Procrastination, An Addendum

To be fair, the previous post characterizing the harmonizing tendency of Chinese society doesn't necessarily cover ALL of Chinese society. After all, trying to characterize any group of 1.3 billion people is a very difficult, if not impossible task. China is slowly assimilating more "Western" values, such as individualism, human rights and free speech. I call them "Western," because they are predominately traits found in the United States and European countries. China was getting along fine without any of those things for a while, at least in their eyes.

No, really. One of my Chinese roommates here at Peking University once told me, "You guys think human rights are really important. Here in China... it's not a big deal." And in terms of the education system, the 高考 Gāo Kǎo, or College Entrance Exam, is actually the most fair way to deal with the millions of high school seniors vying for only a few thousand spots at the nation's top universities; it's just unfortunate that the byproduct of such a fair examination system is an education culture that emphasizes information acquisition over analysis. But free speech holds some promise.

The internet has been an amazing tool for promoting free speech in China. While being over-zealous or over-critical of the government online can still result in exile or imprisonment, people have been able to exercise their voices like never before, partially because they can find strength in numbers. You see, the government has a very real fear of its own people, because, as you can guess, a revolution by the Chinese people would be very, very difficult to suppress. It has actually created a fascinating dynamic between the party in power and the people it "controls." Just look at the move by senior members of the Politburo to promote free speech for the media, or the online movements condemning the corruption among the hierarchy of the Communist Party.

So yes, the attitude of "harmonization," from my experiences in China over the past six months, is definitely the prevalent attitude across the country, but things are changing, and they are changing quickly.