"China Night" - Learning event

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"China Night"
Learning event

Date: 03 / 04 / 2008
Topic: "China night"
Type of meeting: Study meeting, research findings presentation, videos
No of participants: 10
Roles:
Creator of the Agenda - Marios Perdiou
Presenter – Marios Perdiou
Moderator – Marios Perdiou
Recorder/Author of the output – Daniel Uszucki
Articles - Maciej Janusz
Videos - Omiros Trofidis
Pictures, music - Nikos Iosifidis

We started our event from the slide show with photos about China at about 18.00. Watching it we were listening traditional Chinese music. When all guests arrived we started from presentation about AIESEC and project Horizon. After this briefly introduction to to the organization, project and current event we played our first movie. It was about the education in this country. The most amazing was, that it shown the difference between children and more generally people from the countryside and from more urbanized parts of China. Of course in the first case "picture" doesn't look good. Just the view for building of school, whose conditions were very bad, says that this is not the priority of the government. The most amazing is the last scene when all parents and teacher from the school are preparing kids for the trip to city. On one hand they know that it's only way to provide them better future, on the other one they are very worried about these and warn the children, saying that there everything is different. Scale of the differences between cities and countryside is stressed by the sentence about spending money. The teacher says that their pupils used to spend just few dollars a month when in cities it's few hundreds. After first movie we discussed for a while, sharing our views and opinions about the movie.

Next in the schedule was also movie, but this time about media in China, which shown how the Chinese government is manipulating the people. Generally both parts tried to show, that of course everything what happened in Lhasa was result of the Dalai Llama, who calls for the fight for independence. The material of the movie was very selective and some scenes where distinctly cut by the specialists, just to stress that all bad things are only because of Tibet and its people. For example we could see the monks attacking buildings and burning cars or attacking people just passing by. But the funniest was the moment when Chinese police, with weapons and shields started to flee from the monks. Certainly also the numbers which was the movie talking about were totally different than these, announced by the Western media or just witnesses of the event. Last very important thing was that government reaffirmed that situation is stable now (after just few days).

The material called out the discussion. We were commenting the movie and also talking about other evidences of partiality of the Chinese media. One of us, new member from Poland, Daniel, said, that there is also a website - www.anti-cnn.com , where you can find “all lays of the western countries media”. Then also rest of the people told about some other examples of changing reality by the government. In this phase we tried also to show the reasons of this and we retraced to the roots of the conflict.

Next stage was “China Says Dalai Lama Rejects Dialogue”, an article from the New York Times. It raises the issue of Dalai Lama, who was the person responsible for Tibet and China. Government said that the leader of Tibet and his “clique” are responsible for all, what happened in March and for ending talks between and attempts of understanding. Generally the article was very similar to the movies, we have seen and shew again the propaganda machine of communistic government.

At the end we ate the fortune-cookies and watch the last, documentary movie, which was about two big explorers of Asia and the area between India and China and their influence for history.

Some general conclusions from the meeting:
· differences between cities and countryside are huge
· they are sill getting bigger together with the rise of GDP (about 10%)
· people have to immigrate to more urbanized areas if they want to improve their life
· children have to travel to cities in order to get good education and keep the chance for better future
· government totally doesn't care about the environment, important is only the economy
· media are only the tool in the government's hands
· because of that fact there are always two pictures of all events – unfortunately most people in China know only the governmental one
· last events in Lhasa shew, how big is the frustration of people there
· the reasons of it are very complex and to understand them you have to know the past (“liberation” of the Tibet in 1951)
· no respect for the autonomy of this country, Tibetan people – discriminated minority
· because of communistic ideology fighting with Tibetan religion, tradition for many years (destroying monasteries, temples, killing people, tortures)
· no respect for human rights

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