China’s postmodern wall

Three months ago, I received from a friend a picture of herself smiling; behind her, serving as a backdrop, was the Great Wall stretching into the landscape of North China like a dragon’s tail.

The photograph reminded me of Mao Zedong’s lines describing the same picturesque sight: “North China scene:/ A hundred leagues locked in ice,/ A thousand leagues of whirling snow./ Both sides of the Great Wall/ one single white immensity./…This land so rich in beauty…”

The Great Wall (zhang cheng, or literally, the long wall), according to China’s first historian Sima Qian, was built by Gen. Meng Tian upon the orders of the mighty First Emperor of Qin to “defend the borders” and “drive back the Xiongnu tribes.” The structure, which served as boundary and fortification, ran “for a distance of over 10,000 Li” from the present-day Lanzhou in Gansu Province to Liaodong, near the Gulf of Bohai. The general was so successful in chasing away the “barbarians” that the latter “no longer ventured to come south to pasture their horses and their men dared not take up their bows to vent their hatred.”

Writing from the viewpoint of the Han dynasty which overthrew the Qin, the castrated historian Sima Qian would denounce the exploitation of the common people in the construction of the wall and would accuse General Meng of the “crime of cutting through the arteries of the earth!” Centuries later, however, China’s experience of foreign domination would transform the Great Wall from a symbol of inhumane exploitation into what Jasper Becker calls an “icon of Chinese nationalism.”

It is from this perspective that I read the Nine-Dash Line as China’s new wall.

Like the old and premodern wall, the Nine-Dash Line draws a boundary and, in recent years, a fortification. The line is a demarcation, a division, a separation between the Han and the barbarians, between civilization and savagery, between those with history and those without. Like the old wall, it is meant to drive away the barbarian invaders. Listen to the “illegal occupation” of “Zhongye” (Pag-asa Island). Watch out for the water cannon. With more Chinese coast guard boats, the barbarians will no longer venture to come south to “pasture their horses.”

It is, of course, a mistake to say that the Great Wall and the Nine-Dash Line are alike. On one hand, the old wall is premodern and therefore anachronistic from the viewpoint of modern warfare. On the other hand, the new (1947) wall is postmodern—that is, a simulated and hyper-real object whose existence represents nothing out there.

Moreover, the premodern wall is terrestrial, while the postmodern wall is maritime. The former twists and turns on land, up in the mountains, and down the valley. The latter encircles the rocks, the islands, and the seas. But the two walls complement each other, like the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy. The old wall demarcates only the continent, the land territory. But what is a continent without a sea, the yin without the yang? Thus, with the Nine-Dash Line, the Middle Empire (zhong guo) acquires a sea, which equals 22 percent of its land area, and thereby becomes complete. China now has walled cities (Beijing, Nanjing, Xian), walled mountains, walled seas, not to speak of walled websites. It is a walled kingdom.

Nonetheless, China’s postmodern wall is distinct, unique. Unlike the old wall, which can be seen and touched, the Nine-Dash Line is invisible and imaginary. One does not see a wall stretching from the Gulf of Tonkin to the waters of Taiwan. There is, therefore, no need for mud bricks and stones. There is no need to exploit the common people as requisitioned laborers. The sea is already an object of exploitation. No Chinese historian would denounce it as a burden. For the profits that the sea bequeaths (“real” giant clams, sea turtles, shark fins), the postmodern wall easily becomes an icon of Chinese nationalism. To get rich is glorious.

The imaginary character of the wall by no means tells us that the Nine-Dash Line is not real. The wall has a cartographic existence. It appears on maps and passports. It is reproduced by the mass media and it circulates in the virtual reality of the Internet. To give the wall legitimacy, it is mythologized by a history (once upon a time, during the reign of the mighty Yuan dynasty…) just like its predecessor in North China. Some would say this history is a lie, a fabrication. I prefer to call the narrative supporting China’s claim a historical fiction.

Every history, says French historian Paul Veyne, is a fiction, a story, a plot, through which one makes sense of all the facts. Most importantly, the Nine-Dash Line is backed by a flotilla of Chinese coast guard ships, now supported by a gigantic aircraft carrier. These ships are roving the high sea as if it were a territorial sea, guarding and sometimes leading fishermen or poachers, depending on one’s viewpoint. Hence, although it is merely cartographic, one should not belittle its reality, its hyper-reality. The Nine-Dash Line need not represent a real wall for every Chinese already brings with him the reality of the postmodern wall. And nowadays we all feel the wall, too.

As an invisible wall, the Nine-Dash Line is logically vague, open, and movable. It represents no determinate position on the sea. It is no wonder the US State Department recently wrote that “China has not published geographic coordinates specifying the location of the dashes.” Without this specification, the paper concludes that China’s maritime claims are “unclear.” Indeed, the vagueness reminds one of Mao Zedong’s border region with the Soviets in Jiangxi and in North China. The Nine-Dash Line’s boundaries are also moving according to the political and military situation. In short, the boundary does not bind; it is a boundless boundary.

But what is within this invisible wall? The objects are quite familiar. There is an imaginary city created by legal fiction—Sansha City, whose mayor rules like Sancho Panza governing his Quixotic Island. Surrounding this imaginary city are the rocks that now appear like (artificial) islands. “They are rocks, Master,” says Sancho. “No, Sancho,” Don Quixote says, “those are islands. You don’t know the ways of the world and you underestimate the transformational magic of the Chinese Monkey King. What appears to our eyes as rocks are really islands.” Thus, in China’s journey to the Southeast, rocks are transformed into islands, islands into fortresses, fortresses into cities.

Now it becomes clear that the next Disneyland will not rise in Shanghai, the center of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. It is already rising in China’s South Sea. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once identified Disneyland as “the perfect model of all the entangled orders of simulation.” The imaginary Sansha City, with its artificial islands and invisible fortification, embodies the concept of a simulated city. Whether it will be Mickey Mouse or the Monkey King who shall entertain the new arrivals, it remains to be seen. But for sure, this new Disneyland will be open to tourists soon and the whole world will be welcome.

Let us prepare, then, our digital cameras and our forced smiles, for we shall soon become foreign tourists in our own backyard.

Jose Duke S. Bagulaya studied Mandarin and Fujianese in Tacloban City. He is assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he teaches Chinese literature (CL 144) and law and literature (CL 198). He works as a lawyer in his spare time.