Juli 2008

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Reason Number 11 - Crossing the Line for a Penny

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 31 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 21
"China has the world’s fastest-growing economy, but many millions in China’s countryside have been left behind, forming the ranks of the 1st Army of Instability.

In 1978, before China reformed its economic policies, the country had 250 million people who lacked adequate food and clothing. By the end of 2005, that number had dropped to 23.6 million. By 2007 that figure had dropped a little further, to 21.48 million. In addition to these people, defined as living in ‘absolute poverty’ there were another 35.5 million in the ‘low-income’ category, said Zhang Baowen, vice-minister of agriculture.

It is easy to be impressed with the drop of poverty accomplished no matter which accounting method is used. However, even under the best circumstances, there are still 23 million living in absolute poverty. That’s equal to two-thirds of the population of Canada or one-third of the population of the UK. It’s more than the entire population of Australia – or the State of Florida. That’s twenty-three million citizens who cannot even afford an extra change of clothes or nutritious daily food. Or afford school fees for their children. Or a simple visit to a doctor."

ChinaBounder comments:

I wonder what it’s like to be poor? I wonder if any reader of this blog knows what it’s like to be poor?

Sure, I’ve had to count the days to the next paycheck from time to time, after, say, too many dinners out in a month, too much temptation from the wine list of Le Garcon Chinoise, Shanghai’s finest restaurant.

But true poverty? No, never. Nor, I suspect, any of the readers of this blog. All you readers read English. In China, that’s the language of privilege. If you speak English, you’ve been lucky enough to have an education. You’ve got options. English is the language of empowerment, of success. English is caste.

The mere fact you are here, you are online -- that sets you above hundreds of millions of people. You're not poor.

Certainly not the kind of poor that sends so many of the elderly out into the streets to scavenge for rubbish to recycle. The kind of poor that makes every day a struggle, the kind of poor that saps the joy out of existence, that wraps itself around your soul and sleeps there.

And what must that poverty be like when you’re surrounded by flash cars and glittering buildings, when your great motherland has (though you likely don’t know it) the largest pile of foreign reserves in the world? When it has forty billion dollars to spend on the Olympics, seventy billion to spend on the army, and untold billions, wealth beyond counting, diverted into the pockets of its corrupt officials?

I’ve read the statistics. I’ve seen the pictures. Worse, I’ve seen the people – seen them every day in Shanghai, the people with nothing. I know what poverty is. But can I feel what poverty is? Hardly.

Can you?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 22
"Just how serious is China about poverty reduction? In 2005, the central government assigned about US$1.7 billion for poverty reduction. In the same year, it said it spent more than US$30 billion on its armed forces. The Rand Corporation, a US-based nonprofit think-tank, estimated the true figure was closer to US$70 billion per year.

In China’s western regions, home to about 400 million people, 20% of the population cannot afford hospital fees and more than a third cannot afford high school fees. Sending a child to college took 74% of an average family’s entire income. Again –74%! Illiteracy, another side-effect of poverty, was at 28%.

These millions of ‘low income’ individuals exist in something like a state of limbo. Hovering just above absolute poverty, they face a daily struggle to keep their sanity and their bodies functioning for the next day of work.

We have seen these members of the 1st Army clustered around the single television in their village, which is often perched on the shelf of a store owner’s establishment. They watch in disbelief at the flickering pictures from Shanghai or Beijing, and they see the glittering towers of modernity. Programs, commercials and reports show cars, restaurants and the happy and content life of the upwardly mobile new middle classes.

They do not see their own life. They see the good life.

One day, when they finally realize this good life is not on another planet, but is in their own country, and that the pictures on the screen represent now, not some promised future, they will begin to march, the first of the armies that spell a colossal threat to China."

Don't forget, even for a moment - every chance you get when in China -- 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

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Reason Number 10 - The Builders of Myths, the Tellers of Tales

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 30 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 19
“The Party has an irresponsible approach to history as part of its modus operandi, consistently fabricating stories to glorify its own actions, often at the expense of others. The true ‘Long March,’ for example, bears little resemblance to the internationally famous version the Party gives of it, and the many mistakes of Mao Zedong, which led to the death of tens of millions, are airbrushed out of the official record, at least within Chinese history books.

The government claims that “China has never launched pre-emptive strikes against any country. It is not part of its defensive ministry strategy.” This statement, made in blustering denial of Pentagon worries concerning China’s huge military spending, is simply a lie. China’s invasion of Korea in the 1950s was clearly a pre-emptive strike, and its attack on Vietnam in 1979 was wholly unprovoked.

With its upbringing of historical falsehoods, it is perhaps no wonder that myths and lies are virtual ‘truth’ for the government of China today.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Here’s another thing I like to do in class – to play the ‘China is a peace-loving country’ card. It’s a simple enough trick, and pretty childish too. But it’s fun.

It’s easy enough to get into this game – a mere mention of America will give rise to disapproving comments about the way that nation swaggers around the world. And pretty often a student will mention Britain, yapping along like a little dog behind the States. Fair enough.

‘But China is a peace-loving nation, yes?’
‘Yes’ reply all the students.
‘So China would never attack another nation?’
‘Never!’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not even a pre-emptive strike?’
‘No!’
Then I fake up a ruminative pause, before the big reveal. ‘Ah. So… what about the Sino-Indian war? The Korean War? The attack on Vietnam?’

Now this might set off a faint recollection in some people’s minds – some of them think back to high school and the single paragraph they might have read in school on some of these wars.

But really that makes no difference at all. Fact is, they do not need to have heard of any of these wars. Because the answer is always the same. ‘They’ – meaning the other country – ‘started it.’

That’s always the way. ‘It wasn’t us. It was them.’

Now, sure, the Sino-Indian War was an obscure mess on both sides. But that is not the point. The point is there is no willingness to countenance debate. There’s no willingness to even consider another point of view. No, sir! ‘They started it. They attacked first.’

The Korean War is perhaps a more interesting example, because here I can really press my students into thinking in shades of grey – something they find pretty hard when it comes to analyzing their own country.

Often I’ll begin with a potted history of that particular war. I’ll say how the North attacked the South, and here most students will agree that was wrong. They still feel they’re in familiar territory. One country should not attack another. Yes. They’re pretty sure of that. Black and white.

Then I’ll talk about the UN response, using force to drive the North Koreans out of the South. ‘Right or wrong?’ I’ll ask. ‘Right’ they will most often say. They like the UN. (I save how China has several times blocked the UN from helping stop war crimes for another class.)

Usually when I do this routine I’ll draw up a map of the Korean peninsula on the board. So now I’ll put the UN forces at the 38th parallel. ‘Should they stop?,’ I ask.

‘Yes.’

So there we are, united in righteous indignation, watching as they cross the parallel and barrel into the North.

Then I put the UN forces up against the Yalu River. ‘What happened then?’ I ask.

‘China attacked.’

‘Hmm… isn’t that a bit of a … pre-emptive strike?’

A ripple of discomfort here.

But I do not press this – instead I get the class back on-side by saying how the Chinese then forced the US Eighth Army to make the longest retreat in American military history.

That goes down well.

Next, I put the Chinese at the 38th parallel. ‘What happened?’

Here the most usual answer is silence.

Silence, or someone will tell me, ‘China stopped there.’

Because, of course, that’s the default answer. China can do no wrong.

‘Not so. China crossed the border and captured the South Korean capital.’

More discomfort here.

Then the killer question.

‘So, was China wrong?’

This they mostly cannot cope with. They know they’ve said the UN was wrong to cross the parallel. But they just can’t bring themselves to apply the same yardstick to their own nation.

The most common way they break this impasse?

‘You must be wrong. It cannot have happened. Your history books were telling lies.’

And so then to 1979. Now for most Chinese people, 1979 is a year to be proud of, for it was the year when Deng Xiaoping embarked on China’s ‘opening up and reform’ program (also known in regular language as ‘Behaving with the common sense you’d expect from anyone over the age of 10.’)

But 1979 is also the year that China attacked Vietnam. And again, I get the usual bullshit. ‘Vietnam attacked us first’ they’ll say, oblivious to the fact that this is akin to a mouse ‘attacking’ a gorilla.

And so I lay it out. How Vietnam attacked Cambodia to try to end the insanities of Pol Pot – how China had supported Pol Pot, paid him and armed him. How millions died thanks to Chinese cash. How China decided to ‘punish’ Vietnam for trying to stop the genocide.

They know nothing of it, nothing at all. They cannot accept that China does the same shit as so many other countries. Again, they tell me I must be wrong, that this must be Western propaganda. I urge them to research it themselves, to look beyond the textbooks of their own nation. But I know they never do.

Lies are comforting. Lies are honey.

Myths give a certain sort of strength. Myths are steroids for the soul.

It’s easy to believe the Party line.

Much harder to open your mind and try to consider both sides.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 20
“China applies its culture of myths and lies not just to territories it has colonized, such as its ‘autonomous’ regions Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, but to those it seeks to colonize, such as the vast areas of maritime territory it claims sole right to.

On 25th May 2007, media reports announced ‘conducive’ talks between China and Japan concerning territory in the East China Sea which both countries laid claim to. The territory in question lies midway between China and Japan, and is the site of several large gas fields. Japan had proposed a median line giving each nation roughly half of the disputed area. China’s proposed line pushed significantly past the median line suggested by Japan, putting the gas fields in their entirety on the Chinese side, leaving Japan with nothing.

The Chinese side was represented by Hu Zhengyue, Director of the Asian Affairs Department of China’s Foreign Ministry. He said the talks were a ‘new beginning’ and said China was ready to make joint efforts with Japan to push forward consultation. In another article published on the same day, Feng Zhikai, a senior researcher at China’s Institute of Japanese Studies, said that ‘It is fair to say China’s emphasis on cooperation in energy development has been a prominent feature in the development of bilateral relations.’

The very next day Chinese media issued another report, this time quoting Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Jiang said ‘that China wanted to promote the negotiation process and achieve a joint development plan at an early date, and reiterated China’s opposition to a demarcation line proposed by Japan, adding that ‘China has not and will never accept the median line and will not accept the median line as the basis for discussing joint development.’

Jiang Yu’s words made it clear China had no intention whatsoever of backing down from its greedy and rapacious desire to exploit the gas fields to their utmost, sharing them with no-one.”

Just a few more days until the Olympics begins. Will you be there? You know what to do, right? Make a 'T' sign for Tibet, an 'X' sign for Xinjiang.

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Reason Number 9 - The Largest Box of Toy Soldiers in the World

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 29 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 17.
“`The Chinese army started its IT revolution in the 1990s’ said media in 2007. ‘Digital technology allows commanders to electronically monitor the borders right around the clock even while cooks in the barracks are rustling up some tasty grub using a recipe from an e-Book consulted on a scr'een in the kitchen.’

‘With regiments … far from towns, soldiers used to have to travel a long way just to buy a tube of toothpaste. But in January 2007, an online shopping site appeared on the district’s military LAN -- and now a soldier staring out at the hillside in a remote border post can simply click on a website to whistle up his favorite brand of rice cakes’ said reports.

But perhaps worried that too much hi-tech would corrupt the troops, state media also announced that ‘the tradition virtues of frugality, discipline and readiness to serve the people remain unchanged among the troops.’ One can almost see young lads vying for the hard-to-acquire ‘frugality’ merit badge.

To remind new recruits of the importance of these virtues, members of the PLA are shown the ‘classic’ Chinese film romantically called ‘Guards Under Neon Light.’ This film, made some forty years ago, details the virtues of the PLA’s Eighth Company while stationed on Shanghai’s famous Nanjing road. The film shows how the ‘soldiers who patrolled on a dazzling road of Shanghai…resisted various lures of the booming city and remained frugal, well-disciplined and ready to serve people.’"

ChinaBounder comments:

The Communist Party’s attempt at bait and switch. Worried about the tens of billions of dollars the CPC is spending on the Chinese army? Worried that the troops are being used in Mini-Tiananmen Squares all over the nation?

Hey! We got rice cakes! We got the internet! We got stirring, patriotic films!

So that’s all right. Let’s forget about the other stuff, shall we?

It’s all part of the way the CPC frames what passes for public debate in China. Trivial. Infantile. Bipolar. Such and such is bad. So and so is good.

There are no shades of grey in China.

But indeed sometimes it’s good be stark, to be emphatic.

So here’s a stark tale.

The classes I teach are pretty poor value for money, I have to admit. I spent, say, six months or a year refining my class style, finding the routines that worked best; and after that I have always just done the same shtick, every class. I always begin with the same routine, coming into the first class and doing a whole thing about ‘Why is no one here talking English?’ In eight years of teaching I have never once walked into a class and heard the students practicing English with each other. Chinese language all the way. It just never occurs to students that, given they are in a class to practice spoken English, every else in the class will have a certain level of spoken skill, and thus be a great practice partner.

So I give ‘em a little lecture about that. I tell them the truth, which is seldom wise – but here it is, for what it’s worth. ‘If you just spent an hour each day talking English to a friend you’d improve fast. You don’t need to come to this class. You don’t need to pay this school’s high fees.’ That’s the boiled down version, by the way. In class I make it at least five times as long as that, just to run down the clock.

Then I talk about how to improve written English, and I use newspaper headlines from China’s English language media as talking points, showing how to get a conversation going on that basis.

Naturally, I focus on the headlines that interest me – the stories of corruption, pollution, politics. And I often work on death penalty stories, a fairly common item in the paper given the glee with which China’s government washes its hands in the blood of its people.

So the story will be of some hapless guy being put to death by the state, and I lead the conversation into a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the death penalty.

Most students are bloodthirsty. The death penalty’s fine by them – helps keep order in society, they say, suggesting that without the death penalty Chinese society would degenerate into violence and chaos.

Then I say, “Here is a statistic for you..” and write up on the board, “In 2006, China executed more people than the rest of the world put together.”

“What do you think of that?” I ask.

Some students look uneasy. Some point out “But China is so much bigger than any other country, and not all nations use the death penalty.” True enough.

Then I say, “But in fact what I just wrote on the board is not completely true…” and here I will often observe one or two self-satisfied smiles, as if to suggest “He is about to admit this is more Western anti-China propaganda…”

On the board, I add to the end of the statement “In 2006, China executed more people than the rest of the world put together…” the words, “…in the previous five years.”

This, at least, creates a deeper ripple of discomfort, yet even so many of the students will still support it. They know the government is corrupt, the police are corrupt, the courts are corrupt. But they still support the mass executions, the show trials, the public executions.

And so to the point of this entry.

A couple of years ago, at the end of one class, a student stayed behind to talk to me. Turned out he’d been in the armed services, though whether it was the People’s Liberation Army or the People’s Armed Police Force I confess I cannot now recall.

He told me he had participated in an execution.

“I got about half an hour’s notice” he said. “My superior came into the dorm and told me and the other guys to get ready for the duty. We prepared and went to the place where it was going to happen. They brought in the guy. He was utterly terrified. We lined up and each of us aimed our gun at him. We were given the order to shoot, and we shot. He collapsed, but he did not die. So then my commanding officer told me to use the … what it is called, knife on the gun?”

“Bayonet.”

“Yes, bayonet. He told me to use my bayonet to kill the guy. So I went up to him and stabbed him in the neck and then the chest. Then he died.”

This student was around 26 or 27. He told me this story with no more emotion than he might have recounted killing a chicken at the market.

“How did you feel about it?” I asked.

“It was my job.”

“What did the guy do? What was his crime, I mean?”

“I don’t know. They never told you that.”

“Didn't that bother you?”

“No. They told me to kill someone, I killed them. That was my job.”

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 18.
“A more truthful ‘healthy’ view of the PLA might be to reflect that since 1949 over 300,000 members of the army have died on active service. This is according to government figures which are, naturally, much lower than outside independent estimates. According to Beijing, for example, the official death toll in the Korean War was around 140,000 deaths. But the historian Jung Chang, citing an unofficial statement by Deng Xiaoping, puts the number at 400,000.

When a soldier dies for his country it should mean something, serve a purpose, or gain freedoms. What do China’s 300,000 military deaths mean? What purpose have they served, what freedoms have they gained?

China still vilifies Japan for its military past. But it can be suggested that Japan’s recent military history since 1945 is far more successful than China’s. In the same decades that China has lost at the very least 300,000 soldiers, Japan had no military casualties at all.

None.

Zero.”

Traveling to China soon? Have a real impact -- 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang. Every time you're near a camera, don't forget to make the signs.

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Reason Number 8 - The Godless

Posted by Unknown Senin, 28 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 15.

“One strand of Chinese belief well-exposed in Western media is Falun Gong, which at this date is still totally outlawed. Part cult, part religion, part exercise, the Falun Gong followers fatally attracted attention to themselves when using an internationally recognized method of religious protest -- the non-violent demonstration. The crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999 when members of the group gathered near Zhongnanhai, the residence compound of many of China’s top leaders in Beijing, to protest about perceived unfair treatment. This unified display of political protest outside Party control terrified China’s leaders. Within weeks, China banned the movement with extreme prejudice.

Amnesty International reported soon after that 'Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods, and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs. Many of them are reported to have been tortured or ill-treated in detention. Some practitioners have been detained in psychiatric hospitals. Those who have spoken out publicly about the persecution of practitioners since the ban have suffered harsh reprisals.' It has recently been alleged that many Falun Gong detainees who died in custody had been used to provide organs for transplant through organ harvesting.”

ChinaBounder comments:-

Fear.

Fear. Sheer, pure, fear; fear that at any moment the police might come, that you might be taken off to jail, beaten, tortured.

Fear. Fear that you cannot trust anyone, not your neighbors, not your friends, not even your family members.

Fear. Fear, because the whole of society hates and despises you, views you as an enemy of the state.

Fear. Fear that if anyone knows what you are – who you are – they will inform on you, betray you; and you will become one of the vanished.

Many groups have known this fear at different times in history. Jews. Gypsies. Homosexuals. Intellectuals. A death sentence always waiting, watching, hovering behind you simply because of who you are.

Today, in China, it is followers of Falun Gong who feel this fear.

Sure, Falun Gong is just as berserk as any other religion, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, whatever; it is all a bunch of dark ages fairy tales that impedes human progress. To be religious is to embrace ignorance.

But that is hardly a reason for persecution.

And it is persecution, persecution of the most brutal and horrible kind. And just like being Jewish in 1930s Germany, or a suspected ‘red’ in 1950s America, virtually the whole of Chinese society condones, even approves, the persecution.

This is why Falun Gong followers live a life of silence and terror.

Yet in a nation where telling the truth means prison, means pain, some Falun Gong supporters will talk. Not to their fellow Han, of course, but to people like me – foreigners. Just like the people of Xinjiang, like the Taiwanese, Falun Gong followers can speak the truth to foreigners. They can say what they believe, sure in the knowledge that they will not be informed on, will not be handed over to the police.

They cannot trust their countrymen. The risk is too huge. They cannot say what they are to any Han, no more than a Tibetan can tell a Han ‘Your country invaded mine,’ a Uighur can say ‘You are murdering my culture’ or a Taiwanese can burst into laughter at the preposterous, absurd notion their proud and praiseworthy nation ‘belongs’ to China. But to me – to any foreigner – they can speak clear.

And so I have met several of these despised and persecuted people. Some drew strength from their crazy beliefs, strength enough to leave China, and set up lives in other nations, countries where they get the basic human respect denied to them by the motherland.

I cannot forget one young woman I met, two or three years ago now. This was in a class, of course, and there was something … broken, snapped about her. There was a pallor to her skin, a timidity, a fear to her body language. She seemed too scared to even make eye contact with me, and she did not interact with the other students at all.

It bothered me, worried me. She was always the last to leave the class, sitting at her desk, pallid, passive, until the other students had all gone. So at the end of that course of lessons, I tried to get to know her. And, with the other students away, she began to open up a little – made eye-contact, spoke with a little more conviction.

She had spent a year in a labor camp, she told me, undergoing ‘re-education.’ She’d followed Falun Gong, and the State, with its tentacles, its informers everywhere, had found out. What life was like in the camp she would not say. But she did not need to. It was obvious – obvious from the pain and fear in her demeanor, obvious from her broken, shattered spirit.

Tortured, brutalized, destroyed. That’s what China had done to her. Violence, wrath and anger – and she would never be free, she knew it. China would never let her go. Monitored. Watched. Under surveillance. Made a pariah, an outcast in her own nation. And of course her family, her friends, anyone she talked to – they, too, would come under suspicion from the police, the security services – from guys who would be just as happy working in the Killing Fields as downtown Shanghai.

I wanted to keep in touch with her, wanted to reach out – wanted her to see that not all her fellow humans distrusted her. She gave me her phone number. I tried sending a few messages. Nothing came back.

This was, as I say, two or three years ago. I have never forgotten her. Not least because I now carry my own fear, my own worry. For in sending her even one sms message in English I put her in real danger. The police would have intercepted that message, traced it back to me (for the Chinese state will happily see its poorest starve while spending tens of millions of dollars on the most elaborate surveillance) – and would have persecuted her yet further for it. Talking to a foreigner! That was crime enough to put her right back in the labor camp.

I wonder where she is now. Is she even alive? Has she been put to death, has she taken her own life?

It bothers me.

But I cannot imagine it will bother many of my Han readers.

'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 16.

‘Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism were ruthlessly suppressed for much of “New China’s” history. Today, however, the Communist Party has begun to embrace Confucius once more, using the philosopher to support its own target of ‘harmony’ – a sort of Confucius dressed in Marxist clothes. A communist Jesus.

What is noticeably absent is the Judeo-Christian ethic of doing good, of helping the less fortunate. In Chinese belief, both ancient and modern, wealth is a sign of heavenly blessings. Even Deng Xiaoping said ‘To get rich is glorious.’ Rather than wealth being seen as a mandate to help the poor, it is viewed as approbation from heaven. The wealthy man is the righteous man, often above reproach, as is demonstrated by the way some wealth-seekers in China disregard public welfare, environmental concerns, and often basic human morality. ‘Glorious’ in China has nothing to do with graceful.

Religion is comfort. That so many lives in China are devoid of comfort only increases the vacuum for the religions of the world to flow into. Although the Party has yet not imagined such a theoretical catastrophe, communism is not one of those religions.’

Not long now. The Olympics will soon be here. So - don't forget, 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

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ChinaBounder Weekender Part Three

Posted by Unknown Kamis, 24 Juli 2008 0 komentar

BIG NEWS!

The Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games has asked ChinaBounder to provide a list of 10 ‘gold medal’ winners from among the many dissidents, victims, and visionaries who truly want change but have been beaten, jailed or executed by the Communist Chinese government.

No, not really -- but here are my suggestions.

Woeser. She’s a Tibetan poet. She writes about AIDS, the environment, and social problems. She wants to travel outside China. The Chinese government refuses to give her a passport. “If I really am posing a threat to society, doesn't it make the great country of China seem very weak?" she told the Associated Press recently. “I still have hope in China, which is such a strong nation," Woeser said. “I hope it will be strong enough to give me a little space." A champ!
Rebiya Kadeer. A Uighur businesswoman. She was arrested in 1999 for the ‘crime’ of sending newspaper clippings to her husband in the United States. She wants a peaceful solution to the occupation of her country, the area known as Xingjiang, by China. So she is reviled and abused by China. After six years in jail she was released and allowed to go to the States. Then the Chinese came after her sons, two of whom have received long jail terms on politically motivated charges. Kadeer continues to speak for her oppressed people.
Huang Qi. Recently he tried to help the parents of the thousands children who died in the recent earthquake. After speaking out about what happened in the quake he was arrested for ‘illegal possession of state secrets.’ Still under arrest, he’s been denied access to any legal representation. He was jailed previously, for five years, after writing online about the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Hada. A Mongolian, he’s been in jail for more than a decade because he called for greater rights and freedoms for the people of Inner Mongolia. He also ran a bookshop selling books, in Mongolian, on Mongolian topics. Add the Mongolians to the list, with the Tibetans, the Uighurs – another minority oppressed, belittled and abused by the Han.
Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin. This one is a posthumous gold medal, for Setiwaldi and Imin were recently executed by China. China said they were terrorists – not freedom fighters or resistance fighters against occupation. In China freedom is terrorism. They received a show trial, that still active remnant of authoritarian regimes from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Russia. Beijing invokes the specter of terrorism to sow hatred and fear of other ethnic peoples among the Han population, the same way the Nazis did to those of Jewish faith. The government can crush the people of those ethnic nations and the Han, normal Chinese citizens, will applaud when they do.
Hu Jia. He speaks out on AIDS, the environment, human rights and democracy. He’s in prison now, locked up for three and a half years because he wanted the leaders of his nation to do more about AIDS. The state came after his family. His wife lives under constant police harassment. That is the Chinese way – if you speak out you make your whole family a target.
The Dalai Lama. He has made it his life’s mission to call for a peaceful solution to the Tibet problem. The government constantly misrepresents him, spewing out lies and disinformation, misleading the people of China so that they believe he is a man of war, not peace. Does anybody disagree with this choice?
Sting, along with a range of other artists – not Chinese, but they wanna be. The ‘Songs for Tibet’ project gathers a group of internationally-famous singers and musicians to record an album to highlight the plight of the nation of Tibet. The album is proposed for release on August 5th. Songs of and for peace and harmony. China will spin it as ‘an attack on China,’ ‘meddling in internal affairs,’ ‘foreign machinations’ and so on. China will invent music terrorism.
Leung Kwok-hung. He’s a Chinese Hong Kong politician, often known as ‘Long Hair.’ He’s always been a man to speak with his own voice. He wanted to travel to Sichuan to learn more about the earthquake victims. He was banned from doing so. In the words of Leung himself: "It’s so ironic. People said the Olympic Games will make China more open up, I think it’s going backward." Leung, a socialist, truly believes in the things the Communist Party of China only pretends to believe in. That’s the real irony.

And now to No 10……………… and the answer is up to you. I challenge you to choose the 10th most worthy individual from China who may honorably receive gold. Post your selection in the comments box.

To help you out, a few more who have suffered under the hammer of communist rule: Du Daobin. Shi Tao. Wang Dan. Huang Liangtian. Sun Lin. Pang Jiaoming. Zhang Mingxuan. Gao Zhisheng. Bao Tong. Ma Jian. Yang Jianli. Wang Xiaoning. Liu Xiaobo. Wei Jingsheng. Jiang Yanyong. Zeng Hongling. Gao Yaojie. Chen Guangcheng.

There are many I have not even mentioned. Heroes who should be honored by China, but who will only receive abuse and contempt while the semi-fascist government holds sway.

Any students who wish to have a new experience and life-long memory as a protester for 60 seconds form a 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang and expect to get your ass booted.

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Reason Number 7. Better than Cheap – It’s Fake

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'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 13.

“An inspection launched across nine provinces in China found 775 bogus military vehicles and more than a thousand stolen or faked military license plates. Criminal gangs faked military certificates and seals to produce the bogus vehicles, which they then sold for many thousands of dollars profit.

In Shanghai, the trade in fake tires is big business. Employees in underground workshops gather dumped used tires and cut new grooves into them, making them resemble new products. Each worker can make 30 to 40 such tires a day, and these are then sold on for 25 yuan (US$3) each. A genuine new tire costs 300 to 400 yuan. The fakes are prone to explode at high speeds.

In eastern Zhejiang Province, a factory manager, Ying Fuming, was arrested after it was found his factory made ‘edible’ lard from animal swill, sewage and even recycled industrial oil. The Fanchang Grease Factory, in the city of Taizhou, produced six tons of lard a day, and sometimes ten tons. It sold its lard to hotels and restaurants across the country at prices 50% lower than average.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Coming to Shanghai, the visitor’s first destination is seldom the much-touted tourist attractions, but instead the markets, to buy replica Louis Vuitton handbags, designer labels, scads of pirate DVDs – all that stuff. And China fakes far more than this, for if there’s even a fraction of money to be made in faking something, it will get faked. Food, medicine, car parts, what have you; it all gets knocked-off, putting lives at risk for a handful of profit.

But I often think China’s essential fakeness runs deeper than this.

Xintiandi, for example, one of Shanghai’s premier tourist spots. A few years back, real people lived there. Sure, it was a run-down, beat-up neighborhood. But it was a community. Rather than renovate this community for the benefit of those who lived there, the residents were thrown out, palmed off with often sub-standard housing, often far away from their former friends and neighbors. Then their original houses were more or less torn down and rebuilt, brick by brick into what you see today – a picture-perfect Disneyfication of ‘classic’ Shanghai. A careful, cautious, sterile facsimile.

Few of the residents who used to live there could now afford even a single drink in Xintiandi. It is simply a site for well-heeled Shanghainese to strut, and for gullible foreigners to get the ‘Old Shanghai’ experience. Colossally expensive, with restaurants serving mostly mediocre food, Xintiandi is little more than corporate styling. And hugely successful it is too, so that now politicians all across China are letting their lack of imagination run riot as they order up their own Xintiandi clones. Eyes on the dollar, as always.

When I go to Xintiandi, I feel shame for China.

Same is true for that other famous Shanghai tourist spot, the ‘Old City’ area, and the ‘City God Temple,’ near the Bund. Here, tourists are pressured to buy ‘antiques’ from Ming and Qing China, all fake; and this happens in a venue which itself is fake, since the entire area was rebuilt in the 1930s, and has been renovated again several times since then. Fakes inside a fake, and the whole a dream of what China imagines itself to be. And all over China, pagodas, temples, wells, gardens, rockeries – so many are fake, modern-day reconstructions of the priceless heritage China destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.

But it is not just the fabric of China that is so often fake.

I often feel the Chinese national character itself is fake.

For what does it mean to ‘be Chinese’ today? Too often, it means to be the image, the embodiment of what the Communist Party says ‘being Chinese’ is. Every reader with a more than transitory experience of China will have heard the six famous words – ‘As a Chinese person I think…’

And, ‘as a Chinese person,’ what the vast majority of people think is nothing more than what the Party wants them to think. On Tibet. On Xinjiang. On Japan. On Taiwan. ‘As a Chinese person I think…’ and fill in the blank. And the flip side of those six famous words – ‘You are not Chinese, so you do not understand.’ Knee-jerk reaction, pre-programmed. How many of the people who use that phrase really examine their opinions, question them, shape them?

They take their opinions, and thus their very character, from Party hand-outs.

And so effective is the Party at this that most people do not even notice. Many citizens of China have criticisms of their government. Yet few see how wholly, how intimately, this same Party has constructed the national character. Teaching hatred. Bigotry. Intolerance. Xenophobia. Racism. Ingorance. And, to top off this poisonous mix, the Party instills the sense among its people that the world owes China an apology. That all of China’s current problems lie at the feet of Imperial Japan, or the British Empire.

The truth, of course, is that 95% of today’s problems in China are the fault of one group of people, and one group alone: the Communists. It is the Party that owes the deepest and most profound apologies to the Chinese people. Alas! With their Party-sanctioned personalities, how are the people to know it, how can they ever demand it?

Character should be self-created. Authentic. Yes, our genes, our environment, shape us in ways we do not fully understand. But still we can make what we are, can decide what we are. We can choose to be.

But in China? I do not often see that. What I more frequently see is the group reaction, the Party line, the cultural identity – ‘I am Chinese; therefore I think that...’

'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 14.

China is home to the sweet wormwood plant, which is a source of the chemical artesunate, used to make artemisinin, a potent defense against malaria.

Malaria kills one person every 30 seconds, and up to three million people a year. Ninety percent of the deaths are in Africa. Most of the victims are children. Yet Africa, the continent that needs the drug most, is being flooded with fake versions of it. Fakes made in China that either contain too little artesunate or none at all. The copies are highly detailed, even down to fake security holograms. And they are cheap – around forty US cents, as opposed to US$2.20 for the real thing.

“Most of these find their way into the hands of poor people, they don’t have any choice. They buy these drugs with the little money they have and they die,” says Kevin Palmer, a World Health Organization official working in malaria prevention. “People die. We have plenty of instances when people have taken these fake drugs and then they are dead. It’s murder.”

Athletes and students: make your mark in China. ‘T’ for Tibet, ‘X’ for Xinjiang when you’re on camera in Beijing.

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Reason Number 6 - Drycleaning the News

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 23 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 11.

“In early summer 2007 a man walked into the offices of the Chengdu Evening News, a newspaper located in the central Chinese city of Chendgu. He gave the text of an advertisement he wished to place to the young female clerk on duty. The words of that advertisement were ‘Paying tribute to the strong mothers of the June 4th victims.’

The advertisement referred to June 4th 1989, the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The Chinese government’s denial of this event had been so successful, sanitizing the educational system so well, that the young clerk had never heard of it. After the Chengdu Evening Post ran the advertisement, the deputy editor in chief of the paper was sacked, as were two other members of the editorial office

The Communist Party is extremely sensitive about any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre in public life. Open discussion of the event is dangerous, so much so that many young people the same age as the clerk often express disbelief if you tell them what really happened on that evening. The news is so effectively dry-cleaned that young people who do have some knowledge of the event support what the government did to end it. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens not only do not know the truth of their own country’s past, but also have a warped view of the world that lies beyond China.

As well as showing the almost pathological fear the Communist Party has of discussing the truth of modern Chinese history, this incident is just one part of a much wider web of lies, half-truths and misinformation that lie at the heart of today’s Chinese media.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Some months ago I wrote an entry called ‘How to Get Fucked in China.’

That drew a lot of hits, primarily from people who were looking how to ‘really’ get laid in China – people searching for sex via Google, Yahoo and so on. I guess most of those searchers were people who were coming on a holiday to China and hoping to get laid while they were in the country. If that is indeed what brought them to the blog, they must certainly have been disappointed.

So this time I will give a tip for all those readers who really want to know how to get laid in China. Because it’s very easy.

All you need to do – when you get to Shanghai, at least – is buy the city’s ‘flagship’ daily newspaper, Shanghai Daily.

Turn toward the back pages. There you will find a page or two of ‘massage’ adverts.

Look at the names – ‘Happy Ending’ and ‘Angel Delight’ and ‘Thailand Experience’ and ‘Honey Angels’ – stuff like that. These are, of course, call-girl ads.

Each advert has a mobile phone number on it. Call one up. You’ll get through to a Madame. She’ll speak pretty good English, as this is a service aimed mainly at providing Chinese prostitutes for Western visitors. The Madame will get your hotel room details and tell you the girl will be there soon.

And she will – it’s an efficient service and since, as a foreigner, you will likely be staying in a downtown hotel, it won’t be long before she’s knocking on the door. Don’t worry about the staff not letting her into the hotel – they’re in on the game too.

So you’ll let the girl in, and she’ll tell you she’s come to give you a massage. The massage will begin. She’ll take off your shirt, your trousers. She’ll get to work on you. And after a few moments she will offer you sex.

Then you negotiate. She’ll start with a high price, two or three thousand yuan, or maybe more if you’re in a swanky hotel. You can haggle this down a long way. Twelve hundred to fifteen hundred yuan is fair, but if you’re a real hard ass you can get it down to a thousand or even a little less. She won’t speak much English, because most of these girls are from poor countryside families, selling the only asset they have, their bodies, though occasionally you’ll get a more highly-educated university girl, ‘working’ her way through college to pay the bills. It’s the same old story – the rich and powerful preying on the poor and weak. So the girl will be able to haggle. She’ll also know words such as ‘Condom’ and ‘No’ and ‘Don’t,’ and of course the language of faked sexual pleasure is pretty much global.

So you settle on the price – and, please, do not haggle it down too much, for consider how much you have and how little she has, and consider what it is you are paying her to do. Then she will undress.

You know what to do from there on, right?

Now, here you can read about Chen Hui, a Chinese citizen. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 after being busted for running a porn site, with 600,000 subscribers.

That’s life in prison for running a porn site. That sentence was reported in Shanghai Daily, too.

The very same Shanghai Daily that openly advertises prostitution.

Chinese women sold to well-heeled Western visitors, and the Chinese media is the pimp. That’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay to sell Chinese girls to Westerners if you’re the Chinese state.

But not okay for a Chinese guy to sell pictures and videos of sex to other Chinese people.

Work that one out.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 12.

“It takes great energy for the government to maintain its paper curtain, which, with today’s electronic media becomes thinner and thinner, sometimes almost the point of translucence, allowing the citizens of China to ‘see through’ the face of their own state press into the open windows of the international media.

Unfortunately for the Chinese people, the decades of receiving only manufactured news will for some time prevent them from understanding that the ‘negative’ world media will not harm China, but will enhance its opportunities to find international solutions and solve universal problems.”

And remember – ‘T’ for Tibet and ‘X’ for Xinjiang at the Olympics next month.

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Reason Number 5 - There are no Bill Clintons in China

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 22 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 9

“Politicians who have to appeal to the electorate need to develop star power. Think of Bill Clinton. Think of Tony Blair. Think of Nicolas Sarkozy, or Junichiro Koizumi. Think of up and coming Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Politicians from democracies are sexy.

These leaders sought power by taking their case to the people – by showing the people they had a vision and understood the needs of the country. These leaders earned power. Some of them became mired in scandal, yet they never quite lost their star quality. Their sexiness.

But China’s politicians have never earned power in this fashion. They have never had to answer to the people they ostensibly serve. Ever since 1949, when ‘New China’ was founded, the Communist Party has used violence, fear and intimidation to keep its grip on power, rather than take its case to the citizens of the nation. There’s no point in being sexy if you’re a Chinese politician.

China does not have any sexy or charismatic political figures like JFK or Churchill in its recent past. While both these magnetic politicians had flaws, they also had many powerful qualities which enabled them to shape their nations for the better. But even the powerful leader of ‘New China,’ Mao Zedong, could only bring misery and suffering, balanced by few positive characteristics. There are no Lincolns or Washingtons in Chinese history, no Benjamin Disraelis or Horatio Nelsons. Even regally, there is no Queen Elizabeth the First or Queen Victoria. There is no Uncle Sam, or John Bull. No St. Nicholas. No Harry Potter and certainly no Mickey Mouse.”

ChinaBounder's comments:

I have a theory. I think the reason Chinese politicians are so unsexy is because there is a sum total of sexiness available in Chinese society, and Chinese women have somehow absorbed it all. The Shanghai women especially – so smart, so stylish, so sexy. How else to explain their passion for life – and their passion in bed – compared to China’s leaders, a bunch of dyed-hair, buttoned-down, stuffed-up, Brylcreemed, identikit-suited wind-up manikins?

Watch a Chinese politician speak. Watch Hu Jintao giving a speech, his lack of warmth, energy. Look at the politicians lined up at the big Party pow-wows, a line of wax dummies. It’s just one more of the many reasons why the Chinese people have no respect for their politicians.

When Hu speaks, what you never see is the demeanor of an elected leader trying to connect with the citizens of the country. What you see is the dour, abrupt face of the dictator. Not the dictator in the Adolf Hitler mode, trying to whip the people to a frenzy with rabid, nationalistic oratory, but the technocrat dictator, sour, unyielding, expecting his orders to be obeyed without question. Hu plays the role of chief executive of China in the style of the most colorless, faceless accountant. To look at him on the podium, you might not think that this was the man who had sent hundreds of Tibetans to jail – and to their deaths - when he was in charge of that country a few years back.

But even the Communist Party, glacially impervious as it might seem to change, can, like a glacier, melt – if only a little.

I am thinking here of Wen Jiabao, China’s Prime Minister. The recent earthquake, so bad for the 80,000 Chinese now dead, has been pretty good for him; he has become ‘Grandpa Wen’ – a piece of rebranding that seems to have worked rather well. He’s been popping up all over the Chinese media, doing his best to project warmth, humanity. Now, sure, he’s a bit ham-fisted at it – that’s an unavoidable side-effect of a whole career spend being a bastard (the only way to get to the top in Chinese politics) – and when he hugs a photogenic child he looks more like he’s handling an unexploded bomb than a fellow human being.

The Chinese people, apparently easily convinced by this simple media campaign, approve of him. Seemingly, all it takes is a few stage-managed smiles, and all the Party’s crimes, all its corruption, all its grotesque mismanagement of China, are forgotten. ‘Grandpa Wen’ is right at the forefront of a rising sense of pride in the Party. Many of my friends have said ‘Look how quickly the Party has responded to the quake – sending in the army and police to help, finding new homes for the homeless, providing food and medicine.’

Sure – but no questions about the Party mismanagement that was so directly responsible for the massive death toll among schoolchildren.

One friend even argued that the aftermath of the earthquake proved socialism was better than capitalism. ‘Look how all the people worked together to help the victims’ he said. ‘That shows our political system is better.’

Communism getting the credit for basic human decency. Score one for Party propaganda.

But propaganda and popularity can bite you back. ‘Grandpa Wen’ had better watch out. There’s another reason why Chinese politicians are never sexy – standing out too much, being too much the individual, can be dangerous.

Consider Zhou En-lai. He too was beloved, popular, and, by god, Mao Zedong made him pay for that. Mao killed him for it – refused to let Zhou get treatment for the cancer he developed until it was too late to cure. This, of course, is something the people of China do not know, and I expect many to pop up on the comments to say I am talking nonsense. But Chinese politicians know their Party history. They remember Zhou. Many of them saw how Mao tortured and harassed Zhou. They know what Mao was.

Right now ‘Grandpa Wen’ is riding high. Right now that’s good for the Party. Right now it helps support Hu’s control of the nation. Other top politicians, like Xi Jinping, tried to get their snouts into the limelight. But they couldn’t catch up with Wen. Good for Gramps.

But that won’t last. I’m sure Wen remembers 1989, when he stood behind a popular politician of the time, Zhao Ziyang, who spent the rest of his life under house arrest for the 'crime' of being sympathetic to the Tiananmen Square students, and died in 2005. I’m sure Wen remembers the ‘re-education’ he underwent.

Shanghai used to have a popular and charismatic mayor, Xu Kuangdi. He got too much limelight, so he got demoted, kicked down to some meaningless talking-shop role. Mind you, one spicier rumor says part of his demotion was due to pissing off the Party boss of the time, Huang Ju. The scuttlebutt is Huang was expected at a big meeting in Beijing, chaired by the then-PM, Zhu Rongji. Huang didn’t make it and Xu, present at the meeting, gave the game away – ‘Huang is shacked up with his mistress in Shanghai.’ On hearing this, Zhu (renowned as a hot-tempered guy) lost his rag and demanded Huang be ‘escorted’ up to Beijing ASAP. After Huang’s loss of face, Xu’s goose was cooked, and Huang made sure he paid.

Yeah, in China, it’s best not to stand out, whether you’re at the bottom of society or the top.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 10

“`Having a nubile, young mistress is not only fashionable for China’s middle-aged officials partial to a spot of corruption but also a perfect cloak for taking a bribe’ explained Chinese media in summer 2007, announcing a new regulation to tackle bribery. Many corrupt officials kept ‘clean hands’ by funneling bribes through family members or lovers. The new rules meant that “for the first time prosecutors will no longer need to provide evidence of the involvement of a mistress in order to convict an official charged with accepting bribes.” Under the new guidelines, Zhao Zhanqi, a transport chief in eastern Zhejiang Province, was sentenced to life in prison. He had taken a bribe of 550,000 yuan through his mistress, Wang Peiying, to award an airport construction contract. As well as this sum, Zhao took a further 5.6 million yuan (US$737,000) via his son.

But mistresses only get reported when the leader in question falls from power. This ensures that most politicians in China are never associated with a ‘human’ side, but remain remote and unknowable figures. There is no way for the population of China to feel any connection with their leaders, and nor are their leaders individual enough to inspire affection or emulation.”

And remember -- T for Tibet, X for Xinjiang at the upcoming Olympics.

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Reason Number 4 - Degrees of Unhappiness

Posted by Unknown Senin, 21 Juli 2008 0 komentar

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 7

“One of the reasons behind the system of pressure [in higher education] is the extraordinary changes higher education in China has seen in recent decades. China’s universities were shut down in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). In the years since they reopened, 36 million students have been admitted. Expansion in Chinese higher education has taken place at a truly astonishing rate. In 1999, the country’s colleges admitted 1.08 million students. By 2002, that number was up to 2.75 million. In 2007, said China’s Ministry of Education, 5.7 million students would be enrolled.

No matter what course a student signs up for – or, more often, is coerced into attending, either by parents or the system itself – he or she must also take a number of mandatory courses that have nothing to do with the major.

The most burdensome of these are political indoctrination courses, such as ‘Mao Zedong Theory,’ ‘Deng Xiaoping Theory,’ and, naturally, copious quantities of Marxism, all designed to espouse political theories that almost no-one – even the tutors – believes in. Political indoctrinization courses continue right up to PhD level, and a large amount of political hagiography must be memorized and repeated by rote.

There is extremely little room for any creative thinking or disagreement in these courses; a student who has the temerity to argue against the political effectiveness of Mao, for example, will simply fail the course – no matter how cogently he or she argues – and without passing the course, they student cannot complete the degree.”

ChinaBounder's comments:

China’s higher education system sucks. It is lazy, corrupt, and ideological. Try as I might, I can find nothing good to say about it. Well, except that it provides a great source of ChinaBounder’s lovers – but that’s another entry altogether.

Again and again I talk to students about their attitudes to higher education. Their responses are almost wholly negative. And while there are a few students who will begin by giving positive comments about their university, it does not take many questions from me before they agree that their university is indeed shoddy and unprofessional.

One of these students (name withheld) recently had his MA viva at what is regarded as one of Shanghai’s better universities. A viva, for those not in the know, is an interview panel of academics who quiz the student about their paper. Its purpose is to ensure the student really did write it, and to ask questions arising from the paper to test how wide the student’s knowledge of the subject is. The viva is meant to be a flexible academic debate, a give-and-take tussle. At least, that is what happens in a proper university. A university that takes education seriously.

Now I have read hundreds of essays written by students in China during recent years, across all levels, BA, BSc, MA, PhD. Very few have been worthy of academic respect. But this was an extremely accomplished paper, one that was certainly fit for publication in an international journal. How frustrating, then, that the academic rigor which this student put into his paper was totally disregarded by his university.

The questions that the panel asked were all decided in advance. Each academic had his script. And how do I know this? Because the chief examiner of the viva panel wrote out the questions for each examiner to ask each student, and handed them over to two of the MA students to type out. These students promptly shared the information with their peers.

China is creating an entire generation of people who do not think, do not question. How can China ever hope to change when this is the caliber of its best-educated people?

There is also a contradiction here, one of the many that makes Chinese society so fascinating and so hard to read. Though most Chinese students will agree the education sucks, most do not care. They do not want a rigorous, creative and flexible education. Sure, they all want less of the bullshit politics courses which are mandatory for all students, and most would be grateful if their accommodation was a bit less like the gulag.

Do they want to learn? Do they want to be challenged? Most of the students I have met simply want to get their degree, to chalk up the points. All that matters to them is having a degree with the name of a half-way respectable university with which to impress employers. The quality of received education is not a consideration. And this is why too many Chinese students are content to drift through their education, doing the minimum, copying their essays and obediently, uncomplainingly, jumping through the hoops the university sets out for them.

Let me put it another way; in all my years in China, I have met perhaps five students who take pride in their academic work.

While the Communist Party keeps its Neanderthal grip on power, maintaining present educational policies, this cannot change.

The students cannot wholly be blamed for not demanding a decent education. In Chinese education, just like everyday life in the nation, it is dangerous to stand out, dangerous to be an individual with alternative opinions. Unfortunately, it is from students like these that the next generation of academics comes, and so the system repeats itself, over and over.

Those few tutors who have some spark to them are soon crushed. Take an actual tutor (name withheld) at the same university I just mentioned. He completed his doctorate in the United States and returned to China to teach literature.

Perhaps, having been so long in the dynamic States, he had forgotten how lazy, how idle Chinese undergraduates were. For he set his students to actually read books – read books! – from cover to cover, not just a selected chapter from here or there, as is usual in a ‘literature’ degree in China. Worse than this, he wanted his students to read beyond the core curriculum. His greatest error was that he tried to set up seminars in which students could discuss ideas.

His students revolted. They complained to the university authorities. ‘Too much hard work!’ they bleated. ‘Too much reading!’ they whined.

Pause a moment, and consider the irony of that. English Literature. University Level. Too much reading.

Chinese university students, generally too apathetic or timid to complain, only made a fuss because the education was too good.

‘Fault Lines’ asks, “Will your university allow you to think?”

I reply: Does anyone in China really want to?

And certainly not about sex.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 8

“The authoritarian treatment of students extends into every area of their life. Sex, for Chinese students, is also a subject for control by university regulations. Shanghai University, for example, expelled a student because he allowed his girlfriend to spend the night in his dorm room.

The student, Zhu Bin, explained that his girlfriend had come to see him from another university but had missed the last bus home. 'I originally intended to arrange for her to spend the night in a nearby internet café, but it was too dangerous for a girl to stay overnight with male strangers about' he said, so he took her back to his dorm. He planned to allow her to have his bed while he slept in a chair but, suffering from a fever, he lay down beside her. The next morning a dorm mate informed on Zhu, and teachers discovered him and his girlfriend on the bed.

In insisting ‘nothing happened’ Zhu perhaps legitimized the belief that sex is indeed shameful. And certainly Zhu’s mother said ‘I know that my son did something wrong, but things are not the way teachers think… the school should give him an opportunity to reform.’

When the Family Planning Commission of China’s southern Guangdong Province wanted to install condom machines in eight provincial universities in 2004, some reacted strongly. Kong Xiaoming, publicity chief of the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, said ‘We firmly oppose to condom vending machines on our campus. On campus, this very move is definitely prohibited, and we would never allow students to have sex experience while in college [sic].’

Also in 2004, Beijing University – one of China’s most prestigious institutions – rejected plans to hand out condoms on World AIDS Day, saying that it was ‘inappropriate to hand out free condoms openly on campus.’”

Don’t forget: ‘T’ for Tibet and ‘X’ for Xinjiang at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

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Reason Number 3. Children – The Endangered Species.

Posted by Unknown Minggu, 20 Juli 2008 0 komentar

Excerpt 5.

“As writers living in China we have become constant surveyors. Asking questions is easy since most Chinese are eager to explain their life, culture and feelings.

One question we pose to almost everyone we meet socially is, 'Who loves their children more, Chinese parents or Western parents?' The response invariably comes quickly with the firm belief that the answer is irrefutable. Chinese parents!

Sometimes we paste a forlorn look on our faces, if only to gauge the sensitivity of our subject under question. Quickly they offer, ‘Well, I am sure you love your children in a different way…culturally speaking.’

Of course it is true that Chinese families love their child (most often a single child, as allowed by the one-child policy) a great deal and expend great effort and finance to prove that. Chinese parents are often overwhelmed, complying with the demands made by their pint sized Emperors and Empresses.

But it seems that China loves its children only one child at a time, because nationally there are thousands of children suffering horrible deaths and injuries every year.”

I wonder how many people in China still remember the name Zhang Yaoyi? Very few, I guess. Certainly no one I have spoken to in the past year or so – no one at all – has known who she was.

And now, of course, there’s Li Shufen. People might remember her for a few weeks, just like they remembered – briefly – Zhang Yaoyi. After all, child deaths like those provide temporary pin-pricks of conscience to Chinese society before public opinion rolls on – indifferent, uncaring.

But the thousands upon thousands of other children, set to work as pickpockets, beggars, laborers or – worse – sex slaves, who ever pays attention to them, even for a moment?

Every day, in Shanghai, I see children begging on the tube – and the way they beg is simply shameful, kneeling on the floor in front of passengers, knocking their heads on the ground. This, of course, is the kowtow, the Chinese tradition based on self-abasement, on humiliation.

And nearly every single passenger simply ignores the child, see right through him or her as if invisible – that, or curses the child away with a sharp word, or even a kick.

Shanghai, one of the richest cities in the nation, does nothing; no social workers, no education, no health care – nothing, nothing for these children. They are simply expendable. Are there any child-care specialists in the Shanghai police force?

Sure, the poor in every nation get a raw deal, and children of poor parents are exploited all over the world. But, in China, it is not just the poor who get a hard deal.

Truthfully, I think to be a child in China today is to be a moving target, not a prospect for the future.

For schoolchildren in China (or at least those children fortunate enough to have access to education; for while China can find tens of billions of US dollars for the Olympic Games, it cannot find the funds to upgrade education for millions of its young), life is mostly misery.

Chinese children up to the age of seven or eight are like their peers all over the world. They are happy, bright, full of life, full of mischief. They have their range of characteristics, from the quiet and rather shy children to the boisterous and badly-behaved ones. But each has character, each is an individual, and each is ready to burst into noisy joy, to play and laugh and simply embrace life.

But then I think of children who are just a few years older, say ten years old. For them, ‘the process’ has begun. ‘The process’ is the method whereby the Chinese education system crushes that life, that individuality, out of the child. The sheer weight of by-rote learning, the inflexible, rigid, monotonous teaching, the endless hours of homework and the pressure to succeed, exerted by teachers, parents and indeed much of society – all that crushes the essential child.

And so, by the age of 14 or 15, children in China have forgotten how to live. Treated like so much nuts and bolts in school, they become robots.

But even as the children study, Chinese officials have found new ways to kill them.

The new weapon is called ‘a school.’ Crushed as the floors accordioned down as a quake struck, 7,000 classrooms collapsed and nearly 5,000 children died, while the pockets of officials were lined with graft money, ripped-off instead of used to make the schools quakeproof.

The Chinese Communist Party has no respect for rules, no respect for law, certainly as related to children. The CPC pisses all over the law whenever it wants, shits on the constitution and wipes itself with the ‘rights’ of the people. China’s government teaches the lesson ‘fuck the rules.’ And so the builders did.

Consider Juyuan Middle School, in the city of Dujiangyan. This school was identified as being structurally unsafe. Last year, the school got money to upgrade its construction quality – 200,000 yuan, more than enough to complete the work. But the money was not spent for that purpose. Press reports say the cash went for ‘trees, paint, new classroom windows, and power line improvements.’ Result: two of the school’s buildings totally collapsed – the only buildings to do so in the whole city. Two hundred and forty children died.

As if the deaths alone were not terrible enough, the Chinese government then insults the bereaved parents, shows its contempt for them, their suffering, their pain. For all across Sichuan parents have been prevented from holding mourning ceremonies at the schools where their sons and daughters died. And all across China, the press has been prevented from asking questions about why so many schools fell. Sure, a few English-language outlets in the Chinese media have covered it, but those reports are for foreigners only, concocted to give the outside world the impression China’s media is open. Definitely not for domestic consumption.

The average people of China, treated as second-class citizens as they are by Beijing, live in a sort of latter-day New China Apartheid.

This Apartheid values overseas impressions of China far higher than the concerns of the Chinese people themselves – deny the bad news, avoid the tough questions, and carry on with death and destruction as normal.

Excerpt 6.

“Perhaps the one-child policy has shifted the focus of adults so much that caring eyes do not see others in harm’s way. Or possibly the constant reminders of overpopulation have inured adult kindness to the point of blindness to the importance of ultimate care for every single child.

Today’s Chinese parents who have obeyed the one-child policy expect to receive traditional filial obedience from their child. This obedience, which was traditionally shared by many siblings must now be shouldered by one. This micro-nuclear family basis has corrupted caring in China.

'We have no time for others when others have no time for us,' as one proud father told us, his son closely listening, learning the ‘rules’ of life in modern China.”

‘T’ for Tibet, ‘X’ for Xinjiang for all you China visitors to the August Olympics.

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