session 12 readings (12/12)

[Anonymous]

The Documentary Assignment China was interesting and insightful. The overarching theme of how China was perceived by the west, colored at times by the political situation in the United States gave me a greater sense of the one-sided nature of much of what was reported in the early days. This was despite the efforts of many journalists to actually get out in the field and find the people and stories that made up the overarching narrative of China's Civil War. How this narrative was changed, first by a lack of resource from within China for the next twenty-two years, then by an changing attitude of the Chinese government towards how western reporters would find their stories, and then finally by technology itself shows how difficult the actual evolution of historical perspectives can be. We can trace how the original, in-depth stories reported by correspondents changed into one that relied more on visual storytelling at the time of President Nixon's trip to China. This visual style, which continues to this day further evolved into what is now known as the sound byte, or more correctly the video byte. Further change occurred as social media became an important tool for reporters telling a story, much to the unfortunate detriment of detailed understanding and examination of how events in China, Asia and the rest of the world have played out. It leaves me wondering, which is the greater offence to man's quest for historic truth and knowledge, a narrative that is colored by lack of information and isolation as well as political perceptions, or social media style reporting that jumps on the first elements of a story as truth with no real concern for accuracy or careful analysis of how it affects the world.

[Anonymous]

As our wrap up session I thought that the idea that women were the linked to social status as interesting. I know we brought up in class that slave families were like that but I also know military men with children abroad had a problem bringing that child into the US in the past. As a school teacher, the idea that you can deny people an education just because a parent moves is very intriguing. I’m thinking I might want to bring that part into the classroom as students can identify with other students and their education.

[Anonymous]

China’s strict one-child policy resulted in many criminal acts and forced abortions. The blind Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng advocated for women’s rights, worked on the welfare of the poor and exposed the brutality of the one-child policy in PRC. Some women who were pregnant with a second child or about to give birth to a baby girl had forced abortions. Interesting how his story became widely publicized when Academy Award actor Christian Bale was attacked when attempting to meet Chen Guangcheng. Here’s the video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-NGweWIQqc

[Anonymous]

Tom Xia created “Xmas Without China”, an interesting documentary about how people would celebrate Christmas without any products made in China. This film can be effectively shared with students by having them first list items in their house. My students (approximately 95% non-Asian) would be surprised to realize that almost everything we own is made in China—the tech gadgets, toys under the Christmas tree, computers, iPhones, televisions, and clothes are mostly Chinese products. China was driven by cheap labor. However, China’s one child policy seems to shrink the population’s workforce and is facing more competition from other economies with cheaper costs. Students can also think about how this will change in the future.

[Anonymous]

In learning more about the current focus on moving the people into urban communities has left me with more questions than answers. I can understand the concept that having people live in more urban areas can benefit them by giving them more resources, better jobs, and a better lifestyle. However, the implementation isn't working. Migrant families that are being evicted from farms are not being given proper compensation according to one video. Also, the migrant children don't have access to education and medical attention while they are waiting for their parents to find work and become settled. The former farmers don't have the skills necessary to get urban jobs. This seems to be a recipe for disaster instead of a fix. I also watched an interesting video "China's Empty Cities" that showed how this push is leaving large ghost cities dotting China's landscape. Interestingly, the reporter showed the South China Mall which brags of being the world's biggest shopping center--but also the emptiest. The interviewer spoke to a toy shop owner two years ago and business was very slow. He went back in 2013 and the shop was closed. The cities response? Build more! Now they are adding apartment complexes and villa complexes. While some admit that when these ghost cities are built they are empty, but they fill up (some) after five years--it seems that filling up a million person city with only 70,000 (as in the case of the largest ghost city in Mongolia) doesn't seem to be fiscally responsible. What happens with these ghost towns when they don't fill up or when it costs more to keep them up than they actually bring in?

[Anonymous]

"Tremors" is a great title to describe this feature--the tremors of the changes being made due to the Olympics are still being felt. In order to obtain the ability to host the Olympics in 2008 the government had to promise more freedoms for the press. Interestingly, some Chinese weren't interested in the fact that the freedoms were written and signed--their fears were systemic and a piece of paper wasn't going to ease their fears. At the beginning of the piece, it was interesting that a reporter did what she thought was a "fluff" piece, but the local government was upset. Many reporters expressed issues with the ability to get into local places to interview people. The Sichuan earthquake eased the tension a little as the government saw the benefit of having the world see what odds they were facing...until questions were asked about why schools collapsed on children, but government buildings still stood. Then the government clamped down on reporting again. It seems that the country was going through growing pains--they wanted to be open--but with that they couldn't control the narrative. It seems that they are going to deal with this issue as long as they are communist. They want to be more part of the world as a whole--but they want to control the narrative that the world sees. This idea is incongruent. I could use this information in class when we are discussion Chinese literature or poetry, also when discussing the issues of any dictatorial government.

[Anonymous]

The idea of the Hukou card is very interesting--and ultimately indicative of how much control the Chinese government has over the lives of the people. A residency card is necessary to get an apartment, job, or send children to school. This means that people cannot just decide that they want to move to a new place and find a new job. According to an article, I read on the internet, "There are many stories of husbands and wives that are separated because the husband got a good job in a distan(t) town and his wife couldn't secure a new hukou." Bloomberg reported "Almost 10 million people live in Shanghai with a local hukou--more than 40 percent of the city's population." Being a westerner, this is a strange idea. 10 million people that have gone to a city, but have no guarantee for a job, home, and cannot send their children to a proper school! Since I also read and watched more about the urbanization problem--it seems that getting rid of the Hukou system would actually be better for the population. Allowing people to move freely and get jobs, also allowing their kids to get an appropriate education--would improve their lives. That is the argument for urbanization in the first place--so why aren't they allowing families to move and improve their lives? Because the government is afraid of losing control. So, it's back to the original argument that came up with allowing freedoms for the press. Allowing the people to be free--takes away the government's ability to control. China will continue to try to find this balance of freedom and control. It will be interesting to see how far the changes go in the future.

[Anonymous]

As I started to read this piece I instantly thought about a phenomenon that was quite similar here and in the U.K. Downton Abbey had a similar fan appeal and dealt with cultural uprisings that people were intrigued by. Downton had the same reputation as being a part of the intellectual elite, just like Yearnings. I thought it was fascinating to learn how the Chinese went about producing an extensive show about their past. I'm not sure how I could use it in the classroom, but it was interesting from a costume drama fan!

[Anonymous]

Reading about the television series Yearnings reminded me of the kind of shared viewing experiences I had in the days before cable television and everyone watched pretty much the same shows. In particular it reminded me of the 1977 miniseries Roots, which I remember watching with my family. Roots made television history, garnering a 44.9 rating and a 66 audience share for the length of its run. It’s hard to imagine modern audiences so receptive to a show about slavery in America, where African-Americans were portrayed as heroes and white people were portrayed as villains. However, those of us who watched it were forever moved by its power to create racial awareness. I imagine the Chinese may have felt a similar power from the shared experience of watching Yearnings. The fledgling Chinese television industry had finally created a show everyone was excited about, and during the tumultuous time after Tiananmen Square, I’m sure the Chinese people were grateful for a distraction.

[Anonymous]

Wow! What a story! This video recounts the amazing investigative work by journalists such as David Barboza and David Forsythe in uncovering the huge fortunes amassed by China’s top party members. Facing deportation and death, reporters from Bloomberg and the New York Times scoured thousands of pages of corporate and other open-sourced documents to uncover a web of corruption surrounding prominent Chinese Communist Party members like Bo Xilai, Wen Jiabao, and Xi Jinping. The Chinese have come a long way from the socialist ideals of the revolution.

It seems that the economic policies begun by Deng Xiaoping have created deep class divisions as the wealth of a relatively few well-connected Chinese has outpaced the vast majority of their countrymen. A 2014 measure of income inequality called the Gini Coefficient puts China at a .55 which is considered a severe disparity and is higher than that of the United States. At the same time, the Chinese government tries to hide this from the public, appropriating Mao’s image to propagate a sense of commitment to China’s socialist revolutionary ideals. It reminds me of Animal Farm, George Orwell’s allegory of the Russian Revolution, when the Napoleon (a pig that represents Joseph Stalin) alters the “commandments” conceived during the revolution from "All animals are equal” to "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

[Anonymous]

This presentation, by Dr. Jonathan Woetzel, explains how China has come through a historically low period of economic growth and is currently on the path to regain its traditional place representing nearly a quarter of the world’s economy, consumption, technology, and resources. China was outpaced by Europe’s Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century, but has rebounded in the last 50 years at an incredible rate.

Woetzel explains that China’s economic development has gone hand-in-hand with urbanization, encountering both problems and solutions to the effects of rapid change along the way. The biggest problem is that public services have a serious spatial mismatch, meaning that people are in one place—services somewhere else. To remedy this and focus on the future, planners must balance economic development with social well-being and environmental concerns. Woetzel describes the urban sustainability index used to measure the success of well-managed cities and ends the presentation by listing the top 10 cities based on those criteria.

Some of my takeaways from the presentation are the importance of urbanization, the service sector, migrants, and urban productivity models to the economy. The model includes improvements to public transportation, sanitation, access to schools, hospitals, and the internet, just to name a few.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for adding “Invisible Wall”. It's such a moving documentary that shares the challenges of a migrant family’s daughter who can’t further her education in Beijing since her “hukou” is not in Beijing. This film can be shared to our students since many face similar struggles. Most of our low-income families cannot afford to live in neighborhoods with better schools and are also left to make difficult financial choices. Students can gain a better understanding of their own parents’ perspective by listening to the parents shown in the film. The father wants his daughter to have a great education beyond high school. Mother is use to her community but believes Beijing has more to offer. Hopefully students can also appreciate the sacrifices parents make for their future.
edited by Mayw on 1/15/2017

[Anonymous]

Although there were a variety of topics concerning Modern China in session 12--education, economics, urbanization, migration, etc--I thought the various sources concerning the Media were the most fascinating. In reading about Yearnings, and watching Assignments: China ('Highlights', 'The Chinese Civil War', and 'Follow the Money') one gets to see how complicated and knotty the production of media is in China, especially concerning journalism and Chinese self-representation. It appears that anxiety and trepidation are ongoing threads that run throughout media production. This anxiety was palpable in many of the sources. Whether it was in the values, interpretation, or meaning of Yearnings or Western financial reporting about Chinese leaders in the late 2000s, a series of implicit questions emerged. How does China ensure that the media will help promote a cause, economic growth, or the nation? How should the government use outsider reporting about China and what should the government's relationship be with foreign media? How does media denigrate or affirm values, challenge power, or shape identity?

Journalism in particular seems to have born the brunt of China's unease. Noticeably, Western journalists in the videos are constantly talking about trying to find ways to "uncover" truth and reveal what the "real" China is like; however, the Chinese government does not seem to share this inclination. Limited access, censorship and the tension between the West and China appear to boil down to a basic difference about the purpose of media. For Western journalists, while they each have different goals and audiences, the foundation of Western journalism appears to be in finding the "truth". For the Chinese government, however, it appears it is telling the truth, with great concern to the effects of the story on it audience. This may also help explain why Western journalists mentioned times they worked with Chinese journalists like colleagues.

Perhaps my reading is a simplification, or an ignorant understanding of Chinese media, but I found this to be an interesting area for discussion.

[Anonymous]

Very sad video, it is so terrible that people cannot choose the place to go to school. Some of our students are suffering a similar struggle and they could identify with this video. I know some students whose parents were deported to Mexico. The kids wanted to go with their parents, but parents had to leave them here with relatives, so they can continue their education. This is a great sacrifice for both parents and children.

[Anonymous]

Session 12
It seems like this seminar went much quicker than the one I attended in the spring. Like the previous Seminar, one of my favorite things is when everyone talks about what they are going to do with their class, using the information that was given. This is a great resource for teachers and this group of teachers has given so many great responses and ideas for me to use. One of the things that made this group so interesting was the diversity in the subject areas that are being taught. I always appreciate the social studies teachers and their expertise that they give in their chosen field. The lesson ideas were great! I was excited that we had elementary school teachers because with special education, I have to be creative and present the information in smaller chunks. It was nice having Ester back (Spanish teacher), because she has such a sweet spirit and positive attitude. She had ideas and a perspective that was different from many of the others. Teachers of the arts and English are the ones I gain the most from. They have some of the most creative ideas and insights in how they are going to present this information to their students.

[Author]

Posts