Understanding Asia

Sitting in a hotel room in Singapore glued to the television (after three months of relying on the less than hard-hitting coverage in the China Daily), I watched a news segment on the American education system’s large gaps in teaching about Asia. American middle school students, when asked to name Asian countries, rarely got beyond China, and one boy even rearranged world geography to place England in the area that has traditionally been occupied by Japan. A statistic was also sited that would suggest that well over half of American high school graduates are unable to name the ocean that separates the United States from Asia.

I venture to suggest that these statistics are alarming. First of all they suggest a lack of basic awareness about the world. Secondly, given Asia’s increasing importance and growing political clout in the international community, it is an academic area that the United States can no longer afford to ignore.

Even if we assume that government officials and policy makers are more knowledgeable than the average American, and that they are able to identify Asian nations and the ocean that separates North America from Asia by name, the United States faces serious problems in the not distant future. Although we may know facts, statistics, and names, it is difficult for Americans to understand the different value systems, codes of moral conduct, priorities and ways of thinking that exist in Asia, which often conflict with our own.

This disparity is particularly apparent with respect to China. Part of the problem lies in the American media’s selection of news to report: persecution of scholars, jailings of Falungong members, visits by Jiang Zemin’s to American-termed “rogue nations” such as North Korea and blocked internet sites and propaganda in state-sponsored newspapers.

Domestically, much has been made in recent years of biases in the American media that leave the reality falling somewhat short of the ideal of a truly free press. In terms of coverage of China, it seems that much of the news reported in America is designed to stir up the feeling that Beijing represents the antithesis of all the ideals for which the United States supposedly stands.

We are good, they are evil; we are democratic, they are authoritarian; we are free, they are rigidly controlled by an oppressive government. Opposites abound. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has been floundering about, searching for a comparable rival, and finally in China, it has found a “them” to oppose the ever-angelic “us.”

Craig S. Smith wrote in a Sept. 9 New York Times article, “China routinely executes more people than all other countries combined. This year, though, has been far from routine. Without much notice at home or abroad, the government has begun sending unknown thousands of people to execution grounds, often after they have been tortured into confessing crimes that to foreigners seem minor.”

This certainly sounds like an alien world where up is down, left is right, and all that America theoretically holds dear is flushed down the toilet along with the turkey and stuffing.

China’s newly constructed Minsk Park, a big-boy playground named after the Russian aircraft carrier that serves as the center attraction, is delectable fodder for those in the media who are on a quest to prove that China is the natural enemy of the United States. With rides and games whose objective is to destroy the US Navy, it is almost too easy for the American media to play up Chinese anti-American sentiment. However, I would be more inclined to believe that in the case of Minsk Park, there is more testosterone involved than anti-American sentiment.

In Elizabeth Rosenthal’s Sept. 9 New York Times article, she wrote, “In a year in which record numbers of Chinese have applied for visas—and been rejected —the American Embassy visa section [in Beijing] has suddenly become a focal point of anti-American resentment, its decisions derided as arbitrary and unfair.”

Again, Rosenthal has placed the emphasis on the rejection and the subsequent frustration rather than on the fact that more and more Chinese are trying to leave China and come to the United States.

Having spent a total of a year and a half in China, I must say that I have never encountered any hostility based on my citizenship, though if one were to rely solely on the information provided by the American media, one might believe that in China, anti-American feelings are rabid.

The most common reaction to the discovery that I am American has been, “Really? I want to go to America.”

Though from 11,000 miles away it may be difficult to disconnect individuals from governments, in the case of China, as well as many other Asian countries, such a separation is imperative. It is essential that the media in the United States realize that despite the psychological comfort that can be derived from creating an “other,” it is actually in their own interests to portray a balanced picture of China and to help Americans understand a country that is becoming increasingly significant. Apparently, Americans need all the help they can get.

Emma R. F. Nothmann ’04, a Crimson editor, is a social anthropology concentrator in Lowell House. She spent the summer researching for Let’s Go in Asia.