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SMARTHINKING's E-structor Response Form

(Your marked-up essay is below this form.)

HOW THIS WORKS: Your e-structor has written overview comments about
your essay in the form below. Your e-structor has also embedded comments
[in bold and in brackets] throughout your essay. Thank you for choosing
SMARTHINKING's OWL; best wishes with revising your paper!

*Strengths of the essay:

Welcome to Smarthinking, Michell. My name is Hedwig. You have done a good job
taking out the footnotes. The content flows better and is easier to read.

*Michell 2579164 has requested that you respond to the Content


Development:

You are on the right track with your body paragraphs by summarizing the major
points you react to in the critical portion of the paper.

It looks as if you read the article carefully and closely to ensure that you understand
it. In addition, you identify the main points or ideas of the article and then articulate
this information in your own words. Do your reactions respond to the author’s
descriptions, ideas, viewpoints in the summaries? Correlate them even more as you
revise.

Organization:

Use this checklist of characteristics for a Summary as you revise, Michell.

Summary

• Identifies the subject of the summary by its title and the author’s full name

• Uses the third-person point of view: the author (he or she), the essay (it). I notice
you sometimes use “you” in places: the author makes you, etc. This is not needed
even in the Response section.

• Maintains an objective stance; restrains from critiquing or analyzing

• Uses present tense verbs: the author recalls . . .

• Is concise and accurate in presenting main points

Characteristics of a Soapbox Response

• Uses the first-person point of view. If your instructor wants you to use third
person, your response is fine, Michell.

• Is subjective and personal

• Includes at least one direct quotation from the article or essay. Do you relate to
how the author wrote something by quoting a small part of, even a few words?

*Michell 2579164 has requested that you respond to the


Introduction/Conclusion:
The introduction should provide the title/author, etc., as your does along with the
article thesis. However, the end of the introduction should show readers what your
paper thesis is. What is the focus of the article summaries in your body? What is
your approach to the article in your critical response? This info should set up the
paper content you will provide.

Summary of Next Steps:

• Add your paper/response focus to a paper thesis at the end of the


intro.

• Add more response or edit out the summary points that are not
relevant to your response.

• Avoid using “you/your.”

• Make suggested and needed changes as you proofread.

I hope this is helpful as you revise. Be sure to submit your next draft if you
would like additional feedback. Best of luck! –Hedwig G.

Find additional resources in SMARTHINKING's online library:

You can find more information about writing, grammar, and usage in
SMARTHINKING's student handbooks. You can visit the SMARTHINKING
Writer's Handbook or the SMARTHINKING ESOL (English for speakers of
other languages) Writer's Handbook.

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Please look for more comments in your essay below. Thank you for visiting
SMARTHINKING. We encourage you to submit future essays.

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Can a country, plagued with political corruption, appalling human rights issues, and the
world’s leader in greenhouse gas emissions, really own the twenty-fist century? Guy
Sorman, author of the article in The City Journal, spring 2007, ‘Empire of Lies’- the
twenty -first century will not belong to China., is hoping it can not. Sorman takes his
readers into what he calls the ‘Real China‘. It is a provocative look into the China, that
for the reader, it would seem in many ways, is not only unwilling but also, somewhat
incapable, of seeing past the deeply imbedded Communist upbringing of the past and
present. After travelling throughout China for all of 2005 and part of 2006, recording the
words and silent thoughts of what he calls “exceptional” Chinese men and women,
Sorman claim’s China’s rising ’Superpower’ status is no more then a ‘mirage’ and the
Party’s priorities lie not with the social and economical growth of its subject, but with
power and nothing more. [Do you need an apostrophe for the singular verb
“claims”?]

Sorman argues, that while China is no longer the totalitarian of its past, its 60-million-
member Communist Party, remain cruel and omnipresent. His evidence for this comes
from the people he interviews. People like 75-year-old Madam Ding Zilin. Branded an
enemy of China and is now on probation. She fights for the victims of the 1989
Tiananmen Square massacre, who under China’s then leader of the PRC, Deng
Xiaoping’s instructions, where gunned down because they dared fight, in a peaceful
protest, for democracy and the right to freedom, and those responsible to be accounted
for. Alternatively, Sorman discusses the the many thousands of AIDS victims, the worst
of live in the province of Henan, suffering without basic medical supplies or government
help, imprisoned within their villages by the Party authorities themselves. It paints a very
bleak picture for the PRC.

He also argues that the cruelty of the Party can be seen through Chinas ‘Single Child’
policy. A seemingly smart introduction, theoretically speaking, but in practice has shown
the true cruelty of the Party. Introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 in a bid to slow
China’s vastly over populated society, the policy officially restricts the number of babies
born to married urban couples. It supposedly allows for certain ‘exemptions‘, including
minorities, rural couples and parents without siblings. Outwardly, it would seem that this
policy has worked bringing China’s fertility rate down to 1.7. HHowever, at what cost to
the people of China? Sorman also brings to our attention, the kidnapping of 17,000
women, of Linyi and the surrounding rural area, by the family-planning squad in 2005.
Where they forced abortions, on those who were pregnant, and preformed sterilization,
on those who were not. Purely because the population was immensely outside the Party’s
quota. There was even torture inflicted upon the men until they gave up the where abouts
of their wives and daughters. Something the authorities have admitted to, although not
before a Hong Kong journalist, who Sorman also interviews, and who served a 51-month
sentence for his actions, sent word of the atrocity through txt messaging. The law on
family planning in China dose technically prohibit coercion, thus the action of the family
planning squad was actually illegal.

Sorman is a French professor who completed his PhD in 1964, from the Institute of
Political Sciences. He is also a columnist, author and public intellectual in economics
and philosophical matters. he claims China’s rapid growing, and seemingly stable,
economy is nothing more then a mirage, however he shows no ’real’ evidence to support
this claim. Leading world economists would, and have, contradicted this. Many of them
coming to the conclusion, that in fact, not only can China make claim to the twenty-first
century, but indeed, she will eventually do exactly that. Mao Yushi, a house-confined
economist, supporter of the free market, and one of Sormans subjects, claims that many
of Chinas products are worthless; however, China exported $878 billion worth of goods
between January and September of 2007, up 27 percent from 2006, despite recalls of
certain products.

Sorman would have you believe that the Party tells the banks, to whom, they should
make loans to, this being a more politic move rather then an economical one according to
Sorman. But again, he fails to back up his statement up with any real creditable evidence.
As to with the low unemployment rate. [Can you add the sentence fragment the
sentence before it?] He would like you to believe that what he is telling you is fact yet
has nothing to substantiate this claim.

This article fails to put together any substantial evidence to support Sormans claims on
several issues largely the economy in China. However, the real power of this article, does
not come from Sormans apparent bid to sway the reader to his way of thinking, but from
the people he has interviewed. It is the compelling accounts, of these dissidents and the
silent people who live and breathe China. It is their stories that make you not only, at
times put the article down and walk away in total disgust and complete anguish, but make
you want to continue to read on. <<[This is a great observation/reaction, Michell.]
While Sorman would like to believe that China has no claim to the twenty-first century, if
we take into account real statistics and evidence, that show China is indeed on the fast
climb to economical growth and social stability, it would be hard to deny that China is
definitely a front-runner to make claim to this century.

References

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm Date accessed


4/12/09

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy Date accessed 1/12/09

http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/index.php?id=222 Date accessed 6/12/09

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/business/worldbusiness/13trade.html

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