So What's the Deal with China?

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So What's the Deal with China?

Postby LaoWai » Fri May 09, 2014 11:03 am

As some of you probably know, I've been living in China for about a decade now, and after reading a terribly over-exaggerated article on another site about what it's like here, I figured I might as well try to step up and answer any questions you all might have about China, the Chinese languages*, Chinese food, Chinese drivers...um, chopsticks...whatever.

*I only have fluency in Mandarin Chinese, though, so I won't be able to tell you what Cantonese songs mean.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Suckerfish » Fri May 09, 2014 11:30 am

First of all was the article the Cracked article "The 4 Strangest Things Nobody Tells You About Life in China"?

Second of all, is the "one child policy"* still causing problems with girl children being abandoned or aborted, or is that much less prevalent now? I've alwyas been fascinated about the "one child policy" in general actually, so I'll ask you something else. What is the general public opinion towards that particular ordnance? Is it something that is just another part of life, or is it one of those topics that is generally always on the public consciousness (like healthcare or the economy here in the states)?


* I do understand a good bit of the policy is conditional, so calling it the "one child policy" is a misnomer, but calling it the Family Planning Policy is less instantly recognizable.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 09, 2014 1:47 pm

Is kidnapping really a big problem in China?

In general can you rely on the police?

Is it true the average Chinese person doesn't know about Tiananmen Square or recognize that famous photo with the tank?

How easy is it to get around Chinese internet censorship?

Why hasn't anyone freed Tibet?
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby LaoWai » Fri May 09, 2014 7:06 pm

Suckerfish wrote:First of all was the article the Cracked article "The 4 Strangest Things Nobody Tells You About Life in China"?

Second of all, is the "one child policy"* still causing problems with girl children being abandoned or aborted, or is that much less prevalent now? I've alwyas been fascinated about the "one child policy" in general actually, so I'll ask you something else. What is the general public opinion towards that particular ordnance? Is it something that is just another part of life, or is it one of those topics that is generally always on the public consciousness (like healthcare or the economy here in the states)?


* I do understand a good bit of the policy is conditional, so calling it the "one child policy" is a misnomer, but calling it the Family Planning Policy is less instantly recognizable.

Since I've been here, the only times I've heard about abandoned girls has been from other ex-pats who were here working as "undercover missionaries." I'd say boys are still highly preferred, but most of the new-parents I've known are pretty happy to see ten fingers and ten toes, eyes, ears, and nose, all in the right place. I'm in a massive, developed city though, so that could be happening out in the countryside.

As for gender-based abortion, it should be impossible, since it's illegal for doctors to tell parents which gender shows up in an ultra-sound. However, there are probably ways around that. Even if the usual bribe doesn't work, in my city, wealthy folks can usually get a visa to travel to Hong Kong or Macau for a medical, and they could maybe find that information there, then act on it. Then, too, selective in-vetro is a more and more popular way of having the "perfect baby" for rich couples here, and the bias may fall heavily in favor of boys.

Again, I live in an extremely urbanized city here, so I can't speak too much for the countryside. Here, though, you hear almost no one talking about the One-Child policy. Most conversations I've ever had about it are along the lines of "You can have all the children you want, and you have none! Americans must be very free, but also very stupid." At most, I have a conversation about the topic once a month, which is really rare compared to other topics.

Aside from that, I've had it explained by a professor (i.e., government employee) that if someone in their work unit were to have a second child, it would mean that the entire work unit would be fined, and the new parent would be fired. I originally thought this sounded a bit Orwellian, but the professor asked what would happen if a D.E.A. agent in the States was openly using meth, then got caught up in a scandal. The results would be pretty similar, I'd guess.

Since very few people actually hold government positions anymore, the policy is mostly enforced by fines. A couple gets one baby for free (well, you know what I mean), then they have to pay a fine for any additional children. One of my former students had nine siblings. His parents were absolutely loaded, his mother pretty tired. I've also met farmers' children who had six, seven, eight siblings as well, so obviously the fines are income-based.

I think most people, though, especially young, job-seeking graduates, favor the policy overall. The population here is huge, and all the better opportunities are packed into a few cities. People in the States say it's hard finding a job when 100 people are all applying for the same low-level position. Here, it might be 1,000 people applying, and some of them are bound to have more money than you. That last sentence isn't a typo; people whose families have more money are more likely to get hired for opening positions, and people do pay. When a friend was working an unpaid internship, I learned a new sentence in Chinese, which translates, "The work is hard; the hours are long; usually you have to pay for a job this good." If you're looking for a job in that sort of situation, a policy enacted before you were born to improve your chances might seem like a good deal.

The only other thing I hear sometimes is an oft-recurring rumor that if a one-child marries a one-child, they may be allowed to have two children at some point in the future. As far as I know, it's just a rumor started on the estimated 2025 shift into a "greying" population.

Oh, and it was an article on cracked, but I think the title may have been different when I read it.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby LaoWai » Fri May 09, 2014 7:50 pm

Tesseracts wrote: Is kidnapping really a big problem in China?

I'd say yes and no. Given the sheer size of the population, there are comparatively few incidents of kidnapping. Naturally, there are still a lot, but per capita it seems relatively few. Keep in mind, too, that Chinese people really, really love kids--seriously, you can take your kid with you for date-night at an outside restaurant and just turn him/her loose. Waitresses, cooks, and even customers will just play with them for hours if you let them, and you see this every night. Two-year-olds can toddle into the restaurant next door, and when it's time for Mom and Dad to go, the wait staff will know where the kid has gone.

On the other hand, kidnapping does happen, presumably in these kinds of situations, though I've never seen it. The big difference between here and the States is probably motive. Kidnapped kids here basically get sold into begging or pick-pocketing rings in cities far away, which is definitely a problem. I wouldn't say it's a rampant problem, though.
Tesseracts wrote: In general can you rely on the police?

I would say, police are pretty helpful here. They drove a co-worker of mine around once after his phone was stolen, using the GPS to track down the thief, for example. If you don't know the laws really well, though, it's better to avoid them. An acquaintance was in a bar fight and used a choke-hold to knock a guy out; for him it was self-defense, but by law it isn't; he got locked up for a good while. Count on the police to do their job to the letter, unless it's the traffic police, in which case count on them to do nothing.
Tesseracts wrote: Is it true the average Chinese person doesn't know about Tiananmen Square or recognize that famous photo with the tank?

In my experience, yes. Unless they were near Beijing at the time, they just know something happened there. To be fair, there have been more than one major Tiananmen incidents--actually there have been a good number of protests there.
Tesseracts wrote: How easy is it to get around Chinese internet censorship?

Very easy for viewing. Currently, the easiest fix is a VPN account. For me that's a bit pricey, though. I prefer my ten-dollar a month broadband connection and just not using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. The local version of google actually does streaming videos of just about anything, (Lately, I've watched the Batman movies, Walking Dead, and a few others.) and most news sources aren't blocked. It's mostly just foreign social media that's blocked, and I'm not that big on that stuff anyway. Running a blog can be tricky, though, and at times the local social media can get shut down. I do follow the local social media a lot, just because there are all kinds of cool memes that run around, but anytime that happens, it just makes more memes. If you want to see an old one, check out CaoNiMa on Youtube.
Tesseracts wrote: Why hasn't anyone freed Tibet?

This one's a whole can of worms. Give me a while to reread some of the Chinese perspective histories I've got, so I can give a balanced response.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Tesseracts » Fri May 09, 2014 9:16 pm

I was kind of joking with the free Tibet question, but if you want to answer that more power to you.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Aquila89 » Fri May 09, 2014 11:36 pm

Is the air pollution really that bad in cities?
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Learned Nand » Fri May 09, 2014 11:59 pm

LaoWai wrote: the professor asked what would happen if a D.E.A. agent in the States was openly using meth, then got caught up in a scandal. The results would be pretty similar, I'd guess.

This isn't exactly a fair comparison. It's the DEA's job to prosecute drug crimes. It's not a professor's specific job not to have children. If, say, a teacher were caught using meth in the US (and he weren't working around children), at most he'd be fired and that'd be the end of it. There's no collective punishment, as far as I'm aware, because that is kind of Orwellian.

What to people in China think of Chinese censorship policies? Do they actually think they promote "harmony", or whatever word the government likes to use? Do they dislike them but view them mostly as a bit of an annoyance? Is there controversy?
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Tesseracts » Sat May 10, 2014 2:07 am

aviel wrote:
LaoWai wrote: the professor asked what would happen if a D.E.A. agent in the States was openly using meth, then got caught up in a scandal. The results would be pretty similar, I'd guess.

This isn't exactly a fair comparison. It's the DEA's job to prosecute drug crimes. It's not a professor's specific job not to have children. If, say, a teacher were caught using meth in the US (and he weren't working around children), at most he'd be fired and that'd be the end of it. There's no collective punishment, as far as I'm aware, because that is kind of Orwellian.

What to people in China think of Chinese censorship policies? Do they actually think they promote "harmony", or whatever word the government likes to use? Do they dislike them but view them mostly as a bit of an annoyance? Is there controversy?
Here is an anecdote about that subject.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat May 10, 2014 3:45 am

That Quora post seems to indicate that the Chinese government is the popular kid in class in a 90s teen comedy. Yeah, kind of dickish, but also with a lot of power, so you'll put up with that shit to be in his circle of friends / henchmen.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Andropov4 » Sat May 10, 2014 4:08 am

aviel wrote:That Quora post seems to indicate that the Chinese government is the popular kid in class in a 90s teen comedy. Yeah, kind of dickish, but also with a lot of power, so you'll put up with that shit to be in his circle of friends / henchmen.


It is disturbing how frequently global politics resembles high school.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby LaoWai » Sat May 10, 2014 5:41 am

Aquila89 wrote:Is the air pollution really that bad in cities?

Yes. By sight, Beijing was the worst I've seen. Xiamen and Zhuhai were the best for large cities (that are listed online as badly polluted). Here in Shenzhen, chronic colds are a problem, but we can see the stars at night, some of them, sometimes. Sometimes the sky even looks blue.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby LaoWai » Sat May 10, 2014 6:23 am

aviel wrote:
LaoWai wrote: the professor asked what would happen if a D.E.A. agent in the States was openly using meth, then got caught up in a scandal. The results would be pretty similar, I'd guess.

This isn't exactly a fair comparison. It's the DEA's job to prosecute drug crimes. It's not a professor's specific job not to have children. If, say, a teacher were caught using meth in the US (and he weren't working around children), at most he'd be fired and that'd be the end of it. There's no collective punishment, as far as I'm aware, because that is kind of Orwellian.

Under contract, part of a government-hired professor's job here is to promote government policies, which includes promoting family planning and work-unit accountability. So all work-unit members are responsible for reporting breaches to the party representative, and the party representative is responsible for reporting any breaches of policy to the next level up. A pregnant woman at work is pretty easy to spot, so it should at least be reported up to the next level. It is a case of the government being well-involved in its workers' lives, of course, but most seem to view that as a trade-off for the benefits.

I'd imagine the DEA contract specifies something like "don't use meth and report to a superior if your partner is using meth," and there'd be punishments for any agent if it could be proven that he/she knew another agent was using and didn't report.
aviel wrote: What to people in China think of Chinese censorship policies? Do they actually think they promote "harmony", or whatever word the government likes to use? Do they dislike them but view them mostly as a bit of an annoyance? Is there controversy?

"Harmony" is a popular joke here among the Internet crowd. The official 和谐 (harmony) is often represented by the sound-alike characters 河蟹 (river crab), so grassroots bloggers who find their posts censored may start hiding pictures of river crabs all over their blogs. Sound-alike characters are used a lot to mock or criticize censorship and propaganda.

That's online, though, and among people who would be something like the Chinese Anonymous. Journalists are also directly affected by the censorship, so it's not uncommon to see sound alike characters for 无名 (no name) in bylines for heavily censored articles. For people on the street, though, censorship just isn't much of a thing.

30-50 year-old, well-educated people usually don't like to watch TV, because the programming is "all for babies and grannies," and they don't exactly trust the newspapers. Because we're on a border with Hong Kong here, a lot of people try to get HK newspapers instead, but they tend to be disappointed, because the HK papers are just as filled with propaganda and shoddy reporting. Sometimes they'll complain about censorship, but not too often. They tend to spend a lot more time reading and working on their Chinese chess game, or playing World of Warcraft. They're specifically obsessed with translated English novels, and the acceptable translations can be strange. Two years ago, "Who Stole My Cheese?" and "Lolita" were among the two most common translations I saw people reading in public.

Younger people and older people love TV, regardless of education level, and those with lower education levels can't get enough of it. For them, everything stops when cartoons or a dubbed Korean soap opera come on the TV at a restaurant--service, conversations, everything. Many people wouldn't even recognize the characters for censorship.
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby 52xMax » Sat May 10, 2014 6:36 am

So what's the deal with the "special economic zones"? how do they work, and why doesn't China just fully embrace capitalism?

Also, how's the chinese food different from american chinese food?
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Re: So What's the Deal with China?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat May 10, 2014 7:19 am

LaoWai wrote:Under contract, part of a government-hired professor's job here is to promote government policies, which includes promoting family planning and work-unit accountability.

Then that's the Orwellian bit. Here it's not only not a professor's job to promote the government's policies, he has some protections if he speaks out against the government itself (particularly if he's tenured).
"Harmony" is a popular joke here among the Internet crowd. The official 和谐 (harmony) is often represented by the sound-alike characters 河蟹 (river crab), so grassroots bloggers who find their posts censored may start hiding pictures of river crabs all over their blogs. Sound-alike characters are used a lot to mock or criticize censorship and propaganda.

I think I'd heard this before. Honestly I feel like the pun is lost in translation. In English, harmony doesn't sound much like river crab.

or playing World of Warcraft

And they don't complain about censorship then? It took years to get WotLK through the ministry of culture, when characters die they're made into neat little graves, and the ministry of culture delayed the implementation of MoP for years. WoW has had to deal with a lot of bullshit from the ministry of culture, so I'm kind of surprised those people are kvetching more.

Thanks for the answer, but a more specific question on censorship. I don't know if you're a fan of House of Cards, but apparently that's one of the few American shows available in China totally uncensored, because it portrays the American government as corrupt. There was a Cracked article written by Robert Evans and some person who grew up in communist Romania, which had tough censorship policies. There, they would show almost no American TV, except Dallas, because it showed American businessmen to be corrupt. But it ultimately backfired, because what people actually saw was an America where even the poorer people seemed relatively well off, and which was generally freer.

So, do you think the lack of House of Cards censorship is backfiring in a similar way? Like, is are people getting the message that the American government is corrupt, or are they getting the message that in America, you can accuse the government of gross corruption and it's not just not punished, but celebrating (presuming it's well done)?
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Last edited by Learned Nand on Sun May 11, 2014 6:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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