Rowan Callick writes in the Australian:
Last weekend a Chinese blogger posted the following comment on the website sina.com: “When a country gets the right to host the Olympic Games, it makes other countries jealous. China is strong, and this makes them afraid. So (the foreigners) encourage Taiwan, and encourage the Dalai (Lama). As Chinese, we should feel infinitely proud of what we are doing with respect to the Dalai, the Carrefour affair (boycotting and protesting against the French stores) and the Olympics.”
A taxi driver in Qingdao pasted a sign on the back of his cab in English and Chinese: “Refuse to carry Frenchmen and dogs.”
The blogger concluded: “Because we are now getting to a more and more important place among the great nations. No other country will help us ordinary Chinese. The one that can protect us best is always our very own Government! Because we are Chinese!”
Such sentiments – including the identification of the party and Government with all Chinese people – emerge from the Chinese education system, which focuses strongly on the period from the 1840s to the mid-20th century, when China was in a downward spiral as the Qing dynasty’s inflexibility led to its collapse and civil war was compounded by a Japanese invasion. Chinese history thus tends to be viewed through the prism of foreign victimisation, even though the 19th-century treaty ports also introduced to the country elements of progress, including education for women, universities, modern medicine and new infrastructure.
