I live and work in the PRC. Yes, it’s pretty much communist in name only, but China has gone through a huge set of transformations since the 1980’s. I teach English and History at a high school with Chinese nationals. I have a teacher’s assistant (T.A.) who is Chinese and speaks pretty good English. She helps me handle the Chinese student body whose English level is variable. I’m no slouch in Mandarin, but as a team we make it work. Our staff is half Western and half Chinese. China is not as repressive as it is made out to be in the Western press, but it’s not free by any stretch of the imagination. These people are proud of their culture, but I never considered though, that the Chinese staff would be so affected by just what myself and the rest of the staff do on a regular basis.
The first debate between Clinton and Trump had just finished, and I was ELATED. I knew she had won. Her one liners shone through the muck. She controlled the conversation afterwards, and Trump had failed to stick. Everyone agreed he began strong, but failed at the end. I immediately ran to my buddy’s office to discuss the debate. He had watched it (yes, we watched it during our prep period). He shares an office with my T.A. She heard us discussing the debate the entire time and saw how animated and happy we were. I explained to her Republicans, Democrats, Moderates, centrists, etc. She listened and then just went back to work.
Later, we were discussing the debate in the coffee break room. Myself, my buddy, and one member of the staff who I am pretty sure is a Trump supporter, at best libertarian, and just doesn’t share it, were discussing the debate. She listens thoughtfully and she gives her opinion in a reasoned manner, so I don’t think all Trump supporters are fire breathers. My teacher assistant snapped a photo of us, and said “You guys are having a moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are discussing the election, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but what is so special about that?”
“We don’t do that, at all.”
My T.A. then told me that basically the government in China is a black box. “You have no idea if they’re running efficiently or if there is wide spread corruption. It’s hard to have an opinion about something you have no information about.”
This struck me. She knew that the staff were all of different political opinions. I even explained to her who were the Republicans, the Democrats, the swing voters, and the libertarians. From her view, our behavior demonstrated that democracy wasn’t chaos and societal discord the way that the Chinese media makes democracy seem like (See what happened in Iraq and Syria? Democracy destroys countries!). We could disagree in an even manner. We could discuss complicated subjects. We cared about the direction of our country. I told her that we always don’t know what our government does either, but we try our damndest to keep up. Politics didn’t divide us, and that we could handle our divisions.
The world’s watching. Can we offer an alternative to Eastern authoritarianism and all of its double think?