That’s a direct quote. From the best student in my worst class. She’s referring, of course, to the Japanese.

I spent this week reading my grad students a story from the Washington Post about a month ago, just before the US population hit 300 million people. It makes a good opener for a discussion on over-population in general, especially when I can write “300,000,000″ on the board, then put a 1 in front for China.

When the U.S. population surpassed 200 million on a census clock in 1967, cheers rang through the lobby of the Commerce Department, and applause interrupted President Lyndon B. Johnson’s celebratory speech.

Four decades later, however, 300 million seems to be greeted more with hand-wringing ambivalence than chest-thumping pride.

“When we hit 100 million, it was a celebration of America’s might in the world,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California. “When we hit 200 million, we were solidifying our position. But at 300 million, we are beginning to be crushed under the weight of our own quality-of-life degradation.”

I’ve been using current events lately as a back-door kind of way to actually talk politics with my students. Using another country as a proxy–the US is a good one, but I’ve used Kosovo, too–seems to get around their unwillingness to give an opinion about anything happening in China. (Peter Hessler described doing this in River Town, which is where I got the idea, and I have friends who do the same thing.)

Their big question this week: Should America try to limit its population growth? Does America need a one-child policy or a freeze on immigration?

It was a split decision, and that always makes me happy. It means they don’t know what the Party line is, and maybe they’re thinking a bit on their own. What more could a teacher want?

But the interesting discussion came later. Walking out of class, I was behind a group of my students, and one girl dropped back. She’s leagues beyond any of her peers, in both ability and interest, and I never mind talking to her. She has traveled some, too, and tends to bring up unique ideas in class (like raising the price of gasoline in Beijing during the Olympics to reduce traffic and smog, along with more long-term solutions).

“We were discussing how to limit the population in Japan,” she said. Japan doesn’t need to limit its population, I thought. It’s anemic. But OK, sure, I’ll go with this.

“How would you limit the Japanese population?” I asked, nervous about the answer I’d get.

“To kill those who do not remember history.” And that’s what I was afraid of.

She continued, telling me about rude Japanese customers at her old job and other such gripes. “Do you know any Japanese people?” I asked. She didn’t. I decided not to mention the three Japanese teachers working at the college, who are good friends of mine. She added that she really just hates the government, not the people. Sure.

In fairness, the Japanese have plenty to atone for in Dalian and northeast China, starting with a half-century of occupation that ended with World War II. Another Japanese friend of mine came here in part because he felt he owed something to this region that his country had so mistreated. He’s 65, so it’s within living memory for him.

And his memory seems uniquely undiluted here. I found this story in the International Herald Tribune. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese aren’t the only ones “who do not remember history.”

According to the Chinese-language version of Wikipedia (blocked at the moment) “Mao Zedong’s reputation is unsullied by any mention of a death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, or for what many historians call the greatest famine in human history,” Howard French writes.

When I read this, I can’t help thinking of all the times my students have told me, emphatically and without a moment’s doubt, that Taiwan is, and always has been, part of China. There’s just no debate in their minds. Or if there is, they bury it so deep that no one would ever know, lest they be labeled as unpatriotic. Maybe this is only a front when foreigners are around, but it’s widespread enough that I’m pretty sure it runs deeper.

The English-language version of the encyclopedia speaks of a Japanese shipwreck off Taiwan in 1871, in which 54 crew members were beheaded by Taiwanese aborigines. Japan demanded compensation from China, only to be told that Taiwan was not within China’s jurisdiction. The Chinese-language entry on Taiwan, meanwhile, is silent on the jurisdiction question.

Similarly, the English-language Wikipedia mentions the settlement of Taiwan by aborigines who are genetically related to Malaysians, about 4,000 years ago. It also places the first meaningful settlement of the island by Chinese in the 16th century.

The Chinese version of Wikipedia, though, merely speaks of cultural affinities with Malaysians and speculates about the possible exploration of the island by Chinese as far back as the third century.

All this makes me think of an essay I read months ago. One that still deserves attention. Blogger Kyle Davis makes the case for why the Chinese people don’t just put up with censorship, they want it. It keeps anyone from having unpleasant discussions about just how their government might not always do the right thing.

What continues to amaze me is how deep the conformity runs and how ferocious the indoctrinated jingoism can be. What does a government have to do to make an otherwise gentle and in all other ways intelligent young woman joke about genocide?

Why does my student say, even in jest, that we should “kill those who do not remember history”?

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at 5:34 am and is filed under the Dalian life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.