Are We Traitors?

Those of us who come to stay a while in China and work - make some money, make some friends - can perhaps see development happening first hand. Over the last decade, say, even over the last five years, material change has been substantial. Political and social changes are going on too. In particular, China's international identity is becoming more clearly both genuine (maybe) and antagonistic (certainly). We might like to say it's a stage. We might like to repeat the old wisdoms that with international economic development comes international social and political engagement, and that eventually this bellicose nationalism will pass into something more benign and stable. Meanwhile, what are we still doing here? Likely we were nurtured under different kinds of social and political system, and might harbour different ideals somewhere in the backbrain. If China continues to insist on and practice their own kind of system different from what has been, at least in theory, the international ideal, what have we sold out?

I teach English. I will keep teaching English. I can, with absolute honesty, state that being an English teacher does not, in any way, mean I have sold out nor that I am a traitor. There is a job here which I need to make Money to buy food and Things, If that job was back home, I would be there to buy food and Things. That is the core essence of eveything. We Work to buy food and Things, No treachery or selling out. Just plain, normal survival.

First they came for Google, but I wasn't Google.
Then they came for the other multinationals, but I was only international.
Then they can for talk of constitutionalism, but I only teach English, dammit.

Then raoulschinasaloon became inaccessible. Yet even so we all had networking tools that shall remain nameless and we could totter on.


Seems like, as time goes by, the leeway in China to be resident and yet still insist on foreign things is shrinking. Seems like this question of what are you really and why are you here becomes more pointed.

I see your argument CP, but it's predicated on the fact that we hold certain things dear. I can communicate with my family via "Chinese OK" avenues, but apart from that the political system here is as invisible to what I care about as it was in America, Korea, Taiwan, etc.

I'm not sure there's a political system anywhere I'd die for. My values are growth through curiosity and persistence - hence the walking tree avatar.

The DPRK would stint me, and to a lesser extent the defunct Russian system and/or McCarthyism. Can I learn new things everyday? Do I have enough free time to exercise? Can I build social networks? Let the good ol' boys back home label me if they please, and I've had Chinese people mock my lack of patriotism, but that means as little to me as them mocking my choice in women, clothing, you name it.

Naive? Probably. Trees have better things to do.

I think for rather a long time a kind of colonialism, or perhaps imperialism, has existed. That is to say, it has seemed for rather a long time that certain fundamental kinds of political concept, such as those you can find instanced in different ways inside the US, the UK, the Australian, and in some of the European political systems, shall prevail. Individual liberty. Freedom of association. Various freedoms of expression. Access to learning. Transparent determination of rulings. Etc. But China is genuinely against many of those. Furthermore, China has developed along its path far enough that perhaps we should take their convictions seriously and assume that in the end their system isn't going to be western.

I don't know if that this necessarily means we must choose a side. But if it doesn't, why does it keep seeming so?

funny enough, this topic is coming up a lot in live conversations at the bar.
I'm sure all of those "laowais getting the hell out of dodge" articles have a bit of an effect but i do see it more as a case of "who came first: the egg or the chicken".

Are we traitors? to what?
The mere fact that we've moved on for so many years from our so-called homes is an indication that we believe and want different things, ain't it?

Things are and have changed with a few things getting easier and a few others getting a lot harder and that's the price of evolution. They didn't come for google, google moved out. Believe you me that google is compromising even more in other countries than it did in China.

Are we traitors? No
but each person has different standards for what they want and what they can live with. ideally, they're here because it's a choice and they can leave when it's no longer what they care for.

But take Google as a for instance. There are penalties associated with wanting to use Google services. You have to set yourself on the other side of institutional wishes to gain that access. You have to act against the practical expression of those institutional wishes. You're crossing someone's policy boundaries, your own or theirs.

In any case, doesn't seem like we're patriots. But if we're being low key, "soft power" internationalists, either we're next against the wall or we're collaborating.

In any case, doesn't seem like we're patriots. But if we're being low key, "soft power" internationalists, either we're next against the wall or we're collaborating.

I don't even know what this Means.

Just that, while we've always known Chinese have been nationalistic, it's been easy to shrug off as immature or irrelevant. But as Chinese actually do gain in strength and sophistication, it's becoming less easy to ignore. The polarization that's always been there - in for example "laowai" or knowing that Japanese were devils or that "the west" is mysterious and contains ulterior motives - is starting to take practical, effective hold of such things as internet access, claims to land and sea, and even in the existence or otherwise of banking systems. Our Chinese appear well on the way toward actual construction of another middle kingdom world where you aren't able to reserve judgment anymore.

I think teaching critical thinking and encouraging students to apply a critical eye to the world would be seen as quasi-seditious by the government of most any country. I feel much better about teaching Chinese (or any other) students to do those things than I would about being one of the multinationals "transferring technology" in return for what doubtless will be short-term access to and profits from the Chinese market.

Good point. We're foreign agents with ulterior motives, those of us that aren't sucker mercenaries.

What is the damn truth of China? Big economy, little spirit, halfway done material development... anything else? What is the grand new good thing that comes from here? Is there a Chinese dream we can all share?

Then again, around the world there are people who genuinely hate "the west", and for as long as "the west" is not the one and only answer, then those people who hate "the west" can have genuine reason. They can genuinely oppose it. So maybe there really is a Chinese dream we can all share.

I think that politics is (or should be) an unavoidable topic for consideration for a teacher, whether you're teaching in your own country or a foreign one.

There is a political element to working in a public/government school in any country. I think this is especially true in a country that has such different values and political culture to many of our own home countries'. It's worth thinking about what that difference in values means, how it may affect the choices we make in the classroom, and what it means to make these choices. For example, I'd be very surprised if there are any of us who have chosen not to use certain materials or avoid certain topics because of political sensitivity.
Some people may not be particularly interested in the question, but I'd be curious to hear arguments as to why it's not worth considering.

As part of my own thoughts on the subject, the Party are increasingly using nationalism and "patriotic education" to defend their mandate to rule. The schools in which so many of us teach are thus an important part of the political indoctrination received by young Chinese. I think it's worth considering how my presence might (be used to) legitimize, reenforce, undermine, or otherwise affect the "patriotic education" and "patriotic history" taught in schools.

This doesn't mean that I think FTs should try to come up with "subversive curricula" or anything like that. But I do think that the Chinese system has institutionalized certain beliefs and behaviours that are antithetical to the goals of education.

I use the "as we all know..." form. Whenever there's an obvious elephant in the discourse and it has to be addressed to let the rest of the lesson go ahead, I do that one and say whatever I'm supposed to say. "As we all know, China has five thousand years" and worse. But it's been such a long time since political questions were explicitly part of class that I can't remember the last time. The days of "Teacher, how about [ideological or authoritarian issue that'll make the teacher wriggle]" appear long gone. But it's not like I teach politics or law or history. As such, being essentially silent this way, I do wonder sometimes.

The "as we all know" form does allow for satire though. "As we all know, [exaggerated version of a politically accepted condition or fact]". But I have a vague impression, might be entirely subjective, that students these days are unsettled by politics in the classroom in ways they didn't used to be. In the past they could, led by boys, be counted on to be a chorus, with possibly some exceptions who would talk to you after and say they still appreciated your class. These days... well, I don't know. I don't test them that way, and they seem not to want to test me.