Miles from Home

China doesn’t say it’s going to change. It doesn’t ask you to believe in it.  But it’s happening.

I’ve often written about this country’s extreme paradoxes, how I can never seem to decide if it’s righting its course or steadily eroding. China is fascinating and frightening. It’s grotesque and inspiring.

And now, China is our only hope.

It hurts to say. I feel unpatriotic, a traitor to my upbringing. The good ol’ US of A is meant to kick ass and take names, to lead. And yet, as inspired as I was by Barack Obama’s historic ascent to the presidency, I’m equally horrified by the impotency of his tenure and the implications of our collective behavior.

For what seems like months, in reality is years upon years, I’ve witnessed Washington quibble over plans for universal healthcare.

I just don’t get it. How is this so difficult?

And what now? You’re bringing assault rifles to speeches? Town hall fights? What is this madness?

Burning flags, gay marriage, prayer in the classroom. We spend months and months and months working on this in Congress, and pass nothing. But on big issues, big like Andre-the-Giant-standing-on-a-ladder-on-Mt. Everest-type issues, we revert to mind-numbing partisan hack jobs. We choose paralysis over politics. And worse, we citizens allow it.

Chinese know they cannot openly question their government. But in a country where we can, the best we can muster is crazy gun-totting homophobes carrying Bibles to town hall? Holy Baby Jesus.

As we bicker and point fingers and nod our heads to the lunacy of TV pundits, here’s what China is doing.

1. Cracking down on corruption at the highest levels.

October 1st is the 60th anniversary of the PRC. Chairman/President/His Holiness Hu Jintao is expected to announce major achievements in righting some of the massive wrongs of corruption over the last, well, forever in China.

“Every month for the past year, at least one cadre at the level of assistant minister or above has been nabbed for ‘economic crimes’ and allied felonies,” writes Willy Lam in a phenomenal piece on the anti-graft campaign. Long-standing party members and mafia frontmen are feeling the heat.

The crackdown recently nabbed Kang Rixin, head of China’s nuclear energy program, one of the most powerful 204 cadres in the country. It’s progress, mind you, not an end-all solution.  Corruption in China will continue. As Lam writes,

Doubts remain as to whether the Hu administration will go one step further and introduce institutional checks and balances, as well as allow scrutiny from the media and independent anti-graft agencies, to better eradicate the scourge of graft and related malfeasances.

But this much is known: if you want to skim off the top nowadays, you better have the skill set (or be Hu Jinatao’s son).

Here’s more. For the first time ever, China’s 10th meeting of the Standing Committee just passed a resolution declaring a commitment to fight climate change. Just words, yes. But this is the first time that the highest reaches of government have conceded climate change must be addressed. Some call it peanuts, I’ll call it progress.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of progress in China is that so much is left to be done and much of it is easily within in reach. Unlike the US, China has the ability to implement policy nationwide practically immediately. In other words, while the US jabs, China is throwing uppercuts. As Thomas Friedman writes,

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

That, the in-between-the-lines up there, used to belong almost solely to the United States. We called it Balls and Foresight. Now we have malls and foreclosures.

But it’s not the economy that worries me. I’m supremely confident Wall Street will find a way to make money off of others. That, to me, is a lock. They have plenty of time to find the next best method, because everyone is distracted by the nonsense that is now healthcare and tomorrow will be something else. Because as much as I want universal healthcare, I feel that half of my Congress is dead set on me not getting it.

So what I do care about is the environment. My ability to eat, drink, and breathe is very important. These three come before the health issues they may cause. And, as I said, progress is attainable here in China.

A new joint report by The Boston Consulting Group and The Natural Resources Defense Council reads,

If by 2015, the end of China’s 12th Five-Year Term, 5% of existing buildings and 60% of new buildings were to achieve levels of energy consumption 50% below those of comparable non-green buildings in similar climate zones, the subsequent annual energy savings would be 170 billion kWh electricity, equivalent to turning off all the lights in America for one month. CO2 emissions would be cut by 170 million tonnes.

It’s been proven. Beijing’s “Agenda 21 Building” applied existing technology and reduced energy consumption by 70%. According to Justin Fung, co-author of the report,

“What is not commonly understood is that building operational use accounts for around 25% of China’s total energy consumption… That is more energy than China’s cement, iron and steel sectors combined. And if you include energy used for manufacturing and transporting building materials and products, China’s buildings consume 30-40% of the country’s total energy.”

People like to say the United States is The Land Where Anything is Possible. Well, healthcare sure doesn’t seem to be. Does the shoe still fit?

I figured I would link a few of the venomous rants China’s main party paper spued out over the last week surrounding the Dalai Lama’s trip to Taiwan.  An editorial on the China-Tibet branch of The People’s Daily broached the subject rather subtly, titling the article “Similarities Between Dalai Lama and Typhoon Morakot.” Wow, here’s a line, and this just crossed it.

The  editorial  goes on to compare the typhoon’s destruction to that of last year’s March 14th Lhasa riots.  In a staggering leap of logic, this pen-wielder believes the loss of 376 lives in Taiwan, with 254 missing, balances out to 18 civilian deaths in Lhasa.

I’m not one to measure the value of a life; there is no scale for tragic loss.  But to so brazenly– and pathetically– try to draw a parallel here is despicable.  Following the logic of the editorial, Morakot and the Dalai Lama are murderers.  A stretch, even for the most rabid Dalai-haters.

Comparing what is likely to be the loss of over 650 lives to 18 is a grave injustice to those still living in the aftermath of Morakot.  Knowing this, the propagandist tries to solidify his claim, exacerbating this insulting line of logic by adding to the 18 the fact that “242 public security police and armed police soldiers were either injured or killed.”   Problem, here.  Nowhere and at no point in time did Xinhua report the death of any Chinese soldiers.  So the “or killed” part is complete fallacy.  It’s a shallow attempt at mustering up some sort of patriotic empathy for injured soldiers– who, I might add, were mostly carrying guns and flak jackets to a stick fight.

The second editorial, “What Could the Dalia Lama Bring Taiwan?”, is another bewildering misinterpretation of humanity.  I may not be religious, but I can understand the solace provided by spirituality in times of great suffering.  This editorial infers Taiwanese people should be more upset about possible strains on cross-strait economics than the loss of loved ones.

And on top of that, “the move not merely riled the Chinese mainland government, but irritated the general public across the Strait… Some even take the island’s invitation of the Dalai Lama, a political monk lobbying around to split China, as a slur on the Chinese government and people.”  Yes, China, this is all about you.  It’s all about not upsetting you, all about splitting your country, all about your soldiers’ lives, all about your paper-thin confidence and your two-year-old’s temper.

The editorial ends by stating “the monk [will] bring along… another disaster beyond Nature.”

And Chinese wonder why Taiwanese see their offers of help as political ploys and disingenuous bribery.

Tickle-me Elmo.  I get it.

Only so many in stock, and you just have to have that perfect present for little baby Bob.  It makes sense.  To some degree, it makes sense.

If there is some sort of caveat– while supplies last, first ten free– then I can understand a heightened level of urgency.  When you pour that cocktail into the collective bloodstream of a large group, somebody take their keys.

Nowhere is this chaos more coded into the DNA of derailed human beings than a Chinese airport.  It’s groupthink gone terrible awry– a bastardization of acceptable public behavior.  And I’ve lived to tell it.

The situation is even worse in train stations. Pictured here, the waiting hall for a train from Chengdu to Chongqing.

Chinese airports are, on appearance, most like any other countries’.  They are often a good distance outside of the city.  They have the departure and arrival levels, lines of counters, display boards.  It’s all there.

But the madness– the hair-pulling, eye-gouging mayhem– arrives with the passengers.  While people abroad laughed at Beijing’s “Line-up Day,” those of us here on the ground applauded the effort.  Lining up, a line.  Seems so simple.  Logical, rational.  Easier for everyone right?

Wrong.

It starts at the check-in counter.  The man behind me is standing so close that the hair on the back of my neck is practically in his mouth.  Garlic for lunch, that’s usually a given.  Something garlicky, or rotten, like a decade lacking a toothbrush, or stale cigarettes.  Another favorite.  Maybe all three, all there, and now, clouding around me.  The guy doesn’t want to lose an inch, doesn’t want to provide an opening where some daring derelict might slice in and steal a spot in our line.  This is tooth-and-nail territory.

I step forward, he steps forward.  Step, step.  Step.  Slam, slam. His bag whacks the back of my knee.  Something pointy.  What does he have in there?  Ice-skates?  Hard-covers?

Bogey ahead!  Old woman just torpedoed out of nowhere, ignored the entire line as if we are standing here on our own accord, a conga line with no music. Right to the front she goes.

Now, we suckers in line have a 50% chance of a positive outcome.  The attendant will either repel her sneak attack, telling her to head to the back, and point politely to our line.  The old woman will then turn and don a fantastic “Oh-my-gosh-I-didn’t-even-notice-how-silly-of-me” face.  Or, perhaps because of her old age or the sheer volume of how loud she is raving or how difficult it is to get her to stop talking in her city dialect, the attendant will fold, allowing her to cut.

Okay, boarding pass in hand and through security, the next real test is the gate.  You might look at the lounge and think to yourself, “Seems normal.  People reading, listening to ipods, sleeping.”  Don’t let them fool you.

No such problem boarding this bus to the middle of nowhere in Fujian-- just a hangover and a funky smell.

They’re all in a very well-practiced Usian Bolt-esque sprinters squat.  In the millisecond between the airline attendant turning the mic on and actually announcing, “Flight XXX to YYY is now…”– in that millisecond of static and inhaling breath– bang!  147 people in “line.”

There are 150 seats on the flight.  Taking myself into account, two people must be late.  It’s a amorphous blob, not a line.  It’s eight people wide, and lumpy.  People lurk in the middle.  Architectural columns become terrain for flanking maneuvers.  Carry-on becomes a tool, wedging, prying, and pushing.  It’s grandmothers, it’s little kids.  Anything goes.

And the airlines, oh yes, they know; they’re co-conspirators!  Never once have I heard a Chinese airline board a plane by row, starting from front to back.  This, this lack of order, ensures once we all board, as people literally sprint down the jet way, we will all bottleneck in the aisle, which, of course, begets more pushing.  More grunting.  More unnecessary contact and anger.

We all have assigned seats.  We’ve booked the tickets.  We’re not leaving until everyone checked-in is on board.  And still.

Second to last time I was on a transport bus taking us to an awaiting plane on the tarmac.  There were two doors– front and back– on each side of the bus.  People had spent the last 5 minutes gnashing and prodding, climbing over each other to finally establish their ideal position.  With everyone else.  Going to the same plane.  Together.  But this time, the front bus door didn’t open.  Oh, shit!

A pair of middle-aged men absolutely frickin’ lost their minds.  First, the bus driver got it– berating, cussing, spitting.  How in the hell could he not open the front door!  They started punching the door, punching the glass.  One guy actually started kicking it, hard, and high.  This wasn’t like a tap along the baseboards.  This was a full-fledged, 90-degree, flat of the foot kick to the glass on the bus door.  So hard, he stumbled backwards a few steps to regain his balance.

Then, we all boarded the plane and sat there for ten minutes in our assigned seats before taking off.

William H. Whyte, Jr., the man who coined the term “groupthink” in a 1952 Fortune article, called it “rationalized conformity.”  The definition was amended later, to include the notion of “not causing conflict among peers.”  Well, the wheels on the Rational-No-Conflict cart have come way off.

You could bend the definition a bit.  Let’s assume people make the rational decision to allow this type of behavior by others in order to avoid confrontation with these maverick hooligans.  That’s actually very Chinese.  “I am only one person in a billion,” they like to say.

Merriam-Webster’s calls groupthink “a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.”  Do I conform?

Hell yes I do.

Most of the time I am content to wait and be the last to board.  I put on a snooty look of belittling condemnation.  I frown and shake my head at people, like an elementary school teacher when a kid drops a can of paint in art class.

But sometimes I lose my cool.  I enter the line a bit too early and someone behind me Tonya Hardings my knee.  I’m a nice guy, so I let it slide.  Then, Same Person flat-tires me.  I turn, make a sort of half-loco growling face meant to intimidate, and find it is some mother holding a child.  For a second, I relent.  Then the baby reaches out and violently rip-chords an earphone out of my ear.  Mother says nothing to Child, but watches, not even amused, just emotionless, focused on pushing her way to the front.

She’s off the list.

There is no f-ing way she is getting in front of me.

The most peculiar part of the experience is upon actual arrival.  As the plane screeches and skips to a halt on the runway, before the roar of the jets even subsides, you can hear a massive exodus of belts from buckles– like a hand piano-jamming it’s way across an old IBM keyboard.  Click-click-click!  They’re ready to roll.

The plane slows, not stops, just slows.  Some brave soul leaps to her feet, pops open the overhead and grabs her bags in one fluid motion, a blink of an eye.  Blink.  Blink.  The entire aisle is full of people.  The plane is still moving, turning, people lose their balance, stumble, fall and lean on each other.  The speaker comes on and the flight attendant asks for people to remain seated.  Yeah right.

Now we’re stopped, and everyone is standing on each others’ toes in the aisle.  The door always seems to take forever to open.  Forever, probably, seems that way, because everyone has been standing in the aisle for so damn long.  Finally, we all deplane.

As we hit the jet way and turn to head down the arrival hall, a bizarre metamorphosis occurs.  The Chinese passengers revert to their normal, in-city, super-slow-walking selves.  For all the huff and puff, the shoving and sneering, now, actually arriving, it’s all for naught.  It seems no one really cares about arriving any faster.  Sure, you have a few strong-armers who hustle to the baggage claim, to, again, wait.

But after all that, after I flattened that mother and her child, had some strange man rub his crotch on me as he squeezed past in the aisle, had to sit in the sweaty stench filled cabin full of these intrepid plane-boarders– after all of that, no one wants to rush to their final destination?

Then get the F out of my way.  I do.

Small (relatively) cities in China need to know more about the effects of pollution on their health.

Greenlaw’s Alex Wang just posted a short piece reiterating calls for more open channels of information on toxic emissions here in China.  There have been recent reports of serious lead poisoning in Shaanxi province, leading to bouts of “unrest.”  I don’t like that term.  Unrest.  But I do like what Wang had to say,

“In this economic downturn, China has been investing heavily in infrastructure – rail, highways and the like – to make China more economically competitive going forward.  Think of open environmental information as necessary environmental protection infrastructure, without which the entire environmental protection system breaks down.  Let’s hope for the same sort of aggressive push for information infrastructure in the coming months and years.”

Open information is essential.  But it’s not enough.  There need to be members of each society who can help explain consequences in a way local people can relate.  The China Daily article mentions a mother telling her daughter she can not possibly have lead poisoning because she is 18.  They were only offering the free testing for children up to 14.

It reminds me of a story.  A few years back, traveling through the countryside of Cambodia, I was appalled to see people living in their own refuse.  Front yards were cluttered with bags and bottles, rotting food and torn cloth.  Passing some homes, you could smell the heaps of trash from 100 yards away.

I asked my Cambodian friend,  “Why do people pile trash in their own front yard?  Aren’t they repulsed?”

“No, they don’t even think about it,” he replied.  “Remember, only recently did these people begin gettting access to plastics.  Before that, almost all of their trash would biodegrade and sometimes even be useful as compost.  They do not know that this plastic will be here forever.  No one has taught them.”

chinaSMACK is a translated aggregate of the biggest news circulating on Chinese websites, forums, BBS, and blogs.  The site just posted the reactions of mainlanders to a Reuters story about Taiwanese typhoon victims refusing Chinese aid for fear of toxic contamination.  Can anyone say “trust issues”?

Chinese are constantly baffled by Western countries’ concerns– and we can lump Taiwan in there as a proxy– over the quality of Chinese products.  Trust is hard to build and easy to break.  Understanding its nuances has not caught on with the majority here.

China has a right, to some degree, to be upset.  Over the past two decades countries have transferred countless manufacturing facilities to China.  Reason being, China was, and is still, a relatively unregulated developing country with cheap labor.  How do you get cheap labor?  Cheap oversight.  Mistakes are bound to happen, and some will inevitably be on a massive scale.  Where does the fault lie?  Each party needs to have a lot more empathy for the situation.

The Economist has a short, concise article about the recent developments between Taiwan and China concerning that wily ol’ monk.

There’s a silver lining to this issue that The Economist is wise to point out.  By China changing it’s tone, criticizing the DPP rather than the Taiwanese government as a whole, their criticism also conveys the CCP’s legitimate interest in continuing to develop economic ties across the strait.

I would like to think, after the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, such a devastating national tragedy here, the Chinese government would see soul soothing as something larger than a political ploy.  That leaders, as human beings, could see the position the Taiwanese leadership is in.  But alas, that day is far off.

I’ve been discussing my recent angst about working as a tool to the Chinese propaganda machine, even from an independently owned media company.  While I don’t feel the mainstream U.S. media is any less victimized by its alignment with government information sources, in our country we have the right to choose to hear our own perverted news the way we like it.  It is the distinct lack of choice here, the standard of un-informing the masses in order to maintain control, that troubles me.   It’s fascinating, really, to consider both countries’ ability to manipulate news with a dichotomy between those who choose to be misinformed and those who are systematically uninformed.  How does each strategy affect behavior and beliefs?

To exemplify what I mean by the power of words, how small changes in context and phrasing can lead to drastic changes in meaning, I have added below one piece of news I was asked to edit tonight.  In this anchor on camera reader, as is common, we cover the Chinese (government) reaction to a news event without first airing the initial impetus.  To start, here is the first draft sent by the news-gatherer to the producer:

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said today that the resolution recently proposed by the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tibet is with “ulterior motives.”  She says the proposal neither condemned the mobs who conducted violence in Lhasa nor did it denounce the Dalai Clique who organized the crimes, it instead blamed the Chinese government and Chinese people.  The resolution calls on the Chinese government to end its “crackdown” in Tibet and to enter into a substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

Here is the first edited version after the producer cleaned it up:

The resolution recently proposed by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tibet has “ulterior motives.”  Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu made the comment today at a press conference, where she noted the resolution neither condemned the mobs who conducted violence in Lhasa nor did it denounce the Dalai clique who organized the crimes, it instead blamed the Chinese government and Chinese people.  Jiang urged the US Congresswoman to respect the truth, give up preconceptions, and recognize the true nature of the Dalai Clique.

Now, this is pretty striking in its own right.  But I never saw these changes.  I only receive the first-edit version, and thus I was unaware of the first draft.  It was now my turn, and I went through trying to balance the news as much as possible, very much a bend-don’t-break tactic for me.  I know if I bend it too much, the producer will take note of it and strike my changes, criticizing me for changing the story.  This was my polished draft:

The resolution on Tibet recently proposed by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has “ulterior motives,” according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu. Jiang made the comment today at a press conference, where she also noted the resolution neither condemned mob violence in Lhasa nor denounced the Dalai clique whom China believes organized the crimes. Pelosi’s resolution criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the unrest and called for a dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama. Jiang urged the US Congresswoman to respect the truth, give up preconceptions, and recognize the true nature of the Dalai Clique.

Oops.  Too much.  I had thought by leaving in that poisonous final sentence I would appease the producers, who to their credit are only trying to protect their ass and not have their bosses– let alone some government press official– burn them at the stake.  Remember, this is their job, their livelihood, and they have been doing this in China for years.  Like it or not, they know how to play the game; even if that means sitting on the sidelines.  In this case, I was explained that the news was largely a direct quote from Jiang Yu reported by China’s state-controlled Xinhua news agency.  I was taught in college never to use direct quotes in broadcast news because the reader cannot distinguish between speaker and the broadcaster opinion.  Always paraphrase.  If you must, attribute clearly.  For instance, never leave a quote like “ulterior motives” at the end of the sentence, because an anchor always pauses to catch a short breath between lines, thus fracturing the logic.  If you MUST, attribute clearly.  For instance, you should write “Jiang said the resolution quote blamed China and Chinese citizens unquote.”  I tried in vain to subtly pass this tip on to the producer.  I failed.  And though I usually have final say, producers always trump my position.  This is the final draft that went to air:

The resolution on Tibet recently proposed by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has “ulterior motives.”  Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu made the comment today at a press conference, where she also said the resolution neither condemned the mobs who conducted violence in Lhasa nor did it denounce the Dalai clique who organized the crimes.  She noted, instead, it blamed the Chinese government and Chinese people. Jiang urged the US Congresswoman to respect the truth, give up preconceptions, and recognize the true nature of the Dalai Clique.

There was a well-written IHT.com article posted yesterday on the issue that I think reiterates some of the points I made in my last post. Here are some highlights:

“Analysts have long debated how often the Communist Party steers and inflames nationalism versus how often nationalist public attitudes are beyond the party’s control. In the run-up to the Summer Games, the steady attacks against China on issues like Darfur, global warming, air pollution and human rights abuses have increasingly been interpreted by many Chinese, including those overseas, as an unfair attempt to undermine China’s Olympic moment.

But the Tibet crisis has touched directly on the raw nerve of separatism at the core of Chinese nationalism. Tibet is usually a low-profile issue within China, especially compared with Taiwan. But most Chinese, influenced by the government, are interpreting the Tibetan crisis as an attempt to split China.”

“Influenced by the government” is an understatement. The press has been bashing the Dalai Lama like he is Osama bin Laden, another man intent on destroying the world to promote his own agenda. Instead of engaging underlying Tibetan grievances, the CCP has aggravated ethnic tensions with one-sided reports on damages and the pain of Han Chinese. This goes against the image jogging its way around the world with Olympic torch in hand.

“Communist Party leaders have hoped the Olympics would showcase China as a modern, confident and nonthreatening emerging world power, while also validating the party’s hold on power. President Hu Jintao has advocated a “harmonious society” to signal a new government effort at addressing inequality in society. At the same time, China’s soft power abroad is rising with its bulging foreign-exchange reserves and its increasingly active diplomatic role on issues like the North Korea nuclear problem.”

But China’s geopolitical emergence hinges on support at home. As grand projects pave the way for a developed nation, the toll on society has been steep and often ignored. It is essential that the CCP maintain a positive image, providing its mandate for change.

“Scholars often describe nationalism as China’s state religion now that the Communist Party has shrugged off socialist ideology and made economic development the country’s priority. Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet specialist, said modern Chinese nationalism could be traced to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who described the country’s main ethnic groups – the Han, Manchu, Hui, Mongolian and Tibetan peoples – as the “five fingers” of China… Today, Han Chinese constitute more than 92 percent of the population, but without one of those five fingers, China’s leaders do not consider the country whole.”

So, it is with the intention of preserving the mechanics of change that the CCP reacts reflexively with excessive strength and secrecy. It maintains order and promotes a mythically unrelenting reach of power. It reminds citizens that their government is capable of anything—developing China at a rate never seen on this planet and willing to conquer any obstacles in its way.

Does this ring any bells with government information campaign and agenda-setting in the US as it seeks to maintain its own mandate for waging an unpopular, inhumane war in Mesopotamia?

Online, on-air, and among friends there has been plenty of talk dismissing the validity of Barack Obama’s candidacy.  It’s not so much a discussion about can he win the nomination.  That’s possible, most say, and they leave it at that, filed away in a little manila folder tabbed “As Good As it Gets.”  It’s the national election that people adamantly fear he will lose.  

There are all sorts of platitudes to buttress this intuition.  America just isn’t ready for a black president being the primary crux.  He doesn’t have enough experience, secondly.  But what lies within these statements that empower them with such detrimental imperium?  These justifications mask a latent submission to the methodology of our past, a belief that change is not possible in our time, that the powers-at-be will keep on being and have always been.

Zimbabweans went to the polls this week with a chance to legally oust their hero-turned-tyrant president from a possible sixth term in office.  The country hasn’t just spiraled out of control; it has turned a tailspin into a drill-bit, burying the country beneath unthinkable inflation and imprudent policies.  It is tragic.  I feel for my friends there, some of whom have been forced to flee their homes in search of the means to provide basic necessities of life.  I admire the entire country’s fortitude and resilience.  Yet, how is it that Zim has not risen against its elite?  How can it be, that even with nothing left to lose, there is nothing left to fight for?

That line in the sand forms and reappears with the tides of the times.  In light of the political situation in my country, pawns will be pawns and kings’ll be kings. It becomes so ingrained in our mental faculty that the very notion of change becomes frightening, destabilizing, producing uncertainties.  For what if the brave leader who seeks to guide us falls, what then?  Shall I, humble peasant, be expected to lift his sword?

The situation in what China calls the “Tibet autonomous region” has left nearly one thousand buildings burnt to the ground, hundreds in jail, estimates between dozens and hundreds dead, and a society teetering on a Himalayan edge.  What brought about this uprising?  Why here and not Zim?  For years, China has been pumping money into its rocky southwestern region.  It came by way of new train lines, new roads, and subsidized business loans.  In China, a country with an Olympic-sized pool of laborers and a rice bowl to fit them all in, well, the draw was too enticing to pass up.  Thousands of ethnic Han Chinese flooded into the region, eager for their manifest destiny promised to them by politicians in a capital thousands of kilometers beyond the horizon.  Immediately, the cultural chasms split.  On the one side, you have Tibetans, a pious Buddhist population happy to live a quiet life observing its modest rituals.  On the other, you have Han Chinese, cleansed by Mao’s Cultural Revolution of almost all respect for anything beyond money, power, and the respect they feel the two bestow upon their owners.

Yes, I am simplifying.  But this is very much the situation.  Beijing’s crude attempts at policing culture have been very well documented, including forcing monks into re-education camps and hoping materialism would supplant idolatry of the Dalai Lama.  They failed.  And while the ethnic cleavages reinforce social separation, they were not enough to propel peace-loving monks into murderous mobs.  No, that final straw came atop the press pulpit.  The incessant global glamorization of China’s “journey of harmony” to the Olympics provoked a generally pacified Tibetan peasantry.  It was all the, “Hey World, look at us.  We are China, and we are great.  We don’t have any problems anymore because we blot them out of the newspapers and cut away from them on the television.  We bully lesser nations with our economy.  Denounce whoever we damn well please.  And after these Olympics, there ain’t a damn thing you’re gonna be able to do to stop us from taking your lunch money whenever we damn well please.”  That, that got ‘em.

It was another slap in the face of a people who have been pushed to the very edge of the world and still cannot find their peace.  It was an affront on their dignity.  And, savvy as they are, Tibetans knew it was now or never for one last push at some international press before China is given the credibility it feels the Olympics bestow.  Here, the Beijing line is a one-sided world-view based on principles of power and ego.  Incomplete control over Tibet threatens the CCP’s paper-thin confidence, and they will stop at nothing not to be embarrassed.

It is this weak ego prodding along the blind pursuit of power that is so hauntingly similar to the broken vanity of the U.S.  Yet, each country has a palate of positive tools at its disposal, forces that inspire in me the idealism that things can and must change.  Paramount to each, China has its Olympics and at home, we have the election.

Tibet rose up because it was being denied its rightful dignity.  And that is the most difficult step to take, the step towards change.  It is time for Americans to restore the dignity of our nation.  Wobbling through the world as a belligerent bully wins no wars, no hearts and no minds.  Sobering up isn’t go to be easy.  But the first step is getting off the junk that got us here, the faulty choices that have run their course in our system.  It’s time for fundamental change, and that will require a more mental than fun exercise.  We must conquer our demons.  Conquer our fears, and respect ourselves again.  We need to believe that the U.S. is still capable of being the most progressive plot of land on this rock.  No, not perfect, as Obama said in his historic speech, but willing to work towards perfecting it.

My good buddy Bianj, who occasionally adds his two cents to this blog (see the London piece below), often comments on the paradox between professional and personal interests.  As a teacher during my time in Taiwan, the psychological battles I waged dealt more with an up close and intimate look at the fragility of our future– our children.  The basic principle of the day was progress.  And though I dealt with a fair amount of inner-school politics and curriculum based haggling, the job was straight forward.  There was no slight of hand.

I have found new challenges.  Working in television news, in China, is a myriad of perplexing personal gripes.  Most of it, I internalize.  Occasionally I bemoan a certain situation in as subtle and polite a manner as possible.  But I am only a piece of the finished product.  The manufacturing of the news is a political process that I am only beginning to learn.

Chinese journalists have a daily meeting in which superiors tell them what will be the primary focus of the day and what is not to be mentioned.  The first aspect of this is common in any newsroom around the world.  There is top news.  It leads.  But the later aspect, the self-censorship, well, that is the more interesting part.

The company I work for now is in a very tight spot. I believe it holds ambition and promise.  I believe it is coming along at a time of principle importance.  But, it must step gently.  It still must appease a government overseer, who fingers the strings of its future.  Attempting to cut free too soon would be catastrophic.  It must be a measured and lengthy battle, and in that, not even a battle.  No, more subtle, more subversive.  The government must accept it as one of their own, harbor it, let it expand, let it go international, build a base.  And then, and only then, will it possibly hold a card worth betting on at the table.

A lot of this has come to light for me in the past few weeks.  I have taken great pleasure in my ability to form the wording of news stories.  This began with news on Palestine.  I was finally able to personally remove some of the pro-Israel bias so embedded and intrinsic to Western media.  Some of you might question what that means.  Am I, too, biased?  How can someone “form” the news?  Well, that’s complex and simple.  To offer a simple example, remember in elementary school or in peer counseling classes when we were taught to make “I” statements to begin rehashing an argument.  Don’t say, “He stole my pencil.”  Say, “I was angry he stole my pencil.”  It seems pedantic but it matters.

Well, I was satisfied to be making minor (and truthful) adjustments to the presentation of some complex issues.  But then, then came Tibet.

I have never been witness to something so contrived, I thought.  Images of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag are banned from Chinese television.  He is to China what Osama bin Laden is to the US right now, a terrorist, public enemy number one.  And similar to the US, rather than engaging the public in even a very minor discourse as to why such animosity has emerged, the state is choosing to ramp up nationalism and ethnic identity to “defuse” the situation.  There is no discussion of how Han-Tibetan ties have been strained by unequal access to education, land, healthcare and opportunities.  And, now, it’s all about protecting the sanctity of the Olympics.

It is funny how much of this actually echoes what the US has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I hadn’t even made the connection until writing this now.  I had assumed it was such a Chinese move.  But take for instance the fact that foreign journalists have been barred from Tibet.  Weren’t all journalists practically barred from the US invasion zones during the run-up to war?  Or another example.  China immediately came out with a list of nations supporting its reaction to the outbreak of rioting in Lhasa.  It included such powerhouse nations as Mauritania and the Seychelles, not to mention a few regional neighbors too threatened to challenge the status-quo.  How much does that resonate with our Coalition of the Willing?

Malaysia just canceled a dance performance in its capital because it feared one short segment might anger China.  Well, to be specific, China said it would.  So officials in KL ex’d the show, refunded ticket sales, taking a major loss and inconveniencing people who traveled to see it.  All because China said so.  The economic weight is balled up like a fist behind the CCP.  Cross China and your gonna get one in the jaw.  Less and less does the world stand-up for the people getting pummeled beneath the feet of human(e?) progress.

Protesters were just arrested at the Olympic Torch lighting ceremony today.  That’s the crux.  Protect the sanctity of the Games.  How dare someone politicize such a holy event, right?  How dare people speak out against a country basking in glory while repressing entire regions of the world!  I was sitting in our newsroom watching the “live” coverage of the torch ceremony on CCTV, China’s national corporation in control of nearly everything, especially live events.  We were watching because it was going to lead the news tonight.  I had my head down and heard a slight blip of something.  Everyone poked their heads up, curious.  When we looked, the channel was normal.  Just a cut away, and then it went back to the man giving the speech.  The entire raucous was edited out!  The entire nation missed it!  Smart, I suppose.  How can discontent even be stirred?  After all, masses are generally timid, awaiting others to step up, seeking security in numbers, before speaking out for some cause.

So, as far as making a connection Bianj… as far as bridging that divide between the personal and the political… well, I am still working on it.