Sunday, April 25, 2010

Californian Town Fears Yellow Peril


Last week, C. Custer from China Geeks put the spotlight on xenophobic rants by Chinese online in response to a video of a moronic, drunken foreigner and his run in with the police. The blog posting was an excellent examination of under currents of anti-foreign sentiment in Chinese society. Many of us that read the post commented that the similar phenomenon would happen in the United States. The Associate Press then went and reported on a nearly similar example of xenophobia in the California town of Hacienda Heights.

At a recent school-board meeting, a group of mostly white town residents vehemently opposed a Chinese government program (Confucius Classroom grants) to fund a local middle-school language class. Here are some illustrative quotes from the small minds at work:

"These children have young brains that are very malleable and they can be indoctrinated with things that America would not like,” said an opponent to the school board members who approved the program.

"China already owns and changed most of the shopping centers in Hacienda Heights… Do we really want them to change our kids' minds, too?" wrote a resident to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.


According to the AP report, some town residents feel they need to protect the community's youth from communist propaganda that could be hidden in textbook passages unreadable to non-Chinese speakers. One resident explicitly took issue with the program’s association with Confucius; "When you Google it, it comes up as a religion… It just seems wrong on so many levels."

Opponents attending school board meetings brought signs bearing such slogans as "America, Not Confucius".

The city planned to accept an offer to have the Chinese government place a teaching assistant in the school and pay his or her salary. In response, an editorial in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune called the plan "tantamount to asking Hugo Chavez to send his cadres to teach little American kids economics."

In the great tradition of American journalism, AP went out and sourced an academic wonk to weigh in on the issue. A University of Southern California public policy professor, Nicholas Cull, who reportedly ‘tracks China's efforts to shape its image abroad’ said, "I'm sure this will become a standard dispute… People in America are very suspicious of ideas from the outside."

So, apparently Ward & June Cleaver have decided to draw a line in the sand and fight the insidious dissemination of the PRC’s ‘soft power’. I wonder if they have ever heard of Voice of America and understand why it was created.

I’d also like to know if they have any appreciation for the fact there are now more English speakers in China than in the United States, and that they were taught by legions of under-qualified Americans (and other native-English speakers) who intentionally spread Western culture, including the ideas of liberal democracy and free market economics. I would also like to point out that many of these very same English teachers also did their very damn best to sleep with some of their female students.

Dear readers, I was an English teacher in China in the 90s, so I speak from experience. Was I spreading American ‘soft power’? I suppose I was.. but ‘soft’ isn’t the word I would use.

Oh, by the way, let’s not forget the untold number of religious zealots masquerading as teachers who are giving out Bibles, organizing underground churches, and generally engaging in activities the PRC government deem illegal.

Why do the Chinese tolerate this horde of barbarians who spread anti-Communism and corrupt the morals of their youth? I suppose it’s because they want to create a competitive 21st Century workforce and become a global super power. You know what? It’s working too.

Reading between the lines of the article, I suspect opposition to this particular PRC-funded language program is mostly about a town’s changing demographic, where the whites are no longer the majority and they are lashing out at perceived cultural and economic threats. Damn, isn’t globalization a bitch? You’d think after America worked really hard to win the Cold War the whole world would just giddyup, speak English, drink Coca-Cola and let white Americans run everything. Well, not hardly.

Waves of 'soft power' will crash into each other, but it doesn't necessitate a 'clash of civilizations'. Hopefully communities throughout the world can take the best and leave the rest behind. Isn't that what America is about?

4 comments:

  1. As a Chinese speaker, I know where you're coming from. I think it's among the most important of foreign languages that any American could learn. On the other hand, I can sympathize with the parents' fears as well.

    Americans who go to China to teach are, for the most part, not part of an organized US Government public diplomacy program. They go as individuals with whatever personal agendas they may have. (I was one of those individuals many years ago.)

    The point is, these people are not organized by the US government to carry out certain activities on behalf of the government.

    The vast majority of Americans, though possibly interested in China, have a deep and abiding mistrust for China's government. (And many distrust the US government almost as deeply.)

    All that most Americans know about China comes from the visual of the tank man and reporting on the injustice suffered by activists there.

    I'm not saying Americans are right to believe that China has some devious agenda behind teaching our children to speak their language. But can you really blame Americans for believing they might?

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  2. I understand the fear, and I am slightly amused by it. Of course the PRC has an agenda, it wants to promote understanding and sympathy for China. I don't think that's a bad thing, it's a form of diplomacy. What I take issue with is the knee jerk reaction that these parents think their kids will be brain washed and therefor will deny them an important educational opportunity.

    I absolutely hope that school boards around the United States that are considering these programs are thoroughly reviewing text books and other educational materials used in these language classrooms. It would be unsuitable if they didn't.

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  4. What cracks me up the most about this is that they think that Confucianism is a religion and that China is still Communist. Both assertions couldn't be further from the truth. OMG LOL!

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