BEHIND THE HEADLINES

 

Nicholas D. Kristof &
Sheryl WuDunn

I couldn't help thinking what would happen if a Chinese journalists roamed the United States reporting about crime. He would travel around visiting the urban slums, entering the crack dens, interviewing the rape victims, consoling the children of the slain. No doubt he would be indigant at the senselessness of the crime, at the government's failure to control guns, at society's inability to confront the drug problem. And his passion would come through in his articles. His material would be accurate, and it would leave his Chinese readers feeling that America is a violent, dangerous, uncivilized country. Talking all the time to crime victims, he might well conclude that the United States is a society reverting to the jungle. The government would seem fundamentally immoral for looking the other way as people are gunned down in the schools and the streets.

But when this reporter dropped by ordinarily middle-class homes like those pf the Kristofs in Yamhill, Oregon, or of the WuDunns in New York City - he would find converasations a bit puzzling. The Kristofs and the WuDunns would certainly agree that crime is terrible, but then they would cheerfully move on to other topics. The reporter would single-mindedly bring the conversation back to crime, asking how they could live with the knowledge that they might be shot down any time they walked on a public street. The Kristofs and WuDunns would share their heads soberly and grumble that the streets really are awful, and then they would move on to discuss the days's news or some recent book or film. The reporter would ask about rape and bulgary and bank robbery, and a few awkward silences would result. If the Chinese reporter asked whether the United States government would collapse in the next few years from the crime problem, he would get funny looks. And when he left, the Kristofs and WuDunns would say teach other: This guy may know his crime statistics, but he sure doesn't know America.

As I flew back to Beijing from my interview with Boss Zhang, I wondered if that was the kind of role I was playing. Was I so obessed with human rights violations that I missed the rest of the tableau of China and the buds of a civil society? Was my writing so focused that, however accurate, it was misleading? Was I deceiving myself?

- excerpt from China Wakes - The Struggle For the Soul of a Rising Power, Vintage Books, New York, 1994.