Chinese youth culture - the one and the many

It was a pleasure watching the interview of the bright young Alex - so upbeat and articulate, and speaking revealingly as a contemporary Chinese youth. The number one question that interview raised in my mind was how typical he was of Chinese youth as a whole. I had hoped to find other personal narratives reflecting comparisons and contrasts, but found little. What I did find in some ways may be even better - a recent thorough survey of Chinese youth culture that effectively answered my number one question about Alex. It also begs a question or two, leading finally to considerations of one of the main elements of contemporary youth - their use of the Internet. But with that, I am ahead of myself. Lets briefly hit the main points of Alex's interview, and then look at some data from a survey of Chinese youth ages 16-29 completed in December, 2007. Alex is a Chinese college student studying computer science (I assume here in North Carolina). He was interviewed by Dr. James Anderson. In summary, Alex said his hopes and desires for the future are just to be successful, and maybe help his family. This is similar, he noted, to his parents generation except that they had "smaller" goals to live and dress better, while the younger generation has bigger goals. Work means a good future in a comfortable career helpful to his family and country. His major could help his country perhaps by bringing high technology back to China. The future looks good for him now, noting that the economy is doing quite well and the government becoming more democratic. He sees the government as having already taken lessons from the Cultural Revolution and the Beijing Massacre, giving them experience that will aid the future. Parents and the government show responsiveness to youth in their emphasis on education, which is very important, costly, and devoted. Today's youth mainly pay attention to competition in the job market, which is much more intense as universities have increased capacity and many graduates are looking for jobs. The young generation likes western culture, with big influences from Europe, America, Japan and Korea. They pick western culture in a mixed way, having grown up in China and retaining Chinese culture which they do not dispose of. Their pop culture is a mix that adapts western culture to Chinese tradition. For example, dressing western does not make them think western. A web-based organization called Kairos Future out of Stockholm, Sweden posted this month (March, 08) a feature titled: "Chinese Youth - Down to earth people reaching for the stars". The feature, written by Ms Anna Kiefer, summarizes a December, 2007 survey of 22,000 Chinese, with an older comparison group to contrast with the emphasized study of youth from ages 16 to 29. I begin with a condensed paraphrase of her opening statement... Young Chinese are very optimistic about the future and have great plans. Important is to have a prosperous career, high status and earn a lot of money. Material possessions and fame are more important to Chinese than to Europeans. They [claim] importance to spiritual values, anxious to blend in, want to be similar to friends, and to live up to the expectations of others as well as of self. This dual loyalty may reflect the one-child policy. I will highlight a few of the specifics... They want it all: high status and high salary jobs with good benefits, but they know they have to work hard to achieve this. 60% of young men and 42% of young women want to start their own company. 81% think material possessions provide meaning in life. 60% consider certain brands important to express identity - three times the number of European youth who answered the same. But most answer "yes" that spiritual values should be more emphasized. Typical youth are satisfied with most aspects of their lives. Most are optimistic about the future, believing they have complete control over their own future and confident of having a good job. 82% say they have a lot in common with their compatriots compared to 48% in Europe. But a much larger proportion want to live and work abroad for a temporary period compared to Europeans. Watching TV is the most common media habit. Books are popular. Only 20% read foreign magazines and newspapers. Very few listen to radio. The number one activity during free time is surfing the Internet, ahead of spending time with family and friends or listening to music. My immediate observation is that my question about Alex is answered: according to what I read here, Alex is quite typical. Another observation is how easy it is to answer "yes" to the spiritual values question, but how far removed that is from meaning it and acting accordingly, for which the data compellingly proves otherwise. Chinese materialists are no different than American (whether they warm Sunday morning pews or not) in failing to recognize that any spirituality demands the primacy of an inner orientation that does not deny the material but puts it in its place. This will soon cost them, because they have a warped sense of reality. I wish them well and do not belittle the value and legitimacy of their optimism, but it needs to have a firm foundation in reality as a stable platform to construct their future. Their sense of invincibility will make spectacular success stories out of some, but jerk the rug out from others. They seem to me to be out of touch politically, spiritually and environmentally (including in regard to resources). Economics has been operating under the fallacy that continued growth is not checked by the natural infrastructure. It is its own world. This is building a Tower of Babel, and the Chinese youth seem to be busy laying the bricks. But there is one other concern I wish to bring out. The survey presented above was conducted online. This makes the results biased toward computer users. The chapter in Weston and Jenson about the Internet by Xiao Qiang was revealing in showing how the government sustains some level of success in controlling Internet content, but with diminishing returns as reform and greater openness inevitably result from the expansion of its use. The effect on society is quite profound: affecting public opinion, influencing and drawing out other media, and occassionally leading to successful reforms and acts of justice in response to public outcries, as in the case of police brutality on Sun Zhigang. Parallel to this article, The World News Network posted on March 4, 2008 on YOP.com (Youth Opportunities) a Reuters release (February 21, 2008) titled "Chinese youth push political expression online." This feature was very similar in content to that of Xiao Qiang. But it differed in having a youth orientation, and was an eye-openner on how extensively Chinese youth use the Internet and how fast that is growing. The feature said that the number of people using the Internet at the end of 2007 was up 50% from 2006. It said there is an "additional 200,000 new Chinese users going online every day", and that "the vast majority of Chinese users are young people - 70% are under 30." Telecom expert Duncan Clark was quoted that "Technology is driving reforms in Chinese society right now much more than political reform." Internet addiction and enthusiasm (long hours of use) show statistics that appear to surpass those of the United States among Chinese youth. The Kairos Future survey may be biased in only sampling online users, but that is hardly a subculture of Chinese youth. Rather, it is the mainstream. For balance, I would like to see a survey of rural agrarian youth. But the picture I am seeing here is, I believe, the bigger story. And Alex, our computer science major, fits right in.

China a world power?

Q. With all that you have learned from the recent reports about China's current internal problems, do you think that its world power status should be reconsidered? Can China successfully overcome these difficulties to achieve such status on the world stage? The simple answer is "yes", but it begs the question of just what "reconsidering" means, by whom and with what weight. And would it make any difference. "Reconsidering" here refers to policies by the world community toward China, whether those policies be political, economic, social, humanitarian, environmental, religious or cultural. An obvious example: should Beijing have won the bid for the 2008 summer Olympics? I understand the motive as a catalyst for reform, but I answer "no", as I do not accept China's sincerity or uniformity in this. Instead, it is a ploy and plays games -pun intended - with the rest of the world. I have the spring issue of Amnesty International's quarterly, and it includes an article on the Olympics calling for boycotts, protests, and appeals for reform. If I had any doubt before, it vanished Tuesday night (18th of March) when I heard the press conference with Wen Jiabao on C-SPAN. Frankly, it was hard to stomach. It was tedious, as he kept pausing to carefully craft his lies. Nearly everything that came out of his mouth was the stuff emitting from the south end of male-gender cattle travelling north. He was inflexible in their "one China" doctrine toward Taiwan. As for Tibet, he made it sound like China was just trying to support them and help them any way it could and the unprovoked ungrateful barbarians there violently and heinously committed atrocities against the Chinese. He called the Dalai Lama's appeals for peace lies. If that is how it really was, why has China gone to such great lengths to squelch all media coverage and videotaping of the conflicts? Why not show the whole world just how these terrorists are treating the poor innocent Chinese soldiers? Why does the cell phone footage that slipped out tell a different story? The ancients in the Genesis story (parable even if also historic) who tried to build the tower of Babel with slim for mortar found it would not hold. Well, guess what: BS doesn't make a successful mortar either. I always try to zero in on the central hub of any discussion issue and build upon it. In this case, I thought the best exposition to come close was the last part, part 7, of "China on the rise" by Paul Solmon on the Lehrer report. What he said about technical innovation applies well, I think, to other categories such as the environment, etc. "We in the west", he said, "assume that political freedom and technical innovation go hand in hand". Not a bad assumption, especially given, as Solman, pointed out, that most actual "innovation" is foreign: China's machines, replacing their labor force, are not Chinese made. Who can name a Chinese product? They are US products, etc., made in China. There is unchecked corruption, no public forum, and perhaps most scary of all, the young intellectuals are so economic oriented they are apathetic about control and repression. Fear is the paramount driving force of China's regime internally. Economic growth in some fashion will continue, forced as it is by policies oblivious to consequences, but it is married to communist oppression. In Solman's words, the "worst marriage." A second possibility trumped by optimists is that politics will develop along with economics. And there's a third possibility: economic growth will co-exist with no political reform. I wish to dig a little deeper into these scenarios. The second possibility listed just above entails that the government is reacting - not acting. Typical of its history, with embarrassing results. The government remains stubborn, but adjusts when its hand is forced. It's a slow evolution. Look at the long history of suffering the Chinese have reaped waiting on such an evolution! This could show superficial success as it has in the past. But when the forcing surpasses equilibrium, all hell breaks loose and the system goes chaotic. That's a law of nature as well as the lesson of Tienanmen Square. That leads to the third possibility. China seems very resilient. So does nature when it remains in equilibrium. The famous supreme court justice Oliver Wendel Holmes was also quite a poet, most famous for his poem "The Chambered Nautilus". But he also wrote a poem called "The Deacon's Masterpiece". In this poem, a local well-to-do deacon ordered the custom building of an exceptional horse-drawn carriage with every part designed to last indefinitely. The carriage did indeed far outlast all others with no repair problems, until one day the entire thing massively collapsed. The Chinese leaders are trying to build a deacon's masterpiece. Like an earlier such effort: "and slim and BS they had for mortar". Fear is a terribly mechanical modus operandi, and no long-term constructive evolution can be supported by it.

The closely related factors of environment and population now figure prominently. These will not go away. China's insistence on six-percent annual economic growth is myopia as long as it refuses to deal with these problems pre-eminently. Let's look at the issue of apparent Chinese political resilience from the standpoint of how these and other factors play out. I will quickly add to the list of these: inflation, unemployment, gap between the rich and the poor, corruption, lack of social services and health care. All of these were on showcased display in the Frontline documentary "China in the Red". Honestly, I found there to be a certain striking arbitrariness whenever I considered different references to cite both to make my case and to demonstrate (what petty insecurity!) that I had "done my homework". I reached the point where I felt I could poke my finger randomly at any point in any book, article or video and relate whatever my finger touched to my case. That suggests to me that I may be on track, but I will spare an overly-tedious manifesto to document it. At this point, notice that none of the issues listed occur in a vacuum - they all tie together. Here, I will use the two logs of environment and population as representative of the whole - the load on the wheelbarrow.

Environment and population are both growth vectors: they move in one direction - getting bigger. A one-wheeled wheelbarrow is an excellent metaphor for discussing equilibria (and hence stability versus collapse). If you have ever used one much, as I have, you know they are easy to keep in balance if empty or with a light load. As the weight of the load increases, you have to be more and more careful about its balance. With a light load, it can hit a bump and tilt some but you can hold it. With a heavy load, the tiniest tilt is hopeless: the whole thing goes over and you lose your load. In this case, the wheelbarrow itself stands for the resilience of the Chinese infrastructure politically, economically and socially. The logs of environment and population are already in the wheelbarrow, and since the device has been pushed along so far successfully, it is easy to assume it can be handled with those two logs in it. But those are not static logs. They gradually increase, and because the increase is gradual, the consequences are easier to ignore. But at some point their forcing - the actual term used in equilibrium science - will surpass the capacity of the system (strength of the arms holding the handles). At this point, which can't be far away, you better be on very smooth level hard flawless pavement! The load can be kept only if the balance is perfect. Intuitively, the Chinese leaders get it - that is why they are so paranoid about social stability. But they refuse to properly take the growth of the weight into account. They refuse because it comes at the expense of their power and their lack of transparency: the very ingredients of the strength of their arms. Notice that nearly all of the increase in weight is internal - the outside world largely just plays referee.

Can China successfully overcome these difficulties and secure its status as a world power? Can the boy Douzi become the girl Dieyi? They can put on a good show. No doubt we will see one this summer. A stage performance reform is not an essential reform, and China at the leadership level has long abandoned all sense of the distinction within themselves as their ancient traditions more thoroughly understand. The external will reflect the internal, and all of China pays the price. They squelch the very Buddhists and Taoists who have the wisdom that could save them. My talk of balancing the wheelbarrow, framed in the modern science terms of punctuated equilibria, will not sound strange to these ancient ears.

So now we return to the beginning: "reconsidering" China as a world power is like watching to see if the referee throws a flag. To what extent can we "reconsider" in any meaningful way? Is it our place to tell China that if you become a world power we will send you to bed with no supper? No, but neither is it our place under a phony guise of real friendship (and only watching our own wallets) to cater to China's myopia at the top level. I believe that if we in the west are scared of China becoming a world power, we don't need to do a whole lot about it: China is quite capable of messing up its own bed. I believe that our position should be one of passive force, engaged but not meddlesome, and somewhat authentically (imagine that!) a friend who is secure in giving constructive criticism without pandering to self interest. It's a hand on China's shoulder saying that we do not believe China will succeed in its world power endeavors and we will not hesitate to say why. Our policies should not continuously hand them carrots feeding their myopia. We should take a hard line on their support of Somalia, their heavy-handedness toward Tibet, their warped nationalist pride toward the Taiwan issue, etc. Bush should not say - as he did - that he will attend the games in spite of events in Tibet (of course he doesn't give a piss about what happens to Buddhists). We should tie economic carrots to reform. We should put major pressure on environmental reform - including the pressure of setting a good example. We will not be preventing them from becoming a world power. If they continued in current fashion the wheelbarrow will dump anyway. We do not oppose them. They can become a world power if they want to. We will not send them to bed with no supper. But they must learn for themselves what "wanting to" actually entails. I don't think they will. I think the wheelbarrow will dump. What this means in terms of actual events I do not presume to know. But I am ready to wager that the metaphor will prove apt.

CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

I wish to comment on two different but closely related news items that appeared on the China Digital Times on Sunday, March 2, 2008... CAPTION: "China Agency Gets More Power" The report, closely paraphrased... AP reports this week that the Chinese government plans on the creation of a cabinet ministry to hold SEPA. Officials believe this would give SEPA more authority. The plans are expected to be formerlly approved in March. The agency would becomethe "Ministry of Environment" said Hongjun Zhang, who said staff could be increased from 200 to 300-400. Over time the body would be given more authority over local environental bureaus which tend to be beholden to local industries and politicians that flout the rules. Critics say this change will have little impact and regulations will continue to be ignored. Up front, I applaud this action of the Chinese government. It is certainly a move in the right direction. The most critical and beneficial part seems to me to be the increase of authority over local bureaus. While the power-mongering of the central government of China makes me cringe, yet the corruption on the local level, especially in regards to the environment makes me cringe much worse. I trust the central government to be more sincere on matters of the environment than the local officials. This concern was made crystal clear by two of our main readings, those of Judith Shapiro and of Elizabeth C. Economy. But why "over time"? Why not right away? Already we sense a good thing falling short. Economy writes, "Even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms." Curiously, she gives the figure of 300 for already-existing full-time members of SEPA, the State Environmental Protection Administration, whereas the news posts speaks encouragingly of increasing staff numbers up to 300 or more from the current 200 - a discrepancy. Economy asks why is China unable to get its environmental house in order. She says, "they are unwilling to pay the political and economic price to get there" She says Beijing's message is that economic growth cannot be sacrificed to environmental protection. No wonder critics are cynical about the reform making much difference. I believe it will make some difference, but it will be too little too late. It falls short of "revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms" that Economy so compellingly argued for. She and Shapiro run parallel in their concerns and appeals. Economy writes, "Effective environmental protection requires transparent information, official accountability, and an independent legal system. There is little indication that China's leaders will risk the authority of the Communist Party on charting a new environmental course." Compare this with Shapiro's last paragraph on page 65. The current leaders of China do not suffer from environmental myopia as severely as Mao Zedong did, but they are not immune to it. China is not just living on borrowed time, they are living on triple-mortgaged borrowed time. The officials seem terrified of losing control of their authoritarian regime. They should be much more scared of NOT losing it! CAPTION: "China to Log its Worst Polluters" The post, condensed and paraphrased... China has announced a new survey in which it will require factories, farms and other major polluters to declare how much and what kind of pollution they release. As an incentive, the government has promised immunity from prosecution for all willing participants. "We need reliable data..." said Ma Jun of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. Wang Yuqing, the man in charge of the project, said the main aim was to get a clear picture of China's pollution problem. The government will then use the information to develop new policies. Mr. Wang said the government will not use the information against the polluting firms. This news elicits very mixed feelings in me. As a scientist, I applaud the effort to get good empirical data upon which to formulate policy. The anti-scientific Bush regime over here could take some pointers. But this strategy is fraught with problems. An incintive is needed for sure, but so is accountability. People will deliberately take this as a license to behave however they please environmentally and get out of it at the price of a data report. Besides, it smells much too heavily of insider corruption, with the government and the corporations in cahoots. Even if that is unfounded, the policy is vulnerable to this, and certainly vulnerable to the suspicion of it, leading to even more public mistrust. I'm not sure how to approach giving incentive and accountability simultaneously - obviously a tricky path. Perhaps the immunity could be put on a time limit such as one year. After all, China can't twiddle its thumbs too long just gathering data - they need to do something. Maybe one impure motive for this whole thing is just to buy time anyway without committment to reform. At best this policy should be a quick sneak peak - then shut the policy down.

Re: Gurdjieff on Movements (compare to qigong)

NOTE: These words need to be taken in context - he is speaking to pupils at his Institute who have taken on a serious program with a holistic aim - Steve

Gurdjieff on Movements [COMPARE TO QIGONG]

Gurdjieff wrote sparingly about movements. The following excerpt taken from Views from the Real World is reprinted by the kind permission of Triangle Editions, Inc.

First Talk in Berlin

November 24, 1921

You ask about the aim of the movements. To each position of the body corresponds a certain inner state and, on the other hand, to each inner state corresponds a certain posture. A man, in his life, has a certain number of habitual postures and he passes from one to another without stopping at those between.

Taking new, unaccustomed postures enables you to observe yourself inside differently from the way you usually do in ordinary conditions. This becomes especially clear when on the command "Stop!" you have to freeze at once. At this command you have to freeze not only externally but also to stop all your inner movements. Muscles that were tense must remain in the same state of tension, and the muscles that were relaxed must remain relaxed. You must make the effort to keep thoughts and feelings as they were, and at the same time to observe yourself.

For instance, you wish to become an actress. Your habitual postures are suited to acting a certain part—for instance, a maid—yet you have to act the part of a countess. A countess has quite different postures. In a good dramatic school you would be taught, say, two hundred postures. For a countess the characteristic postures are, say, postures number 14, 68, 101 and 142. If you know this, when you are on the stage you have simply to pass from one posture to another, and then however badly you may act you will be a countess all the time. But if you don't know these postures, then even a person who has quite an untrained eye will feel that you are not a countess but a maid.

It is necessary to observe yourself differently than you do in ordinary life. ...Everyone has a limited repertoire of habitual postures, and of inner states. She is a painter and you will say, perhaps, that she has her own style. But it is not style, it is limitation. Whatever her pictures may represent, they will always be the same, whether she paints a picture of European life or of the East. I will at once recognize that she, and nobody else, has painted it. An actor who is the same in all his roles—just himself—what kind of an actor is he? Only by accident can he have a role that entirely corresponds to what he is in life.

Views from the Real World, pp. 167–170

Gmail - Emailing: Wild Goose Qigong - eakerite@gmail.com

http://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/1186ba331336e59d NOTE: Open the "download" link in the mail window that the above brings up in order to view this remarkable document - Steve

Gmail - Pyromorphite-A - China.jpg

Gmail - Pyromorphite-A - China.jpg This is a specimen of natural crystals of a rare chlorophosphate mineral called pyromorphite. The specimen was found in the Daoping Mine in Yangshuo, Guangxi, China