This week marks the nineteenth anniversary of the student protests in Tiananmen Square where an estimated 200 students were shot to death by the PLA. Like many similar incidents in Asia there is no official count of the casualties and most people younger than 25 are unaware that the protests even took place.
I have no intention for this to become a 'political' blog so if it should happen that I'm unable to disable comments for this post I would appreciate anyone wishing to comment to do so through email. I am compelled to talk about political thought and attitudes here because they're relevant to daily life and because there's a lot of misinformation.
For nearly four years I've collaborated with an American-naturalized Chinese professor who culls his grad students from the top schools of his home country. Many of your own experiences will probably bear out the perception that Chinese nationals are notorious for keeping to their own kin and culture while they study abroad and to a large extent I don't blame them. Their English abilities are often minimal when they arrive and they have well established communities that they can hook up with once they're in the States.
So it took quite some time but eventually my coworkers became friends and allies as we collectively dealt with one research setback after another before making the occasional breakthrough. We also enjoyed having political discussions that could last over an hour and one in particular was very astute in his criticisms of both Chinese and U.S. policy.
Now that I write this here, even though I work in a research institute on issues far removed from political variables, nagging concerns about the careers of my friends and coworkers prevent me from recounting many of our discussions. I'm posting to a public blog that's publicly inaccessible in this country and the only Chinese who might read it would be taking notes for some Party-run committee. I use a proxy server to connect to the internet here but the Tor/Privoxy programs don't work or I can't figure out how to use them correctly, so any traffic coming from my IP can be traced.
Most likely the worst that could happen is that my post gets deleted or my blog gets shut down. Considering blogs didn't exist nineteen years ago, that's not such a huge deal.
So here we go:
Journalism may not be the most tightly regulated industry here, but journalists do have the best venue to complain. Journalists are suspicious of technology to begin with and Americans, in general, are very suspicious of China. This comes both from those neocons who haven't died off yet, the ones yearning for another Cold War, as well bridge-climbing attention whores.
Recently Rolling Stone published an interesting article by Shock-Doc Crusader Naomi Klein examining the development of China's integrated security system. It's stuff like this that makes it tough to do research or business over here. Our group had to undergo months of legal wrangling to convince airhead lawyers at Florida State that our detection system was not being used to make night vision goggles or guidance systems before they would allow us to ship our older creations to the mother country.
But amid her ranting she raises a serious point about the market demand for surveillance tracking and communication monitoring. There is certainly exponentially increasing demand for these products as result, though, of the fear marketing that's become so prevalent over the past decade. People are scared of viruses, terrorists, sex offenders, myspace pages, baby boomers and on and on and on. This may relate to her well-toured book though I admit I haven't read it and don't really plan to. I think she's too quick to lay the blame on entrepreneurs like the one she interviews, companies whose very nature entices them to constantly improve their products and services.
But before I get too far into a Once-ler frame of mind I want to continue my line of reasoning. If you're scared of burglars, of course someone's going to sell you an alarm system and a nine-millimeter. Same goes for terrorists and wiretapping, for baby boomers and Logan's Run-style implants. But before you buy this stuff you need to think 'Who's selling this to me? Is it really in my interest or theirs? Mankind has been able to do with out these things for thousands of years, why is it I should want one now?'
This is my opinion of where America sits today as it peers at the rest of the world; it asks to buy everything but other people's problems. Later today or maybe this weekend I'll get back to the Chinese opinions that I've encountered so far.
