Today was our last lecture, and my finally successful visit to visit Mrs. Moran's friend, Lewis. Yun He dedicated the first part of our lecture to Media in China and the latter to a quick recap of what we had learned in her lectures. Yun He said that in the 1930s, press had been free in China, that it was that during that damned Cultural Revolution that the Gang of Four took over every piece of media, even the official party newsletter, and retooled them to serve their own purposes. She said that the media is much more free today, that the party newspapers are not propaganda machines but instead represent "the peoples' opinion", as if all the common folk of China have the same views and can easily use papers as their mouthpiece. It is not coincidence that the papers she spoke about were fiercely nationalistic and were also once party-run. She referred to a recent diplomatic spar with the US where the "common people" believed that China took it too easy on the US. These papers, carrying the true voice of the people. relayed the peoples' message that tougher sanctions had to be put on the US, to which the government reluctantly complied. To see an educated adult buy this horse hockey is disturbing. It was sad to see that she did not make the connection between these papers' party "past" and the supposed peoples' voice they represent. The illusion of participation is essential to maintaining an autocracy where civilians' voices cannot be heard unless they bring a knife into a kindergarten. I also found it disturbing that many journalists supplement their income with "gifts" from companies who sponsor press conferences. It is then assumed that these journalists will not say anything about the corporation if they want to be invited back to these events in the future. It was also very scary that journalism is the most deadly profession in China after coal mining. Yun He confirmed that there are very few investigative journalists in China, and that they have limited lifespans. She also argued that the obvious interference of the government in the media made Chinese people more skeptical and thoughtful of the information they receive. She said that we in America rarely think about what is presented to us before we digest it, but Chinese people carefully process everything they hear and can sort through the BS easily. This is akin to arguing that watching Fox News turns one into a political scientist.
This afternoon was the last possible time that I had to meet up with Lewis. I called him around 11 when we got out of class. We agreed to meet at his house at 1. I misunderestimated the time it would take to get to his house by subway, and arrived at the stop around 1:40. I then had to get to his apartment complex, which I had planned to be s simple as walking to a nearby intersection, making a right walking a while longer and making another right. Google maps estimated it at a 5 minute walk. And should that not work out, I had written down Lewis's address so that I could just hand it to a taxi driver. It ended up taking me almost another hour to get to this house. When I emerged from the subway, I could not see a single taxi, and an overpass and highway were all that laid in front of me. I eventually found my way to an area with local streets, some stores, and apartments, but they were all behind guarded gates that would only open with a special resident card. I walked back over to the highway and found the main boulevard that Lewis's apartment was on. Long trip short, I asked many security guards for directions with the address I had written down, and after one sent me in the wrong direction, I finally got to the apartment only an hour and forty minutes late. Lewis thought that I had given up and gone home, and was expecting a call explaining that. Luckily, he had just been working and going through email in my absence, and could talk with me until 5, when I had to return home for my final dinner. We talked about many things, but his views on Chinese consumer culture, and the country's finances interested me the most since they dictate the country's, and arguably the world's, future.
Lewis pointed out that millions Chinese find themselves in themselves with more money then they have ever seen before, and so are willing to spend hundreds of USD on shoes or dresses. The cheap cost of housing and food adds to young peoples' willingness to spend. Lewis explained that the Chinese government has been putting a lot of effort into building up consumer spending in China, as a way to spur growth of a domestic market for goods so that China's economy is not so reliant on foreign markets. He also said that he has an advantage in the export business as an American, as he can entertain Western clients much more naturally then his Chinese counterparts. He agreed with my assessment that while China's manufacturing far exceeds any other country's, Chinese marketing is not as mature as it is in the West. I think that capitalism in China shows many signs of being young and these more difficult aspects of business may evolve in the near future, especially with the increasing involvement of Western companies. He also described the difficulties of running an export business as a foreigner, and the unique solutions he had to come up with the deal with the portability issues of RMB. We then went on a walk through a nearby mall and he talked more about his times here, and how much more purchasing power he had back then. He sees Chinese people as becoming the new economic tourists, since their currency is very strong, and more of their income can be spent on luxuries like travel. I think that the even though upper-middle class city dwellers may have enough money to live comfortably in China, their income does not translate to that much abroad. I bid him farewell and hopped on the subway. Getting off the car for a transfer, a young Chinese woman tried to push past me and into the car. Perhaps she didn't see that I am a 6' 3" American, and assumed I would be as easy to push past as a 5'6" Chinese man. I kept walking to get off the train, and she ended bouncing off of me and landing knee-deep between the train and the platform. Luckily she pulled herself right out as if it had happened before, and darted into the car shortly before its doors closed. I noticed uniformed people who looked the equivalent of the official car-packers in some Japanese subways, though I think they were to prevent too many people from getting on the train or blocking the doors, not the opposite. It seemed to echo the cultural sentiment I picked up, that if you do not push hard to get ahead of the pack, you will get run over and forgotten. I worry that over 1 billion people with this sentiment will trample each other just to get a little further ahead, as we've seen with the Social Darwinism of conservatives in the US.
I stopped by the street market to pick up a counterfeit wallet for my mother. As I made my way back out to head back to the hotel, police showed up and set vendors running. I had heard that the police, influenced somehow by the licensed merchants on that street were cracking down on unlicensed vending. The whole market was deserted within 15 minutes. I don't know where they hid, but everyone was back an hour later. I feel that police are largely for show.