Italy should learn how to manage migration and public security from China, says Italian politician who lived there for a decade

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The rise of populist politicians and movements has been the political story of the decade in Europe. "Populism" is a very broad label, sometimes used as a smear against anyone who pushes for genuine change. All the same, it has currently come to indicate a wave of movements that all share some broad features: they claim to be outside of the political mainstream, reject traditional politics as corrupt, are hostile to immigration, view the EU with suspicion, claim to speak for the people against the elites and hark back to the "good old days" when every country was supposedly in charge of its own affairs. 

Italy might well be the first Western European country to elect a government that belongs within this current. Although the prime minister Conte is an unassuming technocrat, the two major parties that make up the government, the Lega and the 5 Star Movement, embody two different brands of populism. The Lega's brand is more "right-wing", anti-immigrant, nationalistic and anti-EU. The 5 Star Movement is more anti-establishment and anti-traditional politics, and in some cases it promotes environmentalism, universal basic income and other progressive causes. On the other hand, it is strongly Eurosceptic and many of its leaders appear to feel an affinity with Putin.

Within this new government, the main link to China is the undersecretary for economic development, Michele Geraci. An ex-investment banker and economist, Geraci moved to China in 2008 and lived there for a decade, teaching finance in the University of Zhejiang and at the University of Nottingham's campus in Ningbo, until he was recently called back to Italy to take up his current post. He has long been close to the Lega, which proposed him for the government post, and he has also long been a strong admirer of the Chinese system. 

Geraci is fond of claiming that Italy should learn from the Chinese model and copy what it can, a point he has made in numerous talks and articles. His view of how China works would appear to be extremely one-sided, since he never makes any reference to China's huge debt problem, or the slowing down of its economic growth, or its worsening repression and pursuing of dubious territorial claims. At a conference organized by the Lega last summer, Geraci exhorted the audience (link in Italian) to "study China and copy the things we can learn from, adapting them to our needs", and he explained the sources of China's success, which lie in the fact that China "decides every year how much to build and how many people will have to move from the countryside to the city, programs immigration, and controls the tariffs on international trade and the interest rates".

This June Geraci authored an article published on Beppe Grillo's blog (Beppe Grillo is the founder of the 5 Star Movement, and his blog used to be the movement's quasi-official media outlet). Entitled "China and the Government of Change", the article lists a whole lot of ways in which Italy's new government should learn from China, a few of which really raised my eyebrows. One area in which China could show Italy the way is apparently the control of migration. China's management of the influx of migrants from rural areas to the cities over the last 40 years is presented as a model for Italy to manage its own problem with migration. "Who can we learn how to manage the migratory flows from? From China".

Geraci claims that the Chinese government only let people move to the cities after investing to give them "dignity and work", but it also limited "loitering and crime" by making sure that the new arrivals "knew the rules and respected the social pact of the place that hosted them". No mention is made of the inequality between rural migrants and urban residents that the hukou system creates, an inequality that extends to the migrants' children and is hardly very dignified. There also seems to be no understanding of how disruptive, chaotic and costly the whole process of urbanization has been. But most of all, there is no recognition of the fact that China's experience with urbanization has nothing to do with Italy's need to deal with a constant inflow of people arriving from Africa on rickety boats across the Mediterranean, given which Geraci's recommendations appear to be nothing more than some cheap rhetoric about how immigrants should be "kept in their place like they do in China". 

Even more strikingly, Geraci claims that Italy should learn from China in terms of public security. "Which is the country where public security works? Who can we learn something useful from? From China", claims the undersecretary. Mirroring the kind of discourse you find in the Chinese media, he says that "in China women can walk the streets happily at night without the terror that reigns over here". He then adds that "in the last few years, China has also improved a lot in terms of criminal and civil justice, overtaking Italy". He does add the caveat that cooperation would be good "within the limits that our culture and constitution impose", however we do not hear a single word about China's dire and worsening human rights record, in the face of which claiming that China's criminal and civil justice has overtaken Italy's can only make any sense if you think that the civil and human rights of criminal suspects are not worth respecting.

This pro-Chinese rhetoric is reflected in the new government's actions. Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement and minister of economic development, as well as unofficial head of the government alongside the Lega's leader Salvini, made an official visit to China last month, with Geraci going along as his sidekick. During the visit, Di Maio made it clear that Italy wishes to be the first G7 country to sign an MOU with China to become a partner in the Belt and Road project, something which the British and French prime ministers have already declined to do.

Geraci's uncritical expression of admiration for Chinese governance has elicited a reaction in the form of an open letter signed by a group of young Italian academics involved in the study of contemporary China. The letter calls Geraci's article part of a "very dangerous drift that is taking place today in many Western societies, including Italy", and takes him to task for his call to learn from China's handling of migration and public security, answering back with reasoned arguments. Strikingly, almost all of the letters' signatories work in universities outside of Italy. I recently met one of them in person when he visited Beijing. He told me that there is a very simple reason why most of the signatories are not based in Italy: the China Studies departments of Italian universities are linked to Confucius Institutes and receive funding from them. People are convinced that if they take this kind of stand, they put themselves at risk of being cut off from funding, cooperation, and visits to China. Now where have I heard all this before?

Geraci and Di Maio signing a cooperation agreement with Sichuan province during their recent visit to China

Foreign tourists aren't coming to China, and it is hurting the economy

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Most foreign residents in China seem to agree that the country has become a less easy place for outsiders to navigate over the last few years. From renting a house to accessing banking services, having a foreign passport rather than a Chinese ID is becoming more and more of a liability. This is probably part of the reason that the number of foreigners living in China is still pretty tiny, and not really increasing very fast either. I would argue that this is not to the country's benefit, although this can be a hard point to sell in China. 

It has become apparent, however, that there is one area where China's refusal to make more accommodation for foreigners is causing an immediate, tangible damage to the country's economy, and that is tourism. Over the last couple of years, various analysts have noted that China's current account balance has been hard hit by the gap between inbound and outbound tourism. To put it simply, there are currently far more Chinese travelling abroad than there are foreign tourists coming to China.

In 2017 Chinese tourists made 130 million trips abroad, spending a total of 115.29 billion US dollars. In the same year, the number of foreigners taking trips to China fell just short of 30 million. For a country of China's size and heritage, this is not a very impressive figure. By way of comparison, Thailand received over 35 million visits in the same year, Japan got over 28 million, and even not so glamorous Vietnam still managed 12 million.

It isn't hard to see why China receives few visitors. The unnecessarily restrictive visa regime for foreign tourists is one major factor. In a world where more and more countries allow visa-free travel (at least for citizens of developed countries), China is definitely not going down this path. While Americans, Brits and a few other nationalities are able to receive multiple entry tourist visas as part of reciprocal deals, citizens of most countries are generally given one-month visas. This is dependent on showing that they have tickets both to enter and leave China, and presenting evidence of hotel bookings for the entire duration of the trip.

For most individual travellers this is a burdensome requirement, based on the assumption that they have planned out their entire trip in advance. For young backpackers on their gap year trips around the world, this may well be reason enough to stay away from China all together. 

Then there is the hassle of getting around China as a foreign tourist. This has become much harder in recent years, precisely because of the same set of factors that have made life more convenient for long-term residents. Essentially, almost everything in China is now arranged and paid for through an ecosystem of smartphone apps that is very hard for outsiders to access. From cabs to cinema tickets, phone bills to airplanes, there is almost nothing that cannot be booked through your phone and paid for using WeChat.

Trying to do things the old way can be tricky, more expensive or downright impossible. For example, waving down a taxi on the street has become much harder in Chinese cities, since everyone uses Didi to hail a car. But you cannot use Didi unless you can pay with WeChat or Alipay, and you cannot do that unless you have a Chinese bank account. WeChat used to allow you to use its "wallet" function even without linking it to a bank account, but this is no longer possible (probably due to "security concerns").

For travellers not planning to open a Chinese bank account (which is generally impossible on a tourist visa anyway), getting around an already puzzling country has become a lot harder. Fortunately it is still possible to pay in cash in most establishments, although even this could soon start to change (I already know of one restaurant in Beijing that only accepts mobile payments).  

Then there is the truly incredible fact that a large proportion of Chinese hotels do not accept foreign guests as a matter of policy. This is the case even in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. While a few decades ago hotels needed a special license to accept foreigners, and only the high-end ones generally received it, nowadays all hotels could do so in principle. Quite simply many establishments do not want the hassle of having to register foreign guests with the local police, or do not know how to go about it, and so they just reject all foreigners. Although any Chinese city will still have hotels where foreigners can stay, this state of affairs represents a serious annoyance for the independent traveller, especially since it is the cheaper places that are most likely not to accept foreigners.

All in all, what emerges is the picture of a country that is simply not trying very hard to make itself welcoming to short-term visitors, even though this is actually costing it economically. The omnipresent sense of national pride and the state's growing security paranoia remain the best explanations. The strict visa regime is probably seen as a response to other countries' strict requirements for visiting Chinese citizens. The situations are not really comparable though: while most rich countries have a justified fear of illegal immigration, the chances of visitors from places like Australia or Germany overstaying their visas in China is almost non-existent (and they would hardly be able to lay low for very long, given the country’s omnipresent surveillance). The same sense of pride, the increased regimentation and control and the perceived need to monitor foreigners’ movements makes it hard to imagine changes to the rules that make China difficult for independent travellers, although many of them could be changed quite easily with some good will.

The fact remains that China’s diminishing capital account surplus is a serious source of concern for the government, and the large imbalance between how much Chinese tourists spend abroad and how much foreign tourists spend in China is a significant contributing factor (although obviously not the only one). Given that it is no longer politically feasible to restrict the majority of Chinese citizens from travelling abroad, there is little that could be done about this except opening up more to foreign tourism. 

Even within China, some have now begun to call for more openness. At the recent ITB conference in Beijing, Ctrip founder and co-chairman James Liang called for the government to make China more attractive to foreign visitors. He recommended relaxing visa policies, pointing to a study by the World Tourism Organization showing that only five countries worldwide have more restrictive visa policies than China, those countries being Angola, Gabon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. He noted that Turkey, which allows visa-free access for nationals of 78 countries, managed to attract more international visitors than the whole of China in 2017. He also recommended that the government build more museums and further develop airports and railway travel (this last suggestion might seem a bit superfluous).

While this is encouraging, I can't really see much being done to make China more inviting for foreign travellers any time soon. In the near future, tourism is probably going to remain one field in which China haemorrhages money towards the outside world.

When the Tibetans and Uyghurs overran China

The worrying developments in Xinjiang seem to have finally caught some of the world's attention, although it is far from becoming the cause célèbre that Tibet was in years past. Modern China's relationship with its minorities in these two regions remains fraught, and any compromise seems unlikely. It is interesting to look back at a time when the balance of power was reversed, and the Tibetans and Uyghurs made up formidable fighting forces that almost overran China.

Back in the middle of the eight century CE, China was ruled by the fabled Tang dynasty, now remembered for presiding over a golden era of prosperity, openness to the world and even women's rights (China's only ever female ruler, Wu Zetian, took power in this period). The capital Chang'an was the world's largest city with two million people, and the Tang dynasty was the world's largest empire. The cosmopolitan capital included quite a few non-Chinese among its inhabitants, probably in a higher proportion than you would find in any Chinese city today. Nowadays Chang'an is known as Xi'an, a city that sits in the middle of an arid, impoverished backwater, but in those days China's North-West was the empire's flourishing centre, while Southern China remained on the perifery.

To its North and West, Tang China was flanked by two mighty empires: the Tibetan empire and the Uyghur Khaganate. We are used to hearing about these two peoples as beleaguered minorities in modern China, unable to even beginning to compete with the Han in terms of numbers, resources and power. The balance of power was however quite different at the time.

The Tibetan empire came into being in the 7th century CE, when a specific clan gained control of central Tibet and based their capital in Lhasa, which has remained Tibet's main urban centre ever since. Even though Tibet has always had a harsh and unforgiving natural environment, over the next two centuries its rulers created a powerful state and expanded over a much larger area than the Tibetan plateau, gaining control over much of what is now Xinjiang, Yunnan, Kashmir, Nepal and even Bengal. The Tibetans at this stage were not yet Buddhists, although it at this time that Buddhism appeared in the Tibetan plateau. Buddhism in China, however, was enjoying the peak of its popularity.

A statue of Songtsen Gampo, unifier of Tibet and founder of the Tibetan empire, in one of the ancient meditation caves of Yerpa, outside of Lhasa

The Uyghur Khaganate, on the other hand, was a tribal confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples that existed between the eight and the ninth centuries CE. It spanned a huge area covering modern Mongolia, the north of modern Xinjiang, and a big chunk of Russian Siberia and Northeastern China, reaching all the way to the Pacific. Its capital was at Ordu Baliq, now in Mongolia. Its ruler was the khagan, which in Turkish and Mongolian languages is a title of imperial rank. Given that Turkic languages, which now spread all the way from Xinjiang to Turkey, actually originated in what is now Mongolia, it is not surprising that the khaganate was based there.

It should be recognized that although this kingdom was known by the term "Uyghur", its relationship with the people currently known as Uyghurs is not straightforward. The term "Uyghur" was rediscovered by the Soviets in the early twentieth century and used to define all of the settled Muslims of Xinjiang, which is what it refers to in China today. Although modern Uyghurs are partly descended from the people who made up this empire, and they also speak a Turkic language, they are probably also descend from other groups. In fact, it is likely that the Uyghurs of the time had much more East Asian facial features than the current Uyghurs do. At the time the Uyghurs followed Shamanistic beliefs, although the official religion of their state later became Manichaeism.

Over the first part of the eight century, the Tibetan empire and Tang China were constantly fighting each other for territory. In 755, a devastating rebellion against the Tang dynasty was begun by a general named An Lushan. As was often the case with Chinese generals in these cosmopolitan times, An Lushan himself was not a Chinese. His ethnic origins are uncertain, but his adoptive parents were Sogdian (an Iranian-speaking civilization in Central Asia) and Turkic. He reportedly spoke six languages on top of Chinese.

An Lushan, the "barbarian" general who almost brought down the Tang dynasty

As Chinese historical records would have it, the events that led to this rebellion were put in motion by the Chinese emperor at the time, Xuanzong, who had reigned since 713 CE. Although initially a shrewd and competent emperor, by about 736 he had become tired with affairs of state, and turned his attention to artistic pursuits and his favourite courtesan, Yang Guifei (one of China's traditional "four great beauties"). He consequently left all affairs of state in the hands of his chief minister Li Linfu, remembered as a villanous figure who purged all real or imagined opponents and became a de-facto dictator. One of his moves was to nominate only non-Chinese to the powerful posts of military governors of the different regions of China. His reasoning was that lacking ties to the court, they would not enable any rivals to gain power on the basis of military success. This is not strange when you consider that at the time, a big chunk of the Chinese army consisted of non-Chinese mercenaries. An Lushan was thus nominated military governor of the North-East (corresponding broadly to what is now Hebei and Shandong), and amassed lots of power.

When Li Linfu died in 752, Xuanzong replaced him with Yang Guozhong, the second cousin of Yang Guifei, his beloved courtesan. Yang Guozhong intended to eliminate An Lushan, who consequently rebelled. An Lushan's rebellion was a blow from which the Tang dynasty never really recovered. It continued for years and caused the death of millions by starvation and disease. In the broader scheme of things, it probably put an end to the aristocratic system that still dominated China, and brought about the social and economic changes that would create the bureaucratic, examination-based system of later dynasties.

After the rebels took the capital, the emperor's court was forced to flee to Chengdu. Xuanzong's angry troops rebelled, killed Yang Guozhong, and forced the emperor to have Yang Guifei strangled. Even Confucian scholars would later disagree on whether she was the author of her own downfall, or a convenient female scapegoat. An Lushan was killed by his own son in 756, but the rebellion went ahead. In order to suppress the rebels, the Tang dynasty sought the assistance of the Uyghurs. The Uyghurs contributed 4000 cavalrymen to the imperial army, which was then able to retake the capital from the rebels.

In 762 the Uyghurs also assisted with the recapture of Luoyang, now an unremarkable provincial city, but then a second capital of sorts, with a population second only to Chang'an itself. The Uyghurs only helped on condition that they could loot the city. In the sacking of Luoyang, in which the Uyghurs were joined by Chinese troops, tens of thousands of civilians were killed and the city burned to the ground. The Uyghurs' behaviour was certainly not exemplary: when civilians fled to Buddhist temples looking for protection, the Uyghurs burnt those down as well. Ironically it was during this adventure that the Uyghur khagan encountered Manichean priests and decided to adopt this faith for his kingdom. Manicheaism is based on the idea of a constant struggle between good and evil.

The rebellion was finally crushed in 763, but in the meantime the Tibetan empire had occupied more and more of Northwestern China's grasslands, taking advantage of Chinese weakness. In 763 the Tibetans actually occupied China's capital, the great Chang'an, for fifteen days, attempting to install a puppet emperor. Although they were quickly kicked out of the capital, they continued to rule over areas previously under Tang rule where many Chinese resided.

The next year yet another important Tang general, Pugu Huaien, decided to rebel after fearing that he would be accused of treason. He was also of Turkic descent, and if he wasn't a Uyghur then he was closely related to them. In fact he had been instrumental in setting up China's alliance with the Uyghurs. When Pugu Huaien rebelled, the Uyghurs and the Tibetans immediately joined him. They were ready to launch a joint attack on the Chinese capital when he died in September 765. The Uyghurs then switched sides again, and helped the Chinese finally push back the Tibetans.

Over the next decades the Uyghurs exploited the Tang's weakness and its need to keep them as allies by extracting rights of extra-territoriality for the Uyghurs and Sogdians who lived in Chang'an and other Chinese cities, so that they would not be subjected to local law. Their immunity from Chinese law, and their money-lending activities, created resentment and anti-foreign feelings amongst the ordinary Chinese which may have laid the basis for the massacres of foreign residents a century later.

A mural commemorating the victory of a successful rebellion against the Tibetan Empire in 848, led by the Chinese residents of what is now Gansu province

Within a hundred years of the events described above, both the Tibetan empire and the Uyghur Khaganate would be history. The Tibetan empire collapsed in the 840s, after a civil war fragmented it and led to the rule of regional warlords over the Tibetan plateau. Tibet would only be unified again under the Mongols, four centuries later. The Uyghur Khaganate collapsed around the same time, after a particularly severe winter in an already cold land killed much of the livestock which its economy depended on, after which the Kyrgyz invaded and sacked the capital. The Uyghurs migrated south and west, became Buddhists and then finally Muslims, mixing with others to constitute the Uyghurs we know today.

It is probable that China, with its much larger population, fertile land and sophisticated bureaucracy was always going to last longer than any Tibetan or Uyghur polity could. Nowadays China is one of the major powers of the world, within whose borders the impoverished and marginalised descendants of the Tibetan and Uyghur of the time are fighting a losing struggle against an assimilation which at least in the case of the Uyghurs has become worryingly forceful. The fact that they once outfought the whole of China and almost led a joint assault on its capital is not well-remembered.

But it is interesting to look back at a time when Tibet was a military threat and the Uyghurs were in a position to blackmail the empire. It is also fascinating to think that China's destiny could be decided by rebel generals who spoke Turkic languages as their mother tongue. Unlike China's current ethnic minorities, non-Han living in China in those days were not constantly being told they were Chinese. From what we can see, their foreign status seems to have been recognized both by themselves and others. An Lushan used to joke with the emperor about how as a barbarian he could not understand Chinese court etiquette. At the same time, these "foreigners" were allowed to amass power and become real players at the national level in a way that members of minorities nowadays would find very hard to do, at least if they are distinguishable from the Han by speech or custom.