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“I hate the government,” said the young man sitting with us at the Muslim restaurant. We all paused uncomfortably. “Well,” suggested Drew, “if you change it enough, then maybe your grandchildren will be able to say they love it.” The young man shook his head. “No,” he protested, “my grandchildren will grow up in a different country. The government here is terrible.” This time it was me who spoke up. “It has been getting better,” I ventured, “compared to the sixties aren’t things much better?”

I don’t often find myself often defending the Chinese government. Most people I talk to couldn’t place politics further from their minds. No one cares. Even when I ask them leading questions about odd or unpopular government policies, the Chinese hesitate to offer any negative appraisals of local or national politics. They read the propaganda, accept whatever it says, and leave it at that. Affairs of state and politics are for people with government salaries to worry about. So it goes with most of China. But our impassioned young man felt differently.

Let’s name him Joe. When he’s not at work he dresses, like most other hip, upper-class Chinese, in a hip, upper class style. When he first approached me in the restaurant he had his baseball cap tucked into the epaulet of his well-worn, imitation U.S. Air Force jacket, which he wore over a plain T-shirt, stone-washed jeans, and brand new work boots. “Excuse me,” he said in very passable English, “are those your bicycles outside?” Intrepid readers will already undoubtedly have guessed that the five heavily laden cycles outside to which he referred did indeed belong to the group of which I was for that evening and every other one in recent memory a part.

Upon learning of our trip, its length and our intentions, Joe was noticeably impressed. He talked about his own desire to do a long bicycle trip, and made a reference to Thoreau’s Walden, the part where Thoreau says that we all can choose how many lives we live, and emphasizes the importance of gathering as much experience as possible through living many different styles of life. Even for a college graduate, Joe demonstrated a particularly erudite sensibilities and a crisp intelligence. He also could not say a single positive thing about the Chinese government.

When he first asked us about our bikes, we had already finished eating, and he had barely ordered. We invited him over to our table, and his plate of fried noodles soon arrived in front of him, but despite our frequent encouragement, he didn’t eat any, so excited was he to discuss China with people who brought an outside perspective.

He told us about the first time he learned of the Ti@n@nmen incident (where more than 200 civilians were killed by PLC soldiers trying to break up pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing). “I was so shocked, so shocked, I really could not believe the government could do something like that,” he told us. But in fact it seems that his questioning attitude and skeptical view of the government originated from a sense of justice. “As a small child,” Joe explained, “I saw many poor people, but there were also rich men. The poor had things terrible, but the rich man just had more and more money. I thought this thing wasn’t right, so I thought about it often.” One of Joe’s childhood friends had similar views, and with each other to rely upon, they both developed attitudes that were, for usually propaganda-fed Chinese school kids, amazingly independent.

As an independent thinker in a country that is not open to all strains of thought, Joe realizes he’s at risk. “I can talk about these things here with you,” he says of his rants against the government, “but if I write it down or put it on the internet, the government will watch me.” He wrote down his email address for us. “It’s Google,” he says, “I don’t like what Google did in China, but I use it anyway.” Here he was referring undoubtedly to Google’s agreement to self-censor their China operations according to government demands. Sometimes it’s difficult, for both would-be ethical companies and individuals, to maintain completely clean hands.

“I love America,” Joe tells us as his noodles get cold, “not the government or the military, but I love the American people, and the idea of America.” We have to admit that the ideas behind the constitution, and indeed the whole of the American people, are an admirable bunch, even if the actions of its government and legislature aren’t always the most well-considered. But Joe didn’t praise the U.S. for too long before taking the Chinese government to task. “You don’t know what it’s like to live under the government. You could be killed at any moment,” he claimed. He went on to tell us about a recent college grad who was looking for work in Guangzhou, but did not have a permit to work there. He was taken in by the police, and through an unfortunate twist where the unstoppable wheels of bureaucracy turned brutal, was beaten to death.

Stunned though we all were at this tragic twist in his tale, we tried to point out that following the young man’s death, the system of local work permits was reformed, so it seemed that bad as things may be, it was still possible to change the system. “But this man’s parents and family,” Joe pointed out, “things are awful for them. But who will take responsibility? Who will pay? Noone!” “Maybe you can change the system, though,” we tried to reason with him. “No,” said Joe, “I am not brave enough.” He explained that he felt responsible for his mother, and would not want to jeopardize her retirement by putting his future at risk. Brave or not, he certainly had plenty of ideas of how to reform the system.

Joe currently works for an international company in sales. This certainly explains his great English, but it also demonstrates a quandary for people wanting to be hypercritical of the Chinese government. Whatever abuses the Chinese government continues to commit or has committed against its people, it has also lifted more people out of poverty in the last thirty years than have ever been enriched similarly in all of history. It is in part because of Chinese government policy that Joe is able to work for a company that does business over seas and get his information over the internet.

At the same time, because the Chinese government has created conditions in which people like Joe can flourish, it has also created a condition that imperils its own existence. That is, one in which folks with money and sway and independent minds have the information and reasoning to become upset by their lack of self-determination, the presence of injustice, or the state of the environment.

As you can well imagine, Joe doesn’t enjoy working for the man. Instead he would prefer pursuing a degree in international relations. He regrets the presence of war in the world. Joe tells us he could make a positive contribution to a peaceful world by helping countries get past their differences. But he realizes it will be an uphill battle. In a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost or perhaps simply to Christian theology in general, Joe mentions that before men there was no peace, even between angels. Regardless of what the angels do, I am glad to know that logic and empathy still have the ability to shed light on murky situations and speak truth to power.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 9:30 am and is filed under Jim's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.