Chinese Cyber Nationalists Hit the West Where it Hurts

New America Media , News Analysis, Jun Wang, Posted: Apr 28, 2008

(This report has an interesting argument.)

While the Olympic torch may have lit the way for international anti-China protests, it was also the catalyst for Chinese nationalists to develop their voice – especially on the Internet. Now these Chinese cyber nationalists are flexing their power as a nation of consumers by calling for a series of boycotts – proving that the issues might be more about economics than Democracy. Continue to read >>

Iconic Differences between German and Chinese Culture

I'm not sure if I agree with Yang Liu on all her interpretations, but some of these are quite funny. Frog in a Well is also an interesting China-focused blog worth checking every now and then.

No Conversation on BBC

BBC's "World Have Your Say" called again this afternoon, inviting me to join a "conversation" between Chinese and Tibetan students, with Grace Wang's help in mediating. I was interested, but because they gave me only a 20-minute advance notice, I wasn't able to make it. I did try to listen to the recording on their website later. The program runs for 2 hours; I listened for about 45 minutes and gave up – there was simply no conversation whatsoever, albeit some good questions from the audience.

Among the participants, besides the BBC mediator and Grace Wang, there were two Chinese students, a half-Tibetan, and a Tibet-born Ph.D. student from India, all studying in London. From beginning the panel did not go well. Grace Wang spent too long trying to describe her ordeal, but after 10 minutes still hadn't got to the point how she and her parents in China were harassed. The BBC mediator had to politely (as far as I could tell, he was most polite to Grace) steer her to the point by interrupting and asking whether the Chinese government helped her parents defend themselves against attack. The answer was expected: No, the police knew there was damage done to her parents' house, but did not know who did it. A poor excuse apparently. And again the expected reaction from the BBC guy and the Tibetans – untiredly condemning "China has no basic human rights!"

Then Grace Wang tried to point out that China not only has no respect for human rights, it has no respect for its citizens' rights. She kept saying – whether because of her ignorance of the Tibetans' feelings or her insensitivity – that "We are all Chinese; Han Chinese and Tibetans are all Chinese," which was bound to make the exiled Tibetans furious. ("Well, no," the Tibetan, or the half one, protested right away.) It was so ironical that BBC invited this victim of her fellow Chinese to be the main guest in order to further bash China, though they claimed to have sought her help "for both sides to find a common ground," and ended up only widening the crack. Grace and the Tibetan student got into argument about the identity issue, and the BBC moderator had to interrupt again.

Next, the BBC guy wanted the participants to talk about China's blocking of foreign media, and one of the Chinese students made a stupid (really stupid) defense: "This is for the safety concern of the Western journalists!" (Couldn't the BBC find a more intelligent Chinese student? There are plenty of them.) The same student then began to list the benefits Tibetans received from the Chinese government, including a railway to Tibet. His way of arguing by ignoring the feelings of the other side is quite common in what I see from the Chinese internet.

The Indian Tibetan wasn't being any smarter. He claimed that the railway was built by prisoners of the Cultural Revolution. Such nonsense. Apparently he had no idea when the railway was built.

At one point someone mentioned how Tibetans suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Grace Wang made a good point that all people in China suffered then. "It was the Cultural Revolution," she said.

An audience called in and made comment on China's civil rights (don't remember what he said), and the BBC moderator asked Grace Wang to respond. Grace tried to say that there should be equal civil rights between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans (which I happen to agree), however she stammered and didn't finish the sentence, and the moderator came to her rescue by announcing a break. ("I need to improve my English," Grace tittered. "Your English is fine," the BBC guy said.)

After the break, the students got into arguments on who caused the riots, the Tibetan monks or the Chinese government. The Indian Tibetan (Ph.D student in Economics), who insisted many Tibetans got killed or beaten up by doing a peaceful demonstration, lost his temper and kept shouting, using his voice volume to suppress every feeble attempt at rebuttal from the Chinese student (poor guy, who did not have a higher voice, therefore). "You listen to only the Chinese government!" The Indian Tibetan roared. He didn't seem to realize that, by the same token, he only listened to the Dalai government.

The BBC moderator seemed to enjoy this one-side overwhelming scene for a while. He eventually raised his next question about Chinese's criticism on BBC's biases. "How did they even know we have biases? The Chinese government blocked us!" Well, that was again a stupid one. For a moment I couldn't figure out what was his real motivation – was it a rhetorical question trying to prove the BBC's unbiased? Or was he suspecting China did not succeed blocking the BBC? In any case, didn't this guy even know that there are a huge number of Chinese students studying all over the world, including London? And there are such things exist as email and the internet?

An audience called in and said that he visited China last summer and was able to download files from BBC site. This really annoyed the moderator. He shouted at the caller: "I'm telling you, I'm not asking you! It is a fact that China blocked BBC! Two weeks ago!" This anger took the poor caller by surprise and he mumbled, "Well…I only know about last summer…" and the moderator hung up on him.

Another caller asked about Tibet's serfdom before the 1950s and whether the serf's were better off because of China's action. (A very good question - I wanted to know the answer, too.) The Indian Tibetan replied, "Tibet wasn't perfect, but the Chinese replaced the Tibetan upper class with the CCP upper class!" He said if Tibet needed reform, it should be carried out by the Tibetans, in their own pace, not by the Chinese. That might be the best argument I'd heard so far, however he never did answer the question. But by the same token, if China needs reform on its human rights issues, shouldn't the West let it develop on its own pace as well?

Any how, there was shouting but no conversation, and there were more stupid arguments than intelligent ones. I lost patience and could not go beyond 45 minutes. I do hope the second hour went better, but I doubt it. Good that I wasn't there. #

Taiwan Election Photos

A friend of mine, a Hong Kong poet, took the following photos during Taiwan's presidential election the past week. Yesterday, 57-year-old Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist Party won 58 percent of the vote. A CNN report says Ma "endured an often nasty campaign by [Frank] Hsieh, a former premier who got 41 percent of the vote." Hsieh was the candidate from the Democratic Progressive Party.

The presidential campaign focused on relations with China. Ma, the president-elect, has plans to improve Taiwan's relationship with Beijing.

Below: March 22, 7:30pm, after losing the election, Frank Hsieh and his campaign team bow to their supporters giving thanks and apologies

Above: Evening of March 20, a Frank Hsieh rally in Kaohsiung City. The slogans read "Save democracy" and "Long live Taiwan people"

Above: March 21, Ma Ying-jeou's supporters march to a rally.

Above: Evening of March 22, live-show of the election results on a TV at the Nationalist Party's headquarter.

T-Shirts and Mayan Ruins

High Priest's Grave

Seven is everywhere in the ruins at Chichen Itza, our Mayan tour guide Santos Yah tells us. Now toward the end of our tour, we stand in front of the High Priest's Grave. Santos counts the step-pyramid temple's stone walls, "One, two, three, four, five…seven walls. When it was explored, 1993, 1997, that's how we know, it's a tomb. In the tomb was found skeletons. Do you have an idea how many skeletons?"

People murmur. An American man's confident voice raises above others: "Seven thousand!"

"Seven," says Santos.


A Mexican T-Shirt

Bob went running early in the morning outside of our Cancun hotel, as he did daily at home. A Mexican man in his thirties ran ahead of Bob. The man wore a T-shirt with text around an airplane, like this:

Bob, who learned enough Spanish in his youth when he bicycled through Latin America jungles, described the T-shirt to me afterward and said the text translated as "Authorized Terrorist." Then he commented, "People apparently are more relaxed about these things in Mexico."

Cancun Surprises

Tailbone

Mayans have Chinese blood, a local man tells us. The man has mixed European and native Mexican blood, and speaks nearly perfect English. Any evidence? I ask. "See that woman?" He points to one of the hotel staff walking by. "See her eyes?" I glance at her as she glances back at me, suspicious. Indeed, the Mayan woman's eyes look more like mine than his or my husband's. Further, the Mayans have names such as Chu, Chen, and Qi. "Those are Chinese names," our companion says positively. I find myself unable to dispute.

And the Mayans have Mongolian blood, he adds. "You know about the Mongolian spot, right?" "No." "You don't know?" He is genuinely surprised. "The Mongolians have a black spot here," he places his palm on his lower back, where the tailbone might be. "And the Mayan kids have it too. It disappears at twelve." Some Mayan children will even offer to show their black spots to tourists.

Doll in Bread

Last night, we bought a loaf of fruit bread from a Mexican supermarket. This morning when we sliced the bread, a tiny white plastic figure emerged from within. We brought the figurer to our hotel concierge, Andy. Her eyebrow leaped. "You found that?" She said something about a child who finds the doll is responsible for bringing food to the celebration on February 3rd. This is what I found on the internet afterward:

Rosca de Reyes

Three Kings Sweet Bread

Rosca is the name given to any ring-shaped bread or cookie. This sweet bread was once used by the friars to evangelize: a small doll, representing the Christ child, is baked right in the bread- "hidden", to symbolize the hiding of the infant from King Herod's troops on the day of Los Santos Inocentes, the Holy Innocents. This treat is traditionally served on the festive Three Kings Day, when the children receive their toys. Whoever gets the slice of rosca with the doll in it has to provide the tamales and atole for the next party, on Candlemas.

Caribbean Blues

"How many blues?" A Mexican girl named Pamela asks me. We are looking at the blue waves of the Caribbean crashing on the beach below the balcony. Surprised by the question, I turn to gaze at the soaring waves again. Before the question was asked, there was one blue; now there are many shades.

"Fifty six," Pamela says.

U.S.: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

A decade ago, in 1997, the United States refused to sign the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, which applies to industrialized nations only. This position has been criticized frequently in the years since.

Then last week, many countries sat down again, this time in Bali, to discuss a new set of emission standards that will replace the Kyoto accord set to expire in 2012. Out of Bali comes a framework for negotiating a new agreement, expected to take two years to finalize. It is to include but distinguish developed and developing countries. Not surprisingly, the US and China were both in the limelight during the conference.

Once again, it was the United States and not China that stood up and said no. After extending the talks an extra day in the hope of consensus, the US representatives said they were not willing to support the process. This brought about a great deal of jeering. According to CNN, at this point, the delegate from tiny Papua New Guinea dared the US to lead, follow or get out of the way. Whether rising to the challenge, intimidated by the jeering or simply making a course change, the lead US representative reversed herself and gave the thumbs up to start the more formal negotiations.

There are some indications that the US may have tried to influence China and India in the position they took at the conference, requesting that those countries reject any binding emission targets. Indeed, China did just that: China’s representative stated that it was not "fair to ask developing countries like China to take on binding targets." Whether this statement was the result of US influence, or was China’s own response from the start, will probably never be known. If something was attempted, the ironic twisting of the knife came when China said that the US should bear the brunt of the cost of new measures to control global warming.

So in the end, the US, China and almost every other country in the world, did declare a willingness to be part of the process. As far as I know, there are indeed some initiatives in China to move toward the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This summer in my annual visit to China, I was surprised to see a good sized wind farm on the edge of the South China Sea when I flew out of Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. And certainly the Three Gorges Dam (which I hate) on The Yangtze will, assuming it lasts, produce a great deal of hydroelectricity for China. Both are renewable resources with little pollution.

But in all of this I have to go back to a conversation I had with an official from the Transportation Bureau under China's Central Planning Committee, back when I myself was a transportation engineer, shortly after my graduation from MIT. At the time, China's auto industry boom had just begun. During a business meeting in Beijing, I commented to the official that China would have the chance to develop a more rational public transportation system and not be driven into a corner by the automobile as happened in the US. Usually mild mannered man, he got really mad and said, "You Americans already got the good life, now you don't want us to have it!"

At the time I was taken aback (I had always considered myself more Chinese than American), but on reflection, the response is not unexpected. Everyone wants to be able to choose the dream they want to pursue, and nobody wants others to tell them not to. Not making it, not getting what you want, living in misery – these are all things that the Chinese have faced with equanimity for thousands of years. Now they are wholeheartedly pursuing rapid economic development. Should that falter, or come to a crisis, there is no doubt the Chinese will adapt. It is the imposition from outside that is not tolerable.

Now that the world is facing a severe environmental crisis, it brings us to the essential question: Is it more feasible to stop poor nations from developing, or to change behavior of the rich ones?

I don’t know the answer to the question, but it is important. It will be interesting to see the story unfold.

Germany Exhibits Fake Terracotta Warriors

China's report: "Germany's 'terracotta warriors' exposed"
A US report: "German museum admits terracotta warriors are fakes"