China's to-do list, according to my students

Anyone who's taught in a Chinese university likely knows the perils of soliciting students' opinions. There's a predictability to it, you can almost guess the answer before it comes, and many will flat out refuse to register a thought. But us foreigners can be just as guilty of this, of refusing to engage, of thinking the Three Ts are secretly at the top Chinese students' agendas, too. I've certainly made that mistake in the past.

"No one ever asks us what we think," one of my students told me after class on Monday. I asked them one question: "If Hu Jintao decided you should be the next president or prime minister of China, what would be on your to-do list?" Here's what they wrote:

• Improve standard of living (4)
• build more roads
• protect the environment (5)
• rebuild our lost civilization
• reform the college entrance exam (2)
• improve medical care for farmers/peasants (2)
• make the country more democratic (3)
• prepare for the 2008 Olympics
• control the population size (2)
• conserve water
• reduce/eliminate college fees
• change China's relationship with Japan (2)
• limit the use of oil and coal
• education reform (5)
• help the poor (3)
• set the minimum age to marry at 25
• call on all children to play football (soccer)
• let foreigners play on China's soccer team
• lessen the income gap
• cut taxes (2)
• Hope Project
• develop Western China
• protect endangered animals
• improve traffic
• make food safer
• give everyone a car
• pay more attention to polls
• give more funding to the army (2); to education (3); to scientific research (2); health care (3)
• take back Taiwan (4)
• make buses free
• expand Chinese culture around the world (2)

Links are mine. I lumped some things together, cleaned up the grammar as best I could, but otherwise tried to stay true to what the students wrote. These are all freshmen, ages 18-20, in an elective English class. They're considered the best in their majors, but this is the first class they've all taken together.

I kept the brainstorming anonymous, because even empowered with opinions, I've met few students (I teach close to 300) who are ready to stand up and defend an idea that isn't already widely accepted. Otherwise, two things strike me about this list:

It's overwhelmingly domestic. Few suggestions even referenced China's neighbors, and those were old strawmen, Taiwan and Japan. One student wanted to invade both, but only one.

There's much to be done. Democracy got a few votes, but not as many as education reform and environmental protection. Every student had at least one issue of their own, and the overlaps were shallow.

What would you add? Has anybody else asked their students?

Before: Things we can't talk about | After: Gaokao!