“Line Between Chimerica & Frenemy”

Seriously. Above is the title of tonight’s “Dialogue” episode on CCTV news. There’s a lot of heated discussion about the US presence in the South China Sea these days—so the news gurus put together a Chinese Poli Sci professor, a US “International Relations Expert” and a Sino-über–conservative anchorman and let them go at it. And this was the title their editors came up with…sort of reduces a very serious, very important international issue to “Brangelina” status.

This weekend, the hot topic was China’s global image, and what the country can do to present an appropriate image for a rising power…I’m thinking, hire a pragmatics consultant? That particular news program featured the lady I call the Disney Princess (or Barbie Doll lady, or Lady in a prom dress, depending on the day). She is actually a very good news anchor/host, and knows how to get her guests to discuss the stickiest issues in the best (yet still censor safe) ways. But—she typically wears pink fluffy dresses, ruffles, flounces—basically, Barbie Doll clothes.

After nearly three months, I’m getting a hint about the image problem. Have I already mentioned—the country is a study in contrasts? The hard-hitting news anchor looks perkier than Katie Couric, if that’s possible. We left the Summer Palace on our bikes Sunday afternoon, where tourists from China and abroad spent thousands of Yuan to wander about looking at artifacts and eating overpriced hot dogs, and rode through a street the businessmen’s Mercedes and Audis could barely fit through because of the fruit peddlers broken-down, rusty carts and equally broken-down, corroded shacks. What may be the most frightening US-Sino relationship problem of the decade has a Brangelina-esque label. Experts scratch their heads and wonder about the country’s image on the Sunday news, and I have to subscribe to a VPN to tell you about it. We have buffoonery in the media (at least in that area China has caught up to the US) but don’t have freedom of speech or religion, which were honestly two things I never thought about when I had them.

The most discouraging day of my China adventure to date was directly related to these particular freedoms. We met a very friendly grad student from Beijing while we were still in Albany, and had her over to dinner to pick her brains about life in China. While she was home for the summer, she offered to help us go to the post office and mail some things out. We arranged a meeting time for a Sunday—China doesn’t care about Sundays, so we can do banking, postal errands, whatever, all weekend.

I told our friend that we could meet her after church and she said— “I’ve been wondering about that—I’d really like to go to the service with you.”

For the first time in my life, I was on the opposite end of the church invitation turndown. In America, we ask people to come to church, and they turn us down. Here, they want to come along—and they can’t. See, the Chinese government allows foreigners the freedom to worship in our own way—as long as we promise not to include any of their people. Anyone who knows about Martin Luther and the Renaissance knows that thinking too hard about church can certainly give one troublesome ideas, and the Party wants to avoid this at all costs. Only those with foreign passports can go to foreign churches. Chinese citizens who have a non-sanctioned church (one that doesn’t come under official State leadership) soon find it very difficult to rent space for meetings, to gather without being harassed, to explore that freedom we Americans take for granted. And if we allow anyone from China to come to our service, we, too, will be shut down—or even have the dreaded “detained and deported” experience.

You might wonder—with all of these people, presumably seekers at core, why do they tolerate it? Why not do something, say something, make change happen for themselves?

That’s where the other lack of freedom comes in. When I told my friend that she couldn’t go along because of her citizenship, she was shocked. She seemed to have no idea that such restrictions existed. If you can control speech and religion, you, too, can have a blissfully ignorant populace, where eighteen-year-old students tell their dismayed, speechless English teachers, “I am a free man”. Freedom is pretty relative, and I suppose this is truer for him than it was for his grandfather. Still--not my idea of an accurate sentence.

Image control problems? You bet. It’s pretty tough to present a positive image to the outside world while keeping your people behind the wall. The Stepford-wife news anchor might be a move in the right direction, but for heaven’s sake, tell her the truth about what the outside sees—not knowing you’re in captivity doesn’t make you free. It’s like the little kids who color the sky gray in their drawings—there’s blue out there somewhere, but let’s not talk about it from inside the Great Pall.