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Workers in a denim factory, southern China.
Image from the documentary China Blue
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Workers in the recycling industry, Dharavi slum, Mumbai
Source:Korea Times
When we returned from India in January, we had one week
before spring semester classes began.
All I could think about was India, but I had to prepare a class on
China. More specifically, I had to
prepare the class I teach for Colgate’s CORE Cultures and Identity program,
an interdisciplinary course which lets me teach about Chinese history, society,
political economy, art, religion, food, literature and anything else I can
stuff into the 15-week semester.
Normally I love preparing this class, but this time my brain only wanted
to think about Indian history, society, political economy, art, religion, food,
and literature. I found myself reading
novels about India (Mistry’s A Fine
Balance), histories of India (Dalrymple’s City of Djinns), looking up World Bank statistics about India, Googling
Bollywood films…. I had to cut myself off and get to work.
I decided to sign up to teach my Nations and Nationalism
course next year, so I could indulge in a whole unit on India. (I wonder if I can assign all 944 pages of
Ram Guha’s India after Gandhi? Will students
freak out when they see its telephone book-like heft? But it's such a fabulous
read!)
But in the meantime, I want to find ways to bring India into
my course on China. I always start off
the course by giving students some statistics about China in comparison to
other countries. I don't give them any
background or explanation, but instead let them peruse the data to see what
they notice. This year, I featured
India prominently. For example, one of
the tables I offered looks at GDP/per capita and growth rates:
Comparing China with Selected Countries 1980-2010
*current US $
Data from World Bank, World Development Indicators
As I hoped, my students noticed that China, India, and
Syria are all very poor countries in comparison to the United States. They also note that China's economic growth
in the last two decades has been exceptional.
Compared to China, India looks like an underachiever. (This is something that many Indians obsess a
great deal about, as I pointed out in a previous blog post, “Chinese
in India.”) But compared to Syria
(or Haiti or Indonesia or Romania or Nigeria), India’s economic growth looks
very impressive.
I also plan to bring India into class later this semester
when we look at the manufacturing economy that is the driver behind China's economic
growth. In that unit, I have my students
watch China
Blue, a documentary about Chinese workers in a denim factory. Students find this film eye-opening and often
emotionally devastating. They are
appalled to see young men and women (mostly women) their age - and much younger
- working to exhaustion to produce blue jeans for lower and lower prices. They not only find the exploitation
horrifying, but also express disgust at the living conditions for the workers:
tiny concrete dorm rooms stuffed with eight or ten girls, squat toilets, no hot
running water. I have heard former
students exclaim, months after they saw the video, that they still feel guilty
every time they buy a pair of jeans. |
