The Portrait of an Extraordinarily Ugly and Violently Dangerous "Olympic Host" -- Chinese students in U.S. fight image of their home
Micky Wong
Host" -- Chinese students in U.S. fight image of their home
－－ Micky's humble opinion : The violent body language the Chinese
students displayed in attacking and harming those who disagree with
China during the torch run in Seoul is the glaring proof that the
current generation of Chinese are not only very ugly, but also extremely
dangerous. --
International Herald Tribune
Chinese students in U.S. fight image of their home
By Shaila Dewan
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
LOS ANGELES: When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the
front of the University of Southern California lecture hall to answer
questions, the Chinese students who packed the audience for the talk
last Tuesday had plenty to lob at their guest:
If Tibet was not part of China, why had the Chinese emperor been the one
to give the Dalai Lama his title? How did the tenets of Buddhism jibe
with the "slavery system" in Tibet before China's modernization efforts?
What about the Dalai Lama's connection to Hitler?
As the monk tried to rebut the students, they grew more hostile. They
brandished photographs and statistics to support their claims. "Stop
lying! Stop lying!" one young man said. A plastic bottle of water hit
the wall behind the monk, and campus police officers hustled the person
who threw it out of the room.
Scenes like this, ranging from civil to aggressive, have played out at
colleges across the country over the past month, as Chinese students in
the United States have been forced to confront an image of their
homeland that they neither recognize nor appreciate. Since the riots
last month in Tibet, the disrupted Olympic torch relays and calls to
boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in Beijing, Chinese students,
traditionally silent on political issues, have begun to lash out at what
they perceive as a pervasive anti-Chinese bias.
Last year, there were more than 42,000 students from mainland China
studying in the United States, an increase from fewer than 20,000 in
2003, according to the State Department.
Campuses including Cornell, the University of Washington in Seattle and
the University of California, Irvine, have seen a wave of
counterdemonstrations using tactics that seem jarring in the American
academic context. At the University of Washington, students fought to
limit the Dalai Lama's address to nonpolitical topics. At Duke,
pro-China students surrounded and drowned out a pro-Tibet vigil; a
Chinese freshman who tried to mediate received death threats, and her
family was forced into hiding.
And last Saturday, students from as far as Florida and Tennessee
traveled to Atlanta to picket CNN after a commentator, Jack Cafferty,
referred to the Chinese as "goons and thugs." (CNN said he was referring
to the government, not the people.)
The student anger, stoked through e-mail messages sent to large campus
mailing lists, stems not so much from satisfaction with the Chinese
government but from shock at the portrayal of its actions, as well as
frustration over the West's long-standing love affair with Tibet ? a
love these students see as willfully blind.
By and large, they do not acknowledge the cultural and religious
crackdown in Tibet, insisting that ordinary Tibetans have prospered
under China's economic development, and that only a small minority are
unhappy.
"Before I came here, I'm very liberal," said Minna Jia, a graduate
student in political science at USC who encouraged fellow students to
attend the monk's lecture. "But after I come here, my professor told me
that I'm nationalist."
"I believe in democracy," Jia added, "but I can't stand for someone to
criticize my country using biased ways. You are wearing Chinese clothes
and you are using Chinese goods."
Students interviewed for this article deplored the more extreme
expressions of anger, like death threats against the Duke freshman and
the tossing of the water bottle, and pointed out that Chinese students
had little experience in the art of protest. But, they said, they could
also understand them.
"We've been smothered for too long time," said Jasmine Dong, another
graduate student who attended the USC lecture.
By that, Dong did not mean that Chinese students had been repressed or
censored by their own government. She meant that the Western news media
had not acknowledged the strides China had made or the voices of
overseas Chinese. "We are still neglected or misunderstood as either
brainwashed or manipulated by the government," she said.
No matter what China does, these students say, it cannot win in the
arena of world opinion. "When we have a billion people, you said we were
destroying the planet./ When we tried limiting our numbers, you said it
is human rights abuse," reads a poem posted on the Internet by "a
silent, silent Chinese" and cited by some students as an accurate
expression of their feelings. "When we were poor, you thought we were
dogs./ When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts./ When we
build our industries, you called us polluters./ When we sell you goods,
you blame us for global warming."
Rather than blend in to the prevailing campus ethos of free debate, the
more strident Chinese students seem to replicate the authoritarian
framework of their homeland, photographing demonstration participants
and sometimes drowning out dissent.
A Tibetan student who declined to be identified for fear of harassment
said he decided not to attend a vigil for Tibet on his campus, which he
also did not want identified because there are so few Tibetans there.
"It's not that I didn't want to, I really did want to go ? it's our
cause," he said. "At the same time, I have to consider that my family's
back there, and I'm going back there in May."
Another factor fueling the zeal of many Chinese demonstrators could be
that they, too, intend to return home; the Chinese government is widely
believed to be monitoring large e-mail lists.
Universities have often tried to accommodate the anger of their Chinese
students. Before the Dalai Lama's visit to the University of Washington,
the campus Chinese Students and Scholars Association wrote to the
university president expressing hopes that the visit would focus only on
nonpolitical issues and not arouse anti-China sentiments. According to a
posting on the group's Web site, the university president, Mark Emmert,
told them in a meeting that no political questions would be raised at
the Dalai Lama's speech. A spokesman said the university, which opened
an office in Beijing last fall, had prescreened student questions before
the Chinese students voiced their concerns.
Some experts say that colleges feel constrained from reining in the more
extreme protests through a combination of concerns about cultural
sensitivity and a desire to expand their own ties with China.
"I think there tends to be a great deal of self-censorship," said Peter
Gries, director of the Institute for U.S.-China Issues at the University
of Oklahoma, "and not just among American China scholars but among the
whole web of people who do business with China, including school
administrators."
At the USC lecture, the Chinese students arrived early to distribute
handouts on Tibet and China that contained a jumble of abbreviated
history, slogans and maps with little context. A chart showing that
infant mortality in Tibet had plummeted since 1951, when the Communist
Chinese government asserted control, did not provide any means for
comparison with mortality rates in China or other countries.
One photograph showed the Dalai Lama with Heinrich Harrer, author of
"Seven Years in Tibet" and a one-time member of the Nazi Party ? hence
the question about the Dalai Lama's connection to Hitler, who died when
the Dalai Lama was nine. The question about slavery referred to the
feudal system in place in Tibet until the mid-20th century. Another
photograph purported to show a Tibetan drum that, according to the
caption, was covered with "a virgin girl's skin."
The students said they were frustrated by a sense that many accounts of
the recent riots did not reflect the violence and destruction by the
Tibetan protesters, who vandalized shops owned by Han Chinese (the
ethnic majority in China). According to official Chinese news sources,
22 died in the rioting.
Much of the anger has the tenor of disillusionment. During the Tiananmen
Square protests in 1989, the Western news media was seen as a source of
otherwise elusive truth.
"We thought Western media is very objective," said Chou Wu, a
28-year-old working on his doctorate in material science, "and what it
turned out is that Western media is even more biased than Chinese media.
They're no better, and even more, they're against us."
Students argue that China has spent billions on Tibet, building schools,
roads and other infrastructure. Asked if the Tibetans wanted such
development, they looked blankly incredulous. "They don't ask that
question," said Lionel Jensen, a China scholar at Notre Dame. "They've
accepted the basic premise of aggressive modernization."
That may be, some experts suggest, because the students whose families
can afford to send them abroad are the ones who have benefited the most
from China's economic liberalization.
Spring Zheng, 27, another graduate student at USC, dismissed the notion
that her patriotism stemmed from the government's efforts to use the
schools to instill national pride, particularly after Tiananmen Square.
Rather, Zheng said, "We have witnessed with our own eyes about the rapid
change of China. China is developing fast, and Chinese people's lives"
are "becoming better and better, fast."
As the USC session wound to a close, the organizer, Lisa Leeman, a
documentary film instructor, pleaded for a change in tone. "My hope for
this event, which I don't totally see happening here, is for people on
both, quote, sides to really hear each other and maybe learn from each
other," Leeman said. "Are there any genuine questions that don't stem
from a political point of view, that are really not here to be on a soap
box?"
At that moment, the bottle hit the wall.
International Herald Tribune Copyright
Toby
have been demonstrating overseas give a good idea what might happen at home
if the very real grievances and problems there get out of hand, and is one
of the reasons that the CCP rules with such an iron fist. My apartment is
near the French Embassy in Beijing, and for the past few weeks the whole
area has been blocked off intermittently with scores of police manning
barricades in case mobs come to vent their anger about what happened at the
torch relay in Paris, as happened a few weeks ago. The modernity of
contemporary China is a thin veneer over a very rough society that has been
continually brutalized for centuries both from within and without, and which
still bears deep wounds from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution. Things could get very ugly here if things are not played just
right, and the CCP knows this well. Just to be clear, this is not something
intrinsic to the "Chinese character", but the result of scars from an
unfortunate history. One needs only to look at Taiwan to see the strengths
of Chinese culture and character, fostered in a much less traumatic milieu.
Let us hope that the integration of China into the world community happens
smoothly and allows the healing of wounds that have scabbed over but never
healed.
"Micky Wong" <mick...@11thdimension.ca> wrote in message
news:4818...@newsgate.x-privat.org...
bmo...@nyx.net
> The violence and vehemence that these Chinese students (and non-students)
> have been demonstrating overseas give a good idea what might happen at home
> if the very real grievances and problems there get out of hand, and is one
> of the reasons that the CCP rules with such an iron fist. My apartment is
> near the French Embassy in Beijing, and for the past few weeks the whole
> area has been blocked off intermittently with scores of police manning
> barricades in case mobs come to vent their anger about what happened at the
> torch relay in Paris, as happened a few weeks ago. The modernity of
> contemporary China is a thin veneer over a very rough society that has been
> continually brutalized for centuries both from within and without, and which
> still bears deep wounds from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
> Revolution. Things could get very ugly here if things are not played just
> right, and the CCP knows this well. Just to be clear, this is not something
> intrinsic to the "Chinese character", but the result of scars from an
> unfortunate history. One needs only to look at Taiwan to see the strengths
> of Chinese culture and character, fostered in a much less traumatic milieu.
> Let us hope that the integration of China into the world community happens
> smoothly and allows the healing of wounds that have scabbed over but never
> healed.
Hear, hear!
相鼠 Micky Wong
> The violence and vehemence that these Chinese students (and non-students)
> have been demonstrating overseas give a good idea what might happen at home
> if the very real grievances and problems there get out of hand, and is one
> of the reasons that the CCP rules with such an iron fist. My apartment is
> near the French Embassy in Beijing, and for the past few weeks the whole
> area has been blocked off intermittently with scores of police manning
> barricades in case mobs come to vent their anger about what happened at the
> torch relay in Paris, as happened a few weeks ago. The modernity of
> contemporary China is a thin veneer over a very rough society that has been
> continually brutalized for centuries both from within and without, and which
> still bears deep wounds from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
> Revolution. Things could get very ugly here if things are not played just
> right, and the CCP knows this well. Just to be clear, this is not something
> intrinsic to the "Chinese character", but the result of scars from an
> unfortunate history. One needs only to look at Taiwan to see the strengths
> of Chinese culture and character, fostered in a much less traumatic milieu.
> Let us hope that the integration of China into the world community happens
> smoothly and allows the healing of wounds that have scabbed over but never
>
> 閱讀更多 »
Your view confirms that it is a gigantic mistake to let the Chinese
government hosting the 2008 Olympics .
I doubt very much that it is possible for the new generation of
Chinese red guards to do the things "just right".
As you stated that the Chinese nation which has been "brutalized for
centuries both from within and without" , such a diagnose put modern
Chinese squarely into the category of psychopath, however, the
question remains: what can possibly be gained by letting a
fanatically nationalistic psychopath to host the Olympic games? Will
the Olympics magically transform a delusional China into a responsible
world class citizen? If someone had such a wishful thinking 7 years
ago, the cold and hard facts had proved otherwise.
On the other hand, will China ever learn the fact that not that long
ago, Europeans and many other nations in the world has also been
brutalizing each other, why others can recover and only China remain
being a psychologically "wounded" giant ?! That's bloody childish and
shameless!
In a civilized society, we usually put psychopathic patient who shows
symptom and potential of harming others into mental asylum, since
there is no asylum big enough for China, it became a real problem for
the whole world. IMHO, even the wounded Chinese nation is willing to
cure itself, a must medicine is freedom of expression and freedom of
press, yet after wasted over 100 years, China is still lack of both,
no wonder the coming Beijing Olympics has brought so much ominous
omens and lately, deadly tragedies inside China.
What a shame! for China and for the IOC !
相鼠 Micky Wong
On 5月1日, 上午8時35分, "Toby" <kymarto...@ybb.nee.jp> wrote:
> The violence and vehemence that these Chinese students (and non-students)
> have been demonstrating overseas give a good idea what might happen at home
> if the very real grievances and problems there get out of hand, and is one
> of the reasons that the CCP rules with such an iron fist. My apartment is
> near the French Embassy in Beijing, and for the past few weeks the whole
> area has been blocked off intermittently with scores of police manning
> barricades in case mobs come to vent their anger about what happened at the
> torch relay in Paris, as happened a few weeks ago. The modernity of
> contemporary China is a thin veneer over a very rough society that has been
> continually brutalized for centuries both from within and without, and which
> still bears deep wounds from the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
> Revolution. Things could get very ugly here if things are not played just
> right, and the CCP knows this well. Just to be clear, this is not something
> intrinsic to the "Chinese character", but the result of scars from an
> unfortunate history. One needs only to look at Taiwan to see the strengths
> of Chinese culture and character, fostered in a much less traumatic milieu.
> Let us hope that the integration of China into the world community happens
> smoothly and allows the healing of wounds that have scabbed over but never
> healed."Micky Wong" <micky...@11thdimension.ca> wrote in message
> ...
>
> 閱讀更多 »
Toby
Your view confirms that it is a gigantic mistake to let the Chinese
government hosting the 2008 Olympics .
--The fault lies largely with the IOC. There was a verbal "quid pro quo"
that if Beijing were given the Games in 2008 China would work on improving
their human rights record, but apparently the promises were vague and the
IOC, which was supposed to monitor the situation via Amnesty International
and apply pressure as needed never really followed up.
I don't think it was fundamentally a mistake: one need only look at Tokyo in
'64 and Seoul in '88 to see what a boost the Olympics were to those
developing Asian hosts, and I suppose that the IOC hoped that the same would
happen for Beijing. However given that, it is hypocritical of the IOC to
insist that the Games are non-political; the IOC should freely admit that
they are and take responsibility for that fact in my view. Otherwise the
Games should only be held in countries with stable systems which are
integrated into the global system.
I doubt very much that it is possible for the new generation of
Chinese red guards to do the things "just right".
--This is becoming clearer by the day. In my view the CCP is caught between
a rock and a hard place. My feeling from attending numerous sessions of the
Party Congress and tracking the government announcements in various areas is
that there are some very smart people in charge--I think that those at the
very top are not too corrupt and are really trying to get China on the
rails. The problem is that they are just too weak to enforce their vision on
the huge numbers of totally rotten and corrupt local administrations and
elites which still exist throughout the country. One of my colleagues, who
is a great Sinophile and who speaks the language fluently, returned in
disgust from a recent newsgathering trip to the provinces, saying that the
people in the countryside all think that the world ends at the edge of their
villages, and practically for them it does. "Heaven is high and the Emperor
is far away" still applies strongly in "modern" China. The image that I have
is that the CCP is riding a runaway nuclear reactor: they have to keep the
economy boiling so that an ever-increasing quality of life placates the
masses, but moderate things delicately so that the whole thing doesn't go
critical and explode. This is no easy task, and I think it explains why they
come down so hard on any sign of civil unrest. My sense is that there is a
deep anger that runs throughout the people on the Mainland, and an incipient
violence lurking just below the surface.
As I said before, this is the result of their being brutalized from all
sides continuously for centuries: by the feudal Chinese hierarchical system,
then by the Brits and Japanese and other foreign powers in the late 19th and
20th centuries, and then by their supposed saviors led by Mao. That this
anger can be diffused peaceably is shown by the state of civil society in
Taiwan--these are basically mainlanders with the same cultural history who
have been spared only the traumas of the communist era and who were early
integrated into the global community, but the difference in tone between
Taipei and Beijing is like night and day. Fifty years can make a big
difference if used effectively.
The question is whether the present power structure is up to the task. As
enlightened as some of the top cadres may be on some levels, there is still
bitter infighting and politicking in the CCP, with reactionary old
hardliners still holding a lot of power. For me the really unfortunate fact
is that there is still a huge exceptionalist myth being fostered at all
levels. Chinese constantly go on about their glorious past; how theirs is
the only continuous civilization unbroken for 5000 years. They look down on
all other cultures with an arrogance which is only now becoming apparent as
they wield more and more economic power. This nationalism is being fostered
by the ruling powers as a way to ameliorate interal strife, but it comes at
the cost of increasing inflexibility in international relations and stopping
China from incorporating important cultural advances from other
civilizations, which they missed in the last fifty years or so. Add to that
the difficulty of administering 1.4 billion people centrally in an era of
diminishing resources and it adds up to a huge problem.
Time is not on our side in this. There are certain parallels between the
Chinese situation and that of prewar Japan: another society which rapidly
industrialized at great cultural cost because of perceived threats from the
West with a heady sense of exceptionalism. It took a huge war and some
terrible bombings, followed by a long occupation before they really entered
the dominant world order, and it is just recently--in the past ten years or
so--that a stable democracy that responds somewhat to the wishes of the
people has emerged. And this is in a small country which already had a long
cultural history of collective responsibility.
As you stated that the Chinese nation which has been "brutalized for
centuries both from within and without" , such a diagnose put modern
Chinese squarely into the category of psychopath, however, the
question remains: what can possibly be gained by letting a
fanatically nationalistic psychopath to host the Olympic games? Will
the Olympics magically transform a delusional China into a responsible
world class citizen? If someone had such a wishful thinking 7 years
ago, the cold and hard facts had proved otherwise.
--I think there was a hope that by giving China a foot in the developed
world it would spur a certain liberalization. Seoul definitely benefitted
from holding the Olympics, I believe, in terms of strengthening democratic
institutions. Also, you can't ignore the more prosaic reasons: China is the
capitalists' darling, and they wanted to protect and foster their
investments...
On the other hand, will China ever learn the fact that not that long
ago, Europeans and many other nations in the world has also been
brutalizing each other, why others can recover and only China remain
being a psychologically "wounded" giant ?! That's bloody childish and
shameless!
--China has been sleeping, and only now is going through some of the
developmental phases that other countries went through long ago. You can't
skip those steps, but what is distressing is the fact that the
exceptionalist stance keeps China from benefitting from the experience of
others. They have definitely learned their economic lessons from observing
others, but there is a huge blind spot when it comes to civil society.
In a civilized society, we usually put psychopathic patient who shows
symptom and potential of harming others into mental asylum, since
there is no asylum big enough for China, it became a real problem for
the whole world. IMHO, even the wounded Chinese nation is willing to
cure itself, a must medicine is freedom of expression and freedom of
press, yet after wasted over 100 years, China is still lack of both,
no wonder the coming Beijing Olympics has brought so much ominous
omens and lately, deadly tragedies inside China.
What a shame! for China and for the IOC !
Yes and no. China has been confronted for the first time recently with
outside criticism "where it hurts", and they are struggling to find a
response that both placates those critics and plays well at home.Nothing
will happen unless they are put against the wall. I agree that so far the
signs do not seem hopeful, but time will tell whether there will be a shift
towards more openness or whether those in power will feel threatened and
clamp down even more tightly. One thing is certain, there is not a lot of
room for error.
Jim Walsh
(in article <4819b8af$0$248$bb4e...@newscene.com>):
> Things could get very ugly here if things are not played just right, and the
> CCP knows this well. Just to be clear, this is not something intrinsic to the
> "Chinese character", but the result of scars from an unfortunate history. One
> needs only to look at Taiwan to see the strengths of Chinese culture and
> character, fostered in a much less traumatic milieu.
Agree. The CCP should step by step institute normal human rights. The
Republic of South Africa model.
--
Love, Jim
(I often delete parts of the previous post and I often remove excessive
crossposts.)
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"相鼠@屠龙都 Micky Wong"
think that those at the very top are not too corrupt and are really
trying to get China on the rails"
I wonder: How often do you see people finding a piece of clean cloth
from a cesspool? In an environment that the prerequisite of survival is
corruption, how can a "not too corrupted" climb to the top? This is yet
another fairy tale with Chinese characteristics.
If the people in charge were not too corrupt, how come Chinese
government, after talking about it for over 10 years, yet still dare not
to make public on the personal finances of government officials ?
If the people in charge of China are so smart, how come Chinese
education system has just nurtured yet another generation of fanatical
red guards?! And after 30 years of the "great success" of "open and
reform", there are still not even one independent free media who can
voice and publishing opposing views against the government inside China ?
IMHO, such "smartness" signifies stupidity with Chinese characteristics.
A more accurate assessment on the smartness of Chinese leadership would
be "smart my ass !" ;-) ;-)
Micky Wong
While people often compare today's China to pre-Olympic Japan and South
Korea, this comparison often neglect a very important difference:
During the time when Tokyo and Seoul playing the Olympic host, neither
Japan nor South Korea were colonizing and brutalizing other nations like
China is currently bullying Tibet and East Turkestan.
Jim Walsh
(in article <481b...@newsgate.x-privat.org>):
> If the people in charge were not too corrupt, how come Chinese government,
> after talking about it for over 10 years, yet still dare not to make public
> on the personal finances of government officials?
Excellent question