Dr. Judith
Shapiro
Stukes Lecturer Looks At China Since Mao
Dr. Judith Shapiro, director of the Global Environmental Politics program at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C., told an Erskine audience Tuesday, "What China does affects the whole world," and cited environmental, political, economic and human rights issues to press her point.
Shapiro delivered this year's Stukes Lecture, ""From Maoism to Market-Leninism."
"Today I want to persuade you that we should care about China," Shapiro said. "I want to do that by sharing some of my own experiences."
Shapiro was one of the first Americans to live and work in China after the normalization of United States relations with China in 1979. She served in Changsha, Hunan, from 1979 -1981, teaching journalism and literature to more than 600 students and faculty.
Shapiro asked audience members to identify images they associated with China, and received answers ranging from good food to communism to martial arts. "All these images we have of China have some truth," Shapiro said. "China is a land of contradictions."
As a college student, Shapiro had been fascinated with China. But she said going to China for the first time was "a jump into the unknown."
Shapiro said her students were grateful to have her as a teacher, and she always felt appreciated. China was emerging from the Maoist era of isolation and fear.
"I was the only foreign teacher they'd had since a drunken Russian who had left years before," she said. "People were talking behind their hands — they were afraid to speak out."
As Shapiro began giving her students essay assignments, she learned about the suffering many of them had endured under Mao's regime. "My students started telling me stories," she said. "Their essays about what they'd been through were very moving."
She said one student, who was not in her class, "made me listen to his story." The student became her first husband and his story was recounted in a memoir of the Cultural Revolution, "Son of the Revolution."
Shapiro said China today is a "fascinating example of rapid social change." Since her initial work in China, she has returned many times.
"China is changing — every time I go there, it has changed. China is an emerging superpower, and China is looking at us," she said.
"If our relations with China are good, it frees us up, but if relations are bad, it preoccupies us," Shapiro said.
Shapiro said air pollution from China has been measured in the northern hemisphere. "Environmental issues don't respect political borders," she said, noting that China is a leading emitter of pollutants. Mao's environmental legacy in China includes the destructive policies implemented during the "Great Leap Forward" that began in 1958.
"China is still recovering from the deforestation that occurred in that period," she said. "And they were too busy melting steel to take in the crops. The result was the largest human-created famine in history — 30 million people starved to death."
Memories of such privation were still strong when Shapiro went to China in 1979. She said someone told her, "We have so much rice now, even girls can eat."
China's forays into the marketplace and resulting economic growth are also significant for the United States. "China is the last big socialist system," she said, but it is also one of the "hottest economies in the world," another example of the growing nation's contradictions.
"China has joined the World Trade Organization," said Shapiro. "It is doing so well that it no longer attracts some of the lowest paid jobs."
Human rights issues may come to the fore when China hosts the summer Olympics in 2008. While personal freedom and mobility have increased, Shapiro noted that religious freedom is limited in China.
"You can buy Bibles in China now, but there are still restrictions on religious freedom." House churches operating outside official parameters as well as Roman Catholic churches are out of favor. "The government doesn't like this pope very much," she said.
"China is at a crossroads," Shapiro said. "But they are moving so fast they may not even realize they are at a crossroads."
Decisions China must make include whether to focus on a car-centered superhighway transportation system or find ways to use light rail and bicycles. China's decision will affect the earth's environment.
A deeper question for China, Shapiro said, is, "Will they continue to stress material values over spiritual values?"
Traditional Chinese values honor the intellect and the family, but Shapiro said it is unclear whether China will return to these.
In the transition from communism to a market economy, there is a large gray area that is susceptible to corruption, and another question China faces is whether it will succumb to this danger.
"We should be involved in what China chooses, not to decide for them, but to provide our experience and our information," Shapiro said. "The stakes are too high and we'd be missing out on too much if we did not get involved," she said.
Shapiro fielded audience questions, including one from Dr. Joseph Stukes, who attended the lecture with members of his family. Stukes asked about whether there are open-minded professors in China, saying that in his experience, professors can be slow to change.
"Chinese intellectuals have suffered so much for their ideas," Shapiro said. "There is a real timidity among some professors, but then there are some who are outspoken.
"Until there is real intellectual freedom in China, China will lag behind."
Shapiro's latest book is "Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China" (2001). She is also co-author, with Liang Heng, of other well-known books on China, including "Son of the Revolution" (1983), a memoir of the Cultural Revolution, "After the Nightmare" (1987), an eyewitness account of China after Mao, and "Cold Winds, Warm Winds" (1987), a discussion of freedom of expression in the reform period.
Her professional experience also includes co-founding and writing grants for "The Chinese Intellectual,” a Chinese-language scholarly quarterly circulated in China and the West intended to encourage China's development toward a more open society. Fluent in Chinese, she occasionally serves as a legal interpreter and is a regular guest on the Voice of America.
Shapiro received a Ph.D. in environmental politics and international relations (1999) at American University. Her other degrees include a master’s in Asian studies from the University of California at Berkeley (1979) and a master’s in comparative literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana (1978). Her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and East Asian studies is from Princeton University (1975).
The Joseph T. Stukes Lecture Series brings a distinguished lecturer in history to Erskine College each year. The fund was established by students and colleagues of Stukes, who served as professor of history (1966-74) and vice president for academic affairs (1966-71) at Erskine College.
