Well this past week has been a bit hectic for me in part because I have personally taken a lot of flak on my positions regarding Taiwan and Tibet from my Chinese friends. The issue was further exacerbated this week by someone whom I thought had some respect for me but ended up turning quite nasty in our discussions over the subject. This person was not the only person that angered me but I have accepted circumstances as they are. That being said I don’t approve of that kind of discourse and I simply cannot understand why some Chinese people assume this stonewalled position on China and its policies. There is literally no room for argument and if you do try to argue you end up being harassed by people or called names that I would rather no repeat in my blog. Needless to say after this past week I have come to realize that amongst my Chinese friends here in Ireland, I have a lot fewer friends than I once thought. Additionally I would like to state to any other Chinese person out there reading this blog or anyone else for that matter, I won’t tolerate racist or harassing comments or emails. Any further emails like that will be reported to your ISP and they can deal with your lack of intelligence.
I have been following the China/Tibet issue quite closely in the “western biased” media and found that the Chinese people are becoming more nationalistic than they already were. I was watching a segment on Al-Jazeera where they interviewed the girl (Jin Jing) below who “saved” the torch from the hands of a Tibetan protestor. She went on to say in the interview that the person who tried to disrupt the relay would get his just desserts if he happened to die. What???
I think this girl’s actions and words are symptomatic of a larger issue that has taken over the Chinese populace. One of unfettered national pride, don’t get me wrong, I admire this girl for the athlete she is but actually advocating the death of someone else who was just trying to draw attention to the crisis in his home country (Tibet). That is simply wrong and the fact that she was glorified by the Chinese media shows something seriously wrong with CCTV and the other state-run media outlets.
I don’t understand how the people of China can confuse the issues here, people in the West do not have anything against the people of China or Chinese culture but we are protesting the thousands of people that have died or are silenced each year because they oppose the government. Just look at the USA, there are more than a handful of people who publish the craziest stories about the American government that could be considered “subversive” but do you see these people imprisoned for such activity, I think not.
The next big headline today is that the CNN website was attacked using a DOS (Denial of Service) attack by Chinese attackers with the rumor being that it was actually sponsored by the Chinese government. A DOS attack is when a website is bombarded with millions of service requests at one time so that it eventually shuts down from all the strain. This is another demonstration of the government of China having gone too far; CNN has reported both sides of the story and focuses on the truth of the plight of the people in Tibet. If Chinese people want to criticize anything, they should focus on the lack of coverage by CCTV of anything other than the pro-Han side of the story.
A famous Oscar Wilde quote comes to mind:
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Some people often are a bit confused from where this quote comes from which is Life of Samuel Johnson (1791):
Patriotism having become one of our topics, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.
Now this quote does not only apply to the people of China but to people all around the world. There is a fine line between blind nationalism and doing the right thing. At the moment the Chinese arguments for Tibet revolves around some antiquated historical fact, come on! This is not the past, we live in the present where every single person on this earth is entitled to their basic human rights.
In case some of you don’t remember the UN charter for human rights, please click the above the link but the most relevant right and the one that I most believe in is:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
My biggest problem with China and the Olypmics on a personal level is that they claim that we should all come together in peace and harmony in the spirit of brotherhood. How can their be brotherhood when according to the human rights journal Dui Hua published in America, we only know about 5% of the dissidents that are jailed in China. There is no brotherhood when the minorities in Tibet like the Uighurs and the Tibetans are slowly ceasing to exist thanks to the Han majority. Lastly there is no real freedom in China until people, journalists and dissidents can publish whatever they want in criticism of the government, until CCTV shows both sides of a story and until the Chinese government fires their 30,000+ censors.
It’s a shame that the East and the West are so divided about the issue of the Olympics but having spoken to quite a few of my friends, they all agree China should have never gotten the Olympics since if you look back to the last Olympics in Greece, things went super smoothly. I hope and I really do mean this that China and the West can work closer together and get past this issue of “The West trying to keep China down.” That is simply not true.
