China’s Megatrends and a Confused Sussex Boy amid the storm

China is in the media spotlight so much these days, and for someone with too much time on their hands and regular tendencies to scroll through the internet in a brain dead zombie-like fashion, it can’t be argued that most of the English language coverage is pretty negative. Of course I’m no media analyst and my regular news updates stem mainly from the BBC, though it would seem Auntie is no pioneer for news reports that don’t hold unbiased “everyone who isn’t doing it like us is bad” viewpoints on developing countries.

For those of you that are interested in China and its chaotic mosaic of a society, and wish to pursue an understanding that doesn’t jump to conclusions but jumps away from attitudes and expectations held by Western democracies, a book named China’s Megatrends by American socio-economic expert couple Doris and John Naisbitt may be worth a read. I picked the book up for 10 Yuan (about a quid) on one of Beijing’s many street book vendors, selling pirated copies of novels old and new, as well as an alarming amount of get rich fast/self help books.

I’ll start with what I’ve gathered so far. The book is filled with various explanations and reasoning behind the actions and schemes of the Chinese government, emphasising its rapid development from a backward peasant society to the world’s second largest economy in just 30 years, and how as a political machine it has been brilliantly efficient in bringing China up to the standards of the developed world. Sound a little too good to be true? Well just when I thought it was refusing to tackle the BBC’s favourite issues of human rights and democracy, the authors make the point that in terms of opportunities and standards of living, the issues of human rights of China have improved dramatically due to the economic advancement and modernisation of the country. Also, the events of 1989 are not attributed to the need for democracy and freedom of speech, but a general dissolution felt towards the government regarding high inflation and lack of produce at the time (though interestingly the book refers to it as the Tiananmen Tragedy, not the typical “Tiananmen Massacre” used by other Western sources). Perhaps most interestingly, regarding democracy the Naisbitts bring forward the age old Confucian ideals of stability and harmony and their importance to the Chinese idea of well-being, thus a Western style democracy whereby parties compete against each other for power would throw the country into disarray when what it cries out for is stability and the idea that the population should all work towards a common goal. It also mentions that the current Western model of democracy took hundreds of years to mature, and China, with its current installation only really being 60 years old, has made massive leaps from its autocratic closed off society under Mao. Unlike the West, individuality is not seen by the Chinese as complete freedom, instead freedom to them is achieved by families and citizens cooperating together and the whole of society heading down a similar path. The book repeatedly quotes from leading Chinese politicians and scholars mentioning plans to put more power into the hands of ordinary more emancipate people’s minds, and take from other countries various pieces of political, technological and sociological knowledge to add to China’s already existing montage of very un-Chinese ingredients.

Although the ideas put forward in the book are quite intriguing and do contradict many of the claims of other media sources regarding political corruption and human rights, it isn’t without its flaws. A peculiar aspect of the book is that it was released in China in Chinese a while before it hit Western bookstores, despite it being written by American authors. This did cause me to ponder whether this book, with its strange reluctance to directly criticise the Chinese system, is being used by China as a propaganda tool; a viewpoint shared (perhaps predictably) by many English speaking media corporations who reviewed the book. With suspicious mistakes in spelling and countless misprints coupled with questionable grammar, I have even been pondering the legitimacy of this book. Alas, after various internet searches it would appear that the book and its authors are real.

The Naisbitts

With regard to human rights, corruption and other nasty stuff we always hear about when hearing about China, the book makes an effort to bring a new light on these matters and the need for more understanding of China’s situation which I fully support, though having lived here for 3 years I can say that a lot of things are without total justification and, among many other things, are the result of a country with a superfluous population all trying to make their way whilst sometimes discarding law and morality. It would however take me an age to write about this and some of the things I’ve witnessed and heard about during my time here. I’ll save those stories for the pub.

The book, criticism aside, does serve well as a vehicle bringing some much needed light and explanation on the current China socio-economic situation, and does appear relatively appeasing and understanding compared to much of the finger-pointing armchair criticism style seen so often on the BBC. I haven’t read much work written by Westerners who have lived in or have studied China’s trends, though so far I’ve found the books of Joseph Hessler, an American teacher turned journalist who has spent much of his working life in China to be the most unbiased and informative view on Chinese happenings. It’s certainly interesting hearing the story from the other side (free from the heavily censored Chinese media), and in the meantime I’ll continue on my new found quest to find out more in understanding China’s doings and directions. This has become more of a book review than a blog, though the theme of the book is a topic that has repeatedly been on my mind of late.