Princeton the new #1.
Just a note, but I was wandering around on the internet and found that Harvard is not the number one university in the US anymore. Why does this matter? It doesn't much. I will never attend Harvard or Princeton, but what struck me is the idea that the number one university is able to change.
That’s right, change. I have been in China for 5 years and watching it for twice as long. For about as long as I can remember Peking University and Tsinghua have always been number one. Why?
If you do a little checking you will find that in recent years Peking University has been hiring more and more fraudulent professors that claim to be from big US universities. These professors are paid huge salaries and treated like local gods. All research has pointed to the recruitment being at fault and that the professors are in fact fake, but still Peking University remains number one.
On top of that, more and more of this year’s top College Entrance Exam students are going to Hong Kong universities. They are finding that Peking is not the heaven on Earth for universities anymore. They are finding that politics is really getting in the way of a real education. Some were quoted as saying that as many as 80% of the engineering students in China upon graduation do not have the relevant skills to practice in the field and that after 8 years most will go into other professional fields.
How long must this exodus take place before they decide to do some soul searching and get on the right track? Is face more important than education?
For more information, check the links below:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/19/nchina19.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/02/19/ixnewstop.html
http://www.danwei.org/scholarship_and_education/peking_universitys_fake_sea_tu.php
The "Real" China
You know it is really hard to put your finger on what the “Real China” is. I was in class today and talking to a student that teaches Chinese as a foreign language to foreign students. Most of her students are Korean and she has through time found that most Koreans look down on China. She is often confronted with questions like, “Do you have running water?” or “Have you ever watched TV?” She was offended by this and could not imagine how stupid the other person had to have been to ask such a question. But my question is, is it true that all Chinese have running water and watch TV? Are these perceptions untrue and if they are, why do they continue to be on the non-Chinese mind all the time so much so that we tend to look down on Chinese development.
I am sorry to say but it is a fact that at least 60% of Chinese are farmers or living on the land. Some put the number at 70%. That’s a lot of people. Now although they are farmers, it doesn’t mean that they are poor and have no TVs or running water, but for many it is a reality. Having visited rural Liaoning in China’s Northeast I know for a fact that there are people that have no running water, no natural gas, no electricity. This is still a reality for some. The people I stayed with were deer antler farmers. They were given a herd of deer to look after all year by a rich city business man and they are able to live there for free. They can grow their own food and he gives them a little money for the misc. items needed in life. 
I believe it is the media that shape our opinions about our world. The Chinese media is all about showing how the life of all Chinese people is changing everyday through the efforts of the Communist party. They work tirelessly for the needs of the rural farmers and workers.. Usually however the media concentrates on those of us living in the cities. The ones of us living and helping to create the new capitalist China with communist characteristics.
The media coverage of these changes are huge sweeping commercials about how great China is in the 21st century. It shows economic growth and how great the workers are doing with the new reforms in labor and production. It shows the monumental achievements of the party with such projects as the three gorges dam, flood relief, and taking part in the UN army abroad. They cannot forget two of the greatest achievements of the party in recent years and that is the 2008 Olympic Games that will be held in Beijing and lastly the great Chinese space program. Nothing about being poor is mentioned. If they show the countryside at all it is always some happy farmers working the fertile Chinese soil. If it is about a worker, he is always a beefy smiling Chinese worker that looks to be well fed because he is always paid on time and in full. The media prefers to showcase skyscrapers and dragon dancers instead of the rural villages made of adobe and mud floors.
When is the last time you saw images like this about China in western or far eastern media? Frankly speaking they do not exist. The media abroad is usually concerned with the reality and many of these flag-humping communist commercials are far short of the reality. In the west we are bombarded with news that the workers are underpaid and cheated by local business men. We are told that there are still people without enough food in the western regions. We are told of the bad effects of the one child policy. We are told that China has the worst pollution in the world. Furthermore this is all because of the party or because of corrupt local officials.
So if we step back and look at it all, which one is the right one? Which one is easier to see? The truth is that they are both commonly found in China on any street on any day of the week, it just depends what you are looking for. They are the proverbial yin and yang of China. Without the one there is not the other. So when westerners, Hong Kongers, Koreans, and Japanese look at China maybe we don’t always see the quiet guy who is politely queuing up, we only see the country-bumpkin with the bad garlic breath and is staring at us. I think the same can be said for the Chinese. They look around and see great changes. Changes that have never taken place in China before. Not everywhere, but in many areas. Furthermore they have never lived in a fully developed country where the level of education for almost everyone is much higher. They don’t know how people “could” live, "could" drive, "could" queue. There is a difference between economic development and socieal development, the second one takes much more time. The old saying, you can take the farmer out of the countryside, but you can't take the countryside out of the farmer rings true, but for many the transformation has already taken place and they are putting the other less polite people behind them.
I think that this huge gap in perception will continue to haunt Chinese-foreign relations for many years to come the same way many foreign nations refuse to look at their own problems until confronted with Katrinas and mass demonstrations. We all have to be more perceptive, but for the Chinese living in a China full of pro-communist propaganda, this will be a little harder.
