From June 8th to the 24th, 11 Choate students travelled in China as part of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s International China Study for Future Leaders program. There the students spoke with several distinguished Chinese officials on topics such as Chinese government and politics, economics, technology, business, and environmental studies in order to understand better Asia’s growing power and to improve US-China relations.
The students—seniors John Aloian, Eden Ellis, Jennifer Kim, Ian Knisely, Christophe Lirola, Tyler Maloney, Taylor McDonald, Claire Monagan, Johnny Whitney, and Irene Zhang, as well as junior Tanya Chearavanont—received scholarships as part of the pilot program that included tuition, airfare, and living expenses. World History teacher Leigh Dingwall worked with Program Coordinator Peter Litt and Visiting Scholar Yang Jialin to chaperone and advise the students throughout their stay. Dean of Academic Affairs Kathleen Wallace collaborated with Vice Dean of International Programs and Development at PennGSE Cheng Davis to orchestrate the program at Choate.
As one of the conditions of their scholarship, Davis expects the students to share the knowledge and understanding that they gained from their trip. On October 17th, the students will present a 90-minute joint PowerPoint presentation to Choate faculty, UPenn representatives, members of the Chinese consulate of New York, and a few history classes in which the team members will synthesize topics such as Chinese foreign policy, internal politics, business, culture, industrialization, pollution, and the 2008 Olympic games. The students are meeting with Ms. Wallace and Ms. Dingwall each Sunday to prepare.
The students spent a week in Beijing where they visited the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), Pacific Century Cyber-Works (PCCW), the Olympic Project Committee, the Ministry of Agriculture, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), and Motorola. This was followed by a week in Shanghai where they met with a number of government officials and CEOs such as District Governor Jiang Yao; Vice President Hu Wei of the Shanghai People’s Congress; Xue Peijian, CEO at Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group; and Baron Ho, General Manager of Government and Education and Healthcare for Oracle Greater China.
Cheng Davis at PennGSE used her vast connections to bring these speakers to the program, spurred by Paul Kelly who, after donating Kelly House to UPenn, expressed a wish to integrate more Choate students in Penn programs.
Davis interviewed each of the host families by phone and communicated with the program coordinators each day. She is developing other programs to the Middle East, Asia, and Europe including sending teachers to China to discover the secrets behind their success in mathematics. She remarked that America receives 60,000 Chinese scholars who gain crucial knowledge from the West and that this exchange must become “a two way street” if the U.S. is to “remain on top of the world.”
Davis was very impressed with the Choate students she met with because of their Chinese language skills, eagerness to learn, and parental support, as well as their “good color of conscience.” The students had been selected at Choate from a larger pool who wrote essays, reviewed anonymously by a panel of teachers and deans. Davis granted all of them scholarships using GSE’s funds with the help of an anonymous donor in Hong Kong.
“Part of my mission is educating diplomacy,” said Davis. “I want to see Choate students who will be future leaders for this country and ambassadors of the people between two nations. I want to provide an opportunity for them to understand another important country in the world.”
SARFT
The students’ first meeting was with the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), which is under direct supervision of the State Council. There Mr. Cao Yin tried to convey to the students that China’s media are free and that the country is too vast to control. Yet he conceded that the officials were all government-appointed. Eden Ellis ’08, born and raised in Southern Africa and whose main interests include Chinese policy and economics, felt that SARFT “under-evaluated how intelligent we were, how prepared we were for this meeting. So he was feeding us a ton of propaganda and we were able to just throw it right back at him.”
Ms. Dingwall commented, “the kids really noticed contradictions that came up which I thought was great.” Jialin said with Davis as a translator that the officials were “very seriously concerned that high school students ask such questions,” but that she was impressed with both how sharp and respectful the questions from Choate students were.
Several of the students commented that they were encouraged to ask provocative questions while maintaining proper Chinese etiquette. “It was a very interesting balance between us pushing him [Cao] to give us the truth and us trying to respect his duty or his position as a minister,” said Eden.
The students asked hard-hitting questions concerning tainted products such as dog food and toothpaste scandals. Cao admitted these but retaliated by pointing out some American and European products were also unsafe. The Chinese government has refused to purchase American beef because of CSC, which some consider a form of defensive paranoia that reflects a phenomenon of tension in the larger context of international trade.
PCW Limited
At PCCW Limited, the largest telecommunications company in Hong Kong, President Cheng Shiqing, father of Choate student Matthew Cheng ’10, gave a more candid talk on the Chinese business spirit. He explained to the students that in contrast with American business strategies, forming respectful relationships with erudite and trustworthy business partners by discussing topics such as Chinese history and culture is more important to business ethic than debating profit-making schemes with well-credentialed individuals.
“It was amazing to meet people of that calibre and of that status and ask them what their business was like and how they felt about business with America,” said Johnny Whitney, who has lived in China 8 months out of the past 3 years and interned at a Chinese business over the summer.
CAST
Another Choate father (of Max Yuan ’08), Yuan Jiajun, hosted the students in top-secret research facilities at the China Academy of Space Technology. During this unprecedented event, the students were taken to see China’s satellite development. Although he forbade any photography, Jiajun was straightforward with the students when they asked him sensitive questions about CAST’s relationship with NASA, and he even revealed a project that will enable the Chinese to shoot down American satellites that track nuclear missiles should the Chinese require nuclear warfare protection.
Cheng and Yuan met the group in China and participated in some of the events. Chearavanont was also referred to the program separately and did not spend the entire time with the group.
“China is experiencing a rate of growth that is unprecedented in the post-industrial or the industrial world and for one thing it’s holding a lot of our money,” said Ms. Dingwall, who felt the future of Chinese economics was not in real estate but in company take-over. The dichotomy between the rich and poor in Beijing was notable throughout Beijing; wealthy and poor lived in obvious juxtaposition, dispersed throughout the city, according to Christophe Lirola.
Shanghai
This was not the case in Shanghai, where skyscrapers filled most of the landscape. “China has stunned the world with its economic development,” said Irene Zhang, whose main interest is Chinese business. The students did notice overcrowding and pollution in both cities, which they discussed in context of global warming and of the 2008 Olympics.
“The main thing I learned is the fact that everyone in China’s willing to work and that’s what makes their economy grow so much,” said Lirola, who looks to a career in international relations.
Reflections
Ms. Dingwall commented on the potential of the Chinese workforce which she predicts will not be exhausted in the next 20 years. She also remarked that the average Chinese income was 500 US dollars and said she noticed that in Shanghai the buildings become more dilapidated as one moves further west until the city ends entirely. “The poor people have been hidden away to the West.”
Lirola, who went into the program with the stereotype that Chinese government is highly centralized and communistic, commented that the Shanghai People’s Congress, which consists of a dual-party system in which the Mayor of Shanghai is the highest-ranking official but has less power than the Shanghai Communist Party of China Municipal Committee Secretary, told the group that the governmental control is becoming more regional and that the Congress is “cracking down” on government corruption.
However, Ellis felt that the group made little progress during the meeting itself. His more pressing questions were instead answered afterwards at the luncheon, when Vice President Hu Wei had time to understand the students’ characters and interests. This reflected the Chinese relationship philosophy.
Ellis, sporting a green “Save Darfur” shirt in his interview with The News, expressed his growing concern for the Congress’ lack of moral concern for the Sudan. According to Chinese foreign policy, the government will not involve itself with other countries that have not directly attacked China even if they violate China’s human rights interests. China therefore continues to import oil from the Sudan, essentially “funding terrorism” in Darfur. At the luncheon Wei told Ellis that “business is business.”
Ellis also clashed with the Vice President on the topic of global warming. Whereas the Chinese approach to such matters involves slow change, Ellis explained his sense of the urgency of environmental protection. Cities in China remain among the most polluted in the world according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
“We have that edge where kind of we’re ahead of the media,” Ellis said, “because we’ve been able to get inside these politicians’ heads and really talk to them.”
The students also had the opportunity to visit a Chinese boarding school and learn about educational differences. The Chinese focus their 8-hour day intensely on science, mathematics, and English. On Friday afternoons they work to complete a list of secondary subjects such as history, art, and philosophy; however, because these subjects are not on the exams, they are rarely taken seriously. Instead, the students gain advanced understanding in their primary subjects with impressive results in areas such as physics.
Staying with a host family in Beijing was a vital asset to the program. Host families were closely connected with Penn. Ellis’ host father was Sun Zhengcai, Minister of Agriculture, the youngest minister in China and one of the most prominent rising political figureheads. Although he was pulled to parliament during the scheduled lecture date, the group met with him informally and spoke with his Vice-minister.
“When you’re a guest in the Chinese household, they will do everything to make your stay as comfortable as possible,” remarked Lirola. “That really kind of shocked me, because you get that stereotype that the Chinese or even the Asian cultures in general are very stoic, very non-emotional individuals. They’re very welcoming.”
The Chinese fascination with Western culture was apparent when the students made an unexpected trip to the Shanghai Film Festival. The boys ran out to buy tuxes for the event and were able to negotiate complete sets for $100 each, courtesy of Johnny Whitney’s business and communication skills.
“We were treated as VIPs practically everywhere we went and the people valued the information we could give to them as much as the information they could provide to us,” remarked Christophe.
John Aloian, whose main interest in China regards its history and legacy, felt the group members were treated as ambassadors. He commented on key cultural differences and desire for westernization that he noticed, such as the fact that the image of beauty for women in China includes pale skin. As a result, many women can be seen carrying black umbrellas throughout the streets to avoid tanning. Aloian also remarked that the cell phones produced by Motorola in China included a touch pen so that the Chinese could write characters. This model must be modified in the U.S. branches to fit with traditional text-messaging.
After evaluating this year’s presentation, Cheng Davis hopes to send 20 students to China next summer. “We love to work with Choate students, and we think Choate students are excellent, smart, intelligent, well behaved. Keep Going!”
“I do think that the program had some flaws only because it was the inaugural progam, the first run,” said Aloian who noticed a “lack of communication and misunderstanding between Choate, UPenn, and finally our hosts in China as to what our abilities were, what our interests were, I’d say, who we are. They all thought we all spoke Chinese.”
Ms. Dingwall suggested that the next program should span a longer period of time and that the students be given more time off. “The one problem with the program was how packed it was and it was particularly exhausting for the students, and so one suggestion I made was that if it was done for a month; they’ve got to build in more free time, just down time because they were racked.”
The students all agreed that they gained a lot from the program they would use in future study and career. Ellis said: “It’s a lot of work but it’s very worthwhile” and Lirola expressed deep gratitude to all who made the trip possible.
“China’s really a country of change and I look forward to seeing that change develop throughout time.”
