Learn from Shakespeare, learn from China

If you've ever been a public relations minion at a rather large company, you'll develop a sense of cynicism for things that important people have supposedly written, because you yourself will probably have ghostwritten some important things for important people.

If you've ever been a newspaper opinions columnist, you'll realise that a good number of columnists spend absurd amounts of time attempting to bury their would-be scathing and controversial ideas under a blanket of allusions and soft language, in an effort to draw their more intelligent readers into a fast-paced guessing game of their real intentions.

If you've ever been a humanities student in a liberal arts university, you'll start to understand that a piece of writing that does not reflect or address current issues in one's immediate society will never receive a top grade or be worthy of being published.

(Un?)fortunately for me, I have been all of these three things and when I read Mayor of London Boris Johnson's column on how Wen Jiabao and China appreciate Shakespeare, I inevitably began to speculate about

a) whether he wrote this himself

b) why does he care so much

and c) what is he REALLY trying to say?

The premise of the article consists of Mayor Johnson's appreciation of Wen's appreciation of Shakespeare, and Johnson's justification of the political and social compatibility of Shakespeare's dramatical themes with China's particular political climate and leadership. Johnson concluded that plotlines and characters in Shakespeare's plays are China-friendly. I concluded, so what?

One thing that bothered me right at the beginning was Johnson's surprise that Wen is able to read, think about and interpret Shakespeare so well. What, are we not supposed to expect some degree of internationally-aware education from a political leader of the most populous country in the world?

But while Johnson's tendency towards Orientalism irked me, my main puzzlement arose out of questioning the mere existence of the article at all. Why did Johnson write, or commission a PPE student intern from Cambridge to write, this seemingly random opinion? 

Here's the part of my own article where I begin to express my own opinion. Please allow me to make the following conjecture, using a simple listmaking method. 

1. The social/political context of the writer and his piece of writing. 
In about one year's time, London (Johnson's domain) will play host to the next summer Olympic Games. Such a ridiculously large-scale showcase of international cooperation (ironically, through competition) inevitably causes some disagreements and unrest in those who have a stake in the events, as well as those who want to take advantage of the huge numbers of people to make some noise. 

2. China's universally-criticised social, political and economic policies during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Starting from the controversial and highly-contested gentrification movements in the old Beijing city areas to make room for fancy, modern buildings, to firing missiles into rainclouds to ensure good weather, to boycotts and protests during the Olympic Torch Relay, the 2008 Olympics were pulled off without potholes in the racecourse, but accompanied by a lot of booing from the sidelines.


3. The significance of Shakespeare as a non-controversial icon.
So the English have always loved Shakespeare. And now, it seems, so have the Chinese! Not only that, there were times throughout Chinese history that China favoured Shakespeare above their native classics. Well, if the Chinese and the English had something so important in common all this time, maybe the Chinese aren't so bad after all and the English are more like them than they'd originally thought, and there could be a few things that the English could learn from them.


I conclude warily that Johnson's underlying argument is that in light of the upcoming London OIympics, it shouldn't be too disastrous if London behaved a little more like Beijing if it needed to resolve issues of public unrest, do a little bit of media censorship and fix up the city a little bit more. I read this article as a chilling admission by the Mayor of London giving the go-ahead for his government to become a little more like China's.


Does this seem plausible, or is it too far-fetched? Maybe too many years of the humanities and public relations has made me a bit of a conspiracy theorist after all...