The Fence
No kidding. The “Cyclone fence”, “cities within city” mode mentioned in Jane Jacob’s book is just what we have in China – not really exactly the same, but very common. I hope I could have found some picture links so that you would have a clearer idea of it, but I don’t. So let’s take the Aggie Village where I am living now for an illustration. If built in China, it would never be an open community like it is here – people can get to any building from all possible directions. It would be fenced around in Chinese cities with brick wall of nearly one and a half person height, which will be called living zone if for living and otherwise any business name. There will be security guards at each gate -- normally four gates for relatively big communities, east, west, south and north, only where people can enter, and visitors may need to write down their names and purposes of entering. Chinese cities are built with numerous such fenced areas, including the living zones, schools, factories, organizations and so on. People who visit China must be amazed at the imposing sight of walls.
In fact, the wall is not a recently popular thing in China. The Chinese ancestor liked to build walls. They built walls in Beijing, Xi’an, and many other cities, and the most famous one is the Great Wall, which snakes across half the country. They built walls to protect against enemies and evil spirits. This tradition has survived to this day that the Chinese still have their parks and schools walled off from the public.
Certainly here I do not intend to discuss just the walled city planning in China. I mean, people’s social behavior reflects their national character and culture, and which would be a critical element in their policy making, and should be taken into account by the outsiders to understand their policies. The walled-up cities to some extent reflect the inward, defensive kind of characteristic of Chinese people, who valued the private affairs inside the wall, private as family to family, city to city and of course more importantly, nation to nation. In that sense, I don’t think China would bother to step outside the borderline and pose such a threat to other countries, because we respect others’ privacy as we do to ourselves. I totally understand the concern of China threat facing such a rapidly growing power, like that we Chinese do also try to modernize military in a sense of protecting ourselves from any possible threats. But, to look deeper into each other’s culture and gain more mutual understanding, we might feel more released at what we have seen others doing instead of over-reacting like to China's destruction of an aging Chinese weather satellite.
To reiterate my point, it is that when making a policy, maybe more a foreign policy here I mean, we are affected by our cultural character, consciously or subconsciously. To better realize this would help us make sounder choices in terms of making policy decisions.
Links:
ChineseCulture
One-stop Chinese Culture
China confirms anti-satellite test
China's Defense Budget
Chinese WTO membership is a blessing
In fact, the wall is not a recently popular thing in China. The Chinese ancestor liked to build walls. They built walls in Beijing, Xi’an, and many other cities, and the most famous one is the Great Wall, which snakes across half the country. They built walls to protect against enemies and evil spirits. This tradition has survived to this day that the Chinese still have their parks and schools walled off from the public.
Certainly here I do not intend to discuss just the walled city planning in China. I mean, people’s social behavior reflects their national character and culture, and which would be a critical element in their policy making, and should be taken into account by the outsiders to understand their policies. The walled-up cities to some extent reflect the inward, defensive kind of characteristic of Chinese people, who valued the private affairs inside the wall, private as family to family, city to city and of course more importantly, nation to nation. In that sense, I don’t think China would bother to step outside the borderline and pose such a threat to other countries, because we respect others’ privacy as we do to ourselves. I totally understand the concern of China threat facing such a rapidly growing power, like that we Chinese do also try to modernize military in a sense of protecting ourselves from any possible threats. But, to look deeper into each other’s culture and gain more mutual understanding, we might feel more released at what we have seen others doing instead of over-reacting like to China's destruction of an aging Chinese weather satellite.
To reiterate my point, it is that when making a policy, maybe more a foreign policy here I mean, we are affected by our cultural character, consciously or subconsciously. To better realize this would help us make sounder choices in terms of making policy decisions.
Links:
ChineseCulture
One-stop Chinese Culture
China confirms anti-satellite test
China's Defense Budget
Chinese WTO membership is a blessing
posted by Lihua at 9:25 AM
4 Comments:
It was mentioned here that policy can be affected by culture. I thought of Stone's book which talks about the dilemma between the political and cultural community. The problem is how to integrate several cultural communities into a single political community without destroying or sacrifing their identity and integrity. Culture can be a barrier to policy and maybe a change in culture, although virtually impossible, would be necessary to resolve the dilemma. Stone did not offer any solutions to the dilemma that I know of and I'm not sure myself what would be effective.
The idea of fencing in a community is very interesting. When I read Jacobs and the part on fenced in communities, I related to some of the gated neighborhood communities by where I live in Colorado. These gated communities contain extremely large houses with very high property value, so it could be seen why it is so important to protect (fence in) such highly desired goods. But I wonder what it does to the mindset of the people living within the community and to the people living right outside of the community? I know that whenever I drive past the gaurd at the gate to go and visit a friend I feel that I am crossing into a kind of foreign territory, that I don't necessarily belong. I do not exactly relate to these people with their big, expensive houses, vast yards, and shiny cars in the driveway. Thus, to Alli's point, cultural identity can be fenced in, and when entering that area, can our different cultures coexist?
Interesting concept, I would argue that a neighborhoods and communities should be free and open places for anyone to be a part of and grow. As we discussed inclass today, the little league in Providence, formed and other second order consequences ensured, like the soccer fields, and all the community bonding that occurred. I think if a society were to compartmentalize... the melting pot would not contiue and everyone would become very narrow minded...
I don’t exactly mean that “cultural identity can be fenced in”, and closing door proved to be no good. I believe that a more open and transparent policy will help to knock down those unnecessary visible or invisible walls.
As for cultural clash, I think the best way is to learn from each other, absorb the good and reject the bad, if you call it coexistence.
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