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The young woman wore the neat, conservative dress of a Chinese high school teacher. We spoke in English because teaching English was, in fact, her profession. Without much prompting, she told me “The BBC and the VOA [Voice of America] say that China has no freedom. But now things are getting better step by step. Now people can say what they want to say and go to many places around the world.” I agree with this statement, but not completely. Nor, apparently, does the young woman, who asked that I not associate her real name with the information she gave me. Certainly China’s civil rights situation has improved from the bad old days of the cultural revolution, but the government remains intolerant enough of what it doesn’t like to give the wise pause when having their names associated with public opinions.

Let’s call my friend Sally. She spoke English with cheerful confidence, and surely the school for which she taught, a high school in a relatively small town in a rural area of Guangdong, should have valued her services. However, she felt undervalued as a teacher. “China is an equal society,” Sally attempted to explain, “but I make 1000 yuan [about 130 USD] every month, but teachers in Shenzhen [the booming border town next to Hong Kong] make at least 6000 yuan [780 USD].” Teaching at a rural school in China often means lower pay, fewer benefits, and mediocre facilities. Sally plans to move to a different school in a bigger city where she can make more money. But due to Chinese laws, she will first have to work at the school near her hometown for a number of years before receiving a permit to work in a different location.

Cities have always been the focus of China’s economic reform. Consequently, urban areas have quickly modernized in the past thirty years, while rural areas often received only a few fringe benefits of China’s prosperity. It is unsurprising then that many people in China’s countryside want to move to the city, where the infrastructure, pay, and social systems are all superior to their countryside counterparts. As Sally told me, the government is now trying to make life for farmers easier. Children from farmer families no longer must pay tuition, and can receive additional financial help if they are really poor. Increasing agricultural prices have also helped the farmers. However, the fact remains that many people, Sally included, want nothing more than to move to a bigger city.

Sally also told me about the double books some factories use. They record hours employees are supposed to work in one to show government labor inspectors, and then keep another one to reflect the actual and illegal overtime the employees work for themselves. In complex issues like globalization and international politics, it is easy to swing between two extremes of looking at the situation. Sally often seemed to contradict herself because, while she wanted me to be aware of the problems China is experiencing, she also realizes the tendency of Westerners to focus on the negative aspects of a country. Hence her attempts to moderate all of the criticisms she leveled against it. I can’t blame her. The media often focuses on the abstract figures and concepts behind a country’s development. Perhaps it would do us all a bit of good to simply focus on the people affected by that development, and save the energy we often spend ruminating in simply getting to know the people our opinion would involve.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 9:20 pm 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.