- (december 2008)
China's next revolution (report from a trip to China).
After centuries of relatively static, traditional life, over the last century
there have been a number of Chinese "revolutions" that have contributed to
shape China as it is today.
- 1842: The Treaty of Nanjing granted Hong Kong to Britain. It was the beginning of Western penetration into China. In 1860 British and French forces entered Beijing itself. In the same year Russia secured north Manchuria for itself. In 1895 Japan seized Taiwan. In 1905 Japan took part of Manchuria from Russia.
- 1912: Sun Yatsen's republican revolution that terminated the emperor's rule
- 1949: Mao's communist revolution (when he seized control of the whole of China and launched a massive program of collectivization)
- 1966: Mao's "cultural revolution" aimed at destroying the cultural heritage of China
- 1981: Deng Xiaoping's capitalist revolution that reintroduces free enterprise
- 2008: The "Olympic revolution" that totally westernized China in a few years
Each of these revolutions brought China closer to the West, even the ones that
were meant to fight the West (e.g., the communist revolution adopted a European
form of government for the first time in China's history, and the cultural
revolution ridiculed Confucianism and Buddhism). The Olympic revolution,
ostensibly intended to prepare for the Olympic Games, completed the job,
introducing English as the de-facto second language and modernizing the whole
infrastructure according to Western standards (from toilets to trains, from
shopping malls to mass tourism).
The Olympic revolution has basically been a second cultural revolution
(the forced westernization of the masses) that ironically also entailed undoing
what the cultural revolution had done (thousands of ancient monuments that
were destroyed by Mao have been hastily restored).
The transportation system and the urban landscape have been so restructured
and are now so modern and efficient that the foreign tourist hardly sees any
trace of old China anymore.
The obvious model is Singapore. Most processes are idiot-proof.
There are very few annoyances. There are beggars in front of temples, but not in stations or in the streets. There are English signs everywhere.
More and more people speak some English.
Anything that can be turned into a tourist attraction is restored, even beyond
what it used to be.
China is becoming a supermodern country but with a very weak currency.
It's like Japan at Indian prices.
The massive program of restoration also tells us for the first time the extent
of Mao's destruction. There were literally hundreds of masterpieces that had
not been seen in decades simply because they had been destroyed.
The restoration is a mixed bag though, because it is done with the purpose of
selling the temple or monastery or statue as a tourist attraction, not with
the purpose of recovering the original art. Both materials and labor are
cheap. One wonders what the accuracy is. Often they use concrete where it used
to be stone or even wood. This is capitalist greed to a degree that the West
has never truly experienced. In the West there is the Sistine Chapel (an
artistic masterpiece that authoritative scholars restore painstaikingly over
many years) and there is Disneyland (a tourist attraction that makes no claim
to authenticity). In China the difference between the two is blurred.
What is striking about post-Olympic China is the way both the government and
the citizens are trying to befriend foreigners. The government went out of its
way to make China foreigner-friendly, and not only by putting English signs
everywhere. There are signs in many cities that instruct the Chinese people
on how to treat foreigners: not even Wallmart is so obsessed with treating
the customer well. One feels bad about criticizing this government that has
done so much to make our lives easy and safe during our stay in China.
The citizens are making an equally impressive effort. While there are still
large masses of Chinese who don't speak English, the number of Chinese people
who are nice and helpful to foreigners has increased exponentially over the last
decade. For centuries China was one of the most hostile places for the West.
Suddenly it is becoming one of the most hospitable on Earth.
At the same time, the Beijing regime has invented a new kind of propaganda,
that is not aimed only at its own people but at the entire world. Communist
regimes always specialized in fabricating news and feeding them to their
people in a scientific manner. This kind of brainwashing didn't work too
well with the Russian people, who could tell very well what was true and
what was not true, but it seems to have worked wonders with the Chinese people,
who for decades did not believe that the USA had put a man on the Moon and
still believe that Tibet has always been part of China. Somehow the Chinese
people are easily prey of the propaganda campaigns orchestrated by the regime.
Now the regime has understood that it can do the same to a much wider audience:
the Internet audience. It has created websites such as anti-cnn.com and
Global Times that look like spontaneous websites/blogs run by ordinary Chinese
but they have been created specifically to counter Western news about mainland
China by defaming its media and politicians. These websites and blogs are
not only believed by the few Chinese who access the Internet on a daily basis
(just like they believed the previous propaganda campaigns on the radio and
newspapers) but also by hundreds of millions of anti-Westerners around the
world. The latest victim is French president Sarkozy, who met with the Dalai
Lama, an event largely unnoticed in the West but that caused hysteria in
the Beijing regime. Not only the regime started sabotaging French websites
so that the Chinese people could not read the French version of the facts,
but the Chinese-run websites and blogs started publishing anti-Sarkozy and
anti-French propaganda of the most vulgar nature. It's the old-fashioned
Maoist approach to controlling the brains of the masses, but updated to
the digital age and extended to the whole world.
However, the most important aspect of Chinese society has to do with the way
it thinks.
My feeling is that now China needs one more revolution. It has become too
dependent on the West, in particular on the USA. It products are copies of
Western products aimed at the Western market. It's a very narrow business
model. There is virtually no invention or discovery coming out of China.
Their educational system is tuned towards assimilating from the West.
Their research facilities focus on practical applications of Western technology.
The official propaganda has also had a weird side effect: people tend to
repeat the same sentences as unquestionable truths. For example, they all
say that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong. Not 69 or 28: they
all say 70 and 30. Basically, this dictatorship has been so tough for so long
that people have lost the ability to question authority. One good thing that
comes with democracy is that people are free to think, say and do what they
like, which motivates them to be creative. When you can only think, say and
do one thing, your motivation to be creative is zero.
Most of the Chinese population has been trained for and is employed in
highly repetitive jobs. Again, the principle is that you are not supposed
to question authority, but simply perform the routine that has been set up for
you.
This one-way thinking is pervasive in China among the young educated
generations, and it is the most striking contrast with the USA. Where in
the USA the young generation tends to be wildly creative in its lifestyle
(some would say "too" creative), in China the young generation is raised
not to be creative at all. What is true for lifestyle is often true for
science and technology as well.
The "creative" revolution that China needs may require just that: democracy.
And it certainly requires a different kind of attitude towards learning and
working. China changed the textbooks, but it is still teaching "dogmas" like
in the Confucian era, except that now they are Western-style dogmas.
The next step will be for the Chinese people to be encouraged to think "out
of the box". Until that day it's unlikely that China can replace the USA as
the world's superpower: it will be dependent on the innovation that comes from the USA.
While i am not sure what this "creative revolution" should look like,
one thing is clear: the motivation to create does not arise in a vacuum.
This is certainly the century of Asia, and of China in particular, but one
wonders what kind of continent this will be, frantically busy copying and
improving whatever idea comes from the USA, but chronically incapable of
producing new ideas on its own; relying on a continuous supply of innovation
from the USA while they refine their skills at manufacturing and trade.
The problem is that they don't invest in creativity.
They raise children to work on practical issues, not to invent nor to
discover. This may create a short-sighted and narrow-minded civilization.
The West has a system that rewards creativity
First of all we welcome and reward poets, musicians and scientists,
whereas in the Far East these are often considered "useless" careers
and therefore discouraged.
The West has literally millions of people who practice these "useless"
activities.
While a poet and a musician cannot help a scientist invent a new device,
the poet and the musician are part of a mindset that encourages creativity.
See also The new Chinese nationalism for another aspect of modern China.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news | Top of this page
- (june 2008)
The new Chinese nationalism.
A few years ago, when the Chinese economic boom began, the world (especially
the Western world) was sympathetic. China is the oldest civilization.
China has been suffering enormously under the mad dictatorship of Mao.
And, let's face it, the collapse of the Soviet Union had left the USA as
the sole superpower, a fact that nobody in the world truly liked.
China was, in many ways, viewed as a positive element.
In just a few years everything has changed. As mainland China shows its arrogant side,
the world's opinion of China is suddenly plummeting (see the most recent
Pew Center's poll).
The influence of mainland China on the rest of the world is now viewed mostly
as evil: mainland China has helped dubious regimes from Iran to Sudan to Burma,
ignoring the sufferings of their victims; mainland China is prostituting itself
to any dictator for raw materials; mainland China is oppressing its own citizens.
We are learning that the new generation of Chinese have a wildly distorted view
of history and of the world (a view cunningly administered to them by their
government-controlled media). Very few young Chinese realize that their
economic boom is due to the adoption of a Western style of life
(capitalism, consumerism) and the rejection of the traditional Chinese
lifestyle. Very few Chinese realize that they dress, work, drive,
and even speak the way Westerners do. They even use the Western calendar
and write dates the European way. A Chinese friend was proud of Beijing's
new architectural projects but did not know that all of them are due to Western
minds (the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium was designed by Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron, the "Water Cube" swimming venue for the Games by Australian firm PTW Architects, China Central TV's new headquarters by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Beijing's colossal airport terminal 3 by British architect Norman Foster, etc).
Even the superstitions now work according to Western standards:
the Olympic Games will open on 8/8/2008
(and thousands of couples will marry on that date)
because 8 is a lucky number but 8/8/2008
is a date in the Gregorian calendar that Westerners forced on China, not in
the traditional Chinese calendar. There is virtually nothing left of China's
traditions.
The major cities of today's China are all foreign inventions. The two most
powerful and rich are
Hong Kong ($260 billion), a former British colony, and Shanghai ($120 billion),
a former Japanese and European stronghold.
They account for a larger share of China's GDP than most of China combined.
Shenzhen, the first major export manufacturing city which is now another industrial colossus, was created by Deng Xiaoping in 1980 near Hong Kong, not near a historical Chinese capital.
Shenyang, Haerbin and Changchun (the three industrial colossi of the northeast) are Russian and Japanese inventions.
Beijing itself is a foreign invention (it was founded by the Manchus).
That's why now the Communist Party of mainland China wants Taiwan
($680 billion), another foreign invention (Japanese and USA)
that has been much more successful than any recent Chinese invention.
Sun Yat Sen started the revolution abroad and with help from the Chinese who had lived abroad.
Too many Chinese think that mainland China
has become a power thanks to its own inventions, when in fact mainland China's
last major inventions date from centuries ago. Too many Chinese think that
their economy is booming because of their creativity when in fact not a single
modern invention has come from mainland China (some have come from Taiwan),
and their government is doing nothing to change the situation (therefore
many Chinese
scientists and inventors are still leaving the country for other countries
where discoveries and inventions are rewarded).
Too many Chinese know very little about the rest of the world.
They ignore what their government is doing in Darfur or in Burma/Myanmar.
Too many believe that Tibet always belonged to China
(and those Tibetans must be some dirty invaders sent by the CIA), and so did
Inner Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan and all the other regions invaded by Mao
during his 30-million dead campaign (that makes the Japanese look like
amateurs). Too many Chinese side with their government in oppressing the
Tibetans, in threatening the peaceful democracy of Taiwan, and in attacking
the foreign media that report the truth.
(See also The Chinese people against Tibet)
It is not clear if this rising nationalism is peculiar to Beijing (where the
brainwashing has always been stronger). Shanghai is experiencing a wave of
arrests and intimidations, which means that there must be many more dissidents
than the average Chinese realizes
(See for example this article).
Foreign news organizations that report the truth (such as the BBC and countless websites) are silenced within China, a fact that induces many foreign news
organizations to minimize this kind of news for fear of being expelled from
China. However, there is a sense that many young Chinese welcome the
repression of dissent by their government: they view any criticism of their
country as an insult by foreigners, and any Chinese who speaks out against
her/his own country as a traitor.
Too many young Chinese tend to believe blindly to the inevitably positive
feedback that the government policies (such as the ones on Tibet) get on
moderated pro-China Internet forums. (I repeatedly tried to post negative
comments on many Chinese websites and those comments have been inevitably
taken down within hours if not minutes).
Too many Chinese, ultimately, are coming to believe that the Chinese are a
superior race, that theirs is a superior nation, and that China is the most
civilized place in the world; and that any foreigner who criticizes mainland
China is an enemy.
This form of blind nationalism is ghastly reminiscent of Germany and Japan in the 1930s.
(After all, mainland China is doing to Tibet precisely what Japan did to China
in the 1930s, and with pretty much the same excuse of "liberating" it from
the West). One wonders what these young Chinese would do if their
government-controlled media told them that, say, Mongolia belongs to China,
or that the Tibetans must be exterminated, or that China should rule over
the entire Asia (I am paraphrasing what Hitler said in the 1930s in Europe).
The history of the last century taught us that the combination of
hyper-nationalism and
wealth is lethal. The German states and Japan were never major troublemakers
in history (in fact they rarely ventured outside their borders) but throughout
their history they believed in some kind of divine superiority of their race.
The day they became wealthy, they simply put that belief at work.
Traditionally, the Chinese people share that belief that their country is the
center of the world. For centuries they have been poorer than the other powers,
or too busy fighting each other, or too busy defending themselves from the
barbarians. But apparently the belief that China is somehow superior to
all other countries has not died. Now China is also experiencing an economic
boom that is similar to the one experienced by Germany and Japan before World
War II...
Germany and Japan came to recognize that they are not the greatest races in
the world only after a bloody world war and after being almost annihilated.
One wonders if the Chinese (this young generation or the next one) are
repeating the same mistake (but with a much larger population to sacrifice to
the myth of racial superiority) and against the same enemy (the Anglosaxon
powers).
Compare with the Soviet Union that at one time ruled over one third of the world
and had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world, but was run by the
Russians, a people who have traditionally never thought of themselves as a
superior race, just one people among many: that regime (no matter how "evil")
could never inspire its people to do what the Germans and the Japanese had
done in the 1930s.
Furthermore, the Chinese are rarely grateful for their prosperity, that comes
entirely from the West (unlike the German and Japanese prosperities, that were
at the time largely their own product).
If the West (especially the USA) stopped buying their cheap products,
the economy of mainland China would suffer terribly. They owe their prosperity
to the fact that the West imports most of what they produce, and what they
export to the West are mainly Western inventions.
They do not even
acknowledge that the Olympic Games are a Western invention, that the West
granted to mainland China: they behave as if the Olympic Games were their
own invention and they obtained it from some deity (they obtained it from
an Olympic Committee that is based in the West).
This is part of their distortion of the facts, and of history in general.
It is also worrying that some Chinese tend to create their own problems and then
blame them on others, typically on the West. When mainland China was given the
Olympic Games, it was meant as a sign of friendship. The whole world agreed
that it was overdue for the oldest civilization and most populous country
to hold the Olympics. Since then, mainland China has done everything to
spoil the party: it has increased censorship, banning thousands of
foreign media and foreign websites, arresting and expelling thousands of
dissidents, and it has struck down on the freedom fighters of Tibet.
This would be enough to keep large crowds of disgusted foreigners away.
Paradoxically, it has then exasperated the problem by restricting tourist
visas (See this article), probably out of
fear that foreigners may fuel dissent and protests.
If the Olympic Games fail to attract millions of people and become the first
failed Olympic Games since the end of the Cold War, will China blame its own
behavior or will it blame it, as usual, on the rest of the world?
Will the Chinese people blame their government that it did not
let the foreigners come, or will the Chinese people blame the foreigners for
not coming? These days they have a distorted way of thinking.
It is also worrying that the young generation has never seen an economic
recession. What happens when the Chinese economy declines?
The resilience of the economy of mainland China is unknown. If the stock
market is a good indicator, then the Chinese economy is very vulnerable.
When the USA's Dow Jones dropped 3% on june 26, it triggered as usual a chain
reaction around the world, but the difference was very visible:
Shanghai's stock marked dropped by 5.3%, India's Sensex index declined by 4.3%,
markets in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all shed less than 3%,
Paris and Frankfurt were both down less than 1% and London's FTSE registered
a modest 0.1% fall. Despite its phenomenal growth, the investors seem to think
that mainland China is the most vulnerable economy to a USA economic downturn.
The USA will have a new president in 2009, and
it is likely that he will not be as generous towards China as Bush was.
If the USA pulls out of China, so will the whole of Western Europe.
What happens to the Chinese people if this causes an economic
decline in China for a few years? The young Chinese have grown up
during the economic boom, knowing that every year will be better than the
previous one, that there will be more jobs, more skyscrapers, more cars,
more restaurants every year. They are the exact opposite of their
grandfather's generation that lived in Mao's economic depression.
They are spoiled and arrogant. The world has to be wary of how
this young generation can react to economic difficulties.
They don't seem to realize that their government has done something good
(get rid of Mao's communist follies) but is still a far cry from creating
a modern country. Mainland China has become rich by essentially
selling cheap goods to the USA,
That's all it has achieved so far. There is no question that it is a lot better
than starving (as it did under Mao) and that it can achieve
a lot more in the coming decades, but so far it has none of the technological
skills that the USA, Japan, Germany or even just Taiwan have (and that's
one reason why mainland China wants to invade and annex peaceful Taiwan, see
Why China needs Taiwan just like it
wanted to invade and annex Tibet for its mineral resources).
China is not competing in any of the most important fields: cars, planes,
bullet trains, computers...
It builds millions of bicycles, but it still imports most of its cars
and airplanes. Mainland China has a long way to go before it can claim to have
surpassed even South Korea or Singapore (technologically speaking).
Both health care and higher education lag far behind the rest of the developed
world. The Chinese people are still dying of many diseases that have long
disappeared in the West (see the statistics by the World Health Organization)
and no Chinese university ranks among the top 100 of the world, according to a
very Chinese source, the Shanghai Institute of Higher Education
(see their list of best universities in the world).
The new Chinese nationalists seem to ignore this reality. The truth is that
mainland China is not encouraging innovation at all: it is only encouraging
its industries to copy the West, copy Japan and even copy South Korea and
Taiwan.
Which is the "superior" nation when a nation imitates the other one?
The one that imitates or the one that is imitated?
As long as mainland China's prices remain low, the richer countries
will be happy to let the Chinese take the jobs that their people don't want
to do anymore. On the other hand, mainland China has done little to encourage
innovation. The Chinese people are not creating any new technology for the
simple reason that their government has not invested at all in creating
new technologies. Getting rid of Mao's madness was the first step. But the
second step (matching the West's and Japan's program of innovation) has still
to come. And it may take a completely different kind of government, because
great scientists and inventors don't like to work under a dictatorship
when they can easily emigrate to a democracy. The greatest Chinese scientists
and inventors live in the West (or in Taiwan or in Singapore), not in mainland
China.
Democracy has recently become a favorite target of the young Chinese
nationalists. They point to the many failures of Western democratic governments
(or just to the obvious fact that the much publicized USA system
couldn't elect anyone smarter than an idiot like George W Bush). They point
to the chronic cronysm and nepotism (Bush is the son of a former president,
senator Hillary Clinton is the wife of a former president, the Kennedys have
been in power forever, countless senators and representatives are related to
former ones). They point to widespread corruption in the USA that rewards the
friends of the governing party and the most powerful lobbies. They system,
on the other hand, is more of a meritocracy. Hu Jingtao got elected because
of his achievements, and so his predecessors, all of which were, by the West's
own admission, extremely competent and intelligent. Only the West thinks that
Western democracy is the most efficient system.
Throughout history the Chinese people have had a rather passive attitude towards
their dictators (China is one of the few places in the world that has never
experienced democracy). In most cases the Chinese people silently accepted the
rule of the emperor or communist premier. We still don't see any sign of
a critical approach emerging from the Chinese youth.
When a similar earthquake struck overcrowded Japan, very few
people died; when it struck Los Angeles in 1991, only a handful of
people died; when it struck China recently, 60 thousand people died...
It is true that China has a lot more people, but maybe it also has
a bad government that built bad schools in which thousands
of children died.
Chinese experts have admitted that the danger of an earthquake in that area
was well known by the authorities (see this article), and nonetheless the Chinese government didn't do anything to make sure that all those buildings would withstand the damage.
When 60.000 people die (or even only 6,000) in any democratic
country of the world, the government is held responsible.
Mainland China has a government that is fine-tuned for suppressing dissent
and oppressing minorities, not for saving the lives of its citizens.
But most Chinese seem incapable of blaming their government even for the
most obvious failings.
And if the foreign media criticize their government, many young Chinese seem
offended instead of grateful that someone speaks up.
That's another case in which the Chinese of mainland China should learn
from the Chinese of Taiwan.
It is not clear at all what kind of country mainland China is in the process
of creating. One thing is for sure: mainland China entered the new millennium
with the best wishes from the whole world, but just eight years later the
world is getting worried about mainland China's attitudes.
It's like when you welcome a guest to your house, and the guest starts behaving
like it's now his house.
But then those neo-nationalists may not represent the Chinese people at all.
Most Chinese are super-friendly and truly want to be friends with Westerners.
It's mainly the cadre of urban male students that is stirring anti-western
trouble and shaping this new kind of Chinese nationalism. Alas, they are the
ones who should know history.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2008)
An anti-CNN world.
We live in a dangerous world. Not because of proliferating weapons of mass
destruction and hyper-terrorism, but because of the relativism that brings
many to criticize the free media of the West while condoning the censorship
of totalitarian regimes.
Nobody is perfect but people in the West have been long accustomed to hear
many sides of the same story. And in many countries (such as the USA) the
newspapers, magazines and tv stations are the main critics of the government.
The media have uncovered plenty of scandals that have destroyed plenty of
powerful politicians (from USA president Richard Nixon to Tom DeLay, Trent
Lott and so forth). Without the media, there would be less control on
politics.
This is not the case in most of the world, particularly in the Arab world and
in China, where the media are tightly controlled by the government and the
slightest critique may land you in jail for the rest of your life.
However it is precisely in this part of the world that awareness of the
Western media has caused a backlash. The Chinese regime has realized that
it can easily appease the USA politicians (whether by diplomacy or by
corruption) but not the USA media. It has also realized that the indirect
power of the media (that simply show what is happening) is greater than
the direct power of the USA president (who can argue but is still arguing
opinions, not facts). In other words, the issue is that in the West public
opinion matters more than presidents and prime ministers. And public opinion
is largely shaped by what people see and hear on the media.
Therefore the Chinese have taken on attacking the media, not the governments,
of the West.
This is not new. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and countless Latin American
dictators have always accused the Western media and Western scholars (and even
live witnesses) of "distorting" the facts whenever the Western media and
scholars documented the real nature of those regimes.
The Chinese are simply adapting that strategy to the era of the Internet.
Thanks to the Internet, the masses of educated Chinese people can compare
on the fly the facts that their government feeds them and the facts that
the Western media report.
It is surprising to both the West and to the Chinese leadership itself that
the comparison is leading millions of Chinese to conclude that it is the
Western media, not their government-censored media, that distort the news.
In other words, the Chinese government is gladly realizing that the feared
power of the Internet is actually working in its favor.
Chinese people even set up an "Anti-CNN" website (that is really an anti-West
website), whose motto is "We just want the truth" (a bit like the Japanese
of the 1930s choosing "We love China" as their motto).
On countless websites the Chinese people are telling us that Western media
are distorting the facts when
it is fairly obvious that it is their media who are distorting the facts.
We don't forbid foreign journalists to march in San Francisco with the
protesters, take pictures, interview people. The Chinese government has
expelled all foreign journalists from Tibet, forbids interviews with Tibetans
and shuts down any website that posts pictures of Tibet (including mine).
I have repeatedly tried to post comments on Chinese websites but every time my
comments are immediately removed: the Chinese people will never read
any comment other than the ones approved by the government. There
might be thousands of people like me who are trying to tell the
Chinese what is really happening, but our voices cannot be heard by
the Chinese. Only one voice is heard in China.
How can anyone trust the Chinese media that forbid any dissenting voice
and not trust the Western media where all voices can be heard?
I read on Chinese websites that there have been no protests around the world,
that all of us who claim to have seen such protests are paid by the CIA.
Do the Chinese people really believe that all of this is invented
by the Western media?
Unfortunately plenty of Westerners (especially the younger ones who did not
live through fascism and communism) tend to side with the Chinese propaganda.
What is it that makes westerners (especially young westerners) believe
the media of totalitarian regimes more than their own free media?
The record shows that consistently the media of totalitarian
regimes had wildly distorted the truth (eg, Mussolini, Hitler,
Soviet Union, Mao, Cuba, various Latin American dictators, etc etc).
What makes these westerners think that the Chinese government is the exception
to the rule?
Why don't these westerners write to the Chinese government asking them to
reopen Tibet so that international teams can investigate what truly happened?
If the Chinese government is telling the truth, why does it keep everybody
from entering Tibet and interviewing the witnesses?
We are entering an age in which the over-abundance of information due to the
Internet is actually creating enough confusion that people are more likely
to question the reliable sources than the unreliable ones.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (april 2008)
Why the world shouldn't boycott the Olympic Games.
As protests against the regime of mainland China (and particularly its
occupation of Tibet) are mounting around the world, there are also growing
demands for the world to boycott the Olympics in Beijing.
That would be a bad idea.
First of all, the Olympic Games are already too political. It is a bad
precedent every time the Olympics are used for political purposes.
Secondly, the decision has been taken: the Olympic Committee chose Beijing.
If there was a problem, it should have been discussed then. Nothing has changed
in the politics of mainland China (in fact, it has improved quite a bit).
The regime of mainland China never promised democratic elections, independence
for Tibet, free speech or anything else. We cannot hold mainland China guilty
for not respecting a "treaty" that we never asked them to sign. They are continuing
policies that were in effect when the Olympic Committee (mainly controlled by
Western powers) assigned the Games to Beijing.
If it was ok to have the Olympics in Beijing when it was decided, then it is
still ok. Blame it on the Olympic Committee, i.e. on the Western powers themselves.
Thirdly, it would offend the Chinese people. It would embarrass the Chinese
leaders, but it would greatly offend the average Chinese person. It might be
useful for the average Chinese person to realize the way the world views
their regime, but it is unpredictable how this humiliation would shape the
mind of this generation of heavily-westernized Chinese people. They might turn
against the very West that gave them the Olympic Games as a sign of friendship.
It takes a while to understand the mindset of the Chinese people. After all,
the Olympic Games are a 2780-year old Western invention. Why would the
Chinese (who are so proud of their own ancient civilization) be so sensitive
about a tradition that the West has almost forced them to adopt a century
ago? Why be so proud about a Western invention when the whole Chinese culture
is so imbued with fear and hatred of the foreign powers that oppressed China
for 150 years? It is not easy to explain but, paradoxically, the Chinese would
be mortally offended if the West boycotted this very Western invention.
And that would not be a good way to make the Chinese people appreciate Western
civilization.
What we (the world) should demand is that mainland China refrains from any
political statement of its own. For example, any explicit or implicit
reference to its right to rule over Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mongolia, etc etc.
No speeches. No parades. No nothing. Just play and shut up.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (march 2008)
The Chinese people against Tibet (and everybody else).
It is not only the government of mainland China that insists in occupying
Tibet: the same sentiment is shared by the vast majority of the Han Chinese
people (Han being the dominant ethnic group, the one that foreigners refer
to as "Chinese"). They have been brainwashed for five decades by their
government to believe that Tibet was always part of China, and that the
whole "Free Tibet" movement was engineered by the evil Westerners to
dismember China.
During the recent riots in Tibet, that left more than 100 Tibetans dead and
thousands arrested, ordinary Chinese have been outraged not by the oppression
of the Tibetan independence movement but by the fact that the Chinese police
was not tough enough against the Tibetan demonstrators. Ordinary Chinese
citizens are demanding a much more violent crackdown ("kill all those Tibetan dogs" as
someone wrote on a Chinese website).
Suddenly the Internet itself is becoming the tool to spread nationalist
and racist
propaganda. The very Internet that was supposed to bring information to
the oppressed people of mainland China is being used to justify the methods
of the oppressors. Chinese websites are overflowing with discussions in which
average Chinese citizens (mostly young ones) defend the government's repression of Tibetan protests and advocate toughest measures against Tibetans.
This video is a good summary of the argument, as seen from the viewpoint of the average Chinese in Beijing or Shanghai.
The first argument is about legitimacy. Mainland China claims that Tibet
has been part of China for centuries. First of all, one should decide which
"China" we are talking about: the peaceful, free and democratic China of Taiwan,
or the totalitarian, violent and oppressive China of Beijing?
Second, it all depends on your definition of "independence". Tibet was
certainly part of the Mongol empire, that installed the Yuan dynasty in
China, just like the rest of China and like most of Asia. Saying that Tibet
was part of China is like saying that today Beijing is part of Shanghai: they
are both parts of the same empire. The Ming and Qing inherited a loose
federation of provinces that they never fully controlled, and Tibet was
the most independent of them all. There never was a single Chinese soldier
stationed in Tibet. There never was any Chinese law that applied to Tibet.
The Chinese language was never the language of Tibet. The Dalai Lama was
the head of state. The very Chinese who tell you that Tibet was part of China
will also tell you that the Tibetans lived in slavery under the Dalai Lama
before China invaded Tibet... So which one is which? Was Tibet part of China
(and therefore the Dalai Lama was not responsible for the conditions of Tibet)
or was Tibet independent (and therefore the Dalai Lama was responsible for
the conditions of Tibet)? The same Chinese person will tell you both stories
because the government spun both stories at different times.
Another objection to this argument is, of course, that one doesn't see
how the slavery under the Dalai Lama is any worse than the current slavery
under the Chinese Han.
Incidentally, Tibet was a much bigger nation than the current province of
Xizang (the province that westerners call "Tibet"). Portions of that nation
were taken by Mao and given to neighboring provinces.
Even if Tibet had indeed been occupied by Han China for seven centuries, this
would hardly justify a continuing occupation in the future. Southern Italy
was ruled by Spain for centuries: does this mean that the Southern Italians
were wrong in revolting against linguistically and ethnically different
Spain and joining a free Italy? Were all the
Spanish colonies in Latin America supposed to remain under Spanish domination forever?
Were all the colonies of the European powers supposed to belong forever to
those European empires?
Was the USA wrong in revolting against the British and declaring independence?
All in all, it makes more sense that the Tibetans (who are linguistically and
ethnically different from the Chinese) declare their independence from China
than for the Latin American countries to declare their independence from
Spain (they speak the same language and have been ruled mostly by ethnically
Spanish people).
The argument about "legitimacy" has sent shockwaves throughout the region.
For example,
at one point north Vietnam was invaded and incorporated into the Chinese empire:
does that mean that, according to the Chinese people, China has a legitimate
claim on north Vietnam? When China claims Taiwan, at least China is claiming
people who are Han Chinese and who speak the same language. But Tibet is
neither. Which other nations does China want to invade?
Of course, Tibet views it the other way around: if Kosovo and the Palestinians
(two entities that never existed in history as independent countries)
are entited to independence, why not Tibet?
The second argument is that China is a "melting pot" with 56 ethnic groups.
In the age of the USA, every country wants to be considered a melting pot.
What the Chinese don't tell you is that the Han people make up 92% of the
country's population. The other 55 ethnic groups make up only 8% of the
population. Not much of a melting pot, eh?
They also don't tell you that those 55 ethnic groups have never been allowed
to vote in a referendum about being part of China: they were forced with
violence to accept the rule of Beijing (and therefore of the Han people).
The difference between the melting pot of the USA and the "melting pot" of
China is simple: the ethnic groups of the USA came as immigrants to the USA,
because they wanted to become USA citizens (and that includes a few million
Chinese), whereas the ethnic groups of China were conquered through war,
and most of them never wanted to become Chinese citizens (so much so that
very few people ever immigrated to China from other countries, unlike the USA
that attracts millions of immigrants even from distant Africa and even from
its own "enemies", such as Russia, China, Western Europe, the Arab world).
Saying that today's China is a melting pot of ethnic groups that coexist
peacefully is like saying that the Japanese empire of the 1930s was a
melting pot that included Chinese, Koreans, etc.
Another popular argument is that China is doing to Tibet what Europeans did
to the USA, Canada and Australia: occupy and enslave the native people.
This is a funny argument. Basically they accuse the West of having committed
a crime, and therefore they feel that it is ok to commit the same crime.
It's like me condemning someone for a crime and then committing the very same crime.
The Chinese have not even read a USA textbook, otherwise they would know that
the USA has long admitted the injustice.
Chinese websites ask for the USA to let Texas independent, Canada to let Quebec
independent, Britain to let Scotland independent. The difference is that
Texas, Quebec and Scotland are free to vote for independence. Tibet is not.
We know how Quebec voted (they voted against independence). We don't know how
Tibet would vote, because nobody in China has the slightest intention of
allowing Tibetans to vote.
Borrowing a line or two from the anti-USA propaganda of the Arabs,
the Chinese claim that the whole Tibetan crisis is engineered by the CIA
for the purpose of dismembering China.
In other words, the Tibetans are happy to be ruled by the Chinese: it's the
evil CIA that stirs up trouble.
The Chinese have been told by their government that Tibet was a British colony
when China invaded Tibet (another contradiction: was it ruled by the Dalai
Lama or not?)
In other words, China "liberated" Tibet from the evil British.
The truth is that Tibet was never part of China, and was never a British colony.
Ask the Tibetans themselves.
It is now a colony (a colony of China) for the first time in its history.
Ask the Tibetans themselves.
Borrowing another line from the anti-USA propaganda that is popular in the
Arab world,
the Chinese blame the whole problem on a conspiracy by the western media, that
would be biased against mainland China (and Chinese things in general).
Basically, it's the western media that fabricate the news of scores of
Tibetans killed and arrested. There is a widespread belief that the western
media, not the Chinese media, distort what is really happening in Tibet.
Despite the fact that the western media are uncensored (and visibly criticize
their own governments) whereas the Chinese media are obviously controlled and
censored by the Chinese government, there is now a tendency to believe in the
Chinese media and distrust the western media.
It is ironic that the Chinese people would rather believe their
government-controlled media (that censor the news) than the free media of the
West (that do not censor the news).
I read Chinese websites that accuse the BBC of insulting China: the BBC website
is blocked in China, and it has been blocked for many years. Those Chinese
people have NEVER seen the BBC website. How can they say if the BBC is
insulting them?
Finally, the Chinese often refer to Tibetans as barbarians who are being
civilized by the superior Han race (an exact replica of the argument used by
the Japanese to justify their invasion and colonization of China in the 1930s).
The Chinese boast of all the marvels that they have created for the barbaric
Tibetans: bridges, buildings, trains. And that proves that
the Chinese just don't get it. They are
proud that China spends millions of dollars to develop
Tibet: that's precisely what makes the Tibetans angry,
just like the Chinese got angry when, a century ago, Japan spent millions of
dollars to develop its Chinese possessions.
The images of Chinese-built buildings, bridges, trains are as terrifying as
the buildings, bridges and trains that the Japanese built in China a century
ago (for the same reason: to steal the natural resources - and with the same excuse: to bring progress to an underdeveloped country).
From the point of view of the Tibetans, all those roads and bridges will bring
more Chinese colonists and more Chinese troops, and will be used to steal more
of Tibet's resources. The Chinese people claim that they are paying taxes to
develop Tibet: they don't seem to realize that their taxes are used by their
government to pay for the army that occupies Tibet (not a yuan of their taxes
ends in the pockets of a Tibetan, it ends in the pockets of the army), so that
the army can protect the mining operations that are stealing Tibet's resources,
and then the roads and railways are used to transport the loot into China.
Why should the Tibetans be happy that China is building roads and bridges?
Why should the Tibetans be happy that China is colonizing and looting Tibet?
The Chinese government also uses the exact same excuse as the Japanese
used: we are liberating you from the European masters.
The Chinese government learned too well from the Japanese government
of a century ago. It may also have to learn what happens at the end...
Of course, the Chinese media have not informed the Chinese people that
there have been anti-Chinese protests all over the world, from Africa to
India, from Argentina to Europe, from Australia to Korea, from
Scandinavia to Brazil (Shame on the USA government for being silent).
Is this what the 2008 Olympic Games mean? that China is spitting in the
face of the entire world?
It all boils down to which media are reliable. More and more Chinese tend
to believe the Chinese government and the Chinese media, on everything from
the history of China to the nature and extent of today's riots. The Western
media, on the other hand, are taken to be accomplices in some kind of
anti-Chinese conspiracy,
lie about the past and the present of Tibet, and support the evil Dalai Lama.
Dear Chinese friends, have you heard the Dalai Lama speak on television or
radio? If not, why not? What is Hu Jingtao afraid of?
Why is Hu Jingtao so afraid of a man who doesn't even have an army?
And why is Hu Jingtao, the president of a superpower, even afraid of me? (One of my websites is blocked in China)
(Note: the postings on Chinese websites are artfully controlled. A link to this
article of mine, that i had posted on a Chinese website, was removed within 24
hours by a zealous webmaster. The Chinese people will never read this article,
just like they will never read thousands of articles published around the world).
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Back to the world news | Top of this page
- (march 2008)
Why Kosovo and not Tibet?
The West recognizes the unilaterla declaration of independence by Kovoso, a
tiny Serbian province that also happens to be the historical homeland of Serbia.
There was no previous Kosovo state in history. The independence of Kosovo
also dramatically changes the religion and ethnicity of that region.
(See Why Kosovo?)
On the other hand, there did exist an independent state of Tibet. It has
been and still is Buddhist, and inhabited by people who speak Tibetan.
It was invaded by Mao's China in the 1950s and annexed to China, its territory
distributed among three provinces.
No wonder that Tibetans feel that they are more entitled to independence than
Kosovo. Why does the West see Kosovo's claim to independence but not Tibet's?
The answer is probably two-fold: 1. Kosovo is Muslim whereas Tibet is
Buddhist, and 2. mainland China is much more powerful than Serbia.
Neither logic nor international law have anything to do with it.
Just like in Myanmar/Burma the protest was started by Buddhist monks.
It is ironic that mainland China urged Burma to respond peacefully.
Now it is mainland China that has to deal with the same problem, and it has
responded with the usual rigor.
Buddhists, however, are not as successful as Muslims in turning their problems
into everybody's problems. They have no terrorists, no suicide bombers, no
death squads, no mad dictators, they don't behead hostages, they don't throw
rockets, they don't hijack planes, and most of them are even opposed to
violence, no matter what.
The West does not reward peaceful ideologies.
Mainland China is still run by a gang of
pseudo-communists, has increased its anti-democratic activities (for example,
shutting down most of the Internet for the Chinese people), has not even
the slightest intention to grant democratic elections, supports all sorts
of mad dictators around the world (from North Korea to Sudan),
and consistently threatens its neighbors with war (Taiwan).
Serbia, on the other hand, ousted its communist dictator, Milosevic, and installed a democratic government. It has abided by international law and does not threaten its neighbors.
The West does not reward democracy either.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2007 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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