Re: China in the topic? and other musings

[Carl Engstrom <engstrom@husc.harvard.edu>]

Including China is ridiculous for one simple reason.  It is not part of
Southeast Asia.  It is part of East Asia.  Although there is probably some
silly definition somewhere waying China and Southeast Asia in the same
sentence, anyone in the field will say that China is not a part of
Southeast Asia.  

I think the specific countries should be mentioned, and China should not
be on the list.  It explodes ground--even if the wording of the resolution
is clever, there is so much literature on China itself that the effect
would be the same.

I'll bet there is not a single person (besides maybe sparacino) who voted
for SE Asia and considered China a part of that.  It distorts the
DEMOCRATIC PROCESS to include China.

Moreover, a large part of topic selection is to choose topics that current
debaters haven't debated before.  Even last year, the environment topic
was explicitly domestic to reduce overlap with the h.s. environment topic.
Sparacino wants to include China cuz sophomores and frosh have debated it
and the bigger kids haven't.  Screw that--any man who calls himself The
Champ shouldn't argue for such a chump topic.

Carl Engstrom
harvard university

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