China is at once a repressive regime and one of
the most permissive places I’ve experienced.
That seeming contradiction was one of the biggest surprises during my visit.
I was prepared to enter a country that, while embracing the free market, nevertheless
kept a tight leash on its people. After all, much of the reporting out of China
highlights the government’s jailing of dissidents, crackdowns on protests and censorship.
I don’t doubt the truth of those reports.
In fact, things may be getting worse. Tom Plate, a syndicated columnist and UCLA
professor, recently wrote that draconian media policies appear to be on the rise
in the country. He also argued that censorship threatens the country’s economic
success. "People wonder how China can possibly move forward if its media policies
are heading backward," Plate wrote.
So yes, China’s free-speech restrictions are disconcerting. But day-to-day life
in Beijing and Shanghai feels anything but oppressive—unless you’re talking about
the throat-burning smog that is all-too common.
While sitting in a Shanghai park, I saw a young boy mock a security official
who was telling him to get away from a pond. The boy ran off before the man could
approach him, and I’m not sure whether he was a police officer or one of the many
private security guards you see in China. Even so, the lad didn’t seem to fear authority
much.
A trip I made to the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing illustrates the sense
of extreme laissez faire in China. The complex sits on the shore of a lake, which
was frozen in January. You can reach a spectacular Buddhist temple rising on a hill
via a conventional footpath, but like many other visitors, I walked across the ice
to get there. There was no formal entrance to the temple from the lake bed, however.
So people clambered over boats resting by the shore and literally scaled the walls
of this national monument.
Then, on a flight of stairs up to a Buddhist statue, an ornamental fence just
a foot or two tall separated visitors from a fall of some 30 feet to a courtyard
below.
There was something thrilling about these adventures. And it prompted me to question
whether the United States is too obsessed with safety precautions and liability
concerns. But then, partly because I was climbing those temple stairs with my two
young children and the two young children of friends from Beijing, the paltry fencing
alarmed me.
There’s something twisted about the way China’s government seems to care little
about children possibly tumbling to their deaths, but plenty about fingers tapping
out words on a keyboard.
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