No Googling! Off the top of your head, tell me who the following people are and why they’re important to the world you live in:
Li Keqiang
Bo Xilai
Chen Guangcheng
Hu Jintao
Zhang Yimou
Wen Jiaobao
Xi Jinping
Li Ka-shing
Poll to follow shortly.
Just two: Wen Jiabao and Chen Guangcheng, both because they’ve been in the news a bit lately.
Hu Jintao only, I’m afraid.
Hu kept the political reforms out? Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu, Hu.
Li Keqiang - Name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
Bo Xilai - Former CPC secretary of Chongqing and Dalian. Became famous for his anti-crime and red culture campaigns in Chongqing. Currently in trouble for being too populist and openly gunning for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee. His police chief and deputy mayor(?), Wang L__, sought refuge in the US consulate in Chengdu earlier this year. His wife may have murdered a British fellow. His son is named Melon Melon and goes to Harvard.
Chen Guangcheng - Campaigned against forced abortions and sterilizations in Shandong. Fought for disabled rights on the Beijing Metro system. Recently escaped from local police in Shandong and made it to the US Embassy in Beijing. Left the embassy and planned to study in Tianjin, then changed his mind and now wants to go to the US. The Chinese media says he is a pawn of foreign NGOs (a.k.a. the CIA) trying to hurt China.
Hu Jintao - Current Chief Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Promoting “Harmonious Development”. He was once the Party head of Tibet. Always seems to have the same expression on his face.
Zhang Yimou - My favorite Chinese movie director. From Xi’an. Raise the Red Lantern, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, The Road Home, Hawthorne Tree, Not One Less, House of Flying Daggers, Story of Qiu Ju (it’s about Gong Li’s husband getting kicked in the groin by the mayor).
Wen Jiaobao - Current Vice Premier of the Communist Party (not sure about the title). He was in the famous Tiananmen '89 photo with Zhao Ziyang’s bullhorn. Has spoken about liberalizing some things that I can’t recall. Grandpa Wen is probably the most popular high-ranking official in the country.
Xi Jinping - The next Chief Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. He will be the first “princeling” (child of a high-ranking party official) to lead the country. He once visited Iowa in the 80’s.
Li Ka-shing - No idea.
I’m an American currently living in some county in Chongqing.
I think they are all waiters at my local lo mein palace.
His name in pinyin is Li Jiacheng (if that helps). My wife just gives me a blank stare if I say Li Ka-shing.
Bo Xilai, because he’s been in the news a lot lately. Also Hu Jintao, because he’s the big boss. I think Li Ka-shing is a business exec?
Weren’t they in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?
These names all sound foreign to me.
One one I picked was Hu Jintao and I knew he was the head of China but after reading through this thread after I voted, I’m not so sure now. If he is the head of China, then he can influence my life mainly because there’s not many people that he can’t influence in one way or another.
I’ve never heard of any of the others. But I’d be hard-pressed to name all nine of the SCOTUS justices, name all my state’s Congresscritters, or name more than a handful of Obama’s Cabinet secretaries, so take that as you will.
Lately I’ve been having name-recognition problems in general, even names I’ve known for decades. The problem is exacerbated with non-Western names. So I may very well know who some of these people are, but just reading the names on a list doesn’t register in my brain at all.
Yeah, they’re all Greek to me.
mmm
I could identify all but two.
I think you’re over-estimating the importance of many of them. They’re players on the Chinese stage, but only Hu and Wen are currently players on the world stage.
All the same, each one of them is important to understanding what’s going to be happening in your world in, say, the next year. Except maybe for Zhang Yimou, I just threw him in there.
Excellent that you “threw in” Zhang Yimou. That means out of the seven that I should know, I can identify six. Six out of seven. Not bad.
Not all of them. Li Ka-shing runs the cash register.
But not really that important, you can understand the importance of various countries in relation to current world events (Germany, Greece, China, Italy, Spain, etc) without knowing a list of people who someone on the internet deems important.
How many people could name a like number of important people in Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain? Russia? Can you?
That doesn’t meaningfully demonstrate you’re really missing out on having an understanding of what’s going on. Sure, knowledge is always good, but in this case I think you’re overestimating the general importance of said knowledge in the context laid out here.
And Ho Chi Minh is the baker.
You just never know..