Warning, it's a long post

I know that everyone is probably pretty tired of reading about China on my blog, and wishes I was writing about my experience thus far in Costa Rica. But, to explain, I keep this blog not only to keep everyone back home informed about what’s going in my life, but also a journal for myself. It’s a great way for me to record stories with the pictures I’ve taken, the trinkets I’ve acquired, and the friends I’ve made. I hope that my loyal readers will put up with this for a post or two more. Everything is going well here, no big problems, I’ve been learning lots and have taken many notes and will post them when I have the time to get them organized and Internet access to get them posted. The five of us in my training community had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner with one young woman’s host family. We had a splendid time cooking together and were able to pretty well replicate a Thanksgiving at home. I took care of the garlic mashed potatoes and helped out with the stuffing. I have less than a month left of training and will then head to my permanent site. With that, I’ll delve into a fairly serious and involved blog post that I have pondered about for a long time, discussed with many friends, read about all over the news and political magazines, and will opine about now. (Because, with the Internet, anyone can comment about anything.)

China is a rising economic and political power. China will continue to rise in the near future. The rate and number of speed bumps are debatable. The previous two statements are not. How this will affect the world as well as the Chinese citizen and the American citizen is something I thought about a whole lot during the past two years. It is also something I have discussed a lot, with great minds like my great friend Dave Wacker, my newly acquired friend Danthemanstan, Sean and Sarah, Chinese people like Steve Wu, Chen Gang, Qin Chen, Xing Xing, the lovely Zhen Zhen, and recently, with a fellow Peace Corps trainee named Barton Rode. Sometime during my senior year in high school I started getting interested in politics. Sometime in college I got really interested in finance and economics. After going to Spain, I gained an interest in world politics. My knowledge in this arena is about as great as the chance of Blockbuster building a new branch in your neighborhood, but with that and two years meandering around Changzhou (normal city China) I’ll take a stab at analyzing the significance and impact of China’s inevitable rise as an economic and political power.

One prevalent question about China is whether or not democracy is inevitable. It’s almost impressive how well the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has kept a hold on power even as China opened up, millions of Chinese have gone abroad (and some returned), Internet, TV, and phones have opened up the minds of the average Chinese citizen. The oldest generation in China still holds a lot of reverence for the CCP. For Mao Zedong for pulling the country together, and to Deng Xiaoping for bringing the country out of famine and despair and into the world economy. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, is loved and adored by the elder and middle generation alike. Middle aged Chinese people still respect the CCP and see it as the agent that has given them so much wealth (comparatively). The difference is in the youngest generation, the kids I taught, the single children who have known nothing but expanding wealth their entire lives, who were raised by doting grandparents, and who see the world through the Internet they access from their smart phones. It is this generation that the CCP has its biggest problem with. The Hu administration has brought back Confucian thought in an effort to foster strident nationalism, and in China, the CCP is the nation. But, this generation sees access to global products, global media as one of its main goals, and if the CCP gets in its way, I think a grand sociopolitical fracture may happen.

My two years in China really opened my eyes to one main concept, which is related to whether this fracture occurs. Before I went to China, from what I read, I saw China as a totalitarian, human rights abusing, dictatorship. Well, I wasn’t really all that wrong. What I saw, though, was that this totalitarian regime has put incredible effort into the three things that are most necessary for economic and human development, in my order: infrastructure, education, and security. Limiting families to one child is a great breach of personal freedom. Forced sterilizations are both deplorable and barbaric. Ignoring property rights to build a road is not just. Imprisoning political dissidents without recourse is wrong. I am not supporting an end justifies the mean argument, because that argument is fraught. What I am saying is that living in China made me realize that the efforts of Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yangbao, and many of China’s leaders today were and are done with the goal of raising China’s standard of living. The Mao government was wrong and self serving, but in the past thirty years, since Deng Xiaoping wrangled control of the government, China has made great leaps because the totalitarian government made them happen. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman isn’t on opium, there are many things about the Chinese government and society that America should be jealous of. Women in China still deal with a very patriarchal society, but they have so many more opportunities than women in any other developing country. China’s authoritarian government has given access to education with quickness and breadth that is the envy of countries worldwide. I was truly blown away at the level of education in a country with 1/8th as much money per person as the United States. China has come a long way, and this required lots of stability. I would be more than willing to argue that China’s government involvement and authoritarian rule was very justified, and in others was totally problematic.

China has come a long way, but the youngest generation wasn’t there to see the country ruined by maniacal rule and indiscriminate political killings. The youngest generation sees their freedom limited. They know the Internet is censored, and are annoyed they have to download software and deal with a slow connection to access the “real” Internet. They are annoyed that certain American movies don’t show in the theater. They are sent polemic books by their friends studying in Hong Kong. They are forced to meet in secret homes to have church services. Ian Johnson, in his book Wild Grass (p. 251), perfectly summarized the sentiment that Chinese people have lived with for their entire lives: "The comments reminded me of the remarks that family members might make about a troublesome relative: Don't speak about that because it'll only set him off. It was the way a lot of citizens around the world are forced to deal with their governments--as an unpredictable force that is better left alone." As China becomes more and more capitalist and more involved in the global economy, this generation will question this situation. They may question the economic controls exerted by the CCP and its state controlled enterprises. What they certainly will question is whether the controls on free speech, free press, free religion, free assembly, and political and labor group formation are worth the advancing standard of living.To me, and from all the Chinese people I have talked to, this is the question that must be answered. It is only now forming. Until recently, the increased standard of living was well worth the limited personal freedoms. Some think that the housing market may crash in China and this will be the great event, some think it may be an internal battle for control in the CCP between conservatives and reformers, and some think the issue over Taiwan could escalate. Perhaps a great fracture will not occur, but I think, if anything it will be how the CCP handles the evolving freedom for development bargain they have made with their citizens.

Now, for those of us that bleed red, white, and blue. The last issue was an internal one, but China is no longer an autarky. Check where your sunglasses or iPod were made if you have any doubts. So, a grand question in international relations (and maybe the grand question) is how do America and the EU deal with China’s rise, and America more than the EU as America is truly, the world’s security guarantor. Infrastructure and education are mainly internal challenges, security is not. From those who I’ve talked to and what I saw across the country, I don’t think that China is trying to take over the world. Do they want to have a bigger say in global order: of course. Do they want to be treated like the world’s second largest economy: duh. Do they sometimes want things to be counted per person, so they can get off easy (e.g. carbon emissions negotiations): yes. Is this kind of petty: yes, but also kind of just. China’s in a unique position, of the world’s ten largest economies, it and Brazil are the only developing countries, and it has a whole lot more poor people than Brazil. It has the world’s second largest military, yet almost all its soldiers and tanks are within its borders. I’m certain to some I appear to be a Chinese apologist. Granted, I grew some great affinities in the past two years for the country, but also much disgust. What I would most like to say, what I most learned in the last two years, is that China is indeed a very unique country, much like the U.S.A., and it’s a country that will rise, and in my opinion, fighting this rise or treating China as anything but a partner and potential friend is not a safe, prudent, or responsible option.