TripDingo

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Elliot Ng, the VP of Marketing for Kango.com (who sponsors this blog) and having quite a few exchanges about the China blogosphere, entreprenuership, travel, technology, Shanghai nightlife, and the flows of information between China and the West (amongst many other things). Fantastic guy and I want to bake cookies for him already but I’ll jump straight into what I want to talk about in this post by referencing a post of his over at his blog, CNReviews.com:

There is an incredible one-way mirror (technically a two-way mirror) effect in the world today. People (ok, educated elites) in China have a high degree of awareness about what is going on in the US. But most people (including educated elites) in the US have a low degree of awareness of China.

Elliot then goes on to give an “especially clear” example of this one-sided “awareness” where a marketing director for a Chinese company shared that she watches the American TV shows Prison Break and Entourage. 

I have a few problems with Elliot’s statement (which I’m sure likely stems just from the lack of precision when using certain terms). For one, how are we defining “awareness?” Awareness of what? Of popular media entertainment? Social trends? Political trends? Societal values? Business environments? Professional norms? History? What? I could go on and on. Granted, there are more Chinese (absolute and per capita) who have exposure to American popular media than vice versa but is that sufficient to generalize “awareness?” 

Moreover, what meaningful conclusion can we derive from that bit of “awareness?” Does it imply that Chinese people are more international-minded and outward looking than Americans? Or does it mean that Chinese television shows just aren’t as entertaining? Does it mean American culture and media has, over time, achieved a certain level of ”dominance” where societies below it cannot help but look up at it just as your average joe invariably knows about and may even follow the lives of celebrities and other famous people?

There are many reasonable and arguably more accurate ways to explain Elliot’s observation than jumping to the implication that Americans have a low degree of awareness about China. To be sure, awareness requires one to pursue information. However, it also requires information to not only be disseminated but also to be worthy of dissemination. There is a wholly natural catalyst for the dissemination of American media and even culture. Like it or not, America is the dominant economic, political, and even social power of the present era. It is admired and emulated as well as resented and reviled for that precisely that reason. America simultaneously disseminates information, has information worthy of being disseminated, and has people who pay attention to it.

If nothing else, it usually at least has two of those three.

Of course, this same set of circumstances is also a huge culprit for the resulting self-absorbtion and global ignorance commonly and widely lodged against Americans…even to the point where Americans often consider themselves to have “low awareness.” When you’re ahead of the pack, it is easy to fall into the complacency where you think there’s not much to look at. Does this excuse Americans for being arrogant, intolerant, self-centric, disrespectful, or rude? Of course not. Yet, it would do a world of good to actually evaluate the excuses justifications wholly legitimate reasons for why Americans often don’t have much experience traveling to different countries and experiencing other cultures:

1. the United States is fairly big, unlike many European countries (where most of the these critics hail from) where you can fart and you’d be polluting a neighboring state;

2. like the vast majority of people in any country, people don’t always venture away from “home;”

3. America often imports (even Disney-fying) the “interesting” parts of other countries and cultures; and

4. America already is arguably multicultural as an country built upon immigration and has widespread, even dominant, ethnic communities that originate from around the world.

Yes yes, there are a lot of WASPs throughout the midwest, but a huge portion of Americans regularly and consistently encounter people, businesses, and phenomenon of different origins and cultures. Canada isn’t very different from the United States (though they’d like to think and insist so) and hell, Mexico extends through most of the Southwestern states anyway. Already, there goes America’s closest neighbors. Shit, now they have to drive or fly that much further before encountering another distinctly foreign culture so they can earn the respect of being “international.”

Should Americans get out there? Yeah, it would never hurt. Can the critics understand why there’s not much compelling motivation to do so? Not with their heads up their asses.

Many Chinese seek out information about what’s going on in America because, for a large part, they want to know what American lives are like. Even with all the anti-American propoganda, many Chinese past and present still have certain positive perceptions of America, land of opportunity or whatnot. Can the same be said for Americans with regards to their interest in knowing what life is like in China? No, not really. Oh sure, China has “an impressive history and culture” but there’s little reason to be seriously keen about China, what goes on in China, and Chinese lives when it is a country that was for decades closed off to the rest of the world, ominously Communist, and doesn’t really offer much in ways of political, social, or economic advantages relative to the West. 

People seek what they aspire. They do not seek what would only make them feel guilty. We prefer to focus on where we want to go, not who we left behind. We look towards what or where would be a better life for ourselves, not the miseries, sufferings, or disadvantages of others. We prefer to hope, not pity. When people have spare cash, they look for what they can buy, not for charities that need donations. It’s logical and reasonable for Chinese people to consume more American culture than vice versa. It is logical and reasonable for Chinese people to seemingly be more “aware” of America than vice versa.

And what about educated elites? I take issue to that too. Well, first, how do we define “educated elite” anyway? There are lots of educated people in both countries and not every educated person is an elite. Hell, not every elite is educated either. I do think we can say that there are a lot of “educated” people in America who could afford to travel abroad to expand their awareness of other cultures but don’t. I also do think we can safely say that there are much fewer “educated” Chinese people in China who are able to travel abroad (to the United States, for instance). In China, it is not necessarily easy to venture out, whether due to political or, mostly, economic reasons. Americans do not have such constraints.

When combining those given constraints with a logical and reasonable interest in American culture, Chinese people will do the next best thing: Live vicariously. That can be done through relatives that are in America, watching American movies and TV, listening to American music, or consuming American products (Starbucks anyone?).

But that is “packaged” culture. It can be a form of “awareness” but it is ultimately wholly incomplete awareness. Equating everything you see or hear through American entertainment media as being truly representative of America is about as intelligent as thinking all Chinese people are kung-fu peasants capable of flight.

Do Chinese expose themselves to more American media and information than Americans to Chinese media and information? Yes, definitely and the reasons for this one-way transaction were detailed above. When China becomes a dominant international culture, you’ll see more people around the world (including America) directing their eyes and energies towards it.

…which is, in fact, what is happening and what we’re experiencing!

Surprise.

I would say much of the “educated elites” in America do have awareness and even growing awareness of China. There are many Americans who are venturing here to learn the language, find opportunities, and to do business with what promises to be the next big economic market of our time. Sure, there is still much for them to look down upon and be unsatisfied with compared to home, but they’re wising up. If they’re not, they’re not actually “educated,” are they? Willful ignorance and intolerance seems to go against the very meaning of “educated” (but not really).

It also wouldn’t be fair to suppose that Americans are more suspicious and misguided about Chinese than vice versa. Maybe some of the nastier generalizations lodged against the Chinese are more intellectually dishonest than those lodged against Americans but I reckon the vast majority of both peoples really don’t know jack shit about each other and actually harbor some really ridiculous notions. But we’re talking about the “educated elites,” right?

America is more transparent than China. Perhaps Elliot uses this rationale to conclude that the Chinese must have a more accurate awareness of the United States than the other way around. America does have a lot of sores and it does tend to do a pretty good job of sharing them with everyone. The same can’t be said for China.

But the information is there. A course about Chinese history or contemporary Chinese society at a major university in the United States is likely to have a lot more detail, facts, and perspectives than a comparable course about America in a major mainland Chinese university. If nothing else, the American “educated elite” can probably get a clearer and more accurate picture of China sitting in an American classroom than his or her counterpart. The “educated elite” in China (presuming they did not study abroad) would likely have to venture abroad to get a better idea of America.

And that’s what they do. Many Chinese people have, historically, gone abroad (often to the United States) once they could. Many in China often emigrate and seek U.S. citizenship the moment they become “elite” enough to do so. There is an out-flow of information from America just as there is an in-flow of people who want to be there. America, for all its warts, is still a pretty darn nice place. Why do many Chinese students study French? Because many of them would like to go study abroad in France where *gasp* it is generally a pretty darn nice place too!

Circumstances encourage Chinese to look outward. The desire is born out of a certain necessity. Such circumstances haven’t existed in the United States to motivate Americans to do the same. The average semi-educated city-dwelling Chinese may be more “aware” of American pop culture entertainment than an average American is of Chinese pop culture entertainment but that’s because of wanting to live vicariously. It is not an intrinsic desire to simply be more internationally aware; it is a fascination with something that appears to be better or more interesting than their current reality.

If we’re talking about “pure, unadultered, intellectual pursuit of knowledge” awareness for the sake of being aware, I reckon the “educated elite” in America trump the “educated elite” in China. Why? Because for the longest time, these American intellectuals did so out of sheer academic curiosity. It can be argued that even for the “educated elites” in China, they’ve always had the confounding factor of feeling the grass is somehow greener on the other side. Hell, we can say that ever since the European imperialists forced China and Asia open (and demonstrated just how big their cocks are). I’ll even say it: there’s penis envy…and penis envy is a confounding factor when it comes to pursuing and judging “awareness.”

My point with all of this is to understand the motivations that result in seeming “awareness.” These are people and they exist in situations and circumstances that are conducive or inconducive. If we can say one group is more or less aware than the other, it isn’t necessarily about the flows of information but the desires for that information. Yes, more information and better systems for exchanging information can whet the appetite but, in explaining away why Americans may be less aware of Chinese culture than vice versa, we need to focus on what brings people to the table of wanting to know about the other.

Elliot wants to somehow help Americans better understand and become more “aware” of China and the Chinese. That’s a great goal and Americans definitely do need to keep their eyes open on the competition if they plan on staying at the top of the heap. The question with how to improve these exchange flows of information is figuring out who our current target audience is and how we’re going to convert the unwashed masses into our target audience. If we don’t, we’re answering questions no one is asking. If we don’t, we’re just creating yet another tool/medium/channel to serve a niche market rather than developing and growing that market.

“Awareness” is our product. Who are our customers and how do get more consumers to want our product?

Tags: answer, anti-americanism, audience, awareness, blog, blogger, blogosphere, business, country, cross-cultural, culture, customers, economy, educated, elite, elliot ng, entertainment, exchange, generalizations, growth, immigration, intercultural, kango, language, market, marketing, media, melting pot, multicultural, popular, problem, product, question, size, solution, target, vice president

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 2:21 am and is filed under China, Random, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.