Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

It is common logic that laws are only enforceable where individuals can be tracked down when crimes are committed. The ability to identify and track down the criminal is perhaps the most factor preventing more people from harming others for personal benefit. Seriously, if one knows that one is guaranteed that one cannot be found by the law-enforcement agencies, where is the risk for doing something illegal? In the modern world, this sort of "disappearing criminal" logic still works in two circumstances: international relations and the cyberspace. As for international relations, I don't need to elaborate. A country can easily make up some bullshit reasons to invade another in the name of "justice." And domestic laws can easily be overridden when foreign fishermen are concerned. The logic is clear, the criminal with more power, as defined by greater technology, greater economic strength , and even greater size becomes good enough reason to replace the bound...

After looking at the ongoing boat row as a financial damage to Japan and as a personal experience of getting negative treatments in Japan , it is perhaps necessary to look at the whole reason why border disputes between nations are so hard to resolve. Some tend to argue that the issue is largely economic. The whole reason there are disputes over Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is over the seabed oil fields nearby, and the whole reason why Japan still argues over islets with Russia and Korea is also over fishing fields and trade routes. According to these arguments, somehow Japan's economy/economic security can be greatly boosted through control over a few islands. But aside from a few decades of cheap fish and oil, the short term benefits are just as hard to establish as long term strategic interests. An essentially Euro-centric Russia sees no reason for war in sparely populated Far East for further expansion, and Japan should not see itself powerful enough to go at it with nuclear Russ...

So it seems these days when Chinese walks around in the streets of Tokyo. Of course, unless we open our mouths, no one would know, but public opinion is public opinion after all...just seeing the guy next to you on the commuter train reading a newspaper article titled "China's Ambitions to Take Over the East Sea" can't possibly be very pleasing for myself and millions of other Chinese who are in this country. And then comes the news that Japan rejects Chinese demands for apology and in exchange issues a demand for financial reparations. I really wonder if the government is heeding the call of the people on this particular issue, on both sides. There are few bilateral economic relationships as close and interrelated as the one between Japan and China, with goods and personnel constantly crossing the borders. As much as citizens on both sides have certain negative images about each other, no one, even on the extreme right, can deny the existing benefits of economic c...

Finally, today, I sent my grandmother back to Nanjing, ending my pretty much self-imposed three-week house arrest. Watching my grandmother behave in public for one last time (in a long long while, at least) as we head our way by train, it still makes me think how older people behave in China. Maybe a lot of what I say here is peculiar to my grandmother, but basically, all the social vices we perceive that Chinese people have are incredibly prevalent among elders. For instance, cutting in line is normal (quite humiliating for me to watch when my grandmother does it because I can't follow her in that particular act). Also, for her, words like "Excuse me," "Thank you," and "Please" are never to be used in public toward strangers (even customer service people)...and, smiling toward others is just not something to be done logically. Ironically, when foreigners first think of Chinese elders, bearded wise smiling old men (like Confucius) are probably the...

There has a lot of attention on Japan holding Chinese fishermen and Japan selling Yen to devalue it against USD, but everyone thought the two news are completely unrelated to each other...until now. There has been new reports (more like rumors) saying that the Chinese are beginning to throw its massive 2.5 trillion USD foreign reserves into buying Japanese government bonds, in such a scale that the CCP is actually selling off many of its USD assets to make the purchases. If the rumors can be proved correct, its potentially a huge financial assault on Japan amid political confrontation. The economics is this: when the Chinese sell off USD-denoted assets, the demand of USD decreases, causing its value to decrease. At the same time, buying Japanese government bonds requires the Chinese to first buy huge amounts of cash in yen (using USD or RMB), causing the demand and value of yen to increase (USD and RMB to devalue as they are put in the market in place of Yen). Together, the two mov...

Recently, a rich girl in Korea showing off her wealth and luxury goods on a local TV station got the whole country pissed off. When it turned out that the TV station told the (averaged middle class) girl to make up the whole thing to get higher rating for the show, criticism and financial punishment for the TV station was logically and swiftly called for. The fact that the TV station is capable of thinking up something like this and the success in attracting (mostly negative) attention to the said TV show goes to show the sensitivity normal people have regarding an outright display of social inequality. Of course, this kind of wealth display is not new or rare. Internet forums in China practically gets new pics of some rich boy or girls' personal "accessories" every single day, attracting fiery comments from netizens. The fact that these young boys and girls are from wealthy families and did not work for any of their wealth only increases the negative sentiments towar...

So it seems I have believed for a long time. The manual labor job that probably has one of the highest date rates, the coal miner is the ultimate blue-collar job. In China, thousands of them die every year, only to be replaced by thousands more who come from the countryside for a quick buck (and a quick death). The lack of regulation in the mining industry (not just coal) means that laws cannot protect the workers and can't be used to improve their conditions. Popular belief (not just here but also everywhere) think that no matter how "safe" laws make the mines, mining is a dangerous, boring job without any prospects for brighter future. But the ongoing media coverage on rescuing 30-some Chilean coal workers trapped underneath a collapsed mine tunnel for a few months shows that maybe to simply consider coal miners are hapless and unfortunate pawns of gigantic mining companies is becoming a thing of the past, at least in certain parts of the world. There seem to be da...

Living under the shadows of Internet censorship, here in China we are used to the fact that foreign websites are inaccessible and foreign Internet companies are treated as if they are all secretly working as cyber-spies for the American government. But when it comes to Microsoft and Google, two of the world's probably best known companies involved with the Internet, the attitude of the Chinese government have been quite different. While Google has been in a constant fight to get itself greater market share over Baidu, Microsoft's MSN has seen strong growth in instant messaging despite strong domestic competition. At the same time, while Bill Gates is quite an honored personality here in China, the higher ends of Google has not seen strong following in either the Chinese government or the public. As the Chinese Internet market heads to its destiny as the world's largest, Microsoft versus, one of the most peculiar yet influential rivalry in the human civilization increasin...

To this day, the idea that I am in a foreign country while in China has not really sank into my mind. While I understand that (as I will rant on about in the following paragraphs) citizenship, more often than not, is a display of pure opportunism rather than some deep-hearted and sincerely nationalistic loyalty, a mental change, after all, does need to accompany a sudden change in national status. Recently in China, a fishing boat colliding with a Japanese patrol vessel in disputed territory has been subject of nationalistic outbursts. Especially considering the elections in Japan that marks another shit back toward pro-American stance and September 18th being the anniversary of start of Sino-Japanese War, tensions run high here. As much as I stay neutral on these issues, I wonder that, if similar situation were to occur in the States on July 4th, would there be as big of a reaction? Some priest threatening to burn Korans on September 11th and the popular support for such an act show...

Even just going to a supermarket with your grandmother can be a learning experience in China. As a relatively new phenomenon that did not really take off in China until the early 90s, supermarkets are still a sort of middle class luxury rarely experienced by elders and people in the rural areas. In fact, for everyday shopping (especially for food), supermarkets of any kind are considered rather high end (and prices reflected this), with most Chinese preferring to buy their raw vegetables and sorts in open air markets with small stalls rather than get them all packaged from local supermarkets. Even the middle class thinks that those open air markets (sort of like "farmers' markets" in the States) have fresher local produce directly from the fields, whereas the goods in the supermarkets are commercially produced, meaning that they are made with high quantities of chemicals and are shipped from areas far far away. Of course, once you go to the open air markets, you know t...

As someone (nominally) adhering to a leftist political ideology, the continued existence (and strengthening) of social class differences is quite a major issue for me. Obviously, as all leftists, I believe that the lack of equality in opportunity (or rather, the existence of double standards in which people at higher social classes get better access to education, job training, and business relationships that enable them to have greater chance of obtaining higher incomes...elitism, in short) is the fundamental reason for class gap to emerge. With elitism, social mobility that allows for descendants of lower class to move upward in social hierarchy exists just as an idealized principle. But at this point in time, I would like to question a basic premise of this argument. In modern society, we define social class as simply as a matter of income, as we assume that better educated people with jobs that require more sophistication is bound to make more money. Furthermore, we assume that t...

Approaching a 10-day count until I finally depart for my job in Japan, I am thinking about what kind of hell that I will be expected to raise once I actually start working. No, really, otherwise why would I be hired in the first place? A Japanese company's business side compels the newbies to do some sales in the beginning. And obviously, a foreigner, whose spoken (not to mention written) Japanese has some serious problems, has no way to out-compete Japanese employees in talking Japanese customers in Japanese into buying random stuff (unless its a white/black guy doing door-to-door, then the Japanese people might actually be amused enough to listen...while, at least initially). And that explains why I get rejected from practically all Japanese companies with which I applied for a job. There is no need for many multilingual dudes claiming to know foreign markets considering these big conglomerates hire local talents in different localities around the globe. The local talents do...

One thing that is really noticeable these days in China is the degree of non-propagandistic political underpinning that goes into literary works. In a country where even the news still contains plenty of brain-washing tactics on respecting and loving the Party, the (limited) freedoms of thoughts shown by even highly censored publishing business here in China has been quite amazing. From democracy to human rights, the usual suspects of government censorship abound, leading the usual reader to wonder whether the book s/he is reading somehow managed to slip through the censors. Obviously, the answer is no. Government censorship is as systematic as it has always been, reviewing every book that can possibly pack a slight tinge of political ideas for dissidence. There can only be two explanations for how "open" (relatively speaking, of course) the publishing industry in China has become. The first is growing skill of Chinese literati to hide "progressive" political i...

Finishing the same book that I wrote about in the two previous posts, I was surprised how there could be an optimistic conclusion to such a depressing storyline. Amid a growing increase in the number of farming migrants to the Inner Mongolian grasslands, concerted efforts to eradicate wolves and introduce farmlands into the area are undertaken. While wolves no longer harm livestock and herders become settled residents with regular services and amenities enjoyed by other citizens, the grasslands slowly turned into a vast desert spewing sand toward Beijing to the south. It seems that under modern pressures, the grassland and its masters budged, abandoning the principles that kept the grasslands healthy and sustainable for centuries. A shallow perspective would feel that this is but another typical Chinese phenomenon of trading wealth for environment, but the author has pointed out the final and ultimate demise of the nomadic-herding tribes are the greatest loss. For generations, thro...

In the last post, I talked about the inevitability of nomadic-herders to be assimilated by agriculture-based civilizations despite greater strength and understanding of military strategies. Surely enough, no country in this modern world is completely based on animal husbandry, and all of the major powers all have strong agricultural backgrounds and production capabilities. A Han Chinese or any other members of agriculture-based civilizations should be happily considering this point as a matter of fact. The strength of human capability to produce resources not naturally allotted by Mother Earth may be the most basic quality that distinguish it from mere beasts. But having such a self-righteous attitude belies one of the greatest faults of agriculture-based civilizations. In their quests to continue expansion, in population, societal organization, technology, industry, etc., it does not and refuses to believe that there could be a limit to such forward progress. Technology, so far at...

Out of absolute boredom of staying at home and doing virtually nothing productive, I have been reading a Chinese book on the lives of Mongolian herders on the vast steppes of the Inner Mongolian Grasslands. Written as a personal narrative of a Han Chinese youngster escaping the violence of Cultural Revolution, it explores, from the perspective of the Han Chinese, the lifestyles, values, and beliefs of the "untamed" (i.e. not converted into permanent settled communities) Mongolians in an effort to understand the ethnic differences and the spectacular military history of Mongols and their ancestors. From the very beginning, the author establishes the bipolarity of "nomadic-herding civilization" (such as that of the Mongolians) vs. "agriculture-based civilization" (such as that of the Han Chinese). As a visitor from the agriculture-based civilization, the author immediately notices the respect the herders hold for the the wolf, a creature so hated and widely...

With the increased global influence China holds, studying Chinese really has become a trend among foreigners keen on tapping the economic opportunities in China. Multinationals are seeking employees with knowledge of Chinese culture, language, and society to further expand in the Chinese market, making Chinese the desired foreign language when competing for employment in the corporate sector. Of course, for China, such a trend is also economically helpful by itself. Rich foreigners, taking advantage of low costs in China, come to study in Chinese universities and in the process, spend freely on local services and products. Yet, amid a generally positive environment for developing a profitable Chinese education industry, the methods with which Chinese are taught to foreigners here, at least from the perspective of a Chinese raised abroad, seem quite discomforting. With universities completely controlled by the government, the Chinese education curriculum here continues to hold stron...

Finished talking about tourists in the last post, I would like to take the development of individualism in China to a more positive note. With intense control of public opinion and what is considered "moral, non-corrupting forms of entertainment" by the government, the concept of entertainment programs did not even exist on Chinese TV until very very recently. Just a decade ago, Chinese TV consisted of news, propagandistic drama series (involving such favorite topics as anti-Japanese war stories and communist greatness...topics that still are popular to this day because of guaranteed popularity with the older generations), and little else... Then, with increased reforms and commercializations of the local TV stations, entertainment programs, often involving pop musicians and celebrities, came into being as means of attracting younger audience groups. The programs, emulating similar ones in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, requires the hosts and guests to think on ...

A couple of days ago, I went to the Shanghai Expo for the second, and hopefully, the last time. I wasn't keen to go to begin with and only went there to help my aunt push my 86-year-old grandmother around in a wheelchair. My aunt and the rest of my family calls such act "filial," but seriously, if I was the old person, I would be happiest if left alone in a quiet environment. The Expo, with all its loud people, noise, plus the hot weather, would not only be no enjoyment to an old person, but pose serious health risk from the heat and/or contracting some contagious disease from the crowd. Perhaps thats why I still don't get why Chinese people see "multiple generations under the same roof" as a sign of a happy and fulfilling family. Wouldn't it be much better for the old person to be with other old people with similar interests and lifestyles in a retirement community of some sort? By forcing the younger generations to take care of the elders through ...

With the pro-status quo Kuomintang (Nationalists) in power again in Taiwan after eight years under pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, it seems that, at least for now, the growing movement toward formal independence of Taiwan from the Republic of China (ROC) has been thwarted. But as I have repeatedly observed in Taiwan, the common Taiwanese people, especially among the younger generations with no memories of the ROC's presence on the Chinese mainland, the entire concept of ROC means little if anything.

Without a doubt, going to Taiwan for me has been a real eye-opener. But as I stated in previous posts, the real physical differences between the two are too insignificant to their discrepancies in mentalities, worldviews, and attitudes. Such a mental difference can also be reflected in economic terms, even though the two has strong and obvious gaps in wealth and overall sense of development. Yet, even though we all know that Taiwan leads in terms of living standards, productivity, or per capita income, there should still be a sense of doubt whether the situation is so because of more successful market model undertaken in Taiwan as the West claims. The ruling Kuomintang has always stressed the importance of capitalist (or rather, anti-communist) ideology in governance. Yet, its political strength has always been sapped by the economic dominance of few families, who held the exclusive rights to the key industries. The economic oligarchy was not really broken until much later and the i...