What makes me such an expert on China?

I’ve been asked a few times what makes me the expert on China, the answer is: I’m not.

I’m better informed on China than many people because I live here but that doesn’t make me an expert by any stretch of the imagination. However, there are a few things that give me a different perspective and, because of those perspectives, I often run up against people who claim to be experts but somehow, are completely wrong about China.

It still doesn’t make me more of an expert than them, they may have some specific expertise in their field but are asked to comment on situations that aren’t in their field. For example, it’s no good asking an international economist based in New York with a focus on China’s stock market, how China will do on reopening after Covid, because they won’t understand the street level activities going on. They’ve probably heard of dual circulation but have no idea who it affects or how it affest people living in Guizhou, for example!

Some people claim to have the required expertise to make their living writing, talking and advising others about China some of them don’t really have that right, they are abusing trust that people place in them. I don’t claim the right at all, I never intended to become anything of a spokesperson on China, I found myself in that role because I see things differently to these so-called experts and I often find myself calling them out on their misplaced knowledge or their misinterpreted evaluations of what’s happening in China.

I joined Twitter because I had some free time and because I thought people might be interested in my experiences, two years later, I joined YouTube because many people were telling my they like my articles but their friends won’t read them, they’re only interested in watching. So, I started making my articles into videos, now I make the videos and the articles are scripts, I do read them, I’m reading now, but no one writes them for me, I write everything for myself.

I have lots of photos of different parts of China, I’ve been through and spent time in places most people haven’t even heard about, or if they have, it’s because Western media writes negatively about them, such as Xinjiang and I knew most of those news reports were wrong but never expected to be one of those people that someone could turn to for the correct view.

Now, with 80,000 twitter followers and approaching 10,000 subscribers on YouTube, it’s clear, people do turn to me and most of them, if my feedback is to be believed, understand that I’m not going to lie, I don’t misinform or try to fool them into believing anything but my own version of the truth.

But how do I get that version of the truth and what are the things that make me view China so differently to the so-called experts?

There are four factors: my time here in China is a long time; my travelling here has been extensive; my postgraduate education focused on China; and my wife is Chinese

I’ve lived here 18 years and, for sure, I’ve seen some changes. When I arrived, Zhongshan, the city I live in had one university, it now has four and two vocational colleges. It had no major freeways running through it but now has two, both of which have improved from being suburban roads into multi-lane freeways. The local ferry port to Hong Kong when I first saw it was not much more than a tin shed by the river, it’s now a modern, advanced terminal. Average income was less than 1000RMB per month and it’s now over 5,000. Yet, the price of a bottle of beer has risen from 3.5 when I arrived to just 5RMB now. Coffee was unavailable when I arrived here there are now dozens of Starbucks, Pacific Coffee shops and other international brands, there’s even a Tim Hortons and a couple of Walmart stores nearby if anybody wants to use them.

I laughed when I was told there would be a high-speed train linking Zhongshan to every other major city in China but sure enough, it’s happened when they said it would happen. Also, when students told me I would be able to travel to Hong Kong by bridge, I got the map out to show them the impossibility of their claim but, I’ve now travelled several times from HK airport to my home entirely by freeway, across one of the world’s longest bridges.

My 18 years here have seen massive improvements in health, wealth, education and lifestyle for my Chinese friends. Say what you like about Communism, you can hate China all you like but until you’ve seen how everyone is better off than they once were, you’ll never realise how well the Chinese government has managed the economy and the infrastructure for the benefit of so many people and why so many people are satisfied with China and their lives here.

Travel helps broaden the mind and I do a lot of it in China. There are still 4 provinces I haven’t been to Tibet, Yunnan, Qinghai and Shanxi, but I’ve been to every other province and much of it by bike. Travelling by slow train is great because people always want to talk with you, travelling by fast train isn’t, it’s more like a plane, you get on, you mind your own business then you get off, hardly ever having a discussion with your fellow passengers. But I don’t always travel by train or plane.

I’ve cycled. And this is how I’ve learnt so much about the country; this is how we meet ordinary people. I’ve stayed in 30 RMB a night hotel rooms and I’ve stayed in 1000 RMB a night hotel rooms too. I’ve camped under the stars and I’ve eaten in the street. I calculated recently that I’ve travelled more than 35,000 kilometres by bike in China and, to be honest, that’s probably more than I’ve travelled by car in this country.

I had a dream to ride to Tibet, it wasn’t possible so I rode to Xinjiang instead, crossing the country from the border of Macau in the east, to the border of Kazakhstan in the west over a two-month period in 2014. I was unhappy with the fact that I felt it was an unfinished journey so, in 2019 my wife and I flew to Urumqi and we rode back to Guangdong together. We crossed deserts, mountain ranges and all three major rivers, the Yellow River, the Yangtse and the Pearl River in order to do it, each of these journeys was just a few kilometres short of 5,000.

In 2018, I was working in Harbin, the most northerly capital city and decided, instead of flying home after my contract, I’d ride a bike back. A journey which took me across the Bohai Sea on a ferry and in a straight, 4000-kilometre line a few hundred kilometres inland of the East Coast.

If you really want to know more and learn more about China, there isn’t a better way than interacting with street vendors on the road and meeting small business owners in tiny restaurants and bingguan (Small Chinese guest houses). When we do this, there’s no luxury hotels, they don’t want dirty cyclists coming in wet and muddy from the road but the cheap, side alley guesthouses welcome us, they feed us and are interested in talking with us about what we’re doing. This is how I’ve learnt a lot about China and its people, by getting off the main roads and meeting rural farmers, shepherds, workers and ordinary people. The real Chinese people, some of whom have never even seen a foreigner in the flesh before.

They say education widens the horizons and I couldn’t agree more. As a young man I didn’t go to university, I worked in a shop and a factory before I was old enough to join the police. I learnt a lot about law, I learnt a bit about psychology, plenty about criminology and lots about myself. But when I was 28, I left the police and worked in business, I got my first ever university certificate a few months later in Business management. Now have a diploma in Business Management, an Associate Diploma in Marketing, I have certificates in teaching, training, train the trainer and many other subjects but never got a bachelor degree. When I came to China, I realised this was an impediment, many foreigners, at that time, came to China without proper qualifications and, when China started to insist that they could only work here if they were qualified, many of them left.

Now, some of them make a living on YouTube denigrating China because after many years of them cheating the system, China decided to impose the same rules their own countries would impose on any person wherever they came from — imagine a Chinese person being allowed to teach in the US or Australia just because they were born in China but never finished school. That’s how it was here, for a long time. When it changed, those highly paid but relatively uneducated backpackers, found themselves unemployed and unemployable. Social media was their solution.

I didn’t do that, it was clearly signposted that this would happen and I knew I needed to address my shortcomings so I found a universities that would give me a master degree. I wanted a real one, not one I could buy off the shelf and it took me a year to find the right one and raise the 20,000 pounds needed. After two years of studying Cross Cultural Change Management, I finished a dissertation related to Chinese workplace psychology in a Western managed business environment and changed my career to become a business consultant, advising foreign owned corporations in China how better to do business with Chinese employees and some Chinese businesses how better to do business with western managers and western customers.

This taught me a lot about China: my living experiences, all my travelling and every interaction I have with Chinese people now benefits from the information I learnt about Chinese psychology, culture and national identity during these two years of post-graduate study.

Finally, I married the most patient and diplomatic teacher. She speaks English as well as I do and has taught me enough Mandarin and Cantonese to get by, I don’t claim to be fluent in Chinese, I’m definitely not, but imagine a guy getting on a bike and riding the length of the country without being able to speak a word of the language, that would be gross stupidity, So, my language skills are ok, I can get by, I can engage in conversations, I can order food and get directions but it’s great when my wife is with me and we can have in depth conversations, I ask and answer questions in a country shop at the side of a country road. This is where I learn more about China than any book, any teacher or any so-called expert can tell me.

She’s a qualified Traditional Medicine Therapist and is therefore knowledgeable about what foods are good, what medicines we need, she can offer massage, acupuncture, moxibustion and many other treatments but most of all, she can guide my philosophy and help me when I’m wrong about China to understand what is right.

These are the factors that make me see China differently to the so-called experts. It’s a combination of my time here, my experience gained from travelling, my knowledge build from studying, and the wisdom passed to me by my wife.

And there’s one more point I’d like to add: when I write a script for a video, I make sure I have all the facts and figures supported. I’ll openly and freely admit that I am biased towards China, who wouldn’t be when they understand properly what China has done? But I’ll always support my statements with links, they may be media, they may be academic, they may be government but they will always be supported. I don’t make stuff up to make China look good, I research my facts to support why China actually is good and then I’ll tell the people who are prepared to listen

I hope that helps people understand what I say isn’t just bland opinion. My views aren’t rose tinted views and my opinions aren’t paid for; if they happen to, as some people suggest, “parrot the CCP” that’s probably because the CPC, as they are properly called, have told you the truth and all I’m doing is reinforcing it.