Thursday, June 3, 2010

"When Can We Do This Again??" - Kate Kaup

Who would have thought I’d be asking this already..???---but when can we do this again??

I had such a great time travelling with this group. Everyone came on board excited to learn as much as possible, and game for my crazy schedule, which aimed to show as much as possible in our brief time! Our group was as excited as I am about Furman's eight separate exchange programs with our partners in Suzhou, and about exploring new avenues for Furman to expand its Asian Studies Department and Chinese studies programs. We had fun and intense brainstorming sessions, and we came up with a host of great ideas!

Currently, I’m sitting here in the Nanning Airport in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, trying to enjoy the breeze despite the flood of smokers gasping their last cigarette before entering the now smoke-free airport, and reflecting back on our trip. Though I have a chance to travel to China almost every year, I’m still stunned each time by its rapid growth, the tremendous national potential, and the pull of tradition as the nation moves forward. The developed Chinese cities, once you can see them through the smog, often have extremely modern architecture and infrastructure and the sheer prowess of city managements’ handling of millions and millions of urbanites crammed into small spaces is mind-boggling. Development even in the relatively smaller interior provincial capitals has also been rapid, though one is constantly reminded of the extremes in wealth as peasants come into the cities to perform menial manual labor and sell their wares.

Furman has been working hard to recruit Chinese students this year, primarily in the larger cities along the East Coast. There is a huge pool of talent here and we’ll benefit immensely from having a stronger Chinese presence on campus. It was hard to see longtime professor friends in Nanning this week, though, whom I know are making less than $800 a month (about ten times what they were earning when I was last here in ’99) and have little hope of sending their children abroad. The tuition at the Nationalities University here is less than $4,000 RMB per year (around 600 USD) and most students are on need-based scholarships. When our group was in Tibet, we chatted with a group of peasants on our way to Samye and learned that they made about 4,000 RMB PER YEAR (their cash earnings, not including the value of their crops they had consumed). Though the government is better now about not allowing “miscellaneous fees” to be imposed on primary school children, the tuition for HIGH SCHOOL in Lhasa, according to these peasants, is about 2,500 RMB per year. Most of the students in these peasants’ village simply drop out of high school because they can’t afford the high fees, and they certainly don’t believe they can test into or afford college. As one travels further away from provincial capitals (like Lhasa) in the border regions, poverty rates increase dramatically. The gap in East-West is huge, as is the gap between rich and poor. Despite Hu Jintao’s efforts to promote a “harmonious society” and address the huge disparities in wealth, the discrepancies between haves and have-nots are increasing rapidly. I hope as Furman recovers from our own nation’s financial difficulties, we may be able to consider offering a need-based scholarship to a student from a less developed area as we simultaneously recruit those with increasingly rich opportunities in the cities.

I tried to design this trip to give our Furman travellers a feel for the huge variations in China—to allow them to experience modern city life, the nation’s financial capital, a poor minority region well garrisoned with Han police, and the loess plains of Xian. Though we saw some farming areas surrounding Suzhou, one thing we did not see much of was rice agriculture in the south and I wish we had had a chance to see more of the rural undeveloped areas. The homes that we entered, including one just outside of Lhasa, were well appointed and didn’t give enough of a feel for the harsh conditions under which most peasants still live. So…this group will have to join us for the next trip, and head to Guizhou and Yunnan!!

I would be remiss if I didn’t take a few moments to reflect on the importance of Asian Studies, not just at Furman, but across the United States. It is impossible to understand much in Asia through a single disciplinary lens. Only through understanding the region’s history, religion, politics, social structures, cultural heritage, economics, hopes and disappointments can one hope to understand any given government policy, literary work, or business strategy. I recently had someone ask me “what do you mean by ‘Chinese economics?’ Isn’t economics based on scientific principles---isn’t supply and demand just supply and demand anywhere?” Though economists examining China needs to be well grounded in economic principles, these principles cannot be abstractly applied in China without taking into account a wide array of uniquely Chinese considerations. What exactly constitutes “rational choice,” for example, will be wildly different in a US setting than as seen through the eyes of economic policymakers in Beijing who are attempting to address a host of political, economic, and social demands that may lead to decisions unexpected by economic analysts unfamiliar with the Chinese context. Similarly, by exploring Chinese economic strategies carefully, economists with strong area studies training will be able to contribute to and enrich broader theories that may require adjustment after considering the Chinese case.

I’ve heard some challenge the expansion of Chinese language offerings with comments like “what happens if China collapses like the Soviet Union? What if there’s not such huge development in China as predicted?” I could recount all of the common justifications for studying China; it’s rich and expansive history, its importance on the international scene as a permanent member of the Security Council and its influence in areas of the world that the United States has trouble reaching, its record as the longest and fastest growing economy in the history of the world, its population that accounts for a fifth of the world’s total, …and more. I could also recount how the study of China contributes and enriches broader theoretical discussions across disciplines in political science, economics, history, philosophy, religion, art, sociology, and more. It’s also important to keep in mind, though, that the possibility of China not succeeding the way most analysts predict makes it perhaps even more imperative to study. What if China can’t clean up its pollution problem? What if the disparities in wealth, pervasive corruption, risky banking policies, nationalistic rhetoric, unnaturally distorted demographics and the host of other challenges facing the regime lead to the undermining of state power and the weakening of China on the international stage? Such a scenario would be dangerous not only to Chinese, but to the rest of the world, and to American interests. It’s imperative that we train a corps of students able to embrace all of the potential opportunities that a developing China presents, study and reflect on the rich cultural heritage that is only recently being fully explored, and prepare for addressing and formulating new policies for the myriad issues that will inevitably arise out of either China’s rise or its stagnation.

Finally, as we’ve been exploring China on this trip, nearly all my reflections have focused on China and US-China relations. The Asian Studies Department at Furman has quite rich offerings outside of our Chinese studies courses, however. We have outstanding specialists on South Asia and Japan, and offer dynamic study away programs in both India and Japan. The China-side of our program has benefitted immensely from Ravenel Curry’s generous support and our Summer China Experience has introduced China to more than sixty incoming freshman thanks both to Ravenel’s and Carrie and Richard Tucker’s financial support. The AS Department is quite pleased with how we’ve utilized these generous gifts and been able to triple the number of our majors, exponentially expand our overseas offerings, add talented faculty to the department, and attract federal funding. We’re hoping to build on this record of success and turn to further strengthening of our South Asian and Japanese offerings.
Thanks to our great group, and thanks for dragging me into the 21st Century with this, my first blogging effort!