Yesterday’s weather was, as we say here in Beijing, “feng kuang” (which in my opinion sounds much more like ‘crazy’ than ‘crazy’). It started raining at about two in the afternoon—and by the time that we left the building that our classrooms are in at three, the water in the road was running like a river. The walk back to our dorm usually takes less than five minutes; yesterday, we waded through a knee-deep, mucky lake for at least fifteen. We (my classmates and I) walked into the lobby soaked and laughing hard—we’d long since given up fighting the elements. After warm showers and dry clothes, our hotel was downright cozy, and we gathered in the second-floor café to surf the web and study.
Academically, HBA is getting pretty political. Our last few chapters have dealt with issues like Taiwan, human rights, direct elections/democracy, currency exchange, and Chinese media. Our lecture classes give us a pretty clear idea of the Chinese view of things, which we then respond to in “Dui Hua Ke” (an hour during which one teacher and two students discuss the day’s lesson) and “Dan Ban Ke” (an hour with a teacher one-on-one). The more that we talk about these topics, the more that I realize how big China and the U.S.’s ideological differences are.
Today, for example, in Dui Hua Ke our teacher asked me (and my friend Hao Yuan) if we thought that the government should control the media. “No,” I replied, trying to be polite. “In America, our constitution gives us freedom of speech and so that would be illegal.” We explained how in America the media acts as a sort of fourth, regulatory branch of government. We said that we thought that people need to know as much as possible what is going on in their country. We told her that the media can be an important tool for politicians—can tell them what citizens are concerned about. “What do you think?” we asked her.
Without hesitation, she replied, “Oh, I think that the government must control the media. Otherwise, society will become too unstable.” We asked her to explain, and she told us that from a Chinese point of view, if citizens know that, say, one region wants independence, then they might support this region rather than the government, and that might lead to regional violence that could tear China apart, etc. etc. It’s better for everyone, she said, if the government reports “Hao Xiaoxi” (Good/Happy News) and if the economy keeps running smoothly.
We didn’t want to offend her, and figured it’d be best to end the conversation there.
1 comment:
I knew that the government controlled the media outlets, but I never knew that the citizens actually agreed with that. That really boggles my mind, because there are so many political/health/ethnic/human rights issues that are being suppressed by the Chinese government! I wonder if you would consider that a product of socialization?
Meanwhile, be safe! Floods and other small-scale natural disasters scare the crap out of me.
Love Xu
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