The China Problem

Overnight China has become a problem to almost every person on the planet. As the second largest economy, China has been integrating with the international community for a while. The journey so far has been with many ups and downs. Today we arrived at a critical moment, which will decide where the integration will head for the coming decades. Shall we stop the integration, try to make China isolated and irrelevant? Or shall we retrospect and find more efficient ways to help China embrace openness and common values?

We should make China isolated and irrelevant, because the decades of integration so far has not made China better and more open

Or is it? China had 751.8 million people earning less than $1.9 per day in 1990. In 2016 it’s 7.2 million. China’s literacy rate increased from 65% in 1982 to 96.8% in 2018. Tertiary education attainment from 0.45% in 1970 to 2.71% in 2010. And students studying overseas from 179k in 2008 to 662k to 2018.

A more well fed and well educated populace is one of the cornerstones of an open society[1]. Now there are more critical thinkers. People are more equipped to access western media in one way or another. However, for western people, you might have heard more negative news about China than before. But could the reason be that China was less relevant before, so western media wasn’t incentivized to have the same coverage about China compared to today?

Science advances one funeral at a time. Culture even more so. Top down push against culture such as war on drugs has been proven to be not effective, no matter the type of the government. There are efforts to change the Chinese culture regarding animal rights, traditional medicine, and public health. Sadly those changes will take longer to germinate than planting trees. [2][3]

For some people, there’s plenty of reason to stop China’s integration, to isolate it and to destroy it, even nuke it if there’s no repercussions. Their fear is not China, but a challenger threatening the king’s power, the king’s privileges. But for the rest of the world, isolating China will not solve the China problem. 1.4 billion people will still live there. We probably won’t want a less stable or less predictable China or factions of China, each with enough nuclear power to scorch the earth. At the end of the day we still share the same planet, and might very well have to work together to tackle the next challenge to the human race.

More effort is needed to help China’s integration

Is China becoming more liberal, more open for the last few decades? Why is it not more open as it is today? What’s Chinese attitudes towards the issues of China covered by western media, and why? If they have a different reaction, is it because they don’t care or because they knew something westerners don’t, considering most of the original information is not in English?

Those questions have to be constantly asked. To make China integrated more and better, I encourage you to find those answers from talking to Chinese people. There are 100 million Chinese capable of speaking English for daily conversations. Many living abroad and even more have access to VPN[4].

Maybe you feel that’s too hard. Sanctions and tariffs might be easier to force China into adopting western values quickly, in a government driven and top down fashion? The sad reality is that there’s little evidence so far that those kind of approach works.

Instead many of China’s neighbours enjoyed collaborations and mutual understanding during their integration period. Countries such as Taiwan had its first general election in 1996, South Korea in 1987, and Singapore in 1991.

Just like the above societies, the Chinese people have to appreciate the values which the rest of the developed world appreciate, before they can demand their government to change.

Afterword

The internet is the wonder of our time. But it also creates many illusions of reality. We can always find a great amount of people agreeing with us no matter what we say. It is easy and comfortable to make every issue into a us-versus-them. There are more people who are afraid to talk to other people in the real world, including myself. Because on the internet we have many metadata about a person. Which website the conversation is on, what avatar, what post history, etc. In the real world the effort to connect would be less cost effective. And it would be super awkward if only after spending some quality time together, we find out our new friend is too conservative, or too liberal to our liking. There’s enough like-minded people on the internet waiting for us, so why the effort?

Communication between people having different opinions are more scarce, to the point that we often just brand large group of people as brainwashed, or internet government agents or bots, or too stupid to reason and shut conversation with them. Example 1, 2.

What’s more, for profit media are not incentivized to keep us informed, rather they are fuelled by outrage porn and report on what their audiences wanted to hear. Politicians are elected out of tribalism. Those realities only deepen the China problem.

Still, with the help of the internet, it is easier than ever to reach the group of people who think differently. Let’s listen to them and consider their perspective, and ask them why the solution we always think should work is not adopted by them, shall we? (Here’s one excellent example: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/dyalaz/uinterpine_gives_an_overview_on_the_possibility/f80arbn/)

The reader might have noticed by now that I’ve talked so much without even defining what the China problem is. Because although the solution to the problem can be broadly stroked here, there’s no agreement on what the problem is. The western governments, the western people, the Chinese immigrants, the Chinese living in China all have completely different views on where China should improve first. Again only with more listening than talking, and tireless communication between all, can we have a better vision and tackle the China problem on where it matters, and help China integrate into the international community better.

1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html#:~:text=Maslow's%20hierarchy%20of%20needs%20is,hierarchical%20levels%20within%20a%20pyramid.&text=From%20the%20bottom%20of%20the,esteem%2C%20and%20self%2Dactualization.
2. Many Chinese celebrities have had ads for animal protection for years. Please notice the year those ads were uploaded.

• Jackie Chan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9X4FhWFmRo
• Jackie Chan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBpV1G68-vw
• Yao Ming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WXi7TX5tnw
• Yeung Wing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cW2OTYHwwk

3.

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0771-1
• https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2020/jan/23/china-coronavirus-sars-cover-up-beijing-disease-dissent

4. According to this ZDNet article, 14% of Chinese internet users use a VPN daily. Which is 100 million, roughly 7% of the Chinese population.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/vpns-can-still-be-used-in-china-despite-march-31-ban/