"A China that leads the world will not offer the chance to be Chinese, because it is impossible to become Chinese. "
Of course. The British led the world and did not offer (at the time) anyone the chance to be British either. In fact, they actively discouraged interbreeding. It is a dogma of the modern Occident that it is stronger to be multi-ethnic, and that national identity should be open to anyone. History shows us, however, that that is hardly a necessity for world empire.
Full disclosure: I was once in love with a Chinese woman from an elite family, who I am fairly certain loved me but rejected me because I did not belong to the appropriate stock (with influence from her family). Lesson learned: if love is strong, kinship bonds are often stronger.
Of course, that we speak of "the British" is a testament to a certain level of success of melding English/Scottish/Welsh identities, much of which happened in the context of imperial endeavor. And certainly many other groups (Sepoys, say) found their interests aligned at times with the imperial project, in a way that outweighed their ethnic background.
Being open to a flexible interpretation of identity/citzenship (Brits, Romans) or having a nominally universal ideology/religion (Americans, Islamic caliphates) seems like it be a large help in successful world leadership, even if it's not a prerequisite.
I find this interesting, because Chinese identity, as much as it is tied to Han ethnicity, seems to be something that could include once-outsiders, as long as they assimilate into it. The OP itself cites how the Mongol invaders established the Yuan dynasty, and the Manchu did the same with the Qing. Despite there is always a separation between Han and non-Han, I've found that the traditional (pre-20th century?) idea of "Chinese" is more tied to cultural traditions and the Confucian ethos, than ethnic/racial divisions. In some ways it's almost comparable to the concept of being "American" as in from the U.S., though of course far less malleable and open to including outside traditions.
"3000 years before the Han dynasty, when what we call China today was inhabited by various tribes, the mythical ancestors of the Han, the Huaxia, controlled swathes of land centered around the Yellow River. According to legend, the leader of the Huaxia, Huangdi, defeated the 4 surrounding tribes, to the North, South, East, and West of Huaxia and incorporated their people and territory. The 4 leaders of those tribes, along with Huangdi became known as the 5 Emperors. Legends also tell of Huangdi defeating and assimilate the tribe of Yandi. Together, Huangdi and Yandi have been viewed as the progenitors of the Han race, which refers to itself as 'descendants of yan and huang'."
Even from the beginning, the Chinese came from the intermingling of multiple peoples, not one specific race. So I think the identity of "Chinese" can certainly be more cultural than ethnic/racial, and so open to outsiders who self-assimilate.
The questions are, what is Chinese culture in modernity? And if traditionalist Confucianism makes some sort of comeback, how will the world outside China react to it?
Oh, and how do current Western/non-Chinese expats in China assimilate to local Confucian norms?
Granted. My own personal take is that you need to be very aware of the substrate (which includes genetics, ethnicity, religion, geography, available resources, etc.) and have a vision that is greater than the substrate. The problem with American empire at the present moment, in my very strongly held opinion, is that we are denying the impact of the substrate and launching into "economic-magic" which is very detached from value of any kind -- with the strong risk of impaling not only our own traditional strengths (goodbye American car companies) but the rest of the world economy with it.
Along these lines, I wish the Chinese all the best for producing things things well that we care about and buy -- this is esp. true of Taiwan, which has retained some measure of traditional positive values that are not entirely materialistic, and I have some optimism that the not longer particularly Communist part can develop in a not especially materialistic direction.
From the outside. On the inside, I think most Britons identify more as English, Scottish, or Welsh than British. Scotland and Wales live under the semi-official delusion that they are actually "countries" in some meaningful way, not just autonomous subdivisions of the UK, and even compete separately in international sporting events outside of the Olympics. Even forming a unified soccer team for the Olympics that the UK itself is hosting was a source of significant controversy.
The controversy mostly stemmed from the potential effects of running a British football team, particularly regarding the UK's status within FIFA.
The home nations each have a representative within FIFA, UEFA and IFAB, as well as being able to compete individually, and collectively enter more club teams into the UEFA Champions League. This causes some tension with other countries, who see the UK as a single country that wields undue influence in the global game.
If the UK establishes its own football team for the purposes of the Olympics, then there is a fear that FIFA would use this as an excuse to shut down the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish FAs and force them to fold into the FA. This is the reason Scotland refused to allow its players to be picked for the Olympics.
The Scottish FA never had the power to "refuse to allow" anything, there just weren't any Scottish players worth calling up. The Welsh FA made the same statements but that didn't stop Welsh players from being called up.
Britain's status in FIFA demonstrates just how poorly the notion of a "British" national identity has taken hold.
> A China that leads the world will not offer the chance to be Chinese, because it is impossible to become Chinese.
I feel that this only applies for the elite, especially when there's a lot of political infighting; marrying an outsider will weaken the whole family which is really bad in a low trust society but that's another topic. This is not true for all social levels of China. China has practiced for what my international affairs prof terms as "reverse genocide". What is it? When an ethnically Han Chinese man or woman marries a non-Han partner, their children and their whole family are considered Chinese. To be fair, there are exceptions since China (and you can argue most of Asia) is still somewhat racist. If your children do no look "Chinese", they will not be considered as chinese.
> This is not true for all social levels of China.
I somewhat disagree.
That type of "reverse genocide" only works in East Asia. One of the reasons for the ongoing conflict in Xinjiang is that the local Uyghur, Kyrgyz, et al. don't look Chinese and don't pay any lip service to the "superiority" of Han culture.
> If your children do no look "Chinese", they will not be considered as chinese.
And this is the reason why.
Even though their mother is 100% Han, my own children easily pass as average WASPs. No matter how long they live in China, no matter how fluent they are in Mandarin, they will never be accepted as Chinese by anyone other than her relatives.
I'm confused. You "disagree", yet I don't see anything that really disagrees from my post.
> One of the reasons for the ongoing conflict in Xinjiang is that the local Uyghur, Kyrgyz, et al. don't look Chinese and don't pay any lip service to the "superiority" of Han culture.
If Han Chinese ever start intermarrying with Uyghurs in greater numbers this will change. Given the ratio of males to females in the mainland, I would guess that this will happen way before a sexual revolution in China (which the lack of imo is the reason for the gender population gap). I feel that this is the same reason that Han chinese started to intermarry with both Mongols and Tibetans.
> Even though their mother is 100% Han, my own children easily pass as average WASPs.
I feel there's a big difference when you compare the US to either Europe or Asia as a whole: we are very open about it and our failings with it. It's in our consciousness to work hard to fight against it.
I think Europe is getting there with this frame of mind, but I don't feel that Asia even pretends to try.
Whereas most Asian men in Western countries get rejected by Caucasian females for not being Caucasian. (Source: OkCupid studies, anecdotes, Quora, etc.)
Can you even imagine a "mixed" kid who grew up entirely in the US being cussed out by well over half the commenters on a talent show, and for even the kids mother to be attacked relentlessly for being with a man of a different color? The WSJ link doesn't even get into the worst of it. You should have seen the weibo comments on Lou Jing.
Having been a competitive runner in my youth, I am big into track and field, but I do not own a television. Only mentioned that to admit that I do not know a lot about popular culture. But I do know Track and Field. When you read about the past of LoLo Jones and this girl in Shanghai, they seem basically identical. Complete with the hate from the respective national medias.
If you are feeling brave, take a gander at the Twitter comments from many men, I assume they are American, about LoLo Jones and her mother. NSFW. And NOT for the timid.
Really? I find this hard to believe the two are at all comparable.
Can you provide a link to a page of a major media outlet in which numerous commenters claim she isn't really American due to her race? Or maybe a few tweets from famous people who have suggested that she step aside and let Americans compete?
Are there statistics that indicate the situation is improving? I'm not in Cali anymore but have Asian american male friends who like Caucasian women that would be interested in this.
I don't have any statistics, just anecdotes. I've just noticed an uptick in AM/WF couples. My neighbors across the screen. My friend who just got married. People I see at work.
Without being too cynical, I attribute this to a natural outgrowth of the economic success of AMs, the rising tides in Asia, and more and more AMs appearing in media. (e.g. Daniel Dae Kim in Lost) Let's be honest, men's romantic liberty in choosing mates is often proportional to economic success.
It all started with Russell Wong and the Noxema Girl in "Vanishing Son" :)
>Of course. The British led the world and did not offer (at the time) anyone the chance to be British either. In fact, they actively discouraged interbreeding. It is a dogma of the modern Occident that it is stronger to be multi-ethnic, and that national identity should be open to anyone. History shows us, however, that that is hardly a necessity for world empire.
True. And it wasn't ever better for the US. They had segregated schools, hotels and even buses as late as the sixties, and segregation for latinos, blacks etc, today under the pretext of income is stronger that ever:
This is definitely one of the better (and more accurate) articles on the subject. I have been doing business in China and definitely see his view - it's easy to see why most of China's elite send their children abroad. I wouldn't live there for an extended period.
I'd say their education system (and society) tends to hammer the creativity out of people. I see strong evidence that who think differently are ridiculed. Only the strongest personalities could withstand this, and it is obvious that they often leave for greener pastures. Nurturing the free thinkers is not easy.
Superpower & housing bubble aside, first they have to figure out things like why having seatbelts in cars is important - that the individual is in fact valuable.
When I was in China, i often ride in friends' cars. The first thing I do when I get in cars is buckling up, and I'm often ridiculed for fearing of death (i really am). Twice I sit on the passenger side and tried to put the seatbelt plate into buckle but I couldn't, because there's already a key holder in there. I learned since no passenger wear seat-belt, the driver just put the key holder there to silence the warning noise, they already have key holders in on driver's side.
It's an everywhere thing. Before seatbelts were compulsory in the UK, people used not to wear them there either. You'd have to talk to somebody who was an adult at the time - probably not many of those round here - to get the definitive answer, but I distinctly remember being confused by adults often failing to put their seatbelts on, even for quite some time after seatbelts became compulsory.
Yes thats true. I think the warnings in cars have gradually changed this and there are few holdouts now. (I didnt realize it was only 1983 they were made compulsory, so I was 14 then)
I call bullshit. You get fined almost always for driving unbuckled. It's actually one of the better effects of bad and greedy traffic police, who will otherwise fine you at the first available possibility (and, sigh, oftentimes impose bribe on you).
That's kind of a rude response to someone relating a personal experience. Yes, I have personally experienced Russian drivers getting offended when I try to put on a seatbelt. Maybe it's changed from when I was there last 4 years ago as it's entirely possible that they've begun cracking down on it, but this was certainly the culture not very long ago (like much of the rest of the world). I'll also note that most of my time in cars was not in Moscow or St. Petersburg. This 2010 study suggests seatbelt use is rare in parts of Russia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22414131
Sorry if my comment came off as a little blunt, as I intended no rudeness, but I'm tired of knee-jerk comments regarding Russia. In your linked study they measure number of buckled drivers as slightly more than 50%. That's somewhat different to jamming seat buckle altogether with a key holder, don't you think?
Rear seat passengers do not wear seat belts indeed, but that's another story: lots of cars simply don't have them and it's not enforced by law.
OK, sorry if I was took it the wrong way. What I was responding to was more the seat belt usage isn't too common and people feeling offended if you as a passenger put on a seatbelt. I did not experiencing the particular situation with the key holder. China is no doubt worse, but my point was that this particular thing (lack of seatbelt usage and negative opinion about them) says little about China given that it's a fairly worldwide phenomenon.
In China the seat belts in Taxi's are so dirty, if they have them at all (most are removed), that if you put the belt on, your clothes will be filthy when you get out. That is because the seat belts are never used. So it is your safety or or cleanliness and appearance -- even I am reluctant to cover myself with filth for a short trip.
Take a moment and conciser how a similar piece, written of the United states around the turn of the last century, might read.
Remember the 'roaring 20s?' Materialistic society, ambivalence about foreign affairs, widespread corruption, distrust of foreigners. A Chinese who owned a tea shop in a small town may well have to beg for a renewed lease, yes?
Well, China is not the United States, but lets put things in perspective. At the moment neither the leaders nor the people of China want to be a 'world leader' so why do we keep talking about it as if they do? China has its own problems and most Chinese are well aware of it.
China is not yet a rich country. Its Per Capita GDP (PPP) is about the same as Ecuador or Belize.
Right now things in China are not so great. It seems the Conservatives are back in power and so there has been some increased restrictions of freedom after a couple decades of improvement. Corruption continues to be a problem. The price of groceries, as well as property, has been increasing.
But the overall trend is upward. The author of this piece has fallen afoul of the Guanxi networks of business and politics in China. Sorry, yes, they don't play fair. But I am hopeful at the turn of the next century China will be as prosperous and egalitarian as my own United States of America.
I think that's exactly the point of the comment you're responding to. He's not saying that, "China is going up, therefore depression incoming." Instead he's saying, "The reasoning, 'US also had a period like this, therefore China will be OK,' is false."
yes it is false but that was not my reasoning. I was merely trying to draw parallels between a time people are probably familiar, saying that there is no use comparing modern China to a developed country. It is not a modern country, but it is so "rich" and "powerful" people (like the OP) get that idea in their head and become inevitably disillusioned.
Perhaps I could have made a parallel to Brazil or Thailand?
How can you possibly justify your statement that the leaders of China don't want to be thought of as a 'world leader'? Practically every action within the last 10+ years has had that express purpose. What do you call the Beijing Olympics? That was a "coming-out" party of epic proportions, followed by frequent statements about the 'arrogant' West not recognizing China's greatness, etc.
>Sorry, yes, they don't play fair. But I am hopeful at the turn of the next century China will be as prosperous and egalitarian as my own United States of America.
Why would a one-party system evolve into being egalitarian? The US has devolved into being more or less ruled by lobbyists. The egalitarian phase in the US was largely due to workers being economically valuable and hence useful to maintain physically and mentally. China, however, has a surplus of workers.
False. Factories are having increasing difficulty in retaining workers and are therefore having to either raise wages, improve conditions, or bully them into submission. Supply and demand, no?
Demand is currently high.
Things are not great for workers, but there is hardly a surplus anymore.
> "Why would a one-party system evolve into being egalitarian?"
Stranger things have happened - see Taiwan for a good example. One-party system, under martial law no less, evolving into a thriving multi-party democracy with a high degree of personal freedom and equality.
Are you sure about that? With the downfall of Bo Xilai and the Chongqing model, it seems to have put the progressives, such as Wang Yang (the Guangdong party chief), in an advantageous position.
No, I am not sure as I don't follow closely anymore. I heard about the downfall of Bo but hadn't really considered the consequences. Mostly I was speaking of the climate when I left in 2008
I can attest that things have been getting more conservative; starting from around 2008 and continuing into the present. I don't think Bo Xilai's down fall will have any bearing on this; his mistake was populism rather than conservatism. Politics here are so opaque its very difficult for us to really figure out what's going on beyond what we can observe on the ground.
China is not yet a rich country. Its Per Capita GDP (PPP) is about the same as Ecuador or Belize.
Very, very misleading. Ecuador and Belize could disappear from the map tomorrow and the world's economy would be unchanged. Similarly, Liechtenstein has one of the highest PPP ratings in the world... yet it has no political clout or economic leverage.
"The pressure makes children sick. I speak from personal experience. To score under 95 per cent is considered failure. Bad performance is punished."
I grew up in that culture in America having a Chinese mother and belonging to the local Chinese community. The interesting aspect to it, is that it represents a curve as everyone gets a 97+ on their tests. It felt like 97 was the median in the class. It just happened to be instead of having scores from 50-100, you had them compressed from 90-100. Scoring below a 90 is equivalent to getting an F in the local Chinese community as only a few ever scored that low.
I personally appreciate having gone through that and all the brainwashing that occurred with that mindset. I know one of my strengths is the ability to work well under pressure, where often my motivation is correlated with pressure. While I never made the connection in college, I innately understood the curve and how to play the game due to being curved at a young age.
The worry I have at times with correlating motivation with difficulty is whether I am creating an invalid proxy for value. Sometimes the work leads to something of value, but they are not directly linked as there are plenty of difficult things out there that generate little value to society and oneself.
That said, bringing it back to the OP's concern about his children's education, I don't know what it's like to go through a full Chinese system as I highly appreciate the mixture of Western education in my upbringing. I had a nervous breakdown in high school after realizing the falseness of my quest I had around accomplishments and achievements. If it weren't for the liberal arts of Western culture (arts, music, and literature), I don't know how I would have came out of that mental breakdown. I began to value the Renaissance man who was balanced in a variety of topics and sought the balance of academics, the arts and social skills. I wonder if it weren't for those concepts, if I would have trained myself to seek higher and higher goals in mastery over academics as I saw with some of my childhood friends who had a stricter Chinese upbringing.
The China that the author describes is not the China I've seen. Housing prices may be high, but he neglects to mention that it's common for companies to provide housing to their employees. Yes, people will ask you about your money - but that's culture, and it's not impolite.
There are a lot of untruths in his article, but it's too long to pick apart. A big one, though, is about appreciation for foreigners. China does in fact have laws about foreigners, but most are designed to protect them and avoid international incidents. For example, several schools around the Shaolin Temple offer practical training in everything from hand-to-hand combat to spears to swords. Only three, however, have passed safety regulations to accept foreigners. The Chinese also likes to tell you that you're special, because they think it endears you to them, whether it's true or not.
I'll end by saying: it's hard to judge China through a western perspective.
Companies still provide housing? Are you serious? That went out with the 90s in the big cities! And even then, how many people actually work for the government or an SOE qualify for this housing provided by the company?
Its very easy to judge China through a western perspective; you just say "it was judged through a western perspective." Judging is always relative to a perspective and is useful to evaluate your situation. The author's article is not meant for Chinese, perhaps, but for other foreigners, and therefore its useful and not "bitterly biased."
Foreigner laws in China are designed to protect us? Ya, by not letting our kids go to any but the most expensive international schools? By making us re-register with our local PSB whenever we go on a business trip? By limiting how we can spend our money..which we earned in China and paid (high) Chinese taxes on? By making us pay social security taxes and then telling us we will only see that money at all if we work here for 15 years?
Why do Chinese always take criticism on China so personally as a face problem? Its common western practice to criticize something that you don't think is working right, we just treat China as an equal topic in that regard. Its not an attack, its just commentary.
I'm not taking offense in a patriotic stance. I'm offended because it's plain incorrect. I don't know if we're arguing the same thing, but I'm saying looking at China from a western perspective is misleading, and leads you to formulate judgments that are based on slanted information. It's much like how the average citizen believes he's knowledgeable about the economy.
It's still commonplace for companies to provide housing. I'm not sure how I can prove this to you, other than asking you to go to China, or read it in Chinese.
"Foreigner laws in China are designed to protect us? Ya, by not letting our kids go to any but the most expensive international schools? By making us re-register with our local PSB whenever we go on a business trip? By limiting how we can spend our money..which we earned in China and paid (high) Chinese taxes on? By making us pay social security taxes and then telling us we will only see that money at all if we work here for 15 years?"
Their schools and our schools aren't the same. If you sent your kid to a regular Chinese school, do you expect the same treatment as Chinese kids get? Is it okay for their teachers to hit your kids if they misbehave? Perhaps you'd like the rest of the kids to pretend like your kid was Chinese, even though their culture isn't as multicultural as ours.
I don't know what your complaint with the PSB registration is about. It takes two minutes, and other countries do very similar things. They're keeping track of foreigners in their country. USA, Canada - we all do it, just through different ways. Only difference is, there's an order of magnitude in population difference. I remember, actually, when I went to school in the USA, I had 10x more paperwork to fill out than going to China (I'm Canadian).
USA and Canada also limit the amount of money you can spend before you're horribly taxed. This isn't unique to China. I've never paid Chinese social insurance, so I honestly can't say. All I know is, I'm paying social security in Canada, and by the time I use it, it's going to be (probably) gone.
I think your information about China is quite outdated, or you are seeing it from a more biased perspective.
I'm a half-pat, and I don't get housing benefits; most of us don't get benefits beyond the the last two years, expats are different: they get juicy packages. Chinese employees get to contribute to a housing fund (as part of social security benefits), but as far as I can tell they don't get much from that; its basically state-mandated savings to buy a house in Beijing they'll never be able to afford. SOEs still give housing out (as well as government orgs like universities), but most people don't work for SOEs.
About education, the same problem applies to anyone without a hukou (foreigner or Chinese). Its quite ridiculous, we pay all of those taxes to keep society going and see nothing for it, and do you know how much tuition at an international school runs? I can't afford to even have kids unless I can swing a juicy expat package someday.
I'm ok with registering at the PSB when I move or once a year when my visa is renewed, but every month when I have to go on a trip? Even Switzerland's Controle de Habitant wasn't that extreme, annoying. And even worse, the policy differs between PSB offices, (Shanghai is better than Beijing) even in the same city (Haidian is better than Chaoyang)!
The paying of social security taxes for foreigners is a new thing this year, and they still don't know how it will work out. I don't mind paying taxes, I don't mind state funded retirement, or even the fake social health insurance. I just hate unfairness; every year the deal seems to get worse.
PSB registration does not take two minutes, literally or figuratively. I was at the 出入境 for about an hour two weeks ago. This one visit was one of many visits. Yesterday, I went to register at the local 派出所. I was the only person there. They processed all my documents (three passports) in one hour.
I should amend my statement above: PSB registration does not take two minutes for me. You are fortunate that it only takes two minutes for you (I am assuming you mean figuratively, though if you are being literal I am even more envious).
China is a big country. There are places in China where the administration is very efficient and effective. Most places are not. I say this from personal experience and from the experience of others who don't live in large, developed cities. Some generalizations are accurate, but like any generalization, the veracity may vary from your own local experience.
At a hotel where they are supposed to register for you it might take 2 minutes. But in my experience it takes anywhere from half a day to a week in smaller city. Half a day is the minimum because you get directed from one place to another and wait in lines. A week is how long it could take of you're missing anything they require such as a photo. Yes, it varies widely.
Hmmm... yes you can go to Intentional school. There are plenty in Shanghai. I bet you are not wealthy enough to get in?
Only Chinese people can understand the problems in China. It's a complicated society. You guys only see the surface of the soceity. Deep inside, every corner of the street is a community itself. Every village is a different society.
The one thing that people can agree on is that Chinese government puts too much time and effort in keeping GOP as high as possible, and neglect fairness. But it is hard to do anything useful: deep interest group involves in every level of the government. Bad.
>A big one, though, is about appreciation for foreigners. China does in fact have laws about foreigners
Non-Chinese are officially second class citizens(to use a western expression) if thats is what you mean by laws about foreigners . The Chinese do go about this in the nicest way possible of course but anyone who is not Chinese has little to no rights (in the way a Chinese person does).
I've recently returned from living in China (a tier 2 inland city) where I have been living with my wife (this is her hometown) for 3 years.
I found after running afoul of the administration in the college where I worked how fragile my stay in China really was. I had to leave the country (where my wife, her family, and my son were) within 10 days after losing my job.
Everything is fine in China as a foreigner, until it's not, and then it's awefull.
> I'll end by saying: it's hard to judge China through a western perspective.
I have respected a lot of your contributions to this site and have historically been impressed by your comments, but this one I can't accept. It essentially boils down to a courtier's reply, except that there is no way to gain the experience necessary to comment according to your criterion.
I was a little distracted when I wrote this, I admit; it probably wasn't the most thought-out statement. I don't mean you should adopt another perspective (that'd be silly).
You're right - it's inescapable that we need some perspective on which to judge and formulate opinions, but sometimes we just need to take things in passively, and think--without forming opinions.
I'm not entirely sure whether this makes sense, or whether it just seems like philosophical nonsense.
Very interesting read of one person's (very credible) opinions about China. Yet...
The title is a tautology. I can't help but feel that anyone from country X will every be integrated into any other country, as long as they still want to be themselves. Which is what the author never really states. Had he bought into the materialistic lifestyle, asked everyone how much money they made, and insisted his kids cram for elementry school exams, and toed the party line (whatever that may be), then maybe he would've been considered Chinese (I bet he'd say you still wouldn't but he didn't even consider that possibility). But no, he wanted to be a Westerner in China, and by definition, never become Chinese.
I lived in Europe for half of my life before age 30. I was fluent and mistaken for a native of the country where I lived. Yet, I could not help but retain my American perspective; I don't think I could give that up even if I wanted to. So even if I blended into the culture and wanted be a native, I could not feel like one myself. I came "home" to the US and don't feel American anymore either--I think that will be the author's fate in Britain. I have American friends still there, native by any standard, yet still consider themselves American by choice.
So I think it comes down to giving up one's identifying culture. The ironic thing, is that Chinese (and many other foreigners) do it all the time when they immigrate to the West. To me, that is the quandary of immigration: how do they manage to embrace the host culture so much that they no longer identify with their native one. It seems so much easier to do from East (India, China) to West (US, mostly). It seems like it's much easier to go from a culture of community to one of individuality than vice-versa. Why is there a lack of symmetry?
I think a big reason is ease of integration/life - many Chinese people find life to be easier when they immigrate to the West. Life can be very very competitive in China - relationships are often necessary, complex and by definition numerous.
The author seems to suggest that the main problem -- as suggested by the title -- is that the Chinese are strongly anti-foreigners. This might be true. But I don't think it's why his business was robbed.
The main problem, I think, is the Chinese's jungle-ruled platform associated with its single-party tyranny. What happens is they will invite you in and give you lots of promises and flexibilities at first. They will learn from you. And when you get too big, they will change the rules to favor their owns, and kick you out, robbing you if necessary. It's not so much that you're a Caucasian foreigner.
I believe that a lot of outside investors and companies will eventually (unless they are big) find out that doing business with the Chinese will end up looking like this person. I am not anti-Chinese as a people or a culture, but I have seen this type story again and again.
Very insightful article. I feel more worried about the Chinese housing bubble crash than anything else. You think the '07 US recession was bad? That'd be a walk in the park if China's bubble bursts.
Don't worry, the government will never let the crash happen. Plus they are trying "tightening" the housing now. Stagnating might be a better word: neither let price fall nor let it rise too fast.
Yeah, the US government did its damnest to prevent the housing crash in the US, and they have a lot more money and experience with markets than the Chinese do. When the Chinese bubble pops it's going to blow the social fabric of the country apart.
As Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). This is a very interesting article for an American who has lived in east Asia for two three-year stays (mostly in Taiwan) and who has been learning the Chinese language since 1975. Much of what has been said about China in the first decade of the twenty-first century reminds me very much of what was said about Japan in the 1980s--that it was destined to be the leading nation of the world. Today, demographics and looking behind the official economic statistics, and considering that China has not yet democratized as much as Japan had in the era when the Liberal Democratic Party had a lock on national power all suggest that China is most likely to have a "lost decade" that continues into two or more lost decades as China's economic growth fails to keep pace with the Chinese regime's world power ambitions. Political unrest is an ongoing fear of the Communist Party of China regime, and there is little to suggest that Chinese "soft power" can overcome the misgivings of neighboring countries (e.g. India, Vietnam, and South Korea) that remember being invaded by Chinese armies in the recent past.
It is possible to become an American. I have seen it done. My wife, out of all the girls I knew when I first lived in Taiwan, was the LEAST interested in gaining a green card or even living in the United States as a student until we had occasion to enter the United States (her first occasion ever) as a married couple after a year of married life in Taiwan. Over time, she has become a Minnesotan American by choice rather than by birth, and indeed we have spent far more time in the United States than I had ever imagined possible when I first planned my adult life as an American with a university degree in Chinese language. There have been great opportunities for us in America and much that my wife can cherish even though none of her primary or secondary education was intended to prepare her for life in the United States, and none of my higher education was intended as anything but preparation for living in east Asia. The United States is open to immigrants, accepting of cultural diversity, and a second home for many people that becomes a more meaningful home than their first home. That acceptance of outside influence is America's strength, and why the United States and not China will be the superpower of the twenty-first century.
What the United States can learn from China (but even more so from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea) is better provision of elementary education in government-operated primary schools, particularly in the subjects of mathematics and science. Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do. Let's learn from China's best examples here in the United States. Meanwhile, I hope that the common people of China eventually learn from other democratized countries of east Asia how to come out from under a one-party dictatorship and to enjoy uncensored mass media, free elections, and a vigorous civil society.
> Native-born Americans like me who have lived in east Asia are APPALLED at the wasted opportunities that United States schools have with their lavish resources to provide a truly world-class education. United States schools do not do as badly as they possibly could, but they also don't do as well as they reasonably could be expected to do.
I know this is a popular refrain about American education, but it's only a half-truth. The only real direct, objective comparisons between different countries' educational systems are based on data from identical tests administered across those nations. However, as the results from the PISA[0] indicate, Americans rank near the top of their respective ethnic groups when they are separated in that manner. That is to say, American students of European descent are near the top of the charts when compared to European students, American students of Asian descent are near the top of the charts when compared to Asian students, etc.
This also applies to American students of African and Hispanic descent. However, students in African and Hispanic countries do so much worse than students in European and Asian countries that despite the American students of those ethnicities performing better than students in those countries, they still bring down the average American score below that of most European and Asian nations.
What this tells us is not that the American education system is just plain bad. Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America. The real problem is that our education system fails to provide an equal quality of education to all of our children.
As you probably already know, this result is because our public education system is funded by local taxes, and our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor, who are overwhelmingly of African and Hispanic descent. Thus, the African and Hispanic students end up going to public schools that are poorly funded because their parents are poor, trapping Americans of African and Hispanic descent in a cycle of poverty.
The solution to this problem is not apparent, as attempts to integrate schools along socioeconomic & ethnic lines just results in the wealthy voting to defund public schools and sending their children to expensive private schools instead.
From your linkd article:
"So much for the bigoted notions that Americans are dumb and Europeans are smart." > "There are 3 parts to the PISA test, Reading, Math, and Science."
There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
Quite the opposite - take a student from anywhere in the world, and on average, he or she will receive a better education in America
The people that get to immigrate to the US are the best and brightest, otherwise they don't get in. It's unsurprising that their children perform well. Yes, the US education system is far better than the third world's (what a boast!) but even if you're talking about Finnish immigrants, they're not going to be unskilled louts. The mere fact that they're allowed in means that they have already passed a bar.
I agree that the real problem is the disparity and locally-sourced funding for schools, but that doesn't mean that there's no problem with the curriculum across the board. There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
I think that probably the most telling is when you hear of tertiary educators saying that they have to dumb down intro subjects and teach students the skills they used to get in high school - things as simple as how to construct an essay (which doesn't sound like it's an objective 'reading, math, science' measure)
> There is more to an education than reading, math, and science. The US is particularly famous for frequently forgetting that other countries even exist. Most of the Anglo world (including, but not just US) is seen with some derision in Europe for being so proudly monoglot. A comment of "My god, that person was so dumb" is usually about their lack of worldliness, not their skill with calculus.
I won't deny the lack of language learning in the US, which is something that I find disturbing, particularly with the "flattening" of the world in recent years. However, I firmly believe that it has nothing to do with the education system. The real problem (if you can call it that) is that Anglophone countries don't need to learn any other languages. The reason why Europeans can speak foreign languages (most often English) is because they need to.
Moreover, if you live in an Anglophone country (particularly America, and I'd expect Australia is similar too, due to its linguistic isolation), there just aren't very many chances to practice a language even if you learn it. I know the public schools where I grew up required students to learn foreign languages (and they usually learned Spanish), but most of them forgot the language within a year of stopping classes, because they never got a chance to use it. This situation may very well change with the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the US.
OTOH, if you live in a non-Anglophone country, you're constantly bombarded with all kinds of media in English - on the web, in print, and on the silver screen. This effect is amplified in countries that speak languages with relatively small numbers of speakers. For example, the postage stamp-sized countries of northern Europe are more fluent in English than southern European countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, and a big reason for this is that their small size means that there is less domestic media to consume, so they turn to Angolophone content.
> There are squillions of articles out there bemoaning all aspects of the US school system's race to teach the test rather than provide an education.
Once again, I think this is largely a function of the quality of the school. Having graduated from a public high school in an affluent district after the turn of the millenium, I can say that contemporary US public schools do not solely teach to the test if the students are primarily wealthy suburbanites. We received plenty of stimulating education and in college we were thrown straight into the deep end of the pool, with lots of graduate-level material that we didn't understand for quite a while, a far cry from the reteaching of high school material that everyone says is happening. Then again, that's only my personal experience.
So I do not think financing is the main problem. You can always find ways to spend more money, but first it needs to be shown that the money is the problem, and it is far from obvious, as the data does not show that lavish spending leads to improvement in results.
as several commenters here on HN have mentioned to other persons who have shared the link, and anyway doesn't address the nub of my statement, which is that the United States, by OBSERVATION OF ACTUAL PRACTICE, is underperforming in providing lessons to young people in school,
The analysis in the first link you posted has flaws as well. The author does not deny that when you break down the US scores by ethnicity, Asian-Americans do as well as other Asians, European-Americans as other Europeans, etc. He bases a large part of his argument on the contention that the US should actually be doing better than it is right now - that "we can do more" - simply because we have a higher GDP per capita.
One example he cites is that the mean PISA score for Asian-Americans is 534, while the mean PISA score for Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong is 533. The author argues that since our GPP per capita is much higher than Japan / South Korea (and especially the Asian-American GDP per capita, which is probably slightly higher than the overall US number, given that Asian-American median income is about $1-2k higher than White median income), we should be doing better than we are now. This ignores, of course, that even this alleged observable underperformance must then be shared by Singapore and Hong Kong as well, which have higher GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power) than even the US (Singpore has $10k higher GDP per capita, in fact), but do only equally as well as US Asian-Americans / Japan / South Korea.
The author also argues that it the explosive growth of private tuition services are propping up US test scores, completely oblivious to the fact that the pervasiveness and ubiquity of private tuition services in many Asian countries (especially South Korea) make US private tuition services look like day care centers.
Finally, link-dumping 3 articles and a book that we'd have to purchase on Amazon really does not add much.
>our car-based society allows us to geographically isolate us from the poor
You think that a society needs cars to be geographically isolated from the poor? Ever hear of a thing called history? by this statement I can see that you have not. History tells us that our car-based society allows for more opportunity for the social underclass rather than the opposite.
If you think that funding for schools in poor areas is the problem with our education system - you are out of touch with reality. I grew up in one of those areas and observed first hand the problem. It is not that the children do not have the opportunity to study and get good grades, go to college and get out of poverty.... The problem is that the kids are lazy and they aren't pushed by their parent(s) to do their homework and study. They get into trouble on the streets or play video games instead, girls get pregnant and go on welfare as single moms, guys do drugs and join gangs ending up in jail. Then they blame white people for their problems.
I know this by observation. Why isn't anyone asking the students who come out of these areas with decent to good grades and make something out of themselves. Everyone has their theory but no one wants to hold the parents of these kids accountable. I personally think that parents should be punished if their children don't do well in school, have continual behavioral problems or commit crimes. Cut off the welfare and restrict these parents and their families to living in a shelter and eating bread and water (no money for cable tv, alcohol and ciggies). It is not a good solution, but it is the only solution that will work. No amount of money via welfare or social programs will ever bring the black community out of the continuum they are stuck in.
The Hispanic community has another problem. Most of them are from Mexico or are second generation. The immigrants are usually much better off financially than they were in Mexico even if they are making $6 an hour mowing lawns. Their kids often cannot speak English very well and don't think that that they should have to put in more work than their English speaking counterparts to stay at the same level. Often their parents both work very long hours and do not appreciate the value of their kids education. They like the black parents (but for different reasons) do not require a high level of effort from their kids in regards to education. Again, their has to be consequences for these parents. Investigate the parents of children who never do their homework or are clearly not giving much effort in school. Warn them, then if things don't improve - deport them. I think that we would see quite a lot better grades from Mexicans overnight if this policy was implemented.
If parents don't know how to motivate their children - offer them parenting classes.
When talking about education in China, given that I just graduated from a chinese high school last year(I'm chinese), I think I can have a different view-point from others looking outside.
The fact is that, chinese students indeed have really really lots of things to learn in the subject of science, especially math, but something has missed, gravely. For example, the spirit of science. In china, students are told to be well-behaved, from the first step of the primary school till you graduated from high school or university, imagine that a 6 year-old boy obliged to wear a red scarf(Honglingjin in chinese) as a sign of being young pioneer(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Pioneers_of_China), and saying "Be prepared, to struggle for the cause of Communism!", that red scarf will accompanied with that boy, untill junior high school, yes, time to step into Communist Youth League, it will end till the university, where you can really choose to join the party or not.
Back in to the education, students here will learn truelly lots of knowledges in math, but for what? the love of science? No, for the exam. this is what I really want to talk about, the real main spirit that construct the form of education in China. For a normal student, when it comes to the education, it's the exam, like a hash, no other values, education => exam, study => better grades, pursuit of science => nil. The summit of your life being a student is the GaoKao, takes place once a year, depend and only depend on which you can enter your ideal university. For lots of students, it's the whole family's "dream", parents and teachers will say again and again the importance of get good grades in GaoKao, some student even commit suicide when they faild their GaoKao. Maybe you can already feel that something goes wrong, yes, student take "good" elementary education(especially in math), but with the misleading of the meaning of education, math, physics, chemistry, are nothing but a game of grades. Can you imagine that in high school, only 2/3 of time you can really learn somthing, and the 3rd year of the high school is a full-time practice of topics in exam, everything you are told to do and really do is solving wired and meaningless topics. After doing all this, when you finish the GaoKao, it's done, it's the very end of study, lots of students know nothing about what they should do in the future, because the game finished, and their's no grades for struggling.
You know, after GaoKao, a lot of chinese students go study in foreign universites(especially US) for the sake of, for example, Freedom. When it comes to me(I'm going to France this year), I nearly think that I'm a "survivor" of the form of education in China, I know what I really want, the high school was almost a "prison of spirit" for me, so it's really really exiciting when I graduated, I can really choose what I want to learn, start a startup company, study the real science but not those meaningless topics, do lots of things that aren't "well-behaved".
We are tend to see only good points of other education systems, because we know our own weakpoints, and the solution may be find in other systems, but the underlying problems are easy to be ignored. I wish this will helps you guys to see a different aspect of education in China, and cherish good things in your education system.
Your comments are a great insight, thanks. It reminds me of an article I read about trainee Chinese pilots coming here to my country (Australia) to get required flight training. The Australian instructors are happy with their grades, but are generally not impressed by their spirit and attitude; i.e. they don't have a real love for flying.
You know what, part of pilots in China(not all indeed) come from families that aren't rich, or countryside(so they are really not rich), or just didn't get good grades in school. So become a commercial aviation pilot means family finance would really change, and enroll in the military is another backup solution when taking exam and going university is not a good choice.
I don't think this is a problem isolated in China, I grew up in the Australian education system, went to a top 3 public high school, and the situation(at least for math/science) is the same. Subjects are taught by teachers who follow textbooks, where textbooks are full of practice questions to make sure you can give the correct answer. The underlying motivation for the material is missing - very very few teachers know the material or truly want to properly educate students.
The only difference is that the material is comparatively much less/easier than in the Chinese system, and motivation for students to do well is much lower - the exam has much less impact on the students future.
I think the way to teach math is really the problem to be solved, the math itself is such hard to find motivation to learn for most students if not combining with orther subjects. Teachers may also be confused about that.
Being a chinese much older than you and in retrospective, the real problem in China education is the lack of first rate teachers who really understand the topic they are teaching.
Honestly exams are very weak once you really get the idea of what you are learning. I can absolutely know nothing about what I am learning and get a very high score in the exam. Richard Feynman also pointed this out during visiting years in Brazil. Students in China and Brazil suffer the same problem. There are first rate students, but without first rate guidance, most of them will be turned down to the levels of their teachers.
Interesting, my roommate back in Minneapolis a decade ago is married to a Taiwanese woman. The big difference is they didn't meet in Asia—it was at Nye's if I recall.
I have downmodded and flagged you. Derogatory slurs are not part of civil discussion.
In response to the inevitable response of it just being a joke or a reference, I submit three things: 1) jokes do not come across well on internet forums, as tone is lost and we lack the familiarity that friends have where we can easier infer intention; 2) even given that, it makes the level of discourse likely to decrease; and 3) the attitude of "can't you take a joke?" is one of privilege, that is, it is most frequently adopted by people who haven't been on receiving end of the kind of discrimination that sometimes comes packaged in with such words.
Hmm. A strange article. A mix of really good points soaked in bitterness.
I spend the bulk of my time in Beijing, Taipei, and Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia). My take is slightly different.
Well, a lot is true. The property thing, definitely. The state industry takeovers is scary; you have to get a sense for what industries they don't mind foreigners in, and which they do. Media? Yeah, you don't want to own a media company in China as a non-Chinese. The same is true with energy and raw materials. Probably not true for manufacturing, education, and consumer goods. So, that's a weird and surreal and true point.
But some things seem dead-off. The Chinese seem much more community oriented than the West. On mornings I'm up early, there's always large groups of people doing Tai Chi, or moving around doing a sword-dance, or other group exercises. Likewise, there's huge groups of people singing, dancing, waltzing, in the evenings. Families go out and play together a lot. At least, that's what I see in CBD in Beijing.
The thing about the Chinese loving money and size is true. It's not as bleak as it sounds though, it's probably similar to 1950's America in that sense. You've got people who were raised lower on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so they're very pro-money and pro-security. It's all pretty upfront, and everyone is in to hard work, credentialing, and earning well. My friend is married to a Chinese woman, and we were working something like 12+ hours a day for a while. Since his work/life balance was totally destroyed on the projects we were on, I apologized to her one day at their house. "Hey, sorry we're working so much..." and she replies: "You're making money?" I say, "Yeah, we're making money." She says: "Okay! No problem then, keep making money! I'm glad you two are doing it!" They named their cat "Wangtzai" (spelling?), which translates to "Bring money." Yeah, they named their cat "Bring money." But they're also happy and have a good home life together. She just respects working a lot and wants her husband to work a lot. That's where she's at mentally.
This part struck me as the most off --
> [China] does not welcome intruders—unless they happen to be militarily superior and invade from the north, as did two imperial dynasties, the Yuan (1271-1368) and the Qing (1644-1911), who became more Chinese than the Chinese themselves. Moreover, the fates of the Mongols, who became the Yuan, and Manchu, who became the Qing, provide the ultimate deterrent: “Invade us and be consumed from the inside,” rather like the movie Alien.
It's not like "Alien" -- it's more like, China was so much more artistically and culturally sophisticated that even invaders assimilated the conquered culture, and happily so. It's little known that the Mongols (Yuan) built the Forbidden City at first. It was called "Forbidden" since it was Mongolian-only, preserving some of Mongolian Steppe Culture even within China. Likewise, Mandarin is the Manchu language... the ethnic minority that conquered China and became the Qing. The Han (majority) now speaks the minority's language, since it was widely spoken in courts and high level administration under the Qing Dynasty.
But why did the Manchu become more Han-like and base out of Beijing? Because it was a pretty amazing place, and by and large it always has been.
I don't know, maybe I'll get China-fatigue at some point. I agree with his point that you'll never be really truly Chinese in China, but foreigners also get all kinds of additional respect and benefits for being foreign, along with a tacit okay to break certain customs and decorums because you don't know better. For foreigners in China who speak Chinese, it's even better -- you get delight from everyone you interact with, and lots of respect (arguably, undeservedly so)... so yeah, it's good and bad. The article comes across overly jaded, though I suppose the idea to not start a media company or buy residential housing are both good pieces of advice!
> Likewise, Mandarin is the Manchu language... the ethnic minority that conquered China and became the Qing. The Han (majority) now speaks the minority's language
Say what? Mandarin Chinese was originally spoken by Han Chinese only and is nothing like the original language spoken by the Manchu (save for a few loanwords). The Manchu language is from the Tungusic language family, and has absolutely no genealogical relation to Mandarin or any other Sino-Tibetan languages.
As it says on Wikipedia[0]:
> By the end of the 19th century the [Manchu] language was so moribund that even at the office of the Shengjing (Shenyang) general, the only documents written in Manchu (rather than Chinese) would be the memorials wishing the emperor long life; at the same time period, the archives of the Hulan banner detachment in Heilongjiang show that only 1% of the bannermen could read Manchu, and no more than 0.2% could speak it.
Manchu now has ~20 native speakers, with its closest non-endangered relative being Xibe, with ~30,000 native speakers[1].
You were also incorrect in stating that the Forbidden City was built by the Yuan dynasty. Although there was an Imperial City (known as "Khanbaliq", meaning "great residence of the Khan" in Turkic languages) built by the Yuan at the same location, the Forbidden City itself was built by the Yongle Emperor, the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. The name "Forbidden City" did not exist until the Ming dynasty either. Since the Ming were ethnically Han, "forbidden" did not mean "forbidden to the Han". According to Wikipedia[0]:
> The Forbidden City, as the residence of the terrestrial emperor, was its earthly counterpart. Jin, or "Forbidden", referred to the fact that no-one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor's permission.
Mandarin is not totally unrelated to Manchu. There are a lot of loan words in Mandarin from Manchu, for example, 姑娘, 罗嗦, 邋遢, 马虎, 麻利, 别扭, and lots of other common phrases.
More importantly, Mandarin is heavily influenced by Manchu in other ways, for example, tones. Southern languages like Cantonese, Minnan have more tones (Cantonese 9, Minnan 8, vs Mandarin 5). Some Chinese believe Mandarin is a language polluted/reduced by Manchu, and they consider southern languages to be more elegant and culturally richer and purer.
Cantonese lost to Mandarin by a single vote during the selection of "official" language of China in 1912.[1]
> There are a lot of loan words in Mandarin from Manchu, for example, 姑娘, 罗嗦, 邋遢, 马虎, 麻利, 别扭, and lots of other common phrases.
And I acknowledged them. Similarly, southern Chinese languages feature borrowings from Tai, Austro-Asiatic, and Austronesian languages.
Sanskrit is another source of borrowings for many Chinese languages, due to the influence of Buddhism. The word "Mandarin", coincidentally, comes from the Sanskrit word mantrin (मन्त्रिन्), meaning "minister" or "councillor", although that is not used in Mandarin itself to refer to the language.
So it's not just Mandarin that has been influenced by foreign languages. The borrowing of words is very common when two languages come into contact. A prime example is the internet-speak used by Chinese netizens, which is replete with English-based neologisms.
However, that doesn't change the fact that modern Mandarin overwhelmingly bears more similarity to Classical Chinese than it does to Manchu.
> More importantly, Mandarin is heavily influenced by Manchu in other ways, for example, tones. Southern languages like Cantonese, Minnan have more tones (Cantonese 9, Minnan 8, vs Mandarin 5).
Do you have any proof that Manchu influence is the reason for Mandarin's relative paucity of tones in comparison to southern Chinese languages? Middle Chinese, which goes back nearly a millenium before the advent of the Qing dynasty, already had only 4 tones[0]. According to the relationship between Middle Chinese tones and modern Mandarin tones[1], the 4 tones of modern Mandarin are descended from the Ping (平), Shang (上), and Qu (去) tones of Middle Chinese, with some redistribution according to consonant type.
> Some Chinese believe Mandarin is a language polluted/reduced by Manchu, and they consider southern languages to be more elegant and culturally richer and purer.
And one of the major proximal causes of this is the loss of tones, since it's lead to homophonic ambiguity, which has been corrected through the formation of polysyllabic neologisms, which break many millenia-old connections with Classical Chinese. It's not just the addition of Manchu vocabulary and/or phrases.
>Do you have any proof that Manchu influence is the reason for Mandarin's relative paucity of tones in comparison to southern Chinese languages?
It's very hard to prove. There are materials from Qing Dynasty that still have the 入(entering) tone, this indicate the tone disappeared sometime during the late Qing. But others hold belief that the northern language lost the entering tone long before Qing, maybe as early as Yuan.
Whenever we talk about the nature of a people, things get complicated very fast.
That said, my personal experience with community-vs.-individuality in Chinese culture is closer to the OP's than yours. There is incredibly strong feeling in China that the world -- and, indeed, your fellow countrymen -- are out to get you, so you'd better get them first. The tragedy of the commons is not a problem in China because the concept of a commons is itself perplexing to many Chinese. The way that Chinese citizens treat common areas such as parks (read: with great disdain) is indicative of this mindset.
Put another way, the concept of "community" does exist for many Chinese people, but it usually extends only to family members and friends. If you're within this boundary then things are as warm and welcoming and community-focused as you might desire. However, the boundary is razor-sharp and does not usually extend to things such as neighborhoods or towns.
And of course, there are always exceptions. A Chinese woman I know prides herself on the fact that the never screwed anyone over during her life (she puts it a little more delicately than that).
Perhaps this is all growing pains. Maybe things will mellow out once people become wealthier, or feel that they are better protected from adversity and/or their fellow man.
Disclaimer: much of my opinions are based on anecdotes from city life (Beijing, Shanghai), rather than rural life.
I upvoted, but I also felt I should comment to say that the reason I agree and feel this comment needs to be seen is that I also agree with the OP, rather than lionhearted, precisely also because of personal experience after living in China for the past couple of years (and making truly local Chinese friends, the type who don't know many foreigners).
As mentioned in many posts, your history is a bit off.
Also, my overtime work in Beijing doesn't make my girlfriend happy; she understandably gets very angry that I never make it home for dinner or put a strong wall between work and life, this is very important in Chinese culture and I feel violations are actually more acceptable in American culture. I guess everyone is different, its impossible to generalize.
The concept of "community" breaks down very quickly in China. Sure, if you are a native Beijinger, you go to the park and do the dances in the square (assuming you are old or bored), but most of the people in Beijing are migrant workers who do not have hukou; they are basically excluded from the community. How can a community thrive when you exclude 60 or 70% of the people? Granted, 40% is still a lot of people, but something is very rotten in the society.
Everything said in the article is plausible and probably true. Once you really get embedded in Chinese society, you are as exposed to unfairness and corruption as a local is, without the benefit of being treated as a local, and it makes sense right? You can escape if you want, they don't have much leverage over you.
> most of the people in Beijing are migrant workers who do not have hukou; they are basically excluded from the community
That's not so simple. They belong to their own community of migrant workers and most are able to get community support when needed. They also become acclimated to Beijing and it is not unlikely their offspring will be Beijingers. I have a direct experience of that, our nanny is a typical migrant worker. has very good relations with our neighbors, who are of the oldest Beijing brand (they are Manchu). Disclaimer: we live in the hutong. It is very possible that life in new places is different.
Not true. Children of migrant workers don't get hukou just for being born in Beijing. You basically have people who have never been anywhere outside of Beijing who have no hope of getting hukou; they are basically a multi-generational second class citizenry.
The hutongs are about the only place in Beijing where you can find high concentrations of Beijing'ers. Anywhere outside of the second ring road tends to be mostly migrants. Granted, some of these migrants are rich, live in nice apartments, and don't really have adjustment problems, but then again, there is quite a huge underclass in Beijing that has none of that.
And if you can't get access to social services in Beijing, are you really a beijinger? Where do these kids go to school, take the gaokao, have a higher chance to get into PKU or qinghua? You aren't a full beijinger without hukou. That we can get hukou for a few of our college new hires every year is a big recruiting advantage for my company.
True. Actually there's been ongoing discusses on this issue, about education of children of migrant workers in China.
You cannot purchase a house, send your kids to school, or access many social services without a Beijing hukou(something like resident identification).
Big tech companies like Microsoft and Sina becomes more competitive on recruiting, because they have been given some hukou credits by the government, so if you get into these companies, you can get a hukou when it's your turn in the long-long queue.
And local Beijingers do not welcome those migrants. They even think it's unfair to let the kids of those to receive education in Beijing, not to mention the college entrance test(aka GaoKao).
Some good points, but you're mistaken about Mandarin: Mandarin is a Sinitic language, related to Cantonese, Minnan, etc. (and also to Tibetan); it is unrelated to Manchurian, which is a Tungusic language and is now almost extinct (Wikipedia says there are around 70 speakers).
>The article comes across overly jaded, though I suppose the idea to not start a media company or buy residential housing are both good pieces of advice!
Building a business then having the state steal it from you would make most people jaded.
Completely agree with your synopsis in the first sentence. The article would have been stronger had he given a more thoughtful analysis to the differences between China and say, America. As it is, he points out a lot of characteristics of China and the Chinese that may be more extreme, but don't seem to be all that different at a fundamental level, than what you might see elsewhere in the world. But this is understandable, given that it sounds like he's been immersed in China for the last 16 years - perhaps he's lost some perspective.
Grass is always greener somewhere else. But come on, the article is about China, not America, Europe or anywhere else. This is like how the Chinese press always diverts to American human rights problems when their is a discussion of their own. "See, America has problems too, so commenting on our problems is invalid." That's not the point, its not a competition!
we do tend to project our own desires on other people. i remember a colleague telling me how disappointed he was with chile because the same people who had overthrown a fascist dictator were now interested in worldly things like cars and clothes.
there's something of that in this article, i think.
also, it's very hard to be neutral when you live in a place. and living in a foreign place is hard (more for some than others, of course). it's easy to bear grudges, no matter how aware you are that "it's just cultural differences".
Even though Chinese ideals/opinions tend to be NOT as diversified as, say Canadians, doesn't mean all Chinese think the same.
Some of the main causes, and by no means the only causes for "racism":
1, those you don't understand, you don't trust -- vast of Chinese have not met many foreigners and Chinese culture tend to differ greatly from western cultures.
2, as noted, China is a very segregated country, you get discriminated against for all sorts of reasons. But if you are from a powerful American family, you will find your respect in China; if you are a poor China man, even your (slightly better off) neighbours would look down upon you.
Same reason Jd's love could not marry him, she will not marry another China man either, if he is not from a respectable family or occupying a respectable position.
On a final note, I don't believe in racism. Not that racism does not exist, but it's too easy of an explanation for your misfortunes; It's too easy to blame something you cannot change and call it a day. Real life is a lot more complex than that, and it's best to look for resolvable problems and fix them, increasing your chance of success, than to blame someone else.
It's funny to see more of these articles about China where westerners get their panties in a bunch when they find themselves in a similar situation most other people have been in with respect to the west. I should write a similar article about my American/European dream. I hope the Chinese are able to take criticism better than the west. Westerners can't get over their superiority complex.
>>I hope the Chinese are able to take criticism better than the west. Westerners can't get over their superiority complex.<<
Actually, most Chinese people I've met, especially those who were born and raised in mainland China, have a massive superiority complex. In every type of discussion comparing the West to China, they keep bringing it up the fact that China has thousands of years of history, and has invented things like gunpowder. Most of them view the West - especially America - with condescension and contempt.
I've noticed the same thing - but I've interpreted as an inferiority complex. As a Chinese, I feel like the Chinese feel an incredible need to prove themselves.
After all, the 19th and 20th centuries have been one crushing defeat after another. The yearning and obsession with past achievements (like, 500+ years past) is symptomatic of a general lack of confidence in the present state of Chinese society.
You meet a lot of Chinese with a chip on their shoulders and a remarkable need to assert that China will be strong once more, along with vague threats about how naysayer countries will get their comeuppance when the time comes. This all sounds quite similar to "The South shall rise again!" - an attitude borne out of defeatism, not true optimism.
That's an interesting perspective. I'm actually Turkish, and Turkey definitely has the same king of yearning and obsession for the achievements of its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. That said, it's a bit different because Turks tend to have a real inferiority complex, as opposed to one that is disguised by the pretense of superiority like the Chinese. I wonder why this is.
Russian people of Soviet era had the same complex.
We were taught that we have best science, culture, sport, military and most progressive state. Also we were strong but good, not as "prokliatye imperialisty" ("cursed imperialists")
It evaporated in '90s, but not completely - I often hear "we were ...."
Jerome K. Jerome wrote about the same complex in British people. If I recall correctly that must be in "Diary of a Pilgrimage"
I hear that Russia still has the best mathematicians. Culturally Russia was at the forefront of music/opera - just see the famous violinist of the 20th centuary. I read though in Nathan Milstein's biography that he fled the Stalin regime which stifled art in Russia.
I do pity the guy for moving back to the UK, expecting some kind of blessing of freedom. Perhaps he has been gone too long to realize the extend to which our police state now reaches. In the past 15 years, we have reintroduced star chambers, armed the police, failed to prosecute anybody in the police force for murdering innocent citizens, introduced 'precrime' arrests to stifle dissent, and we're extraditing British Citizens for not committing crimes in Britain.
This lunacy shows no signs of stopping either. In fact, it's accelerated massively with high profile events like the royal wedding and the Olympic games used as excuses to kill political dissent and keep the population dumb.
Of course, most British people are mindlessly flag waving about the Olympic games, despite how they embody the erosion of civil liberties. The British do feel superior - their ego and patriotism blinds them to their own enslavement, just as it does the Chinese.
I know nobody will take my advice, but I'll give it anyway: Pick somewhere other than the UK (or US), because you're gonna be quite sour when you find out what you're really in for.
They seem to keep getting lambasted on Slashdot for proposing draconian internet censorship legislation, but I don't think any of it ever gets passed... how are they on the "police state" issue?
Spoken by someone who seems to have no experience of the real world, whether in the UK or elsewhere. Still live at home do you? Do you even have a job? The UK and US may not be socialist paradises but it is far worse in most other parts of the world, especially if you are not wealthy.
My point is it is possible to write a similarly slanted article about the west pointing out only the negative things (and they are legion). The author has had some very bad experiences in China this has colored his views and is the basis for the many sweeping generalizations and unjustified statements in the article such as 'the world does not want to be led by China in the 21st century' or 'The domestic Chinese lower education system does not educate'. Also the feelings he describes of wanting to be part of a community but never quite fitting is not unfamiliar to many who live in the west. That said, the US is still miles ahead of China (and most of Europe) in guaranteeing equal rights and protection regardless of race or origin.
Try being a raghead like me and going through transport
security in Europe, then going through it in the USA,
then comparing the experience. You may be disillusioned.
Technically, there is no Chinese ethnicity. China is made up of (officially) 56 ethnicities. My parents are ethnically Han Chinese. I was born in Canada, raised in America. I carry an American passport. To my neighbors, I'm a 华侨 (overseas Chinese); one taxi driver told me that I would be Chinese forever because it's in my blood. So what am I? Moving from the questions of ethnicity, is it possible for a foreigner to immigrate to China and become a Chinese citizen? I suspect the answer is 'no' but I have heard (perhaps from the internet) that one can become a citizen at the invitation of the Chinese government. It seems, being Chinese has more to do with ethnicity AND culture than anything else.
While some may deride China for being parochial/uncosmopolitan for this, many countries share this same trait: the majority ethnicity defines citizenship and acceptance. The United States isn't immune from this. Even though I grew up an American (and still consider myself American) I have experienced personal bias and prejudice because of my ethnicity. I got comments from kids about me going to Buddhist church (I'm not Buddhist), using karate in a fight (I don't know any form of martial arts), using chopsticks (this is true), or speaking "Ching chong, ching chong" (I am not familiar with this language). High school was hard. Not that it wasn't for any of my white friends who shared the same weight/height/car/popularity class as me, but none of them were ever told to "Go home."
The big "but" here is that I live/lived in the United States. And though there is a history of disenfranchisement as well as evidence of racial bias today, I am more hopeful that you (whoever you are) /can/ become American... not by becoming 'white', but by participating in a society that has the opportunity to change itself as well as the opportunity to change you.
It's not clear to me that this is possible in China (i.e. social change to embrace differing ethnicities). The average Chinese (pick any of the Chinese ethnicities) person has very strong feelings about one's identity as it relates to race and language (e.g. some people couldn't believe I was Chinese and couldn't speak Mandarin when I first got to China). In my first trip to China, I made a friend who relayed me this interesting anecdote (this was the late 90's): he (an American) was on a college campus and he engaged in a discussion about race relations in America with a Chinese student. The Chinese student told him: "There is no racism in China because there aren't any black people." While the ethnic tensions aren't as visible here, simply ask a Han person how they feel about Uyghers.
To be Chinese is to be 'jing' - to put it negatively, it means to be calculating, materialistic and ruthlessly advancing one's agenda; to put it positively, it means that you are constantly trying to improve yourself and be resourceful.
As 1.5 generation American-Chinese, I used to hate Chinese culture for its 'jing'-ness and rebelled it by going to a liberal arts college and reading Jack Kerouac, subscribing to the hippie culture etc. What I realized is that American culture, beneath its veil of "creativity" and "open society" is nothing but a cover for human selfishness universal in every society.
Most of my friends from college gone to Teach for America or PeaceCorps have done it for social currency - as much as my Chinese friends have gunned for Goldman Sachs/Microsoft for Chinese social currency. Of course, predictably, five years ago, these TfA and PeaceCorps grads are now enrolled dutifully in medical school or law school. European colonialism's "holier-than-thou" attitude is now baked subtly in that you may have the technical/economical prowess, but you yet don't have the renaissance quality. It's just as bad as the Chinese mindset of being judgmental by asking what school you went to and how much money you make.
Personally I've embraced the 'Chinese jing'. I don't think I'm better than any Chinese mainlander, I'm a shameless Chinese guy who's trying to make the biggest buck, get the hottest chick in the club, get the most prestige/respect in my field, destroy my enemies and don't give a fk about who gets hurt in my path. My only one redeeming quality is honesty (to myself) - which is why Westerners will never be Chinese.
Yes, China is now more individualistic than America because people are forced to be.
On the superficial level, Chinese may seem to be socially conservative and study math/science to the wishes of parents, etc. But on a deeper level, modern Chinese are extremely selfish, there was a little girl who was hit in a hit-and-run in a major city in central China during mid-day and no one helped her for hours while she laid there dying. This is quite morbid to Westerner values, but the Chinese rationale is "if I help her, the person who hit her has already run away; she might pin me for the hit-and-run because she needs to sue someone for her damage."
Individualism here implies self-protection and ruthless advancement of personal agenda for money and power; it's quite different from the American ideal of individualism of finding and pursuing one's passion and vision. However, my point is that both the Chinese and Americans ideals, are actually the same thing in different dressings, it's just Chinese are more honest about it because of economical scarcities.
This is really interesting, the case of the girl you described certainly isn't new phenomenon. I lived with my parents in China up until 1993, and back then this was also a common situation, someone would be dying on the street but for hours nobody will help. I distinctly remember arriving in Australia to find people will help out strangers on the street that are in trouble, it was very different to how things are in China.
I'm not sure how far this phenomenon goes back, but the idea behind the thinking is that helping might bring great trouble upon yourself - part superstition and part selfishness. I remember when was around 5 and I saw this other kid who was starving, I had pity on him and wanted to give him some food, but I remember my mother stopping me. There are also many 'pianzi' in China - they trick/lie to you in order to gain something, and people are very weary of this. This is why family/relationships are so much closer in China - people are only willing to help those they know.
I've heard that young people(particularly girls) in China are today more obsessed with money, so there very well may be truth to what you say about people being selfish.
>China is now more individualistic than America because people are forced to be.
I agree with this - competition is so high today compared to when my parents were growing up. The pressure back then was low as opportunities under the communist regime simply didn't exist - only those with great ambition would work hard. Most student/workers played around all day at that time.
Hearing about the property bubble and political system in China is a bit like hearing a Greek tell you about how politics and business worked in Greece, pre-economic meltdown.
The author seems to be stuck in a country which is rising after coming from a country which had already risen. The path to success is no cake walk, its tiring and it causes fatigue.
As as Indian this article to me on many counts also looks like the story of India. The west will find it difficult to digest but the desperation to grow forces a person to go out of his way to do and achieve things people in the west in all the comfort cannot imagine in wildest of their dreams.
>>Modern day mainland Chinese society is focused on one object: money and the acquisition thereof.
What other dreams do you think poor people have?
>>The domestic Chinese lower education system does not educate. It is a test center. The curriculum is designed to teach children how to pass them.
The issue in Asian countries which are developing is most have only one shot at doing something in life. Study your ass off or perish, there is no social security- Your parents work hard to give you a decent education and you work hard in a once in a life time opportunity to do something in life. There is no other alternative, you don't have money to do business. The national infrastructures, license problems, corruption and other stuff won't give you a second shot at business.
There fore unlike in the west where 'chase your dreams' makes sense, here it doesn't.
>>Success in exams offers a passport to a better life in the big city. Schools do not produce well-rounded, sociable, self-reliant young people with inquiring minds. They produce winners and losers. Winners go on to college or university to take “business studies.” Losers go back to the farm or the local factory their parents were hoping they could escape.
As I said before, opportunities are at a premium here. This is difficult to understand if you come from US and settle down here. You will just never get why there is such a mad rush for opportunities.
>>The pressure makes children sick. I speak from personal experience. To score under 95 per cent is considered failure. Bad performance is punished. Homework, which consists mostly of practice test papers, takes up at least one day of every weekend. Many children go to school to do it in the classroom. I have seen them trooping in at 6am on Sundays. In the holidays they attend special schools for extra tuition, and must do their own school’s homework for at least a couple of hours every day to complete it before term starts again. Many of my local friends abhor the system as much as I do, but they have no choice. I do. I am lucky.
Whoa this is nothing. In India while I did by second year of pre university college, I practically slept only for 3 hours a day for the whole year. Before going to the exam I cried. Because my whole years worth of hard work depended on this one exam! During my engineering college days, I've spend endless nights studying without sleeping. Same with school.
As a software engineer I've gone a whole week without sleep. And that was perfectly acceptable. My dad used to tell me, to consider myself lucky to even deserve the opportunity to go and work at a software company. Hence anything was acceptable.
>>An option is to move back to a major Chinese city and send our children to an expensive international school—none of which offer boarding—but I would be worried about pollution, and have to get a proper job, most likely something to do with foreign business to China, which my conscience would find hard.
Good schooling is shit expensive. Hence parents almost always send their kids to a local mediocre school. But warn them sternly to study very hard or they will have no future.
>>China does not nurture and educate its youth in a way that will allow them to become the leaders, inventors and innovators of tomorrow, but that is the intention.
Thats for the next generation. The first generation, like my Dad's. They had only one goal- 'First get your kids somewhere, let them take it from there on.'
The author is clearly stuck in a massive cultural conflict in his brain. He wants China to remain where it was, a mediocre country compared to his original homeland. He doesn't understand the cultural pressures of families in developing nations. He doesn't understand those countries are trying to go to where, his homeland is now. He clearly belongs to his native culture, where bulk of the growth work is already done, and people are just building on top of it. Where you can get to enjoy foreign vacations, passion based work environments, freedom to not worry about basic stuff like food, clothing and shelter.
>>The author is clearly stuck in a massive cultural conflict in his brain. He wants China to remain where it was, a mediocre country compared to his original homeland. He doesn't understand the cultural pressures of families in developing nations. He doesn't understand those countries are trying to go to where, his homeland is now. He clearly belongs to his native culture, where bulk of the growth work is already done, and people are just building on top of it. Where you can get to enjoy foreign vacations, passion based work environments, freedom to not worry about basic stuff like food, clothing and shelter.
What quote do you base this off of? This is your conjecture based upon a mostly negative article about China. I live in China so I can concur with most of the author's experiences if not his opinions. What I got from the author's article was this:
I loved living in China. There is an inequity in China regarding money and power. I wish the Chinese people something better.
Is it a cultural conflict to want justice and then to be frustrated when the legal system swings the other way without explanation? Your conclusion that the author wants China to remain where it is show a lack of comprehension for both the content of the article as well as the pathos meant to be evoked.
Here is what he wrote in his conclusion:
>>There are tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of mainland Chinese who “follow” such people too, and there must be countless more like them in person, trying in their small way to make China a better place. One day they will prevail. That’ll be a good time to become Chinese. It might even be possible.
These aren't the words of a man, though embittered, that wants to see China remain where it was. These aren't the musings of one that hasn't spent time in the culture and has no understanding of it (though his understanding, as is yours is colored by your own personal background). These are hopes of a man that wants to see China move forward.
>As a software engineer I've gone a whole week without sleep. And that was perfectly acceptable. My dad used to tell me, to consider myself lucky to even deserve the opportunity to go and work at a software company. Hence anything was acceptable.
Are you speaking metaphorically? or can you really perform under such conditions? I mean, I'm a SysAdmin, so a lot of my value is in my willingness to get up and fix something when my pager goes off at 4am; but I am very conscious of my declining productivity as I deprive myself of sleep. In fact I try to go to sleep before I'm absolutely exhausted for just this reason. The longest outages are always those that come right when I'm about to go to sleep.
It's not a matter of comfort or will; it's a matter of performance. Yes, I can make myself stay awake for several days, but I will make more mistakes. Way more mistakes. At some point, even in the middle of an outage, it makes sense to set an alarm for a few hours from now and take a nap, otherwise you just keep digging deeper. Staying up, sure, impresses the boss, but it doesn't get the job done any faster.
This is easily resolved. Did American education system or the education system of any other country which you consider developed now, underwent similar stages?
There are grave dangers in justifying our current systems and saying that in time, we will get there. For one, the products of this system may no longer wish for a better system to emerge.
> Schools do not produce well-rounded, sociable, self-reliant young people with inquiring minds. They produce winners and losers. Winners go on to college or university to take “business studies.”
Being Chinese in China has almost nothing to do with the government. It's a cultural belief that's persisted for centuries. Don't expect that to change at "at the drop of a hat".
It's not a particularly unusual belief, really. All cultures have an in-group/out-group division. OP is just missing traits this specific test requires.
As lionhearted said, a mix of good points and bitterness, but 甜 and 酸 always go well together, don't they?
I think the most poignant section was this:
>A deal had been struck. Deng had promised the Chinese people material wealth they hadn’t known for centuries on the condition that they never again asked for political change. The Party said: “Trust us and everything will be all right.”
>Twenty years later, everything is not all right.
But I would disagree with the overarching theme that the problem of an ascendant China / China in general / etc. is that China is too inward-looking, that "You'll never be Chinese." I know you'll never be Japanese, but I think China and its people and culture are quite different; I didn't spend as much time living in China or studying Chinese as the author, but in that time and in my experiences I think there is a lot more interest and openness of people (and many elites) than is given credit.
Unfortunately, there are huge structural and institutional barriers too...
While the article may have good points, I was once told not to burn any bridges when leaving. It is an illusion that you can change things while giving up the fight. Unless you leaving is an illusion for some other agenda.
Depends what you are leaving, sometimes it is good to make sure that going back whatever it is not an option. Having lived there for that long there will be times in the future where he will feel nostalgic need to go back, perhaps try again.. at which point he will look at this piece and know that he will never be able to run business or work in China again a good thing in this case
Talking about ideology education for children in this country, it's just like in some far-far-away, every newly born has to be fucked by the king; growing up, they know they are fucked, some are addicted to get fucked, some manage to be fuckers, most just know and accept what has been done and move on with more/other important things in their life.
it's just life, no matter you born, just get fucked and move on.
Blowing your nose in public is disgusting to me personally. I dont care if you use a napkin or hankerchief whatever. I am amazed to see people blowing their nose in public without any embarassment.
That's a curious world view. People should be embarrassed by things you personally find disgusting, even if they're within accepted social norms? And you are amazed that people do things are socially acceptable? Pardon me if I say that I find that a bit self-centered.
I'm not sure where you live, but at least in the US, it's acceptable to discreetly blow your nose in many public situations (the dining table not being one of those).
For full disclosure, I should mention that my nose runs a bit more than most. ;)
I get that a lot so you are probably right :). I agree that in the US, it is an accepted social norm (I live in the US too) but I was just stating my personal opinion on the matter.
As for your own nose,blow away :). I promise to behave if I am around you
" The Party does not want free thinkers who can solve its problems. It still believes it can solve them itself, if it ever admits it has a problem in the first place."
This is not only damaging to society in China, but to the rest of the world as well. So much potential to do good, squandered because of fear of revolution.
Of course. The British led the world and did not offer (at the time) anyone the chance to be British either. In fact, they actively discouraged interbreeding. It is a dogma of the modern Occident that it is stronger to be multi-ethnic, and that national identity should be open to anyone. History shows us, however, that that is hardly a necessity for world empire.
Full disclosure: I was once in love with a Chinese woman from an elite family, who I am fairly certain loved me but rejected me because I did not belong to the appropriate stock (with influence from her family). Lesson learned: if love is strong, kinship bonds are often stronger.