tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3293847345108796302.post46843958310917849..comments2023-11-05T01:57:38.312-08:00Comments on Matthew Felix Sun <br> <i>- Art · 文化 · Kunst</i>: What to Expect from Record High Chinese Overseas StudentsMatthew Felix Sunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03347154808262264374noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3293847345108796302.post-1509407217590780892011-04-21T16:55:57.022-07:002011-04-21T16:55:57.022-07:00New Yorker: The Grand Tour, Europe on fifteen hund...<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/18/110418fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">New Yorker: The Grand Tour, Europe on fifteen hundred yuan a day. by Evan Osnos April 18, 2011</a> both reinforced my view and gave some hope to the situation. He wrote: <br /><br />"I asked Promise [a college student] if he used Facebook, which is officially blocked in China but reachable with some tinkering. “It’s too much of a hassle to get to it,” he said. Instead, he uses Renren, a Chinese version, which, like other domestic sites, censors any sensitive political discussion. I asked what he knew about Facebook’s being blocked. “It has something to do with politics,” he said, and paused. “But the truth is I don’t really know.” I recognized that kind of remove among other urbane Chinese students. They have unprecedented access to technology and information, but the barriers erected by the state are just large enough to keep many people from bothering to outwit them. The information that filtered through was erratic: Promise could talk to me at length about the latest Sophie Marceau film or the merits of various Swiss race-car drivers, but the news of Facebook’s role in the Arab uprisings had not reached him."<br /><br />"Li [tour guide] was so boosterish that I might have taken him for a government spokesman, except that his comments were familiar from ordinary conversations in Beijing. “Analysts overseas can never understand why the Chinese economy has grown so fast,” he said. “Yes, it’s a one-party state, but the administrators are selected from among the élites, and élites picked from 1.3 billion people might as well be called super-élites.”"<br /><br />And lastly, he said that:<br /><br />"I was struck that, for all his travels, Zhu saw an enduring philosophical divide between China and the West: “two different ways of thinking,” as he put it. “We will use their tools and learn their methods. But, fundamentally, China will always maintain its own way,” he said.<br /><br />His sentiment didn’t inspire much optimism about China’s future alongside the West. On some level, it was hard to argue with him; the myth that a richer China would soon become a Western, democratic China has rarely looked more frayed than it does today. But if it was naïve to imagine that China’s opening up would draw it close to the West, it is also naïve, perhaps, to dismiss the power of more subtle changes."Matthew Felix Sunhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03347154808262264374noreply@blogger.com