From: gaojeng@durras.anu.edu.au (J. Gao)
Newsgroups: aus.culture.china
Subject: CND: Books and Journals Review, 11/22/1992
Date: 22 Nov 92 09:18:24 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
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Summary: CND
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            |  \/___| |/    China News Digest     | |/__/  |/
             \_______/  (Books & Journals Review) |_______/

                            November 22, 1992

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1. Foreign Intrigue --
   "Watching TV with the Red Chinese"  by Luke Whisnant ................. 89

2. "Culture and Politics in China"  by Peter Li
   "China's Students - the Struggle for Democracy"  by R. Cherrington
   "Yen Jiaqi and China's Struggle for Democracy"  by  M.E. Sharpe ...... 62

3. "Chinese Higher Education: A Decade of Reform
    and Development (1978-1988)"  by Du Ruiqing ........................ 134
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Editor's Note:  We welcome all CND readers to contribute to this column.  If
                you encounter any China-related books  or journals  that you
                would like to share with  other CND readers, please  send in
                comments, newspaper reviews, journal articles, and  excerpts
                etc to  cnd-editor@sdsc.edu   Thank you.

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1. Foreign Intrigue --
   "Watching TV with the Red Chinese"  by Luke Whisnant ................. 89
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Charles Mok
Source: San Jose Mercury News 11/8/92
Review written by: Richard Eder

Chinese students in 1980 Cleveland, try to decipher the American way.

It is Cleveland 1980; Ronald Reagan has replaced Jimmy Carter. The United
States has voted against malaise but suffers from it, and three mainland
Chinese students in Cleveland have moved in across the hall from Dexter
Mitchell. They burn with curiosity to decode the myriad signs that bombard
American lives.

The three ask Mitchell the difference among Tide, Cheer and Biz, and in what
syntactical sense each of these names is used. He shows them how to measure
a cupful in their Daffy Duck glass. "Everywhere there is meaning, order,
shared knowledge - if you know the code," he reflects. The message in this
witty and very sad book is that perhaps there isn't.

"Watching TV with the Red Chinese" is about the comic and eventually
disastrous entanglement of the students in the American code, and the
sobering transformation of Mitchell, the narrator, who witnesses the
entanglement. The theme of foreigners encountering the United States is not
new; neither is the use of their missteps as a way of suggesting our own.
But Whisnant's first novel is a fresh and ingeniously constructed variation.

It begins lightly enough with two simultaneous kinds of telling. Mitchell
recalls his exploratory camaraderie with Tzu, Wa and Chen; and at the same
time, we read a description of video documentary made by a ludicrously
self-important film student who has taken as his project the trio's
adventures in american culture. One or another is shown at a Thanksgiving
dinner, at a store, or waving from a car. Mostly, they are shown watching
television and commenting.

Graphic Impressions --

Chen, the youngest, shops elatedly and tries his best to swallow America
whole. Watching sports on TV, he marvels: "So many people watching the
Monday Night Football. Seeing the same play and hearing the same words...
And I think what this is like, to have the whole country watching, to have
everyone together, a system, a series, parts that relate to be a whole
thing."

Wa, more orthodox, is distrustful. He is filmed watching someone watching TV
and switching from channel to channel. Americans lack purpose and
continuity, he complains. "They move from moment to moment like butterflies
among flowers."

Tzu, the most reflective, comes up with a subtitle after an afternoon's
swirl of commercials for aspirin, deodorant, cars, blue jeans, bacon, toilet
paper: "The 10,000 Things that have no substance." All three are charmed by
Americans' warmth, and amused by their cloudy knowledge of the rest of the
world including China. Charlie Chan reruns convulse them. For days, they
bark "Chop chop" at each other, and make up mock aphorisms: "Man of thousand
face not shave so good."

>From the start, though, there are shadows. In the early, sprightly
narrative there is a mention of Chen's dead face. As for the TV film, it
will remain at the end as the saddest of images, like a child's skipping-
rope that has broken the child's neck.

Beneath Surface, Reality --

Beneath America's blithe signs and codes, real things happen. Love, for
example. Mitchell is infatuated with Suzanne, an ex-hippie whose head is
filled with the air of the times. From Czap, her punk-surrealist-philosopher
lover, she has learned a convenient version of Leibniz's Theory of Possible
Worlds. To sum up Czap: Anything is true if you rearrange the "if" . His
empty tautology allows her to sleep a couple of times with Mitchell and then
stop, assuring him that in a different Possible World they could be serious
lovers. It allows her to seduce the innocent Chen.

The generation's casual lovemaking is one American reality that underlies
the commercials. Another is violence. Two young black men mug Chen. He is
not badly hurt but he is badly shaken. He and Wa - who tends to think in
military terms - buy a gun for defense. It will go off in a freak, and
lethal, accident.

At the investigation, the district attorney's "accident" decision strikes
everyone as OK; what happened was awful but not anyone's fault. That is not
good enough for Chen's countrymen. They come up afterward to Mitchell, their
guide to a world that now seems evil as well as inexplicable. "In the dark
parking lot, with Tzu clutching his arm, Wa cursed me bitterly in vile
Chinese, face contorted behind his tear-fogged glasses."

Few societies, Mitchell reflects at the end, indulge our kinds of accidents.
People are responsible for what happens, and there is only one possible
world for it to happen in.

It is a moral, but it feels more like a discovery, one that grows quite
naturally out of this beautifully balanced book. It has a touch of
self-consciousness, but we already know Mitchell as a self-conscious
inquirer. He is an appealing one as well. He and his creator have struck a
spark out of the clash of cultures; what we see by it is sobering.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. "Culture and Politics in China"  by Peter Li
   "China's Students - the Struggle for Democracy"  by R. Cherrington
   "Yen Jiaqi and China's Struggle for Democracy"  by  M.E. Sharpe  .... 62
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by: Jian
Source: Choice Book Reviews
Reviewers: Stephen K. Ma, H. Nelson & S. Ogden

"Culture and Politics in China"  by Peter Li,
Steven Mark & Marjorie H. Li
369 pages, Publisher: Transaction 1991,
ISBN 0-88738-353-X  US$28.95

This volume, edited by Peter and Marjorie Li (both of Rutgers University)
and Steven Mark, a journalist with particular interest in East Asia, is
intended as an opening volume to a series of books on Asian studies.  The
book explores the circumstances that led to the student demonstrations in
early 1989.  The contributors also China. The first section reprints
statements from various major players involved in the demonstrations.  Most
of these documents have appeared elsewhere.  The second section probes the
cultural, historical, political, and psychological aspects of the movement.
The appendixes include valuable information on archives and collections on
the student movement.  The list of recent books on the Tiananmen Square
incident needs to be updated.  The glossary of terms at the end of the
volume contains a selection of English and Chinese terms that is too limited
to explain fully "the most important historical and geographical references"
as the editors claim.  For upper-division undergraduates, graduate students,
and the general reader.


"China's Students - the Struggle for Democracy"  by R. Cherrington
239p  Publisher: Routledge 1991, ISBN 0-415-05291-2 US$52.50

Primarily an account of the student activities involved in the events in
Beijing in the spring of 1989.  Cherrington witnessed the events of the
democracy movement and provides a gripping first person account of the
"Tiananmen massacre. "  She had taught in Beijing in the years prior to 1989
and thus can chronicle the growth of student frustration.  Despite these
strengths, her book is unsatisfying as history.  It is a first-person
account published too late, despite its recounting of earlier student
movements in China. The book is neither an in-depth analysis of higher
education nor a probing examination of readable and might be attractive for
community college students wishing to gain some knowledge of Chinese college
students.


"Yen Jiaqi and China's Struggle for Democracy"  by  M.E. Sharpe
ed. with introduction by David Bachman and Dali L. Yang
201p 1991, ISBN 0-87332-780-2  US$45.00 ISBN 0-87332-781-0 paperback

Yen Jiaqi, who lived under communism in the People's Republic of China from
1949 until he fled to the West in 1989 after the crackdown at Tiananmen
Square, was the quintessential  "insider " demanding reform. China's leaders
chose him to become director of the Institute of Political Science in
China's Academy of Social Sciences in 1985, and even appointed him as part
of a small leadership group in an important think tank in 1986. Frustrated
that the regime did not adopt his ideas for political reform, Yen took the
extraordinary step of resigning from both. He supported students' demands
for political reform and became a highly visible participant.  Since fleeing
China, Yen has been an "outsider, " writing about the need for reform, even
revolution. This collection of Yen's essays on, e.g., abolishing lifetime
tenure for leaders, the need for a leadership responsibility system,
political structural reform, and the rule of law, plead for a new political
culture in which social and political conflict would be important forces in
advancing society, not reasons for finding and eliminating one's enemies.
Yen reveals how a serious Chinese intellectual thinks about democracy and
political reform, and in particular, how Chinese culture and a life under
socialism have shaped a leading intellectual's perception of what is
essential for China's political reform.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. "Chinese Higher Education: A Decade of Reform
    and Development (1978-1988)"  by Du Ruiqing  ...................... 134
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded and written by: Xing Cheng (SB_XING@mash.colorado.edu)

"Chinese Higher Education: A Decade of Reform
and Development (1978-1988)"  by Du, Ruiqing.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, 146 pp.

Since China opened its door to the outside world in the wake of the
disastrous "Cultural Revolution," higher education has been a focus of
interests for researchers both inside and outside the country.  However, a
brief review of the research on post-Mao Chinese higher education for more
than one decade does not always yield a clear picture.  One may hear strong
voices advocating great achievements in Chinese higher education made by
Deng followers, and one may also find a nearly chaotic picture as a result
of constant policy changes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and about
Chinese campuses under attacks of various "fevers" ranging from studying
abroad, business adventures, to student pro-democracy movements.  What
changes have actually occurred in the past decade, and what a role has the
higher education system played in the nation's renewed drive toward a
modern, powerful country before the end of the century?  Du's book provides
an excellent source for the answers to these questions.

This book begins with a brief historical overview of Chinese higher
education for over 3,000 years (Chapter 1).  The author characterizes
Chinese higher education before the modern time as being "dominated by
Confucian thinking and geared towards the training of government officials"
(p. 16), while modern Chinese higher education has been under waves of
foreign influences in different times, from those of Japanese, German,
French, British, American, to that of the Soviet after communists took over
the power in 1949.  The "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) was an
interruption of all the traditions and the whole country was pushed to the
edge of overall collapse, including the higher education system.  It was in
such a deep economic and social crisis that the post-Mao leadership begin an
effort to revitalize the nation's economic system and to embark on an
ambitious endeavor to rebuild the higher education system in China.

A common problem facing most of the researchers in Chinese higher education
is that, while those still in the system can hardly transcend their personal
likes and dislikes and provide an somewhat objective description about the
system, researchers outside the system are inclined to making value
judgements based on a Westernized educational ideal or norm.  The author of
this book seems to be aware of this problem and tries to reach a higher
standpoint in reviewing a decade of reform in Chinese higher education.  But
we will soon see that, given his current position as an administrator and
professor in a Chinese university, it would be an unrealistic expectation
for him to present an "inside edition" of the system using his "outside"
perspective gained through his education and research in Australia and in
the United States.

In Chapters 2 and 3 the author presents two major aspects of the reform
efforts made by the post-Mao leadership: management/structure, and
curriculum/instruction.  If in a well-balanced higher education system these
two aspects should be at least equally important, it was never the case in
China.  As the author points out, in the Chinese system it was the
all-powerful CCP university committee that the president was required to
subject himself to for leadership (p. 26). Therefore, the lessening of Party
and government control and decentralizing the decision making power to
individual institutions became the key to the success of any reform effort.
Without autonomy, any institutional intention to improve curricular design,
textbook selection, and even teaching methodology would prove to be
impossible.  According to the author, these problems have to a great extent
been solved as a result of the reintroduction of the president
responsibility system and the establishment of the State Education
Commission (SEC).  However, for those who are familiar with current
political situations in China, what resistance the reformers went through in
this decentralization process and how much autonomy university and college
administrators are actually enjoying today still remain questions.

In Chapters 3 and 4 the author deals with two key elements of a higher
education system: faculty and students.  The reform measures taken by
post-Mao leaders in dealing with faculty issues were basically catch-up
procedures such as removing political accusations imposed on intellectuals
and restoring an academic promotion system.  These were accomplished largely
due to the changes of overall political situations in China.  The more
urgent issues following the normalization of the academic life in Chinese
campuses should be the promotion of academic freedom and the improvement of
faculty quality.  To raise faculty qualifications takes time, but it is
nonetheless implementable, for measures taken to recruit new MA's and
Ph.D.'s, to initiate short-term in-service programs for young faculty, and
to introduce a mentor system for senior faculty to help younger faculty have
already proved to be some of the effective ways for professional
development.  As to the matter of academic freedom, Chinese faculty just
cannot afford to have very high expectations, given the experience of over
forty years of communist rule.  In this aspect, the author was cautious, but
he unmistakably filled his lines with pain from the past:

     Years of persistent political/ideological education and
     China's time-honored Confucian tradition of obedience more or
     less conditioned the Chinese intellectuals to restrictions of
     all descriptions.  As long as their human dignity could be
     guaranteed and their right to engage in academic pursuits was
     not infringed upon, the Chinese intellectual would feel
     comfortable and content. (p. 73)

The most commendable achievement of this reform effort may well be on the
student side.  The restoration of unified college entrance examinations, the
implementation of the first academic degrees conference program since 1949,
and a gradual movement from a job assignment system to a mutual choice one,
to name just a few, combine to make college campuses a more academically
competitive place than it was before.

A related topic to student development is the establishment of exchange
programs with other countries.  The author devoted a whole chapter (Chapter
6) to discuss Chinese leaders' ambivalence over the issue of sending
students to study abroad.  Besides being concerned with potential "brain
drain," which has already jeopardized the development of many third world
countries with their most talented youths studying in developed countries,
they have also been haunted by the nightmare of "peaceful evolution," a term
used to indicate the democratization of the political system. As a matter of
fact, had the author extended the closing line of his book for one more
year, he would have had much more to say about the impact of this
decade-long foreign exchange program. Though initiated by college students
in China, the 1989 Tiananmen student pro-democracy movement was undoubtedly
inspired by Western ideas and values resulted from cultural and educational
exchanges.

The real strength of this extensive review of a decade-long reform in
Chinese higher education lies in the author's insight into the long-lasting
impact of these reform efforts.  Unlike many "outsiders" who treat Chinese
higher education as just another research topic, the author of this book
clearly aims at improving the daily operation of the Chinese higher
education system.  He offers scenarios and recommendations at the end of the
book, which include formulating and enacting education laws, increasing the
government's education appropriations, diversifying the structure of the
system as well as the sources of funding, and expanding community colleges
with vocational and technical programs.  These suggestions are
thought-provoking, though their adaption and final implementation will
totally depend on the future direction of China's political reform, which is
itself in the process of dramatic change.

The book is not simply a historical narrative, but filled with the author's
deep concerns with the fate and well-being of one of the largest higher
education systems in a rapidly changing world. One may argue that the author
seemed to have given too much credit to the post-Mao leaders who were soon
to expose themselves in front of the world as one of the most suppressive
governments in modern history.  However, one has to understand that, under a
totalitarian system, unbiased "pure scholarship" simply does not exit.
Behind the seemingly overweighing of achievements over problems lies the
author's profound hope for change.  This is where his political
consciousness and social responsibilities are, and this is also where the
strength and weakness of this book are.

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