Debunking the Myths of China

Welcome to the China Myths blog. The Furman University First Year Seminar: Debunking Myths of China uses this space to share research and information about China, delving deeper into topics than standard news coverage and linking to further resources. We welcome your comments and contributions.

Dr. Tami Blumenfield

Assistant Professor of Asian Studies
Furman University

Early Education in China: Culture

By A. Becklehimer and M. Turner

With China’s modern education system clearing not living up to its potential, seen by the only mediocre performance of students and their less than desirable state of health, many people are questioning the problems and how to fix them. Similar in nature to America’s ACT, China’s “Gaokao” test is a cumulative review of their education thus far, and is state mandated (Zhao, Xu, Haste, Selman). Unlike other systems that also take large consideration of other factors, such as personal merit, experience, grades, and involvement, China’s system relies very heavily on this one test, which will forever determine where the student can attend school. The pressure to do well on this test is what has created such a hostile and counterproductive environment to learn in for these students. This pressure is only heightened by the one-child culture China has thrown itself into. As each student is now a second-generation only child, this means they will have two parents and four grandparents that dedicate their time to the child, and will expect highly of the only child to do a good job representing the family. The lack of siblings to divert attention from these students has all the more created an environment that only promotes the drilling of the highly government-regulated education into their minds. Some Chinese parents having tried to take action against this by placing their children in private schools with alternative methods of education, often labeling themselves as havens that will “emphasize the need to help children that develop as individuals.” (Johnson) The goal of these schools is to actually make sure the children leave as smarter and more well rounded individuals, as opposed to the hive-mind the government has attempted to create with state-modified accounts of every little detail.

Ian Johnson. “China’s new bourgeoisie discovers alternative education.” New Yorker Vol. 89, Issue 47 Febuary 3, 2014. 34.

Zhao, Xu, Helen Haste, and Robert L. Selman. “Questionable Lessons From China’s Recent History of Education Reform.” Education Week 33, no. 18 (January 22, 2014): 32.

Pollution in China: Spiritual Pollution

By Caroline Gunter and Plicca Watt

CHINA. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 7 Apr 2014. http://quest.eb.com/images/138_1108590

You are probably assuming the only type of pollution is environmental, well the Chinese Government says otherwise.  One particular type of pollution in China is spiritual pollution.  In the early 1980’s the Communist Party led a campaign against what they coined “spiritual pollution”.  In reality, the campaign was a way to keep the western cultural and economic influences out of China.  The Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign started at the conclusion of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Political leader and activist Deng Xiaoping gave a speech criticizing the academic circles for focusing too heavily on humanization, calling it un-marxist.  In 1984 the New York Times describes the campaign saying the exemptions include “fashionable clothing, youthful aspirations for a better life, science and technology, religious belief, Western musical, art and literary classics and economic prosperity, including commerce with the West.”  The Party’s main idea was by terming any western influence vaguely as spiritual pollution they could portray to the people to stay away from just about anything. The propaganda ministry removed any of it from the countryside, hereby excluding a huge portion of Chinese population.  This campaign ended within three months of its beginning.  It is clear that the Chinese Government did not see labeling foreign ideals as spiritual pollution as a wise or successful choice.

 

Work Cited:

“Spiritual Pollution Thirty Years On” by Geremie R Barmé in Australian Centre on China in the World on 17 November 2013.

http://www.thechinastory.org/2013/11/spiritual-pollution-thirty-years-on/

“China Is Said To End a Campaign To Stop ‘Spiritual Pollution’” by Christopher S. Wren in The New York Times on 24 January 1984.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/24/world/china-is-said-to-end-a-campaign-to-stop-spiritual-pollution.html

“The Rise and Fall of the Campaign against Spiritual Pollution in the People’s Republic of China” by Shu-Shin Wang in Asian Affairs in 1986.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30172073

CHINA.. Photography. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 7 Apr 2014. http://quest.eb.com/images/137_3161065

Pollution in China: Trash to Ca$h

By Plicca Watt

      In the Eastern coastal Chinese city of Hangzhou shrewd entrepreneurs are turning the city’s trash into valuable, clean energy.  The Hangzhou Environmental Group (HEG) has transformed the city’s decades- old landfill into a methane gas powered energy plant and even attracts tourists to the plant site with environmental video games, hikes in the eco- park, and so called “trash tours.”

Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest, “A Man Stands Over A Pile Of Used White P”, accessed 7 Apr 2014, http://quest.eb.com/images/115_2759933

        When garbage decomposes, a toxic methane gas is released which warms the earth twenty times faster than carbon dioxide.  The HEG’s power plant traps and transforms the harmful gas into clean energy.  Not only is this a profitable way to produce energy, but this system also helps curb pollution and better the environment in China.  Part of the reason why China has experienced problems with pollution in recent years is due to the exorbitant economic growth.  With a growing middle class, more Chinese people the economic ability to purchase consumer goods which in turn means more garbage is produced that will end up in the Chinese landfills. Even the Chinese government have shown concern for the nation’s environmental and pollution issues. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao states, “Environmental pollution has become a major problem in China’s current development and it has not been addressed well.”

        It is encouraging to see that the Chinese have emerged with ingenious solutions, such as the Hangzhou Environmental Group’s landfill to energy plant, that facilitate not only economic growth, but also environmental health.

Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest, “Air Pollution Over Shanghai, China”, accessed 7 Apr 2014, http://quest.eb.com/images/132_1231890

 Works Cited:

Liu, Coco. “Turning Trash to Gold in China.” Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., 1 June 2011. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/turning-trash-to-gold-in-china/>.

“Premier Wen Jiabao Meets Press.”Premier Wen Jiabao Meets Press. Consulate of the People’s Republic of China, n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. <http://toronto.china-consulate.org/eng/topics/lianghui/t240621.ht

Urbanization: Farming and Food in Villages Before Cultural Revolution

By Tommy Hauver, Michael Tan and Claire Mathon

Before the Cultural Revolution, long hours during the day were not uncommon for villagers.  Part of the long workdays was the long walk to the farming plot.  Since some villages were based next to maintain sides, they would use hill plots to do the majority of their farming, it would take up to 2-3 hour just to the farming plots.  Another reason for their hard work was due to the thin topsoil that would lie on these hill plots.  Because of the thin topsoil, the arable lands become fewer and fewer, which leads to problems with their food.  Since the land that could be farmed on was few, it became tough for some villages to support all of the citizens.  This caused those villages to boil the rice in watery gruel to make it last longer for every meal.  Another aspect of the villagers’ lives that was impacted was their diet.  Due to the fact that meat was mostly eaten on special occasions, dried fish, pickles, and beans made up the starch side of their diet.  Finally, vegetables were a rare food to be eaten in certain villages, because of the belief that vegetables needed to be cooked in oil, and few peanuts were grown.  (Anita Chan, Chen Village, pgs 14-15) 

Continue reading “Urbanization: Farming and Food in Villages Before Cultural Revolution”

Urbanization: Layout of Villages Before the Cultural Revolution

By Tommy Hauver, Claire Mathon and Michael Tan

Before the Cultural Revolution, some of these Chinese villages might have seemed picturesque form a distance.   With few villages remotely near by, even the market area being miles away, villages seemed quaint, especially the ones that were pressed up against the mountainside, with a stream that might run near by.  Although, at a closer range, it might not be as picturesque as one may think.  With “roads”, if they can even be called roads, are made completely of dirt, so when it rains the roads are slippery and flooded.  Then there are the houses.  Only using brick for small sections of their foundation, the people in the villages, ranging around one thousand citizens for some villages, built the houses mostly of plastered mud.  Because of the little brick for foundation, and being made mostly out of the plastered mud, the houses turned out to be very steep-peaked and narrow.  This resulted in the houses breaking down, as well as reeking of rotting plants and meats that were kept in the houses with the families. (Anita Chan, Chen Village, pg 13)

  

See also:

Village Farming and Food Before Cultural Revolution

Urbanization: Chinese Cultural Revolution

Urbanization of Chinese Villages After Cultural Revolution

Continue reading “Urbanization: Layout of Villages Before the Cultural Revolution”

Urbanization of Chinese Villages After Cultural Revolution

By Michael Tan, Claire Mathon and Tommy Hauver

After the catastrophic Cultural Revolution eventually ended in 1976, China began to regain its vitality under the lead of the new government. Chinese economy has been growing at tremendous pace each year ever since the reforming and opening up policies were established in 1978. It is obvious that this development in economy has resulted in the mass urbanization in rural areas. The villages have been so much better off due to changing the type of economy in order to fit in the new lifestyle in more urbanized areas.

The ancient village of Fenghuang is one of the villages that benefited the most from urbanization. The urbanization took place in 2001, where the local authority decided to make good use of its splendid views to turn it into a tourism-specified city. This process was extremely successful, where the annual number of tourists increased from 576,000 to 4,859,500 in 2009, and annual income from tourism increased from 74,000,000 yuan (about 12,333,333 dollars) to 2,609,000,000 yuan (about 434,833,333 dollars). (Zhou, 2011) These dramatic data definitely reveals the great benefits of urbanization; however, urbanization is also causing potential problems to the urbanized area.

5591385449_bdcee0a5fc_o.jpg

The ancient town of Fenghuang https://www.flickr.com/photos/freecu/5591385449/

 

Behind the gigantic economic growth in Fenghuang, newly emerged problems draws a shade over the bright future of this city. Traditional landscape was the worst drawbacks of urbanization. As the number of tourists increased by a great amount, more and more souvenir shops were set up, which took over numerous ancient folk houses. Meanwhile, more and more contacts between Fenghuang and more developed cities caused some traditional customs and productions to disappear due to the new and more urbanized lifestyle. (Zhou, 2011)

In Fenghuang, urbanization seems to have more drawbacks in the long term than the benefits in the short term because of its harm to the culture itself. So should urbanization be strictly controlled in order to maintain the social welfare? In contrast, the transition in Xizhou, Yunnan is much milder and more sustainable. Xizhou is a village which was ruled by the Bai ethnic minority group, which was known for its handcraftsmanship and tourism. Unlike urbanization that took place in Fenghuang, the transition to a more industrialized society in Xizhou successfully transformed from an agricultural oriented village to a business oriented city. At the same time, its unique culture was enforced, which credited the Bai people’s accurately realizing the tourists’ need and quickly adapt the new style of production within their traditional production (Yang, 2012). This makes Xizhou a good example of a village undergoing urbanization in China.

4368030626_dc767f694e_z.jpg

Girls in traditional Bai costume. https://www.flickr.com/photos/fangyang/4368030626/

If urbanization makes progress under its capability, instead of blindly pursuing economic achievement, it will bring the maximized benefit to the nation and will strengthen the culture and unique tradition of the villages it is affecting.

Continue reading “Urbanization of Chinese Villages After Cultural Revolution”

Urbanization: Chinese Cultural Revolution

By Claire Mathon, Tommy Hauver and Michael Tan

Many societies undergo events that have profound effects on their culture. In China, this event is regarded as the Cultural Revolution.  Between 1965 and 1976, Mao attempted to reassert his authority over China through implementation of his beliefs because he feared that China was moving in an inegalitarian direction. Mao was heavily influenced by similar events in the Soviet Union and made the decision to move toward a more ideologically pure society, as the Soviets did. (Cultural).

The objective of the Cultural Revolution was to get rid of old ideas and customs in order to make education, art, and literature more in line with Communist ideology. Anything that displayed feudal or bourgeois ideals was destroyed. Mao was essentially attempting to create a society in which there was no gap between urban and rural, rich and poor, and laborers and intellectuals. (Cultural Revolution)

In an effort to close this gap, many young Chinese were sent from cities to work in the countryside. In fact, the Chinese government ordered that one teenager from every urban household move to the countryside to work on the farms. (CNN: Tracy You) This deprived many young people from receiving educations in the city. Interestingly enough, this period of time in China showed an extreme urban-to-rural migration, or reverse migration, for the Chinese youth. However, soon after the Cultural Revolution, urban populations began to increase again due to an increase in employment opportunities in cities. (Britannica: Consequences of the Cultural Revolution)

This photo was taken in 1967 and shows two Chinese citizens being branded as “Capitalist Roader” and subjected to physical abuse in front of the public. Source

Photo taken by 蒋少武 (translation: Shaowu Jiang)

It is estimated that 1.5 million people were killed during the Cultural Revolution and millions of others suffered from imprisonment, torture, and humiliation. (Cultural) The long-term effects of the Revolution are still prevalent in China today, particularly in Chinese villages. The traditional village social structure was severely affected. Peasants were encouraged to seize landlords’ fields and other property, which was an effort by the government to strengthen support from the poor. Land was distributed equally among all social classes, and in the process, all traditions of the villages’ social structure were lost. The Cultural Revolution paved the way for urbanization, which ultimately transformed village culture. People were forced to move to cities because they could no longer sustain themselves in the villages. They left behind their history, their tradition, and their legacy because the country made such a dramatic shift toward a more urbanized society.

Remnants of a banner from the Cultural Revolution in Anhui Province. Photo taken by: Chang Liu

See also:

Village Farming and Food Before Cultural Revolution

Layout of Villages Before Cultural Revolution

Urbanization of Chinese Villages After Cultural Revolution

Continue reading “Urbanization: Chinese Cultural Revolution”

Air Pollution in China

By Graham Dabbs and Caroline Gunter

Some people hold a stereotype that China is a dirty and polluted country.  I decided to investigate this and find out about Chinese air pollution.  The first thing you have to understand about air pollution is how it is measured.  Pollution levels are measured using the air quality index or AQI. This takes into consideration particulate size as well as concentration in the air.  According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s the reading outside of Beijing Embassy was seven hundred and fifty five.  To put this into perspective a reading about three hundred and one is considered an extremely hazardous emergency situation.  This means the particles in the air are large enough to “travel down into the lungs and bloodstream and potentially cause severe damage in the organs” (World Affairs Journal). This air pollution also has a cultural impact.  According to online chinese retailer (taobao.com) the word “mask” was searched 5,300% more than usual.  There was also an increase in the air purifiers business.  This indicates not only that the Chinese people were aware of the problem, but also interested in fixing the issue.  But the real question is what action is the Chinese government taking to bring awareness to and correct the problem? “in 2012, in response to growing public pressure, Beijing started to regularly monitor and publish its own AQI readings for air around the country. Now there are more than eighty monitoring systems in place in China’s major cities and this year, for the first time, officials issued emergency warnings and allowed pollution to be covered on state-run television.” (World Affairs Journal).  As you can see, the air pollution in China is at a dangerous levels, but with the growing environmental movement people are becoming aware and working for a change.

Works Cited:
Riviera, Gloria S. “Pollution in China: The Business of Bad Air.” World Affairs Journal, May-June 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/pollution-china-business-bad-air>.

Before and After the Beijing Olympics: Political Change

By Tyler Knauss, M. Baker and Cat McNeela

“Olympic Facilities,”
By Tyler Knauss, licensed with CC 2.0

Inside the city of Beijing, the Olympic facilities sit relatively unused since the end of the Games in 2008. Placed strategically in the center of the city, they are now only a place for tourists. For how grand these facilities are, as well as the fact that they are not used and have been largely dormant, it could be argued that these facilities were and are a wasted use of labor and capital for the people of China. Much can be said about whether or not it was the correct move of the world to have allowed the Olympics to be hosted in China. “The Olympics marked the beginning, it can be said, of the ascendance of the stability preservation regime in China. Looking back now, it might be that the Olympics were something [China] did that [it] ought not to have done.”

The Chinese government has used the success of the Olympics, and its ability to gather large pools of capital and resources, to assert itself over its people. Because of the spending power the government has, they are able to exert themselves greatly over the citizens of China and rule over them in a tightly controlled environment. “And he who has wealth speaks loudest,” muses Sun Liping, professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University.

With the Chinese government having so much power, coupled with the fact that it is still a one-party system, there is no room for compromise within the system. It can be said that the Olympics in 2008 were just another factor in strengthening the authority and overall ability of the government to increase their power in China. Because of the success of the 2008 Olympics, the government gained a lot of prestige for China as a whole. This prestige and success of the Olympics allowed the government to receive huge praise for the planning and execution of the games. However, the games brought on great duress to the poorer residents of Beijing. Many people there live in squalor and the funding that went towards the games could have been used to help these residents on a slightly smaller scale, but just as successfully as the Olympics. For the billions spent, the political environment brought on by the Olympics gave no cause to the government to put that money in the hands of the poor, but instead used it to support their own interests in bringing about an impressive display for the whole world to watch.

“Olympic Drummers,” by Tim Hipps, FMWRC Public Affairs, licensed with CCBY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
www.armymwr.com
https://www.flickr.com/photos/familymwr/4927868989/in/photostream/

See Also:

Before and After the Beijing Olympics: Economic Change

Before and After the Beijing Olympics: Physical Change

 

Sources

Adam, Taylor. Business Insider, “The Beijing Olympics Were a Mistake.” Last modified March 27, 2013. Accessed March 5, 2014. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-beijing-olympics-were-a-mistake-2013-3.

Feng Huiling, The Humanistic Values of the Beijing Olympics, (Singapore: Enrich Professional Publishing, 2011), 1 -334.

Yong Zhou and John Ap, “Residents’ Perceptions Towards the Impact of the 2008 Olympic Games,” Journal of Travel Research 48, no. 1 (2009): 78-91.