Chinese people are proud of how far they’ve come. Many are patriotic and defensive of the system which has made them strong and prosperous. Explaining and unpacking this complicated system is a part of my everyday reporting. In many ways it’s menacing. Surveillance cameras are everywhere and those who dissent against the government are silenced, detained or worse. Individual rights are routinely compromised in the name of the collective. There’s a growing distrust of Western correspondents. Foreign citizens have been arrested and charged with espionage with little explanation. But there’s so much more to the China story, and we work hard to show audiences the bigger picture. There’s the story of climate change and the steps the world’s biggest emitter is taking to curb emissions. We’ve travelled to towns where 75 percent of the cars on the roads are electric, some costing the same price as an expensive smartphone. Technology and the race to reign supreme in advanced industries is another story. Today AI- driven robots routinely clean floors of office buildings, deliver items to hotel rooms and disinfect the waiting areas of transport hubs. I haven’t carried around a wallet or used cash for some years - everything is done digitally, including most shopping.
In just a few decades sleepy Chinese backwaters have become teeming metropolises. The country is increasingly struggling to tackle what appear to be ‘first-world problems’- a plummeting birth rate, rising obesity and mental illness attributed to corporate overwork. When I first arrived in China I quickly became addicted to the energy and rapid pace of change. I admired and still admire the curiosity, good humour and determination of the people around me. The government here prizes above all stability, order and control. In their mind these are the keys to growth and progress “with Chinese characteristics.” Many are attracted to journalism because there is “never a dull moment” and that is certainly true of reporting from China. I’m proud to be a correspondent for Al Jazeera. In a country with 1.4 billion people the individual person can sometimes be forgotten, but at Al Jazeera that’s never the case.
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