China in the World Reflection

By Sophie DeSantis
December 5th, 2014

Through this semester in Introduction to International Politics, my blog group studied US and China relations. We delved further into the role of China as an economic, political, and social power on the international scale, and specifically to the United States and how that has changed and developed over time. The first post offered our audience background knowledge of China. This included basic knowledge of what we already know about the nation, to more complex issues such as the lack of trust between them and the United States. In later posts, we addressed militant side of China and their technological advancements in weaponry which was something other nations- particularly the US- expressed uneasiness over. Spinning off general technological advancements, cyber espionage was another foreign issue our group addressed. We included how the US is attempting to control this issue, and what cyber espionage can result in as a whole to the world. The final post addressed environmental agreements in the continuous strive that China and the US have been making for a stronger relationship.

My blog group and I would meet about a week or so before the post was due and brainstorm ideas before working. We would research the topic and save articles to share with one another, making sure to keep track of sources to refer to later and so that we do not overlap with information. Our blog posts consisted of two parts- the summary and analysis. We would distribute the paragraphs among group members, some working on one on their one (depending on difficulty and length), or we would have up to two working on one of the six paragraphs. We would meet again later to polish and finalize the post before exporting.

As a Politics major, my intent was to focus on asian studies and so learning about Chinese relations with the United States fit well with my interests. However, I never thought to delve deeper into that particular topic so this was an excellent opportunity to better understand how the country I live in is affected by foreign ones. Not to mention how the United States views certain ideas different from China, which is where a lot of misunderstandings and conflicts arise- from the difference in culture.  Working as a group changed our approach in that we had to learn to respect one another's ideas and most importantly, communicate to avoid stressful situations later.