Office dweebs at war? Yeah, right.

An alert reader–who’s also a retired naval captain–offered some email kudos to yours truly for offering a perspective on China that isn’t as vapid as the gibberish emanating from most pundits these days. The CNMI knows well that we’re right in the middle of things when east meets west, and when the junction produces friction.

Meanwhile, we in Saipan have a perspective that most Americans lack: we see Chinese folks every day. They’re part of our community. In the states, by contrast, most people have probably never seen, much less ever talked to, a real, live person from mainland China.

Then how does the public form its impression about the Chinese? How else?–television. The TV long ago replaced God as the symbol of longing and fulfillment, and China–the nation, the people, the military, in sum, the entire concept–is whatever the television says it is. Which means, to Americans, that the Chinese are a devious cabal of hostage taking scoundrels who are also lousy pilots. Every nuance of news emanating from China, and Hainan in particular, is combed, analyzed, distilled, and distorted as evidence of a devious Chinese strategy.

Never mind that your average “pundit”–often wooly headed third rate academics from fifth rate colleges–couldn’t even order the lunch special off a Chinese menu. It’s the same old, tired, game, when the Johnny come lately’s are trotted out in front of the cameras to say something–anything–that might sound like analysis. Most will sink back into the obscurity they deserve, but, roach-like, others will crawl into the limelight the next time some other crisis boils up in China, or anywhere else for that matter.

Meanwhile, Americans regard Chinese as a homogeneous product. China, the nation, is viewed as the same as Chinese, the people. And, of course, America, the nation and the people, are viewed as fundamentally superior. Which is interesting for me, given that I deal with both nationalities a lot in the Commonwealth and the sleaziest operators I’ve run up against have been Americans, not Chinese.

There is a creeping concern in the states that China and Uncle Sam might slug it out someday, and along these lines I’d like to ask if America really has the collective guts to fight a real war like that. Oprah and Prozac are the two most distinct cultural characteristics of modern America. How would a whining, neurotic nation cope with a big war, when everyone is such a mess in times of peacetime and prosperity? Could today’s generation match, say, the tenacity of WWII’s fighters? Could the soccer moms and cubicle clones rise to the occasion of hand-to-hand combat in the fields of China? Heck, most start blubbering when the Starbuck’s clerk screws up their double latte orders. America is a nation of office dweebs, which is fine enough with me, but they’re better equipped to handle a battle with Windows 98 than a war with the Chinese.

Which is none of my concern, since nobody else’s battles are my battles, so I just keep to myself. Like everyone else in Saipan, though, I at least know that Chinese people are people, and that’s something America at large doesn’t seem to have figured out.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. “Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com”