The ****trait of a Unanimously fanatical "Olympic Host" -- The need for
unanimity in China exacts a hidden price
-- Micky's humble opinion: will the stupid Chinese mob ever understand
this simple common sense: "We have had too many lessons and seen too many
stupidities. Making a mistake is not a big deal. The big danger is making
the same mistake again and again." ? I guess not. --
International Herald Tribune
The need for unanimity in China exacts a hidden price
By Howard W. French
Thursday, April 24, 2008
SHANGHAI: A university student in a journalism class taught by an American
in southern China wrote his professor with an urgent question the other
day.
Given that Westerners have been inundated by biased news re****ts about
China and Tibet in recent weeks, he wrote, "How can Chinese people and
Chinese media make the foreign world understand the real China?"
For all the apparent simplicity and innocence of the question, behind it
lies a world of complexity, along with the real potential for increasing
conflict.
The pre-Olympic crisis in Tibet has revealed China and the West to each
other in disturbing new ways. Even before concerns over serious human
rights abuses in Tibet could fade, people who followed this story outside
of China were given additional reasons to worry, by the vehement Chinese
responses to virtually any criticism of their country.
In the United States this was brought home most powerfully by an incident
that took place recently on the campus of Duke University, where a
freshman from China, Grace Wang, was berated by Chinese students when she
tried to mediate between pro-Tibetan demonstrators and a much larger group
of pro-Chinese demonstrators during protests on campus. At one point a
group of Chinese students surrounded her, taunting: "Remember Chai Ling?
All Chinese want to burn her in oil, and you look like her," according to
an account Wang wrote in The Wa****ngton Post. The reference was to a
female leader in the student democracy protests in Beijing in 1989 that
led to the Tiananmen massacre. Details of Wang's background were quickly
revealed on the Duke Chinese Students and Scholars Association Web site,
including directions to her parents' home in Qingdao. Feces quickly turned
up on their doorstep, as the threats against them came pouring in, and
Wang's parents eventually went into hiding. Even her high school back home
convened a special assembly to condemn her for supposedly breaking with
the motherland, and her diploma was revoked.
For many Chinese, meanwhile, events of recent weeks have revealed a West
that is out to get their country, jealous of its successes and lying in
wait for the right op****tunity to pounce. The events in Tibet, with their
Olympic background, provided the perfect chance, and virtually everything
said or done by outsiders in relation to the crisis is seen in this light.
This sentiment was given catchy form in an entry in an Internet chat room
under the title, "What do you want from us?"
"When we were labeled the 'sick man of Asia,' we were called a peril," the
entry read. "When we are billed to be the next superpower, we're called
the threat. When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets.
When we embrace free trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs."
As sentiment like this spread in recent weeks, so did Chinese expressions
of outrage over perceived Western bullying and bias. The symbol of this
movement became Jin Jing, a wheelchair athlete who carried the Olympic
torch in Paris during its global circuit and managed to cling tightly to
it as pro-Tibet protesters tried to snatch it away and extinguish the
flame.
The Chinese media had a field day with these images, whose potency
exceeded the wildest propagandists' dreams, and for several days the
public here was inundated with them, as clear an illustration of Western
perfidy as they were of Chinese nobility.
What followed was an angry boycott movement against the French retailer
Carrefour, set off by an apparently unfounded rumor of a link between its
owner and the country's recent Enemy No. 1, the Dalai Lama.
What then, does all of this have to do with the student's question to the
journalism professor? The common narrative from 30,000 feet about China's
rise has been all about the triumph of capitalism in a nominally communist
country. China has opened up and joined the world, riding the great wave
of globalization that is under way with the best of them. Look, they even
have McDonald's! The differences between us are shrinking all the time,
and fast.
This great story even holds true for the most part. It's the sticky bit at
the end of the paragraph that demands more careful consideration and
arguably, concern.
The great divide in perceptions over the Tibet crisis may indeed have
revealed that the Western press is not perfectly accurate or credible, as
the Chinese government and its carefully controlled media have wasted no
effort in pointing out in recent weeks. To Westerners, this will come as
no big surprise.
A good deal more revealing, though, has been a picture that has emerged
during the crisis of a Chinese political system that remains devoted to
the manufacture and enforcement, when need be, of unanimity on whatever is
deemed a vital question.
Tibet and the Olympics both fit that bill, and saying anything but the
"right thing" on either subject just won't do here.
In fact, if the state doesn't get you first, one risks having emotional,
screaming mobs shouting you down, or worse, instead. People speak solemnly
all the time about what "the Chinese people think" and about their
feelings, as if unquestioned unanimity were the most natural of things,
and moreover a conferral of moral legitimacy.
As China's power rises, the implications for the world are potentially
quite profound. An implicit question, in fact, is already being posed:
"How dare anyone offend our feelings?"
As a 57-year-old Chinese blogger, He Yanguang, recently pointed out,
invoking memories of when a wave from Chairman Mao sufficed "and we all
marched forth and really messed the country up," the price of unanimity
can cut in other ways, too. "When the information we get all comes from
one source, people's thinking will certainly not be rational," He wrote in
his lonely warning. "We have had too many lessons and seen too many
stupidities. Making a mistake is not a big deal. The big danger is making
the same mistake again and again."
International Herald Tribune Copyright
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