Green Party article

[:米洛:]

Hello everybody!

 

I was explaining to my Chinese teacher that I am a registered member of the Green Party, but neither was my Chinese sufficient, nor her English, for me to explain to her the political or economic concepts involved with this party's ideology.

 

Ideally I want to send her a detailed, clear, and logical explanation of the Green Party and its philosophy, such as found by Googling "US Green Party constitution" and clicking on the second link (from gp.org), but I cannot find a similarly explanatory document in the Chinese language.

 

This might just be because my Chinese sucks and I have no idea how to navigate through webpages that are written entirely in Chinese. Could somebody be so awesome as to help?? I would like to find an article that explains the core concepts in a detailed manner (as opposed than the Wikipedia page for "LvDang (MeiGuo)," which speaks in generalities and mentions the abstract concepts, like grassroots democracy, but does not explain them).

 

It does not necessarily have to be as long or as detailed as the Green Party Constitution mentioned above, but I would like to send her a document that provides a realistic and step-by-step explanation of where the Green Party ideology lies with regard to larger political concepts and trends. That it is economically socialist in nature but also supports direct democracy, that it supports economic regulation but not political centralization, that it supports feminism and is anti-military, etc.

 

That being said, if there IS a translation of that constitution available, that would be stellar. But I doubt there is. My party isn't too great at being that accessible.

 

Any help would be incredibly useful not only for her benefit but for mine, as well. I am extremely curious to see if such a document/article exists, and interested in reading it and learning new vocabulary myself.

 

Thank you so much for your help!!!!!!

 

[Also, sorry about the pinyin- I have a Mac at home but am using a PC and don't know how to change the language settings, and for some reason I can't figure out how to copy and paste into this text field- it won't work.. ]

 

Thanks again )

 

Milo

[renzhe]

Wiki?

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BB%BF%E5%85%9A_%28%E7%BE%8E%E5%9B%BD%29

Mind you -- won't be accessible in the Mainland. Where are you and your teacher located?

[Nathan Mao]

[陳德聰]

I'm a bit intrigued.

At first I wanted to question why the wikipedia article is not sufficient, and why you need there to also be an explanation of what "grassroots democracy" are... The reason being that grassroots is a concept in China as well and the word 草根民主 is not that hard to piece together which a quick baidu search. It's just a matter of the level of NGO/NPO work the person is familiar with, as I'm sure many native English speakers see "grassroots" and can kind of guess what that would mean but don't have an in-depth knowledge of what it is. I found the wikipedia article pretty helpful in learning about the Green Part of the USA just now, and granted I chose to use the English version, the Chinese one is like a carbon copy of it.

 

Then I thought about it a bit more and wondered if maybe you don't need a professional translator for some political activities? I'm not sure if your Chinese teacher is the type of person with an interest or understanding of politics in the first place (I personally find this type of person difficult to come by), but if your Chinese is not at a point where you can explain the basic tenets of Green Party ideology (环保、公正、草根民主、非暴力... etc), I'm not sure what kind of conversation you're looking to have with your teacher. I doubt you're some political figure trying to run in a riding with a large Chinese population, but it got me thinking about the depth at which you actually need to be able to explain any given concept.

As for a translation of the Green Pages, I wasn't able to find one with a very half-hearted attempt on baidu. I did find this article that seems to explain what the Green Party is in much more depth. It expands on the four pillars rather than just listing things.

[renzhe]

OK my bad, now I notice that he doesn't like wikipedia.

Still, I don't quite understand the argument against wikipedia. The article is somewhat bare-bones, but if you need to efficiently summarize the concepts such as sustainability, grassroots democracy, etc, you could try, well, wikipedia:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A4%BE%E6%9C%83%E6%AD%A3%E7%BE%A9

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F%E6%85%8B%E6%99%BA%E6%85%A7

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%9E%E6%9A%B4%E5%8A%9B

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%83%E5%8A%9B%E5%88%86%E6%95%A3

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%80%A7%E5%88%A5%E5%B9%B3%E7%AD%89

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%9A%E5%85%83%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%E4%B8%BB%E7%BE%A9

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F%E6%85%8B%E8%B6%B3%E8%B7%A1

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%8C%81%E7%BA%8C%E6%80%A7

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8D%89%E6%A0%B9%E6%B0%91%E4%B8%BB

[陳德聰]

May want to edit your post so the links are separate.

[:米洛:]

Thanks all! I appreciate the discussion and the help  陳德聰 (I can copy and paste now... O_o),that is a very helpful article. In fact that is almost exactly what I was looking for! Paragraphs like this are especially helpful: 

 

绿色新政的灵感来自于20世纪30年代大萧条时期的罗斯福新政。斯坦说，罗斯福新政当时卓有成效，现在绿党的新政也能够起作用。她补充说，如果2009年联邦7000多亿的救市资金直接投向社区，用于种植粮食、创建可持续能源、资助比如教育和医疗方面亟需的社会工作，那么这一计划早就轻松启动了。

除了要大幅度降低军事开支，提供更加清洁安全的环境，解决这个国家甚嚣尘上尤其针对有色人种的暴力文化，绿党候选人还要将民主带到政府。

 

I will probably send that article to her. Because you are intrigued, I will explain my situation if you are interested

 

I have taken three years of Chinese at the university level and this semester am taking a class with a new teacher, a TA, who is teaching here in the states for the first time. While she IS interested in politics, and enjoys discussing these topics with me and her other students, unfortunately no- she does not have a good understanding of the subject matter. We have weekly one-on-one conversations with this TA at scheduled times that act as quizzes and use vocabulary we are currently studying in class, and at the moment our textbook chapters reference political terminology and concepts. 

 

I have a decent overall understanding of Chinese and am conversational when the discussion is non-technical, but I am a beginner and am far from fluent. I still struggle during conversation at times. Our most recent one-on-one discussion was made awkward by the fact that I could not effectively articulate certain political concepts to her and she was left in confusion. 

 

Our textbook vocabulary is fairly basic (共产党,民主党,共和党,选举,辩论,投票...) and it was difficult to explain to my teacher that, for example, many political scientists view the political spectrum as multi-dimensional, with an axis corresponding to economic policy and an axis corresponding to various levels of authoritative or legislative power. That communism or socialism as an economic policy can be implemented in various forms of government, from total state authority (like Stalin or Mao), to anarchism or near-anarchism (Spanish Catalonia). That "Communist China" has, due to adoption of free market economics and private ownership, and due to abolition of wealth-spreading programs like food stamps, become completely the opposite of communist. China is now simply a single-party authoritarian state that is very near the US on the economic-policy spectrum. That social spending and welfare, labor unions, economic regulation, and even minimum wage are all economically leftist policies advocated by the green party in opposition to the rising US income inequality spurred by Reagan and de-regulation. That the Green Party is distanced from the US Democratic Party by stronger advocacy of liberal economics, including opposing corporate practices and advocating higher income tax to support universal health care, more educational opportunities, etc, and that by any objective analysis the Green Party is much more socialist than China is now (but considerably less authoritarian). That libertarian socialist policies can aid technological innovation (see "Who Killed the Electric Car?") and provide a greater diversity of news/information sources in the media (thus fueling free speech).

 

From my teacher's experience, socialism is something very particular and stale. She is surprised to hear a student advocate socialist politics because in her mind supporting socialism is supporting an authoritarian, propaganda-spreading, violent state. I cannot prove to her otherwise, not because I don't have the rational ability to do so, but simply because there is too large of a language gap. But she is genuinely curious about my position, and about knowing more about the political differences among ALL of her students, so I want to provide her by email with a clear and encyclopedic article that discusses the economic and political justifications for Green policy. In essence, there are historical, economic, and philosophical trends at play that aren't discussed at all in the wiki article. I know for a fact that these explanations would help her to understand because I know that she wouldn't understand what something like de-centralization or community-based economics would actually mean just by reading the phrase. And the wikipedia article just lists the phrase and goes on to talk about the geographical distribution, election results, and organizational history of the party itself which are all more or less irrelevant. [Renzhe, it is a good idea to offer the individual wiki links of the Green Party tenets. Those are indeed more in-depth and I will probably send those along too... Or just send the original wiki article and let her click through those links if she wants to.]

 

I'm sure an in-depth overview or discussion of Green Party politics HAS to exist somewhere in Chinese academia, but I bet its tucked away in a poli-sci journal or book somewhere. Its not necessarily fascinating internet material in the Chinese-speaking world right now so I'm not surprised it doesn't just pop up on a baidu search (as opposed to a great article like this, http://www.douban.com/note/25401599/ which pops up immediately upon searching 美国民主党和共和党). 

 

And like I said I am curious for my own sake as well Reading new material in Chinese, especially subject matter I am interested in, is always helpful. Thanks so much, and let me know if you find anything else!

 

All the best,

 

Milo

[TheBigZaboon]

Maybe it's a good idea to slow down a little, and catch your breath.

 

"it was difficult to explain to my teacher that, for example, many political scientists view the political spectrum as multi-dimensional, with an axis corresponding to economic policy and an axis corresponding to various levels of authoritative or legislative power. Yada, yada,yada..."

 

I'm not criticizing your ideas, and they seem to be quite popular today with some. But you followed up that first sentence (a real corker from the point of view of expressing it in Chinese after 3 years in the university's Chinese class) with a whole bunch of pronouncements, any one of which could be the subject of a PhD thesis. And it looks like you typed out the whole thing without taking a breath. I'd have been exhausted after typing that, and woulda needed a good, long break.

 

Try rephrasing this stuff in sentences you can handle, use words that you've already seen in your textbooks. Avoid the politi-babble you can use with your friends, and say, for example, "many people who study politics feel that politics is very complicated. Some focus on economics, some focus on legislative systems or policies decided by the government." In this case, the only word you might have to look up is "legislative". All the other words and phrases you should already have encountered in your classes. (And if you know you're gonna have a chance to use this stuff in a one-on-one with the TA, or during a Chinese conversation night, prep a few phrases beforehand...wink,wink...hint, hint...)

 

I'm sure somewhere in your early education, your English teacher said something like "one idea, one sentence." This is a good strategy to follow when trying to speak in a foreign language you're still trying to master. It makes your discussions a little simpler in level perhaps, and it takes a bit of effort to explain a complicated idea, but it makes real conversation possible. Don't try to speak English using Chinese words, and don't ever, (never!!!) try to translate the English sentence in your mind into Chinese. Try instead to express a simpler form of the idea using Chinese words and phrases. When you see the little wrinkles between your teacher's eyebrows disappear and the lights come on in her eyes, you can move to the next idea,  You'll be surprised how well it works.  You may become the Green Party's apostle to the Chinese.

 

'nuff said.

[Lu]

Try rephrasing this stuff in sentences you can handle, use words that you've already seen in your textbooks. Avoid the politi-babble you can use with your friends, and say, for example, "many people who study politics feel that politics is very complicated. Some focus on economics, some focus on legislative systems or policies decided by the government."

Agreed, for this and for other subjects. Trying to say sentences you can see the end of when you start them is a good way not to get lost while speaking. Although at the same time it can be good to practice sentences you can't see the end of, to get better at them (and learn to see the end).

[roddy]

Not sure if the site being in traditional makes a difference, but there's a HK Green Party which probably has some useful stuff. Maybe also look at Taiwan, Singapore. 

[li3wei1]

The Green Parties in various countries do not necessarily have the same beliefs. It might be a good way of finding the vocabulary, but don't assume that the Green Party of Hong Kong or anywhere else will stand behind everything that the US Green Party does.

[mouse]

 

Wiki?

https://zh.wikipedia...rg/wiki/绿党_(美国)

Mind you -- won't be accessible in the Mainland.

 

fyi, wikipedia is fully accessible in the Mainland, just delete the 's' in 'https'.