China – a social overview 1

Posted by Tadzio Goldgewicht on Oct 14, 2011 in Articles, Culture, General | 0 comments

China is under the spotlight these days. It seems that the whole world is paying attention to the largest country in the world. No wonder this is happening. China has to be one of the countries that are experiencing amazingly fast change over the past few years. However, much of the attention China is receiving falls under the economic aspect. Governments, companies, speculators and businesspeople all have their attention focused on the economic and political changes that happen here, ergo the demand for information in those two areas. At the same time, I feel that more needs to be written about what’s under the hood. What powers the country? How can it maintain its unity under so much international pressure? Until when is the country going to be able to pay the price for its amazingly fast growing rate? These and some other questions are left untouched and unanswered in most articles I have read over the years. Therefore, I have decided to throw some light into the social element, on what’s happening under all the changes and advancement that people outside China are able to see. These, are the visible elements of modern China. Follow me into the invisible realm that powers what most people know about the “center kingdom”.

I would say that we could affirm, with a good degree of certainty, that the economic and political situations of a country are a direct reflection of its social condition. Following this line of thought, I believe that we can establish a direct relation between the Chinese society and its economy and politics. Going a bit further, we can also affirm that the social will influence politics, and politics will determine economy. Even though we could also affirm that the social affects the economy, it seems that the relation between “social” and “politics” is a more direct one. Consequently, it is clear that to be able to gain a better understanding on both the economy and the politics of China, a person needs to also understand its society. By doing so, anyone will be better prepared not only to understand the different aspects of modern China and identify social, political and economic tendencies, but also to predict future developments in those areas.

In the third example, we have a highly educated person with a very good technical and theoretical knowledge of China and its culture, but with assumed limited direct experience with it. After all, how many professors you know lived in a Chinese slum?

Despite the fact that the social element is key to understand China in different areas and levels, it appears that not much is known about the subject. There is, of course, the occasional foreigner that worked for a company and spent a few years in Beijing, or the consultant that stayed one or two years in Shanghai. There is also the Harvard specialist that has all the theory, spent some time in China and wrote a couple of books on the subject. All these people can provide valid information and should, of course, be respected and recognized as reliable sources, but in my opinion, each type of example lacks one or two little things that would add much weight to their opinions. In examples one and two, the foreigners most probably have a very good insight on the particulars of how business is conducted and the life in large Chinese cities (limited to their own daily routines). However, they lack a deeper understanding of the “real China”, of the life in the smaller cities, of the mind of the migrant worker and of culture that is more traditional. In the third example, we have a highly educated person with a very good technical and theoretical knowledge of China and its culture, but with assumed limited direct experience with it. After all, how many professors you know lived in a Chinese slum?

It is clear that even though there are many qualified people that can give reliable information on many aspects of the Chinese society, most of them might not necessarily be able to give a deep insight in the particulars of the Chinese life, and this might be one of the reasons why there is not much information about the subject. Either this or the people that are directly interested in the Chinese economy or politics are not clearly seeing how they are a direct result of the social element. A third option would be a combination of both possibilities- not having enough people able to provide a deeper social insight and a lack of understanding the importance of actually having this insight as a tool to better understand economy and politics.

The first possibility happens because high quality training in a subject needs to happen with the inclusion of direct experience. There are first-rate institutions that offer instruction on matters related to the Chinese society. Their curricula surely includes the study of different theories, lectures of reputed specialists, the reading of related material, field studies and other appropriate learning venues. I am sure, than some of those venues might include spending time in China, but I’m afraid the time might not be enough. Considering that a BA in eastern studies or some other related area can usually be obtained in four years, we can understand that spending more than a few months in China would be extremely difficult. Yet, even with all the knowledge that a first rate institution is able to offer through its curricula, there is only so much a student can acquire with a few months of direct contact in China. I believe it is common sense that the more time a researcher spends in China, the better he will be prepared to discuss about it. However, we should make a clear distinction here: spending time and spending time with a purpose are two very different things. I know people that have spent years in China and do not know much about the people. They know what anyone that spends years in a foreign country would naturally learn, but that alone is not enough to allow someone to convey a deep social picture of modern China. Spending time with the intention of research, always looking for what is not evident and trying to understand the reason why things happen in a certain way is what makes the difference here.

The second possibility would be the one where those directly interested in the Chinese economy and politics cannot perceive the importance of the social element. This is a tricky possibility. Most of the people interested in these areas are just looking for economical profit. China is possibly the biggest market on earth and it has been a while since businesspeople learned they could obtain amazing profit here. Not only China represents the bigger market, but it is also a virgin market in the sense that, until very recently, many of the services commonly offered in western countries were virtually inexistent here. Some still are. The possibility of introducing a service, in national scale, that will reach a tremendous amount of people in the biggest market in the world is enough to make any businessperson in the word water his mouth. What most businesspeople do not know (even though at this point some are already guessing) is that common social rules, social knowledge that makes interacting with people from other cultures possible, might (and probably will not) apply to the Chinese. They look at the data but not at what is underneath – the social element. This might work for most of the countries in the world, which have merged under the usage of globally accepted social rules, but not here, not in China. Understanding the social and the local culture is essential for doing good business with the Chinese and to understand the countries policies and the behavior of its leaders. They are politicians, of course, but above all, they are Chinese. They are the direct result of being brought up in this specific environment, under a specific set of social values and conventions, and just like anyone else in the world, their behavior can be predicted. Once a businessperson, a consultant or a government analyst understands this, they will have a big advantage.

The third possibility is the result of possibilities one and two happening at the same time. Not much needs to be explained here. It might be of value to note that I believe this to be the main reason why most of the information available about China is related either to its economy or to its politics. I believe people need to give more attention to the social, to what lies beneath all that economic data and political analyses. Ultimately, China is emerging as one of the most important countries in the world, and acquiring a deep insight into its society is what any person with an interest in anything related to it should be doing.

Life in modern China is singular, to say the least. Socially triggered phenomena can be identified everywhere and the government faces some amazing challenges. China is going through a moment in its history that one could consider as a kind of rite of passage. The country is trying not only, as many people would correctly perceive, to position itself in our new globalized reality, but also to understand itself as a country. The gap between the old and the new China is enormous and not even the Chinese clearly understand what kind of country they live in at the moment or what kind of country China will become. It is a singular moment because China is still defining its identity. What needs to be noticed is that, unlike most of the developing countries that are defining their international identities, China is also searching for its own national identity, for the very basic concepts and ideas that define, to the people, the identity if a country.

To write about the life in a certain country is not something very difficult. However, when the country in question is China writing about it proves to be amazingly challenging. Not only important things happen in China, but also many important things happen at the same time. It is not easy to have a scope of understanding that will allow you to perceive all this elements, and to make things worse, at least half of what happens in China happens “behind the curtains”, away from the attention of the general population. At times, it is difficult enough to perceive what is evident and happens around you, but perceiving what doesn’t officially happen is even more difficult. To understand life in China,, one must develop this ability, the power to perceive the evident, the subtle and the inexistent. Only by doing so can a person accurately construct a reliable picture of what life in modern China is.

China faces several challenges, and even though many of them are common to all developing countries, we must put them into perspective to be able to fully appreciate their complexity. With the advent of the famous Cultural Revolution, which spanned over an entire decade, China began losing much of its cultural identity. The Cultural Revolution was a complicated event and one of its main characteristics was the strong opposition to what was then called “the old culture”. The basic idea behind this was to help establish a new cultural identity for the country, one that would be free from the fetters of the past and the ever present shadow of foreign domination. The decision to adopt this course of action began putting in motion a process that was critical to the future of the country. The Chinese government has publicly recognized that some of the choices made during that period might not have been the best ones, and has been trying to minimize the social impact of such decisions, but the fact is that even though the Cultural Revolution spanned only over a decade, it happened with such intensity that its effects can still be clearly felt. It helped shaping the way many generations think, including the younger Chinese teenagers from the present. Therefore, even though the Cultural Revolution might represent a darker page in the book of Chinese modern history, it is important for us to understand that it is one of the reasons why some of the changes happening in China occur is very particular ways. Nevertheless, obviously it isn’t the only reason.

 The first big difference here is the idea and usage of “control”. For most westerners the idea of control goes directly against the concept of freedom. In fact, ”control” has been an important and accepted part of this relationship for thousands of years and it is a reflection of the adoption of three very important schools of thought: Confucianism, Militarism and Legalism.

The Chinese political system is usually very criticized by foreigners that are used to a much more democratic approach. China is often criticized because of its choice of a political system and its implementation. In the eyes of many western people, the Chinese live under the tyrannical ruling of the Communist party, which controls the country with an iron hand, enslaving the people, disregarding its will, personal affairs and individual rights. This is, generally speaking, the understanding that a westerner has of the political situation in China, but in my opinion, this idea does not reflect the reality of things. In China, the relationship between the people and the government is a bit different from what westerners might understand. The first big difference here is the idea and usage of “control”. For most westerners the idea of control goes directly against the concept of freedom. In fact, ”control” has been an important and accepted part of this relationship for thousands of years and it is a reflection of the adoption of three very important schools of thought: Confucianism, Militarism and Legalism. In this model, the leaders of a country are expected to have a very strong sense of responsibility towards the people and, as in a family, they are supposed to act in a commanding capacity. Control and command are two very traditional Chinese concepts that are clearly present in the way the leaders conduct internal policy. They are, of course, alien to the reality of most democratic countries, but most certainly very common in the Chinese thinking (even though they exist in other political systems, they are implemented in a very particular way by the Chinese government). Not only they are common in politics, but in virtually any social relationship – husband and wife, boss and employee, older brother and younger brother etc. Of course, there are people in China that firmly oppose this kind of policy, but this is true for any kind of policy in the world – some will support while others will criticize. The problem here arises from trying to understand this policy based in “control” and “command” from the western perspective. From that perspective, this would be a very oppressive policy, where personal freedom is not emphasized enough and society is under heavy control. However, these are elements familiar to any Chinese person. In addition, even though there are surely people who disagree with it, it might shock you to find out that my personal experience tells me that most people are actually content to live in such a society. I would say that once this becomes clear, a westerner would definitely have a better understanding of the relationship between the people and the government.