinnery says. Beijingers’
prideisonetraditionthatneverfades.n
B EIJING
Artists and master craftsmen join
forces to preserve sounds of old Beijing
To hear some of the sounds described, listen
to our podcast, The Intelligence:
economist.com /oldbeijing