On Dark Matter

Orville Schell's essay "China: Humiliation & the Olympics" in the New York Review of Books is well-researched, informative, and insightful, one with rare high quality. However, it is a pity that even such a serious China scholar was at times unable to break away from his own presumptions. Just as I was immersed in his eloquent analysis of the way China's historical humiliation by foreign powers shaped the country's modern identity, and brought forth extreme nationalistic sentiment visible today, something in the following passage stuck in my eye:

What was surprising was that many of the most indignant counterdemonstrators were young Chinese, born during the post-Mao era. Better educated and more worldly than older Chinese, one might have expected them to have been exempt from the China-as-victim syndrome. But, perhaps because they, too, were products of the Party's propaganda, many of them have turned out every bit as nationalistic, perhaps even more so, than their elders.^[*]

Then, as if an after-thought, Schell hesitantly adds a footnote:

^[*] Daniel A. Bell's China's New Confucianism, an account of teaching at elite Tsing-hua University, where classroom discourse has proven far more open and students far more reflective, reminds us that not all Chinese students are xenophobes.

While I must give him credit for including this footnote, Schell's convenient presumption that today's students in China are as much products of the Party's propaganda as earlier generations lacks a basis in reality. Apparently, he was very familiar with China in the 1970s, and many of the then-concepts got stuck in his mind as immutable. I visit China every year and talk to all sorts of people, including college students. They appear very well connected to the outside world and not at all as xenophobic as Americans imagine. Their nationalism has a lot more to do with the good economy they enjoy than Party propaganda.

Of course, Schell is not alone. As recent as last week, during the Q&A session of a book event, a woman asked me, "Do the Chinese know about things outside their country?" "Oh yeah," I replied. Such a question came often, and it is understandable, and reasonable, when it comes from someone who doesn't follow China regularly. But it is a bit disappointing to hear it from an expert like Schell, or the BBC anchor who said, "How did they even know we have biases? The Chinese government blocked us!"

Which reminds me last summer when I toured a mountain in Sichuan, an old peasant lady sitting under a tree asked me, "Are you from the city? Do you have trees there?"

If you skip this small disappointing spot, Schell's essay is well worth reading. I was particularly drawn to his analysis of the Chinese people's cultural insecurity caused by the continuous "large-scale, but never definitive, makeovers" occurring in China during the 20^th century. Coincidentally, a few days ago when I gave a talk at the Harvard Coop, an American man who had lived in Taiwan for several years told me that the Taiwanese are the most culturally secure people in the world, with no identity issues at all. The reason? The Taiwan Chinese, while deeply rooted in the five-thousand years of rich culture, didn't experience any of the upheavals of the mainland each rejecting the concepts of its predecessor. A very interesting observation.

By the way, Schell's article makes me really want to see Dark Matter. If any of you have seen the movie, would you please tell me what you think of it?