What do the Chinese people that you have met think of the US and its criticisms of Chinese human rights conditions?
JONAS: Well, first of all, a lot of it they don’t hear about. There’s a lot of stories I read in the US news—I read a lot of US news in China– and a lot of stories don’t make it over there. If a story is big enough that it needs to be covered, the Chinese will put a huge slant on it.

So something like Tibet?
JONAS: Yes. So by the time it reaches the average Chinese person, it’s not a human rights issue, and I’ve tried to explain that to a couple people— that usually other countries are concerned about the rights of the normal person in China. They think that China is being attacked. By the time the news gets to them, they think they are being invaded by foreigners. That’s their opinion.

And as for the American critique of environmental conditions, carbon emissions, things of that nature?
JONAS: Actually about this issue, most of the people I’ve talked to about this were my college students and most of them have feelings that China needs to improve its environment. I haven’t really talked to them about America’s criticism of China’s environmental policies but some have stated that they think America must be a much cleaner and better place, environmentally speaking. They wish China could be more like that– but I haven’t heard anybody angry at Americans.

Would it be accurate to say that the average Chinese person might view pollution as a necessary evil but it’s something that they wish would improve in time while not losing the economic growth?
JONAS: I think that many of them think it can be improved and now it should be. I know that the Chinese’s common excuse is that they’re behind the US in their development but I think that the students I have talked to think it can be developed.

What do you think the Chinese people want America to think of them?
JONAS: Let’s see, probably that they are good people and a good country and a strong country that can’t be invaded. That’s a big part of education, worrying about western imperialism and they want to prove that they are strong and that nobody else can enter China and influence them, or nowadays, separate them. They want to prove that they’re strong and also that they are a good country.

Do you think that the Chinese people want the world to know how well they’re doing economically?
JONAS: Sure, of course, they would love to have a good image all around the world.

What is it that we don’t know about China that living there as you have for the past three years would tell us– what’s the US media missing or overlooking?
JONAS: Well, I think that they have a different perspective than us and we often criticize them through human rights and the word ‘brainwashing’ is often used in America in describing Chinese education and, yes, I think this is true but we have to realize that they are viewing it from a different perspective. In America we think that Communism is always wrong and what happens here is right but we have to realize we’re also victims of, how do we say it, maybe having some civic education. This kind of thing happens everywhere, and not just China, but I think in China it happens to a bigger degree. You have to realize that everything isn’t black and white. To the US, the issue of Tibet is black and white; to China it is black and white. I think both sides are wrong. People have to realize that they have a different way of looking at things and it might be hard or impossible for any of us to understand– unless we have experienced life over there for a while.

And is it because of their sense of nationalism and loyalty to their country that we don’t understand that? Because it’s not our system?
JONAS: No. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s hard for us to understand because we live our lives the way we do. We haven’t experienced a lot of the problems that they have experienced in China. We don’t have a population problem. Almost everyone here has running water and the vast majority of people have heat, if we need it, or air conditioning in the summer. In China I think that like 65 or 70% of the population is a rural population and most of them don’t have running water or any kind of electric or gas heat in the winter. So we have to realize that they are coming from a different situation than us, and it’s kind of hard for us to understand why they do certain things that they do because we haven’t been there. I think if you actually experienced life there, you can have more of an understanding of why there are some things the way do and I am not saying it’s right but it might help us to understand a little bit better.

What is access to technology like there in the various cities that you have been?
JONAS: There are internet cafes all over the place which are very cheap and are always loaded with teenagers. Actually, I think, now you have to be over 18 to use an internet café in China. It’s loaded with young adults and often playing video games and chatting online. Everybody has mobile phones, it seems– you can be in a rural area where maybe if what you see you can’t tell if it’s the sixteenth century or the twenty-first century and then you see a farmer pull out the cell phone and answer it. In some ways it is a little bit behind but it’ll catch up. The computers that I use there are a little bit behind.