Day Five

This morning held an opportunity I could have only imagined before: a private conference with the diplomats of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The panel that sat at the Front of the press room were Deputy Director Shi Yuanqiang -- who gave no speech but led us through question and answering afterward -- Deputy Director General Xie Feng -- who did most of the talking throughout -- Assistant Minister He Yafei -- who left for another meeting immediately after his opening remarks -- and Councilor Feng Tie -- whose speciality appeared to be SARs (Special Autonomous Regions) like Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, but who received no questions from us at all after his speech.

Questions were naturally given preformulated answers or, for unexpected questions, vague interpretations of already mostly obvious answers. Considering my intimate connections with Japan at this point, I took it upon myself to ask at least one question regarding Chinese-Japanese relations. In answer to my request for a description of China's response to Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's call for militarization -- which was supposedly cued by North Korea's explicit nuclear armament -- Deputy Director Xie replied that relations have been mostly peaceful with Japan since the war but that China hopes it has learned its lessons from that time. This is a good example of a vague interpretation of an alreadly obvious fact or likely opinion. However, this is expectable of diplomats, expecially those representing any form of government endorsing the simple message of peaceful international harmony and national development. The extent to which international harmony was stressed, though, was beyond what I had expected.

We then split into several smaller groups, to allow us to have a larger number of our questions answered, as well as to allow the interning representatives for these representatives to practice addressing our questions. In my group, I put a little pressure on the intern to list any concerns the CCP (China's Communist Party -- which has held the primary legislative and executive positions in China's government for decades now) or other government officials might be showing for the degradation (perhaps soon to be near obliteration) of the cultural identity for the Chinese minorities (less often regarded ethnicities) living in the SARs. With the CCP in place as it is, local democratic governments of any region are consistently bureaucratically managed by installed authorities of the CCP, all aiming (in a very monistic fashion) toward the goal of a nationally unified economic development and higher ranking GDP: a more highly recognized economic status at the price of (among other things) minoritarian cultureal erasure. He remarked that respect for these culture was still a point of attention for the government -- as can be seen in its granted funds to refurbish the Buddhist monasteries and temples in Tibet -- and that the CCP, since its formation in 1921, has always served as the country's most active agent in the democratic movement. (By the way, do not forget that I am NOT referring here to a form of democracy that necessarily resembles our American form of government.) Of course, the matter of the prolonged banishment of the Dalai Lama and his brotherhood services remains a problem left unaddressed...

Several hours later, we were on a plane bound for Xi'an, far away from the observable centralization and racing industrialization taht Beijing displayed. It was time to see another face of China.