China: A few early lessons

There is some chance that I will be going to China later this year. I am deeply curious about this country of over 1.2 billion people. The more I learn about the place, the more I realize how little I actually know. Earlier this year, I made some reference to China and was surprised by the strength and emotion that Westerners have--as well as their assumptions that they know enough to pass judgment.

I am going to do the best I can to reserve judgment; to use this potential opportunity before me to listen and learn and to save my opinions and pontifications until after I have taken advantage of this incredible opportunity that may be afforded me.

This past week I took my first ice pick chips and started asking a few people who are in China a few questions. I started taking spoonfuls of information from the nearly one billion entries on China that Google provides. Of surprisingly significant value was Ted Koppel's three part series, "The People Republic of Capitalism," which aired a while ago but I saved through the miracle of Tivo.

Here's a random sampling of what I learned so far. I offer them in part for comments, but also because airing "factoids" here may tell me that I still do not have the story straight and I very much want to get it right.

My sampling:

• Last week China eclipsed the US as the country with the most people using the Internet at 256 million. They will soon eclipse anywhere else with the number of 3G phone users. In some cities the ratio of 3G phones to people is better than 2:1.

• China, has gone from virtually zero private automobile users in 1990 to the fastest rising purchaser of automobiles and builder of roads. Because most drivers are first-time drivers in a country that has little experience with traffic control, collisions are among the world's highest. So are deaths from auto accidents. China holds Japanese and US cars in much higher esteem than they do their own, less expensive cars. The most prestigious car among the Chinese seems to be a large black four-door Buick.

• Companies looking for Chinese knowledge workers try to employ people age 28 or younger. Why? Because quality education began in 1983. Those who went through Chinese public schools prior to that date learned doctrine. After, they learned, science & technology, languages including English.

• There are 35 million piano students in China, up in a generation from virtually zero. There is a love for classical music and a widespread ignorance. Until the post-Mao Era there were no classical concerts, no records, no radios playing it, no classical in elevators. In fact, a generation ago, there were very few elevators.

• While Westerners seem to harbor a view of an oppressive government pressing thumbs down on its citizenry, the Chinese--and westerners living in China--see an entirely different picture. They see a government hardly able to manage an extremely fast-growing population. Government, some tell me, is motivated to stop social unrest. Because of that there is clearly some suppression of dissidents, at times quite harsh. But this fear of unrest has the government focused on building an economy that can create more than 10 million new jobs a year. This has led to an enormous redirection of an agrarian economy into a capitalist economy. For most Chinese people, these are the best times they have ever known and they credit their monolithic  government for creating it. I mentioned to one Chinese business person that Americans hate what is going on in Tibet and he countered: "You also hate what is going on in Iraq. Go fix your own mess and we will handle ours."

I have just dented social media. I will have a great deal more to say about it in a while. But, it is estimated that more than 20 million Chinese blog. They have a huge presence on FaceBook and seem to be on a torrid growth path on Twitter. Many Chinese bloggers understand that for free speech, they can post on meme servers outside the country. For conversations that can speak freely on Twitter because the government has not yet figured out what Twitter is yet.

Like I said, some of my facts may prove to need adjustment. I have only spent a few hours this week looking at China, but it amazes me how much f what I am finding surprises me. What surprises me the most is the unprecedented speed of change going on right now inside the world's most populated country.

• The Chinese, who had virtually no

Comments

[Ari Herzog]

Hi Shel, to shamelessly plug an essay I wrote for the Boston Globe about a 2006 visit to China, you may like to read Quest for a Canton connection.

[shel israel]

Good piece Ari. I used to occasionally cover Canton, MA as a West Edition reporter for the old Patriot Ledger. If I do get to China, it is almost certain that I will visit the former Canton, which is now called Guangzhou.