.jpg)
by Patrick Brown
In Canada, once Labour Day has passed, thoughts of summer fade, the country gets back to work in earnest, the political season begins and the news agenda starts to heat up. In China, the turning point is National Day, October 1st, the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
This October 1st was a major personal turning point for me. I flew back to China after a summer in Canada, to begin a new job as the Asia correspondent for Global National.
The transition from the tranquility of a summer in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia to the pandemonium of a city of more than 20 million people, all struggling to grab their share of the country’s prolonged economic boom, was less of a shock to the system than usual. The National Day holiday lasts all week, and Beijing has been strangely quiet. Factories, shops and offices have all been closed, vast numbers of people have taken trips out of town, and the city’s perpetual traffic jam has evaporated. Nevertheless, one facet of life in the Chinese capital always takes some getting used to: the air is still an insult to the lungs.
Get daily National news
As I began my journey back to China, I pointed my iPhone at the Canadian dawn.
When I arrived, I took a shot out of the window of Global’s Beijing bureau.
The pictures serve to remind me not just how lucky we Canadians are, but also of an important focus for reporting on China in the year ahead. The effort to improve the lives of 1.4 billion people through economic development has dramatic environmental consequences, which we have to include as we paint our television portrait of China in transition.
When I started covering this country 22 years ago, events in China took place largely in isolation from the rest of the world. Even as China’s growth plays an ever-greater role in the world economy, and the Chinese government plays an ever-greater role on the world political stage, the authorities nevertheless try to maintain some of that old isolation when it comes to social and political trends which do not suit the Communist Party.
Steve Jobs’s death this week is an occasion to remember that the frontlines of the struggle for and against greater openness in China are to be found on the internet. Apple was a relative latecomer to the Chinese market, but Apple products are made here, and they are the tools of choice for the most creative netizens who challenge government censorship by spreading information in ingenious and often witty ways.
Reflecting on the changes facing not just China, the whole continent of Asia, and the world beyond, it is worth noting that of all the world’s outpouring of tributes to Jobs, the most elegant and poignant came from an Asian teenager — Jonathan Mak, a 19-year old Hong Kong design student.
Patrick is Global National’s new Asia correspondent, based in Beijing.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.