Friday, 18 Aug 2000

BEIJING, China

Today I went to a large international meeting on capacity building. Five hours later, I still had no idea what the phrase means.

After weeks of being in a constant state of bewilderment (my Chinese is coming along, but slowly), it was very strange to be in a room where I understood every word.

And what words they were. The meeting was one in a series aimed at coming up with a framework for funding projects to stop climate change. Sounds simple, but it’s not. Climate change is maddeningly complex. You can combat it by planting trees, improving energy efficiency, promoting renewables, or tying Americans to their chairs so they can’t consume. Which approach you take determines where project money goes. At one point, there was an absurd discussion on whether desertification or loss of shoreline was more important in the scheme of things. A very somber and dignified man from Pakistan stood up and squashed that particular debate.

Deciding that I had learned enough about the meeting to give a report to GVB, I headed back to the office to work on a proposal. This one is for money to hold a binational meeting in the U.S. between Chinese NGOs and their American counterparts. The explicit goal of the proposal is to introduce American NGO approaches and practices to Chinese NGOs. I softened the language, but the idea still makes me squirm. American and European environmental groups have achieved great things, no question. But are our NGOs such models of strategic thinking and good management that they should be emulated? The answer might be yes; I just don’t know.

I then headed off to an Internet cafe to catch up on email and news from home. Before coming to China, I had read loads of articles about the rise of the Internet in this country. I had grown misty-eyed at the thought of Chinese people gaining access to worlds of information previously unavailable to them. This happens some, but what happens more at Internet cafes is the playing of video games. Rows of overweight, pimply boys sit in cubicles, shooting at things on the screen. Has there ever been a better time in history to be an adolescent male?

My weekend plans include boating at Beihai Park with friends and seeing the Great Wall at Badaling (tourist-infested but worth it, I’m told). I’m headed home to study Chinese before the festivities begin.