Leading American news outlets focused on the question of whether Lang Lang intended to insult the United States, and quickly reached the conclusion that he did not, without considering any of the evidence that complicates that judgment. Leading China experts discussed this incident as a clash between Chinese and American cultures, without discussing what the content of the Chinese culture on display was. The administration seemed not to have known in advance the background of the song that Lang Lang chose and afterwards simply seemed to want to go on with business as usual.
What the reactions to his performance at the White House tended to miss is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wanted Lang Lang’s performance of “My Motherland” to go ahead, as the Epoch Times reporting made clear. That omission caused the entire episode to be misunderstood.
Lang Lang
We will probably never know whether Lang Lang acted in cahoots with CCP officials or not, but Lang Lang’s personal responsibility was never the key issue. He is an instructive example, though.
Lang Lang’s own words give a hint as to why the CCP wanted his performance at the White House to take place. In a Chinese-language interview and blog post he said he played the song to show heads of state from around the world that China is “formidable” and to make the Chinese people “extremely proud.” Later, in English-language interviews he backpedalled, saying he chose the piece for its beauty, rather than nationalistic significance.
His original views as expressed in Chinese are emblematic of a type. With his cheerful mouthing of slogans about Chinese being “extremely proud” and China being “formidable,” a picture of him emerges as a typical, privileged twenty-something, whose mind has been shaped by Party propaganda since youth.
Defenders have suggested that he grew up in the United States. That is an overstatement: his first 14 years were in China. A crucial topic missing in the discussion of Lang Lang’s actions has been how CCP institutions radically form and deform human beings in these, their most malleable years. The response in China to Lang Lang’s performance showed how powerful this propaganda has been in shaping the tastes of his entire generation.
Lang Lang has repeatedly played at major events for the CCP. At the Beijing Olympics he did something that no self-respecting world-class musician would ever have done: in the opening ceremonies he mimed playing at a fake grand piano—a story broken by The Epoch Times. National Review’s Jay Nordlinger has said that Lang Lang is a court musician for the regime.
The CCP has also made use of his celebrity in other ways: Lang Lang is vice-president of the All China Youth Federation, a CCP organization whose basic mission includes the study of CCP ideology. Hu Jintao himself is a former president of this organization.
Next: Understanding What Happened
Understanding What Happened
For the Communist Party, the primary concern has not been what the American press or public would say about the incident—we are a sideshow—but about influencing domestic opinion in China. For that it was sufficient to have Lang Lang interviewed on Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV before the performance and on CCTV afterwards, expounding earnestly on his choice of “My Motherland.” By the time the video of his performance, with Chairman Hu and President Obama congratulating him after it, had gone viral, the Chinese nationalist-ometer maxed out, as could be witnessed on thousands of Chinese websites and message boards.
Understanding the success of Lang Lang’s performance requires understanding the importance of symbolism in China. Tocqueville pointed out long ago that Americans as a democratic people tend to play down formality. As a consequence, Americans are less focused on symbolism in cultural relations.
But symbolism is cardinal in China. The CCP inherited an imperial culture in which every gesture had significance. They coopted and perverted that culture by retaining the importance of gesture and symbol and filling them with their own ideology. Lang Lang’s playing an anti-American propaganda tune at the White House is a potent form of symbolic communication.
The Chinese democratic dissident Wei Jingsheng stood out from most American commentators. He immediately understood the significance of the event and wrote a letter to Congress and Secretary Clinton on Jan. 21 trying to explain what had just happened.
Americans and the American media have not fully understood the significance of this symbolic act because they don’t appreciate how central patriotism is to Chinese identity under the CCP and to CCP legitimacy.
In the United States, conservatives tend to talk more than liberals about the importance of patriotism. Conservative publications and blogs immediately picked up the story and fastened onto this element: they understood the elemental importance of patriotism, and thus the insult and humiliation that had been inflicted.
That one end of the political spectrum in the United States would place greater emphasis on patriotism than the other is a natural result in a free country—and one that should be celebrated. But in China, where the CCP has taught the populace to nurse resentment at perceived slights to Chinese greatness and goaded the nation into a brittle, aggressive pride, seeing Lang Lang play that song was immensely satisfying.
Americans are not prepared to understand the depth of this satisfaction because they tend to be uninformed about the depth of anti-Americanism in China. Lang Lang’s playing the song in the White House was an expression by the CCP that the United States is subservient to China: the United States is on the way out; China is on the rise; China is number one.
While Americans are not competing with China and do not seek to dominate China, the CCP seeks to dominate the United States, if for now only symbolically. But the regime that seems so efficient and powerful is actually terribly vulnerable. It needs these moments to hold onto power.
Finally, the fundamental issue that Americans have misunderstood is the role of the CCP itself. A posting on the popular Hot Air blog, in a fair summary of the incident, alludes to The Epoch Times’ “hostility” toward the CCP as a “complicating” factor in coming to a balanced view.
The events at the White House helped introduce many Americans to the CCP, which, in spite of the ongoing frictions about trade, often remains an unknown. The chasm of understanding that exists between the United States and China is mainly caused on the one hand by Americans’ lack of knowledge about the history and nature of the CCP, and on the other hand by the indoctrination of the Chinese people into anti-Americanism by CCP propaganda.
Perhaps the playing of a song at the White House that depicts Americans as “jackals” will help inspire in Americans the desire to know the CCP better. In that effort, they will find The Epoch Times’ severe and piercing perspective on the CCP to be sound guidance.
