My Bachelor’s Degree in International Apolitics

By: Mike Sliwinski

November 7, 2014

I was riding on a modest tour bus in early October. The sun was rapidly setting behind the jagged limestone mountains, so emblematic of China that they appear on the 20-kuai note.  It was getting so dark that I could hardly see the people sitting across from me, and at that moment I was struck once again by the desire that lies beneath my entire purpose for studying abroad in China: coming to understand what I could not learn from books or classes. It was an odd setting for an investigative exposition, but maybe that’s why I couldn’t resist asking the young couple across from me about their future.

I have been fortunate enough to have time (and, perhaps, unfortunate enough to have a single-entry visa) to explore China when I do not have classes, seeing as many cities, villages, and attractions as possible across the vast country. While these places are often full of 20-somethings to meet, it is really public transportation that gives me a window to speak with a diverse array of my Chinese contemporaries. I have lost count of how many overnight trains, shared taxis, and crowded train terminals I have been in where I sat across from a shy-looking girl or quiet guy, stealing glances at each other. Eventually, whether it is the product of hospitality, curiosity, or simply proximity, one of us will ask where the other is from, and the window opens.

My academic interest in understanding the nexus of Chinese government, politics, and society has exposed me to journalism, scholarship, and analysis based on polished hypotheses and utilizing piles of official documents and resources. But here, on trains and buses and taxis, I get perspectives in the raw; I do not have to look for information to confirm my arguments, or balance my sources to make a level conclusion. I ask what I want, frame my questions openly and candidly, and then sit back and listen. In this way, I’ve explored not just how Chinese in their 20s view the government and political issues, but how they themselves interact in this system—or do not.

Overwhelmingly, the responses I have gotten, with all their bias and bitterness and, on my own part, patchy translation, reveal a group of educated, ambitious, and genuinely caring young adults who want nothing to do with the Chinese government. This is not to be understood as an anti-political spirit, but rather as apolitical.

I was stirred. When I interact with people my age from similarly-educated backgrounds in the United States, I can hardly look at them without imagining them standing at a podium during a debate; it feels like there is so much political hope, or at least political concern, in my demographic cohort. My Chinese counterparts are no less well-educated, personally motivated, or opinionated about current issues, but they are very different in one way: they opt out. Explanations I have heard range from exasperation with the government, to an anodyne disinterest in politics, to even a sense that the state is there to take care of things for them—they need not get involved. When the topic of conversation shifts to their careers, hobbies, and habits, or personal relationships, there is a comparative deluge of hopes and goals.

When I apply my own analysis to these conversations, I see a group of individuals who are the products of economic liberalization without similar improvements in political freedom; a demographic jaded with politics and, as such, removed from it by choice. But I cannot do away with a key proviso—my analysis is of a tiny sample of a tiny demographic in the most populous nation in the world. Even if my understanding were clear, it is impossible to see where this fascinating demographic will go in the future. But that can’t stop me from trying to understand these individuals, one by one, and learn how their single experiences are but tiny points in a complex and shifting image of Chinese political identity. In doing so, I am slowly learning that the connections between people and their societies should not be isolated into categories of politics or opinion; that regardless of my desire to analyze, there will be those, even a majority, who do not fit into the classifications I have ready for them. And as far as this process is concerned, there is nothing I love more than getting to fix my misunderstandings packed into the backseat of an aged taxi or sandwiched into an economy-class train seat, as long as I have somebody to get to know.

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