Chinese students fascinated with American voting...

From In These Times :

Views > November 22, 2007 > Web Only
Talking American Democracy in China
By Mike Levy

The ‘08 election results are in.

According to my friends, who received an informal presidential straw poll from me in my capacity as a volunteer teacher in China, Barack Obama is the winner. He is a crushing, massive winner, earning almost five times more votes than the second place Democratic finishers, Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich, and ten times more votes than the leading Republican (John McCain) and the leading independents (a tie—at one vote apiece— between Ralph Nader and Steven Colbert).

I held this incredibly unscientific straw poll to help a group of my most politically interested students understand a little bit more about American democracy. These students—all English majors at Guizhou University, the largest school in China’s poorest province—represent a broad spectrum of Chinese society. Some are from tiny peasant villages with parents earning less than $100 a month. Others are children of China’s growing urban kleptocracy, rich even by American standards. A few of them actively circumvent the Great Firewall of China to access political blogs and newspapers that the Chinese government attempts to block. Many check CNN.com, or BBC online news. One regularly checks davidsirota.com, then comes to me with vocabulary questions (“What does it mean for Bush to be ‘out of his mind’?”).

These students have been asking me for months who will become President in 2008. I’ve been feeding them data from national polls, but this information strikes them as impersonal and unenlightening. They want to feel a more personal connection to American politics. With this in mind, I sent a mass e-mail to about 100 of my friends back home, hoping to show the students a small slice of American-style democracy.

Chinese-style democracy offers an interesting contrast to our own system in that it is almost entirely undemocratic. Chinese democracy does not involve much voting, awareness of how the government works, information about politics, or what I like to call “facts.” The Chinese government nevertheless claims to be democratic, and many of my Chinese friends will agree that this is true.

America certainly ain’t perfect, and by most reasonable analyses it has gone Anikan Skywalker on the rest of the world, self-righteously slaughtering its way towards the Dark Side. But Americans know who is running for office. We have access to voting records and information about campaign contributions. We can watch debates. We at least have the option of thinking deeply about our government.

Chinese do not have these options. The government simply is. Most Chinese don’t think about it beyond that fact. I was therefore extremely happy to bring the political thoughts of my American friends into my Chinese classroom. This was a chance to show my students what democracy looks like.

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Class began with a summary of the results of the straw poll. Obama cruised to victory, with Hillary Clinton in a distant second and Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson and John Edwards pulling in handfuls of votes. Five percent of my straw poll voters were undecided at this early point in the primary process. Ninety percent of my straw poll voters voted Democratic (which I made clear was more a comment on whose company I enjoy, rather than a reflection of American demographics).

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3432/talking_american_democracy_in_china/

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