Forget Everything I Said

When possible, I like to talk with locals about what they think about America.  In Shanghai, I was asked first by a few what I thought of China.  This got a conversation started, and I heard some frank talk about the dissatisfaction some there have with their country.  I heard references to corruption, the Internet firewall, and the environment.  One topic that came up several times was income inequality.  While China is nominally Communist, it's certainly not a Communism that Marx or Mao would recognize.  Really, it's state capitalism.  Some people -- allegedly including those with family or other ties to top officials -- are doing extremely well.  When you've seen a few Lamborghinis cruising by People's Square, the irony isn't lost on anyone.  To those raised in a system where they're taught about Communism (and you can still hear the old Communist songs being sung karaoke-style on the streets), it's worse than irony, it's hypocrisy.

Technically speaking, China's income inequality is roughly the same as that of the United States, and there are recent signs that it's improving.  Americans, though, accept a degree of income inequality (though I'm sure that has its limits -- and I don't recommend approaching those limits).  You can't draw conclusions from the handful of conversations I had, but I don't know that the Chinese are as prepared.

The young Chinese I met are proud of their country and what it's accomplished, and they have long memories about the historical sins of the West (namely, the Opium Wars, the racism of the concession period in Shanghai history, and one even remarked about the West favoring Japan over China at the Treaty of Versailles).  But when I told one person that I admired the fact that China had raised the living standards of hundreds of millions of people in a few decades, he chuckled.  There are still a lot of poor people, he said, you just don't see them.  Another made an oblique reference to the events of "June 4" and "you know, the tanks" without ever using the words "1989" or "Tiananmen."

The opinions I heard were not severe by American standards -- I think almost every American I know has made stronger critiques of our government at one time or another than anything I heard in Shanghai.  By Chinese standards, though, perhaps there was a feeling that this last comment had crossed some invisible line that a Westerner wouldn't appreciate.  Because then, with a look that was at once both sheepish and wary, she ended this part of the conversation by telling me, "Forget everything I said."