China+Roundtable+Discussion

Today I went to The Landon School to listen to a “China Roundtable Discussion,” in which three speakers talked about different aspects of China’s economy, language, and future. The first speaker talked about China’s role in the world’s economy, the second spoke about China’s linguistic styles, and the third speaker talked about China’s plans and goals for the future. The first speaker, Hans Zimmer, is the lead economist at the World Bank. A lot of what he said about China’s growing influence on the world economy and on the US economy was information that we learned in class. Nevertheless, it was a little scary and disturbing to hear about how quickly China’s economy is growing, and how that growth and success will leave the US with a worsened economy in the end. The more products China sells, the fewer products the US will be able to export, landing us in an even worse economy than our current one. I was, however, slightly relieved when we were shown a bar graph displaying China’s increasing percentage of the world’s economy from 2005 to 2030, and the US’s decreasing one. I felt more at ease because, according to that graph, it would take until around 2030 for China to surpass the US in that field. I figured that 2030 is better than 2013 for that to happen. Hopefully in that time the US will be able to get back on track to prevent a worse economic crisis in our country. 1 Next we listened to Deborah Fallow. A lot of what she said about China’s language was interesting and offered insight into their culture, but it seemed out of place in the discussion and even a little irrelevant, simply because the other two speakers talked mostly about China’s economic stance in the world. Her explanation did, however, help me understand a little more about Chinese culture and how Chinese speak in everyday conversations. For example, one little fact I learned was that in Chinese, it may be considered rude to say “please” or “thank you” to a close friend or family member. These phrases are considered very formal and are often interpreted by Chinese as a way of putting social distance between you and the person you are speaking to. I thought that this might be one of the reasons Chinese sounds somewhat abrupt or short sometimes—because a lot of words or phrases that are expected to be said in English are not usually used in Chinese. She also told us that Chinese verbs are not conjugated, but kept in the infinitive form in every tense. 2 I had always assumed that Chinese would be an extremely hard language to learn, mostly because it used different characters than I was used to, but this made me think that it could be much easier than I thought. There were a lot of Chinese exchange students at the discussion, which made me realize how strange it must be to speak English every day when it is so different from Chinese. I did not really like what the third speaker, Xiaojun Heng, had to say about China’s goals and future. To me, he seemed to just be “selling China”. I found it hard to believe some things he said about how the Chinese government wants to do more for its people. He said the government would import more goods from the US so the Chinese could buy more things and spend money. After he said this I couldn’t help but think of the movie we watched in class following the Chinese couple as they visited their children after working in a crummy factory for years on end. Shouldn’t the Chinese government see that a lot of citizens are living in poverty and cannot afford to buy US goods? I thought that if the government really wanted to help the people and give them more benefits, it should instead give protection and more rights to the many workers in China who do not get paid much. This statement made by Heng only gave me a strengthened feeling that the Chinese government seems to be deciding what its citizens want when it probably has no idea about what their wishes are. This solid control over the Chinese citizens’ lives and ignorance for what they want and need was a quite disturbing to me, even though I recognize that I am simply used to a democratic government, which China is not. This is why some of what Heng said seemed a little fake to me.

1. It might not be so dire. While, of course, I want the US economy to do well, remember that China has 3X the number of people as us, so it would take until their economy was three times as large as ours to outperform us.

2. This makes sense if you hear native Chinese speakers struggle with English.

This is superb!!!!! You really understand China and its issues. Yay! Reflection 10 English 10