Hypocrisy ethnographically analyses contemporary first-hand accounts of arrest, internment, release and recovery, as told by mainland Chinese people with drug addiction. Vincent Cheng's analysis uncovers a discursive mismatch between what the mainland Chinese state espouses in its propaganda on the topic of drug addiction and rehabilitation, and the reality of the experience for his informants. While the state asserts that it wishes to humanely treat and educate detained drug addicts in ways that facilitate their return to everyday society in a productive capacity, the informants’ stories point to punitive abuse in detention and ongoing control on their release. Cheng argues that this bears out a fundamental structural “hypocrisy” in the drug rehabilitative system in mainland China, hence the title of the book. Cheng claims that this hypocrisy is the cause of persisting unhappiness and dissatisfaction for his informants, as recounted in their stories. Moreover, he boldly asserts that their unhappiness and dissatisfaction present a threat to the legitimacy of the mainland Chinese state, and, by corollary, the ruling Communist Party. This is because they clearly contest and refute key claims made by the state in its propaganda.
Hypocrisy is an essential read for Sinologists who are well versed in the historical and contemporary experience of drug addiction across greater China. Many books have documented the historical experience, but only one humanities’ work to date has examined the contemporary experience, namely, my own book, Chinese Stories of Drug Addiction: Beyond the Opium Dens (Routledge, 2016). Cheng's book is a welcome and unique addition, as it analyses first-hand stories that were shared with him during extended ethnographic encounters. This, indeed, is a commendable achievement, as it would have been ethically and logistically very difficult to plan and carry out. Drug addiction remains a politically sensitive topic in mainland China. Yet, Cheng has overcome what would have been formidable barriers to obtain his corpus of stories. Although these stories are necessarily limited to a specific group of individuals in a specific geographical location, they are unfiltered by editorial or creative processes. This usefully stands them in contrast to my own work.
Cheng's data is very impressive. Unfortunately, his key findings are less so. He is correct in characterizing the contemporary political discourse on drug addiction and rehabilitation in mainland China as one that casts people with drug addiction as victims or patients in need of care and education. By doing so, the unerring state paternalistically casts itself as a positive, enlightened force that can help affected individuals return to their families and society in a productive capacity. This is to their greater benefit, as well as that of the wider society and the nation, in particular. The state needs an ongoing, high level of control over its citizens in order to accomplish this task. Such controls, however, maintain social stability, a key political tenet of the contemporary state. By casting its rehabilitative principles and practices in this way, the state not only discursively justifies itself domestically, it also meets its obligation as a modern global citizen whose actions align with world's best practice.
State propaganda, however, cannot singularly shape the day-to-day actions of everyday citizens, including local police and prison guards. Many other discursive forces are in play. Cheng points to a long-standing cultural stigma when he observes that his informants fear that local police will expose their illicit-drug-using history to their neighbours and work colleagues. Their fear stems from the fact that such a stigma casts those who are addicted to illicit drugs as despised non-persons, who are best removed or eliminated from everyday society. This has included execution in the past. Cheng, nevertheless, appears to ignore its impact on the day-to-day actions of local police and prison guards, even though it can readily explain why they do what they are claimed to do. Thus, what his informants tell him does not singularly bear out the hypocrisy of the state. It more reasonably bears out, amongst other phenomena, the longstanding cultural stigma that casts them as non-persons. Accordingly, local police and prison guards can readily dismiss and abuse them, and use them as chattels to improve the financial status of their local facility. Thus, the observed discursive contradiction, which Cheng calls “hypocrisy,” between how the state and how everyday people, such as local police and prison guards, cast and respond to drug addiction, is not so remarkable. Many social phenomena, such as severe mental illness, manifest such contradictions. Moreover, these contradictions do not necessarily undermine the legitimacy of the state, as Cheng claims. They can be readily accommodated, amidst the reality of one's day-to-day existence. Everyday citizens hear what state propaganda says, yet cultural norms, values and scripts discursively prevail in their day-to-day lives. Perhaps, Cheng could have reflected more on why his informants call greater attention to state discourse than cultural discourse in their stories. Why do they solely blame the state for their ongoing misery rather than wider society, who drove them to abuse illicit drugs; or themselves, who chose to take illicit drugs in the first place?
