Interview 2

1. Market Economy
China has converted to market economy since the reforms in 1980s, but there are a lot of problems existing in China's market economy now, such as counterfeit products or goods of low quality. One feature of market economy is to maximize the profit, since US is a successful market economy, how do you solve this problem?

Well, the situation in China is tough. The economy is growing rapidly. There are so many people want to make money and become successful. Actually, we used to have such kind of period in the States. But as the economic situation develops, people will get better-off and this will be solved naturally. We also have some economical problems in the US now. For instance, many teenagers have high credit card debt. Also in recent years, China’s export has grown very fast, which caused a big deficit in US. In one of our business class it is a theme of our discussion, whether China is dumping in western economy. Our Congress also placed some pressure on the revaluation of Chinese currency.
Reflection: I think on one had, China is an immature market economy; on the other hand, our legal system can not function very well. Just like the situation describes in the Wikipedia:
A legal system might punish behaviours which hurt others, but this incentive is not active in a situation where one can personally gain by breaking it and others cannot punish this. [i]
So I think it might be better to have free press supplementing to the legal system in current period.

2. Education
What does your education emphasize?
Because I’m a business major, so my education focuses more on maths, group work and real world examples. We mainly focus on some practical things which may be helpful in our future career.

Does your education encourage superiority?
Not rally, but some companies may have some requirements, for example your GPA must be higher than 3.8 to attend the interview. Basically we won’t look down upon somebody if he gets a C.

How do you define success?
Success to me means that when I’m eighty or ninety, looking back of my life, I can talk about my wonderful life before a group of people such as my children or grandchildren. I also hope to have great contact with some people, some great relationships. They will become precious memory when I am old.

Do you receive any education about social responsibility?
Actually, we have some criticisms in the states about teaching the social responsibility. We have some business ethics class in my home university, but it was really nothing. I think that class is kind of useless and social responsibility cannot be taught.

“Mind your own business” is a sentence that you can easily hear that in China. But in America, I heard that when some Chinese new couples went there, they left their children alone at home. When their neighbours knew this, they just called the police. The Chinese couples didn’t understand why their neighbours like to mind the other’s business. Is this very common in US?
Well, I should say that might happen in some small towns where people know each other very well. They tend to know each other better. While in big cities, which is not likely to happen. People have farther distance with each other than in the little town.

Reflection: I think China’s education is highly result-oriented. Most of the time, people are ranked by the grade they got in the examination. But I think the American or Western interest-oriented education is based on nationally economic prosperity. The majority of people in a developed nation are in a middle class. The equality of the distribution of wealth is better than in developing nations. For instance, a person digging ditches does not necessarily earn less than someone working in the office, which is almost impossible in China. So to develop economy is the first priority of China in order to solve such kind of problems.
[i] Wikipedia: Utilitaririanism. Retrived 26 Feburary, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism#Criticism_and_defense_of_utilitarianism