As a China watcher, I’m cautiously worried about the new administration.

I just spent the past 12 months of my life reading EVERY mention of China in Congress. If it was a bill, I read it. If it was a resolution, I read it. If it was a rambling, nonsensical harangue about China’s ‘human rights’ record or ‘unfair’ business practices, I read it. If it was a measured account of our economic relationship with the growing powerhouse, I read that, too (though I didn’t get the chance to read anything ‘measured’ on China that often).

What I found: Democrats are overwhelmingly the Congress members most worried about China’s rise to power.

But not in an entirely ‘healthy’ way.  

They don’t know much about China – or only what they have been told; most of them have never actually been anywhere inside China. They’re angry about job loss in their states; some of the most irate China bashers are from states with a heavy industrial or manufacturing base. They like to blame China for most of our economic problems, pointing to our debt and trade deficit to China; that’s like blaming the bookie for your gambling problem.

I know from an insider source that Hillary Clinton’s former China policy person during the primaries summarily quit after her campaign turned too protectionist for the person’s comfort. Apparently, no one wanted to listen to the China scholar’s opinions or advice, they just wanted to make their constituency happy. And a lot of people loathe the image of China. 

As a China watcher, I’ve often found myself in the role of ‘defender’ or ‘explainer’ of China or Chinese culture. Someone has to do it. The Chinese – or Asians, in general – are one of the last groups (along with Latinas, truth be told) that people still feel it’s okay to make fun of, complain about, and bascially berate. Misunderstandings and/or a lack of knowledge breeds not only ignorance about an entire culture, but a dangerous sense that we already ’know’ about them. 

In the past, Obama has made comments on both sides of the divide. I think that he’s smart enough to recognize that with China as one of the largest holders of American debt, we literally can’t afford to antagonize them on issues that have nothing to do with the economy – like the one-child policy or labor rights. Like it or not, the Chinese and American fates are locked together. This isn’t a zero-sum game – both nations would be losers in a direct confrontation (military or otherwise).

So, my advice to the new president? 

1. Hire some good China people. You’re gonna need them.

2. Be ballsy enough to listen to their advice, even if it isn’t ‘popular’ with people ridiculous enough to use terms like “Communist” and “Red” in front of China. This isn’t – and shouldn’t be – 1958 all over again.

3. Learn some Chinese, even if it’s just a few polite phrases. It’ll go over well on your official visits.

The Olympics are here! And I’m already over it.

The opening ceremony hasn’t even aired here in the U.S. and I am already bored of the Olympics. Isn’t that terrible? I blame all the media hype.

I blame the fact that for months, all I’ve been seeing everywhere is Olympics, China, China, Olympics, human rights, China, Tibet, Olympics, trade, oil, China, environment, China, Tibet, protests, Olympics, China.

In all my time reading and writing about China, this is the first time that I’ve ever been sick of hearing about China.

I wonder how long it will take before the media onslaught peters out?

When will we stop reading about what the Chinese people eat?

Or how their government tortures people? (Let’s not even go to the easy jab about the practice of waterboarding.)

Or freeing Tibet?

Or protecting Taiwan?

Or how – in a million other ways – the Chinese are simply inferior to us?

The U.S. has been reporting on China much like a big brother playing varsity with a serious problem with his kid brother trying out for the team. Maybe we are worried that our freshman kid brother (who is, by the way, much bigger physically than us) will be better than us. Or that we’ll be benched and have to watch our kid brother getting all the praise and venom that we are used to garnering from the international crowd. Or that we can’t handle the competition.

But doesn’t that just make us all look – well, ridiculous?

Maybe the Olympics will be a turning point for our knowledge about China. And I mean real knowledge, not  knee-jerk reactionary jargon that makes them look bad. They have problems, but they have some good points, too. In all seriousness, I think that we need a better understanding of the Chinese, and this might provide us with an opportunity.

But I doubt it.

We are far more interested in thinking we already know everything we need to know. And vice versa. Which, quite frankly, scares the bejesus out of me. Isn’t this how bad things always start? By a misunderstanding that engenders harsh feelings, which leads to more trouble? (That’s pretty much the way I remember being thrown off the merry-go-round in 3rd grade.)

I don’t think that China is our “enemy”. Nor do I think that they are our “friend”. They are our global cousins, and we don’t seem to like them very much.

They also aren’t the scapegoat that we make them out to be. Or the bogeyman. Or the devil.

Once upon a time, we were the “new money” and Europe hated us. Now Asia is the “new money” and the U.S. hates them. South America and India are just waiting their turn, so that East Asia can hate them. Europe is waiting for it to all revolve again. And Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East remain, to put it politely, screwed.

Returning to, and Blogging from, Hong Kong

In a few weeks, I’ll be heading off to Hong Kong.

For 3 years, I lived there, and going back will be a crazy experience. First, I never thought I would. Second, I’m finally with the person I wanted to be with back when I lived there. Third, I’m finally getting to do some on-the-ground scouting for field locations.

This is going to be great.

And expensive.

I’ll blog about my trip when I’m there, with pictures. A travel log of Hong Kong before the Olympics. As a ‘China watcher’, I’ll be curious to see how much people either care or do not care about the games in Hong Kong, and to see all the merchandising. Anyone want a Yingying stuffed animal? How about a Beibei.

Fat Bottomed Girls you make the rocking world go round . . .

From a park in China.

China and Congress – Not Exactly a Love Affair

So, clearly I’m not anti-China. In fact, I’m very wary of painting China as the next, big, bogeyman. I don’t believe in simple solutions regarding trade, balance of power issues, or human rights. And, I think that it’s ridiculous to become locked in an “us” against “them” mentality.

This is a blog. Which means that I don’t engage in complex analyses here. That’s what good magazine and journal articles are for, or entire books. Rather, I engage in a form of hopefully thought-provoking commentary. With the understanding that the title of my blog says it all. Anyone who takes me or what I have to say too seriously does not understand the meaning of satire. Sometimes, I just like to be the opposing voice, because I find it productive. There’s a reason that the devil’s advocate has never gone out of fashion. Every time someone disagrees with me, it forces me to recalibrate what I think.

Oh, sure, I may get mad enough to spit nails, I might call someone a whiner, a douchebag, or an idiot (not necessarily to their faces). I might sulk for awhile. But eventually, when my mind clears, I’ll ponder why I got so mad about it in the first place. Did they have a point?

All of this is just a long introduction to the article below, and my admission that I do not hate China. I also do not purport to think that we could solve China’s problems with our own brand of “democracy”, whatever that means in an age of super delegates and government-business hand-holding. In fact, I don’t know how our own government would cope with having 5 or 6 times the population we have now. Can you imagine the state of things?

Anyway, I have been researching the instances of when and how China is brought up for discussion on the House and Senate floors. And here is what I can tell you: we are scared. Silly.

China is talked about as a threat, a cheater, a human rights abuser, an unfair competitor – almost in the same breath as it is talked about as a rising power, a world player, and our banker (China is one of the largest holders of our debt, in case you never read the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Economist, or any business section). We worry that China is graduating more engineers than us, that their students are better than ours, that they can speak English while most of us are completely in the dark about Chinese. We also worry that their economy will dwarf everyone else’s, and we try to leverage our relationship with India to counterbalance things. (Oh, don’t get me wrong, we are vaguely concerned about India, too. Just not as much.) We worry as they build up their military, yet we place them in opposition to us before they technically are. (That technique sounds familiar, and the results weren’t that great.) We’re worried about them ruining the environment for us, which is also sort of ironic.

So, when you hear anti-China rhetoric from all 3 presidential candidates, it shouldn’t be that big of a shock. Politicians must needs respond to public fears if they have any chance of getting elected. After Clinton’s China adviser quit, I knew we were in real trouble. Now I don’t know who to vote for – who is more reasonable on this issue? Anyone?

Indiana to Beijing

Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2008; Page A22

As part of her populist reinvention, Hillary Clinton last week criticized a Chinese business deal in Indiana that her husband’s administration had supported. Perhaps she should have consulted the U.S.-China Business Council’s study on U.S. exports to China before arguing that ties with China are hurting Americans.

That’s right, exports. The study tracks exports from each Congressional district to China. Between 2000 and 2007, 406 of 426 House districts clocked triple-digit export growth to the mainland. Note that the bulk were manufactured goods: Electrical equipment and machinery, power generation equipment, and aircraft are America’s top three export categories to China in dollar terms. In services, the U.S. ran a $3.7 billion trade surplus with China in 2006, the latest year for which data are available.

Take Indiana’s first district, home of the Magnaquench factory in Valparaiso, whose 2005 closing has Senator Clinton so ruffled. Between 2000 and 2007, the first district’s exports to China increased 307%, compared with a 65% increase for exports to the rest of the world. That amounted to $74 million last year.

Or consider the sixth district, home to the city of Anderson, the former corporate home of Magnaquench. The sixth district saw its exports to China grow 311% between 2000 and 2007, reaching $118 million last year. Perhaps not coincidentally, the city’s official Web site includes sections in Chinese (as well as Japanese and German). In both of these case studies, by the way, the exports are overwhelmingly manufactured goods.

Trade with China, like trade with any country, will at times lead to closed factories and displaced workers. But these latest data are a reminder that trade creates new opportunities, too. Rather than ratcheting up the antitrade and anti-China rhetoric, the presidential candidates would do better focusing on helping Americans seize the opportunities of trade. Pro-growth tax and regulatory policies would make a good start.

Thanks for ruining it for the rest of us, Tibet protesters.

I was scheduled to go to Kunming, China, in July as part of a thousands strong annual international academic conference. My panel’s topic? The cultural politics of disease prevention.  Specifically, I was scheduled to talk about bird flu, the sharing of samples, and all the politics that get involved in the implementation of health policies.

This morning I got an email from a colleague in Beijing, who speaks fluent Chinese, saying that she had received a message from the Chinese organizer that the conference was “postponed”. Not canceled, but postponed. Indefinitely. Hmm.

He was very sorry for any trouble – like having a $1200 round-trip ticket in hand already – and said that it was out of his hands. Which means that the government canceled the conference. Why?

If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with the upcoming Olympics, their image, and all the young, passionate, slightly crazy protesters that basically made life hell for both China and their own countries. Academics, other than those in business, law and economics, are usually to the left. Which, at Berkeley, is a glaring understatement.

When I got to New York, and then to California, I had prior to that lived in mainly Republican strongholds: Indiana and New Hampshire. My family is Republican. And I always pushed against that, had arguments at the dinner table (even when we had guests over – classy!), and considered myself a hardcore Democrat.

After I moved to NYC, I still felt like a so-called liberal.

Then, I moved to Berkeley.

God, help me, but it turned me back to the center. I realized, from living here, that people on the far left really are as crazy as those on the far right. Basically, anyone who thinks that there are black and white answers to gray questions has got to be insane. Things in real life aren’t that simple; at least not over the age of 25. The last time I thought that things were as simple as ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, I think I was 8 and watching a Disney film.

So, it’s not that far-fetched to think that a bunch of academics and students descending on a place relatively near Tibet isn’t such a good idea. I wish that it weren’t so, but recently I heard someone who is a retired academic talking about sneaking into Tibet. Really? I fail to see how that helps Tibetans. I also fail to see if anything we yell about, in the end, will help Tibetans.

Human rights? While we have no universal health care and Guantanamo? Not to mention the little trouble over escaped pictures from Abu Ghraib. My grandmother had a saying: “Before you go to another woman’s house to complain, clean up your own.”

So now, thanks to all the protests, we can’t go to China this summer. Terrific. I suppose people will say that at least it forced the Chinese government to meet with the Dalai Lama. But, you’ll notice that he also said he no longer wants complete “independence”. Just more say, similar to Hong Kong’s situation.

Yet in the bargain, the protests also caused young Chinese people to show off their own brand of protest. These were not ‘government sponsored’, they were true expressions of a people with waning patience, tired of being considered the de facto ‘black hats’ of the East. Of the world. They are the new Russians, and they know it.

We all just seem to get farther apart, instead of closer together. And that, really, is the true shame. The Chinese government isn’t great, but China is not the devil. Honest. I promise. And neither are we. Well, maybe some of the crazy fringe groups.

大家各位好。我觉得外国人不可了解中国的历史，也不明白中国跟西藏的关系，对台
湾“一个中国”的政策。美国人特别是没思考这些问题，是因为我们不管历史。我
国有挺好的动机，可是美国的政府只管经济的事。我们怕中国已经站起来了，马上
当世界上第一国家。从WWII下手，我国把自己看成最主要的“保护自由”的国家。
我们不应该劝你们哪条路要走。我们也不听外国的意见。可是，我们都只有一个世
界，要联合，当真友。

I must like blogging away the Mondays.

Because I always seem to blog on a Monday morning. Maybe that is because I am procrastinating the beginning of yet another week. Which I’m usually afraid is going to suck.

But not for much longer!

The perk of being in academia is definitely the summer break. This summer, I have every intention of finishing my second novel, about a group of western or ‘westernized’ Chinese women in Hong Kong. The plot is loosely based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, for anyone who cares. It’s more of a literary novel, but I don’t think that people who like a good ‘beach read’ would turn away from it either. It’s all about relationships and what it’s like to be a white women in a post-colonial setting. From, clearly, my own personal experience with such a thing. It should be fun, and serious, and just a good read. Hopefully, it will also be provocative of discussion about what it means to be a woman, and Chinese or American in today’s world (respectively, I only barely dabble in Chinese-American status, which I know about only from my friends in China classes).

I can’t wait to just sit down and crash it out.

That and a couple of academic articles.

I guess I plan on being productive.

But you know how that works. Doesn’t the weekend always look better on the Friday side of it? By Sunday, I think most people have disappointed themselves. They didn’t do everything on their ‘list’. That’s something that should be on “Stuff White People Like”. Lists.

Well, I say frak the lists. To-do lists outside of work only depress people. Don’t even have a MENTAL to-do list.

Instead, why don’t you try keeping a record of what you’ve accomplished during the day. Shake it up. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote an introduction to a theory paper about the so-called ‘problem’ of China, specifically focusing on the issue of science & technology. I also wrote about the ‘Science Wars’ of the 1990s for my field statement on the anthropology of science. In addition, I read an article in Chinese about China’s economy for today’s Chinese class. I took an hour walk with my lovely boyfriend. I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. OK, I just ate them and he grilled them, but still.  I also managed to call my close friend Mark and gab.

Looking at that list makes me feel pretty good about my Monday. Let’s see if it lasts. . . .

So, it’s been awhile . . .

since I’ve posted. Basically, I am either reading, thinking about reading, or worrying about all the reading I still have to do. In the in between times, I do my Chinese homework and worry about the fact that I will never, ever be fluent. But, of course, that’s not true. I can already wander around China sans tour guide, sans destination written on a piece of paper, sans information, and get around just fine. It’s the fact, maybe, that a bunch of 20-somethings are kicking my ass that has me upset. They don’t know anything about real life yet, but they do know how to speak Chinese. It’s either that their parents speak it, so they’ve heard it from infants, or their brains are still spongy and springy and able to soak up information that they don’t even need or know they are imbibing. Ah, youth. How I begin to miss it already.

In other news, we’re going to the Cal game today and are ranked nationally at #2. Except for one small thing – we’ve so far been playing crappy teams and barely beating them. As result, we’ve gotten cocky. The star players have been strutting all over campus for weeks (well, there was that one guy hobbling on crutches off the bus, but that’s another story), the students have been gabbing loudly into their cellphones, bragging to friends at other schools. In my opinion, that will probably all change soon. Hopefully not today, on homecoming day, but someday and soon. I predict an impending defeat. When MacArthur was planning his ’surprise’ final push past the 35th parallel line, where he lost thousands of soldiers in battle (and didn’t win, just in case your history is fuzzy), Mao reportedly said in response to the news: “Fine! An arrogant enemy is easier to defeat!” Sorry, Cal fans, but history repeats itself.

I’m a bit like this team, I guess. Coming into Berkeley, I was undefeated. I had done everything I ever wanted to do in this world and then some, I had never gotten lower than a B on a test (ever), and I had never felt confused in a class (not even physics). But, then, just when I had gotten into the top program and had gotten cocky, Chinese class was waiting for me. And, like MacArthur, I was foolish enough to think that if I pushed hard enough, I would get the results I wanted. Not exactly. The Chinese language has to be approached with care, slowly and diligently, and it will be humbling years before I can claim that I have ‘mastered’ anything. I’m just hoping to be able to have a conversation that goes beyond the basics someday.

Bird flu article is finished!

I just put the finishing touches on my article for Language and Politics, an academic journal which is publishing a special issue on avian flu. This afternoon, I sent it off to the editor, two days ahead of schedule. So, in other words, I’m feeling pretty good and largely carefree right now.

The article is entitled, “The Politics of Bird Flu: The Battle over Viral Samples and China’s Entry into Global Public Health”. The basic premise is that viral samples are not just about biology, but about politicking. Access to viral samples has been a big deal over the past few years, with both Indonesia and China withholding theirs from the largely ‘Western’ epidemiological community. However, the WHO recently issued a report requesting that all nations who request samples from donor nations give those donor countries full access to the benefits (i.e. vaccines, drugs, etc.). Also, any work already done by the donor country’s scientists must be credited. My article discusses this from the vantage point of the overlap of public health and politics. I suggest that there is a new kind of diplomat on the scene – a health diplomat. I’m not the first to suggest this – in fact, I went to an entire meeting concerning the possible future training in ‘health diplomacy’ – but the article is still saying something fairly fresh and interesting.

Not that I’m biased. I’ll keep you posted on where you can find the special issue and when it is available.

Back to Bird Flu – Politics and Public Health

I’ve been asked to write an article on the political language of bird flu, specifically as it relates to the recent battles over viral samples from China and Indonesia. I’ll be focusing upon China, and discussing how public health is pretty much synonymous with politics these days. Basically, everything about global public health as it concerns bird flu has been turned into political maneuvering. It’s a fascinating and completely muddy topic. Just slogging my way through the media accounts is difficult.

For anyone interested, there is a site which lists all the stories and blogs about bird flu. You can find it at :

http://www.birdflubreakingnews.com/

It’s up-to-date and exhausting. Even without the hype, the stories are endless. Bird flu is a topic that seems to have entirely captured our imaginations. What does it stand for? Our fears about globalization? Our discomfort with “others” and anything “foreign”? There is actually a headline from the BBC not long ago that read “Duck with Bird Flu Not from UK”. Really? Even ducks have nationalities now? Do they need passports, too?

Pardon my skepticism. I’m not saying that bird flu as a real biological entity doesn’t exist. Clearly, it does. I’m also not saying it doesn’t have the potential to harm a lot of people. Obviously, it does. What I do question, however, is the language of risk, danger and foreignness surrounding it. I’m concerned that localized outbreaks are being made into global events by a collusion between media – eager for a story, and government – eager for a reason to broker power and scare people. Disease is a very effective weapon for terrifying a populace. And terrified citizens are more likely to approve of increased spending in order to “protect” them from the latest bogeymen. Bird flu being just one case-in-point.

So, this is what I am working on now. I’m knee deep in it, and I have no idea how I’m going to wrestle this down into something readable and understandable. It’s such a big topic, I’m not sure I can make that much sense of it myself.