On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 03:45:06 -0700 (PDT), pg <penang@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>You gotta understand that one of the biggest weakness for all Chinese
>- me included - is FACE.
I doubt it. You look pretty shameless to me.
>
>We love "FACE" and we don't want to lose "FACE".
>
>So China hosts that stupid Olympic Game. For what?
>
>For "FACE".
>
>Meanwhile, racial tensions simmer.
>
>Dunno what the **** the CCP idiots are thinking. I really do not
>understand why in the world China needs the Olympics.
>
>
>
>
>
>On Mar 26, 2:06 pm, RichAsianKid <richasian...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> I've previously said that diversity is the antithesis of unity and
>> harmony. From a managerial viewpoint it is therefore a source of
>> discord, and a source of weakness.
>>
>> Singa****e's Lee Kwan Yew understood this perfectly when he was
>> interviewed by Der Spiegel in August 2005:
>>
>> SPIEGEL: "During your career, you have kept your distance from Western
>> style democracy. Are you still convinced that an authoritarian system
>> is the future for Asia?"
>>
>> Mr. Lee: "Why should I be against democracy? The British came here,
>> never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I
>> cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit
>> my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in
>> accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote
>> in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system
>> here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians,
>> Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my
>> Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would
>> always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that..."
>>
>> And what do we see now? In China, ethnic tensions flare, just like in
>> any other part of the world. And it's amazing some mainland Chinese
>> are actually quite clueless about this - almost as clueless as
>> Americans who think that everyone around the world is a "little
>> American" and crave for freedom! and democracy! (of course! We're
>> doing angel's work in Iraq!) and rights! all just dying to embrace
>> us!
>>
>> No, in spite of the CCP propaganda that 'ethnic minorities' are living
>> in harmony (see below) -- China is not one 'happy harmonious society'.
>> I don't doubt that the Han Chinese are probably happier and more
>> harmonious, but once again you see the ethnic divide there, as with
>> the rest of the world.
>>
>> And of course, in the rest of Asia, the Malays don't get along with
>> the Chinese or Indians in Malaysia, and when RichAsianKid was in Hong
>> Kong, the Filipino maids there resented the Indonesian maids and
>> though you can't really tell them apart I was reassured that they
>> rarely if ever mix, even though both groups speak English. And there
>> are lots of examples around the world which I'm sure you don't need me
>> to list here.
>>
>> I don't think it's any different between the Tibetans and the Han
>> Chinese. The only way to solve this problem is probably either (1)
>> ethnic separatism (2) authoritarianism and hegemony (3) assimilation
>> to the majority group, as in pouring in mainland Chinese to Tibet
>> flooding it demographically, not unlike Hispanics invading the SW
>> parts of the US, with widespread miscegenation. But a democracy in the
>> face of competing ethnic groups leads to conflict, as seen in the
>> identity politics component of race and *** in Obama & Hillary in the
>> US. It is therefore perhaps understandable why China would *need* to
>> keep a lid on it - once the hegemony of the former USSR eva****ated,
>> flight from diversity takes place - as seen in the number of new
>> nation states forming, and carving out their territory along ethnic
>> lines from decaying empires. Apparently the number of sovereign states
>> grew from 60 in 1900 to 194 in 2001. The Balkans & Kosovo. Hey will
>> Quebec be next? What about Texas or California? And there are more
>> potential ones to come, for instance
>>
>> http://i30.tinypic.com/nd7dhi.jpg
>>
>> Human nature.
>>
>> Read the following. See how much the Tibetans loathe the Chinese.
>> (Hey, whatever happened to peace and harmony and meditation?) The
>> Tibetans, the Chinese, and the West - they are really not so different
>> afterall when it comes to human nature, as acknowledged by the
>> article.
>>
>> * * * * * Featured Article * * * *
*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/03/26...
>>
>> China is blind to the hostility it can arouse
>>
>> By Richard Spencer
>> Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 26/03/2008
>>
>> Worldstage: Beijing
>>
>> The most poignant thing I have read about the riots and protests in
>> Tibet came in a blog by a young Chinese woman, an assistant in an
>> optician's.
>>
>> She was adventurous: she had moved to Lhasa to work from the coastal
>> city of Shenzhen, and made friends with local Tibetans, especially one
>> girl a few years younger.
>>
>> As an angry Tibetan mob waged destruction around them, a week ago last
>> Friday, they looked out for each other and then sat watching as shops
>> were set on fire. We now know that many people died - the Chinese
>> government says 20 - some of them in those very shops.
>>
>> Yet the unexamined companion****p does not last. As she goes back to
>> work, the Chinese girl finds everything has changed. When she meets
>> her friend at a Tibetan tea-house, the staff will not talk to her.
>> Instead, they make wild allegations about the Chinese, "rumours and
>> lies that completely distort the truth". Even her friend joins in.
>>
>> She leaves, but is insulted by a Tibetan bus conductor on the way
>> home. When she arrives, she watches television footage of the riots,
>> in which "people were doused with gasoline and burnt to death, Hui
>> [Chinese Muslim] children coming out of school had their ears cut off
>> and were set on fire, shops were vandalised and set on fire, banks
>> were vandalised, schools were vandalised, hotels were vandalised...
many
>> places where the Han, Tibetan and Hui people lived together were
>> destroyed along with our peaceful and happy lives."
>>
>> She can bear it no longer. "Is this the so-called beautiful and sacred
>> Tibet? Is this how Tibetans treat life? These lamas normally would
>> avoid stepping on an ant, but now show their indifferent and cruel
>> faces. What can we say? What can we do?"
>>
>> Chinese coverage of the March 14 riots in Lhasa seems to have
>> deliberately summoned up images of Balkan ethnic cleansing, and
>> conflated the violence with other, peaceful marches by monks across
>> Tibet. Less hysterical re****ts since restrict the ear-slicing, for
>> example, to one adult woman.
>> advertisement
>>
>> But even if that one day of unusual violence does not degenerate into
>> some terrible cataclysm, the biggest challenge China now faces may
>> well not be rescuing the Olympics, which will surely go ahead with the
>> same measure of international ambiguity that they were always likely
>> to attract, but resurrecting the rosy image it has carefully nurtured
>> of its rule over Tibet.
>>
>> If our optician girl, who lived there, genuinely felt that personal
>> friend****ps between different races represented a wider solidarity,
>> imagine how many tens of millions of other well-educated people around
>> China thought the same.
>>
>> "It was only when I went to Paris and met two Tibetan exiles that I
>> realised how they felt," a Chinese human rights lawyer told me
>> yesterday, when explaining how he came to sign a letter calling on the
>> government to negotiate with the Dalai Lama.
>>
>> Those dependent on what the government has to say saw only soft-focus
>> pictures of smiling folk dancers and peasants improving their lives
>> through money funnelled from Beijing. That many Tibetans resented the
>> Chinese would have seemed at best incomprehensible and at worst racist
>> to an audience brought up on an ideologically correct vision of
>> China's ethnic minorities living in harmony.
>>
>> Since the protests began, many Chinese have turned on the Western
>> media for misrepresenting the troubles. That is hardly surprising: at
>> times of disaster, it is im****tant to find someone to blame.
>>
>> More baffling is why the government did not see this coming. It has
>> its own Tibet experts, and its refusal to allow foreigners to travel
>> freely in Tibet suggests it knew all was not well. Yet it took more
>> than a day to develop a strategy to contain the unrest.
>>
>> The Communist Party's unpreparedness for the crises that lie
>> underneath its nose is something of which we should all be wary. For
>> this quality also marks its relation****p with the West.
>>
>> Intellectually, it understands that a gulf exists between its
>> attitudes to politics and those of the West, yet it seems constantly
>> surprised when that gulf takes solid form, whether in Olympics
>> protests, arms embargoes or the universal assumption elsewhere that
>> whatever happens in Tibet is Beijing's fault.
>>
>> At such times, it can only revert to mindless histrionics, such as the
>> vitriol heaped on the Dalai Lama this week. It must be aware that it
>> convinces no one, yet it continues anyway.
>>
>> There is one consolation: 100 years ago, the boot was on the other
>> foot. It was the West whose colonisation of China caused the most
>> bitter resentment, and Westerners who persuaded themselves that the
>> willingness of some Chinese to work with them meant that their enemies
>> were a trivial minority.
>>
>> Those enemies were eventually responsible for a century of hostility
>> and conflict, culminating in the Cultural Revolution. But this may be
>> a consolation none the less: at least our folly can be a warning to
>> Beijing, should it choose to heed it.
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