Years of Poems and Spirits

Too bad the New Yorker does not have a electronic copy of Ian Parker’s article, “Birth of A Nation?” in the May 1, 2006 issue. Or did Parker submitted a typed manuscript?

The article is about the independence vote of Tokelau, an island (atoll) colony/property of New Zealand in the South Pacific. Tokelau is small (size, population), remote, slow-paced and dependent (”receives most of the $7m annual budget from the NZ government”)

Why the urge of independence?
1. UN: “non-self-governing”, anti-colonial spirit, 1960 Gen. Assemb. declaration of “transfer power”, International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism (1990s), established a Special Committee. “The only victory that the committee has had … is East Timor, which was deleted from the list in 2002 …” but since has not even met regularly. “While factions within some unlisted territories, such as Puuerto Rico, lobby to be noticed, some listed terrirtories lobby to be left alone. ‘It is fight, fight, fight … Gibraltans come and throw rocks at us’”
2. The New Zealander: Neil Walter, career diplomat, Tokelau administrator, “wanting to ‘take a crack’ at shpherding the island to self-determination”, NZ newspaper: “THE UN’S MISGUIDED PLAN TO CUT TOKELAU ADRIFT”, commentaries like this “had spread the thought …. that Tokelau’s vote on self-determination had been imposed from overseas”. To this, Walter observed, “I’d be glad of an independence firebrand (on the island)”
3. A sign when a nation should not go independent? Expatriate Tokelaunans in NZ and AU now far outnumber island residents.
4. Proponent’s argument: Tokelauans could best “learn how to be yourself” by returning to thepre-monetary economy of their ancestors … but the speaker has a TV in her home for her children. Others argue, “They don’t have a sense of manhood!”
5. Competing designs of proposed national flag, ” … a few had symbolism that clearly referred to four atolls–implicitly annexing nearby Swain Island, … which is culturally tied to Tokelau but is, by international treaty, a satellite of American Samoa”
6. The referendum song, “Be happy, the day of the referendum is coming, every Tokelauan is happy” (–just like the African national anthems as observed by Herbst)
7. The island is so small that the pigs have learned to float in high tides and fish seafood to survive.

Joe Stiglitz and the World Bank thinks so. See Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84 No. 6
Book review: The Ethical Economist: Growth May be Everything …
“As the WOrld Bank” has emphasized at various points, poverty is not just a matter of income; insecurity and voicelessness are also part of this profile.
(–But what if insecurity is linked to increased opportunity?)

Met the Dean of BiMBA program in Beida in the UW Alumni gathering. He was kind enough to invite me to sit in one of their classes.

The class has about 30 people, I am clearly the odd one out by the look of age. The professor is a HK Chinese spent most of his life in MBA circles in China. Some impressions:
1. The classroom is perhaps the most uptodate–better than the conference room in Thomson Hall.
2. The students are a rowdy bunch: talking amongst themselves during class, coming in and out of the room during lecture, one even answered his cell.
3. The professor is a gentle Chinese intellectual but with a strong conviction. The most striking is how he feels about China and Chinese culture. China has to upgrade its IT infrastructure or China will be surpassed by India in no time, look at where India is today! Imagine where it will be tomorrow! (all linear, I guess they don’t teach marginality in B-school).
4. About Chinese culture: too docile, too modest, too conventional. He repeatedly stressed how important it is to speak up in front of an audience, used his own experiences in the U.S. Think out of the box, be daring, be crazy, he tried to tell his students.
5. But the professor’s delivering style and personality quickly undermines the message he is trying to deliver: “Never say I know a little when you know half … This won’t carry you far in America. As someone who was (both Chinese and American), I know a little bit of both cultures”
5. The class is entirely conducted in English, including homeworks and presentations. Students are clearly among the brightest and are well versed in business strategies.
6. However, the students are just as conventional as the professor feared. When the professor raised an issue with a campus restaurant (why there has to be two cashiers when one is clearly enough?), the class rose in unison to defend the practice. (In a way, many Chinese, me included, seems to find strength from defending/identifying with tradition/status quo/how things have always been)
7. Although many of the students work for foreign companies, it appears their capitalist bosses have not worked them hard enough: the class I sat in was only the second one, but students already ganged up on the professor for giving out homework requirements only now rather than in syllabus. To them, this was unacceptable. When the professor said the final paper should be in 3-6 pages, some shouted “2-5″, as if bargining in a market without even the modest form of courtesy. Excessively concerned about grades.

IMHO, the professor should first shed any thought of Chinese being docile. I doubt how much he can change their ways of thinking but what he can (and should) do is to instill in his students a sense of professionalism.