I have retreated to a hotel.  The college guest house where I was staying was OK, but was having some hot water problems; so, I packed up and high-tailed it to the Hilton.  The benefits: a more comfortable bed, closer to the airport, and constant hot water and water pressure; the costs: obviously this is not free, but the internet connection is wildly overpriced, compared with the Romeo Cafe, where I had been blogging from before.  Here the connection is 3 RMB/minute, there it was 3 RMB/hour!  I guess that is how markets operate: charge what the customers – and here that is mostly foreign businesspeople and tourists – will pay.

     Today I will head out to Qinghua University to see a Canadian friend there.  Then, I will go over to China Daily and talk to the editor I have worked with.  And, finally, dinner with a former student, an Eph, who works in the US Embassy.

      Yesterday was quite good.  I went to Beijing University, saw a former student of mine from Nanjing days, and taught his class.  The campus is considerably different from my time there in 1983.  My student’s office (he is a tenured Associate Professor there) is very modern and clean and comfortable.  The classroom was new, large, and technologically enabled.  I spoke about the politics of US trade policy, drawing on a publication by Dan Drezner. (warning PDF).   I spoke for about 45 minutes, in English, and then took questions, mostly in English, from the students.

    The questions were smart and articulate, as would be expected.  Some asked about my impressions on the state of reform, both political and economic, in China, and I pointed out what I see as the accomplishments and limitations, particularly political limitations.  The atmosphere was open and free-ranging.   

    As I looked out on the rows of young faces, I was struck with how familiar the scene was.  The students were very much like my students at Williams.  Their clothes were the same.  Some sat up, bright-eyed and engaged, while others slouched in knowing insouciance.  A few were eating their lunches, pressed by busy schedules, a couple had their laptops flipped open.  A few came in late, and there was some furtive whispering and giggling as the two hours unfolded.  All of the little things that happen in my classes. 

    Again, I was also struck with the differences with 1983.  Then, when I sat in on Beida classes, the classrooms were dingy and shabby.  The predominant colors were green and blue, as most everyone wore some version of work shirts or Mao-jackets.  The teachers lectured and took few if any questions, in old Chinese style.  And ideological limits were tangible.  That fall of 1983 included the movement to "eradicate spiritual pollution," a conservative communist effort to limit movement away from socialist orthodoxy.  I mentioned this to the students yesterday, and it brought bemused looks to their faces.    It seems impossible to imagine the old ideological constraints. 

      There are certainly limits here, and dissidents are still harshly repressed, and that matters deeply.   But I find myself coming away from Beida with an optimistic feeling.  One student asked if I thought a more open trade policy would promote democratization in China.  In reply I mentioned the expanding consumer culture, and elements of the popular culture (I have been watching TV here), that engender a sense of personal choice.  Individuals are cultivating their own personal sets of preferences in an expanding universe of behavior: what will you wear, what kind of job will you get, what is your personal opinion on this or that issue of the day, both mundane and profound?  I said to them that this sort of cultural change – and it is a fairly stark change from the enforced collectivism of the past – must also influence political ideas and beliefs.  And, at some point, the state will have to respond, in ways it has so far avoided, to the growing sense of individual preference and choice.   If people can choose more and more aspects of their social and cultural lives, at some point they will want to have choices in their political lives.

    I don’t think democracy is going to break out in China any time soon.  But I do think there is a cultural change afoot that will eventually shape a reformed politics that provides more chance for the protection of individual rights and the expression of personal political choices.