The One Thing That Will Bring China Down - Simon Elegant
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
There's 5.8 billion people that live under some form of totalitarianism or autocracy. Many of these people are super educated. 90, 100 million people in the Chinese Communist Party overseeing 1.3 billion people. China seems pretty entrenched. Am I missing that? What is unique about them? Where they can stay in power.
When I was talking to people down a mine in Shanxi or wherever it was, the one thing they always talked about, everybody loves their family and wants their kids to do well. It's a universal thing. And that's the one point where I thought the Chinese Communist Party might be vulnerable. And they're very, very conscious of it. When you've got 30% of the population and 120 million people or something like that graduating every year, it's crazy difficult. That's an enormous thing, and that's the one place they're vulnerable. You can have all the maglev trains and the highways and all the high-speed trains that you want, but if you don't get jobs for the kids, you're going to be in trouble.
Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Simon Elegant. He's the China Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, but he's out with a new book, City on Fire, a novel of Hong Kong. Am I right in saying that Hong Kong, the name means fragrant harbor?
You are exactly right.
Yes. Okay. And why? What is fragrant about that harbor?
Well, that's the joke normally is that it used to be a stinking mess, but they reclaimed so much land that there's hardly any room left between the island of Hong Kong and the peninsula of Kowloon. And it used to be so if you fell into it by accident, you'd die of some weird disease. But so it was very unfragrant. I think they've cleaned it up a bit now.
All right. But that's an ancient word, Fragrant Harbor. Okay. You spent years covering Asia, some of the region's most consequential political and cultural shifts. So before we get into the novel, tell us about your background and what drew you to Asia. Why did you end up going there?
Sure. I was actually born in Hong Kong, and I grew up there partly because my dad was a reporter as well. He actually, believe it or not, seeing as how it's come full cycle, he opened the Newsweek Bureau there in Hong Kong to cover and covered the Cultural Revolution in China, a big mess, mostly by listening to the radio in those days. And it kind of comes full cycle when I... I probably should update you that I am no longer the China bureau chief for the Washington Post because I, along with many, many of my colleagues, got canned by Mr. Bezos. But that was a couple of months ago. It's a different issue. Another story for another time. Yeah. So my dad was based there for Newsweek and then the L.A. Times and.
I guess it just got into my blood, both Asia, China in particular, and, you know, journalism, being a foreign correspondent, looked like a lot of fun. So, yeah.
Well, I mean, that is an amazing city. So I'll just fully disclose to you, I lived there for about four months in 1998. Oh, okay.
Wow.
And so it was a couple of years after the handover. I was living in the Island Shangri-La Hotel. So you know exactly the location I was living in. I sure do. Because I was there as a corporate and I was... We were working on Chung Kung Center for Mr. Li Ka-shing and a few other things. And look, I love that city. I try to get back there at least once or twice a year. Wow. Okay. But you took what I think, I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like this was one of the more, the backdrop for this very exciting novel is one of the most volatile periods in the history of modern literature. Hong Kong. This is the 2019 protest movement. Why that era? Why that setting for this? What were you trying to convey?
I mean, I was there reporting it. I did some stories on the ground and I just got fascinated by... I mean, effectively, I had stopped being a reporter for a while. I was the bureau chief for Time in Beijing. And I love journalism, but it can get a bit, how should we say, bricklaying. It develops into an element of bricklaying.
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