In recent weeks, shrill voices of Chinese youth criticizing the West have dominated headlines. But more moderate, thoughtful young Chinese are beginning to speak up.  Here are some insights into a number of quieter -- but arguably just as important -- conversations with Chinese students, from Zhong Menglu who teaches at a prestigious Beijing university:

Many of Beijing’s university students—an educated, Internet-savvy, upwardly-mobile cross-section—disprove perceptions of Chinese as close-minded, nationalistic automatons. With new ‘Net tools, they're seeking out information from near and far in ways that earlier generations of Chinese never had the means or opportunity to do.

On average, Chinese tend to use the Web mostly for entertainment purposes (in contrast to Americans, who go online for information), reported the China Academy of Social Sciences last winter. Yet my conversations with Beijing university students in recent weeks reveal a curiosity and hunger for information that may make them exceptions to the norm. With protests and anti-Western retail boycotts making news in their country, my English-language students and other Chinese friends in Beijing are seeking some sort of “truth” to help them make sense of it all.

Anna*, a freshman English and Translation major, often becomes emotional during our after-class conversations. Our chats sometimes veer unintentionally toward Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen—the big, bad “Three ‘T’’s” foreigners are advised to avoid when talking with local Chinese. Over time, she’s come to acknowledge that she and her classmates “are all very, very confused—we just don’t know who and what to believe."

My Chinese friends and students signal a willingness to discuss even such taboo topics by encouraging me to ask them questions about these sensitive issues. Our talks reflect a diversity of opinion that I imagine was impossible prior to the ascendance of the Web as a means of circulating articles from foreign media as well as domestic content. Chinese blogs, bulletin boards and social networking programs are vibrant outlets for anonymous dialogue.

The conventional wisdom for these students is no longer simply the “party line” or what state-run Xinhua News Agency decides is worth disseminating. “We only read China Daily to see what the state says, but we know it’s all controlled and tries to make China look good, no matter what,” explains Jane, a student from the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province.

A self-described “politics buff,” Anna is one of several students who keeps me on my toes by diligently following up on our discussions with hours of online research. These students fact-check data, compare story biases and angles from various media, seek out new opinions. They often return with as many questions about what they read as criticisms of the discrepancies they notice between Chinese and Western media. Anna says she prefers the International Herald Tribune’s reporting over other Western outlets.

Judy -- the nickname of an enterprising student who writes for an English-language Website in preparation for her intended career as a journalist -- has been quite open in admitting her reliance on The New York Times regarding coverage of recently-jailed human rights activist Hu Jia.

Chinese censors bar domestic media from reporting independently on sensitive stories, such as the case of Hu Jia.  Yet the restriction has affected Judy not at all: she simply shifted her information-gathering from domestic sources to foreign ones, without fear of monitoring or punishment. Articles about censorship and intimidation (as Newsweek reported a few weeks ago in "Repression 2.0") lead some outsiders to imagine access on the mainland is entirely hindered. But Judy is exasperated by that assumption. “All university students know how to get to Wikipedia and BBC [websites]—it’s easy!”

Case in point: my own online research skills have improved thanks to my students’ advice. It was my student Michael, of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, who first showed me how to use the proxy service Anonymouse to access blocked websites inside China. He also keeps me abreast of critical bloggers newly in vogue among Chinese Web users.

A Chongqing native whose studies have been funded by merit scholarships since middle school, Sally consistently probes and questions reports in all media, regardless of its provenance. However, when she first read through The New York Times’ reporting on the Three Gorges Dam (part of its award-winning “Choking on Growth” series) near her hometown, she conceded the existence of  the environmental and social disasters blamed upon the Chinese government. As she puts it, “Our papers never talk about these problems, even though everyone living there knows about them.”

Like Sally, Ellie maintains a skeptical position toward all media, Chinese and Western alike. “I realize that Chinese media is controlling. But I’ve been abroad, I’ve seen the Western press—and I realize both sides are unbalanced," says Ellie, who comes from the province of Inner Mongolia. On the question of the Olympic torch protests, she believes -- like most other Chinese with whom I’ve spoken -- that Tibetans and their supporters are using the Olympics as a platform to try to get their messages out, "so people will sympathize with [their cause].”

This is a very charitable interpretation of the situation, compared with the many strident opinions from other Chinese youth I’ve personally encountered. Many of Alyssa’s friends, all of whom focus on studyling foreign languages in hopes of one day studying abroad, are so outraged with foreign press portrayals of China they're considering skipping their study-abroad plans. Several Chinese friends of mine admit they feel a new pressure to demonstrate their patriotism—hence the popular MSN outgoing message of a red heart next to “Zhongguo” (China) making the rounds.

Almost all those I interviewed feel China is being targeted unfairly. Their explanation? Western nations cast China in a negative light because they're jealous of Beijing's growth and success. Since most of those I spoke have never been outside China to experience a free press and a vibrant civil society first-hand, it is perhaps understandable that they fail to grasp the role of an independent media. As a result, they can only explain Westerners’ motivations for protesting “because that’s what their media tells them to do,” says Anna. 

What's important here is the co-existence of diverse and dynamic opinions—and a rich, patchwork  at that. These students are actively digging through sources, seeking reliable information to help them make up their minds. In the process, they’re coming up against new ideas and learning to be critical consumers of information.

All of which runs counter to the notion espoused by James Fallows that China’s “Great Firewall” makes “the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won’t bother.” If my chats with these university students are any indication, the quieter and more thoughtful repercussions of recent headlines may affect more young Chinese minds than we realize.

     *English names have been used to protect students' identities; if their comments are not kept anonymous they might experience punishment or retaliation, given the sensitivity of some of the topics discussed.