[Andre] Vltchek, who is also a novelist and political analyst, has been discovering places that are rarely covered by the mainstream Western media, and exposing disparities in today's world.
One of his articles, titled The West Perfecting its Techniques to Hurt China, was recently translated and published in People's Daily, a major Chinese newspaper.
"The West has absolutely no interest in human rights in China or anywhere else. How could it, considering that it is violating them on basically all continents, worldwide?" he wrote in the commentary posted a year ago on Znet, a website focusing on politics from a left-wing perspective.
I've said this in various ways on this blog before, but I'll say it again, this time in numbered points:
1. Whether "the West" (western governments) has violated human rights is immaterial to pretty much anything. It simply DOES NOT MATTER. If you're a tenant in rural China who gets relocated because some cadre wants to build a hotel (or if you're a tenant in the heart of Beijing...), whether or not America waterboarded prisoners has absolutely no relevance whatsoever.
Similarly, whether western governments care or don't care about China's human rights doesn't matter either. See above. The idealist thinks that perhaps a country like the U.S. could push China to [fill-in-the-blank], but that's about as likely as China convincing Obama to close Gitmo. In other words, if change happens, it won't be because of a foreign diplomat.
2. There are a lot of people in a lot of places who take governments to task for abuses of human rights. Why don't we talk about the efforts of these civilians instead of dancing around government press releases and diplomatic talk? Does anyone actually find government officials interesting? Their job is to maintain holding patterns, and if we expect anything else from them, we're really giving them too much credit. A more interesting and telling question is, proportionally, are there more or fewer human rights lobbyists in China than there are in, say, the U.S.? Granted, it's not that interesting a question, and we can go a lot deeper, but at least it's not the classic red herring that Chinese commentators seem so fond of: "Because the West is flawed, we're allowed to be flawed as well."
(By the way, I think this is why I took so much issue with China Daily's Chen Weihua in my previous post, who seems to think that the blanket argument "West is flawed" is JUSTIFICATION for China's misgivings (in this case, censorship of media). It's so juvenile: Mommy, but Jimmy's doing it too! To say nothing of the fact that Chen was wrong in his premise -- his premise, I think, being that the West doesn't care about the West's own problems; Westerners do care -- quite a lot, actually. And sometimes an individual who happens to live "over there" turns his or her eye to China, and all of a sudden the natives -- such as Weihua -- flip their shit.)
3. People's fixation -- by "people" I don't specifically mean Vltchek here, even though he wrote about it -- with what "the West" or, more generally, "non-Chinese people" think about China is stupid. It's, again, immaterial to anything. It leads to straw man arguments and non sequiturs and various other logical fallacies that we can generally label "stupid."
But, then again -- and you know this already -- it's part of the country's long process of maturation. China can build skyscrapers and luxury malls and turn a fishing village into a 10-million-strong metroplex within a couple of decades, but changing attitudes and mindsets, well -- no shortcut there.
The big news out of China tonight -- and this is ALL over the motherfucking wires -- is that Chongqing's police are wearing colorful raincoats to "improve their often hard public image."
Like -- sarcasm alert -- in the photo here (below), an AP pic that ran on Yahoo, NPR, et al.
Uh, let's see, what's wrong here... a cop dressed in all black on a fancy, technologically advanced -- I daresay futuristic -- piece of equipment in a picture with a shallow depth of field with the blurred background image being -- well, what the fuck else? -- a portrait of Mao...
Oh.
Great job, Western editor. Bravo. You've conflated "China" with "Chongqing" and in the same fell swoop brought authoritarian imagery to a story about RED FUCKING RAINCOATS. What's that, you're chuckling? Okay, I get it. You were being IRONIC.
You. Are. Such. A. LOUSE.
You know what, on second thought... William Carlos Williams would have given you a goddam standing ovation. Like fitting form to meaning, you've fit an image to the China narrative. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.
This really should've been posted 40-some days ago, but I was looking at YouTube tonight and came across a couple of interesting videos that bear sharing, even without a time element.
This first one I watched hoping to catch a glimpse of myself in the crowd. Alas, no luck. But listen to the issues this British reporter talks about and pay particular attention to his report on the Tibet protesters. Don't those stories feel like some relic of the past? Thus is the news cycle for you, coming and going in flashes. When's the last Western news report you've seen on Tibet? Or the words "Olympic boycott"? (No, Sharon Stone doesn't count.) They've practically disappeared from our dialogue.
And it's telling how the reporter says that "pollution" has been bumped off the front pages, because in much the same way, the Wenchuan earthquake bumped Tibet off the front. More and more, China's been able to dictate the storylines in this lead-up to the Olympics, this from a government that has plenty of experience dictating what can and can't be said. It should be noted that the Chinese people are more than slightly complicit in self-censorship, with netizens circling the cybersphere like sharks or modernized Red Guard ("online lynch mob," as the Shanghaiist puts it) ready to pounce at the first whiff of blood.
Then again, pollution has slowly but surely been making a comeback, which leads me to wonder: in the two months before the Opening Ceremonies, because two months is a long time, is Tibet going to resurface as an issue? And if not Tibet, then something equally damaging to China's reputation, like reports of anger and protests out of Sichuan?
I'm betting yes. But we'll see.
And a bonus video for you, the Heart of Beijing premiere of "Beijing Welcomes You," the official song of the 100-day countdown (sort of like the official cheer, I guess).
For you guys (and gals, I suppose) out there, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the attractiveness of the first girl who comes on screen? 11, 18, or 55?
POSTSCRIPT: Blogger has been unblocked. Now we introduce our newest office pool: how many days until Blogger gets blocked?
That's not actually a desperate plea. I have some options, I believe, though none of them confirmed on any end.
Today I met with one of Zhang Ting's friends (Zhang Ting, you'll remember, is Jiuma's best friend), Cathy, who works as a department head at Aigo, one of the largest electronics companies in China. She seemed to take a liking to me as she showed off Aigo's latest products, including an MP5 player -- you heard that right; it's a device shaped like a PSP that can do live streaming without a monthly fee -- and an audio book thingy majig that utilizes a laser scanner (you aim it at a page in the book and a voice will read that section; there's Chinese and English). Long story short, Cathy happens to know a person who used to head the advertising department of City Weekend, a weekly lifestyle magazine for expats (they also have a blog, which is now on my blogroll), and she worked for five years at China Radio International. We were sitting in the downstairs coffeehouse (Blenz) when she offered to connect me with editors at both places. Emails were exchanged and I went home happy (though after reading this City Weekend story, I'm a) a little angry, and b) slightly perplexed at why Cathy insisted the place would be a perfect fit for me).
INTERLUDE: I was able to meet with Cathy only after Jiuma couldn't deliver a supposed meeting with one of the Olympics Organizing Committee's chairmen. I didn't really expect anything, but she stringed me along for three weeks. Anyway.
I've also emailed an editor at That's Beijing, which runs TBJ (blogroll), and Simon Elegant, Time's Beijing Bureau Chief, who I'll be meeting after the weekend (Lexis-Nexis, you're about to be logged in to). And tomorrow I'll email the Beijing Bureau Chief of NPR's Marketplace and a Sports Illustrated writer who runs the FanNation Beijing Olympics Blog (blogroll, again).
Sorry, this is way too much name-dropping... I'm ashamed of myself.
(Editing video of Fang Fang and Fei Fei... I think you'll like this...)
UPDATE, 12:16 a.m.: I jumped the gun: the video won't upload. Still pictures may have to suffice.
Is being interviewed on the radio. This has happened to me twice -- neither time live, thankfully -- most recently last night. This is the reason there was no post a couple days ago: I was too shell-shocked to do anything but replay the conversation in my head with mouth agape and eyes distended.
I wanted to say, concerning the Olympics, the overwhelming attitude among the people is excitement. Here's a culture with 5,000 years of stories and insight to share with the world, and until now they haven't had the opportunity to do so. The deficit in cultural exports -- this was a phrase coined by Hung Huang, a notable Chinese blogger -- is tremendous. China hasn't been very good at letting their culture out into the world, so they've decided, Why not bring the world in?
5,000 years of waiting to open your doors, and you can expect them to be a little on edge. Thus the crackdowns. A recent story in Time tells of a Beijing running group that was scrutinized for basically doing the same thing they've done for years: running. And of course there're the various crackdowns of protests all over the country, and the crackdown on Visas. We shouldn't really be surprised that there's some anxiety here.
And so, we really shouldn't be surprised about the Chinese's reactions to perceived anti-China bias in the Western media. Just a small example: a website in London recently published a "World's 50 Best Restaurants" list, and no Chinese restaurants were represented. The Chinese here that I've talked to aren't really sure the source of these negative feelings towards the country. They don't feel like they've done anything wrong, at least not in light of, say, U.S. foreign policy in the past 20 or so years. They think it's very hypocritical of people in the U.S. to lecture them on issues like Tibet when here you have a country that, not all that long ago, managed to wipe out an entire indigenous culture (Native Americans, of course... the Chinese have a pretty good broad outline of U.S. history).
Change is coming to China, this is something no one denies. Even the old guard sees it coming. Heck, if anyone knows about change, it's them: they've lived through tremendous change. Their world has changed overnight many times over, and now, these past few years, they're witnessing firsthand the rewards that come from hard work and education. They see people getting rich, earning money, living happily. Just a year ago, according to a study, there were 500,000 people in the country worth at least 1 million U.S. dollars. That number doubled. This is in just one year. Living standards are improving for the majority of people in China, so the popular opinion towards the government is positive.
Of course, there's a completely different mindset in the U.S. In that country, it's about the little guy. The minority can have a voice, and a loud one, at that. I don't think the Chinese have grasped that concept yet. They think Westerners have simplified the issues too much -- and maybe they have. They don't think people in the West are capable of stepping into another person's shoes and seeing their side of the argument, a trait the Chinese believe they possess.
The Chinese are very conscious of their image, and they're very disconcerted over the anti-China protests across the world. Shocked and hurt by it, really. They don't understand, for instance, why Tibet's so important to the Western world. And, of course, they don't understand why the Olympics are being politicized... all they wanted to do was open up the country, invite the world in to see all this cultural richness and hopefully send them off with the impression that China's alright after all.
...I wanted to say a lot more, too -- catch some momentum, run with it, that sort of thing. But whatever momentum I hoped to ride never materialized.
Here's how the interview began:
"Good morning to you, Anthony. Or should I say good evening?"
"Oh, yes, it's 10:33 p.m. here, so, yeah, I guess it would good evening. But good morning to you."
At one point, the interviewer quoted back a part of my blog to me, and all I could think is, "Oh. Shit." I couldn't even deploy this dandy of a line: "Yes, I have a blog... I'll be the first to admit, it's not always PG. Wait, did I say I have a blog? Hopefully my parents aren't listening." That went over so well in my mind, but while I was on the phone, talking into a formless void, mindful of the sound of my own monotonic voice, I knew I couldn't pull off anything remotely resembling wit. The only image in my head was of a computer screen and a thin green line modulating up and down, interrupted every so often with a few squiggly lines bunched together marking the instances when I said "uhhh."
You'll hear the end product Sunday (against my better judgment, I'll link to it here). I'm sure by the powers of editing magic the thing won't be as terrible as it seemed, but I suspect I'll still be too embarrassed to listen to it.
Note: If nothing else, just scroll down and watch the video.
Jiujiu and Jiuma (Zhang Yanggang and Zhen Yi) were married seven years when they decided to split, a decision probably met with applause from members of the Zhang family. To them, Zhen Yi was, to put it nicely, bratty, stubborn and overbearing, an uncompromising woman whose personality was much too big and pompous. It's possible that Laolao -- the matriarch of the Zhang family who never did like her*, not on day one and not the day she passed away -- may have colored others' perceptions, but I prefer to think that the marriage was doomed from the start. The two were too strong-headed -- that's the real basis of the antipathy between Zhen Yi and the Zhangs, the powerful personalities on both sides -- and neither could settle into their roles as spouse and parent.
*I remember Laolao as a key ally in my rivalry with Mingyu when we were little, she always calling him "little fat duck"; "Look, there goes the little fat duck!"
It's true, of course, that Jiuma can be bratty, stubborn and overbearing. One of her foremost skills in life -- which she'll happily announce -- is her ability to haggle. She would, to put it plainly, not give an inch to Scott Boars, and she would win. I got a glimpse of this last week (when the above-picture was taken) at a furniture mart outside of Beijing, an account of which is here. She's the type who demands to have things a certain way, and at her disposal is a personality that can alternately charm and poison. One moment you're being cooed by this sweet, personable lady, and the next she's insisting you do this and that. It can be jarring, to say the least.
But Jiuma also has a deep reservoir of affection that she dips into unreservedly. To me she has been generous beyond words, beyond obligation. She often speaks boastfully of her three years carrying me around when I was little, between the time my parents left for the States and my joining them, and to this day will occasionally call me Son. Yesterday she pulled out this whopper while on a bus to Panjiayuan Market, in front of Mingyu: "Originally I didn't want to have any kids. Then I took care of you and decided it'd be fun after all." When she repeated this at dinner to all the guests, she added, "So, Mingyu, if not for him, I wouldn't have had you." She said this playfully, not intending any other meanings, but I couldn't help but blanch.
Of course, Jiuma has never been discriminatory with words or hesitant about sharing her thoughts. Everything she does is writ large: her stories always toe the line of hyperbole, her promises always delivered with an earnestness that'll have you forking over every hope. She has no acquaintances, only friends -- and few plain friends at that, more of them of the "good friends" variety. For those close to her, her uncompromising impulse to have more and want better can be seen as unsavory; as humans, we may have programmed in us a wariness of the overly ambitious. But she knows no bounds, and I'm not certain how she came to be this way... how her family raised her, what experiences led her to believe the city could come to her fingertips. She counts, among her friends, the first professional Chinese basketball player to play in the U.S. (it's a woman, and I'll give you five bucks if you can name her off hand), an Olympic weightlifter, a big-time movie director/producer and a menagerie of government officials, big and small. She surrounds herself with talented people who would seem better than she, and this includes her personal life; she would never be called "good looking," but Jiujiu certainly would be, and her current boyfriend as well, a Shanghai businessman she has wrapped around her finger. If this were America, I'd say she does it with sex. But this is China, where a forceful personality, sizable Rolodex and willingness to buy lunch/dinner can get you far, and she has all those.
She is the ideal "Connector," a term popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. In other words, she is a woman of today's China, bridging Old China, which values plain old work habits, with New China, which emphasizes networking. Basically, Jiuma is as valuable to a journalist/writer like me as anyone in Beijing, and I should be grateful she's on my side.
If you've read up to this point, however, you may have deduced from my tone that I'm not 100% sold. I'm suspicious, more than anything, of exactly how much Jiuma actually knows, how much power she actually has relative to power she's claimed. It's a terrible thing to say, but asking too many favors from Jiuma would make our bond seem conditional, thus lesser. I wouldn't want that. And there's also this: there's no one I'd less rather do business with than Jiuma. The way she operates strikes me as a bit underhanded, like when she asked my dad to give her money to pay one of the officials he wanted to meet with ("That's how it's done here," she had told him). Every one of her friends I've met so far have seemed a little manipulative, as Jiuma kind of is. They've all been fiercely opinionated and even dogmatic in their opinions, two-faced and with ulterior motives.
I haven't met all her friends, but the ones I met at dinner last night were definitely this kind. There's no need to introduce them -- I didn't catch half their names, and the ones I did catch I've forgotten -- but I engaged a few of them in conversation on a variety of topics, from Jack Caffrey (they asked) to covert racism in America. I'll touch on a couple of these points.
QUICK INTERLUDE: One of Jiuma's friends came in late because he was getting a foot massage downstairs, which reminded me of the two times I've gotten foot massages in Beijing, most recently on the first night back with Zhang Peng and two of his friends. I have to say, the foot massage feels like it should be sexual, but it's completely not. In fact, the gal who worked on me that first night, when all of us were drunk, had the gall to make fun of my Chinese. "What are you trying to say?" she demanded. To which one of Zhang Peng's friends blurted, "He wants to sleep with you," which was untrue but, now that he'd mentioned it...
(There's this thing they do at the end where rub your thighs, and I don't need to tell you one's thoughts during this process.)
Maybe there's something about foot massage parlors that I don't know yet. A secret gesture, perhaps. I want to find out, if there's anything to be found, because I know for a fact that massage parlors here, like in U.S. Chinatowns, can double as houses of ill repute.
One of the guests -- a Chinese man who has worked nearly 20 years in the U.S. and who I learned lived just a few blocks away from me in New York on 103rd and Riverside -- tried to tell me that because of my face, my opportunities in the States were inherently fewer. He actually used that word: "face." "But because of your face," he said. I immediately told him this didn't matter, as I've never been interested in climbing corporate ladders or gaining social credibility. Then I thought about this, and several minutes later I said, in pleasanter terms, that I thought his idea that Asians were held down because of their appearance -- that "blacks have it easier in the corporate world than Asians" -- was bullshit.
"It's about personality," I said. "It matters more in the States. If you can joke around with the boss, not be so deferential, possess one set of characteristics instead of another, you can get that promotion." I should have used Lou Pai, one of Enron's top executives, as an example. He had a very Chinese face, yet he succeeded (so to speak). (NPR's summary of him: "Lou Pai is the real mystery man in the Enron scandal. A former executive of the energy trading firm, he cashed in an estimated $270 million in stock and left the company before it collapsed, divorced his wife, married an exotic dancer, bought an enormous piece of Colorado, sold it and then disappeared into obscurity.") My New York neighbor seemed dismissive of this idea.
We also touched on the subject of parental treatment of children, and all the adults at the table agreed that my generation doesn't really get it. "You don't know what it's like to suffer," they told me, almost scolding. When the face guy said it's sometimes hard for him to understand his daughter's conversations, I told him it's because Americans like to communicate in ironies. He didn't seem to know what this meant, but instead of asking he just looked blankly at me. "You know, saying one thing but meaning another," I added.
"Oh," he said. "The Chinese do that too."
This was, in effect, how my conversation with these adults went: me saying one thing, them deciding I didn't know what I was talking about and moving on with their own ideas. It's funny, I thought, here we are in a discussion about the problems in the generation gap -- them saying generation gaps are inevitable yet mourning this fact, pity their poor, inflexible ways, woe to the incomprehensible, know-nothing youngsters -- yet here, right here in front of my eyes, was the manifestation the problem. These old bastards.
They related this to China (the subject of the press was also involved, somehow). "There will be a transition period," one of them said.
"Yes," another agreed, shaking his head. "There is no doubt about that."
And all I could think was: if by transition you mean you stepping off the stage, then by all means, transition away.
There was also this: the lady pictured. I've always been impressed with women who have the confidence to wear an empire waist top, and so it is with this woman here, whose facial features and bodily proportions are almost perfect for this style of dress. In addition, she had the good sense to wear a black skin-tight shirt with black leggings, and while you can't see it here, she has the most delicate feet, in these simple, unadorned one-inch platform shoes that look like they might easily slip on and off. She caught my eye from the get-go, then started looking better and better with each glass of Yanjing (it's official: the best cheap beer I've ever had). You want to take a gander at her age? Go ahead, I'll wait.
While I'm waiting, I'd like to say for the record that I am not a proponent of affairs. While I think very little of marriage -- the institution is no more sacred than a handshake, in my opinion -- I feel very strongly about the things that bind us together, individual to individual, and I think it goes beyond saying that those who would knowingly and maliciously try to break these bonds might deservedly be called scum.
Yet there is also that other possibility: marriage where trust is undefined, thus without. What exceptions can be made in those situations, and would they be called exceptions? One more thing, because I do, despite the occasional slip-up, understand these postings are public, and that one can never quite be sure who's reading what, or not reading this, and taking what meaning from what: I'd also like to state for the record that I didn't actually seriously think seriously about making a move on this woman, no matter what sort of things were running through my mind... not that I would've had success, anyway, despite some dark grumbling from within telling me she wanted it. To the police guy who looked kinda tough sitting two seats away from me: if you get a hold of this, please don't kill me, even if the restaurant owner offers you more money than you'll ever make in your lifetime.
Here's a better picture:
I'm guessing on her age, but I'd say 40, since her son is already 13 and her husband, a bald, rather [adjective deleted] man, looked about 55. You would never be able to tell, right?
She was reserved, unassuming and alluring, possessing the sort of amor that comes to those wholly comfortable in their beauty. She knew -- as those who are beautiful know -- that glances come her way as compliments, not out of distaste or indecency but because they can't be helped, those eyes, poor eyes. I wondered once more how her husband came to have her, and what innocence he may have spared. They were shameful thoughts, but they were guarded, I think. Were they? Did she espy a little too much in my lean-to? Did I suggest too much? Or not enough? Did she just lean when she said, "I have a question to ask you"? Could she have known I was secretly sneaking her into pictures? What desires might she have, and would I know them without asking?
I will never have these answers, such is the harbinger of impossible. It would do us well to move on to something wholesome.
As the title of this post states, Mingyu is a very talented young man (not at pool though -- I beat him three out of four... or was it four out of five? But he did beat me two out of three in Chinese chess). He's testing for the Beijing Music College, which is sort of like China's version of Julliard though not quite so good because all the best musicians study abroad. Anyway, Mingyu's goal is to eventually go abroad, to either Italy or -- this is his mom's dream -- Julliard. The following video is of him singing karaoke, without warming up and having gone weeks without singing (on account of his surgery). He would, it is fair to say, win $50 off his tab at any local Karaoke Night competition.
(Apologies for the background voices in the video... if you click on the video, you'll find a video response that's a longer clip of Mingyu singing. I'll get him to perform just for the camera sometime, and then you'll get a better idea of his vocal range.)
This might become a weekly thing, but I doubt it. Danwei does something similar, and it's much better. Also, I know I always get annoyed reading these type of posts (though I love writing them) because I never know what to click. Oh well.
From the above link: a young teenage girl models underwear on a Chinese billboard, as reported by Slate. There probably won't be much outrage over this, and probably for the reason a Disney spokesman brings up -- "I don't want to make excuses for them at all because it is not anything that we would ever approve, but in other parts of the world this is not unusual at all. In fact, in Europe, they have similar type of taste, if you will. Here in China that's not unusual at all, but it's not usual for the Disney brand" -- but still, it's an interesting read.
The subject of the Chinese press came up in an earlier post, a subject we'll be revisiting, but here're some more points of view, as reported by Jocelyn Ford, Bureau Chief of Marketplace's Beijing Bureau (via Danwei and China Digital Times).
"China will become more open," said Roy, the first interviewee. Another interviewee brings up this point: some feel that complete freedom of press would tarnish China's image, and right now, lots of people care about the country's image. Another guy says China's image is already bad -- as bad now as in 1989. All food for thought. (I need to contact Ms. Ford.)
Speaking of the press: this Swedish company lost its exclusivity rights to telecast the Nobel Prize after a Chinese station censored a speech... on freedom of expression (via IHT).
The Shanghaiist does not like the movie The Forbidden Kingdom, despite hottie Li Bing Bing's best efforts.
The French... what is it about the French? (via Absurdity, Allegory and China)
And, uh... what is it about the Chinese? Via NY Times, this quote from a girl who pays attention to anti-Carrefour protests, only to buy Carrefour goods: “Look at this,” she said, holding a tub of ice cream. “I don’t know much about the French, but this is a really good price.”
The torch went through Hong Kong a couple days ago.
Footage of the train wreck that killed at least 70, via Shanghaiist.
And finally, two stories from Time -- a reminder that politics and people are fucked up everywhere: assessing Jeremiah Wright's damage to Obama, and Rummy playing dumb. the second article makes me wonder: "Is it really better that our Secretary of Defense didn't know what was going on under his nose?" Is negligence of duty any better than misjudgment? (The article gets really good on page 3, which is to say it'll make you really mad.)
An American friend and I had a conversation last night about the Chinese government's obligations to its people. The crux of his argument, in his words, was that, "I just think Chinese pride and nationalism are being appropriated and used by the government... [and] being taken advantage of." I countered, begrudgingly at times, that the majority of Chinese citizens have benefited from the current party in power, and that considering historical context, China's better off now than ever before. The Tibet question was raised, which I hesitated to answer due to ignorance and ambivalence -- that discussion ended rather quickly with me answering in the negative to his question, “You think it would be worse if Tibet had regional autonomy?"
Of course, I expressed a very Western idea, and even though I'm embedded deep in the middle of China, I didn't realize at the time I said "no..." exactly how far removed I was from the popular opinion here. This afternoon, on an outdoor basketball court, I met a guy my age currently studying for his Master's who expressed what I believe is the prevailing belief among Chinese citizens concerning the Tibet question. He said, in English as if to make sure his point would be fully absorbed: "Was, is, forever part of China." What could I do but nod?
Later we discussed the press, and he conceded that a free press has its advantages, mainly in its function as a wellspring for human knowledge -- he surmised I was more worldly because of my ability to access information with a click of the mouse. But he also stated -- correctly, I think -- that a free press would be disastrous for China at this juncture, not because the press would necessarily do a bad job, but because the citizens would create so much chaos as to render government impossible. "Five thousand years of turmoil," he said. Yes, 5,000 years of that might tend to make one a bit hesitant to allow opinions to flow uninhibited.
Also, I mentioned ESPN The Magazine is the second-largest in the U.S., behind Sports Illustrated, which gets all its profit from the swimsuit issue, a point that made him reply, "But you could find pictures [of girls in bikinis] easily there." Yes, I agreed, I have no idea why the swimsuit issue still matters. Then I mentioned China's version of FHM.
I bring this up so that I have an excuse to link to this, via Danwei. I'm sorry for this digression.
It's hard to describe how deep nationalism runs in this country. The form of nationalism the basketball player displayed is not the kind the government takes advantage of, and it isn't the kind the government instills. It's innate, I think, passed along in the same way that Confucian virtues are passed along. It wasn't so long ago that China, with its long and proud history, was made to suffer the indignity of what amounts to international serfdom. Now the country at last has the might to make its voice heard, and the people want you to understand that they want an audience. That they have more to offer than inferior goods and cheap labor.
The nationalism isn't always healthy, of course. Just this morning, the newest Economist passed through my inbox, and wouldn't you know, the cover story is titled "Angry China." It's a startling but grounded take on the nature of Chinese nationalism, and it's a highly recommended read:
For three decades, having shed communism in all but the name of its ruling party, China's government has justified its monopolistic hold on power through economic advance. Many Chinese enjoy a prosperity undreamt of by their forefathers. For them, though, it is no longer enough to be reminded of the grim austerity of their parents' childhoods. They need new aspirations.
The government's solution is to promise them that China will be restored to its rightful place at the centre of world affairs. Hence the pride at winning the Olympics, and the fury at the embarrassing protests during the torch relay. But the appeal to nationalism is a double-edged sword: while it provides a useful outlet for domestic discontents (see article), it could easily turn on the government itself.
Let me relay an anecdote. Shushu’s wife told me a story today of a Westerner getting scolded by a cab driver for being one of those “anti-Chinese media supporters," though he had done nothing to elicit this condemnation. This sort of thing borders awfully close to xenophobia. When I assured her that the American media is large and less an empire than a sprawling metropolis (I didn't use those words), and that if one looks hard enough one could dig up anti-anything rants from notarized media members, she postulated that Chinese reactions to CNN’s Jack Caffrey and other perceived anti-China bias was more like the country's defense mechanism against anti-Chinese sentiment -- the equivalent of a preadolescent throwing a tantrum despite knowing better. It wasn't personal, basically. Perhaps that means the Chinese have a victim mindset, I don't know. Simon Elegant of Time filed a dispatch about just this issue.
While my American friend and I were embroiled in our discussion, another friend – an American-born Chinese nicknamed Nuprin – messaged me about the Olympics. "Don't you think China's going a little overboard? ...There is a line between nationalism and patriotism, and I think China has crossed that line." I told him I didn't agree. Eventually the conversation turned into a discussion over China's role in the future world. I'll reproduce a snippet of the conversation here:
Nuprin: As China gets more powerful, its citizens are emboldened by (nationalism). At least that is the impression I got from my students. [I should mention here that Nuprin taught in Nanjing for a year.] Me: Emboldened to do what though? They're not an aggressive country. Never have been. The worst that'll happen is they'll resent foreigners. And that's bad, granted, but it's not bombing the Middle East. Nuprin: All of my students thought that a powerful China and United States could not co-exist. So with the rise of China, they were convinced that we would see a power struggle and war and they felt like it was inevitable. Me: No one in either government wants war. Nuprin: I know. But I think Chinese citizens feel animosity towards the U.S. and other powerful Western countries. It would be dumb to go to war, and I tried to tell my students that but they didn't believe me.
At this point I told him there are idiots everywhere, and it's true: the Chinese boycott of the French retail giant Carrefour calls to mind the renaming of French fries in the U.S. (what is it, exactly, about the French that makes them so hateable?). Still, the question should be addressed: war? Between the U.S. and China? That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario for life as we know it. Nothing would ever be the same, and it would prove that the fate of human beings lies with extinction. But need we be worried? China is not ready to challenge the U.S., not with its restive citizenry -- “China, like India, is a land of a million mutinies now,” the Economist writes -- and America has other worries on the global stage, where they've held court for the past 50 years. It goes without saying that a conflict between the two nations is in no one’s best interest. As the Economist puts it, “the world and China have to learn to live with each other.”
For China, that means learning to respect foreigners' rights to engage it even on its “internal affairs”. A more measured response to such criticism is necessary not only to China's great-power ambitions, but also to its internal stability; for while the government may distract Chinese people from their domestic discontents by breathing fire at foreigners, such anger, once roused, can run out of control. In the end, China's leaders will have to deal with those frustrations head-on, by tackling the pollution, the corruption and the human-rights abuses that contribute to the country's dangerous mood. The Chinese people will demand it.
In other words: they don't need Westerners demanding it for them.
