Reflective Essay
Alex Sakalas
IS-336X-02
5/1/15
Word Count: 1042
Help Received:
Citations
I’ve learned a lot about China in my time in this class. I think one of the important things I took away from this course is the level of corruption and censorship that the government is part of. I never understood the extent of the corruption that was in the government until I read an article I was doing for my blog about the stomping out the corruption in the military and the government. I learned that China is on the road to democracy but not actually there yet. China has a long road ahead of them. Another thing that I learned about China, and government in general, is the role accountability plays in making decisions in the government. The ability for the government to get a general consensus of the people and to make decisions based off of it is key. If the government can’t hear the voice of every person, then how can they go about making a decision that will benefit everyone?
I think that the second paper meant the most to me. I remember hearing about the censorship in China through high school but I never really understood the extent of it. In the second paper I did some research on the censorship of internal and external information on the internet. Internally, certain things like messages or emails that contain messages critical of the government have been known to not make it to their intended recipients. The author of one of the articles that I referenced in my second paper had just that happen to him. He wrote a message over a Chinese based app called WeChat that never reached its intended recipient because the contents of the message were mildly critical of the government (theatlantic.com). Another thing that I pulled from my second paper is the level of corruption in the government. Xi Junping is having a huge crackdown of corruption in the government and in the military. Basically he is sweeping through anyone that holds power over others and trying to sift out those guilty of corruption. Fourteen different generals in the Chinese military have been recognized as having been investigated or convicted of corruption (wsj.com). Even in a military as large as that of China’s, that has to be slightly unsettling for the people of China seeing that.
When it comes to my views of accountability in the US, I believe that I expressed my views fully in one of my blog posts. There are a large number of people in the United States that are extremely active and participatory in the government. And there are also a large number of people who sit back and take no part in the government besides voting. There are entire organizations here in the US whose sole purpose is to help with passing along the problems of the people to the government. Many people are active enough in the government that our elections are representative of the opinions of the people. That is not necessarily true of the government in China. The voice of the people are heavily censored and it is extremely hard for the people to bring about change in the government. The people are forced to congregate in secret or march in front of government buildings to get their message across. They need to really come together and pressure the government into the change they want to see. Also, in one of the videos we watched, we saw that there were millions of migrant workers who traveled around China looking for work. We also learned that majority of these people do not apply for new papers when they move into a different region while looking for work. But when they do this they limit their own ability to be part of the governmental process. Without their input, a large demographic of voters opinions is missing from the election and that could result in these people later being unhappy with the government.
I don’t really think a whole lot changed in my views between the first set of blogs and the second. I learned a great deal between the two, but my views did not greatly change. I still believe that China is in need of a complete revamping and overhaul of the government. I think what really brought this to light were the videos we watched in class. The Under the Dome video and the one about the migrant workers increased my interest exponentially. I didn’t know that the workings of the government was as corrupt as it was until I took this course. I know that every government has its flaws but I didn’t realize the extent of the problem until we discussed it in class.
Looking back on my semester and all of the different topics we have commented and talked about, I would have to say one of the more interesting things I have read/written would be the article about an anticensorship’s website being DDoS. It ties back into the censorship problem that the Chinese government has. The government is busy censoring websites and messages that contain messages critical of the government, and certain other websites are making it their job to mirror those websites for the Chinese people to see. Now there was a massive DDoS attack against one such website, an attack so large it could only have been orchestrated by the Chinese government itself. Now if that is true then it just shows even more so the lengths that the Chinese government will go to in order to stop these messages from spreading (bbc.com).
Before I took this course, I was never really that interested nor knowledgeable about China or the workings of its government. But since taking this course I have taken away many points, some more important than others. For example, I didn’t know that corruption was such a big problem in the Chinese government. But recognizing it is in another government, it also makes you look at your own government differently. And I think that is more important than anything you can take away about one single government. It’s the information you can relate and use in other ways that is the most valuable. And I have taken a lot of that away from this course.
Citations
Fallows, James. “Sobering News Out of China, Part 4 Million.” The Atlantic. February 24, 2015. Accessed May 2, 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/sobering-news-out-of-china-part-four-million/385889/.
“The Coming Chinese Crackup.” WSJ. Accessed May 2, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198?mod=e2fb.
“Anti-censorship China Activists ‘under DDoS Attack’ – BBC News.” BBC News. Accessed May 2, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31967100.
Paper 2, Alex Sakalas