Election Blogging From China

31.03.2008

On a trip to no-longer-rural south China this past week, I had the opportunity to ask a number of PRC citizens about the U.S. election. All of them gave roughly the same response:

a) The primary is a big deal. Chinese TV has been airing non-stop coverage of the U.S. election, in between local footage of Tibetian rebels locked up for their crimes and shots of natural disasters.

b) Nobody knows who John McCain is. Everyone thinks the election is between Hillary and Obama.

c) According to my guide, a 23-year-old English major from Zhongshan, Chinese people as a whole support Clinton. "In Asia there is a hierarchy. It's like, white people are the best, then yellow people are maybe middle, and black people are at the bottom. So Chinese prefer Hillary." The others I talked to made the same claim.

Luckily, they had a sense of perspective. "It doesn't matter what we think, though," one told me, "it's not our election."

--Barron YoungSmith

Posted: Monday, March 31, 2008 2:39 PM with 4 comment(s)

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blackton said:

Remind them that Clinton was President when we bombed their embassy in Belgrade and then see the response change. A lot of older Chinese hate Bill, and think he deliberately bombed the embassy to show China what he thinks of it. I was there at that time and no matter how much I repeated it the Chinese refused to believe America can make such a mistake. I doubt they think that anymore though, after how many mistakes we made in Iraq.

March 31, 2008 2:54 PM

bcbaird said:

The Chinese might not know who John McCain is, but I'm sure a few Vietnamese do.

March 31, 2008 3:00 PM

bsdespain said:

I am surprised considering after we left Vietnam they thought invading a good idea. The Sino Vietanmese war lasted about a month. The Chinese left pretty quickly.

en.wikipedia.org/.../Sino-Vietnamese_War

March 31, 2008 3:18 PM

Annabella2 said:

Doesn't really matter what the Chinese think or want in this election... what does matter is that attitude carries over to an awful lot of Asians even in US, who went 3 to 1 for HRC... they would think it utterly beneath them to vote for a Black... oh America, America... poor Obama, maybe he really is a Bambi type of political figure on the national stage and maybe this country just isn't ready for that kind of "change." Time will tell because he will be the nominee. Though I am beginning to wonder if either The Black guy (any drop you know will do and he after all is 1/2) or The Woman could actually have won in the General.

March 31, 2008 4:22 PM