Author: hui.101

Text Review- Daughter from Danang

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The film Daughter from Danang tells the story of Heip who’s mother is a Vietnamese woman and her father is an American soldier. The story takes place during the Vietnam War when everyone is saying that communism will kill all the racially mixed children. As a result, Heip was sent by her mother to America by an organization called Operation Babylift. She was then adopted by her foster mother who did all she can to make Heip as American as possible. After Heip grew older, she returned to Vietnam and meet her birth mother. However, their joy of reunion quickly turned into strong cultural conflict and the story ended with tragedy.

After watching this film, I immediately recalled the book the leavers we read. There are many similarities between Deming and Heip’s experiences. They are all adopted by American families and be Americanized. Heip may experience less of an identity struggling as she was small when adopted and never stay in a Vietnamese community until she returned to Vietnam. She also forgot how to speak Vietnamese and almost completely identified herself as an American instead of struggling between the American identity and the Vietnamese identity. But this intensified the cultural conflict when she reunites with her birth mother who identifies herself completely as Vietnamese.

When Heip returned to Vietnam, she was surprised by the differences in people’s habits. One example is when she noticed that in Vietnam, people often cook on the street. She cannot handle the relationship between her and her family in Vietnam. Her sister kept asking her for money and treat her as the one who will help the entire family and her mother treated her as the mental support. Heip also cannot get used to the environment and said that this is not what she is expecting. She ended up missing her life in American and is eager to leave. Her decision is similar to Deming who also ends up returning to the community in which he is most familiar and comfortable. What influences Heip and Deming’s decision is their identity.

I think the idea that the author is trying to convey is how our self-identity is influenced by the environment we grow up in and the type of people around us. The author also shows the significant impact of self-identity on people’s decisions and sense of belonging. This film uses a true story, showing audiences that there are still many children who are facing this type of problem. The author encourages the audience to discuss the formation and impact of self-identity and think about will the ending in the film be the only outcome.

Yo, is this commercial discrimination?

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Background information

There are two concepts that people often hear from the news, they are state-owned enterprises and private companies. A state-owned enterprise is “a legal entity that is created by a government in order to partake in commercial activities on the government’s behalf, it can be either wholly or partially owned by a government and is typically earmarked to participate in specific commercial activities”.(Kenton, 2020) While a private company is “a firm held under private ownership”. (Chen, 2020) There’s another keyword that often appears with state-owned enterprises which is monopoly where a single enterprise is the only or one of the few suppliers of a particular commodity.

 

Examples

Before we start to talk about commercial discrimination, let’s first look at an example of state-owned companies monopolizing the telecommunication market. In China, there are three main telecommunication companies and they are all state-owned enterprises. This is not a coincidence but an inevitable outcome since in China, individual enterprises are not allowed to enter the telecommunication market. In other words, a license to enter the market will only be given to state-owned companies. Similar phenomenons appear in other areas where important but not vital resources are allocated. Since individual enterprises do not have a chance to enter, several state-own companies often monopolize the whole market. In this example, there exists commercial discrimination since the government thinks it’s better to let state-owned enterprises control resources rather than giving the right of allocating these resources away to private companies. Here the concept of the “one” and “other” can be well applied. The government treats itself and state-owned enterprises as the “one” while treating private companies as the “other”. They are the group with power and are trying to use their power to eliminate private companies out of the market.

The problem of discrimination not only exists between companies but also between consumers and companies. Consumers often treat larger and famous companies as more reliable choices and avoid purchasing commodities from small companies that they do not know. However, the reason why some companies are well known is that they have more power or control the majority of resources in their field. They use advertisements to attract consumers and generate a virtuous cycle. This may connect to the concept of “subaltern”. Here, private companies are the subalterns who have less power and whose voices cannot be heard by the public. As a result, consumers will not buy their product as they haven’t heard about the company before and do not trust the company. Having fewer consumers, the company again earns less and further losses the power they have, forming a vicious cycle.

Besides discrimination against private companies, there is also discrimination against consumers. Companies charge differently on the same commodity while facing consumers from different social classes. This is again closely related to the power difference. The sellers often have more power and information. The consumers, on the other hand, do not have all information required for them to make the correct decision so is the group with less power. The theory of the one and the other can again be applied and consumers now become the other and sellers are the one.

According to previous information, we can conclude that there do exist commercial discrimination. However, is the government and consumers decision correct? Is it true that state-owned companies and monopolized companies are better than private and small companies? To answer these questions, we should first look at the advantages and disadvantages of the two types of companies.

 

Advantages and disadvantages

 Since state-owned enterprises can receive financial support from the government, they can lower the cost of production and lower the prices of their commodity, making them affordable for more consumers. State-owned companies are also more competitive in international trade, taking their size and available resources into consideration. If a field was monopolized by a few companies, consumers might find it more convenient to manage and easier to operate. Take the payment system as an example, in China, there are only two main types of payment systems, the Wechat payment, and the Alipay and these two types of payment are supported in all places. When paying, people can simply show the QR code. While in Japan, there are more than ten methods of payment, and different shops have different supported payment methods. Consumers might find it inconvenient to switch from one type of payment to the other.

However, there are also disadvantages. When state-owned companies achieved a monopoly, private companies, therefore, will have fewer chances to develop, and the variety of choices that are available for consumers decreases. A decrease in diversity will also lead to a decrease in competition. Companies that already exist in the market will then lose their intensity to develop as they know that no matter they work hard or not, they won’t lose their resources. These phenomenons will dampen the enthusiasm of the entire market. Monopoly, at the same time, enables the state-owned company to control the price. They can, as mentioned above, lower the price and benefit the majority, however, they can also choose to keep the original price or even rises the prices, receiving more benefit as consumers cannot find any subsidy. If enterprises decide to do so, fewer consumers will be able to afford the commodity.

Private companies have all the disadvantages mentioned above but they also have plenty of advantages. Since many private companies are small in size, they can allow more flexibility. When facing management problems, they are more likely to adjust in a short period and can better adapt to the market when there are changes in the market. Employees working in private companies also face more competition which may force them to enhance their working efficiency. Competitions might also exist between private companies focusing on the same field. As a result, product diversity will increase as companies are all trying to attract more consumers.

To put it all in a nutshell, both state-owned and private companies have advantages and disadvantages. We cannot say that one is better than the other, but we may acknowledge that one type of company is more suitable in a field and the other is more suitable in another field. Though there exists commercial discrimination, this discrimination should be eliminated.

 

Solutions

To solve this commercial discrimination, we must first learn that small, private company experiences discrimination since they do not have a chance to display themselves. In another word, they are experiencing systemic injustice. Whether they can get a license or not is not dependent on their ability but their “identity”; however, companies cannot decide their own identity. A private company may do better than a state-owned enterprise but they still cannot enter the market. To make the wrong thing correct, this systemic injustice should be solved. One thing that leads to systemic injustice is a power difference. Private companies who have less power do not have the chance to display themselves and consumers cannot hear from these companies. The government should let more private companies enter the field which they used to monopolize. If the resources available are important and the government does not want them to be controlled by individuals, they can introduce more state-owned companies into that field, making sure that competition exists between these companies. They can also give private companies more chances to give publicity to their commodity, providing consumers more choices and showing them that private companies are also reliable. As the information inequality between consumers and companies decreases, and more companies get power, the problem of commercial discrimination will be ameliorated.

 

Commercial Discrimination further thinking

The problem of commercial discrimination does not only exist as the examples mentioned above. As long as there is a power difference between the two companies, the problem of commercial discrimination will exist. To better understand commercial discrimination, we can start by thinking what is the benefit of commercial discrimination? Why some companies want commercial discrimination to exist? The answer is profit. Companies with more power monopolized the market, eliminating other companies to get all the profit in that field. These phenomena often appear when a private company monopolizes the market. In the case where consumers from different social classes pay differently when purchasing the same product, the sellers also aim to earn more profit. As a result, companies want to maintain commercial discrimination since it helps them to earn more money. After understanding their purpose, we can generate better ways of reducing commercial discrimination, solving the problem from where it was rooted. For example, the government can set up a limitation on the price of products, and set periodical checks to make sure that commodities have unified prices.

Although commercial discrimination is closely related to power difference, an appropriate degree of power difference can also have advantages. Under the situation where companies have the monopolized power, companies with less power may be encouraged to work harder and get more power, and companies which own more power will notice the benefit of owning more power. Noticing that others with less power are actively chasing, they do not want to give up their superiority and will work harder as well. Together the entire market will develop faster.

 

Work cited:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/soe.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatecompany.asp

Diary of systemic injustices showcase

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I’ve noticed a video reporting the severe crisis a small city called Tonghua in the north of China is facing. More than 200 people in that city have infected COVID-19. As a result, the whole city was sealed off urgently. People living there were asked to stay at home. However, many of them do not have enough food. I was surprised by the huge number of people infected and the crisis native citizens are facing and wonder why I have heard nothing about it. Then I tried to search it online. The result shows that there are rarely news reporting it and only a small group of people have noticed the problem. The virus used to broke out in Hebei, a city close to Tonghua but bigger. During that period, I see reports everywhere, the situation was updated every day, and everyone in the city was asked to take a COVID test. These two cities all face the COVID-19 but it is obvious that much more attention was paid to one city than the other.

I think this is an example of systemic injustice since people living in different cities does not have equal availability to medical care and food supply. There’s no law mentioning that one city should get more attention than another when facing problems, but the reality shows that since Tonghua is a small and less developed city, it was almost ignored. When people think about how COVID is affecting cities, cities like Beijing, Shanghai are also those that pop into their minds since these are “more important” cities with larger populations, more highly educated citizens, and act as economic or political center. I think this case relates well to the key word “Subaltern” which Spivak has mentioned in the article “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. Here people living in Tonghua are the subalterns, whose voice cannot be hearted by the public. People noticed what they are suffering only after the official news reported it. Which indicates that citizens’ voice cannot be heard without the help from those who have power.

If we ignore those “less important” cities, problems may exist. Without paying enough attention, a huge population may be infected by the virus before being realized. Doctors are unprepared and cannot control it as soon possible. It may even turn into an national disaster. Also, this may lead to social unrest as citizens facing this crisis may try to remonstrate, causing conflict and panic. To fix this systemic injustice, the government should let people realize the negative consequences of ignoring what’s happening in small cities, and administrators should take every problem seriously no matter which city is facing that problem.

This article may help you to learn more about what is happening during that period of time

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/what-happened-when-one-chinese-city-shut-down-after-new-covid-outbreak.html

Reference

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/what-happened-when-one-chinese-city-shut-down-after-new-covid-outbreak.html

Week 6 Context presentation: Why Is the Book Objective

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Chinua Achebe was born in 1930, Ogidi, a village in Nigeria. At that time, the Western missionaries were well established. So, Achebe was influenced by both his native culture and Western culture. It is his education in English that enables him to avoid stereotyping neither Africans nor Europeans and to consider colonial expansion from both sides.

In the book, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe shows his readers how real African cultures were. He shatters Western readers’ stereotype of native Africans by carefully describing their culture, believes, and values before contacting European culture. One important thing to notice is that Achebe not only shatters the stereotype of native Africans, but also managed to avoid stereotyping the Europeans by depicting different white characters like “the most benevolent Mr. Brown, the zealous Reverend Smith, and the ruthlessly calculating District Commissioner. It seems like he also gave his characters the ability to shatter their stereotypes. As he wrote on page 118 of the book that “Whenever Mr. Brown went to that village, he spent long hours with Akunna in his obi talking through an interpreter about religion. Neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs.”

Similar to other African authors, Achebe is trying to revitalize the native culture; however, instead of using the native language, Achebe decided to wrote this book in English. His target audiences, therefore, are Western readers and he wanted this novel to respond to earlier colonial accounts of Africa. (Colonial Nigeria was the era in the history of Nigeria when the region of West Africa was ruled by the United Kingdom from the mid-nineteenth century until 1960 when Nigeria achieved independence.) In Things Fall Apart, the story takes place during this period when white men are trying to introduce their religion Christianity to native people. Again, Achebe is looking at the colonial expansion from both sides—he is trying to take both the African and European perspectives on colonial expansion into consideration.

 

Work cited:

“Things Fall Apart: Context | Sparknotes”. Sparknotes.Com, 2021, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/things/context/.