American author Anne Stevenson-Yang came to China in early 1985 and worked in the English section of the official monthly magazine China Pictorial. She was in her twenties, and at the time, she felt that Mao Zedong’s Thought (Maoism) and socialism were “particularly powerful.” She even said: “I want to learn… if we cure some of the social ills of the United States, we can have a more ideal society.”
I got to know the people and grew to love China
In 1988, Anne Stevenson married Yang Zhifang, a Chinese man, and returned to the United States with him. In 1993, she returned to China as a Beijing representative to the US-China Business Council, a private non-profit economic organization in the United States. She had frequent exchanges with officials of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Before returning to the United States in 2014 to settle down, she had lived in China for 25 years. It was during that time that she got to know and love China.
Exposing the fraud caused her to fall from favor with the CCP
During her time in China, Anne Stevenson-Yang opened several companies. One such company, J Capital Research, was founded in 2007 and has been publishing research reports on listed Chinese companies in various industries for American investors. However, after she exposed the fraudulent activities of Chinese companies and dared to criticize the CCP, she was no longer “liked” by Beijing.
Moreover, after returning to the United States, Anne attended several times as an economic and business analyst in China-related hearings held by the United States Congress, exposing the financial fraud of Chinese companies and the risks of investing in China.
Wild Ride: “Reform and Opening Up” is just a ruse
Anne Stevenson-Yang recently published a book titled Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy, based on Anne’s 25 years of local experience and in-depth research within China. She informs readers that reform and opening up are “a play played by the CCP for foreign businessmen.” Reform and opening up are phony, a ruse, a short-term measure the CCP took to attract money from the world. If there is enough money, the CCP will not necessarily continue participating in the international community. If it threatens the CCP’s rule, the CCP will no longer open up again.
In the book, Anne pessimistically predicts that China may return to the old path of isolation as it was before the 1980s. She also reflects on her first-hand experience of “blindly participating” in it.
The CCP is becoming more dark and repressive
Of course, Anne misses her in-laws, Chinese food in China, and her Chinese friends, whom she finds easier to get along with and more easy-going than Americans. She has not set foot there again since the pandemic. Moreover, the CCP has been “turning to the left” in recent years, and the CCP has arrested several of Anne’s friends for no reason.
In 2023, Anne’s husband passed away. Before he died, he asked Anne to bury part of his ashes on a mountain in Beijing, where his parents are buried. However, Anne could not fulfill her husband’s last wish to return to his hometown. She was worried about being detained if she returned to Beijing. Anne said: “I am very sorry, but I dare not return.”
Sinophile, Tomoko Agu: Japanese professor of modern Chinese studies
Like Anne Stevenson-Yang, who loves China but dares not return, Tomoko Agu is a Japanese scholar and professor of modern Chinese studies at the University of Tokyo. In 2002, Shaanxi Cave dwelling welcomed the wedding of the first Japanese couple, Tomoko Agu, and her husband, Hideo Shiroyama, who was then a reporter for Japan’s Jiji News Agency and is an expert on China.
At that time, Tomoko Agu was responsible for poverty alleviation work at the Japanese Embassy in mainland China. She learned about the culture of Yangjiagou of Shaanxi Province, especially the local paper-cutting, special weddings, and sedan chairs. She thinks the local cave dwellings are also magnificent because they are in an “old revolutionary area” and a historical place.
Tomoko Agu held a wedding in front of a cave in Shaanxi and had a “Chinese mother.” She worked to help farmers in traditional areas of Shaanxi increase apple yields and invited experts from Japan to help grow organic apples.
Encounters with the regime police turn sour
However, Tomoko Agu encountered hostility from the Chinese Communist regime on three occasions. The first time was when she was with Chinese reporters in Inner Mongolia to learn about corruption with poverty alleviation. The second time was when she was in Guizhou to learn about the petition issue of reservoir migrants. The third time was when she helped lawyer Pu Zhiqiang communicate with her Japanese counterparts and was interrogated by the Communist police. This gave her a new outlook on the Chinese Communist government.
She loves China, but this was the final blow
However, what changed Tomoku Agu’s thinking of the Chinese Communist government was the arrest of her friends in Hong Kong and China. In an interview in 2023, Tomoku Agu told Voice of America (VOA): “I like China very much, and this attitude has not changed.” However: “I hate the Chinese Communist government! The reason I hate the Chinese Communist government is that they arrested my friends.”
Tomoku Agu and her husband know many lawyers, journalists, and academics in China, and they also know many friends in Hong Kong, including former Legislative Council members. Now, these friends of the couple are either under house arrest or imprisoned. She believes this is a problem with the Chinese system: The lack of rule of law and the government’s restriction of speech.
Her last trip to China
As a scholar on China issues, Tomoku Agu regularly traveled there to conduct fieldwork. When she went there in 2019, she planned to visit human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong in Henan, but gave up because of the national security tracking. This was her last trip to China. In 2023, Tomoku Agu told the media that she originally wanted to do research in China, but now she dared not set foot there again. She disagrees with the CCP’s request for visa applicants to provide a large amount of personal information on national security grounds; more importantly, she is also worried that she may be arrested in China.
They face a real and terrifying danger
Although Anne Stevenson-Yang and Tomoku Agu have very different experiences, they both still love China. However, after many years of living experience in the country, they gradually began to distinguish between Chinese people and the Chinese Communist regime. They both like to make friends with Chinese people, share happy times and hobbies, and want to help China become a better place.
The Chinese Communist regime, while taking advantage of them, regards their questioning of some of their shortcomings and their integrity and kindness as opposition and threats. Hence, it treats them differently and even imposes specific personal threats. Looking at what has happened to their Chinese friends made them feel that this threat is real and terrifying, so they no longer set foot in China.
China’s domestic environment has vastly deteriorated
China’s domestic environment has deteriorated significantly over the years, and its attitude toward foreigners, especially Americans and Japanese, has become increasingly bad. The CCP continues to tighten its control on speech, expands the definition of espionage, searches the Chinese offices of foreign consultant management companies, arrests foreign businessmen, and other scandals.
As far as social security is concerned, there were vicious incidents in 2024 in which an American teacher was assassinated in Jilin, and Japanese elementary school students were hacked to death in Suzhou and Shenzhen. Under the rule of the Chinese Communist regime, do foreign friends still dare to come to China?
CCP rule means no law or security for the people
For example, R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to China, said there were 15,000 American students in the country six or seven years ago, but now there are only 350. Another example is that foreign airlines are withdrawing from the Chinese market and operating only 60 percent of the flights since before the pandemic. The number of flights between the United States and China is about one-fifth of that in 2019.
Looking back at Anne Stevenson-Yang and Tomoku Agu, one is a foreign wife in China, and the other is a well-known Japanese expert on modern China; both regard the country as their second home. They love China, but dare not set foot there again!
Translated by Chua BC
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