Why flat-pack China doesn't quite work
Updated on 14 January 2008
The Chinese translation of Ikea is Yijia - pleasant home. I went there last Sunday, writes China producer Bessie Du.
I felt I was stumbling onto a movie set. Hundreds of Chinese families, young couples, children and grandparents, were trying out beds, sofas and dining room sets.
The smiles on grannies' faces, kids running through lamps and curtains, and the bright colours of the Ikea home decors highlighted by fancy lights created a warm - if not exactly peaceful - home scene.
I was touched. I felt like congratulating the Chinese people.
The abundance of material comfort, the variety and the richness of it all, was something my family and I could never have dreamed of 20 years ago.
The home I grew up in was two rooms of a total 23 square meters and one 15 watt light bulb, shared by five of us. Today - immersed in the joyfulness on the Ikea floor - I wandered around, jostled by the crowd, and felt proud to be among these families.
I bet Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan would also like to be part of this harmonious scene. Instead, while he's locked up for "incitement to subvert state power", she has became a prisoner in her own home with their eight week old baby.
Then I thought of the young family we tried to visit earlier that week.
I bet Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan would also like to be part of this harmonious scene. Instead, while he's locked up for "incitement to subvert state power", she has became a prisoner in her own home with their eight week old baby.
They've lost their freedom because they're "trouble makers" who could - allegedly - endanger state power.
Their crime is to publish articles on the internet which criticise the injustice and abuse of power by officials. It was their call for a just and open civil society which made them a threat to state power.
The scene at Ikea tells me, with the current state power in place, the lives of Chinese people have improved a great deal. However, many people I meet through my work as a journalist tell me that their basic rights are not guaranteed by a sound and functioning legal system.
The peaceful lives of these ordinary people can be turned upside down on any given day.
One's home can be forcefully torn down because the officials have signed away the land to a developer. Somebody's son can be beaten to death by the city patrol officers because he's taken pictures to document their brutality.
The state power is there to protect the people. When it fails to protect and nobody dares to speak out, anger grows, injustice prevails, then the support of this power will be seriously undermined.
It's not criticism that leads to subversion of state power. It's the abuse of power.
I wish the state power would allow Hu Jia and Jinyan and many other critics to enjoy freedom and normal family lives like the hundreds of families at Ikea on Sunday.
But I don't despair. I find myself looking for their faces in the crowd at Yijia, the pleasant home.
