This was posted on 29 Sept 07
“The following is a series of impressions and thoughts written right before and after I left China. I did not feel comfortable keeping a diary of these thoughts while I had much time left in the country. No significant attempt has been made to make the ideas logically flow and while I have tried to write it well, it is not well written. I did not have a particular audience in mind when I wrote this. I just wanted to get down my impressions so I could share them with others. I don't know what I will think in the future but what follows is a pretty good representation of what I thought in July of 2007. It is not exhaustive (I figured five pages was long enough) but it is reasonably complete.
China is not our friend nor are its people. Individual citizens of China may love individual citizens from the US but they will not be friends of the US until their government tells them that the US is the friend of China and the friend of China's people. I have never heard anything genuinely positive about the US from anyone, anywhere in my whole time here. Additionally they are being unfriendly as evidenced by the discovery of Chinese weapons in Afghanistan.
The lack of critical thinking skills amongst the university students is striking.
Isn't it interesting that everyone is mad at Starbucks for being in the forbidden city and nobody is talking about the managers of the Forbidden city who were the ones who allowed and may have even asked (I'm not sure) them to be there. This is a small example of the prevalent idea of the west imposing or bullying China or the east.
There is this mania for never coming to a conclusion which dictates action. “Both sides have good points. This is a complex issue and we will need to continue talking about it.”
It feels to me like there has been a long and concerted effort to improve the world's view of China. Factual errors like the great wall being the only man-made structure that can be seen un-aided from outer space. The sudden influx of Chinese movies. I am hearing a lot about China in pod-casts for everything from news programs to cooking shows. I am always hearing positive things or almost always. Occasionally I hear about exploited workers and the fiasco of the Three Gorges Dam but I never hear about the brutally suppressed farmers who are starving and disenfranchised. I hear polite references to the PRC government's denial and revision of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It feels to me like there is almost some sort of psy-ops against the American people (and perhaps the world) so that they will not so readily support military conflict with mainland China.
The PRC is building it's Army. Why? Attributing motivations to actions is fraught with peril, even when it is your actions, but I think I can put forward some reasonable possibilities. In fact I would go so far as to say that they are likelihoods.
To begin with a sane person does not acquire something without intending to use it. Therefore I will treat the PRC's intent to use the military as a certainty. This begs the question of what this use will be. Two possibilities immediately present themselves. The first use is the suppression of uprisings, particularly from the farmers and peasants. The second use is imperial expansion. I know that in current times imperial expansion sounds antiquated but I will substantiate this.
The suppression of uprisings is clearly an intended use for the military. There are reports of using the military to put down revolts of farmers in recent years. We are well aware of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It is reasonable to believe that the military will continue to be used for this purpose in the future. However, this does not account for the military buildup. I am not educated in these matters but it seems to me all you need to suppress uprisings of peasants is infantry.
From my understanding of Chinese history I see thousands of years of imperialism. I don't mean dynasties and monarchies. I mean that each dynasty went out and conquered as much territory as it could. The present government is no different. With the possible exception of the Qing dynasty (the most recent), the current boundaries of mainland China bear little resemblance to any of the previous dynasties and its claimed boundaries are that much more different.
However, just the habit of imperialism does not mean that imperial expansion is going to happen. There needs to be land available to take. Without doing any research beyond listening to the news and looking at a map I am aware of several different areas available for armed conflict*. Aksai Chin at the north of India is claimed by India but controlled by the PRC. Most of India's state Arunchai Pradesh is claimed by the PRC. The Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan but claimed by the PRC. Finally Taiwan and its associated Islands are controlled by the ROC but claimed by the PRC. I watched the president of the PRC speak about Taiwan and heard the translation of his comments while in China. Words like “rogue” and “renegade” were used. The PRC wants the ROC.
A couple of my more “liberal” friends have said that military actions on a large scale are a thing of the past because it would mean one country invading a part of its own economy. They say that it will not be a military takeover (i.e. Taiwan) but a willing coalition from the business men. I hear what they are saying and I think that there is some truth in these statements. However, I see a flaw in that thinking. Those statements are built on the idea that things change, but things don't change. It has been powerful people with armies since the beginning and it will continue to be so. To add to this, The PRC president's language was clearly military minded and mentioned nothing of a proposed business alliance and can only be described as barely stopping short of threatening (or not stopping short).
I do not know what the PRC's grand strategy is but I guarantee they have one and that we have seen the preliminary steps being implemented. I cannot say exactly why I thought this but my gut seemed to think, after spending 11 months there and listening to the people and watching what was going on, that the ultimate goal of the PRC is world domination and I don't think it cares in what way, military, economic it doesn't care. I am aware that this sounds a little kooky and I am not going to defend it. That was my sense of things, do what you will with it.
There is no question though that the PRC's ambition is to be a super power. I'm not sure how one would define a “super power” but what ever it is Mainland China wants to be one. I believe that they will do ANYTHING to accomplish this.
In China, right and wrong, and good and evil are far from absolutes except as it pertains to family. It is my sense after listening to my students speak (and has been confirmed after talking with other foreign teachers) that if something is good for the family you do it and if it is bad for the family you stop and this is without reference to the well being of anyone who is not your friend or your family. I do not believe that the government of mainland China cares about the wellbeing of anyone else at all. This is supported by its cruel treatment of its own people.
China's weakness is energy, in particular oil. But if you can put a kink in the energy supply line you can significantly interfere with almost every part of China.
I had a great experience in China. I would heartily recommend anyone who can walk two or three miles at a time to go there. We met some wonderful people, both Chinese and ex-pats. With everything that I know now I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It is a different culture and as you begin to understand parts of it you begin to see your own beliefs and culture from a new perspective. You find that things you thought were givens and reasonable certainties are actually wildly ranging variables.
That being said. . .don't believe the hype. China is not a land of wonder and mystery. It is a land of pollution and ignorance. It is a land where most of the people don't know that plastic bags are not biodegradable and so dump their garbage in ditches by the road and railroad tracks, and in waterways. It is a place were nearly all of the trains' toilettes dump their waste directly on the railroad tracks (you are not allowed to use the bathroom while the train is stopped at a station). The people do not know about germ theory. I have a friend who works at a cheese factory there. They are having a very hard time getting the workers to wash their hands at all and to get them to do it well and every time after using the bathroom is almost impossible.
It is a land where the national hero killed MILLIONS of it's own people yet his portrait is hung from Tiananmen and his mausoleum is located in Tiananmen square. It is a country that censors the Internet. It is a country that distorts it's facts. It is my understanding that government agencies routinely inflate or deflate figures and statistics to make them more favorable. (As a result if the figure passes though many different agencies it is often inflated or deflated beyond any semblance of reality.) This is a country that is built on lies.
They are a people without dignity or a sense of fair play. Just observe any bottleneck. Buses are great examples. Everyone mobs the door. They push and shove. There is no dignity. This was driven home when I was in Xian on a bus coming back from the terracotta warriors. The whole bus wanted to get off but we couldn't at first because of the mob pressing up against the door. When we finally got off, and had pressed our way through the crowd, I looked back and saw people pushing and shoving and, since you would buy your ticket after the bus was under way, people were climbing in through the windows. It is not about right and wrong, it is about what you can and cannot do.
As a general principle we need to not do business with immoral and corrupt governments. There are obvious moral reasons for this. However, there is a purely practical aspect and this practical side is extremely significant with China. If you support the immoral government, do business with them, establish a relationship with them. You keep them in power and give them no reason to change. Then there will come a point (or even many situations) where the corrupt government will, for lack of a better expression, be corrupt to you.
We are engaging in trade relations with a government that essentially denies the Tiananmen Square “Incident.” We are engaging in trade relations with a government that is afraid to give the public uncensored news. A government that regularly puts down revolts using the military. A government that is supporting the government of Sudan and thereby NOT helping to end the genocide in Darfur. A government that is selling weapons with full knowledge that these weapons will be used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan. This government is not our friend. Its people are not our friend.
I wish I could explain it better but I didn't have this clear realization until I had been in country for several months. There is this constant “buzz” of propaganda. A few big things, like constant hashing and rehashing of Japan's invasion and occupation. Continual coverage of “The Rape of Nanking” and so on. However, it is this constant. . .pressure. It is almost like background radiation. No clear incident but this ubiquitous force of over-statements, under-statements, lies, ethnocentrism, nationalism and so forth. At first I attributed this to a natural and reasonable pride in their country which does have a great history. However, I began to realize that it was something more.
There is nothing wrong with China! It is perfect! Everything that is wrong with it is being addressed in the best way possible! (yes the sentences contradict) However, everything that is wrong or could be wrong with other countries, the US in particular, amounts to their sum total.
I realized while I was there that I could not classify the government or its economy. So I decided to ask my classes. They said it was socialist. Since I couldn't see a single socialist thing about mainland China I asked them how it could be socialist when there was nothing socialist about it. This was about halfway into the second term so my students knew me and knew that I wasn't attacking them or the country and really wanted to know. One class in particular got rather excited and eloquent. (The following are not true quotes but they are close. I should have written then down at the time.) “No, China is not socialist now but it will be. This is just a step towards a wonderful dream. Maybe you don't believe in this dream but we do. No one will have to work if they don't want to. Everyone will get paid for what they do. Everyone will work for himself.” I think they also said something about everyone being equal (which obviously implies that people currently, in China, are not). I asked them how you could not need to work when you don't want to, get paid for what you do, AND work for yourself. They were so enamored with the “beauty” of their “dream” that I got no real answers. What was striking was the unity in the class on this idea. Sometimes I got the feeling that students were saying what they knew they were supposed to say. This was not the case with their “beautiful dream.” Their enthusiasm was clearly genuine.
This reminds be of another interesting thing. In the textbooks for Intro to the US and Intro to the UK classes. When the cold war came up it was never Democracy vs Communism, it was Capitalism vs Socialism. I thought that was an interesting distinction to make considering that the UK was socialist for some time and that much of Europe was/is based on some degree or flavor of socialism. I also discovered that they do not view the PRC or the USSR as communist but as socialist.
I had a class where I would bring in contemporary articles in English and we would read them. Not wanting to stir up feelings I was careful to not select articles that were at odds with the Chinese government's policies. North Korea had just detonated a nuclear device. This was a historic situation. Not because there was now possibly a new nuclear power but because the PRC and Japan were on the same side working together. I brought in an article that discussed the situation and how the East Asian countries were working together. I broke them up into groups and told them to give me a summary and write about there opinions of the article's contents. Every single group returned papers discussing the unfair treatment of North Korea by the west and how the US needed to stop bullying North Korea and said nothing about the cooperation between the PRC and Japan. I found these results particularly interesting in light of the fact that the only reference to the west and the US was that it was a US government agency that had confirmed it was a nuclear device and not a conventional one.
The people seem to be carefully taught all the negatives and problems
With few exceptions, perhaps 5%, no one in China can think. They are carefully trained, very effective recording and play back devices. Students are regularly incapable of admitting that there is another point of view much less conceding it has any points worth considering. A fact all the more disturbing when you consider that these are the educated people who will be running the government in the future.
I had a class where I showed movies. It was up to me to select and purchase the movies. I showed the movie “Spy Game” with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. I selected it because it had a lot of dialogue. It had completely slipped my mind that the PRC was an antagonist in the movie. While most of the movie takes place in other parts of the world the beginning and end take place in China. When the movie was over I asked them how they liked it. You could feel that they were not entirely happy. I said, “Did you like it?”
They said, “No.”
I said, “Why not?” expecting them to say that they thought China was shown in a bad light or something like that.
A student said, “They break our laws!”
I was surprised at that reason.
“This is a movie about spies! That is what spies do! They break other countries laws. Do you not think there are Chinese spies in America right now trying to steal American secrets?”
This seemed to unsettle them a bit. There was a pause and the student who spoke before said somewhat hesitantly, “We don't know.”
My initial interpretation of this response was that they were afraid that by admitting to the existence of Chinese spies in America, they would be divulging state secrets. Upon reflection I found that there may be another explanation. The students, or at least that student, felt that to acknowledge the existence of Chines spies would somehow make them loose face. Clearly to acknowledge their existence would diminish the absolute evil of spies breaking Chinese laws. That said I am not entirely confident the students were capable of this level of reasoning.
I was also surprised that the response about the movie was based on the breaking of Chinese laws when the rest of the movie was rather damning of the US intelligence service. However, their language skills may not have permitted them to follow the movie very well. Additionally, there may have been other cultural factors I am not aware of influencing or directing those responses.
I said, “Of course there are spies in the US! At least there had better be! Your government would not be doing its duty if there weren't.” This statement appeared to be a new way of thinking to them.
I was not able to get them to continue talking about this.
In my Introduction to the United States class I had a policy of requiring all the students to write questions (about anything) on slips of paper and giving them to me at the beginning of class. One day I had a slip of paper with the question, “Why does the west say that people were killed in Tiananmen square when all witnesses and historical documents prove that it was resolved peacefully?”
Feeling deportation was at hand but not wanting to lie (I had decided that I would do my best to always speak the truth) I spoke to the dynamic. The one thing that I soon started trying to teach was how to think. I said, “In a situation like this, where there are two such different accounts, one person is lieing and you need to decide which one to believe.”
I have been reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I think that China, its people, and its culture are just as different from the west as the Arabs he describes. The difference is that Lawrence's Arabs are riding around on camels and set on staying the way they are, whereas the Chinese are furiously emulating the West. As I trying to get more specific about this I see a lifetime of research and writing on this topic opening up before me so I will leave it there.
I could just keep going on. I didn't know what I wanted to say exactly when I started this and I didn't know who would be reading it. It is a mess but it is a reasonable collection of thoughts and impressions from 11 contiguous months and 15 months total.
-
To add weight to the point I have included an excerpt from the world fact book on China based on principles drafted in 2005, China and India continue discussions to resolve all aspects of their extensive boundary and territorial disputes together with a security and foreign policy dialogue to consolidate discussions related to the boundary, regional nuclear proliferation, and other matters; recent talks and confidence-building measures have begun to defuse tensions over Kashmir, site of the world's largest and most militarized territorial dispute with portions under the de facto administration of China (Aksai Chin), India (Jammu and Kashmir), and Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas); India does not recognize Pakistan's ceding historic Kashmir lands to China in 1964; lacking any treaty describing the boundary, Bhutan and China continue negotiations to establish a boundary alignment to resolve substantial cartographic discrepancies, the largest of which lies in Bhutan's northwest; China asserts sovereignty over the Spratly Islands together with Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and possibly Brunei; the 2002 "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea" eased tensions in the Spratly's but is not the legally binding "code of conduct" sought by some parties; Vietnam and China continue to expand construction of facilities in the Spratly's and in March 2005, the national oil companies of China, the Philippines, and Vietnam signed a joint accord on marine seismic activities in the Spratly Islands; China occupies some of the Paracel Islands also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan; China and Taiwan continue to reject both Japan's claims to the uninhabited islands of Senkaku-shoto (Diaoyu Tai) and Japan's unilaterally declared equidistance line in the East China Sea, the site of intensive hydrocarbon prospecting; certain islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers are in dispute with North Korea; China seeks to stem illegal migration of North Koreans; China and Russia have demarcated the once disputed islands at the Amur and Ussuri confluence and in the Argun River in accordance with their 2004 Agreement; in 2006, China and Tajikistan pledged to commence demarcation of the revised boundary agreed to in the delimitation of 2002; demarcation of the China-Vietnam land boundary proceeds slowly and although the maritime boundary delimitation and fisheries agreements were ratified in June 2004, implementation remains stalled; in 2004, international environmentalist and political pressure from Burma and Thailand prompted China to halt construction of 13 dams on the Salween River.”
We have problems with this country. One of them is the fact that we don't apply the same standards to out trade "partners" and allies that we ( the Carter administration) demand of CIA informants. We should be more selective or, at least apply pressure or apply change.
Don't forget this:
Found here.
