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- Chinese Netizens: To Export Culture, We First Need Stronger Values
- Li Chengpeng: Patriotism With Chinese Characteristics
- The Daily Twit (@chinahearsay Twitter feed) – 2012-05-26
- Dueling Rights Reports: U.S.-China Political Theater
- U.S. Treasury: China Still Not a Currency Manipulator {yawn}
| Chinese Netizens: To Export Culture, We First Need Stronger Values Posted: 26 May 2012 11:44 AM PDT  You can't tell, but he's quite disappointed That was fast. Although Confucius Institutes have only been in the United States since 2005, the American government is already showing signs of doubt. On May 17, the U.S. State Department issued a new directive regarding Confucius Institutes in the U.S., which states that all Confucius Institutes must obtain American accreditation, even though they don't seek to grant degrees. In addition, the directive also said that the J-1 Visas held by many teachers at these institutes will not be extended, meaning some of them will have to leave the U.S. by June 30. The move has caused quite a stir in China. The Global Times published an op-ed titled, "Why is Washington so scared of Confucius?", stating that this directive will cause a great deal of trouble for Confucius Institutes in the U.S., and that "the US obviously wants this." Other newspapers in China echoed this sentiment, and blamed the U.S. government for creating unnecessarily troubles and "harming the friendship between the Chinese and American people." What about education for Chinese children? While Chinese newspapers have maintained a united front against this directive, Chinese netizens are much less sympathetic to the troubles faced by Confucius Institutes. @淘宝时尚潮流排行榜 exclaimed that sending volunteer teachers of Confucius Institutes back to China is "the most meaningful thing that the U.S. has ever done in its 300 years of history." He continued, "There are so many schools in western China that desperately needs teachers; you can only call yourself a volunteer if that's where you go," linking to a picture of a broken classroom from (presumably) western China (see below). Many netizens echoed his views, and complained that the Chinese government does not put accessible education for its own children as a top priority. Confucius says: Show me the money? Other complaints about these Confucius Institutes include allegations of corruption, and a lack of fealty to the Chinese cultural values the institutions claim to represent. A number of netizens claimed that so-called "princelings" (those coming from good political stock) and Communist Party officials have received educational grants from the Chinese government under the name of Confucius Institutes, and they have also put their own children in these Institutes as volunteer teachers. As @幽静迷途A wrote, "They only have one goal through Confucius Institutes—to use Chinese taxpayers' money to pay for their children's American green card!"  A classroom purportedly in Western China, looking a bit threadbare Where is all that money coming from, anyway? Many netizens expressed concern about the financing of Confucius Institutes. @简直 tweeted: "The important thing is how these institutes are being financed. The media should ask the Department of Education, where is the money coming from? Is it coming from expenses for educating our citizens? Is it coming from foreign aid expenses? Is it coming from marketing expenses? Is it coming from expenses to 'maintain stability?'" That last expense, known as 维稳费 in Chinese, is a euphemism for government payments to quell unrest and otherwise maintain a "harmonious society." Don't brainwash me! Many Weibo commenters seem to regard Confucius Institutes as brainwashing facilities. Netizens have widely circulated a quote allegedly made by Benno Schmidt, former President of Yale University, in support of this view. According to these netizens, Schmidt had said, "China's higher education is the biggest joke in human history. It doesn't have any real universities." In fact, Mr. Schmidt never said anything like that. Nonetheless, Chinese netizens didn't doubt the validity of the rumor, and no one bothered to check whether it is true or not. Even though Schmidt did not actually make that comment, the fact that so man netizens bought into it shows that there are real concerns regarding the Chinese style of education. Many worry that Confucius Institutes, by dint of their provenance, cannot be safe havens for the free speech that free academic inquiry requires. @历史老袁 complained, "These Institutes just want to export their own values, but they don't allow freedom of discussion." Values? What values? Even those netizens who are not angry are nonetheless skeptical of the purpose of Confucius Institutes. Their essential complaint: "What's the point?" @青稞酒A is deeply confused about what values China has left to teach. "China exporting its own culture and value system to other countries? You've got to be kidding me! What values and culture are you talking about? Materialism, corruption, nakedness, poison, and pollution? Confucius Institutes are truly a waste of taxpayer money!" Indeed, netizens cannot bring themselves to embrace the Confucius Institutes' stated mission because they still view China's current culture and value system as deeply problematic. Why promote China to the outside when so many problems still remain unsolved at home? As well-known investor and microblogger Wang Ran (@王冉) pointed out, if the Chinese culture ever wants to present itself on the global stage, "It will not come as the result of government promotion…[China] must have strong core values [and] free space for creativity." His implication was clear: We're not there yet. |
| Li Chengpeng: Patriotism With Chinese Characteristics Posted: 26 May 2012 04:21 PM PDT Writer Li Chengpeng is a prominent soccer commentator on Chinese TV. In 2008, he traveled to the area devastated by the Sichuan earthquake and writes about how the experience changed his attitude toward his country. From the New York Times:
Li Chengpeng has become a popular blogger and has five million followers on Sina Weibo. He also ran for local election in Chengdu. Read more by and about Li via CDT, including an essay he wrote about his experience volunteering in the earthquake zone, "The True Story of the Miracle Survival of the Students and Teachers of Longhan Elementary School in Beichuan." Read also more about the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| The Daily Twit (@chinahearsay Twitter feed) – 2012-05-26 Posted: 25 May 2012 08:59 PM PDT
© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| Dueling Rights Reports: U.S.-China Political Theater Posted: 26 May 2012 02:35 AM PDT
Here's how it works. First, the State Department issues their annual report; the country report on China is lengthy, as usual, and covers topics such as civil liberties and Net content restrictions. The State Department has a press conference, speeches are made, the press writes the usual news articles, etc. Standard stuff. Second, the government over here in Beijing cannot let this go without a comment, so the usual denunciations are made by officials and/or surrogates. Again, pretty much what you would expect. However, that's not the end of it, and if you are not a regular China watcher, this next part might surprise you. Part three of this story is the issuance of a China version of the U.S. report (available in English of course). Well, it's not exactly the same kind of report. The China version criticizes fewer countries. Actually, a lot fewer. To be honest, it's only one country: the United States. The point of the report, I suppose, is not to replicate what the U.S. did. After all, China, which officially has a "non-interference policy," is not in the business of criticizing other countries' domestic records. No, the point of the report is to reveal American hypocrisy. If you have nothing better to do, you can check out the report and read about U.S. problems relating to "Personal Security," "Civil and Political Rights," "Racial Discrimination" and other topics. Which brings us back to the document dump in China Daily that might have disturbed some folks who were unaware of all the rest of this. You might have seen these fun stories today and thought to yourself "WTF is going on?" US-led wars create humanitarian disastersUS conducts human experiments, sparking outcryQuite a lot Americans have no access to healthcareUS leader in gun violence, gun deathsMillions homeless in US: reportEthnic minorities discriminated against in USPoverty rate among American women, children hits record highTo be fair, I'm sure there are just as many, if not more, articles in the U.S. press on any given day that are critical of China. On the other hand, they usually aren't all in the same publication. By the way, all of the above articles were posted to the China Daily RSS feed at the same time (i.e., I received them in one big {ahem} dump). I point out hypocrisy a lot of the time on this blog, so I sort of do the same thing that China Daily, and the government here, is doing. On the other hand, I'm not doing it to draw attention away from my own record, and I'm definitely not trying to make some sort of equivalency argument with respect to the U.S. and China. That being said, certainly the U.S. has its own problems domestically, and a lot of what went into the China report are valid criticisms. Moreover, the U.S. doesn't always exactly follow through with its condemnation of other nations' records with actual foreign policy initiatives; sometimes an annual chiding is all the U.S. government is willing to do, particularly if the country in question has oil or another strategic asset. But hey, nobody's perfect. So if you got weirded out reading the press today, you can relax. This is all "normal" political theater. I do, however, feel bad for all the writers and editors at Xinhua, China Daily and the State Council Information Office who had to churn it all out. Honestly, a standard condemnation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have been just as persuasive. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us |
| U.S. Treasury: China Still Not a Currency Manipulator {yawn} Posted: 25 May 2012 11:10 PM PDT
For the last decade, issuance of the report has been accompanied by a lot of needless speculation, hand wringing, concern trolling, and China bashing about the value of the RMB. It's just another opportunity for the media to find something worthless to write about, excuse for "telegenic" politicians like Senator Chuck Schumer to get on television, and "event" around which lobbyists can flog their positions and raise money. And oh yeah, it's good for bloggers too, particularly during relatively slow news weeks. All of this goes like clockwork, beginning with the report itself. Despite the speculation about whether or not the U.S. will come down hard on China and label it a currency manipulator, it almost never happens. Last time was during the Clinton Administration. There are several reasons for this, some of which have varied over the years. At the end of the day, though, the simple fact is that the U.S. government does not see this as a winning issue for them politically and recognizes that the consequences of labeling China a currency manipulator would not only harm U.S.-China relations, but would also piss off a great many large U.S. corporations (i.e. campaign contributors) that import products from China. So the Obama Administration doesn't want to change the status quo, and doesn't. Indeed, true to form, the latest report comes to the following conclusion on Topic #1:
Unfortunately for President Obama, this is an election year, and China bashing is a can't-lose political strategy that has already been adopted by Republican challenger Mittford Worthington Romney III, who is well aware of his own reputation as a plutocrat. One good way to establish populist credibility is to complain about China and the value of the RMB, which Romney has done, stating that he will label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. I'm not so sure Romney can even do that procedurally, but it doesn't really matter since no one believes that Romney would actually do it if elected. Indeed, he is an "Old School Republican," meaning that he is looking out for the interests of the private sector, which for the most part does not want to rock the U.S.-China trade boat. Lucky for Romney, the campaign allows him to make a lot of noise on the issue without having to actually make a tough decision. All this noise puts Obama in a tough spot, right? He wants to look tough on China, but he can't upset the multinationals. What to do? Well, the other part of currency report SOP is to release it on a Friday. Since the D.C. weather is pretty nice, folks will be scrambling to get out of town, and hopefully not too many will pay attention to the report at all. (Success or failure depends on whether the Sunday politics shows in the U.S. cover the issue or prefer to go with in-depth coverage of the latest Obama birth certificate news.) But it's not just the timing. You'll notice in that language above that while Treasury doesn't go so far as to label China a currency manipulator, the report does maintain that the RMB is undervalued and that the U.S. government will be keeping a close eye on the situation. This is called "having your cake and eating it too." President Obama keeps his big fundraisers happy, while at the same time can claim to be tough on the Chinese, pushing back against Romney criticism. Isn't this fun? You may have noticed something missing in this post and in the media coverage of this issue in general: a discussion of whether the RMB is actually undervalued. Why is that? Well, the media would rather focus on the politics of this, as opposed to the more complex economic issues, which are not nearly as fun to talk about. Moreover, once you dig down into the numbers, particularly if you look at what has happened over the past decade as the RMB has been allowed to float upward a bit, the case for an undervalued RMB doesn't look so strong anymore. I think the only folks still talking about a significant revaluation are Chuck Schumer, U.S. labor unions and Fred Bergsten. The Report states that:
The Report also claims that the RMB is still undervalued anywhere from 3 to 23%, depending on the model used. That second number used to be 40% not too long ago, so we've come a long way. The Treasury is quite clever using that range, isn't it? It's broad enough that the administration can still say that the RMB is undervalued, and yet gives it a great excuse not to push for any policy solutions beyond bilateral talks. For D.C., that's a win. If you are looking for some scintillating reading this weekend (e.g. while you're in the bathroom), you might want to give the Report's China section a try. In addition to the discussion of the RMB, the Report has a decent summary of China's top macroeconomic and trade issues. However, if you're looking for important, substantive, breaking news on U.S.-China bilateral relations, the issuance of this Report no longer qualifies. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us |
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