Tibet was a part of China, Tibet is a part of China, and Tibet will always forever be a part of China<\/a>.\u201d In this video, the student stated, \u201cIf the West is willing to pack up and move out of the Americas, the Pacific, Asia, Africa, etc and go back to Europe, then we\u2019ll also get out of Tibet. Otherwise, don\u2019t talk to us about this issue.\u201d Based on a sense of fairness, the vast majority of Chinese people feel the same way. America has occupied Afghanistan, and Iraq, and has dismembered Yugoslavia. Is America prepared to dismember China? Proponents of Tibetan and Xinjiang independence, as well as some Chinese intellectuals, sincerely hope that America dismembers China. But is America prepared to do this? Is America prepared to fight a war with China, a nuclear state, over Tibet? At least by looking at what Americans are saying, America is not prepared to take this risk. Therefore, Westerners\u2019 questioning of Chinese rule in Tibet only arouses disgust and disdain amongst the vast majority of Chinese.<\/p>\nSome intellectuals in China, such as Wang Lixiong, argue that in the past countries could acquire territory by force, but they now no longer can. Who decided this? Though America has not technically acquired territory, it has in fact waged wars that have destroyed countries, and who stood up to stop it? Actually, it\u2019s just like what that angry student said on the internet video: \u201cIf the West is willing to pack up and move out of the Americas, the Pacific, Asia, Africa, etc and go back to Europe, then we\u2019ll also get out of Tibet.\u201d If you want to talk about the moral high ground, then all of you roll on back to where you came from in Europe. We do not lack the moral high ground! This is what the youth of China say in response; this is what the people say in response.<\/p>\n
This is the same way Russia responded in relation to South Ossetian independence. What are you talking about, \u201cinternational law?\u201d Go to hell! I beat you and I say that South Ossetia is independent. Do you want to get worked up about it?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the West\u2019s turn to consider how China feels about things. What\u2019s missing isn\u2019t a lack of effort on China\u2019s part\u2014China has already made considerable efforts to be understood. The problem is the West\u2019s sense of moral uprightness. When I was visiting with reporters, this is how I put it:<\/p>\n
The world today is no longer the world of the 19th century or the first half of the 20th century. Chinese people do not think that the West is qualified to insert itself as a referee over the Tibet issue. What the Chinese did in April 2008 was not to seek the West\u2019s acceptance of Chinese views or Chinese people; rather, it was a statement to the West that China was unhappy and angry at it. It was a statement that Chinese people would no longer accept the West\u2019s views or actions concerning Tibet. Whether this causes the West to feel, much like the good intentioned American, that China is \u201cuncivilized, barbaric, and impolite,\u201d is not very important to the China of today.<\/p>\n
From the latter half of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, China had to care a great deal about what those in the West thought and whether they accepted China. At the same time, those in the West didn\u2019t have to care about what Chinese people felt or thought. Westerners and many in China have grown accustomed to this. (That is why the good-intentioned American in his letter requested that Chinese people make Westerners feel more at ease. He seems to have forgotten that the founding fathers of America did not write a polite letter to the king of England and politely try to get the king to like them\u2014they took up weapons and fought!) However, this relationship is unequal and therefore unethical and unfair. Even if we set aside ethics and fairness, from the standpoint of actual power, this relationship does not match the actual power dynamic between the West and China. Today, the West and China must have a more equal relationship. If one is to say that Chinese people need to work hard to gain the West\u2019s acceptance, then the West must also work hard to gain the acceptance of Chinese people. If the West, which has relatively greater power, and China, which has a population of 1.3 billion and is rapidly gaining power, cannot learn to mutually accept the other\u2019s existence\u2014then one side or the other will always be unhappy; the only happy ones will be cockroaches and the prospects for humankind will be exceptionally bleak. A lot of Westerners seem to not understand or get used to this fact. There are some Chinese who worship the West who also seem to not understand or get used to this fact.<\/p>\n
In order to gain each other\u2019s acceptance each side must understand a little about what the other side thinks. As for the Chinese, for the last century, with the exception of some few years, the Chinese have all been diligently studying the West, diligently trying to understand what Westerners think, hoping that they could win affirmation from the West, and at all times emphasizing \u201cgetting on track\u201d with the international community. While Chinese people still might not understand the West sufficiently, at least they\u2019ve tried hard to do so. I think that Chinese people\u2019s perception of the West is at least not as silly as Westerner\u2019s understanding of China. We can read from an article in the Washington Post written by Chinese actress Joan Chen as she visited America, that some American politicians exclaimed that demonstrating against the torch relay \u201cprovide[s] the people of San Francisco with a lifetime opportunity to help 1.3 billion Chinese people gain more freedom and rights.\u201d Joan Chen writes, \u201cThat statement could not be further from reality.\u201d My impression is that in the West there are a lot of people with this crazy idea and that it is fairly widespread. I truly feel that Westerners, including those who are sinologists, reporters, even those who study and work here, have perhaps been spoiled by those West-worshipping Chinese people that have need of them; they really do not understand what Chinese people think. This kind of misunderstanding, no matter if it arise from their own arrogance, or if it arises from the deceptiveness of those West-worshipping Chinese people that surround them, is dangerous and unfortunate for both the West and for China. Now it is clearly the West\u2019s turn to make a little effort to understand somewhat what Chinese people think.<\/p>\n
I just want to help Westerners understand a little bit about what the average Chinese person (meaning mostly Han Chinese person) thinks about the Tibet issue, as well as what the average Chinese person thinks about the West\u2019s response to the Tibet issue. Of course, some people will question me and ask how I can prove that what I have said represents the view of the average Chinese person\u2014I haven\u2019t conducted surveys and this article is not an academic article. But even if conducted a strict random survey and wrote an academic article, the same doubts would still exist. However, I think that the events that happened in March and April of 2008 are the best evidence that what I have said represents the view of the average Chinese person. It has been said that the events of March and April of 2008 caused many Westerners to be very \u201cshocked.\u201d Actually, if they understood a little bit more about what Chinese people thought then they wouldn\u2019t be so \u201cshocked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actually, China\u2019s upper middle class are pretty fond of Tibetan culture. Even I, who am not particularly well off, am also fond of Tibetan culture. When a foreign television station came to my house to shoot some footage, I let them see my statutes of Buddha. I told them that in my collection, only one statue is from the Han tradition of Buddhism, the rest are from the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism. I explained to them the difference between Han Buddhist sculptures and Tibetan Buddhist sculptures. There are a lot of Han Chinese who like Tibetan culture. The Han Chinese treat Tibetans as brothers. They love and protect them, and definitely do not see them with enmity or persecute their way of thinking. I say: you Westerners had better come to understand this, and not be misled by a minority of Tibetans.<\/p>\n
Moral high ground? You Westerners had best not talk to us about the moral high ground. Just like that young person posted on the internet: \u201cIf you pack up and move back to Europe from all the continents of the world, only then will you have any moral high ground.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nJoseph McMullin is a lawyer living in China who spent a semester of his law school years taking classes in Chinese at Nanjing University School of Law.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A book released earlier this year, called Unhappy China: The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges (\u4e2d\u56fd\u4e0d\u9ad8\u5174\uff1a\u5927\u65f6\u4ee3\uff0c\u5927\u76ee\u6807\u53ca\u6211\u4eec\u7684\u5185\u5fe7\u5916\u60a3), offered a pointed nationalist critique of Western countries and their media. When the book was released in March, an article in the Oriental Morning Post (translated by the Zhongnanhai blog), said: Unhappy China contains severe criticism of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[99,116,100,5,4202],"tags":[8,6657,7825,4532],"class_list":["post-48498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cdt-highlights","category-world","category-politics","category-society","category-translation","tag-nationalism","tag-tibet-status","tag-unhappy-china","tag-wang-lixiong","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
Wang Xiaodong (\u738b\u5c0f\u4e1c): It\u2019s Up to the West to Face Why China is Unhappy<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n