LHASA, 14th MARCH 2008:
Source: CCTV9 and net.Sydney, 12th April 2008:
Source: CCTV9. A FEW COMMENTS FOR TELEGRAPH'S SPEAKER'S CORNER: IS THE WEST DEMONIZING CHINA?
I have lived in China for eight years now. Indeed, I am in China at this very moment and have no trouble in reading this blog. In fact, despite all that is written about blocking, there is nothing much that I find blocked in my perusal of international papers on the internet. If I suspect that something is blocked in one place, I seem to have no trouble finding it in another. As for the current debate, I think it is not widely understood outside China with what joy and anticipation the Chinese people are approaching the Games. I sense no triumpahalism about the whole thing. Rather I find the delightful Chinese people that I know keen to put on a good show for the world in the hope that their efforts will be appreciated, that they will contribute something good to the world and that they will be better understood by the world. What a frenzy has been produced by events in Tibet - and how well timed to make things awkward for China! I keep thinking of my home village of my childhood. The Kellys may have hated the McCoys but the one thing for sure they would not have done, despite whatever antipathy the Kellys may have felt towards their neighbours, would have been to invade a McCoy wedding and defecate all over the dance floor. There are times for demnstrations of antipathy and there are limits - and both the Kellys and the McCoys would have known them. And so I have the feeling that that's how it should be, whatever one's views regarding Tibet, with the Beijing Olympic Games. The Games are so important to ordinary people here that to poop on them from a height to make a convenient political point is really beyond the pale. Orindary people here are not much concerned with politics of any kind but they are concerned about the Olympics as an expression of their pride in the country. It is a shame that a perennial problem, Tibet, should have been chosen as the cow that flies to poop on this proud Chinese moment.
Posted by Tom Whitford on April 14, 2008 11:02 AM
Media coverage of the journey of the Olympic torch has been heavily biased. There have been very few anti-China protestors when compared with the scale of support on the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco, for the Beijing Olympics. The latter have had fleeting mention but BBC News 24, for example, has gone heavily with visual scattered protests rather than provide meaningful explanation of scenes its coverage was distorting, never mind China's history having started before 1950. I'm no great admirer of what China has become these past few decades, but do not support the campaign to split this or that part of China from the rest of the country. Also I question the ploy of lumping China, Burma and Sudan together as 'the case against', a ploy that seems transparent in its prejudice. Posted by Peter, NW London on April 14, 2008 9:54 AM
The West is not so much "demonising China", as being trapped by a romanticising and simplistic notion of the East - of Tibet, China, and other nearby cultures. The dominant paradigm in popular Western culture is that Tibet is a peaceful, isolated nation of priest-kings and yak herders. Similarly, the Chinese are mindless drones labouring under the yoke of their Communist overlords. TV cameras play to, and as a result, reinforce such stereotypes. Most troubling of all, Tibet, like China, is assumed to be monolithic. Few question the ability of the Government-in-Exile to speak for people actually in Tibet - as opposed to the privileged monk-nobility classes who were willing and able to escape in 1959. Likewise, the common Western conception of China ignores the diversity of both political opinion and ethnic identity within China. There is also little understanding of the complex inter-relationship between and amongst Tibetans, Mongols, and Han Chinese, a history stretching back some 17 centuries.
Posted by Tommy on April 14, 2008 6:40 AM
I think the problem in the eyes of most Chinese is that they know (as most foreigners with experience of China do) there has been a substantial improvement in human rights in China, yet the Western media either ignores or denies this. Most absurd of all is to wait until 2008 to raise the point when the situation is clearly better than it was in 2001, when the games were awarded to Beijing. The games themselves have been a clear catalyst for change and improved governance.
Posted by Andrew Johnson on April 14, 2008 3:04 AM
What you don't seem to get is that this torch relay ordeal has turned protests against the Chinese government into humiliating the chinese people. The Chinese people would love the idea of better human rights in China, but when pro-human rights became anti-China, it's not hard to understand why the Chinese are enraged.
Posted by Kyle on April 14, 2008 9:32 AM
I believe some guys need to learn more about the history of China and Tibet before giving comments. Tibet has become part of China since centuries ago when Communist party was even not born. Have you guys ever travelled in China or Tibet, have you got any knowledge about the real situation here? There're quite enough evidences showing that the Tibet event is not a peaceful protest but a well organized violence to embarrasse the Chinese government before Beijing Olympics. However the western media definitely used the Double Standard in reporting this event, they picked out what they wished to spread to the pubilic but ignored the objectivity. To be honest, many young people in China used to disdain the Communist government and yearn towards the democracy of the west but now the western media is pushing them backwards. What we need to concern about is the gap between the average Chinese and the west is becoming larger and seems hardly to be repaired in a short time.
osted by DERY_CN on April 14, 2008 9:13 AM
Dear Fu Ying, I have lived in China for just over three years and have found most of the Chinese people I meet to be charming and friendly. Of course, I view Chinese state bureaucracy with the suspicion and contempt that I would view my own country’s state sectors. The English do. What I feel should be pointed out is the cultural difference in the way countries view their overlords. As a Chinese person, you could easily and perhaps justifiably condemn and criticize Blair, Brown, Bush et al, (They are all Bs. The irony of it!) and would be given freedom to do so, if in the west. One million people rallied in London against the Iraq war, and we are disgusted about the way our feelings were ignored as Blair stumbled along blindly, hanging onto the coattails of another religious nut. This is because most westerners do not automatically associate their governments with the people. This may seem strange in countries confessing to be democratic. How can democracies separate government from the people? It is what we do. One thing I have come to realize is that in China, as it was in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party cannot be separated from the people. The Party is the people and the people are the Party. When westerners see the Chinese flag, they do not see the Chinese Flag. They see the Communist Flag. Do you see capitalism and colonialism when you see the Union Flag? Communism and its bloody history (which cannot be denied) are as abhorrent to most westerners as the bloody history of capitalism (which cannot be denied) was to Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and to most westerners now. I was taught at school about the evils of slavery and colonialism. Britain is still ‘suffering’ from guilt – although I expect that would surprise you. We are reminded of it in the state controlled China Daily everyday, especially at the moment. Many of the comments by Chinese readers are extremely aggressive and racist. We do not harp on about what your Great Helmsman did to your country, or what Stalin did to his own people. I have met Chinese people who say that 9/11 was a good thing. I don’t like their opinion, but I can understand why they think that. Westerners are taught about Japanese Aggression, something we suffered, but not to the extent of China. I read anti-Semitic views on China Daily every day. I’ve even read comments urging Chinese people to beat up foreigners. This would not be published in the English press. You can be rude, insulting and patronizing. You can even tell lies, but you cannot incite racial hatred and violence. One of the west’s most iconic pictures in the second half of the twentieth-century is the picture of a young man standing in front of a tank, holding two carrier bags, in 1989. This was seen as the spirit and strength of a young and new China which was finding a new way. It is as iconic as the horrific picture of a napalmed girl running in sheer terror after the strafing from an American fighter in Vietnam. What I find most disconcerting in both western media and Chinese media is that demonstrators are classed as anti-Chinese. Anti-Chinese is far from the truth. Many people in the west are anti-communist, just as China and the Soviet Union were anti-capitalist, and anti-liberal. The west will always see communism as oppressive, as oppressive as Fascism, no matter how much China improves under the communist regime. Westerners also view the new capitalism of China in the way that 19th century European capitalism is now viewed, the evils of extreme Darwinian Capitalism prompting the works of Marx. Don’t forget, Marx fled to England where he was free to write his anti-capitalist pamphlets, often given free reign to view Parliamentary documents, and kept from starvation by a rich industrialist. There’s an irony for you. Another destructive era of Chinese history imported from the west. Western Europe is now more socialist than China.
Posted by Carl on April 14, 2008 3:40 AM
I think the Western media is to some extent oversimplifying the Tibet issue, and we only ever seem to hear about human rights abuses there. That Tibet is an independent nation occupied by China seems to accepted as historical fact. And yet, no country has ever recognized Tibet as an independent state and its complex history intertwined with China goes back well before 1949, centuries in fact. Many people for example seem to be totally unaware that the title of "Dalai Lama" was created by Mongol ruler Altan Khan in 1578 for political reasons, and that Britain itself is historically hardly an innocent party, having invaded Tibet in 1904, exercising some human rights abuses of its very own on the Tibetan people. What's more worrying regarding the present situation though is that the fact that China has done a lot of good in Tibet, such as abolishing slavery, introducing free, universal, secularing education, modernising the economy, reducing infant mortality from 43% in 1950 to 0.661% in 2000, spending 300 million yuan restoring temples goes totally unnoticed by the Western media. In fact, it ought to be remembered that the Chinese government, much maligned, has lifted a massive 300 million people out of poverty in the whole of China during the past 25 years. An astounding effort if you think about it. If I were Chinese, I'd be really angry too if what was supposed to be a great sporting celebration hosted by my country was being hijacked to make my country look like a monster. We only ever hear about what an evil dictatorship the CCP is. Certainly it's not perfect, but it's not Stalinist repression either. Chinese culture places very high value on harmony and mutual respect. Unless absolutely unavoidable, you don't point out the faults of others, and even then you do so in such a way that will always allow them to save face. In this regard, I can well understand the Chinese sentiment that we simply have it in for them. Posted by Daniel on April 13, 2008 9:46 PM
Of course China is being demonised,but not by the ordinary hardworking citizen trying to keep a roof over his head and food on the table. Those making all the noise are the professional chattering classes,on the public gravy train who seek a cause ,any cause that detracts from getting a real job to earn money. They believe everything they have been told,have never been to Tibet and know little or nothing of the history. Tibet in the early 50s was still a feudal society,practising slavery,serfdom,terrible tortures and punishment.The poor were taxed to the hilt and life for the majority of the population was worse than in the middle ages in Europe.All of this was done under the banner of religion. When the Communist government of China moved in to do something about it,naturally some of those responsible for the centuries of oppression fought against the communists or got out. The monasteries were seen as the centres of oppression and were attacked. The Tibetan society was so backward that millions of Chinese were needed to bring it into the 20th century. As a result Tibetans are becoming a minority(just like the English in the UK,what's Browns' excuse). Everyone knows that China is a no nonsense society,criminals are executed,objections are frequently not tolerated and democracy is in name only,but China has come from a feudal society in 60 years to one of the most powerful economies in the world on which the west now depends(mainly because of the wests self destructing policies). When the world looks back 10-20years from now on the achievements of the Blair /Brown dynasty, they will see a once great nation reduced to an insignificant island,inhabited by a non cohesive society dependent on the outside world for its existence.Its best and bravest will have already left as they will have realised there were no opportunities for their talents.
Posted by mike reading on April 13, 2008 9:29 PM
I imagine that the average non-political citizen in China would find our obsession with Human Rights rather strange, and their implementation in this country even more so. At times I wish we had China's attitude to illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, drug dealers, prison conditions, gangs of youths, murders, etc.
Posted by Brian E on April 13, 2008 8:29 PM
Ambassador Fu delivered a clear message to western media outlets: don't compromise your journalistic professionalism just because you hate communism and/or dislike China in one way or the others. Reporting in China may be hard at times, don't use it as an excuse because that is what makes journalists' job respectful. China earned her rights to host 2008 Olympics because the country is moving along the right direction. It is now capable of sustaining 1.3 billion population by herself and becomes a productive and responsible member of world community. People in the West need to understand it is impossible to install 100% western style democracy over a short 30 years of China's open-up. China is still building its legal system. Chinese ppeople having issues of laws now can sue or defend with the help of lawyers. When heat passed and dusts settled, it will be clear the current hysteria about Tibet and Olympics is simply a reflection of ideological, economical and cultural difference between West critics and a developing country. Tibet, Darfur and animal rights (you name it here) are just smokes and excuse. The interesting thing is that no matter what China says and does nowadays will not please these critics. However, western media outlets need to do their job better.
Posted by David on April 13, 2008 7:45 PM
ORIGINAL LINK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=BLOGDETAIL&grid=F11&blog=yourview&xml=/news/2008/04/13/view13b.xml
The above comments are only a selection. I avoided the more scathing, anger fueled voices from both sides of the discussion and instead concentrated on those trying to understand and offer some understanding of the current topic.
Lastly, an excellent article by Russel Berman, 'Why They Hate China' seeks to offer an explaination of why the seemingly sudden anti Chinese sentiment as risen.
http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=237
That's it for now but be sure there will be more later.
- J
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