I started posting about China a few months ago, since I saw a trend of undue deference that news outlets were giving the country (and people). There seems to be a consensus amongst journalists and politicians that "China is rising" and that it is a force to contend with. No one mentions the third-world level of subsistence that many Chinese live in, and the huge numbers immigrating every year to an accommodating Canada. Of course, once in Canada, it is not clear how these Chinese will contribute to Canadian, let alone Western, values, and how much of their ancestry and cultural baggage they will force onto the unsuspecting.

I spent several years teaching Chinese immigrants, who are meant to be the cream of the immigrant crop, since the Canadian "landed immigrant" criteria which they use requires that they bring in substantial sums of money ($200,000 last I checked), and post-secondary education levels. Prospective Chinese immigrants are able to fulfill these criteria more so than Latin American or African applicants, yet often the Chinese became the ultimate non-Western immigrants: ready to take but unable to give - much, anyway. How long before any can sing the lines from the Canadian national anthem "Stand on Guard for thee" with hand on heart? I had a shocking experience where Chinese immigrants I was teaching English to refused to stand (or even sing) these words. Their message clearly was that they are not Canadian, and have no desire to be Canadian.


Part of the desire to accept and accommodate Chinese immigrants into Canadian  society goes beyond economics, politics or even education. I think there is a natural Western curiosity towards different peoples, who appear to have interesting things to offer. But as with all things cultural, there were always small caveats to fulfill, even for these desirable Asians. Namely that the Other is sufficiently far away so as not to mingle and disrupt the Western society, or in our contemporary era, that he not appear too alien from the host's society. The former has been the case at least in art in the past, and especially in the twentieth century with the  impressionists. Van Gogh and Monet were influenced by Japanese florals, and even the idea of flat surfaces (removing perspective in paintings, a method invented during the Renaissance) was an Asian influence in Impressionism and current art. Now, the rationale seems to be that Chinese (and Koreans), don't appear to be too different,  compared to, say, Indians, Latin Americans or Africans. (I personally disagree with this and find Chinese physiognomy as alien as any. But I think what modern Westerners see is a superficial similarity, perhaps simply due to their light skin).


There is also the admiration for much proclaimed "smart Asian" with the high I.Q. But my brief personal interactions with East Asians, which includes Koreans, has always demonstrated the fallacy of the Asian with the  high I.Q. For all the smarts and brains, I found they lacked inventiveness and imagination, which is a part of I.Q. measurement that is generally neglected. I originally come from a background of research which requires processing information (data) to come up with interesting and inventive questions to solve scientific problems. Later on, I switched to art and design. Imagination and invention have always been important in my world view.  I was never impressed with my "Asian" colleagues in either of these disciplines.

And recent cultural opinion goes even further than trying to bridge differences. Liberalism teaches us that there are no differences between peoples (thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom is just claptrap), there is no Other, and contrary to our  primordial nagging which tells us that there is indeed one, we must collide and cohabit with him in order not to participate in the world's worst crime: that of discrimination. Thus, we have no option but to invite the Other right into our own back yards in order to be good citizens.

These uncontested opinions of similarity, or to be more precise, sameness, are exacerbated by modern media, which brings the Other to us in life-like forms through movies and television. But we (or our artists), God-like, recreate him in our own image, to suite our whims and fancies. Do the Chinese really look like that in their own environment, or are our filmmakers and television producers simply going on their own (desired) views, which are constantly trying to evade accusations of discrimination and racism.

And the smart Chinese aggressively use this benign, almost adulated image, of "Asians" is to infiltrate the West through a tremendous out-migration of its population into North America. China understands that ultimately, especially in a rabid multicultural society like Canada, loyalties will almost always return to ethnicity.

 

So why does China, still a bureaucratically-led, communist-style (perhaps I can coin a new term and call it neo-Communist) regime figuring so high in our imaginations these days? I think it is a natural Western curiosity towards different peoples, who appear to have interesting things to offer. This has been the case at least in art in the past. But now, we no longer admire and emulate from a distance. Our interactions are cozier and closer: immigration brings all these exotics right at our doorsteps. And modern media brings art to us in life-like forms through movies and television, putting us just just steps away from the real thing. Immigration adds the final clinch - bring them here, we know them, we know who they are...China itself aggressively uses these modern communication systems to further its image and agenda.

But, is what we see what we get? At least, regarding China, it is now becoming clear that it is not the flourishing, modern country that its leaders are pushing us to believe. Chinese cheap goods, faulty and even deadly China-made pharmaceuticals, collapsing buildings and dams, and that unanalzyed

, through modern media, immigration, and it's own media, often deceptive, gives the rest of the world that it is a flourishing, modernized place, worthy of emulation by any standards.

No-one digs too deep to uncover these declarations and beliefs. Perhaps the truth, the stark reality, would be too much to bear. China might just be the last exotic, Other, bastions for liberals, and liberal peoples, who always have to keep looking for the next fix and stimulation.