The Dark Road by Ma Jian

This is a tricky one. For the most part Ma Jian produces a compelling narrative on the brutal implementation of China’s, One Child Policy, but on occasion Ma allows his dialogue to lapse into crude propaganda against the Chinese Communist Party. It’s not that his criticisms are not merited they probably are. It’s more that he fails to develop the dialectic between the modernising policies of the Chinese Communist Party and the often inhuman implementation of those policies. Too often Ma sets up contrived situations where his characters launch into an unconvincing polemic against all things communist without taking the time to unravel the complexities of China’s breath-taking journey out of rural Asiatic feudalism and into an urban, industrialised modernity.

It isn’t always pretty but taken in its full historical perspective, China’s modernisation is probably one of the most staggering developments in human history. Ma, in his rush to expose the inequities and petty criminality of China’s present, loses sight of the historical dimension. Instead, he allows himself, or at least his characters, to fall prey to a romanticised, religiosity from a mythical Chinese past.

That Ma is a little too strident, a little too one-sided in his polemic is entirely the fault of the Chinese authorities. Because the Chinese Communist Party is want to continually fear and repress all alternative voices, dismissing the inevitability and desirability of opposing views, artists like Ma have little choice but to create a literary opposition. Ma’s novels have been banned in China which only forces writers like Ma to resort to crude propaganda rather than to develop more subtle, nuanced narratives.

Whatever the shortcomings of Ma novel, there is contained within it a magnificent statement of women’s liberation. I’ve read recently that feminism as a public activist movement is finding a second wind, typified by the ‘One Billion Rising’ campaign. There could be no better standard bearer for this new feminism than Ma’s latest novel. If Ma is one-sided in his criticism of the Chinese Communists, he gets it absolutely right on the question of women’s rights. Not content to expose the misogynistic brutality still alive and well within the Chinese State authorities, Ma is equally damning of the patriarchal chauvinism contained within ancient Confucianism. The transformation of his leading lady, Meili, from subjugated peasant to a liberated, enlightened woman, is the inspiring heart of the novel – even if her transformation strains credibility at times. Here is Ma at his polemical best:

‘When she met him at seventeen, she believed marriage was for ever, that the government protects and cares for people, and that husbands protect and care for their wives. But as soon as she got married, these naive beliefs were shattered. She discovered that women don’t own their bodies: their wombs and genitals are battle zones over which their husband and the state fight for control territories their husbands invade for sexual gratification and to produce male heirs, and which the state probes, monitors, guards and scraps so as to assert its power and spread fear. These continual intrusions into her body’s most intimate parts have made her lose her sense of who she is.’ P177

I doubt if peasant reared Meili would realistically have developed such complex and enlightened thoughts, but Ma has created no other vehicle in his novel to express these ideas. This is just one of countless examples where Ma unfortunately allows his narrative to lapse into polemic. Ma writes of Meili:

She wants to be a strong, adventurous woman who doesn’t rely on a man for her happiness.

Again a revolutionary thought that would no doubt infuriate a conservative, male dominated Chinese leadership, but one that a peasant women like Meili is unlikely to arrive at so soon after leaving her village. Ma continually gets the feminist politics spot on but in so doing stains to breaking point the credibility of his central female character. Ma, determined to hammer home his feminist philosophy, has Meili rebuke her Confucius loving husband:

‘I’m sick of your male chauvinism. No wonder Confucius wasn’t welcomed during his travels jabbering on about male superiority all the time!’ P165

Once again, a fine sentiment but not the likely thoughts of a peasant woman just a few years out of her remote village upbringing. On the question of government implementation of the One Child Policy, Ma is equally blunt. Dragged into a state abortion clinic Ma creates this scenario for Meili, the type of scenario that Ma claims he witnessed as he travelled, incognito, through the remote parts of Central and Southern China:

‘If you want to leave this room alive, you’d better shut up! Yes if you don’t keep quiet, you’ll be responsible for any medical accident that might happen in this room. Your womb belongs to the State. Getting pregnant without authorisation is against the law. Go to America, see what they say. China’s population control policy has the full support of the United Nations. Do you understand you ignorant peasant?’ P71

Powerful storytelling, searing polemic or just cheap propaganda?

Reading back over my review, I’ve seemed to have created a somewhat negative view of this novel. That was not my intent, because in truth, I actually found the book both immensely enjoyable and highly rewarding. Clearly, at least for the present, China’s authorities are not going to benignly allow a critical view of Chinese life to emerge. So it is to the artist, the novelist and the independent blogger to create that more balanced perspective. Jian Ma is definitely part of that process. Not only has he created a powerful contribution to the growing debate around the One Child Policy, he has created a devastating critique of China’s environmental degradation and subordinate position in the globalised economy. Ma gets right to the heart of China’s subordinate role:

‘The Emma Maersk, the largest container ship in the world, sailed from China to the United Kingdom to deliver 45,000 tonnes of Chinese manufactured Christmas toys, then returned to southern China a few weeks later loaded with UK electronic waste. Heaven Township is now the largest e-waste dump in the world. As much as 70% of the world’s toxic e-waste is shipped to this area of southern China, where it is processed in makeshift workshops by migrant labourers who are paid just $1.50 a day’ P280

Ma also offers haunting descriptive passages of the extreme pollution that blights China’s countryside and emerging cities, and this bleak imagery permeates the entire story. There can be little doubt here that Ma is not exaggerating:

‘88% of Heaven residents suffer from skin, respiratory, neurological or digestive diseases. Levels of lead poisoning and leukaemia among children are six times higher than the national average. In just ten years, Heaven Township, once a collection of sleepy rice villages, has become a digital-waste hell, a toxic graveyard of the world’s electronic refuse. The air is thick with dioxin-laden ash: the soil saturated with lead, mercury and tin; the rivers and groundwater are so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from neighbouring counties..’ P281

Ma provides plenty more of this depressing descriptive stuff. Despite the novel’s obvious flaws, taken as a whole, this is an important and enjoyable book, but one that is likely to remain on the Chinese banned list for some time yet. If for no other reason, the book deserves to be widely read, both in China and in the West.

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