China: The Opaque Government

Having been in China for more than three months, I can safely say that many of the most interesting things about this country fail to reach us through the media. Everyone—here and back home—asks me what my most striking impression of China is, what I find most strange, what has influenced me most deeply, and other questions of this ilk. The truth is that my three (soon to be more than four) months here this semester, combined with two last summer, have left me with a sometimes bewildering but always interesting set of impressions about what life in China is like. So this will be the first in a series of articles about what I’ve noticed here.

In a book called Getting Along With the Chinese, Fred Schneiter argues that there’s no such thing as a “China expert.” In other words, no one person can possibly understand the incredibly complex, dynamic, and confusing forces which have taken hold and are currently transforming China from an ancient and already complicated empire into…something else. No one really knows what. So with that as a disclaimer, I’m still ignorant of almost everything related to China. These are just some stray observations.
At the same time that America was undergoing its election fervor, the Chinese government was going through a similar turnover of power. A large nationwide Communist Party meeting, the 18th of its kind, was held in Beijing to choose the country’s new leaders. Xi Jinping was selected as the new General Secretary and Li Keqiang as the next Premier.
I asked several of my friends here about the “Big 18,” as it is colloquially known over here. Although it does not even approach a comprehensive survey, all of them had only a vague understanding of the recent events, the new leaders, and how the system works. One of them laughed and said she wasn’t very interested in politics. On the surface, this is a normal comment, but it interests me that a disinterest in the subject can lead to almost total ignorance of such an important event and important people.

I don’t want to imply that my friend’s lack of knowledge is shameful ignorance or a sign of laziness or irresponsibility on their part. On the contrary, the system plainly wants the public to be detached, in a way which is hard to imagine for Americans. After all, we are glued to our screens watching our political leaders shed tears and tell moving stories about their childhoods. American candidates’ appeals to emotion are staggering. In this day and age, no one seems to have a hope of running without a moving and engaging back story. The faceless Chinese leaders are another story. My Chinese friends barely know who Xi Jinpin is.
But then, neither does the media. Around the time of the selection, Google was fully blocked in China, for the first time ever. Western media outlets have commented on the mysteriousness of Mr. Xi and his history. Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese activist and artist, has said that Americans should be proud because we at least know who our politicians are and take an interest in them. The Chinese are still a while away.