building socialism with Chinese characteristics
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- Published on Tuesday, 01 March 2011 17:02
- Written by Erik
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We're leaving Taiwan. I have a new job in China. The past year hasn't been all that great for us and now I'm off to help build socialism with Chinese characteristics. I'll be Zhi Yuan Chair professor of international relations at Shanghai Jiaotong University. Shanghai, yes indeed, the capital of the 21st century! Of course I'm excited.
I looked for a number of different jobs, some 10 of them altogether. I had interviews at four and two job offers -- from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and from SJTU in Shanghai. The Belgians were very sweet and very cheerful. Antwerp is a gorgeous city but we could also have lived in Brussels if we wanted to. The salary was first-class too. But in the end we decided on China. After five years in the Far East we have made a considerable investment in learning about things Chinese and it would seem like a great waste to just abandon it all. Besides my four daughters speak Chinese, but not a word of neither French nor Flemish.
I have some reservations about becoming a civil servant in a non-democratic regime. Of course I do. It is true of course that the Chinese government has changed and that Chinese authoritarianism is wearing increasingly welvety welvet gloves. It is not clear to me, for example, that the Chinese government has more blood on its hands than the American -- in fact, the opposite is surely true. I would probably feel worse working for the US government. And yet I'll end up in a real pickle if there is another Tiananmen "incident." Meanwhile I'll try my best to uphold liberal values. Updates will follow.