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China news tagged with: nationalism (162)

• Perry Link and Joshua Kurlantzick: China’s Modern Authoritarianism

  

  From the Wall Street Journal:

  In the wake of the 1989 crackdown on prodemocracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party seemed morally bankrupt. Average Chinese complained bitterly about graft and special privileges reserved for the Party’s elite, and few believed the Party’s sloganeering about socialism when officials practiced ruthless capitalism. The army, too, had lost face: The Tiananmen killings showed that the “people’s army” could open fire on the people themselves. The urban economy seemed locked within an inefficient and corrupt iron framework of the old work-unit system. No one either inside or outside China saw the country’s authoritarian system as a model to follow.

  Twenty years later, the Chinese Communist Party has built a new popularity by delivering staggering economic growth and cultivating a revived — and potentially dangerous — Han Chinese nationalism. China’s material successes, as seen in its gleaming city skylines and piles of foreign currency holdings, suggest the government’s top priority is economic growth. The increasing socioeconomic diversity in Chinese society suggests that the regime seeks liberalization and might one day throw open its political system.

  These are dangerous misconceptions. The Party’s top priority remains what it has always been: the maintenance of absolute political power. Economic growth has not sparked democratic change, as one-party rule persists. Through a sophisticated adaptation of its system — including leveraging the market to maintain political control — China’s Communist Party has modernized its authoritarianism to fit the times.

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  • May 24, 2009 9:21 PM

• Contemporary Chinese Youth and the State

  

  In the new edition of the Journal of Asian Studies, Stanley Rosen writes about Chinese youth culture and politics:

  Reflecting the increasing pluralization of Chinese society after thirty years of reform, Chinese youth in 2009 are far from unified in their belief systems or behaviors. At the same time, a more general understanding of the attitudes and behaviors of Chinese youth has proved elusive for observers, both inside and outside China. Up until mid-2008, it was common to find youth under attack in the Chinese media, characterized as the “me generation” and criticized for being “reliant and rebellious, cynical and pragmatic, self-centered and equality-obsessed,” as well as “China’s first generation of couch potatoes, addicts of online games, patrons of fast food chains, and loyal audiences of Hollywood movies.”6 The Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, however, seemingly changed everything: The same media outlets that had written off such youth now reversed themselves to extol their virtues, while noting, not just in passing, that their altruistic behavior was not surprising because they had learned the virtues of “great compassion, benevolence, and gallantness” from imbibing traditional Chinese culture, and that, after all, they had “fully enjoyed the achievements of China’s 30 years of reform and opening up.”7 Still, it is difficult to reconcile these compassionate youth with those who are angry. Indeed, reflecting the continuing influence of the recent past, some Chinese critics have referred to Internet-savvy nationalists as “online Red Guards” infected by a “populist virus.”8

  It seems clear that there are competing and often contradictory influences shaping the attitudes and values of young Chinese today, particularly in the wealthy coastal areas. They have become very internationalist in their outlook, and they are strongly affected by global trends. Likewise, they are very pragmatic and materialistic, largely concerned with living the good life and making money. The third competing influence, most often called nationalism in its more extreme form, represents a broader impulse and encompasses not only the defense of China against perceived enemies from abroad, but also the kind of love of country and self-sacrifice in support of those most in need that was evident in the volunteerism that followed the earthquake. Chinese youth have shown that they are capable of exhibiting all of these tendencies at different times, depending on the circumstances, or even at the same time.

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  • May 14, 2009 9:14 PM

• 10 Year Anniversary: May 8, 1999

  

  While other historic dates are getting more press time this year, the ten-year anniversary of the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO missiles, and subsequent protests in China, passed relatively quietly last week. China Beat provides links to some readings on the incident:

  The events that began with the May 4th protests and the struggle that took place seventy years later during the lead-up to the June 4th Massacre loom largest in the history of Chinese youth activism in years ending with the numeral 9. But there were also protests involving university students in other years ending with that number, including 1999. These took place soon after the 80th anniversary of the may 4th Movement was marked, and they were triggered by NATO missiles hitting the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three PRC nationals. The Embassy was hit on May 7 European time, but by then it was already May 8 in China. So, following a time-honored tradition, the term “May 8th Tragedy” was used for the event. Here are links to five accounts of the protests of that year (some by people whose names will be familiar to many readers of China Beat). They remind readers of what happened ten years ago and offer differing interpretations of how the demonstrations of 1999 should be contrasted with and in some cases can be linked to the student-led actions of years such as 1919 and 1989

  On his blog 6, Alec Ash interviews a Chinese student about the meaning of that event ten years later:

  2. What do you believe has changed now in the attitude of young Chinese (like those who protested 10 years ago against the USA) towards America?

  Over the past decade, I think the young Chinese have gradually dropped their illusion of the U.S. and begun to view it more objectively.

  After reform and opening-up, to be more specific in the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese people began to know more about the outside world. The prosperity of the west attracted the young people so much that all of a sudden everybody wanted to go abroad. At that time, we had a popular saying, “Moon of the west is even more beautiful than that of China.” Experiencing the sharp contrast between China and the west, many Chinese people became critical of China, perhaps in a cynical way.

  However, when the Chinese embassy was bombed, many people began to think: is this the kind of democracy and human rights that we want to pursue?

  People’s Daily also published an editorial on the anniversary:

  Ten years later, US media has selectively forgotten this event, and re-examinations by US authorities are rare. “Mistaken Bombing” is the final explanation and attitude of the US.

  A member of the US president China-focused advisory group said that China has already risen 10 years after the event, and the relations between China and the US have been stable and developed a good momentum. The “Mistaken Bombing” has become a blip in history. Experts on China’s military issues believe however, that over the past 10 years, it is just because China has made such tremendous and sincere efforts that the cooperation between China and the US has expanded rather than stagnated. Taking into account that this event is a page already turned in history, the alertness and latent hostility that the US holds towards China seems not to have vanished. The best example to prove this issue is with the results from the monitoring of US troop ships in Chinese seas over the past two months.

  You can also read an article I wrote ten years ago from Beijing for The Nation.

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  • May 10, 2009 4:10 PM

• China Marks 90th Anniversary of ‘May Fourth Movement’

  

  Danwei looks at domestic magazine coverage of the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement:

  “Youth” is the day’s keyword. May 4 was designated National Youth Day in 1949 to commemorate the students in the street, but it is the “new youth” from the pages of the magazine who dominate retrospectives ninety years on.

  The April issue of Modern Media’s Life magazine included a supplement modeled on Chen’s magazine. The Modern Media La Jeunesse is printed vertically (in simplified characters) and includes advertisements for books and journals done up in the style of a Republican-era publication. The cover even bears an imprimatur from the PRC publishing authorities where New Youth has an authorization from the Republican post bureau.

  See also a Xinhua report on the official commemoration of the historic day:

  The “May Fourth Movement” started with mass student protests on May 4, 1919 against the government’s response to the Treaty of Versailles that imposed unfair treaties on China and undermined the country’s sovereignty.

  It then spearheaded a national campaign to overthrow the feudal society and promote scientific and democratic ideas.

  “We have seen many young people devoted themselves to the revival of great China since the ‘May Fourth Movement’,” said DengXiquan, an expert from China Juvenile Research Center. “The movement’s legacy is deeply rooted and powerful. China needs it now to unite people to work for a better country.”

  The past 90 years have shown that upholding the leadership of the CPC has always been the fundamental guarantee to drive forward all social undertakings of the country, Li said in the speech.

  See also an essay in People’s Daily comparing the youth protesters of 1919 to today’s “angry youth” (”奋青”).

  » Read more
  • May 4, 2009 12:04 PM

• It’s Just History: Patriotic Education in the PRC

  

  On China Beat, Julia Lovell looks at various explanations for the rampant nationalism in China over the past 20 years and argues that in fact the education system is to blame:

  Various explanations have been put forward for the surge in anti-Western nationalism since 1989. One is straightforwardly cyclical: as economic confidence grew, the reasoning goes, early post-Mao China’s love affair with the West was bound to founder at some point. Another is hormonal: the “angry youth” (fenqing) who dominate contemporary Chinese nationalism, some argue, need something to get mad at – they’ll grow out of it. Twenty years ago, today’s fenqing would have been protesting against rats in their dorms and lack of democracy; go back another twenty years, and they would have been Red Guards.

  But the most convincing gloss on today’s patriotic distemper presents it as a substantially state-engineered phenomenon, rooted in one of the Communist Party’s most successful post-Mao political crusades: Patriotic Education. Searching for a new state religion around which the country could rally after the bloodshed of 1989, the Party skilfully reinvented itself through the 1990s as defender of the national interest against Western attempts to contain a rising China. To dislodge the worship of the West that had helped foment much of the unrest leading up to 1989, successive Patriotic Education campaigns waged in textbooks, newspapers, films and monuments drew concerted attention to China’s “century of humiliation” (c. 1840-1949) inflicted by foreign imperialism, always beginning with the Opium Wars, always passing slickly over the CCP’s own acts of violence (most notably the manmade famine of the early 1960s; the Cultural Revolution; the 1989 crackdown).

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  • April 23, 2009 12:11 PM

• A Satire That Caused an Uproar in Both China and The Philippines

  

  Hong Kong columnist Chip Tsao (陶杰 Tao Jie) wrote a satirical article recently commenting on the dispute over the Spratly Islands between China and the Philippines. Very few Chinese or Filipinos got his humor. Instead, so many Filipinos were infuriated by the “racism” displayed in the article that Manila barred Tsao’s entry. While Tsao received very different reactions from Chinese readers, his message was also misinterpreted. Tsao was trying to ridicule fanatic patriotism in the article. But tens of thousands Chinese thought he was defending China’s territory and are lauding him as a patriotic hero.

  Tsao is a seasoned newsman and a well-known columnist in Hong Kong. He got his college education in Britain, worked for BBC for some years, and now writes articles for Apple Daily and Hong Kong Magazine regularly.

  The article at issue, A War at Home, was published in Hong Kong Magazine on March 27, in which Tsao wrote about the Spratly Islands dispute from the perspective of fervent patriots among his countrymen.

  The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen onboard. We can live with that-—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem-—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

  But hold on—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: There are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as HK$3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

  As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell everyone of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China…

  The phrase “a nation of servants” together with other “racist” remarks — if they are taken literally — offended Filipino workers in Hong Kong and back home. They staged a protest, and the Bureau of Immigration in Manila barred Tsao from entering the Philippines. Tsao’s publisher, Hong Kong Magazine, has pulled the article off its website and replaced it with an apology.

  The story appeared in headlines on dozens of major news websites in Mainland China shortly afterward, getting a sea of responses from readers.

  The Chinese reporter who wrote the story didn’t bother to contact Tsao for comment, and he probably didn’t read Tsao’s original article. Instead, Fang Xiao at Dongfang Daily described the incident as follows:

  …Tsao said in the article that as a patriot, he could not stand the Filipino government’s claim of sovereignty over Spratly Islands, because there are more than 130,000 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong. He wrote, “as a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master.”

  The Dongfang Daily story was posted Monday on the top section at Sina.com, the most popular news portal in China, under the headline, “More than a thousand Filipino workers demonstrated in Hong Kong to protest racial discrimination.”

  Racial discrimination is usually not a hot topic among the Chinese public. The editors of Sina.com posted the story as a top one probably because it involves territorial disputes, which often catch the eyes of millions in China.

  The several thousand comments made by readers under the article are intriguing. They vividly exhibit how the general public in China view national sovereignty and racial equality. Below are a dozen comments representing diverse viewpoints selected and translated by CDT:

  —Domestic workers are human beings. They should be respected. This is a different matter from the territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands. On the other hand, overseas Filipino workers and their government should definitely respect history and respect China’s sacred territorial sovereignty, while their labor and dignity are respected.

  —I support Tao Jie (Chip Tsao). What’s wrong with racial discrimination? Who treated the Chinese as human beings when the Joint Forces of Eight Nations invaded Beijing and during the Nanjing Massacre?

  —The people in Hong Kong are very proud. They look down on mainland Chinese. Thus it’s not surprising that they look down on the Filipinos. In the 80s, the Hong Kong students in America never thought themselves as Chinese and never made friends with us mainland students.

  —The people in Hong Kong show their patriotism by discriminating against their domestic servants. How ridiculous!That’s extremely ridiculous!!!

  —Why do you employ Filipino workers if you are patriotic? Why can’t you look for mainland workers instead? Dispelling the Filipino domestic servants from Hong Kong and hiring mainland workers, you will create so many new jobs for us. That could be called real patriotism.

  —Do not impose on others something you dislike! Why have we Chinese become so selfish today? Can’t we put ourselves in other people’s shoes? If we were them (the Filipinos), wouldn’t we stand up to defend our motherland? Think about the relations between China and Japan in the past…What’s the difference between our current behavior and the old conduct of the Japanese?

  —We could just take them (the Filipino workers) as dogs which were barking in front of their masters. They don’t even deserve to be servants! I can’t help but feel superior when it comes to my mind that this country (the Philippines) was dependent on us during the Tang Dynasty!!

  —I didn’t like Tao Jie before and regarded him as a lackey of foreigners. I was surprised that he actually loves the nation. I completely agree with his points. I will fire the Filipino worker at my home today and show my support through action.

  —His patriotic remarks are too extreme! They don’t match with the mettle of a big power (as China).

  —It takes courage to make an apology. We can not disrespect any people from any country.

  —Tao Jie’s remarks are shameful. I can’t accept them! He inherited the tone of racist discrimination from the British colonists. We must criticize that.

  —Tao Jie should learn to be smarter. He could have just kept those thoughts to himself. Why did he have to say it?

  The above comments are selected from more 3,000 posted under the Sina.com article.

  Asiasentinel.com published an article on the incident, Satire Lost In A Foreign Language, by Alice Poon.

  A well-known Hong Kong journalist and blogger, Lv Qiu Lu Wei, also wrote a blog article A Patriotic Writer? commenting on the incident (in Chinese).

  » Read more
  • April 8, 2009 1:42 PM

• Book Stokes Nationalism in China

  

  Reviews of the new nationalist tome, Unhappy China, are coming in. From the Wall Street Journal:

  Several reviews in the Chinese media have ridiculed “Unhappy China” as an attempt to cash in on nationalistic sentiment. The book is a way to “fish money from the pockets of the angry youth and angry elderly,” wrote one critic in the China Youth Daily, a leading state-run newspaper.

  An English-language article by Xinhua, the state-run news agency, said the book had failed to hit a chord with average Chinese, and quoted blistering critiques from bloggers and academics calling its nationalism embarrassing and unconstructive.

  
  An article in Newsweek reports that the book is the product of a changing mood in China amid the global financial meltdown:

  The mood in china appears to be reaching a tipping point, as its normally bland leaders abandon cautious diplo-speak under the pressures of the global financial crisis. First, they blamed American capitalism for the crisis and Premier Wen Jiabao publicly pressed Washington to ensure the safety of some $2 trillion in U.S. debt held by Beijing. Then Central Bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for replacing the greenback with a new reserve currency controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a move that would assure the long-term decline of the dollar. All this signals an increasingly assertive economic nationalism, and it is only the tip of the iceberg.

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  • March 29, 2009 8:41 PM

• ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ in Chinese Cyber-Politics

  

  Ever since the Internet was popularized in the late 1990s, Chinese BBS sites and blogosphere have been politically quite polarized, divided into “left” and “right” camps. But these concepts are very different from ideas of “left” and “right” in Western politics.

  Here are two sample posts of how Chinese netizens themselves typically define “left” and “right”. The first post was written by netizen Minyue in a nationalistic (”leftist”) online forum Tiexue, in which someone posted a question asking others to define ‘leftist’ or ‘rightist’ in Chinese cyberspace. Translated by CDT:

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  • March 22, 2009 10:41 PM

• Nationalism Rages in New Chinese Book

  

  One of China’s newest book releases is Unhappy China: The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges(《中国不高兴：大时代，大目标及我们的内忧外患》). A 2009 analog to the nationalist 1996 bestseller China Can Say No, the book is a stinging critique of Western countries and their media. The Zhongnanhai blog translates a Oriental Morning Post (东方早报) article:

  The book Unhappy China - The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges has been put on the shelves of Beijing bookstores. The book is authored by Song Xiaojun, Wang Xiaodong, Song Qiang, Huangjisong, and Liu Yang.

  Unhappy China contains severe criticism of western countries, with the harshest words reserved for the United States. Zhang Xiaobo, who helped plan the book, said, “This is the revised and upgraded version of the book China Can Say No published in 1996. In the past 12 years, the situation inside and outside of China has changed dramatically, however, there is just one thing that hasn’t changed and never will change: that is we Chinese need to tell the western world we are not happy about what they did to us.”

  One of the authors of this book, Song Qing, was also one of the authors of China Can Say No.

  Unhappy China has 340 thousand words, and is published by Jiang Su Renmin Publishing House. Zhang Xiaopo said, “What happened to us Chinese in 2008 made Chinese people really angry, depressed and annoyed. We finally had our Olympics and we finally made it to the center of the world stage, but look what we got! Boycotts from the western world; treated by them like we are different kind of animal in the world.”

  Oiwan Lam of Global Voices Online has also written about the new release and has translated portions of a book summary posted on Douban:

  Why is China unhappy?
  - There are ghosts behind the Lhasa 3.14 incident, the strategic encirclement of Western World towards China has become more concrete and obvious.
  - Sanlu milk power incident has result in a “psychological tear” among Chinese people. It threaten a strong nation’s core values.
  - People like Nicolas Sarkozy have been offensive to China out of nasty opportunism.
  - The so-called “knowledge elites” or “excellent Chinese people” are harmful to our national spirit.

  [...]What should China advocate?
  - China should become a country with heroic mission.
  - Hold our sword to protect our business, this is a way to build a strong nation.
  - The National Liberation Army should follow China’s core value.
  - We should not listen to the sweet talk of “finance warriors”, industrial upgrade is the fundamentals
  - Get to know the “Russian Roulette” nature of western diplomatic strategy, lower the concrete diplomatic relation with France.
  - China should be brave in protecting international security and clear our path towards a strong country.
  - Avoid high-art’s culture for affecting our social life or else we cannot actualized our political and economic goals.

  Lam has also translated some online reactions on Douban. Some readers heartily recommend the book, while others disdain the publication. From the user abing:

  The content of this book is very simple. It follows the old demagogic discourse of China can say No, reconfigures a number of contemporary social problems, and finds some entrance points in attacking Southern Weekend, Jian Zhong Shu, Wang Xiao Bo. It tells us, China is good enough, don’t be self-critical, don’t be caught in internal problem, the West is just a paper tiger. What else? There is nothing else.

  » Read more
  • March 13, 2009 10:50 PM

• A Chinese Pirate Unmasks

  

  On the New Yorker’s website, Evan Osnos writes about an essay, titled “All of China is a Knock-Off,” which first appeared on the Chinese online forum Douban and said it was the translated version of a piece by someone named Steven Zuckerberg. The piece provoked debate by arguing that, “China is racked by a culture of imitation that stifles genuine creativity.” Osnos reports:

  But the essay is a more subtle piece of work than you might think: A tip from a Chinese friend led me to contact Wang Hongzhe, a twenty-five-year-old graduate student in mass communication at Peking University, who acknowledged that he is the reputed Steven Zuckerberg. (He chose the initials S.Z. as a nod to shanzhai, the Chinese term for “imitation.”) His essay was an experiment: Would China respond differently to criticism from abroad than it would to criticism from home? It’s a long-running question that gets to the heart of China’s erratic appetite for dissent, and the same question that vexed Lu Xun, the famous social critic, who wrote seventy-five years ago: “Throughout the ages Chinese have had only one way of looking at foreigners. We either look up to them as gods or down on them as wild animals.”

  DAnwei interviews Osnos about reporting from China here.

  » Read more
  • March 5, 2009 3:10 PM

• Zhang Wen (章文): Continue to be a Clear-Minded Patriot in 2009

  

  Zhang Wen (章文), a thirty-something writer/editor and former head of the editorial department of Xinhua’s Globe magazine, makes the case for “clear-minded” patriotism in China in a recent blog post, translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan:

  As the new year approaches, I’d like to say a few words out of my heart, to boost the spirit of myself and my friends.

  To the Chinese people, the past year was one of great joy and great sorrow. It was also a year of heated debates on several major incidents. Fervent public opinions were aroused on the Tibet Independence incident, Carrefour boycott, the Olympic Games, etc. Among all the debates, the topic of patriotism and betrayal is the most conspicuous one in 2008.

  As we have seen, anyone that tried to keep a calm mind and to comment reasonably on the incidents was labeled as a traitor. The more passionately one spoke about the issues, the more patriotic he was regarded. The case of the Olympic torch bearer Jin Jing illustrated the phenomenon well. She was highly lauded as a patriot after she bravely defended the torch in France. However, shortly afterwards — surprisingly and almost incomprehensibly — she was belittled as a traitor after she said she didn’t support boycotting Carrefour.

  The dramatic change in public opinion toward Jin Jing vividly reflected the mentality of contemporary Chinese people. Narrow-minded patriotism is still the mainstream ideology. The mindset of people in a weak nation still dominates the general public. Whereas the attitudes of tolerance, magnanimity, and responsibility are being formed slowly and with great difficulty.

  I never doubt the sincerity of my fellow countrymen’s patriotism, just as I never doubt the patriotism of those who kept calm in the face of adversity. We all love this country and this land. We differ only in how we love it.

  In a civilized society, patriotism is not equal to the love of a government or a party. This point needs little explanation. Citizens need to monitor and often criticize the government and the ruling party — this is an act of patriotism. A nation is composed of its citizens. A government comes into being to serve the people, and its ultimate goal should be the development and happiness of the people.

  Therefore, we should love our nation, but not blindly. We should remain aware of China’s real status in the world, of the gap between China and other developed nations. We should not be arrogant and boast about ourselves. Being a clear-minded patriot will benefit the nation much more than being a narrow-minded nationalist.

  Times have changed, and our patriotism needs to change as well. Narrow-minded nationalism leads to an ignorant, extremist, and violent world view. People with such views fail to see how the world is getting increasingly more connected. They don’t know how to communicate with the outside world in a peaceful and reasonable way. Such attitudes bring China more harm than benefit. It’s time we throw them away.

  It angered and saddened me to see so many newspapers (with Global Times leading the pack) and opinion leaders blatantly advocating extremist nationalism. They ignored the trend of global development and trumpeted narrow-minded ideologies out of their own self interest.

  The media and people at large have been saying repeatedly that China’s current political system is superior and that democracy is not suitable to China. They have devised a vague concept of the “China Model”, and use it to resist accepting universal values. Since information does not disseminate freely in China currently, their assertions have negatively influenced public opinion. Many people have lost the opportunity to open themselves to different ideas. And China’s integration into the modern civilized world has been obstructed.

  To decrease this negative impact, a large number of “clear-minded” patriots must stand out and resist the pressure from those in power who try to manipulate public opinion. They must make public the common sens that has been distorted and covered: Every man is born equal. Every man is born free. He has natural rights (jus nafural). It is a universal principle. It is applicable in all countries and nations. Any excuse to go against these principle should be denounced, whether it’s history or China’s special conditions.

  I will continue to be a clear-minded patriot in 2009 instead of being a muddleheaded one.

  Read also: Democracy Must Win by Zhang Wen.

  » Read more
  • February 2, 2009 12:29 AM

• New China Blog: Evan Osnos’ Letter from China

  

  Evan Osnos, the New Yorker’s China correspondent, has launched a new blog on the New Yorker’s website. Today’s dispatch from Beijing addresses the rise of China’s new new nationalism:

  It does not help that the first publicized words on China from the incoming U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, accuse China of manipulating its currency. In that atmosphere, the appeal of nationalism begins to reach far beyond young activists. (Predictably, Su Ning, a senior official at the People’s Bank of China, called Geithner’s remarks “out of keeping with the facts,”"and said they could become an obstacle in managing the economic crisis.) China shows no sign of changing course under pressure, which leaves Beijing University’s Michael Pettis, a reliable voice on how developing countries respond to economic crisis, especially concerned. “I am afraid that there is no way for this process to end. It will descend into trade war.” Whether or not it goes that far, we should brace for a new wave of economic nationalism in China. If unemployment continues to rise and enough new college graduates are left to idle in the street — or, more volatile perhaps, online — expect to see Chinese authorities do what they can to steer resentment in the direction of a target as far from home as possible.

  » Read more
  • January 26, 2009 3:34 PM

• Video Performance: 2009 Go China! (Updated)

  

  Do you ever wonder how Chinese children are being educated in nationalism? The following video, which is spreading through Chinese cyberspace, will give you a clue. It shows a group of rural grade-school students performing a poetry reading. The lines are apparently written by adults, and refer to news events in 2008. No name of the school was mentioned in the original video post.

  “This is truer than Zhang Yimou’s Opening Ceremony [of Beijing Olympics].” — a Chinese netizen’s comment on the performance, translated by CDT. Click here to read more netizens’ comments, translated by Bob Chen on Global Voices:

  2009, GO CHINA!

  Lead: Snowstorm, freely falling down to earth, like western values
  Lead: Despair fills the sky, ice covers the earth

  Lead: Did China retreat?
  All: No. The Olympics were a success! We are victorious!
  Lead: Hot blood and iron will of Chinese people, lighten up the dark world like burning the holy flame
  All: The rivers and mountains, ever more colorful and beautiful

  Lead: Earthquakes, shifting back and forth like the positions of Sarkozy, with his dirty tricks, trying to shake the great China
  Lead: Did China retreat?
  All: No. The Shenzhou-7 launched. We are victorious!
  Lead: Pathetic Europe will never stop the insurmountable force of the Celestial Empire
  All: Just the aftershocks from the earthquake would destroy France!

  Lead: The happy flowers flourish in the oil fields on Tarim Basin
  Lead: The suona [musical instrument] sings aloud in the Tawang district of the Himalayas
  Lead: Historically accumulated resentment fill the Ryukyu Trench
  All: Smiles in Sun Moon Lake became a miraculous flower in the Pacific Ocean**

  Lead: “Do not sway, Do not slacken off and Do not flip flop”***
  Lead: “Do not change the flag, Do not change the label, Do not turn back”****
  All: Step ruthlessly over all anti-China forces

  Lead: The giant ship full of patches, raise up the brand new sail
  All: Spirits are high, crash through the waves, the wind is at our back
  Lead: 2009
  All: Go China
  Lead: 2009
  All: China the Greatest

  * Read also In Short: How Chinese Nationalism is different from the justrecently’s beautiful blog.

  ** Tarim Basin is located in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where ethnic conflicts have broken out between members of the Uighur minority and the Han majority and some groups advocate independence from the PRC. Tawang district is an area in the Himalayas whose ownership has been under dispute by China and India; Ryukyu Trench is an ocean area whose ownership is under dispute by Japan and China; Sun-moon Lake is in Taiwan

  *** & **** Words from President Hu Jintao’s speech during a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of economic reform at The Great Hall of the People on December 18, 2008 in Beijing, China; translated by Dr. David Kelly, China Research Centre; University of Technology Sydney.

  UPDATES:

  From the Global Voices blog:

  Right at the time that the internet is in search of the teacher/organizer and debating on the recitation, unexpectedly, the man showed up voluntarily, and not in anywhere else but right in Bullog.cn, a turf that is well known for its intimacy to liberalism and pro-democracy thoughts, and where the work is under the most relentless attack.

  The organizer, named 左左右右 （left-left-right-right), explained how the story happened:

  快期末了，我发现孩子们提前好几天都在忙着过圣诞，还有专人组织捐款买东西，国庆节也没这么上心啊，于是我问孩子们对圣诞节有何理解。他们摇摇头

  “It is approaching the final week of school year, and I found the kids busy with Christmas preparation, and someone organizing a donation for decoration. They were even more excited than in National Day. So I asked how much they knew aboutChristmas. They shook heads.”

  我问几个学习非常努力的孩子理想是什么，他说，好好学习，将来考上好的大学，最好能去留学，我问留学什么好，他说，外国的学校就是好。好在哪里呢，他说不上来。

  “I asked some very diligent kids what their dreams are, and they told that to study hard and go abroad for university in the future. I asked why. They told the foreign education is just better, but told no reason.
  ……”

  但是，是谁教给他们不分来由的崇洋媚外呢呢，对外国不加思索的盲目崇拜，从物质到言论难道对西方没有一点质疑？

  “But, who teach them such an indiscriminate favor of all the foreign stuff, and the admiration without a deeper thought? Don’t they even have a grain of doubt towards all the western world, from its material to ideas?”

  哪些事情让你最难忘？他们答：雪灾、地震，圣火传递，奥运成功，金融危机。在值得中国人骄傲的圣火传递和奥运举行期间，也充满了刁难，2008年何止一个郁闷可以形容的！然后就想开一个主题班会，做一个视频给即将离去的2008做纪念

  “（I asked) what impressed you the most in the past year? They said: “The snowstorm in January, Si-chuan Earthquake, torch relay, the success of Olympics and financial crisis. ” In the most pride-worthy torch relay and Olympics, turbulence and harassment against China has never stopped. How gloomy was 2008! So I came up with an idea to hold class meeting and make a video to memorize the past 2008.”

  Then, in an open letter, he apologized to all those being “thundered”, and all the French people angered.

  He insists that it is for not a single bit of education of hatred.

  写这首“诗”的初衷是回顾2008年的历史，并没有宣扬对西方的仇恨，也不是宣扬暴力，更没有针对普通群众，一切以作者本人解释为准。在大家认为仇视西方民众的地方是在警告外国：2009年，不要再以任何借口挑衅中国！历史问题我们也一直记在心里！

  My initial will to write the “poem” is to review the 2008, instead of a propaganda of hatred against the western, without any call for violence, and not directed to any civilians. Only my explanation is the standard interpretation. In points that many people think that show hatred to the western is actually a warning to them: in 2009, don’t provoke China by any excuse! We have always kept the historical issues in mind!

  —–

  《2009，中国加油》
  甲：大雪，像西方的价值观，自由的飘洒，
  乙：漫天哀愁，一地冰碴 !

  甲：中国退缩了吗？
  全：没有！奥运成功了！我们胜利啦！
  甲：炎黄坚毅的热血，如炽烈的圣火，燃烧灰暗的世界，
  全：万里江山，又嵌上五彩的画夹！

  甲：地震，像萨科奇的立场，用猥琐的伎俩，摇晃着巍巍中华。
  甲：中国退缩了吗？
  全：没有！神七飞天了！我们胜利啦！
  甲：瘦瘦的欧罗巴，挡不住天朝的金戈铁马，
  全：地震的余波也能把法兰西催垮！

  甲：塔里木的石油盛开幸福之花，
  乙：达旺的唢呐奏响在喜马拉雅。
  甲：中山世土的积怨填平了琉球海沟，
  全：日月潭的微笑成为太平洋的奇葩！

  甲：不动摇、不懈怠、不折腾
  乙：不改旗、不易帜、不回头
  全：将反华者狠狠的踏在脚下

  甲：打满补丁的大船，挂上崭新的桅帆
  全：乘风破浪，意气风发！
  甲：2009
  全：中国加油
  甲：2009
  全：中国最大

  » Read more
  • December 31, 2008 12:14 PM

• Interview with Anti-CNN Founder Qi Hanting

  

  Students in my Blogging China class at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism conducted an email interview with Qi Hanting, a founder of the Anti-CNN website. The site was founded in the wake of the riots in Tibet in March, “to expose the lies and distortions in the western media,” according to their own description. Qi Hanting is a journalism student at Tsinghua University who studied with Li Xiguang and attended the Salzburg Academy in 2007.

  Blogging China student Jenny Leung submitted the following questions to Qi by email. Qi chose to respond with one full-length response that refers to some of the questions but does not answer them one-by-one, thanks to Shilin Jia for the translation from Chinese to English.

  Questions submitted to Qi Hanting:
  Some people will describe your site as a part of “angry youth”? Do you agree? How would you describe anti-CNN? Truth-seeking? Patriotic? Why?
  Where do you see the future of anti-CNN?
  Can you describe the online community that anti-CNN is a part of?
  What has changed since high school and college on how you view China and its system?
  What are the valuable things have you learned from your anti-cnn site experiences?
  Can you describe why continue you to moderate the site? Or what are you getting out of being a moderator of anti-CNN?
  How is the forum moderated?
  How politically involved are you offline? Are you active in other domestic social, political issues or other international issues?
  How do you think anti-CNN has contributed to how Chinese people view the world?
  Do you think Anti-CNN is successful in communicating the “truth” about China to others? Why or why not?
  How do you feel the anti-CNN platform has allowed your personal voice, or others, to be expressed?

  
  Qi Hanting’s response:
  First, I want to clarify that I was involved in the establishment of Anti-CNN (hereafter referred to as AC), but I’ve already quit the job. My ideas weren’t fully implemented at AC, but I think all the ACers did it with the mindset of facilitating communication. AC’s original slogan was “Do not oppose media, but oppose factual distortion.” Certainly it may have gone astray later on, but the original intention was good and also played a role. In relation to my explanation of AC, you can search it on the website “ohmynews”, where an old lady who invented the term ‘netizen’ interviewed me and posted it there.

  The AC website was born under those certain historical circumstances. We should say that the masses were relatively angry at that time. AC initially started with the front page plus the BBS. Under such circumstances, I can’t deny that most of the audience and participants were “Angry Youth,” but we can’t say that AC is an “Angry Youth” website. If you are interested, you can search for the “Carrefour” event after the Olympics torch was assaulted in April. During the whole process, AC constantly opposed the call to boycott Carrefour and further opposed going to Carrefour to do any damage. We had the attitude that to boycott or not to boycott any merchandise voluntarily is a personal volition. Some of the website founders boycotted, and some didn’t. However, calling for a boycott didn’t help solve the problem. I mentioned this point in the Phoenix TV program too–boycotting is okay, but we don’t endorse a boycott. On the other hand, the site also launched a large-scale activity to protect the torch. We can say that the will of the AC management was to hope to, “be reasonable, be powerful, and also be moderate.”

  AC’s current readers have decreased a lot. Before I left at the end of April, I was always rethinking one problem; was AC named correctly? The fact that AC had such a great influence was first because “Anti-CNN” at that time was what many people wanted to say in their minds; the second reason was that the name “Anti-CNN” was able to get the attention of the western media. However, a website cannot build on the foundation of simply opposing somebody. Therefore, I think that the success and failure are all due to one factor. This problem can answer AC’s future. But Anti-CNN played its historical role, providing lessons from experience to many websites afterward, and even providing direction. This is also what I am now carving out. The ideal situation is: AC does not belong to any particular group but to all people. My new website’s name is Global-netizen-media, which is based on this idea.

  Chinese education, to make a comparison, is just like the communist party. Many people are dissatisfied, and many think they can do better. But actually [China's system] in the current stage, although not the best, is the only one that is relatively applicable. My view of Chinese education hasn’t changed too much.

  The main experience I got from AC relates to the netizens. Netizens are a group that are very prone to reflecting the butterfly effect. Netizens also, to a great degree, represent the “people’s voice;” I am trying to understand their discipline.

  The forum is administrated by volunteers. There are four ranks of volunteers: administrators, moderators, club members, and non-club members. The club member registration is very easy. Some volunteers become moderators by selection. The administrators are Rao Jin and me–the two founders. There is keyword censorship when publishing posts; after that, every moderator will take control; provocative or abusive content will be deleted.

  I personally participate in politics to some degree. I attend some meetings and write some articles. I care about facts and further care about some fundamental problems such as energy and food.

  In a “Media Criticism” class held by the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, the professor conducted a survey in the first class asking how many people believe Chinese media, and how many think that the western media is objective and just. It turned out that only 10 percent believed the Chinese, and over 50 percent believed western media. Those (surveyed) were a group of people who have pretty high media literacy in China; those elites in the society also commonly think this way. However, after three months, I believe nobody would think this way anymore. Actually, it is not AC’s contribution but rather was just accomplished by western media itself. All media works for its own profit; all reports are from the reporter’s own angle and bias, I believe. Including AC.

  AC’s daily viewers surpassed 5 million in April. Among them, 40 percent came from foreign IP addresses. Surely those would include Chinese students abroad and overseas Chinese, but we can also believe that there was a huge number of foreigners. AC did not necessarily present the real China, but it did two things: Let some people realize their perceptions of China were wrong and break the discourse hegemony, and provide people afterward an opportunity for equal communication.

  I’ve only directly participated in AC’s news once. That was the time when AC was attacked by hackers’ DDOS and forced to close down. Normally, I only censored news netizens submitted to AC to guarantee their truthfulness. Usually, I would ask them to provide unprocessed photo and video documents. For any unconfirmed information, I would rather not publish it at all.

  » Read more
  • December 21, 2008 9:16 PM

• French Leader’s Planned Meeting with Dalai Lama Sparks Backlash in China

  

  French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama has met fierce criticism in the Chinese blogosphere. Xinhua reports:

  “The Tibet issue touches on China’s core interests. Anyone crossing that line will have to pay for it, and that is not something people from China and France would like to see,” a Chinese netizen who identified himself as Qiu Jianming said in a forum on news.cn, a major news site.

  Added another: “It is not the first time that France has used the Tibet issue to interfere with China’s internal affairs. The disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris this April alone was unpleasant enough. We will not compromise one bit when it comes to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

  [...]The online backlash is the latest in a string of rows targeting France.

  The disruption of the Olympic torch relay in Paris this April sparked a boycott of French products and enterprises including the Carrefour retail chain, which denied claims that it supported the Dalai Lama.

  Reuters also reports on the reaction from the Chinese government:

  On Saturday, China condemned the meeting. “This development is indeed an unwise move which not only hurts the feelings of the Chinese people, but also undermines Sino-French ties,” its official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

  “The French side … took an opportunistic, rash and short-sighted approach to handling the Tibet issue.”

  Sarkozy said the Dalai Lama, who welcomed him by draping a ‘kata’ or traditional Tibetan white scarf on his shoulder, had said at the meeting that he does not seek independence for Tibet. “I told him how much importance I attach to the pursuit of dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities.”

  President Sarkozy has also made comments on the meeting with the Dalai Lama. From The Express, translated by CDT:

  Asked about the crisis between France and China, spurred by China’s protest to the meeting by cancelling a planned summit for the beginning of the week in Lyon with the EU, Nicolas Sarkozy responded: “This should be managed with grace, with calmness. We must do this in the long term, taking these events and relating these events to the importance that is owed.

  “The Chinese authorities have already known perfectly well that this meeting was going to take place before the end of the year. I always said it,” he added.

  “In addition, I hope that China can take its place in global governance. We need China to resolve big problems in the world, and to dialogue — as the President Hu Jintao has begun to do — with the Dalai Lama,” he also said.

  “The Dalai Lama confirmed to me — as I already knew — that he wasn’t asking for independence for Tibet, and I told him just how much importance I attach to the pursuit of dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Chinese authorities,” he continued.

  » Read more
  • December 6, 2008 10:07 PM

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