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China Realities

By Robert Louis Chianese (8-08-08)

Robert Louis Chianese, Ph.D., Professor of English Emeritus at CSU Northridge, was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Studies at Shanghai Normal University last fall.

Our western reporters seem shocked, amused, even smug about discovering modern China’s repressive practices. Heather Havrilevsky [LA Times Opinion “Reality Show 08-7-08] believes China oppresses its 1.3 billion people so that the Olympics is a complete PR sham. However, clamping down on protest plus self-control is the Chinese way.

Social Harmony. Chinese culture reveres social “harmony” over individuality and dissent. From the time of Confucius, Lao Tzu, the dynastic Emperors, and then the Communists, Chinese authority figures have preached the value of family, hierarchy, social cohesion, and getting along without rocking the boat.

Many westerners approve the harmony and serenity part of ancient Chinese philosophy and Buddhism, but scorn the surrender to totality and obedience to the big-ruler part, which is often the means toward harmony. This dedication to solidarity wears a happy public face, the one we usually see in China. The mass Chinese displays of synchronized movements in the Beijing Olympics will be the dance of social harmony to them and can seem the robotic oppression of the individual to us.

Without a tradition of individualism and personal rights, Chinese society represents the perfect counterbalance to our own rights-emphatic culture. If we find fault with the suppression of the individual in China, we also might fail to see the disadvantages in the west in de-valuing social harmony. We in the US seem to be going off in 330 million directions at once. Contrariwise, our current administration wishes to overrule the Bill of Rights in the name of security, our debased form of “harmony.”

Economic Powerhouse. China takes great pride in its unprecedented economic gains and the amazing rise in the standards of living of many millions of people. While it’s true that those living in the big cities, some 65 million people, only represent 5% of the total population, those city dwellers enjoy modern conveniences and lifestyles comparable to anywhere in the west. This is the miracle they and we should celebrate. They have pulled themselves up from a backward “closed” society to a world economic power in just a few years with their unique hybrid form of capitalism and socialism. Whatever happens to the remaining 95% of the people may depend on continuing that same economic miracle.

It has come at great costs--environmental ruin and pollution, painful displacements—yet it is real, and, they own a big chuck of us. We may resent and fear their gain at our loss. We should not devalue the immense hard work, the dedication of leaders, and the intellectual and economic resourcefulness of the society that can do this. Our own environmental destruction in the name of progress and profit still makes us number one—both as the economic superpower and global polluter.

Complex Mind-Set. Chinese people will confide in private that they do indeed understand the limitations and failures of their government. In an environmental literature class in American Studies I taught in Shanghai China, graduate students criticized, though impersonally, the Three Gorges Dam as an eco-disaster. However, as one of Mao’s last projects, criticism is allowed of his mainly discredited policies.

Their media have plenty of articles about major problems, but they do not criticize current authorities directly. How can we understand this?

Both the emphasis on “harmony’ and the new status as world economic power override the impulse for dissent in most people. They may understand China’s abuses and failures, but in the grand scheme of history, culture, and modern development, it does not seem to matter too much And for the hot button issue of Tibet, they have completely different interpretation; while Darfur is way off their scanner. Instead of being whipsawed by contradictory ideas, as we are in the west, they settle on uncritical support. Being a vast, ancient place of multitudes creates not diversity but uniformity, a conformist mindset.

This Mind-Set accentuates the positive at all costs. We might label this attitude as self-delusional. We may view the majority of modern Chinese as self-deceived, ready for some shocking disillusionment and collective revelation and comeuppance. It could happen, though not in any time soon and not due to revelations that flatter us, which western media send home triumphantly from the Olympics. It will have to come from within.

China has many more evolutions to go through before it occurs to ordinary people to complain about core values of their culture that have gone amuck. Too much social cohesion, too much money and economic disparity, and way too much development and pollution will have to be seen as serious problems rather than tolerable excesses. Right now they are supporting an unprecedented transformation of a country whose future seems in its own hands.

And those hands are more disposed to applause than fist shaking.

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 9 - September 2008

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