The contrast between the two leadership transitions this week is pretty incredible really. It feels a bit beyond me to make any sweeping conclusions about the events themselves, and there are countless articles doing that from every angle anyway with far superior contributions to the debates! But I will briefly summarise how they impacted me here, and what I've heard and seen.
The US election in Wudaokou
The American election felt a lot closer to me here in China than it ever has in the
UK, mainly because of the huge international community here, a large proportion of which are American. It might even be a more balanced spread of American opinions here than I'd be able to find in the states, because of the variety of states represented here among my friends. Asking each person who they were voting for or what their state was normally aligned with was so interesting because I would hear about their state's majority view, their family's view, and then their own as well. These little snapshots of the various demographics helped me to see the diversity of perspectives within the US and how people viewed the significance of their vote. Some people were very ambivalent, their states were already strongly aligned with a particular party and it was a done deal. Some of my friends were very passionately affiliated with a party, one friend did some house calling to Colorado the night before the election to try and convince swing voters from China! A lot of people I spoke to voted but weren't wholly satisfied with either candidate, and felt like they were choosing between a rock and a hard place rather than actually being able to select someone who stood for their views.
I went with friends to watch the votes come in live from the Stanford Centre in Peking
University from 8am ( on a side note, the centre is amazing and I'm so jealous), we were given a great complimentary breakfast and watched the CNN coverage before class. We returned for lunch in time to see Obama win, and then I caught his speech live in the Bridge cafe down my road a couple hours later, which was also packed with Americans. The bridge cafe had been advertising free beer for all if Obama won, and delivered on this promise which was very popular! There was a lot of celebrating on the streets and in the bars that night where I live, and cries of 'God bless America' all over the place.
The 18th Party Congress
The next morning at the start of our Classical Chinese lesson, Nick asked our teacher what she felt about the American election, and who she wanted to win. She was very pro Obama and gave reasons why. Then he commented that that morning was the important one with the start of the 18th congress and leadership transition, how did she feel about that? She said it didn't really concern her, she would just hear how it went and that was it.
The impact of the party congress session on my everyday life has been as follows:
- there are lots of volunteers wandering around the streets wearing communist armbands pinned onto their coat sleeves, apparently there are more volunteers for this than there were for the Olympics in Beijing, but I still don't really understand what they are actually doing, nor have I witnessed them doing anything except walking around.
- big posters and banners have appeared on the roads and in my apartment complex, and like during national week someone has put Chinese flags at the entrance to every part of the compound.
- the entrance to Peking University campus has upped the security at the gate and is asking for your cards to be let in which it has never done before. They are still pretty easy to slip thorough but it is a lot more strict than before. This is because most of the political protests and student movements of the past century have their roots at Peking University. Whenever the government is anxious about uprising or civilian unrest, they always make sure that the Peking University campus is being monitored very closely.
-the biggest annoyance is that the Internet is extremely slow because everything is being read. Not only are networks failing all the time but vpns, which are the way people can access banned websites are being hacked all the time and stop working for long periods of time. The Internet disruption has been going on for about two weeks and is expected to continue for roughly another fortnight.
-I watched CCTV ( China's version of BBC) for news about the party congress but the coverage was really very minimal. The first piece of news was about how supermarket workers were learning dance routines to improve fitness and work enjoyment, the second was about Chinese officials documenting the number of endangered birds in another province's marshland, and then finally they showed two minutes of footage about the congress, a sweeping shot of the delegates, individual shots of some of the big names and then some silent footage of Hu Jintao speaking with the news reporter talking over him the entire time. Not particularly in depth or groundbreaking, I will need to try and stream the foreign news to get any substantial footage or analysis. Although from articles I've read about how dull the speech was, maybe the Chinese public have been spared!
No comments:
Post a Comment