Chinese is Easy!

Chinese people are normally shocked when they hear a foreigner speaking Chinese. Many of them will tell me that it's the hardest language in the world. I tend to disagree for a couple reasons.

First, there is no such thing as the hardest language. I could learn French in a year, but it would take me at least three or four to even be functional in Japanese. A speaker of Chinese, on the other hand, could get Japanese down relatively quickly and toil for years trying to figure out when to use the subjunctive in French.

Second, Chinese isn't unfathomably hard. For example, vocabulary acquisition is a lot faster in Chinese than other non-European languages.

The other day I was fed up with my bug infestation (gnats) and marched to the supermarket to buy pesticides, forgetting to bring my dictionary. I searched in vain and realized I was going to have to ask someone for help finding it. After contemplating what the Chinese for pesticide might be, I asked the stock boy for "kill bug medicine"(杀虫药). He didn't hesitate and took me straight to the Raid shelf. Sure enough, the Raid cannister had "kill bug medicine" written on it in big characters.

You might be thinking to yourself, "well pesticide means 'bug killer' in Latin too." But what ESL student knows Latin?

This happens all the time in Chinese. A very basic example is the word foreigner. Who knows the root of that in English? 外国人, Chinese for foreigner, literally translated is 'outside country person.' Virtually every word can be broken down like this, making learning vocab incredibly easy.

Another example of relative ease is the grammar. There are no conjugations, no plurals, no declensions, no annoying irregular verbs and tenses. Every sentence is subject-verb-object or occasionally object-subject-verb. You don't even invert word order in interrogative sentences. You toss on a modal particle "ma" and then you're done. Sometimes you don't even have to put a subject in. "Do you want to eat lunch?" would be translated as, "Eat lunch ma?"

Another thing that people often imagine would be hard are the tones. The tones themselves aren't particular hard to get used to if you actually try, and even if you don't it may not make a difference. People who don't speak perfectly standard Mandarin (and hardly anybody does) often mess up the tones habitually because they're different in their native dialect (most Chinese dialects are more like languages). Furthermore, most Chinese will be able to figure from context. Horse, yell at, weed, and mother are all pronounced the same with different tones. If I said, "I miss my horse," "I miss yell at," or "I miss weed," a Chinese person would immediately think I said, "I miss my mother." (Unless he knew about my drug and equestrian predilections.)

So if Chinese is so easy, why does it still take so long to learn (2200 classroom hours according to the US Department of State)? I've given a lot of thought to this recently and realized that a lot of time is wasted on learning to write characters, which a waste of time because everyone uses computers now. This reason obviously isn't the only one and I'd like to hear some of your thoughts.

Note: Since blogger.com was blocked in anticipation of June Fourth, I have had trouble getting back on this blog. When I used tor, it wouldn't let me make posts. Now using a proxy seems okay, but slower.

New Blog

I've started working on a group blog with Charles Custer, a recent Brown graduate living in Harbin. He's been running great posts on Ai Weiwei's search for truth in the rubble of Sichuan schools. I'll keep my political commentary, which has probably been boring for most of you anyway, contained to that blog, chinageeks. For those of you interested in that dry stuff, you can check it out. Charles updates it frequently. I'll keep my posts here more focused on less political things that will probably be of more interest to the three of you who still check this.

Another First/Largest for China

Today, I saw this story on the cover page of the Jinghua Times, a Beijing daily:

China to Build Largest Transfer Station in Asia

While it's great that Beijing's adding more subway lines, is a transfer station actually something to brag about much less make front page news?

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the largest anything is often viewed as something that should a source of pride for the Chinese people (or so the people behind the building of it hope). But here is a case where size is objectively a bad thing. This transfer station will only involve the meeting of three lines. Three lines meet often on other subways without requiring such a large transfer point. A subway transfer point shouldn't be tiny, but anyone who's been in Xizhimen, Dongzhimen, Guomao or any of the many other ten-minute-long transfers in Beijing knows that larger is not better. I wonder when the Beijing city planners are going to stop trying to make things bigger and simply make them convenient.


Note: Sorry you have all been missing out on the riveting details of my life and my profound insights over the last couple weeks. I'm working on a time-consuming project, so posts will continue to be sporadic until that's over.

五毛党 Fifty Cent Party

Contrary to the title, this post has nothing to do with the cool American rapper who I'm going to get down with on my birfday.

The wumaodang, or fifty cent party (link blocked in China), are a group of Chinese probably numbering in the thousands who go onto Internet chat rooms and BBS pages to write posts that support the communist party. They get paid fifty cents for each post that criticizes other subversive netizens.

Today, as I was wandering around tianya, an Internet portal, I saw that some Chinese internet users abbreviate the term wumaodang 'wmd,' probably to avoid the censors. I don't think the Chinese are aware what this means in English, but I thought it was pretty funny since my sophomore year policy debate topic was on WMDs, a/k/a weapons of mass destruction.

我今天发现有些中国网民会把五毛党写成wmd。英文里也有这个简称：WMD就是大规模销毁武器的意思。中国网民实在太厉害了。

中国的新角色

Here is the translation of Monday's post.

我同事帮我翻译的这篇我前天发表的文章。

新兴势力

“今天，2009年4月2日，” 《观察家报》的蒂莫西·哥顿·阿什（Timothy Garton Ash）在伦敦G20峰会的开幕日上说道，“将是一个历史性的日子，在全球金融危机的影响下，中国已然成为了21世纪的新力量。”认同中国的领袖地位的显然不止阿什一个。《华盛顿邮报》评论道：“中国在上周的G20峰会上的积极表现向世界宣布——中国的领导人们想在世界经济新秩序的建立中扮演更重要的角色。”就连G20峰会上的座位安排都反映出了中国在世界上的新地位：胡锦涛就坐在主持人——英国首相布朗旁边。

早在G20峰会认可中国的新国际地位的数月之前，美国前国务卿兹比格涅夫·布热津斯基（Zbigniew Brzezinzski）就提出了所谓G2组合——即美国和中国的组合——作为21世纪主要的全球决策者。一些经济学家预测，中国将在2012年超过危机重重地日本，成为世界经济的第二。

牺牲环境换取经济发展？

然而，尽管世界认可了中国的新经济地位，在许多全球问题上如环境保护等，它还没有被完全认可。美国芝加哥全球事务委员会最近所做的一个研究显示，尽管公众的呼声不断高涨，在东亚及东南亚地区的六个国家看来，中国在政治、经济以及文化吸引力等方面影响力仍不及日本和美国。美国乔治·华盛顿大学的一名中国政治专家大卫·沙姆宝（David Shambaugh）说：“（中国）缺乏全球范围的军事威慑力，软实力也有限，外交触角尽管现在已经伸向全球，但在中东和拉美等地区，它的外交做的并不够。”

同时，许多西方国家抱怨道，在二十世纪九十年代，中国的经济高歌猛进、迅速腾飞，随之而来的却是大量的环境问题：二氧化碳排放上升，煤炭的消耗量剧增，化学肥料流入澜沧江等流经其他国家的河水中。九十年代末，西方国家急切呼吁中国加强改善其环保上的种种问题，而中国领导人却因为怕经济增长放缓而及不情愿地实施了新的环保措施。美国和欧洲的许多政客都要求对中国出口的高污染产品增收关税。

其实，这一问题主要是其他人如何看待中国的问题，而不在于中国本身。但是如果中国不努力改变它在世界眼中，尤其是在西方国家（对中国的支持率最低）眼中的形象的话，它与这些国家之间的贸易往来和文化交流都会受到限制，而中国的出口业对西方国家相当依赖。布什政府的糟糕形象（拒绝签定《京都议定书》也是原因之一）就使美国的软实力大打折扣。

环保在于美国，更在于中国

十年前，《京都议定书》没能在环保问题上达成全球一致，十年后，今年12月的哥本哈根会议成了众人眼中拯救全球变暖的最后机会。“八年来，美国在气候变化问题上无动于衷，”《卫报》的一篇文章写到，“美国的领导路线的正确与否将是拯救全球变暖的唯一希望。”《卫报》并不是唯一一个对哥本哈根会议寄予厚望的媒体，几十家杂志、报纸和政府都迫切希望奥巴马政府能做出正确的决定。

但是这些盼望的眼神是不是应该关注一下太平洋的对岸呢？两年前，《纽约时报》的托马斯·弗里德曼（Thomas Friedman）就写到，如果没有中国和印度的合作，西方这些以服务业为主的国家为减少温室气体排放的努力都会付诸流水。实际上，中国的污染伤害的是中国人民。世界银行估计，2007年中国约有75万人死于环境污染引起的病因，这是在南京大屠杀中遇害的人数的2.5倍。

中国在行动

当中国逐渐认识到环境污染带来的众多问题加之来自国际各方面的压力，中国开始采取措施。中国在减少温室气体以及碳元素的排放这一问题上已经采取了大刀阔斧的改革措施。它的第十一个五年计划，即从2005年到2010年，制定的目标是利用风能发电达到五千兆瓦，也就是说每年风能发电要增加28%。而各省制定的风能发电计划显示中国可能会大幅度超额完成任务。世界上范围最广的一项太阳能照明计划目前正在中国偏僻的西部省区得到实施。西部地区只有一部分人能接触到电能，很多人最常用的是煤，也就是世界上最肮脏的能源。中国政府对汽车尾气排放的规定比美国还要严格。在上海等一些城市，给汽车上牌照非常昂贵，这里的汽车尾气污染也没有洛杉矶严重。

全中国的私人企业在政府投资和补助的优惠政策的帮助下也为环境问题的改善作出了巨大的贡献。大连易世达能源公司发明了一项技术，不但能减少水泥企业产生的污染，还能将污染物转变为能源，从而减少煤的消耗。在长沙，资产达数十亿的远大空调集团率先开创了一项无需排放破坏臭氧层的氟氯烃就能调节室温的新技术。就在去年秋天，瓦伦·布费（Warren Buffet）用超过两亿美元的投资向世界宣告了他对“绿色中国”的信心。布费投资的中国汽车公司比亚迪（BYD）目前正在生产纯电动轿车，购买该车型的顾客将收到8800美元的政府补贴。

中国政府用这些积极的策略向中国人民显示了积极面对污染问题的决心。在12月的哥本哈根会议上，中国将利用这一契机向世界展现它的环保决心，同时摆脱“世界工厂”这一外号，真正成为世界大舞台的主角。

China's Number 1 Again!

If you've ever been to China, you know that they're obsessed with having the largest this or the oldest that. This often results in strange titles. Tiananmen Square is the largest city-center public square in the world. Xinghai Square in Dalian is the largest non-city-center square in Asia. The giant TV screen outside my office building is Asia's largest skyscreen (whatever that means).

Today, China edged out Cuba for another superlative: most journalists in prison with a total of 28 (story here). Cuba wins for most journalists in jail per capita (24 in jail with a total population of only 11 million!), but they will soon be freed because Barack is letting Hyman Roth go to Havana to build casinos.

I don't know the names of all of these reporters but one of them, Shi Tao, is in jail thanks in part to Yahoo! In 2004 Shi Tao sent an email containing a directive regualting reports on the 15th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The directive, which came down from a high level in the government, said that no one would be allowed to mention the event and that the human rights activists who returned to commemorate the anniversary were to be ignored. The police asked Yahoo! to help, and being a good American, freedom-loving company, they gave them access to Shi Tao's account. Shi Tao has now spent five years in prison and won't be released until 2014. (The Chinese police must not have realized that that is the 25th anniversary of June 4th.)

In other news, Pirate Bay has been found guilty (surprised?). I am completely unaffected. Now Google China, another one of those red, white, and blue internet companies, lets you download music for free just like on Baidu (the largest search engine in China).

Also, in reference to my post yesterday, tommorrow is Earth Day and there is a cool environment conference that has attracted many big names like Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and Kenneth Lieberthal, Brookings's China environment guy. Anyone in Beijing should try to make it there, although you'll need a press pass or some other invite from an attending company.

China's Copenhagen Opportunity

I co-wrote this article last week. The final article was in Chinese so hopefully sounded prettier and not so choppy.

Rising Power

“Today, 2 April 2009,” declared the Observer’s Timothy Garton Ash on the opening day of the G-20 summit in London, “may yet be marked as the day on which, through the catalyst of a global economic crisis, China definitively emerged as a 21st-century world power.” Garton Ash was not alone in seeing China as a world power. The Wall Street Journal contended that, “China sent a strong signal with its active role in last week's summit of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing economies: The country's leaders intend to play a greater part in shaping the global economy.” Even the seating arrangement at the G-20 revealed China’s new position in the world: Hu Jintao was right next to the summit's host, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK.

Months before the G-20 confirmed China’s new international standing, Zbigniew Brzezinzski, former US Secretary of State, proposed the formation of a G2—a group of the US and China that would be the major global decision-making body for the 21^st Century. With some economists predicting that China will overtake a crumbling Japan in 2012 as the world’s second-largest economy, it is probable that this bilateral relationship will be the most important one for the next several decades at least.

Not Quite There Yet

But despite its new-found economic status, China is still not a major player in many global issues, and it is not valued in its own neighborhood, East and Southeast Asia. A recent study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs indicated that despite growing public support, China still falls behind Japan and the US in terms of political, economic and cultural appeal among six East and Southeast Asian nations. According to David Shambaugh, a Chinese politics expert at George Washington University in DC, “[China] has no global military reach, its soft power is limited, and its diplomatic reach, while now global, is still limited in areas such as the Middle East and Latin America.”

More unsettling were the results of a recent University of Maryland and BBC Globescan poll of mainly Western countries’ attitudes toward China. Only 39% of the people polled in all 21 countries thought that China’s influence on the world was positive. (The US only had a 40% positive rating, Japan had 57% and Russia 30%.) This perception is mainly the result of misunderstandings about issues like Tibet and the Chinese government’s control of society, and a general fear of an unknown, rising power. Many other people in countries like Japan or Germany may resent being replaced as economic leaders.

For the most part, this perception problem is simply that—a problem with the way others see China and not necessarily a problem with China itself. But if China does not make attempts to bolster its image, especially in Western countries (where it received the lowest support) upon which its export industry relies heavily, dealings with these countries will become strained. The unpopularity of the Bush administration, due to the president's cavalier attitude on issues like Iraq and the Kyoto Accords, sapped America’s soft power and many leaders who sided with Bush have since been voted out of office. China could avoid Bush’s mistakes this year.

Progress on Pollution?

Ten years after the Kyoto accords failed at achieving a global consensus on environmental protection, many view the Copenhagen Conference this December as the last chance to stop global warming. “After eight years of U.S. inaction on climate change,” wrote the Guardian, “American leadership offers the only hope of success.” The Guardian is not alone in its desperate-sounding anticipation of Copenhagen. Dozens of magazines and newspapers and governments are also pinning their hopes on the new Obama administration.

But are they looking on the wrong side of the Pacific? Two years ago, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote that without the cooperation of China and India, carbon emission-reduction efforts in the service-based economies of the West would be meaningless. In fact, those harmed by China’s pollution most are China’s people. The World Bank has estimated that 750,000 people, or 2.5 times the number of Chinese people who were murdered in the Rape of Nanjing, died from pollution-related causes in 2007.

China has already begun taking bold steps in reducing carbon and green-house gas emissions. China’s 11th Five Year Plan, from 2005 to 2010, has set a target of creating five gigawatts (GW) of wind generation capacity – meaning 28% growth annually. One of the world’s most extensive solar-lighting initiatives is currently being carried out in China’s remote western provinces where access to electricity is limited and people normally use coal, the dirtiest source of energy. The government has also implemented more strict emissions regulations on cars than the United States. Cities like Shanghai, where it’s incredibly expensive to buy a license-plate, don’t have as much car-related pollution as Los Angeles.

The private sector, with the help of government investment and subsidies, is also making massive contributions to environmental improvement throughout the country. Dalian East Energy Company invented technology that not only reduces pollution from cement factories; it can convert the excess pollution into energy, further reducing the consumption of coal. In Changsha, Broad Air-conditioning, a multi-billion dollar company, has pioneered technology that cools the indoors without releasing the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons that traditional units spew. And just last fall, Warren Buffet showed his faith in the future of a green China by investing over 200 million dollars in BYD, a Chinese company that is producing fully battery-powered cars. Buyers of the car will be rewarded with an 8,800 USD government-paid subsidy. (The final price tag is still a cost-prohibitively high 22,000 USD.)

With these progressive initiatives, the government has shown the Chinese people that it is confronting pollution problems head-on. This December by leading the charge in Copenhagen, China has a unique opportunity to show this commitment to environmental protection to the world and, at the same time, to move beyond the moniker, ‘the world’s factory,’ and become one of the major players in the entire international system.