Image misunderstood around world, expat says

Despite Beijing’s pollution, traffic and crowds, Jurriaan Meyer of the Netherlands loves the city.

Seven years ago, however, the Dutchman wasn’t enthused with the idea of coming to China after reluctantly accepting a job in a country he thought was very alien to him.

“I was somewhat in shock,” said Meyer, 48, who works as a manager in an IT company in Beijing. “I had reservations about living and working in a country with a cultural and political system entirely different from Europe. (It was) a developing country which, I felt, was disrupting the old order by claiming its place on the world stage,” he said.

Seven years later after immersing himself in the culture, he speaks fluent Mandarin and has learned to appreciate the entrepreneurship, resilience and candid humor of Chinese people.

While his reservations may not have completely vanished, he is concerned about China’s misrepresentation around the world.

“The fact that China is improving its international image is like a youngster coming of age, looking for the recognition and respect that he or she deserves. China has made great progress over the past 30 years,” Meyer said.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the number of outbound visitors from the Chinese mainland reached 83.2 million in 2012. Nearly 20,000 Chinese enterprises are operating overseas.

Sun Yingchun, a professor at the Communication University of China in Beijing, said the world is not prepared to embrace the recent surge in Chinese tourists and businessmen as the country’s economy grows at breakneck speed. Sun added that Chinese are also not fully prepared to blend into the Western world.

Wang Chao, a Chinese student at the University of Geneva, said it is common for Europeans to have trepidation before coming to live and work in China.

“China, in the mind of many Europeans, remains as a hardly civilized, politically underdeveloped country with no freedom, democracy and human rights,” said Wang, who went to Switzerland last year to study international human rights law. “My professors even worried about whether I could find a job in China with a degree in human rights law.”

Wang said the problem is that the Western world hasn’t shown enough interest in truly understanding China.

“Because if you ask those who have traveled to China, they usually think of it positively, at least in terms of culture, food and entertainment,” Wang said.