WHICH NBA TEAM IS FROM ATLANTA?

Robbie, one of my oldest friends in the world from Atlanta, and I were biking through villages near rural Yangshuo, a picturesque mountain town in Southern China.  Our guide, Tony, spoke broken English and, so we thought, could only show us the roadside details he had memorized from his tour-guide briefing.  At one turn, he looks over at me and says, “Where you from?”  I say “We are from Atlanta, Georgia in America.”  He says, “Atlanta?  Which NBA team is that?”  I respond, “Atlanta Hawks.”  He says, “Oh, Atlanta Hawks!  Number 8 in Eastern Conference!  Joe Johnson!”

I love the Atlanta Hawks and I really enjoy watching the NBA.  The players are so good, and they play at such a high level, that when the games are good, they are great.  I am one of the bigger NBA fans I know—most people only like college basketball.  Yet this rural Chinese guy knew much more about the NBA than I did.  We talked rosters, statistics, who would win the NBA title, and who would win the MVP for an hour.  Even with his limited English, he had strong opinions (that Chris Paul was the best point guard in the game, and the Celtics’ three good players would overwhelm the Lakers’ one-two combo of Kobe and Pau Gasol in the NBA finals).
He was not the only Chinese person I found obsessed with the NBA.  Ever since Yao Ming, the greatest player in China, came to the Houston Rockets, the NBA has taken over the country.  We saw NBA ads all across the country (Shane Battier, former Duke star, had his picture on the side of buses in Xi’an).  I talked NBA with over twenty Chinese people.  Games were on state-controlled TV, usually in the mornings (when it was night in America).  David Stern, the NBA commissioner leading a wave of globalization, should be proud.

In my travels around the world, as someone who studies politics, I’ve found that there are two universal subjects: sports (at least for men) and politics.  Anyone can talk about either of the two.  Even people who don’t like politics and aren’t involved aren’t engaged for a reason.  And sports—well, everyone has an opinion there.  In the two weeks I was in China, I talked a lot of sports and a lot of politics with the Chinese, and I did my best to learn what was going on in the country.

“TWO-MAN MINDFULNESS”

One of the coolest things about the trip was being able to talk with Chinese people my age about life in China, where the country was headed, and more.  At the People’s University of Beijing, we had lunch with the editor of the school newspaper, the Student Council Vice-President, and more.  To be in student leadership in Chinese universities, you have to be a Communist Party member.  You are studying political science, and the government is training you to be a member of the government.  You do student leadership as a breeding/training ground so that you have experience when you enter the civil service post-university, you are somewhat ready.  These guys were young, interested in government, and very honest and open about what they thought about China.

The Chinese have what they themselves describe as a “two-man mindfulness.”  My friend Bill, who spent months in China before I came, gave me a pointer: if you want Chinese to be honest about their government and their country, give it nothing but praise.  Eager to present a balanced picture, they will point out faults.  On the other hand, he said that in the examples where he had criticized the Chinese, they would vigorously defend themselves.

This played out when talking to young Chinese people, big time.  Chinese people, in my experience, were very passionate and patriotic.  They love their country more than any other nationality I’ve seen, except for Americans.  They are deeply proud of their long history (they asked questions at length of what we thought of the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and more) and a bit embarrassed that their country is behind the rest of the world.  They revered Mao as a great leader, but liked Deng Xiaopeng, who led to economic open-ness, much better. “Development” is their primary objective.

When we talked about freedom of speech, religion, and more, they seemed unbothered by the state of affairs.  The newspaper editor said that to print, say, an editorial cartoon criticizing the government would be “disrespectful.”  When we talked about media control, they simply resigned to the inevitability of progress, saying, “as China becomes more open, we will become more free, too.  It’s getting there, so there is no sense pushing for it.”  The younger generation of Chinese is fiercely patriotic, very much defends the Chinese party line, and is very optimistic about the country’s future.

“WE ARE NOT A THREAT TO YOU”

One big question about China: what does their rise mean for the US?  This “two-man mindfulness” plays into US-Chinese relations.  The Chinese were more complimentary of George W. Bush than any other country I have visited.  One guy called him a “Fool,” but said that “every leader has his good and his bad points,” praising his role in US-Chinese economic relations.  What is the future here?

The Chinese are, by themselves, very cautious about their direction.  When I asked one guy, “what is the future of China?” he responded, unsolicited, “We are not a threat to you.”  The Chinese, from what I gathered, do want to be in the position of global power that they once were, but are trying to do it quietly so that the rest of the world won’t notice.  But I do think after my trip that, if America plays its cards right, China in fact is not a threat to the country—not a competitor in the traditional sense.  America and China can operate two spheres of an influential global role, having a comfortable—if at times uneasy—partnership.

One Chinese young person expressed her frustration that everything in the world is “Made in China,” but very little is “Created in China.”  The Chinese want to develop a pluralist market economy without an open, pluralist government.  It is incredibly hard to start a business in China.  The Chinese lack impartial courts, property rights, independent auditors, trust-busting mechanisms, and more—all of the things that lead to an ability for creativity, entrepreneurship, and market flexibility.  The Chinese do not have Fortune 500 companies—they produce tennis shoes, computers, and more for other Fortune 500 Companies.  Corruption is rampant—under current president Hu Jintao’s crackdown, many of the government’s top officials have been to indicted (including the mayors of large cities and regional party secretaries!).  It is hard to separate enterprise from state-controlled monopolies.

Yet China has outstanding universities, great developing minds, and vast laboratories where Dell, Microsoft, and more develop their latest schemes.  Sure, they are being made in China under the auspices of American companies, but brilliant engineers are doing first-class research.  What does this mean for the future?

Currently, the American presidential candidates are talking about trade deals and outsourcing.  American factories that make textiles, furniture, and more have shut down in part because Chinese labor for making plastic toys, shoes, and basketballs is much cheaper.  There is talk about trade protectionism and keeping jobs in America, but in the long run, America should not try to be a competitor with China in manufacturing jobs—we simply cannot compete.  We like to pay our workers a fair wage (which we do, and China often doesn’t), and we like buying items at low prices (I certainly do!)  Until Americans stop shopping at Wal-Mart—which, with the money you save, I don’t think will happen—the jobs going overseas aren’t coming back.

But America still does have a competitive advantage in research, development, the knowledge sector, and entrepreneurship.  Research and development creates jobs, even for the workers who aren’t doing the researching.  Setting up research labs is complicated, just as assembling cars is.  We have many highly-skilled manual labor workers who are out of a job because of the changing nature of the economy.  We have a higher regard for workers’ welfare than China, so we can’t compete by the old rules of the game.  But America is much better lent to creativity and innovation; here’s where we can compete.  If we think of America as the nerve center for the world, and China as the production center, and invest accordingly, we just might be able to have a comfortable power-sharing scheme.

BUT WHAT ABOUT TIBET?

On this same bike ride, I heard what sounded like gunshots echoing across the mountains.  I asked our guide what I was hearing.  He responded, “no bang bang (making the motion of a gun) but boom boom.  We build new houses.”  He then further went on to say “We no have bang bang anybody.  Maybe Dalai Lama!”  We had talked about Tibet, and the Chinese are forcefully anti-Free Tibet.  In a case of “two-man mindfulness,” I had been very pro-Tibet freedom before my trip.  But I came to understand the Chinese side while I was in China.

Here’s the Chinese case: Imagine that you are Chinese.  You have spent more money on the Tibetan region than any other region in China.  Tibet is important strategically (border with India) and culturally.  It’s a large land mass,  You are trying to hold together a country of 1.3 billion people, and with many regions having their issues, you fear a mass secession if you don’t play your cards right.  In the meantime, you have contributed heavily to Tibet’s economic development.  Tibet was a backwards mountain kingdom in 1949—an authoritarian, repressive regime (hardly the idyllic utopia that hard-liners portray).  What is so different or worse about the Chinese controlling Tibet?

Now, I am more sympathetic to the Chinese point.  This doesn’t mean I agree with it (I don’t—especially the repression of religion and more) but I do get where they are coming from more.  This is, in my experience, to get what diplomacy tries to do—to understand where people are coming from and why they do what they do.  I think that Chinese indifference to individual rights is bad.  But I also can’t vilify the Chinese for what they are doing in Tibet—it’s a difficult situation.  I certainly don’t endorse gunning down monks, of course, but I also am not taking my fire extinguisher to the Olympic Torch.

The solution for Tibet?  Tibetans themselves mostly don’t want independence.  They do, however, want a high degree of local autonomy, much like Hong Kong and Macau have.  I think this is probably the course worth taking.

THE OLYMPICS

Speaking of the Olympics, they were ALL OVER China.

In Beijing, we landed and thought it was snowing out the window.  Instead, what we saw was heavy pollution.  Yet we saw rapid improvement in the city for the world to come (though I don’t think it will be ready in time).  The Chinese are controlling traffic patterns and the weather in order to get the country on track.  Is giving the Olympics to China a good thing if it forces modernization and liberalization?  We essentially saw a country-wide effort (was it genuous?) to impress the West (sometime us.)

Will it be enough?

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

I’ve almost written enough for one post, but I have a few more observations to include here.  I will reflect more on China as time goes on.

1)    Chinese people often choose English names in order to make their names more Western-friendly.  One girl, Rachel, was given her name by the Holiday Inn where she worked at age 18.  She has kept it.  I asked her if she liked it; she said, “I don’t hate it.”  Another guy, Tony, took his name after San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker, his favorite player.  He loves his name.

2)    Because of the one-child policy, every Chinese person under the age of about 30 is an only child.  This has huge developmental concerns.  For one, young Chinese people have a self-centeredness that is noticeable.  I was in line trying to sort out an airplane ticket, and about 20 young Chinese people over the course of my transaction shoved their ticket in between me and the woman working at the counter, saying they had a “Quick question” and asked to be tended to.  The woman yelled at all of them, urging them to get to the back of the line.  The older Chinese are very subdued and respectful; younger Chinese have an inner, self-determined drive.  This, I think, has major consequences for the future!

3)    While I was in Beijing, the State of Georgia, my hometown, opened an office there.  This is exactly, going off of my “We are not a threat to you” passage, what governments should be doing.  More reflection on this point in a future post.

We traveled by bus, moto-rickshaw, car, plane, boat, rowboat, bicycle, and train, and covered about the size of the United States in two weeks!

It was an amazing trip that I’m still processing.  Stories, pictures, and more to come later.

Ring in with your thoughts.

ERB

PS: I was curious about what the Chinese thought of Richard Nixon.  I asked them all, and usually they knew “Open China” and “Watergate,” and didn’t know enough to have an opinion.  But one guy, upon hearing Richard Nixon, said “ping-pong god!”