STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We've been hearing a long view of one of the biggest stories of our time. It is the rise and the struggles of China. We called up David Rennie of The Economist who just finished six years based in Beijing. He saw signs of China's declining population when he met the manager of a factory that used to prosper making children's bikes.
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DAVID RENNIE: But there are half the number of kids that there used to be. And the kicker was at the end, I said, well, what are you doing? They said, come to our new factory. So we get in the car, drive to a village. Their new factory is making tricycles for old people because there's plenty of those to go around.
INSKEEP: That was David Rennie yesterday on this program. Today, we hear one more change he saw in China.
How much more intrusive is the state than it was six years ago in daily life?
RENNIE: The state became hugely more visible in the lives of ordinary Chinese people during the pandemic. And I was in China for the entirety of the pandemic, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was grim in many ways. But it was an extraordinary - if you're a political reporter like I am - to see an authoritarian, high-tech sort of surveillance state being built around you. The level of surveillance that was put in place to track the movements of every single Chinese person - you know, multiple times a day scanning in, tracking their movements - not all of those surveillance systems that we were told were to keep us safe from the virus - not all of them went away. I think that explains a lot of people's sense of disappointment and almost bewilderment that the system just doesn't seem to be working in the same efficient way as before. And that bargain - you know, I won't think about politics, but you'll let me get rich - that seems to be going wrong.
And your question about the state being in people's lives is a real one. People feel not just the state but the return of ideology into people's lives. You know, when I first came to China in the 1990s, Communist Party membership for some, you know, bright kid from a top university was basically a career move. Now it is so much more ideological. And, you know, if you're a parent at a Chinese school, your kids are coming home from primary school with a textbook about Xi Jinping thought. And the visibility of Communist Party slogans and banners and propaganda has really intensified, and that ideology just sort of surrounds you.
INSKEEP: If you're in favor of a free society, you would like to hope, I suppose, that this is a movement of a pendulum and that something in Chinese society maybe will swing it back the other way in a few years. Do you see any dynamic at the moment that would tend to pull in the other direction toward maybe backing up some and making things more free?
RENNIE: One of the most kind of shocking and sensitive conversations that you can have with anyone in China is, how does this change? Is this going to keep getting tighter and tighter and tighter? Because you're really having a conversation about, how much longer is the supreme leader, Xi Jinping, going to be in power? There is a sense that he is someone - and those around him - shaped by some very grim years in Chinese history to have a very sort of conspiratorial, paranoid but also very hubristic kind of world view, and that as long as he is in charge, things are very unlikely to change.
The optimists that you meet in China, such as they are, they tend to say - you know what? - in Chinese history, we have a habit of going too far. And then when things get so bad that even the leaders can't ignore it, then the pendulum swings, and we look for someone who takes us in another direction. So you went from Chairman Mao to Deng Xiaoping. So people are sort of waiting for that generational shift. But the idea that that's going to happen anytime soon under the current leadership, it's very, very unusual, if not impossible, to meet anyone in China who believes that.
INSKEEP: David Rennie of The Economist, thanks so much. It's always a pleasure listening to you.
RENNIE: Pleasure - thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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