I was stunned when I was in China by my students' inability to think creatively.  I found my students also had trouble thinking critically, analyzing, even deriving the meaning of words from context.  It seemed that their minds were trained too well to memorize and recite by rote.  This is a method of teaching in China; it is also a method of controlling people's minds and a result of a state-controlled media.  You can't think about what you don't know and you can't create if you can't afford to make mistakes.  My students were very afraid to make mistakes -- that would be losing face, a profound embarrassment.   

There are innovative musicians and artists in China.  I heard some exciting new music when I was there.  No regime can repress everyone, but it sure can repress a population. 

I, myself, have bought into the idea of China's rise to superpower status, but John Pomfret, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post, writes that he doubts China is going to be another superpower.  Pomfret gives four good reasons why it won't:   "dire demographics, an overrated economy, an environment under siege and an ideology that doesn't travel well." 

At the Gate to Greatness

While Pomfret acknowledges China's huge labor force, he points out that the population growth is 1.8 and a rate of 2.1 is required to keep the population stable.  Of course, the point of the one-child-per-family policy was to decrease the massive population, but it also means the working-age population is shrinking at the same time that life expectancy has increased.  Chinese demographers at Nankai University predict  that the number of Chinese older than 60 will increase from 100 million today to 334 million by 2050.

We all know that China has the fastest growing economy in the world, but Pomfret gives this a new perspective.  He states that China's economy is overtaking America's, but on a per capita basis, it is in 109th place on the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database.  That puts it between Swaziland and Morocco, countries not famous for having burgeoning economies. 

And the trade deficit?  Nearly 60 percent of China's total exports are manufactured by companies that are not owned by Chinese.  When you look at high-tech exports, such as computers and electronic goods, 89 percent come from non-Chinese owned companies.

So, the lawn fertilizer spreader I bought last weekend that was labeled "Made in China," was not necessarily made by a Chinese-owned company.

Then there is the pollution problem.  China is the largest depleter of the ozone layer, the largest polluter of the Pacific Ocean, has sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities, has polluted 70 percent of its own lakes and rivers and offers clean drinking water to half its population. 

Oh dear, it does look like maybe China should have spent less on getting ready for the two-week Olympics and more on long term solutions for cleaning up the environment which will still be there long after the athletes and those troublesome, hyper-critical journalists have left. 

Then, there is Pomfret's fourth point:  ideology.  Pomfret uses the American movie "Kung Fu Panda," a box office smash in China, to make his point.  

He reports that Wu Jiang, president of the China National Peking Opera Company, told the official New China News Agency, "The film's protagonist is China's national treasure (pandas), and all the elements are Chinese, but why didn't we make such a film?"

The content may be Chinese, but the irreverence and creativity of "Kung Fu Panda" are 100 percent American. That highlights another weakness in the argument about China's inevitable rise: The place remains an authoritarian state run by a party that limits the free flow of information, stifles ingenuity and doesn't understand how to self-correct. Blockbusters don't grow out of the barrel of a gun. Neither do superpowers in the age of globalization.

I understand what Pomfret is saying here.  China can develop only so far without loosening government control and China is to this.  More to the point, much of China's population takes comfort in sameness and a single-minded point of view.  Dissent is scary.  Criticism is infuriating and has nothing to recommend it.  This is the result of 50 years of totalitarianism.  It will take much time for China and its people to evolve out of this.