Rethinking China

Hong Kong to Guangzhou is a comfortable 2-hour train ride. But it’s not a normal train ride. It’s a bit like a train ride I took six years ago to Ukraine:

1. The heave-ho tension of feeling under-prepared to enter a foreign country. Stepping out of your comfort zone.

2. The flash of excitement – like crossing over into the former Soviet Union – of being some place where you’ve never thought you’d be...and for a long time felt like you couldn’t be and shouldn’t be.

But with a clickity-clack no different than all the other clickity-clacks on the two hour ride, we crossed over from the special autonomous zone of Hong Kong into communist China, whatever that tired label actually means these days. I’m a bit outdated on the political science behind Chinese communism, and I’m not quite sure what it will become or how it will affect the United States, but only two things really stood out during three days in China:

In China, Communism means a planned economy. It’s clear – I’d argue joyously – that there’s a little bit more thought going into China’s rapid modernization than India’s. The roads are wide and clear. Traffic is crowded but reasonable. The public transportation is well-linked. Right-angles exist. Parks, too. China is clearly a generation ahead of India in terms of infrastructure. (Even as India is an equal generation ahead of China in globalism and English language. I’d completely taken for granted that 75% of Indian visa applications apply in English while 95% of Guangzhou’s pool, it is said, apply in Chinese.) The economy is visibly booming. Young people in clubs radiate cash and excitement both. I walked away with a distinct feeling that it’s an exciting time to be Chinese.

And in China, Communism means control of information. Observation’s common, among Americans and locals alike. I didn’t notice anything abnormal during my visit, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an eye. The more everyday implication, though, is an absurd control of the internet. I tried to log onto Facebook? Nope. Blogspot? Nada. Twitter? No, thanks. Yahoo? No dice. Youtube? Wampwampwamp.

In short, I enjoyed China, the culture and the food far more than I ever imagined I would. For a dozen years, I’d held an unchallenged and fairly simpleton belief that I like India and don’t like China. Perhaps I was too moralistic in appreciating certain values over others. I might have been convinced during a second late-night snack, welcomed to sit at a table of ten young Chinese and share some sort of gobbley-gook local porridge, that China too is a land I could enjoy. Well, either that, or I was smitten by the sight of tank tops and skirts for the first time in nine months...