Explaining Lobbying to Chinese Youth

Today at the international climate change negotiations I experienced American youth trying to explain to Chinese youth on their first trip out of China how exactly lobbying in America worked. This came about because an American youth put up a powerpoint slide showing how the energy industry in the United States was the largest overall contributor to political campaigns. While the presentation was very good, the young person neglected to realize that democratic processes and lobbying was not something that the vast majority of Chinese ever think about. Since the presenter was trying to move quickly through the presentation, to describe lobbying he first said something along the lines of “businesses give money to the government so that they can have laws the way that they want them.” This is the basic American understanding of lobbying, but it is way oversimplified to actually convey the message. So, I started to explain to the Chinese young people around me that the money was actually offered to elected officials in our Congress while they were campaigning so that the candidate could have money to convince the public that they were the best person to vote for. Chinese young people who did not fully grasp the American electoral process who were hearing for the first time about lobbying sort of understood, but they all had perplexed looks on their faces and asked questions to clarify how exactly lobbying worked.

This led to another conversation where I asked whether or not Chinese youth could speak out against their government about climate change. One youth told me that in China, everything had to be framed in a way that went along with the norms and agenda of the Chinese government. My interpretation of this speaking is that in China you are allowed to strongly suggest that something is a good idea for the country, or that you ask the government put more emphasis on its work in some area or another, but that you are not allowed to say anything negative about what the government is doing. I then said that we in America so strongly believe that we can and should criticize the government in America that we have protected our rights to own guns for over two hundred years so that in case the government ever gets to be tyrannical, then we can overthrow it. The response to that was that there were pros and cons to every system of government.

All this was part of a collaborative effort between the Chinese Youth Climate Action Network and Americans from the Cascade Climate Action Network, the Sierra Student Coalition, and SustainUS, the group that accredited me with the U.N. so that I could attend this climate change conference.

I think today was the first time that I have ever spoken to a Chinese person fresh out of China with very little international experience. It made me very grateful that we have so much collaboration among our citizens about so many things not related to government and that if we do disagree with our government, then we have the freedom to say or do so much to actively express our opinions.