The Chinese Elephant
January 2nd, 2008 . by Julian Hewitt
“In tonight’s programme we will reveal how the majority of American apple juice actually comes from Communist China.”
Sounds like this excerpt is straight out of the fear mongering of the Cold War era, but actually it is one of the last TV sound bites I took back with me after a recent trip to the USA. While you might argue this is my just punishment for watching something like Fox TV, it does highlight how China is still so rigidly defined by stereotypes.
China is an incredibly complex country to sum up. The huge scale of the nation and its recent lightning fast socio - economic changes make it a country that comfortably holds many paradoxes in a way that few other countries can lay claim too. China is both rich and poor, communist and capitalist, old and new.
Most western minds crave an easy answer to understanding China in a sound bite. Even with fluent Mandarin linguistic ability and comprehensive cultural insight, China does not throw up any easy answers.
Before coming to China, I was interested in exploring the various lenses that popular media view China through. It occurred to me that the country is the modern day equivalent of the ‘Blind men and the Elephant’ Sufi tale.
The parable goes that there are some blind men gathered around a strange beast. One man grabs the elephant’s tusk and proclaims it to be a hard and spear-like animal. Another man latches on to the trunk and boldly claims that they are actually holding a powerful snake and so on. Each man is convinced that they have the answer and that the others are all wrong.
In many ways, China is very much like this elephant. It is hard and soft, sharp edged and rounded - depending on how you look at it and where you look at it from. If you look at it from political, economic, human rights, ecological, cultural or historical lenses; China will jump out at you like a different creature.
No lenses are necessarily wrong, but neither are they right. Some people have the benefit of seeing China through numerous lenses, but even if all the views are thrown in together, the sum of the parts will never equal the whole. But many people like try to convince you that they have the answer.
Books are one of the many places were this one sided view of the Chinese elephant is probably apparent. And there really are some shockers out there with titles like my all time bugbear “The Coming Collapse of China” or “The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America.”
The reality is that you can’t claim to understand China through the lens of Tiananmen Square or the Shanghai Stock Market. Nor will you get any closer by visiting Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Reading the latest “Art of War for Marketing Managers in China” or “China’s Secret Plans for Global Hegemony” will probably take you far from the point.
Unless you are comfortable with holding two opposing paradoxes in either hand, like the idea of uncertainty and don’t shy away from complexity; then the Chinese elephant will be a mysterious animal worthy of being afraid of.
What China will always remain is a collection of many lenses rather than a single reference point.
