Postcards from James Fallows

Senior Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows has been covering China extensively for the past three years and is now preparing to leave Beijing for his next postings in Washington D.C. and Australia. We caught up with him recently to discuss his experiences in China, his new book, Postcards from Tomorrow Square, and getting mistaken for former President George W. Bush.

What pulled you back to China after the initial Esperanto trip? (Click here to read James Fallows’ May 2008 Interview with the beijinger)

I had been here half a dozen times in the late 80’s and early 90’s when I was reporting about Asia but I hadn’t been back for 10 years before I came here in 2006. There were two minor feelings and one major feeling. One of the minor draws was that my wife and I had seen China before things had really got going and we wanted a comparison. The other minor draw was that the five years before I had come here, I had been doing Iraq war policy, which I had had enough of. The main draw was a feeling of how can you be involved in the world today without having exposure to China.

You came to Shanghai in 2006; when did you start living in Beijing?

In November of 2007, so about a year and a half in Shanghai and a year and a half in Beijing.

Is it possible to narrow it down to how China has changed over your three years here?

It's hard to say three years, because on the one hand, things change every day. My wife used to joke in Shanghai that she was afraid that whenever she took the clothes to the dry cleaners, she was worried they wouldn’t be there when she went to go pick it up because there is a lot of volatility in stores and streets there. There’s daily change and then there are major events. There has been the coming and going of the Olympics, the coming of the earthquake, the rise of China in financial power and otherwise, the contesting of China on controversial foreign policies, and the current economic slowdown. It's not so much seeing China change in any possible way, rather seeing things happen in China which is definitely worth seeing.

You have a fairly optimistic view of China’s environmental policies. Why?

I think there are several threshold levels. In my book I am writing to address the uninformed American view that everything in China is going to hell in a hand basket and that it's one big smoking, ashy country and that people are paying no attention whatsoever. There’s a famous cartoon in The Onion, which shows a Chinese ministry official proclaiming “We are the #1 polluter in the world; we are so proud!”

It is worth the outside world recognizing that there are different forces in China that are trying to better the environment. There are companies trying to do the right thing. What this means in terms of actual hope might mean something different. The US and China have to work together on climate issues during this presidential administration. These two countries are doing the most emitting now, and China is certain to grow because people are going to demand more electricity, more cars. It's just going to happen. If this could happen in a less damaging way, there’s hope for the rest of the world to deal with these issues. If it's not, it's really difficult to be hopeful. One’s only option is to be optimistic about what China and the rest of the world, especially the US, can do together.

Do you think the entrepreneurial spirit in China will help facilitate a movement towards green energy?

I think that will be an important extra vehicle. It's necessary for a governmental shift in policy. Until four months ago, the US policy, in my view, was almost entirely negative towards the environment. Just two days ago, John Podesta, the head of the Obama transition team, was in Beijing. He made a speech where he said that the most urgent matter is the economic mess, but the most important matter is the environment and the cooperation between the US and China in this arena. He talked about how the economic recovery plan will focus on rebuilding the US economy with a green emphasis and working with China on this.

In your book Postcards, you examine the different explanations for the "Chinese Dream." Have you been able to identify it?

I would not presume to have an answer about the "Chinese Dream" because this was a question I had when I arrived three years ago, and it is a question I will have when I leave. Chinese people, like most people around the world, want to have a better life for their family, for their kids to have a better chance. In contrast to people around the world, most Chinese people have seen this in their lifetimes. The circumstances are dramatically easier for children than their parents. For Chinese people younger than 25 years old, nothing catastrophic has really happened to you (other than, perhaps, the earthquake). If you’re older than 30, catastrophic things have happened to you. That’s a huge difference.

This stage of China’s life is like Western Europe, post-WWII, with the disastrous two world wars, concentration camps, and migrations. Western Europe started recovering in the 50’s and 60’s. I think China is in the recovery stage now. On the national scale, I think there is a question as to what China will be “when it grows up,” words I am using with deliberate archness, as it addresses more and more of its pressing problems. I think that is an open question that during your active lifetime, people in China will be working on.

What was the impetus for Postcards? What will people learn by reading it?

I will explain my philosophy of book writing in a nutshell. I will have two books done during my time in China, of which this is one. At this time last year, I realized there was a coherent wholeness to my writing that I had done for The Atlantic. One way or another, they were all about trying to convey a more complex picture of China that outside people have. I was trying to get across the idea that this is a collection of more than a billion individuals and to convey the human-ness of the place. I also have this other book which I’m trying to finish this year that follows one particular infrastructure project and how it will gets done. Through this one infrastructure project, I hope to show China’s ambitions, its high-tech developments, regional imbalances, the way infrastructure is done, and its interactions with the outside world.

Will your readers come away from Postcards with a more complex picture of China?

The most reassuring thing to me is that in the book reviews from China, the theme is that readers have said I am telling them things they don’t already know. Not everybody has been out to Changsha and seen the guy with the replica of the Palace of Versailles, not everyone has been out to Gansu and seen the Yellow Sheep River.

For those who don’t know China, I want to give them a sense of the individual passions in China. There are people from Taiwan who want to help villagers in Gansu, there is a guy who wants to have environmentally friendly air conditioners, that kind of thing.

Do you think the current economic slowdown will stunt the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people that you have spent so much time writing about?

My two answers would be: “Yes, but…” and “Not really…”
I have an article in The Atlantic and what I say is that on the one hand, China will absorb a bigger blow from this economic downturn than it thinks because China has such a large share of the world’s manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years. As these jobs go away, China is losing a disproportionate share of jobs, much like the US during the Great Depression. During the Depression, the US had worse unemployment than Europe did because it had more manufacturing jobs at the time. On the other hand, you can’t look around here and think China is done. There is so much momentum in so many ways. People have been through so much worse in their lifetimes. There will be a damper for a while, but it's not the end of this period.

What is your view on China’s future in the world? Do you see it surpassing America in any way?

Let me answer this indirectly and then more directly. When I lived in Japan 20 years ago, there were many things I enjoyed, but something I didn’t like was this relentless, “Who’s #1?” Because Japan had been outright defeated by the US in WWII and occupied by the US and it had been a rich country before, there was an inescapable “Who’s #1?” There was a theme of “Our success is your failure.” That got really tiresome quickly. I think a happy impact of China’s scale and its inward looking success is that I feel much less of that here. Yes obviously, there’s lot of talk about China rising. China is the most populous country in the world. Inevitably, it will be the largest economy at some point because it only needs to be ¼ as rich per capita as the US to have the largest economy. Compared to Japan of 20 years ago, there is less obsessive “head-to-head-ism.”

Secondly, what China has been doing is more complementary with the US and Europe. For better or worse, China doesn’t have as many high-end brands as Japan does, so China has been growing with the US rather than competing head to head. The historical memory of US and Chinese interactions has been cast in a way that emphasizes the friendly parts. There is not much talk about the Korean War and other times when the US and China were at loggerheads. There’s more talk about the good side of the missionary era. China will certainly be a larger economy than the US. I don’t think I will see a China that is richer per capita than the US in my lifetime and probably not in the next 60 years or so.

China will become richer, but we’re more likely to see different kinds of power. The American military power is vastly greater than China’s. The US has a vastly stronger university structure than China will have for a long time. We’re more likely to see complex relationships of power; I do not view it as threatening for China to become stronger. If it does become threatening, that represents a failure on China’s part and a failure on the outside world’s part, too.

On to more fun questions, what’s your favorite area of Beijing?

I have no regrets about living in Guomao since the coming of Line 10. Line 10 is my friend; it has changed my life. The Gongti area is nice for walking around and going to restaurant and shops, its very Shanghai-like. The Houhai area has its charms. We were in the park north of the Military Museum, and it's gorgeous. There are too many parts to mention.

What do you do for fun in the city? What’s a typical day for James Fallows?

In my line of work, there is no typical day. There’s being out someplace and seeing a factory, a farm, or a village. By the time I leave, I will have been to all provinces. So, either I am out doing something like exploring coal mines or steel factories and interviewing or I am sitting at home and writing things up for the 24-hour work cycle. 9pm here is 9am on the East Coast, and that's when the phone calls and queries start coming in.

You’re often mistaken for George W. Bush. Had any funny run-ins?

This is a stock line of hilarity with taxi drivers. I can make enough conversation in Chinese to say “Ha ha, I am not on the job anymore.” I will contend that this is a matter of ethnic stereotyping because I have never heard that from another White person. There are studies that say that facial distinctions of other ethnic groups blend away for other groups, that any middle-aged Chinese man in America looks like Jackie Chan.

Best experience in Beijing?

It’s such an interesting place. Our two bases in China have been Shanghai and Beijing. Beijing is more challenging to live in but its more interesting. Shanghai is more comfortable, and set up for the daily comforts of life. We didn’t have this 22-lane intersection like Guomao. Just like New York, everyone in Beijing has an attitude and a story. I love sitting in the taxicab and listening to the radio talk shows. Just the richness of dealing with the average folk here in Beijing has been great.

What’s your favorite place to eat or drink in Beijing?

This is a sore topic. Eating is great, we love the duck place south of the Building Museum, Liqun. Since I like good beer, I’ve found that hard to obtain in Beijing. If I were a Belgian and I liked Belgian beer, I’d be ok because there is good Belgian beer here. I will have no answer for the drinking question. The priciest place I’ve had a drink is this new Park Hyatt and the China Bar. The view of the city is something that no human being had until they opened the building. You are 65 stories up and you get a low-altitude airplane view of the city, and this gives you a different sense of how Beijing is laid out.

What do you think is the most surprising thing about Beijing to first-time Western visitors?

The naïve ones are surprised by all the big buildings. If you live in a cocoon, Beijing can seem that way. I take it as a sign of naïveté if people are impressed by the big buildings. I think for me, a legitimate tourist reaction is to the pharaoh-like scale of Beijing’s design, which really is unusual among major cities, something that’s not like Western cities. They have these roads that are half-a-mile across. If you go down from Guomao to the Military museum, from east to west, there is an astonishing array of giant buildings. The scale of Beijing’s intentional design is unique in the world. If a first-time visitor remarks on that, they get extra brownie points.

Beijing or Shanghai? This can be off the record…

I will go bravely on the record. No one can deny that for Westerners, Shanghai is more comfortable. To walk down the street, you see a little store, a little coffee shop, a little second-hand dress shop, as opposed to a big government ministry in Beijing. I also think no one can deny there is a more intense mix of interesting people in Beijing and that it is more Chinese. Shanghai is more comfortable because it is more cosmopolitan, and Beijing is more informative because it is more Chinese.

What are you currently reading?
Two Kinds of Time, by Graham Peck, a truly wonderful book by an American diplomat here during the WW II era.
Beijing Coma, a very dark novel by Ma Jian.
The Spirit of the Place, a novel with nothing to do about China but really great nonetheless (by Samuel Shem, pen name for Steven Bergman).
The Interior, by Lisa See, a detective novel set in modern China.
China Takes Off, by EE Bauer, memoir of a businessman who was here in the 1980s.
Lush Life, by Richard Price, a contemporary US novel.

You’ve been writing for The Atlantic for over 30 years, but you’ve had stints in other fields as well. How was your time as a software designer at Microsoft?

I started working for The Atlantic 30 years ago, and there were only three years when I was not working there. Two were when I was the editor of the US News and World Report. Before I rejoined The Atlantic, I wanted to do something I had always been interested in. I worked for Microsoft on the design team for Word when Word was just becoming the monopoly product. There were still other products at the time then, like Wordperfect, etc. I was arguing at the time that if Word were going to be the dominant product, it should have better features for writing. I was on the team for what became Word XP, which came out in 2000. It was a lot of fun; the features I worked on were the track changes features, research features which were eventually used in OneNote, and I tried to kill Clippy. [The cartoon character that pops up in the corner when Word opens.]

You were the youngest chief speechwriter for an American president at the age of 27 and a few months. What was it like working in the Jimmy Carter White House?

I was 27 and it was four months versus 27 and six months for Obama’s new guy. The reason why people do this when they are very young is because getting involved in a presidential campaign is a crapshoot because the odds are that your candidate won’t win. I started working for Carter in 1976, when it looked like he might win. I had worked for the Washington Monthly magazine and had done some writing on governmental reform which Carter was interested in. His Georgia staff got in touch with me, and I thought, why not? This is the time of my life to try it. So, on the “What is there to lose?” principle, I worked on the campaign for six months and then for two years in the Carter administration. Two important caveats to this experience are that Barack Obama is a great speaker, Jimmy Carter was not a great speaker. Some speechwriters have a great connection with the President, some did not. I was in the latter category. There are presidents who view the process of giving speeches as very important, and others not so much.

Is there as much walking around in circles around the West Wing as there is on the tv show, West Wing?

It was similarly young, but not as sexy and probably not as snappy in the banter. Not as much walking around because the West Wing itself is very small.

You’re leaving China in a few months. What’s the next step?

I will be returning to Washington, D.C. where I’ll continue to write for The Atlantic. However, to ensure that I can still travel for months out of the year, I will be the Professor of US Media at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University. Going down to Australia will give me opportunities to keep returning to China in the future.

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Interview by Jennifer Ying Lan

James Fallows (List of books written by Fallows)
Born: Redlands, California
College: Harvard, Concentration: American History and Literature, Graduated Magna Cum Laude, Thesis: 1930’s Rural American development and the effect it had on the Great Black Migration out of the South
First time abroad: Excluding trips to Tijuana, Mexico, it was to Oxford for the Rhodes Scholarship.