politics....

i realised although i covered most of everything in a wordy post afew hours, before, i neglected politics, so here goes....

a meeting today with a University in Shanghai (one of the best inChina)...In Universities, there is the university structure and thecommunist party structure..they work alongside each other, probablydoing the same things, but the party is more powerful, so we metsomeone at the top of the party in this uni.

he is typically chinese -ambitious! What he says, goes. What hewants, happens. So we are happy he wants to support AIESEC; ofcourse, what makes this interesting reading is he is typicallychinese in that he wants to use AIESEC to his own ends (that is thedefinition on china) -not a bad thing of course. So AIESEC will dowhat he wants, to ensure we can get what we want.

his solution to AIESEC's polical issues (we are in taiwan too -its aloooong story) was that a few AIESEC people at the uni should jointhe communist party, that way they will never hard China, and favourTaiwan. I was assured by the AIESECers that this can be done in amatter of minutes...so by being a token communist, the whole bigproblem gets solved..and who says being communist doesnt open doors?

also chinese was the impact I had, the foreigner, white guy, givingadvice, a global perspective ...kinda useless, as mostly they spoekin chinese, but a big impact. I felt weird cause he was thanking mefor my time more than i was thanking him for his; he obviouslythinks iam more powerful/older/respected than I am, but hey... andpeople wonder why I want to stay in China?

the other interesting stuff is our preparation for the meeting was:
-say yes, never say no...then worry about what you committed tolater, or bend what you committed to
-be careful about what you say.

the last one was particular with AIESEC, as a youth movement,international and about leadership (3 words that are not the best touse often in a communist country) -but of course china is not verycommunist, so you can often get away with things (just never talkabout Taiwan!)

right thats the political stuff covered briefly, until next time...

Adam