山高皇帝远

Last month, I visited China, Japan and Korea in the space of two weeks for various Sun and industry events, including Sun Education & Research Conferences in China and Japan. What I saw on this trip surprised me, on both a professional level and a personal one.

Even with as much world travel as I've done--including a trip to Beijing 10 years ago--I was apprehensive about this trip for several reasons. Just before I left, there was controversy about the Olympic torch runs through San Francisco with the unfurling of the “Free Tibet” flag on the Golden Gate bridge. There was the coordinated action by sub-Saharan African countries to bar the docking of the Chinese ship loaded with guns and ammunition intended for Zimbabwe.  (I've been receiving emails from friends in Zimbabwe that are downright chilling, but that's a subject for another post.) And there have been many stories in the news about the quality of Chinese goods, and about the great firewall of China impeding access to information on the Internet from inside China. Yet the purpose of my trip was to give a talk about the power of communities and social networking technologies at a conference co-sponsored by the Chinese government!

My first stop was Shanghai for that very event, the 2008 Sun China Education & Research Conference. This was my first visit to the city, and it was a mind-opening experience, to say the least. The skyline is massive and beautiful and modern and unrecognizable, at least to me. With every other large city I've visited, I've  had a picture of the place in my mind before I went. Not Shanghai. It was as if a city the size of New York had been built overnight and there were no pictures of the place to see before your visit. 

I felt very welcomed. The people I met made every attempt to speak English. Shanghai seemed very Western, but not as crowded as a major metropolitan city like Tokyo. I presented at conferences, met with customers, and visited some of Sun's university customers. The first day, I visited the beautiful campus of Fudan University, a large private educational institution that has an enrollment of over 35,000 full-time students across four different campuses. Here's a picture outside the main administration building. Ironic that this structure's Neoclassical facade looks more like it belongs in Washington D.C. than in China!

I began to realize that my initial apprehension about China was unfounded. At the risk of sounding like a shill for the Chinese government, I think China gets a bad rap in the Western press. I think there is a lot of fear that probably stems from the Cold War and the belief that China has a highly planned, highly centralized "command-and-control" government, society and economy. 

But I learned an old saying on this trip: “Shan Gao Huang Di Yuan.” This literally means, “Mountain high, emperor far."  In other words, the mountains are so high and the emperor so far away that we will do what we want in our local area. For example, you can't help but feel the sense of pride that Shanghai feels about itself and its economic success. There's even a five-story museum honoring Shanghai's development, with a full floor dedicated to a miniature replica of the city. Shanghai is very different than Beijing.  The local governments have a lot of autonomy from the central government, just as in the United States.

I don't think Americans understand the challenges that China faces, given its population size and land mass.  I'm reading a great book by Parag Khana called The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. He does an outstanding job of comparing China and the United States. This book is where I learned about that in roughly the same land mass as the United States, China has five times the population, the majority of whom live in poverty. China, in my view, is less concerned about what is going on in the United States than it is just working to bring that large population into the modern economy as quickly as possible.

For example, my hosts told me that in China, as in many countries, admissions to the university is based on test scores; however, entering classes are sourced from all of China with test score quotas by region or province. It reminded me of the U.S. practice of encouraging diversity by maintaining quotas based on race--but instead of race, China uses geography. They want college graduates to return to their local towns and villages to help advance economic development throughout the country.

The misunderstanding flows in both directions, however. For one thing, the Chinese clearly don't understand how the press works in the United States, a problem made worse by the fact that the U.S. press does a poor job of covering China. (There are far bigger problems in China than what our press reports on, which is one reason I like reading and listening to Global Voices Online to get “real news” from citizen reporters around the world.)  For example, while I was in China, a controversy arose based on stupid remarks made by CNN reporter Jack Cafferty.  The story ran in China Daily every day I was there. The government demanded an apology, which CNN finally issued on May 15.

What they failed to understand is that their actions kept the story in the news longer than it would have stayed there otherwise, thus compounding the insult. They also failed to understand that most Americans don't put much stock in Cafferty anyway (if they even know who he is), so what difference does it make what reckless and inaccurate statements he makes about China or any other story? In the United States, you consider the source, then move on.  In China, since the press is not free, I think the government believes that CNN speaks for the U.S. government and that the U.S. government should punish CNN for their reporter's comments.

So I left for China with a certain trepidation that was replaced by a desire to learn and a desire to teach, because I think our two countries have a long way to go before we understand each other.  Luckily education--through U.S. students attending Chinese universities and Chinese students attending U.S. schools--can help bridge that divide.

Of course, China has been in the news for another reason: last week's devastating earthquake. Even though this is a tragic time, another way that we can help bridge the understanding gap is through generosity. If you are a Sun employee, you know that the Sun Microsystems Foundation will match your contributions. There are a number of charities to which you can donate. Here are a few:

Sun Microsystems Global Disaster Drive: http://vad.aidmatrix.org/vadxml.cfm?driveid=1203
Shin Shin Educational Foundation:  www.shinshinfoundation.org
American Red Cross: www.redcross.org
MercyCorps: www.mercycorps.org
CARE: www.care.org
Save the Children: www.savethechildren.org
Salvation Army: www.salvationarmy.usawest.org