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Rob_Hugo@PortNWHi everyone,
Please reply to this message and share your thoughts about our November 21 afternoon session on China from 1976 to the present by Clayton Dube.
-Miranda
AnonymousDo more men ask for advice about the women they want to marry and do women seek for approval of the men when it comes to marriage? If so is it because of money and ethical backgrounds?
Could the women who was married to a rural men pay her way out of a marriage if she wanted a divorce?
Besides being stuck in a marriage, what are other reasons these women are committing suicide?
AnonymousI can't wait to use the Mao Zedong quotations and especially the 8 points describing "How to be a good communist" with my ap language students. Always looking for new and interesting non fiction articles, this is ripe for some great discussion. thank you.
AnonymousI have lots of questions in terms of marriage reforms: Were the former marriages before the reform recognized as legal marriages? Or did couples have to get re-married in order for legitimacy? If they did not choose to marry under the government's guidance, how were the children recognized under the state? Did they have less rights than the children whose parents were legally married? And were same sex cohabitation permissible before the legalizing of marriages under the state?
AnonymousAs usual, Professor Dube provided a wealth of information.
Although there is so much more to cover, this session provided an overview of China
past 1976.
The rise of Mao and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists was of special interest since it shaped the Chinese society we see today.
The Rape of Nanjing further explains ongoing mistrust between the Japanes and Koreans.
China's revisionist history of WWII - in its textbooks it reads that China defeated Japan.
Perhaps there is to much hubris among CHina's government to admit that "capitalists" such as the US defeated their enemy.
First, government infiltrated private property, and then took another step further to
enter the family.
China's Communist government ruled China according to its own interpretation of Lenninism and the USSR brand of Communism.
AnonymousI was fascinated by Clay's lecture concerning the Chinese revolution and Maoism. A few similarities with Cuban Revolution caught my attention. In my native country Cuba, during the revolution, Fidel focused on educating the "Guajiros" (peasants) while battling Batista's forces in the mountains; like Mao, the peasants later became his most staunch supporters. The similarity ends here however, although both countries practice "Land reforms" Mao's ideas led to a rapid industrialization of China (but at great human cost). It is interesting to note that some critics have been pushing the Cuban government to the adapt the Chinese model to their brand of socialism
clay dubeHi Sarah -
I wish we had more time to dive deeper into this and many other topics. There are several quick points, though, that we could make on marriage.
First, there was great variation across China. In some poor areas and in many parts of Taiwan, it was common to "adopt in" one's future daughter in law at a young age. The girl was raised alongside her future husband. This is touched on in the film Girl from Hunan (based on a Shen Congwen story), but has been written on extensively by Arthur P. Wolf. This, though, was not the norm, but hints at the variety of customs.
Virtually all women who wanted to married and most men married. The poorest men constituted the biggest exception to the universal marriage norm. They simply couldn't afford the bride price and were called "dry sticks."
Most households consisted of an elderly parent (or couple), a married couple, and their children. Only the richest households managed to achieve the multicouple/multigeneration under one roof ideal. Most families divided the family property and lived separately as soon as two sons had married. Property was divided evenly among all sons. (The son who took care of the parents got a little more and this too would be divided once the parents died.) It was this system of partible inheritance that allowed for near universal marriage. It was different from unigeniture or primogeniture practiced in other places.
The new CCP-dominated gov't did recognize the old marriages (even if the couples were underage). In rural settings, parents continued to dominate marriage decisions for years. In most places, though, people now choose their own partners. And in cities divorce is on the rise:
http://china.usc.edu/ShowArticle.aspx?articleID=592 Divorce, though, is still much less common than it once was.
I think that students love learning about family systems and norms of behavior. What kinds of things might teachers do to help students understand varying systems (and soon you'll note differences between China and Japan and Korea).
clay dubeJoe's comments are really interesting. The big challenge for Cuba remains the economic one. Unlike China, though, Cuba doesn't have access to the giant US market.
clay dubeHi Julie,
Great questions!
I think that both sexes seek parental guidance on marriage in roughly equal amounts. It's a giant step. The age of first marriage has risen steadily in China and is now about the same as in the US.
Please note that the suicides/murders I mentioned in class on Saturday were in the mid-1950s in a single province. The party decided to stop pushing the marriage/divorce freedom law as a result, though it remained the law (see Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China, 1983 for details).
There are other reasons for rural women suicides, but the most common is unhappiness in marriage. Sometimes this is because of mistreatment or harassment because one hasn't given birth to a son.
Please note -- most women aren't unhappy and most who are do not kill themselves. Unfortunately, though, it does happen. Here's a Washington Post article on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051401506.html
AnonymousI should not be surprised at the influx of CHinese business people in Africa.
Over the last five to ten years, America and Europe have left a void in:
Somalia, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Sudan.
Now that CHina has grown exponentially, they need the resources that Africa has.
So what does China do?
They hire contractors to manage their African holdings. CHina was bold enough to do business with the Arab government in Sudan, while international pressure was at its
highest - no wonder the Sudanese government did not relent with its genocide/holocaust
of the blacks in Darfur- they had all of the resources/trade agreements they needed from China.
Although CHina's influence in Africa provides them with a wealth of resources, black Africans
do not benefit since they are not hired to manage CHinese holdings - this is where the
big money is.
Until African governments place incentives or boundaries on who should be allowed to
manage or work in CHinese firms, the average black African will suffer economically.
Cheryl Watson
clay dubeCheryl raises important questions about China's expanding role in Africa. I am sure that most will agree that over the past centuries most of the interaction between Africa and others did not rebound to the general benefit of Africans (though many individuals and groups did benefit). Only in more recent decades has been fostering economic development and self-rule been an aim embraced by foreign powers. China's engagement with Africa is not completely new (the Tanzanian/Zambian railway is a good example of early assistance. An Associated Press report from 1977 begins:
"The Great Uhuru Railway, China's showcase aid project in Africa, begins incongruously at the end of a red dirt road in this bush town at the heart of Zambia's copper belt, 100 miles from the capital, Lusaka." (published in the NY Times, 4/24/1977)
According to a scholarly article published in 1971 (George Yu, "Working on the Railroad: China and the Tanzania-Zambia Railway," Asian Survey, 11.11 (Nov. 1971) :1101-17.) this was China's largest foreign aid project ever at more than US $400 million.
China's aid in those days was driven primarily by politics. It was building solidarity with newly independent nations. Those nations, incidentally, were key in voting to bring China into the UN in 1971.
I met many African students in China in the early 1980s. They spent a year studying Chinese in Beijing and then went to various schools for technical training (medicine, engineering, computer science).
What is new is a) economics now drives decision-making on investments in Africa, and b) the scale and scope of the new engagement. A travel agent friend in Xi'an devotes most of his time to sending Chinese businesspeople to Africa. There are many articles about this and CSIS and the Jamestown Foundation are among the institutions that have produced studies on the impact of China in Africa.
I hope that Cheryl and others who are interested in this topic will join us at USC on 1/21/2010 for Deborah Brautigam's book talk (The Dragon's Gift: The True Story of China in Africa) and on 2/10/2010 for Zhou Xiaoli's presentation of her new film, The Colony. Xiaoli and her husband have carried out extensive interviews with both Chinese in Africa and Africans who work for and with the Chinese.
AnonymousWell, I will tell you I found the whole idea of granting women the right to divorce and the intended and unintended consequences of that law fairly interesting. Made me very grateful to be A) a man and B) an American. 😀
I have to say I got really stuck on the idea that women commit suicide because that was/is their only option for getting out of being married. Yikes. I suspect this is not a phenomenon unique to rural China, but it is fascinating nonetheless.
Another point of interest--to say the least.
Mao's determination to overthrow his own government if they tried to overthrow "his" revolution.
A) "His" revolution of course is counter-intuitive to the "Peoples Democratic" Dictatorship. I know I quoted the Peoples Democratic part out of the title, and it probably speaks to my western bias, but the "Peoples Democratic" and "Dictatorship" are such antithetical terms to me that I just get puzzled.
B) Mao's improvident avarice where his revolution is concerned somehow allowed him to starve his own people rather than revisit his economic policies. How can someone who obviously loved his country allow him to so stubbornly stick to his guns, so to speak, in the face of millions of starving countrymen? Makes no sense. Damn Mao was a paradoxical fella though wasn't he?
Anyway, I look forward to tomorrow and the guest speakers. Should be fun. Forewarning, I have been forced to bring my kid. She's 10, she'll be bathed and she is aware of the nature of my duties as a student so I expect all will be okay. I apologize in advance if this causes anyone discomfort, but she'll be cool, she has a new book to read and a computer to play on.
Till then,
Thomas [Edit by="talfera on Dec 5, 7:25:37 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousMarriage and money ! Isn't it interesting that a selective gene pool would be determined by economical stability. One could say that economic success in China should be chosen, rather than love or physical attributes. The dry sticks lose out again. Each culture treats inheritance differently, but I will say that usually the son's are the winners. Only the wealthiest households keep the grandparents and the entire family under one roof. It is also interesting to note that respect for the grandparents gives that son a greater inheritance. It must be because they have to put up with so much more. This is justice. They are getting paid for their work. It seems that discrimination among women is still prevalent, because they did not inherit the property if there were sons in the family. It seems that the rights of women were identified when they had the right to divorce. This of course was much better than suicide. Doesn't it seem that here, women are continually getting the short end of the stick ?
AnonymousI think that it will not be too long until Cuba has its Independance Day, and its introduction to the American Market. Is it the final Economic Frontier ? I think the preassures upon the people of Cuba, and how much they have suffered will eventually push for some form of a revolution. No regime can last forever. Let's hope so.
AnonymousI loved this lecture/topic. I am most fascinated with Modern China because so many of my students come from various parts of the country. I love asking them questions about their regions, customs and dialects. In doing so, I found out that one of my student's (I had had her older brother prior years) parents had an arranged marriage. Frankly I was shocked. I knew it existed currently...but I thought really it only occurred in other countries (such as India). But her parents marriage was arranged and then they moved to the United States, as newlyweds. The parent, although the mother is very unhappy, are still married. My student told me her mother is threating to move to where ever she goes to college. I find this extrememly interesting. Especially the Chinese parents I come across, they are profoundly dedicated to their children. A quality I truly admire in their culture. I suppose its the same in Mainland China, since most only have 1 child.