Chinese Cowboys
Beijing, China, November 28, 2011
Salaroche

It often happens that I read in the western Media articles about some interesting places here in China that otherwise the locals would never talk to me about. Such was the case a few days ago when I read an article in Foreign Policy magazine about the cowboy towns that have recently been sprouting here and there in the Chinese countryside.

(See here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/23/china_s_wild_west )

The article immediately incited me to write a commentary that I sent in the form of an email to a group of Latinamerican friends who are scattered across a few countries in two different continents. Given some of the spontaneous responses I got from some of them, I thought I should translate that email into English and post it here on salaroche.com, so here it is.

In this kind of intercultural subjects involving the United States, there's always the trivial and the substantial side, not to mention the side embraced by some people who start spewing pure biased resentment the moment they hear or read the acronym USA.

But the article in question is, to the eye of this observer, descriptive and fact-based to the point of precluding any doubts as to the substantial influence that the American culture exerts over the people whose land I presently inhabit.

In truth, the Chinese people feel the same blend of fascination and repulsion toward the United States that many other peoples of the world feel. On the one hand they never cease to succumb to the irresistible attraction that the goods and social attitudes generated within the American popular culture exert upon them (i.e., music. clothing, food, iPhones, etc.) and, on the other, they cannot help but resent the fact that all those things originate in a society whose members are often perceived as egocentric, pretentious, bellicose, and who knows what other real or imaginary things more.

In the specific case of China, that pro-anti-Americanism translates into sheer rivalry, although not a rivalry of the philosophical, ideological, and cultural depth that, almost by tradition, is often expressed in France.

"The level of progress that took China thirty years to achieve, took the United States almost one hundred years to obtain", said to me one day a spokesman for a group of Chinese students who thus wanted to impress upon me the superiority of Chinese culture.

"That is certainly true", I replied, "just as it is undeniably true that the United States had to invent and create a good number of things in order to improve technologically, while you guys only had to copy what we had already invented and created over there, and in the West in general, in order to move forward".

And with those words I clearly meant that the tools and ideas that China uses to improve its general development were not invented and conceived here in China, just as the symbols that nowadays represent China's progress weren't conceived as such here in this country either. Which is like saying that China is now roughly considered a modern nation only because of the level of resemblance it has managed to achieve vis a vis Western modernity.

I could have always widened my answer by asking them what scientific or technological discoveries, besides the invention of gunpowder, have been made here in China over the past few centuries? Well, there's always the invention of paper, and, sure, there's the invention of the wooden press, and maybe the compass for navigation, but what else?

No doubt the Chinese have made some scientific breakthroughs in the modern era, like the discovery of the hybrid rice and some Laser applications for computerized printing, but that kind of advancement, as important as it may be to a good number of people, hasn't revolutionized the world in any spectacular manner.

I could have also told them a few other things, like for example, that regardless of how tall and modern their apartment buildings may look, many of the Chinese that inhabit them still store their food on the floor, which, along with their walls, they seldom take the time to clean, or that those buildings' bathrooms are always wet and dirty because the Architects and Engineers who designed and built them still haven't managed to copy western-style bathrooms well. 

But to tell them the content of the previous paragraph would have been some sort of extreme critique, which is something I always avoid doing, particularly in professional settings that involve relations between teachers and students.

Instead, and in a general manner, I could have answered them that progress is not just a matter of appearance and pretentions, but also a matter of internalizing a set of principles that, even though they may often be broken and abused, in the long run always serve as guide for the societies in question.

The Chinese are very nationalist, and they often mention to me, half-jokingly, half-seriously, the idea that one day they will be the #1 nation in the world. There are even those who tell me, half-seriously and half-jokingly, that one day China will dictate the norms of conduct to the rest of the world.

Those two pretensions are quite valid from the perspective of their traditions, as the Chinese have always thought of themselves as the center of the world, or "Middle Kingdom", and the second pretension wouldn't have been far from crystallizing had the world not enjoyed the present good fortune of counting on a "friendly" super power like the US.

From the Economic point of view, we're barely some 10 to 15 years away from watching how China snatches the number one position from the United States (the size of the American Economy is today approximately 14 trillion, while that of China is somewhere between 8 or 9 trillion) That's already an inevitable given, barring any natural disaster of the catastrophic kind.

But from the Cultural and Political perspective, the situation is quite different. Not many nations are happily willing to live today under the boot of authoritarian regimes such as that of China. As proof of the latter, let's just contemplate the events that have taken place in Northern Africa this year and that continue unfolding in Syria and Egypt as we speak. Then there's the fact that no country likes to have other nations coming around dictating to them what to do.

If China had the intention of eventually imposing its will upon the rest of the world, it would have to be through skilful diplomacy, which would necessarily have to involve trillions of dollars worth of Chinese foreign investment across the globe. More importantly, such effort would have to include a considerable change in the way the world perceives China's intentions. The latter would by necessity imply much more transparency in China's domestic legislative processes, which at the moment suffer from considerable levels of opacity.

And if China ever thought of exerting its political influence using sheer force, well, there's where the world should consider itself lucky to have a country like the US on their side, country which, although far from being perfect, at least we know it won't very often go out to clobber other nations into submission.

And if anyone thinks that the latter scenario is but a figment of my imagination, let's just take a peek at the way Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and even Australia, have recently been reinforcing their military treaties with the United States, like telling China: "don't go around venturing yourself too close to my territorial waters, lest you have to deal directly with my Uncle Sam".

No, Chinese friends, the cultural supremacy that the US presently enjoys didn't come about primarily through the use of Billy clubs or extreme intimidations (although Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are clear and justifiable exceptions) but primarily through the seduction that the peoples of the world were subjected to over the last one hundred years from the part of American popular culture, seduction that not even the Chinese people have been able to resist.

Even the Economic prevalence that the US still enjoys wasn't achieved through the use of force, but as the result of two "World" wars that destroyed the European Continent, one of which also set many nations in the Pacific Rim into temporary economic backwardness.

This is to say that to go around claiming that "one day China will dictate the norms of conduct to the rest of the world", when meant seriously, is but sheer proof of the lack of maturity that afflicts both the people and the government of China, and it's just a clear sign that, as such misguided nationalistic stance is presently growing in this country, China's global cultural domination will never come about.

Why? Because nobody likes to be dominated by force.

The Human individual by nature seeks freedom, not oppression. This means that if China ever wanted to have the cultural upper hand over the rest of the planet it would first have to show that its cultural underpinnings allow for the Chinese people to live in freedom. Then we would have to witness how capable the Chinese are to reinvent themselves, as any culture who is incapable of innovation is a culture incapable to lead the rest.

In this day and age, cultural preeminence goes hand in hand with technological preeminence, but to go from "Made in China" to "Invented in China" there's a gap much wider than the one these people appear to have imagined. To make a nation of inventors out of the Chinese people, the latter would first need to enjoy the right to freedom of thought and to freedom of expression, socio-political traits that are sadly missing in this country in emasculating degrees.

The reason that the myth of the American Cowboy still has currency here in China and in other countries, is that the American Cowboy was ideally free to think, speak and act according to his own designs and held himself accountable only to his own obligations toward himself and to those of his immediate community.

The mythical John Wayne may have been an individualist bent on minding only his own business but, for the same reason, he was a character that allowed for the rest to live in freedom and in the long run never took the side of the oppressors. Would many Chinese people like to live lives a la John Wayne? According to the article in question, and even if it's only in a superficial way, obviously yes.

In any case, there's always the good, the bad, and the ugly in every culture, and China is no exception.

By the way, out of sheer coincidence, I have recently been watching on my computer a few classic Cowboy movies such as "Rio Bravo" (Howard Hawks), "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (John Ford), both of them with John Wayne, and "The Wild Bunch" (Sam Pekimpah) with William Holden.

With all those cowboy towns flourishing here and there in the Chinese countryside, wonder if someday we'll see the "Noodle" version of the Spaghetti Western (ha)

Salaroche