A few comments on Chinese society

I should be doing a homework assignment, but I thought I’d remark on a few things I’ve noticed in China. A post by Jess (someone from UF studying in Jordan, I don’t know her) about society in Jordan surprised me. She wrote:

The practice essay prompt involved individual responsibility in situations you aren’t directly involved in (i.e. encountering an injured man on the side of the road - should you call the ambulance?), and I’ve gained yet another valuable anecdote in support of my theory of why the Middle East is stuck in an odd social time warp. All the kids said it’s not their responsibillity, it’s whoever saw the accident or caused it. No notion of thinking beyond oneself for a greater social cause (except, and this sounds horribly imperialistic to say, for the ex-pat American kid in the class, who said that individual responsibility helps a society progress). He said it, not me.

I was really shocked by the responses of the Jordanian students, and it made me wonder how Chinese students might respond. Based on my experience trying to communicate with people using only very broken Chinese and trying to navigate the city, I would wager that Chinese people would respond like Americans. So far all of the Chinese I’ve met have been very helpful. Its not like they’ve been helpful because they feel like they have to be, but to me it feels like they actually want to help. Of course, I’m talking about a society that had a Communist stint, so that’s not especially surprising. I’ll have to remember to ask some Chinese people this question when I’m more fluent.

My next subject is touchy in China, and I was considering not posting it. I’ve left out the name of the person I was speaking with along with any personally identifiable information. I was talking with a girl here at Tsinghua and was surprised when she mentioned the Tiananmen Square protest and subsequent massacre in 1989. We were originally talking about the May 4th movement’s protests at Tiananmen back in 1919 but the topic moved around a bit. I told her that I was surprised that she knew about the protests in 1989, and asked if she though most of the students here at Tsinghua also knew. She has spent some time outside of China where the restrictions on knowledge don’t exist and was able to learn a great deal of information that is suppressed in China. She said that most of the students know something happened, but that they don’t know what. She also said that they don’t care, they would rather just make money. I then asked her if many students knew how to circumvent the great firewall. She says many do, but most don’t and they don’t have any reason to since they don’t know what they’re missing. I then asked her how she felt about all of this. She said that she’s frustrated and saddened by the restrictions on the internet, but there’s very little she can do since no the large majority of the population cares. I’m curious what the rest of the student body thinks, but this isn’t a subject I can go around asking people. I have no opinion to give until I get back to the US where I’m protected by mostly reasonable laws on free thought.

Fun fact about China and it’s changing values: The number of syphilis infections in China in the years from 1993 to 1999 increased from .2 per 100,000 to 6.5 per 100,000 people. The authors of the study attribute the rise mainly to “economic reforms and globalization in China. These changes have led to income gaps and a cultural climate that favors re-emergence of prostitution due to a substantial majority of men and a large migrant population of male workers,” and only partly to “[c]hanging social practices such as people experimenting with sex at earlier ages and before marriage, as well as increasing costs of individual health care.” In my most un-expert opinion (really, I’m just guessing and you shouldn’t put an value in my postulations), I think the increase has more to do with the lack of knowledge about sexual health and, like in America, social stigmas which prevent people from admitting they might have an STD and seeking treatment. Less information has never led to better health. More at Science Daily. Interestingly this virus was exterminated in China during the Cultural Revolution and only reemerged after opening the borders to the world. +1 point for Mao.

Cases of HIV/AIDS are also on the rise. As of 2005, there were 1 million infected individuals in China. According to Wikipedia, if nothing is done, this number could reach 10 million by 2010.

That’s enough musing for today. 再见!