About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

2008 coined the Chinese internet meme: 很黄，很暴力 (”very yellow, very violent”). Despite roundly being used in the most humorous of situations, few things truly exemplify the dark side of this meme more than two videos that have spread across the Chinese-language internet this year.

The first video hit critical mass in early July, appearing on various forums and blogs. In the video, a naked and withdrawn teenage girl is commanded to do ludicrous things such as marching in place while enduring beatings by other youths, some classmates, seven girls and four boys in total. It is also suggested that the girl was raped before the video begins.

• Tianya BBS: 女生遭轮奸后又被同学凌辱 并被拍视频放上网 (Chinese)
• ChinaRen BBS: 女生被轮 奸遭凌辱视频引网友热议 (Chinese)
• chinaSMACK: Naked Chinese Girl Attacked By Cantonese Teens [NSFW] (English)
• Sankaku Complex:Girls Preside Over Classmate’s Gang Violation (English)

The second video hit critical mass this past week, again appearing on various forums and blogs. The accompanying story suggests that this girl was being punished by classmates seeking retribution for her stealing from them at least three times. Within the video, the girl offers to appease her enemies by taking off her clothes for the camera rather than being beaten up.

• Mop BBS: 广东女中学生偷东西被威胁脱衣凌辱拍视频 (Chinese)
• chinaSMACK: Naked Schoolgirl Video, Punishment For Stealing [NSFW] (English)

Reactions to both videos can best be described as “expected,” with the overwhelming majority of people all outraged by teenagers ganging up on an girl, beating, exploiting, and humiliating her…all on film. Also expected are the implicit and explicit multitudes of people, both men and women, further spreading or seeking these videos, and the people who lecture them for doing so.

Yet, within the public discourse surrounding these videos, there seems to be two major camps of apoplectic rage:

• Those more outraged by the content of the video, who tend to spread the video to draw more outrage to the video.
• Those more outraged by the video being spread, who insist that the spread of the video is categorically contemptible.

We bare witness to a profound social phenomenon…and conundrum.

1. Are these videos “viral?” Or are these videos a “virus?”
2. Is the rapid spread of these videos natural, illustrating some human social mechanism at work? Or is it unhealthy, revealing something deeply wrong with society? Something else?
3. Should these videos be suppressed, whether to protect the identity or dignity of the participants or to prevent a portion of the population from deriving a socially unacceptable voyeuristic pleasure from it?
4. In the internet age, can these videos realistically be suppressed at all? What ramifications for the “victims”, the “aggressors”, and society at large are there for suppressing or not suppressing? What is “better” or “right” for society?
5. If these videos cannot entirely be suppressed, then how should society react? How should society respond both to the spread of the video and to incident evidenced by the video? Again, what is “better” or “right” for society?
6. What do our responses say about our own worldview, about where we draw the lines separating the individual and society, the private and the public?
7. Is there a difference between the reactions of the average Chinese netizen and the average “Western” netizen? Would your answers above change based upon what society you are in, whether “Chinese” or “Western?”

My film “600″ which I shot in Shanghai in 2007 has recently been accepted into some major U.S. and international film festivals after a short successful China festival 2007 showing(3 awards in 2 festivals). I’ll be heading to the following venues in the next month Austin Asian American Film Festival, Vancouver Asian American Film Festival, International Community Film Festival(can’t make this one, it’s in England). I’ve been wanting to share “600″ with CNreviews for the longest time, but post production with my 2nd film “Drowning” prevented me from having any free time to write. BUT!!!! I FINALLY have some time, so here it is:

Background: I spent my post-college years all over China acting in movies before ending up in Shanghai. While living in Shanghai, I also took a part time job at an English teaching company formerly known as TalkdaTalk as an events coordinator(flexible, easy, I loved it!). When I was free, I would also teach English there and hosted company events. During my time there, I met a lot of English teachers; people from all walks of life now living in Shanghai as expats. Besides the English teachers I met at TalkdaTalk, I also met a huge number of them during social and expat community events. Why teach English? The reason being English teachers are a hot commodity and the Chinese pay nice $$$ for a full time teacher. Full time English teachers are making the ranges of 10,000-15,000 RMB per month. Even though that doesn’t sound a lot to people here in the States, you have to consider the cheap living standards in China where you can eat a cheap meal for 7 rmb( $1), share an apartment for 2000 rmb ($300). To put things into perspective, most of my Chinese local friends all make between 2000rmb-5000 rmb per month (note: most have a college degree). For this reason, people come from all over the world to teach and party in Shanghai.

The film’s core: The core of “600″ is about the loneliness and struggles with identity of an American ex-pat living in Shanghai teaching English. I used the stories of many expat English teachers as inspiration in writing “600″. The main motivation behind this film being the crazy stories I hear from people talking about their lives and how they somehow ended up in Shanghai. When I was living in China, I felt this aura from all the expats that they were all lost(myself included), and was looking for something. This maybe the reason why most of the expats I knew had different jobs and was always trying to do different things. They all deeply loved Shanghai for the city’s energy and were drawn closely to it. In getting to know more and more of these people, I realized most of them were all looking for something in life that they hadn’t found in their previous existence. As expats of Shanghai, they all loved the city and culture initially and are having the best times there. But gradually, over time, the reality and problems begin setting in… and this is where our film begins…

The film”600″ is online and you can watch it for free HERE

(feel free to donate $$$ to support my next film)

In my next post, I will focus on the theme from “600″ and talk about

Living in China as an Expat

Don’t touch that dial!

Black and White Cat (BWC) took the time to compare an original English language article in the New York Times entitled “Beijing Puts on a Happy Face for Games, without Wrinkles” and a translation/redaction of the article by Beijing Evening News (zh). (h/t to China Bystander, China Law Blog, many others). BWC author Rob then translated back the Chinese article and compared against the original. In summary, according to Rob, this is what happened:

However, caveats aside, one overwhelming fact remains: every single statement that could possibly be seen as negative - and there’s quite a lot - has been expunged from the [translated] article, and almost every nuanced phrase that carries any neg4tive connotations has been turned into one of unqualified praise. In some instances, this can simply be error (as with my own unfortunate mistakes). But genuine errors cannot always be in one direction. The New York Times article expresses admiration for some aspects of [the city's] preparations, disapproval of other aspects and also a slightly disoriented mixture of the two. There is no way the [translated] article could in any way be said to have remotely reflected this. And it cannot be called a summary if it does not actually summarize the original.

It should go without saying that similar examples of misrepresentation can be found in European and American reports.

The non-keyword parsable visual image of Rob’s post tells much of the story.

Excerpt 1: New York Times in perfect harmony

The main point of the original article was to point out the impression of “unnatural youthfulness” left by the staffing strategy of the Beijing Olympic organizers–relying on volunteers mostly in their 20s. The article makes the point of this being a “carefully stage managed” event, and talks about it as if it were a big Hollywood production or a massive Disneyland in Beijing.

But then the BJ Evening News modified it into a piece praising the youthful vigor of China.  So why did they do this?

• Perhaps the editors of BJ Evening News felt that it was important to help Western reporters not embarrass themselves by inadvertently insulting the Chinese people, the volunteers, and the Olympic organizers with these points.
• Perhaps the editors feel that its counterproductive for the Chinese readers to view Western media as biased and anti-China. Achieving the goals of peaceful, productive integration between China and “the rest of the world” can only be helped by Chinese people having a positive impression of others, and if Chinese people believe others have a positive impression of them.
• Or maybe the boss just wants to avoid difficult phone calls on their mobile phones at inconvenient times from regulators.

But an unintended side-effect of these state-encouraged efforts to shape popular opinion has resulted, according to John Kamm in the Washington Post, in a growing disconnect between how Chinese think “the world” views them and what “the world” actually thinks. The point that Kamm made from the Pew Global Study is right on target: major disconnect between Chinese self-perception and Western perceptions. Smoothing out the rough edges in Western media accounts to present a more positive, respectful, harmonious face, may be one reason why this disconnect exists. But does this disconnect make the difficult task of governing China easier? I’m sure there is plenty of private debate around this issue.

Excerpt 2: So what really happened to all the 40 and 50 year old people?

One of the most interesting points that was eliminated in the translated version was the part about why there were so few middle aged volunteers. Compared to Western Europe and the United States, the experience of one generation to the next in China is much more different. The original article hints at the practice of selecting employees by age, gender, and attractiveness which is more common in China (and many other parts of the world) than in the US (where it is illegal). And its possible that the competitive selection process favored younger applicants because English-language proficiency was a factor. So maybe the “front-office” volunteers were young but the “back-office” volunteers (hidden from view) were middle-aged. Not sure why the issue of generational differences is so sensitive (actually I have some theories).  But I believe that this issue is one of the factors that Westerners interested in China really need to spend time to understand: generational differences in attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. I’ll put it out there: In general, I feel more comfortable doing business with someone in the early 30s, than someone in their late 40s in China. The world of the generations born in the 80s and 90s is much more open, global, and (dare I say) Western…then the world of those born in the 50s and early 60s. Yesterday’s Red Guards are today’s beautiful Olympic cheerleaders. It seems that it was impossible for Western visitors to Beijing to even glimpse any of that complexity of generational differences, at least during the Olympics.

Thank you Rob for highlighting this example. Here were my two key takeaways:

• Always be on the lookout for differences in perception between you and your partner in China. Dig beneath the surface of what is said and done to understand what might be more fundamental differences in worldview.
• Understand how fast China is changing and how diverse people’s opinions, attitudes, and behavior are…from a generational basis.

I hope to strive for, as Paul Denlinger of ChinaVortex says, “one level deeper” in my own personal understanding of these issues. Interested in your thoughts and comments too after you read the original post.

UPDATE 9/1:

Tim Johnson, McClatchy Beijing bureau chief and blogger at China Rises, provides another example of Xinhua polishing his story.  He includes the redacted story and his original so you can make a side-by-side comparison. The effect, according to Tim, is as follows:

This serves several purposes for Xinhua and its readers. For masses of readers, it makes them think that foreign journalists are completely admiring of modern China and have nothing negative to say. A slightly more discerning reader may think foreigner reporters are saps. They know that China has warts, and may wonder why the foreign journalists don’t see them.

Only very savvy readers know that Xinhua guts the negative from stories.

I guess with all the “polishing” and creative editing, Chinese people who can’t read English really don’t know what to believe when they read the official media.

Photo originally found on Mop here.

“Add fuel?” “Let’s go?” “Olé! Olé! Olé?” “Come on?” One of the quirkier news stories that has come out of the Beijing Olympics is how to translate the ubiquitous Chinese cheer 加油 (jiāyóu). The New York Times Rings blog wrote about the various contexts that 加油 has been used–ranging from the current usage during the Olympics to the Wenchuan earthquake–and sparking a vibrant comment thread where no one seemed to be able to agree. Even the Chinese news agency Xinhua got into the act, covering the foreign media’s struggles to translate the phrase properly. And an intrepid blogger took it further–why bother stopping at English when you can say 加油 in languages from Luxembourgish to Prussian?

China Daily also examined how China might need new cheers and compared China’s cheering to the organized South Korean effort. Is the simple 加油 really that boring?  (Aug. 23 Update)  The Australian certainly thinks so.

In case you haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, here’s a video on how to cheer the Chinese way from the hilariously straight-faced Two Chinese Characters.

How would you translate 加油? I’ve always had a fondness for “good luck” myself.

–

On a related note, the Wall Street Journal writes about a government program called Heart-to-Heart that assigned local Beijing schools to cheer for visiting countries. While Huajiadi Experimental Primary School was thrilled to be picked as one of the cheerleading schools, they were understandably less thrilled when they were assigned to cheer for a traditional archenemy: Japan. Nonetheless, in the spirit of international amity, the school made the best of it. One terrific line at the end of the article makes the point that children might “[associate] Japan with cartoons, not history.”

Ironically, the program was first begun by the Japanese during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

One has to wonder how the school assigned to France, China’s newest international nemesis, felt.

Fiona Lee is a freelance writer/marketer/blogger based in Beijing. She blogs at quirkyBeijing.

I noticed an interesting comment posted by mtlyorel in Elliott’s recent post about David Brooks:

Neither Brooks or other commentators let alone career China-bashers i.e. Fallows - understand fully the concept of collectivism in China. For starters, collectivism needs semantic qualification. Collectivism is really a concept that exists in all cultures, and certainly one can say the same thing about Japan and Korea. Collectivism in the Asian context in this instance really means a unified desire to reach one goal. This ’spirit’ has little to do with ethnic or cultural homogeneity which is what the commentators and Brooks himself fail to understand.

Simply, it is a desire to achieve successfully a common goal. The Chinese people are most similar in character to Americans. (If you don’t believe me, google for academic references on this topic.) There is no one ‘Chinese’ as there is no one ‘American’ or ‘French’. The misconception is that China is one monolithic and homogeneous entity. It isn’t. It is like a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities that are taught - just like all Americans - to have one single Chinese identity. In this case of course, through the directive and propaganda of the CCP.

The emphases are mine, and to me, the statements I emphasized were interesting enough to compel me to separate my response into its own post:

Might I suggest that the “collectivism” in China is not so much about a “a unified desire to reach one goal” but rather a “shared ideology of lost glory and historical victimization?”

Along the lines of comparing the Chinese to Americans, I do believe there certainly exist interesting parallels, but at the same time I feel there might be a qualitative disconnect between the two here. We can argue that the unifying American “identity” surrounds that ever-cliched “American Dream.” However, what is the “story” that the unifying Chinese “identity” is built upon? If the Americans have their “American Dream,” what do the Chinese have? Could we suggest it might be “Chinese Victim-hood?”

Furthermore, can we argue that Americans are more driven by a shared dream whereas the Chinese are more driven by a shared fear of their past, a past consistently characterized as the world’s oldest and once-mightiest civilization squandered away and raped by outsiders? Is there a qualitative difference between people yearning for what they never had and people struggling to regain what they perceive as something they lost?

Without straying too far from the above propositions, how does “collectivism” and “individualism” fit into this? If we accept the American Dream as the basis for the unifying identity of Americans, would we have to examine if this identity is merely the collective coincidence of individual dreams and aspirations set in a land perceived to offer the opportunities for their realization? Would we, then, need to ask ourselves if the unifying “Chinese Victim-hood” is something that all Chinese individually and coincidentally ascribe to or if it was instilled in them, systematically, by the very “directive and propaganda of the CCP” that mtlyorel presumes?

Nothing hard and fast here, just questions to prompt discussion. What are your thoughts?

Last week, on August 11, New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks published his essay “Harmony and the Dream” (NYT login required) and inadvertently created a perfect case study of how a journalist parachuting into China can get eviscerated by the blogosphere in less than 7 days.

Of course, its easy to criticize and hard to come up with simple, written expressions of complex, underlying reality that help people have a more informed opinion. I don’t claim to have an answer. But then again, I’m not a NYT columnist like Brooks who has significant influence over American popular opinion. Many Americans already see China in a mirror dimly, and other Americans do not see through the one-way mirror at all. Instead of helping people see, Brooks is filling the field of vision with a misleading image of “collectivism” that just isn’t true…potentially for ideologically-motivated aims.

I’ve abstracted Brooks argument and highlighted his online evisceration by: James Fallows, Imagethief, PekingDuck commenters, Language Log, John Pomfret, Kevin Donovan at Blurring Borders, and Dan Harris (but not really an evisceration) at China Law Blog.

For those who didn’t see his article already, Brooks thesis (abstracted generously because of the NYT login wall) is as follows:

The world can be divided in many ways — rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian — but one of the most striking is the divide between the societies with an individualist mentality and the ones with a collectivist mentality.

This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. …

You can create a global continuum with the most individualistic societies — like the United States or Britain — on one end, and the most collectivist societies — like China or Japan — on the other. …

But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.

The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.

The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.

James Fallows’ Response

James Fallows, who has a much more complete and nuanced view of China, responded in a beautiful fashion (h/t ThomasCrampton, Peking Duck, Imagethief, Transpacifica):

This is the kind of thing you can say only if you have not the slightest inkling of how completely different a billion-plus people can be from one another. Beijingers from Shanghainese, Guangdong entrepreneurs from farmers in Sichuan, Tibetans from Taiwanese, people who remember the Cultural Revolution from those who don’t, people who remember the famines of the Great Leap Forward from people who’ve always had enough. The guy across the street from his brother. His daughter from his wife. People hanging on in big state enterprises from those starting small firms. People who stayed in the villages from those who came to the city for jobs. Christians from Buddhists. Hu Jintao from Jiang Zemin, Olympic weightlifters from Olympic tennis players, Yao Ming from Liu Xiang, Wen Jiabao from Edison Chen — and while we’re at it, Filipinos from Koreans, Japanese from Chinese, Malaysian Chinese from Malaysian Malays. Lee Kuan Yew from Kim Jong Il. People from Jakarta from people in Seoul. Hey, they’re all “Asians”. …

But the very most obvious thing about today’s China is how internally varied and contradictory it is, how many opposite things various of its people want, how likely-to-be-false any generalization is. Anyone who can look at today’s China and not see the powerful individual personalities and traits and dramas is someone more interested in fitting a theory to the current place he is passing through than in learning about that place.

Say it again, brother!

Boy, does this ring true. From my experience, Chinese people themselves love to talk about regional differences, North from South, Beijingers from Shanghainese, Beijing college students from the provinces vs. Beijing college students from Beijing, Dongbei people who call Beijingers “Southerners”, Guangzhou people who call Fujian people “Northerners,” unique characteristics of Sichuan people, Wenzhou people, Henan people, etc. etc.

Even more important I believe is talk about temporal differences: people who were sent down to the countryside in the Cultural Revolution vs those who didn’t, people who went to college after 1978 vs. those who didn’t, families before the one child policy vs. those started afterwards, people born in the 1970s vs. 1960s, people born in the 1980s vs. 1970s, 1980s people born after 1985 vs those born before, the 1990s generation vs the 1980s generation…on and on.

So where’s the “collectivism” here? Maybe the incredible diversity, individualism, regionalism, and at times chauvinism is what causes the rhetoric of harmonious society to be pushed down by the CCP on this bubbling stew of society.

Imagethief’s Response

Brooks use of the Opening Ceremony’s precision Fou drummers and Movable Type dancers in defense of his thesis is extremely sloppy, according to Imagethief. He writes:

In semi-defense of Brooks, I don’t think an inclination to collectivism at a social level excludes personal individuality or even sub-cultural differences.

Still, I think Fallows is right to take Brooks to task on this one*. I think using the Olympic opening ceremony to draw large conclusions about Chinese society is a dangerous game. Better to use it to draw large conclusions about the government’s obsession with micromanagement of propaganda.

After all, if the performers were part of a People’s Liberation Army performing troupe that performed with military precision, then they behaved as all militaries are designed to do! And maybe it was just a big performance, not something that justifies Brooks drawing broad, sweeping conclusions. Imagethief:

After all, isn’t it possible that you put 10,000 people on a stadium field simply because it looks cool and any smaller group of performers (or single, lip-synching, apple-cheeked nine-year-olds) is dwarfed?

I think back on many high school and college marching band performances I’ve witnessed in the individualistic old US of A. In fact, considering the military antecedents of marching bands, and Fallows’ remark about PLA performers, the cross-cultural phenomenon of large-scale military choreography and precision seems to be the archetype here.

I also think NBC did American viewers a disservice not highlighting which of the performers were part of the military (assuming they knew), and using that as part of the explanation of why they were so good.

Peking Duck and its discontented commenters:

Peking Duck’s post also yielded an interesting comment thread with 15 comments. Here’s one insightful comment from Old Tales Retold:

What frustrates me isn’t just the old cultural stereotypes about “collectivist” versus “individualist” societies, but any lack of real thought on what collective values China supposedly has beyond obedience to the government.

Surely, northeastern workers’ revival on Maoist class rhetoric (arguably “collectivist”) is a source of tension between the State and the People. Does this fit Brooks’ model of a smoothly functioning machine? And surely some of China’s “individualist” traits make things pretty easy for the government and business?

No question societies are bound together by common values. What are those values? How are they being expressed? Is there an implicit bargain between the people and the government? That political monopoly will be accepted in return for growing personal liberties and economic opportunity? Lets talk about that instead of “collectivism.”

Pomfret’s China response

John Pomfret also takes Brooks to tasks on three assertions of his argument. I won’t even dig into his 204 comments!

1. Brooks: Precision Opening Ceremony exercises prove “collectivism”. Pomfret: Wrong, David.

I wonder if Brooks has ever seen American marching bands, or line dancing, or visited a high school where the coolest kids are always part of a group - say, the football or basketball teams. I would argue that in many way Americans bow more to the group than the Chinese, which explains why the Chinese party-state has been so intent on forcing conformity.

Good point. I have talked to many technology entrepreneurs who feel that their Chinese employees are a product of an exam-driven education system that creates a highly competitive, non-collaborative dynamic in the workplace. As a result, they need to teach people educated in the Chinese system how to work better in teams, more so than foreign educated people. Is this evidence of collectivism or individualism? Or collectivism with Chinese characteristics?

2. Brooks: Chinese people focus on the collective good first. Pomfret: Wrong, David.

Even more, I wonder if Brooks has ever driven in China (look out for grandma!), or sharpened his elbows in the scrum that forms each time you try to get off an airplane, or tried to get Chinese co-workers to band together. Let’s just say in the decade that I’ve lived in China (over the course of 30 years), I haven’t seen or heard much collectivist impulse except when it was rammed down the throats of ordinary Chinese.

3. Brooks: China’s rise is due to this collectivism which as it becomes successful, issues a major challenge to the West. Pomfret: Wrong again.

And as to Brooks’ point about China’s rise being attributed somehow to collectivist impulses. Wait a second. The most dynamic sector of China’s economy is the private one. It’s a nation of entrepreneurs. It’s a culture of entrepreneurs. Look at Hong Kong, or Sydney, or Main Street Flushing and now Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu. That’s Chinese and it’s “individualist” up the wazoo.

Maybe this is indeed collectivism with Chinese characteristics…the time-honored tradition of pointing to a deer and calling it a horse (Zhǐ Lù Wéi Mǎ or 指鹿为马).

Blurring Borders response

An excellent post by Kevin Donovan at Blurring Borders concludes that in fact the success of China has been the unleashing of pent-up individualism through economic and social liberalization…the direct opposite of what Brooks is concluding:

In Ted Koppel’s recent miniseries entitled “The People’s Republic of Capitalism,” he interviewed a Western-educated Chinese youth who thought government censorship and repression was acceptable because it was bringing China out of poverty and improving millions of lives. Brooks sees this sentiment, which I believe is widespread, as a collectivist capitalism.

I disagree. I think it is driven by self-interest; it is individualistic. Those suppressed are not supporting the suppression. They don’t think collective harmony for growth is good, like Brooks supposes. The Koppel interview shows citizens who are being personally benefited by markets - the selfishly driven interaction of individuals. The rise of China - an economic phenomenon of GDP growth - comes with increased individualism. My intuition is that while it may masquerade as collectivism (”all of China is benefiting from this system, so suppression of dissent is okay”), it is really individuals seeing themselves benefit and liking it.

Language Log

The above bloggers address the substantive issue of “collectivism” vs. “individualism”. Brooks argument is then completely eviscerated on technical grounds by Language Log who take Brooks to task for his misuse of academic studies in a lengthy post. An example:

Question to Language Log: Is it correct that if you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing, while if you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim?

Answer: In principle, yes. But first of all, it wasn’t a representative sample of Americans, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at the University of Michigan; and second, it wasn’t Chinese, it was undergraduates in a psychology course at Kyoto University in Japan; and third, it wasn’t a fish tank, it was 10 20-second animated vignettes of underwater scenes; and fourth, the Americans didn’t mention the “focal fish” more often than the Japanese, they mentioned them less often.

So what happened here? Read the Language Log post which seriously calls into question Brooks credibility, at least on this topic.

UPDATE: China Law Blog Response

Dan Harris at China Law Blog also waded into this debate with a less heavy, sports-oriented, but no less gutsy inquiry:

But I feel compelled to discuss one thing I have noticed in watching the Olympics and that is that China’s basketball team does not have a single point guard worth a damn and I have to wonder why.

Is it further evidence of the shortcomings of a planned economy? Does China pull out the great athletes for other sports, leaving only tall people for basketball?

Is it further evidence of a lack of innovation or take-chargedness (I know I am making up this word, but it works) in China? Great point guards have to be willing to innovate and take the heat. Is the coaching so tough that no player is willing to step up?

Seriously, why?

Dan extends this Basketball As China Metaphor by highlighting Will Lewis at Experience Not Logic blog who answered his questions as follows:

I was discussing this with some friends last night. They were telling me that at age 10 kids start to get pulled for sports like basketball. The problem is that an athletic kid with point guard style body type is typically pulled for soccer despite whatever skill and flair they show on the basketball court. …

The planned athletic program seems to have done wonders at producing exceptional individual athletes as seen in shooting, weightlifting, and gymnastics (team gymnastics is not a team sport because it is merely the sum of individual performances). But, like in business, team sports depend less on individual prowess, and more on creativity and chemistry which is all but impossible to select for.

Dan then highlights the fact that in individualistic America, heroes also talk about duty and are modest about their achievements.

And from the song, “Into the Fire,” about the firefighters who went into the Twin Towers after 9/11, we learn about how “duty” plays a role in heroics in the U.S. as well: “It was dark, too dark to see You held me in the light you gave You lay your hand on me Then walked into the darkness of your smoky grave Up the stairs, into the fire Up the stairs, into the fire I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire”

Like every country, China has kids who go back into schools to save classmates and teachers [Fan Pao Pao] who run away.

Seems like an opportunity to celebrate the common character of heroism in the face of adversity. The questions that China Law Blog asks are far more interesting, and get into questions of the education system, what skills and traits are valued, what failures there are in the parts of the economy that are still centrally controlled (like sports), how does this affect employers and companies, how do foreigners best understand the educational background and worldview of their China-educated employees? These are all great questions. So how do we get influential writers like Brooks to even ask the right questions?

Dissenting views: CommunicateAsia

Here’s an dissenting view from Michael Netzley of CommunicateAsia who claims that Fallows was shifting the terms of the debate: “Fallows simply allows the pendulum to swing the other way, focuses on the individual differences while overlooking cultural patterns, and writes a high-handed criticism.” I disagree with Netzley and think Fallows was just flabbergasted by the conclusion that is so obviously untrue to even a casual observer of China.

So did Brooks come to China just to reinforce his pre-conceived notions?

I’ll end with a comment (#13) from Lindel, a commenter on the Peking Duck post:

His article is blatantly saying there are two kinds of people in the world “Us” and “Them”. “Us” being individualistic freedom loving loyal american white anglo-saxon conservative republicans vs “them” the collective loving disloyal foreign liberal democrats. Vote for McCain in November!

He went to China for the express purpose of writing partisan political commentary to support a viewpoint he already has. It is doubtful that he made any attempt to learn about or appreciate Chinese or Asian history or culture. He was not attempting to expand his own cultural awareness or learn anything that might challenge his own viewpoint.

The sole purpose of his article and writing from china is to give a false sense that he is writing from authority of having visited china, but in reality he probably had alread decided on what he would say and went to china merely as a formality or possibly as a paid vacation.

In the US we refer to this as “preaching to the choir” in other words he is just repeating an opinion he already had to share with people who already agree with his opinion. It is not meant to challenge or educate people about a new idea or share a cultural insight.

Others more familiar with asian culture and history see more complexities to the issue he raised and more nuances, but those do not fit within his narrow partisan agenda for influencing the american voters in the upcoming election.

So perhaps, on a short trip to China, all you really can expect is a light seasoning of Chinese society (within walking distance of your 5 star hotel, of course) to flavor the ideologically motivated framing that you came with–a framing that achieves the right political objectives and conveniently delivers the story your readers want to hear. Fly home, and declare victory. Not saying Brooks did this, just a cautionary tale of what might happen inadvertently to a columnist under pressure.

Some parting advice!

James Fallows offers some excellent advice, which I wholeheartedly agree with:

Take a little time and look around, David. The parts that don’t fit what you theorized before arriving are actually the most stimulating.

And that’s what I love about China!

UPDATE 08/20/08:

Roland Soong at ESWN highlights some Chinese netizens’ reactions to the essay (which was translated). I agree with Roland (and our commenter James G) that Chinese reactions is even more interesting than the English-language blogosphere reaction that we covered. See the translations at EastSouthWestNorth. I especially like these comments from Xitek.com (zh):

• Collectivism may be high in China, but it is actually weakest in the collectivist sports such as men’s soccer. Sigh …
• My understanding that the system and the individuals should complement each other. Actually, Chinese individuals are not very high in collective spirit, and therefore the system needs to promote the collectivist spirit. Actually, American individuals are strong in collective spirit, and therefore the system needs to promote the individualistic spirit. I cannot imagine how chaotic the world would be if the the China over-emphasizes individualism. It will become like many places in Africa. Similarly, if America were to carry out the collectivist spirit, the country would not have much dynamism. I feel that collectivism is not too strong in China. Rather it is far from enough. We can see this from the results of the group sports and from our daily lives.
• Without the meeting of American individualism and Japanese collectivism, there would not be digital cameras, plasma television sets, laser discs and so on in the world. China is not collectivist, because it has neither western-style rule of law nor Japanese culture of shame. It is just a collection of loose sand linked by interests. The foreigners are wrong in their views about us. For more than a century, none of their predictions about China have been realized. China is an alien species that foreigners can never understand.
• The Chinese people do not follow collectivism. The minimum requirements for collectivism is discipline and a spontaneous consideration of the group interests. The Chinese people are lacking on both. (Japan is truly collectivist relatively speaking.) The Chinese have the characteristic of “following the crowd.” When they go overseas, they want to join the “mainstream society.” Frankly, they adore power more than rationality. To be kinder, they are super-pragmatic.
• Even the fart from the New York Times smell fragrant.

UPDATE 8/21:

Yihong Ding at Thinking Space shares his post about cultural differences between China and the US in social networking, and how it affects LinkedIn’s opportunity in China. According to Ding:

Philosophically, Chinese style social networking is based on the Doctrine of the Mean (Chinese: 中庸; pinyin: Zhōngyōng). Chinese people believe in that if one tree is higher above all the others, wind will destroy it first (Chinese: 木秀于林，风必摧之; pinyin: mù xiù yú lín，fēng bì cuī zhī). Hence the principle of surviving but also living well is to follow Doctrine of the Mean—be neither too outstanding nor too insignificant. This philosophy is the basis of Chinese social networking. Such a subtle difference actually indicates some fundamental difference between Chinese social networking and western social networking.

This may have some truth, but it certainly seems there are plenty of Chinese born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s who seem to not care about sticking out, at least for a good cause.  Ding essentially supports Brooks point in this context:  that American business people are more individualistic, and Chinese business people are more collectivistic, at least in the use of social networking for business purposes.

Disclaimer: “I am here to bridge the gap. Not to hate. Not to love. Not to be biased. Only honesty.”

After seeing and hearing many of the critical comments made from so many Americans on newspapers, blogs, forums, TV, venting their frustrations on China’s policy-making, human rights issues, security issues. I’ve decided to step into the limelight and give my two cents on this critical issue currently circulating the media worldwide.

I’m willing to make a bet that many of these critical comments about China are coming from sources that haven’t lived in China for an extensive amount of time; people who don’t really know China. I believe some people just love to hate because I’ve encountered a good number of these bitter souls, but there’s a difference between someone who hates with no foundation behind their arguments and someone who actually knows why they are hating something. Here is my formula: Hate = misunderstanding + ignorance + arrogance, Arrogance = Not wanting to understand (due to fear/insecurity in most cases). Most of us probably read a biased article somewhere in a magazine about China’s workers working for $20/month and automatically scream “Oh my gosh! I can’t believe this injustice! How can this be? We’ve got to do something about that!”

I know people who hated China so much that they went over to China to collect evidence to strengthen their arguments (now that’s some serious hating).  However, most of them came back here with a better understanding and appreciation for China as a culture. I respect these people and applaud their efforts in attempting to at least understand the subject they are arguing against.  That is what we refer to in sports as respecting your opponent.

My advice to all those have negative views about China: “Go to China, live there for 6 months, don’t be a shut in and close your mind.  Open your mind and really experience the culture, and then come back and tell me you still hate it.”  That’s the very first step.  I’ve encountered some of the brightest expats in the world who now reside in China, and we’ve gotten into conversations about China and different perspectives, and every conversations always ends with “best damn decision I made in my life to come here, mate (lots of Aussies).”  Before you criticize something, don’t do it because you have been biased by secondary materials and sources that have influenced you in a negative way; go out there and get to know it yourself before you judge!  

First and foremost, I want to make this clear: the purpose of this post is to help each other understand and accept different cultures so that we may all live in harmony. First, I want to mention that China has made great strides in the past ten years to be more globally receptive to become more international-friendly, and yet I feel we Americans unfairly expect China to make a 360 degree turn within days. It’s almost like telling a 3,000 year old Big Mac Lifetime Honoree to turn vegan within a week. It’s not fair for us to expect a culture with such a rich history to change and conform to our ideals because we think they ought to; especially when we think it’s for their own good.

The popular Chinese opinion regarding the main flaw of America is that we are arrogant, stubborn bullies that think the world should operate our way because we are almighty and everyone else is weak and small. Do we Americans agree with that?  Let’s be truthful here (please do not let your patriotic feelings blind your logic and reasoning because it will make for a weaker argument), it’s my firm belief that a lot of things (media, propaganda, racism) can blind us from understanding other people’s beliefs and cause us to block out the legitimate arguments they may espouse; it’s called cognitive dissonance. If you saw any of the debates from the recent Presidential Election, you’d have a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Let’s ask ourselves, “Are we really a stubborn, arrogant nation that doesn’t want to understand and blocks out everything we don’t believe in? Or is that just a misconception?” Don’t get me wrong, I love America and am proud to be a citizen of this wonderful country where we can speak our mind and not fear persecution. But being in China for two years have helped me understand where the Chinese people are coming from, and that understanding has changed my perspective about a country I had previous biased notions about before actually living and breathing here for two years.  

Here is a quote I found interesting:

“When we have too much security, you blame us for oppressing people.
When we don’t have enough security, you blame us for being a dangerous place to be…

What do you want from us?”

I want everyone to read that statement and absorb it.

Please watch this interview with Chinese veteran blogger Wang Jian Shuo to better understand what we need to do as human beings to help this world.

Quote of the Day:

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.” Elvis Presley

An interesting conversation unfolded on Meg’s blog post about China Visa problems. Commenter CnInDC offered a well-argued explanation of the root cause of work visa limitations in both countries.

But one thing he (or she) shared helped me understand the feelings that some Chinese people must have:

I agree that the current visa “crackdown” was caused by security concerns about the Olympics. If you watch news in China you’ve probably already noticed that the China’s domestic Olympic propaganda has been dramatically toned down from wanting a most successful Olympic to a merely safe one. The reality is there, that a most successful Olympic is already beyond our reach. The people they wanted to impress the most, the western media and the general public from the western countries, are impossible to please. So they go for the next best one, that at least it’s safe, no ugly scenes (or at least not a major one), and the Chinese can enjoy the party all by themselves. I’ve heard this before from the Chinese people around me and think it may have a point: “大不了办成全运会”, or, “At least we can turn this into a national sports event”.

Photos from my visit to see the Good Luck Games in May:

It reminded me of this poem entitled “My Friends, What Do You Want From Us” I saw earlier in April on China Digital Times (also on China Herald) from cbc forums via C’est la vie blog:

What do you want from us?

When we were called “sick man of Asia”, we were called peril.
When we billed to be the next superpower, we’re called the threat

When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets.
when we embrace free trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs.

when we’re falling apart, you marched in your troops and wanted your fair share.
when we’re putting the broken pieces together, “Free Tibet” you screamed! “it was invasion.”

So we tried communism, you hated us for being communist.
So we embraced capitalism, you hate us for being capitalist,

Then we have a billion people, you said we’re destroying the planet.
Then we limit our numbers, you said it was human rights abuses.

When we were poor, you think we’re dogs,
When we loan you cash, you blamed us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you called us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blamed us for global warming,
When we buy oil, you called that exploitation and genocide.

When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you wanted rule s of laws for us.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you called that violation of human rights.

When we were silent, you said you want us to have free speech.
When we were silent no more, you say we were brainwashed.

Why do you hate us so much? We asked. “No”. You answered, “we don’t hate you”.
We don’t hate you either Bud, do you understand us?? “of course we do”, you said, “We have CNN, BBC, and CBC”.

But why, we still feel, your western people are not happy with us.

What do you really want from us??

My friend, What do you really want from us??

There is plenty of angry rhetoric from people who take extremist political positions on China on the China Digital Times post. There is also some extremely thoughtful points there too. Please read that comment thread first before posting some extreme rant (either highly critical of China or highly defensive against perceived criticism of China) that has already been said over there.

I propose we just take the time to try to understand the feeling expressed in the poem above and figure out how we can all take this feeling into account in our behavior with each other.

(Why am I posting this? I figured this poem would be hard to find in the future and wanted to just capture it on the blog where I know I could find it)

As a pseudo-geek, my RSS Reader includes a subscription to the almighty TechCrunch, an influential blog that covers the internet and tech industry. I woke up today to an entry about Jason Calacanis retiring from blogging and now choosing to only write to a mailing list of about 1000 of his followers. In his first e-mail, he elaborates on this decision and criticizes a potential problem of blogging when it results in “trolls and haters” taking over the discussion:

Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it under the belief that “open is better!” Open is not better….We’ve put the wisdom of the deranged on the same level as the wisdom of the wise.

She too has felt the harsh mob mentality, also known as “the wisdom of the crowds.” For the record, crowds are really frackin’ stupid and to put your stock in crowds is about as bright as putting your faith in a dictator-they’ll love you for as long as they feel like it, then they’ll ripe[sic] you apart without mercy.

For some reason, reading this reminded me of what Kaiser Kuo¹ at Ogilvy Digital Watch wrote about China’s Facebook-clone Xiaonei² and their new open platform policies. Reflecting upon the legion of developers angry that Xiaonei’s “open” policies actually ended up NOT being so open and thus negatively affecting their plans for making money through Xiaonei, Kuo wrote:

Tangos³ suggests that there really isn’t a culture of openness, but rather one of control, with Chinese Internet companies, and I agree that’s the case. In this case this tendency is reinfoced by something even more basic to Chinese culture, Internet company or whatever: ruthless pragmatism.

Of course, Calacanis and Kuo are talking about two very different things. Calacanis supports his decision to exit the blogosphere by citing the degradation of dialogue in the face of capricious crowds. Kuo (and Tangos) attributes Xiaonei’s tight-fisted policies to a basic tendency in Chinese culture to regard control controlling your options and controlling how others should coexist with you whenever possible as being pragmatic.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Calacanis’ rationalization has a certain technocratic air about it, which is ironically reminiscent of the Chinese central government. Like Calacanis, the CCP government too doesn’t put much stock in crowds, especially crowds with “frackin’ stupid” ideas that aren’t government approved. Like Calacanis, the CCP government fears the crowds, regarding them suspiciously being one step away from becoming an uncontrollable mob ready to end their rule disrupt “social harmony” and tear apart the country.

Therein lies the complex rationalizations for the necessity of the Chinese central government to control the Chinese people, whether it means increased patriotic education for splittist TIbetans, suppressing grieving parents who lost their children in the Sichuan earthquake, or employing grassroots public relations specialists to shape public opinion with propagandic posts and comments throughout the internet. The Chinese government doesn’t need to show Tibetan young men cutting out chunks of ass-meat or show how the Weng’an mass riot was ultimately a 30,000-strong mob mobilized by rumors and lies. All they need is a video of Cantonese teenagers raping and beating up a single, naked girl and the ensuing public commotion to show that, yes, people are inherently evil, can’t be trusted, and will do really “frackin’ stupid” things when in groups, much less crowds and mobs. So, society needs government to control and control, itself, is a pragmatic necessity for the welfare and continued development of the Chinese nation.

China, like Calacanis, isn’t too keen on letting dissidents and westerners “trolls and haters” take over the discussion. After all, the last time it happened, China became a whore to Western imperialist powers. As a social, poltiical, and economic entity, a CCP-governed China will only be as open as it chooses to be. Just as Xiaonei not wanting to be OpenSocial, China doesn’t want to be a Western democracy. China’s unapologetic embrace of control, like Xiaonei, is about ruthless pragmatism, for good or for ill.

For most Chinese, society is ultimately inefficient, injustices happen, and there is no Holy God in the afterlife to give you your due. “Westerners,” ever confident and optimistic in their socio-political ideologies, often miss that. The concession that governmental control of society is necessary is certainly a defining characteristic of Chinese culture, a culture that has, for thousands of years, hoped for benevolent governance from enlightened individuals to guarantee the most basic right hope of being able to eat, sleep, and make babies in peace.

Of course, the other defining characteristic of Chinese culture is that it is always everyone else–and not oneself–that makes government control and other necessary evils, well, necessary.

Notes
¹ About the only other person in the world I know of that shares my name. Sucker.
² For those who don’t know, “Xiaonei” literally means “inside campus,” reminding us of Facebook originally being open only to university students, you know, before they made it big.
³ Now, “Tangos” is a cool name, far cooler than “Kaiser.” It has more “Spanish street brawler” and less “German world domination.”

Elliott: This post does not reflect the opinions of my co-bloggers, they are solely my own.

Robert Scoble, this one’s for you.

Via Fuzheado on Twitter, Robert Scoble posted on the three day mourning period (translation of the edict on Shanghaiist) and why it was bad:

This is why I’ll fight to the death to protect our freedom of speech…Government control of its people starts with how it treats its media.

Comments on the topic were already ensuing on FriendFeed. This post highlights what I think Westerners don’t understand about China and Chinese people don’t understand about the West.

I felt the opinions of Robert Scoble and the Twitterati (or is it really FriendFeedrati?) were off base and I tried to get away with a rant and Scoble rebuked me into explaining myself. So here goes… (more…)