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ChinaBounder Revealed

Posted by Unknown Rabu, 16 Juli 2008 0 komentar

Relative to today’s article in The Guardian in cooperation with Justin McCurry in Tokyo and Jonathan Watts in Beijing, I have decided to post, ahead of time, Chapter 21 of ‘Fault Lines on the Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great,’ which indicates who ChinaBounder is. This posting will also give readers the opportunity to review the work of David Marriott and Karl Lacroix without my acidic commentary.

Without a further word, I offer you an abridged version of ‘Boxing in Ideas for Mr. Marx.’

In the late 1950s, China’s military had developed a number of basic computer networks. Each network was made up of a number of workstations. Each of these stations could communicate with each other. But they could not communicate with other networks. Furthermore, each network had been built for different purposes and by different people. Each had its own set of operating rules.

In the early 1960s, one brilliant, forward-thinking Chinese scientist working in a military research program realized that what was needed was one computer workstation that could communicate with any other network, and one set of operating instructions for all machines.

The scientist began to work on a set of theories to enable this change to take place. Others on his visionary team helped design and implement the necessary protocols.

As they did so, they realized another benefit of their dream; it could be expanded to link together the country’s universities, research institutions and libraries, and it could allow cheap and efficient communication for ordinary people. In a country as vast as China, this would have been a great advantage.

But China’s military and political leaders had a different agenda. They saw that this system would make China’s secrets invulnerable to the outside world, even nuclear attack. If one research base and its computer network were destroyed, other machines linked to it in other places would be able to take over. Top research scientists from the country’s leading universities were drafted to help create this defendable system.

Several noted scientists protested about this squandering of the network’s wider benefits. They wanted to open up the new system to more academic collaboration. They wanted the entire technological community to be able to take a role in creating this new system, because they knew that in this way many new advantages would be found.

China’s military leaders firmly disagreed. They had no interest in opening up the possible benefits of the new system to the people. For them, all that mattered was the tactical advantage such a network would give them. Dissenting scientists were dismissed from the program and relocated. Some were even jailed.

The new system of networked workstations never left the research base. China’s military kept the secrets in the box.

Around the same time, China’s computer manufacturers, under direct state control as was all industry in the country, were directed to focus their efforts on the military benefits alone.

Because of this, even though computers were not user-friendly, it did not matter, as only specially trained operatives needed to use them.

And since Chinese society valued conformity above all things, there was no possibility for any young and talented student to drop out, create a start-up business at home, and invent a more easily usable system.

Though computers slowly began to permeate wider society, few were networked.

Since Chinese computer scientists remained under strict military control, no-one invented programs that would allow easy browsing of the data in the now-huge Chinese defense department computer network.

The world, of course, knew practically nothing of the system the Chinese had invented. Rumors filtered out of some great connective system whereby a computer in New York might easily communicate with a computer in London.

Occasionally, an arrest was made of a particular scientist or military specialist, who tried to reveal the secrets. But the Chinese Communist Party had a death-grip on the system.

As news leaked out into the West, the press had a field day with speculation, rumor and conjecture.

It even earned itself a nickname – they called it ‘the Internet.’

Fantasy? Absolutely. But entirely plausible if you consider the present day nature of the policies and actions of the political regime which desperately wants to put the World Wide Web back in the box.

Imagine, if the above story was true…

No World Wide Web. No Netscape or Internet Explorer or Firefox. Or Yahoo. Or EBay. Or Google. Or YouTube.

Probably the boys at Microsoft would find something else to do. And imagine what kind of poor country cousin the Nasdaq stock exchange would be.

Had China ‘discovered’ networking in the way that America did in the 1950s and 1960s, the internet as we know it today would never have been born. The world would have been a totally different place. There would be no hi-tech ‘connected’ economy, no ‘wired generation.’

Guessing alternative history or the future is an unprovable science, but presently it is very clear that China’s government desires to use the net as a tool of control, not as a tool of freedom.

In 2007, Hu Jintao, China’s president, ordered officials to ensure the internet was ‘ethically inspiring.’ He said he wanted the Communist Party to help ‘purify the internet environment,’ and said that ‘whether we can cope with the internet is a matter that affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state.’

China’s top political body, the Politburo, added ‘development and administration of internet culture must stick to the direction of advanced socialist culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance.’

It was vital, they said, to ‘consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere.’¹ Perhaps the Communist Party wishes that Karl Marx had invented the internet.

But control, not ‘guidance’ is what lies at the heart of the internet for China’s government. Whereas in the West the great achievement of the internet is that it allows each user to create their own individual world, for China its purpose is to spread government propaganda and to consolidate control over society and individual freedom.

One of the strongest expressions of individual freedom that the internet facilitates is blogging. Blogging allows everyone a voice, and while the sheer number of blogs means each voice might not always be heard, the voices in most societies shout freely.

The Chinese government is terrified of what blogging represents. A society in which every voice is free to speak is the antithesis of the goals of today’s Chinese government.

Beijing would be happy to be able to be able to design a Marxist-style box to control China’s burgeoning blogosphere. In 2006 the government looked into the feasibility of requiring all bloggers to register with their real names.

Due to the complexity of such a registration system it has not, at the time of writing, been implemented. But ‘a real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardize and develop its blog industry,’ says Huang Chengqing, head of the Internet Society of China.²

The true meanings of the words ‘standardize and develop’ can more accurately be described as to ‘shackle and restrict’ to the point of total control those who ‘anonymously disseminate irresponsible and untrue information via the internet, bringing about very bad influences not only to individuals but to society as a whole.’³

In Chinese terms, ‘irresponsible and untrue’ information is anything which does not agree with the government line.

According to Reporters without Borders, worldwide there are 61 people in jail for posting ‘subversive’ comment on a blog or website. Fifty-two of them are in China, giving the country five or six times the total number of imprisoned voices in the rest of the globe.⁴ “China is by far the world’s biggest prison for bloggers and cyber-dissidents” says the organization.⁵

The Reporters without Borders 2007 China report says that “… self-censorship is obviously in full force. Just five years ago, many people thought Chinese society and politics would be revolutionized by the Internet, a supposedly uncontrollable medium. Now, with China enjoying increasing geopolitical influence, people are wondering the opposite, whether perhaps China’s Internet model, based on censorship and surveillance, may one day be imposed on the rest of the world.”

The organization also says that “China keeps a tight grip on what is written and downloaded by users and spends an enormous amount on Internet surveillance equipment and hires armies of informants and cyber-police.”

“It also has the political weight to force the companies in the sector - such as Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems - to do what it wants them to, and all have agreed to censor their search-engines to filter out websites overcritical of the authorities. This makes the regime’s job very much easier because these firms are the main entry-points to the Internet. If a website is not listed by these search-engines, material posted on them has about as much chance of being found as a message in a bottle thrown into the sea.” ⁶

Another great assistance to the Chinese government in its quest to silence freely-expressed opinions is, sadly, the Chinese people themselves.

In China, the compulsion to conform creates a ‘herd mentality’ which dominates to such an overwhelming extent that those who do try to speak out with a different voice are routinely attacked or ostracized. This is masked as citizen action taken in order to subjugate those individuals who step outside preconceived notions of morality.

There are segments of Chinese society today that even free of government encouragement seek to impose a definition of right and wrong on other people.⁷

A clear example of this was the ‘ChinaBounder’ case, which again exposed contemporary Chinese society’s inability to deal with the freedoms that blogging offers.

The ChinaBounder blog detailed the sex life and social opinions of a Western expatriate character living in Shanghai. Within a few weeks of the blog being posted on an American blog site, it was attracting vitriolic and abusive comments from Chinese readers.

The blog really caught fire when Zhang Jiehai, a professor of psychology and member of the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, wrote a long and impassioned denunciation of the blog and its writer.

“Today, with tremendous anger, I will tell you the story of an immoral foreigner and I call upon all Chinese compatriots to get together and kick this immoral foreigner out of China” he began, going on to give a recap of some of the things Chinabounder had written about. “But what makes it intolerable for me” Zhang wrote, “is that this piece of garbage deliberately hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation… and he openly spoke to divide China.”

“This undisguised disclosure of the mind is too shocking!” wrote Zhang. “I am a researcher in psychology. There is only one reason why this piece of garbage would meticulously and laboriously write out his bedtime dalliances, and that is because he is a pervert.”⁸

Zhang Jiehai also sent out a clarion call to the men of China. “I also have something to tell the Chinese men: Please think about how these foreign trash have dallied with your sisters and made fun of your impotence. Do you want to say that this is no big deal? Do you still want to treat the foreigners as important? Do you still quiver when you see foreigners? Please straighten out your backbones."

Zhang’s angry protest sparked a manhunt. The ‘ChinaBounder’ story leaped into the national press and then the international press, being picked up by the BBC, CNN, Time Magazine and newspapers in every continent in the world.

‘ChinaBounder’ was in fact created and written by one of the authors of this book, David Marriott.

What was so interesting – and frightening -- about the reaction to the blog was that it laid bare some of the attitudes beneath the surface of the skin of modern Chinese society.

There were thousands of comments, both on the blog itself and through email, expressing extreme hatred and threats of violence, offering sickening sexual violence and mutilation not just to ‘Chinabounder’ but also to his father, mother, and any other relatives that he might have. Online opinion in China was outraged.

When the story hit its fever pitch in China, we were both acutely aware of the risks to ourselves. One of the blogs that sprang up in response to the ‘Chinabounder’ affair, the ‘Who Is Chinabounder?’ blog, was a site completely devoted to exposing the author.

Perhaps the author of that blog about a blog was unaware that he was relying on the very freedom that blogging allows to try to curtail the freedom of someone else.

At that time both authors were traveling internationally, and were somewhat apprehensive about being able to return to China, where we had established homes. Indeed we had to pause for reflection entering customs and immigration about a week later. Would we be stopped at the border? Fortunately we returned through Hong Kong into Shenzhen without incident.

Nonetheless, if ChinaBounder had been exposed, physical attack was possible, and political trouble was certain. We prepared for this eventuality by shredding large amounts of the printed research we had filed on China, and by destroying the hard drive of the computer ‘ChinaBounder’ had used to write the blog. That way, if the ‘knock on the door’ did come, there would be little evidence to be found, save for the guilty expressions on our faces.

We both prepared ‘grab bags’ of our most vital possessions so that we could leave our homes in the city within moments, and we took other steps to preserve our anonymity. We also decided to shut down the blog for a few months, and gradually the fickle attention of the Chinese public moved elsewhere.

A key element in the negative commentary about the ‘Chinabounder’ affair --- apart from the numerous wild threats of castration and mutilation (and that was just in English – in the Chinese language the abuse was much worse) -- was for ‘Chinabounder’ to be thrown out of the country (preferably in a box.)

‘China, love it or leave it’ has a familiar ring to it. Different culture, but it hearkens back to another era. Once upon a time, in America, the spirit of the Stars and Stripes required that you had to adhere to the voices tuned to nationalism.

Thankfully, America has left that attitude in the past.

In China, however, the attitude is still very common, and underlies the assumption of the ‘uni-nation’ – the idea that the Chinese nation is the only nation, that Chinese ideas are the only ideas, and that the Chinese voice is the only voice.

Utilizing all the negativity towards ‘Chinabounder’ Zhang Jiehai was able to publish a book about the affair, called ‘I’m Angry.’

In the end, what was written as ‘Chinabounder’ means absolutely nothing. What is important is that the character tried to say something outside the norm, beyond what Chinese people expected Western people to comment on with reference to China. In China it is not only what you say, it is also why you say it, who says it, and the medium in which you say it. To that end, ‘Chinabounder’ was successful.

In announcing that the ‘medium is the message’ Canadian Marshall McLuhan meant that the method of communication could have a more important effect than the communication itself.

He did not mean that the ‘message’ was less important than the ‘media’ carrying it, or that the content was unimportant. What he meant was that new inventions could change the world in unforeseen and non-obvious ways, and that this was their true, abiding message. It was the nature of the medium that changed society over the longer term, rather than the messages carried on it. Those messages could be individually important, but the more profound effect came from elsewhere. The medium itself could change the way society operated.

Based on McLuhan’s ideas, the true visionary is one who is aware of the possibilities of these unforeseen advantages and is ready to encourage them or respond to them. In China, a lack of fear also helps.

That being the case how would McLuhan address China’s issues? Perhaps he would suggest that the Chinese, on the whole, have singularly failed to ‘get’ the point of blogging. Chinese society is simply not open to the possibilities blogging offers, and the ways in which this new medium might transform society. In approaching the new media with old ideas, contemporary Chinese society misses the message.

China’s ‘Operation Golden Shield’ is a vast program employing between 30,000 and 70,000 operatives (estimates vary widely, but new recruits are added daily) whose sole purpose is to monitor and guide internet usage. One of the negative offshoots of this project is how eagerly Western corporations such as Cisco, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google (which has the hypocrisy to offer as its motto ‘Don’t Be Evil’) collude with China to provide the hardware and software that the government fashions into the shackles which imprison the country’s internet users.

Another part of the ‘Golden Shield’ program collects as much information as possible on China’s citizens, even if they are not part of China’s online population. This has been a remarkably effective part of the program. Since its launch in 2003, it has collected data on 1.25 billion of China’s 1.3 billion people.⁹

China is currently planning to greatly increase its number of ‘virtual cops.’ They are a vast army of government spies who monitor, in real time, what people are doing online. If a user reads something that does not meet with official approval, he or she is blocked.

More seriously, should a user post commentary that is viewed as being out of the boundaries or the ‘box’ of uni-national thinking, the posts are wiped. Should the user’s post receive interaction from others, there is the terrifying possibility of the ‘virtual cops’ becoming real police knocking on your door.

The ‘virtual cops’ were first used in the southern city of Shenzhen in 2006. A cartoon icon representative of a policeman was placed on large websites, linked to local police stations.

“The simple appearance of these floating icons will remind people these websites are under surveillance,” said Lu Benfu, an internet expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.¹⁰

The ‘virtual cops’ (housed in high-security buildings along with their own command structure) were then deployed in the city of Guangzhou, before being expanded to nine cities, with large units established in Beijing and Shanghai. Currently, the government plans to expand the surveillance system to 100 cities nationwide.¹¹

Much like rapid-deployment anti-terrorist squads, the electronic suppression of information counter to government policies is extremely effective.

For example, when the media freedom organization Reporters without Borders set up a Chinese language website, it took China’s net police less than eight hours to find it and block it to Chinese surfers. When the group moved their site to another host, it was again shut down.¹²

China amazingly denies it actually censors anything. For instance, China’s representative at a meeting of the Internet Governance Forum claimed that, “In China, we don’t have software blocking Internet sites. Sometimes we have trouble accessing them. But that’s a different problem.”¹³

This is factually untrue. China now has the ability to block access to foreign websites at will. For instance, during the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meetings of 2001, sites such as CNN and the BBC, long blocked in China, were opened up. China was keen to show the visiting dignitaries how open its society was. But when those same international leaders had left, access to these sites was immediately blocked.¹⁴

It is certain that exactly the same thing will happen in the 2008 Olympics. China will create the appearance of an open society for the two weeks of the games. But once they are over the gates will be slammed shut and the restrictions will be reimposed.

China’s educational facilities add an additional layer of control. Universities choose members of the student body to ‘monitor’ the university’s internet chat rooms. These monitors act secretly, pretending to be simply taking part in conversation, yet their real purpose is to steer student postings in a healthy ‘Marxist’ direction.

For example, one of these monitors spoke of her belief that, “We don’t really control things, but we really don’t want bad or wrong things to appear on the web sites…. As I’m a student cadre, I need to play a pioneer role among other students, to express my opinion, to make stronger my belief in communism.”

Another 22 year old student said, “Our job consists of guidance, not control.”¹⁵

The restriction of sexual expression, long ago left unfettered by developed economies, is only beginning to gain steam in China.

Online restrictions are gaining energy, with China launching a ‘People’s War’ on sexual freedom in one of a series of attempts to influence sexual morality.

In the first month after the campaign began in early April 2007, authorities blocked 4,800 websites and 160,000 pieces of online information.¹⁶

The ‘People’s War’ gave rise to a number of alarming statements. Wu Heping, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Public Security, said that “In recent years from the cases we have discovered, the proportion of young people guilty of cheating, rape or robbery who are given to using the Internet or have been corrupted by online filth, is very high…Our preliminary figures for arrested youth criminals is that almost 80 percent of them have been seduced by the Internet.”¹⁷

What mode of questioning or analysis of how this information was compiled has not been revealed. Far from seeing that an interest in sex is a normal and healthy part of growing up, China’s puritanical streak equates sexual images with crime.

Zhang Hui, a deputy public security minister, said that “The inflow of pornographic materials from abroad and lax domestic control are to blame for the existing problems in China’s cyberspace.”¹⁸

How nude images of Western women translate into cheating, rape and robbery has again not been indicated.

Twenty-eight year old Chen Hui ran a porn-based website in China that drew 600,000 registered users. That’s over half a million citizens freely exercising their desire to view the images provided. What might be seen as a measure of popularity, or perhaps a vote for freedom, resulted in a life sentence in prison for the entrepreneurial Chen.¹⁹

In the eyes of the Chinese legal system, running a porn website is punishable as seriously as murder.

1. 'China aims to tame internet and spread party line.’ Reuters, 23rd April 2007.
2. ‘Blog real name system not yet officially decided.’ People’s Daily Online, October 23rd 2006.
3. ibid.
4. ‘Reporters without borders urges internet users to join in 24-hour online demo against internet censorship.’ www.rsf.org, 26th October 2006. The figure of 52 imprisoned in China comes from Reporters without Borders’ 2007 China Report.
5. ‘Blogger Hao Wu freed after being held for five months.’ www.rsf.org, 11th July 2006.
6. 2007 Annual Report, Reporters without Borders, available from www.rsf.org.
7.‘Online Throngs Impose a Stern Morality in China.’ By Howard W. French, The New York Times, 3rd June 2006.
8.Zhang wrote in Chinese. A translation of the article is available at www.zonaeuropa.com
9. ‘Basic information of 1.25 bln Chinese recorded in police data bank.’ Xinhua, 7th April 2006.
10. ‘Virtual cops to weed out Internet gambling, porn.’ By Li Fangchao, China Daily, 14th April 2007.
11. ‘China targets campus porn sites.’ Agencies/China Daily, 29th May 2007.
12. ‘China shuts down media freedom site ‘within hours.’’ AFP, 30th May 2007.
13. The minutes of this meeting, held on 31st October 2006, can be read at www.intgovforum.org.
14.‘China Again Censoring Web After Summit, Blocking of Foreign Sites Resumes.’ By Clay Chandler, The Washington Post, 23rd October 2001.
15.‘As Chinese Students Go Online, Little Sister Is Watching.’ By Howard W. French, The New York Times, May 8th 2006.
16.'People’s war against porn websites shows results.’ People’s Daily Online/China Daily, 29th May 2007.
17.‘China official blames internet for youth crime.’ Reuters, April 19th 2007.
18.‘China launches campaign to crack down on Web porn.’ People’s Daily, 13th April 2007.
19.‘Gambling and porn targeted.’ People’s Daily, April 16th 2007.

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Reason Number 2 - The Five Armies of Instability

Posted by Unknown Selasa, 15 Juli 2008 0 komentar

Excerpt 3.

“Anything that questions the Party’s right to power becomes a threat to ‘harmony’ and thus peace and happiness in China are explicitly linked to a lack of political freedom. In the minds of many Chinese people, not expressing any interest in the political future of China becomes a sign of patriotism and good citizenship.

The harmony-peace-stability equation is far too simplistic to guarantee more than a temporary peace. Even though the Communist Party has done a highly effective job in creating a country in which individuals are afraid to speak out, it faces a number of problems so huge, and yet so unique, that armies of citizens will be formed, each developed from a specific social condition.

In this book, we discuss Five Armies of Instability, each army of which is capable in itself of creating disturbances and imbalance negative enough to destabilize even the most totalitarian government’s ‘harmonious’ controls. These five armies are not staffed with military experts or legionnaires, but are made up of citizens who have a particular disabling burden the government has thrust upon them intentionally or through neglect.

Already, the forces of these armies are reluctantly growing in number and in most cases are blindly unobserved by the government. These are not dissidents, not revolutionaries per se. These are the human result of tampering with nature or the inattention of those in power to reach out with a helping hand.”

The greatest trick China’s Communist Party ever pulled was teaching the people not to think.

This is why while China is the greatest political conundrum in the world, its population is almost wholly politically apathetic. The entire political discourse in China boils down to a single sentence: ‘Things are better than they used to be.’

And for the future? ‘Things can only get better.’ That’s what most people I talk to in China tell me.

The two phrases pair like a one-two punch of political apathy.

Sure, in an absolute sense, there is some truth to those statements. After spending multiple decades killing around 70 million of its own citizens, China’s Communist Party has indeed become more benign.

But this cannot be called an improvement; at best it is a cessation of the homicidal insanity of the former policies of the Party. Those policies, crude, brutal, insane, out of the same basket as Hitler and Stalin, only ceased when Mao died in 1976.

It cannot be called an improvement because that attitude, the utter contempt that the CPC showed for the people of China back then is still part of its psyche today. The heart of a sociopath still beats underneath the identikit suits and sour expressions of the CPC leaders. That’s why there are still so many Mini-Tiananmen Squares.

‘Things are getting better’ blinds the people of China to the problems that are growing, swelling, metastasizing within China today. Poverty. Gender Imbalance. Crime. Psychologically warped only-children, 90 million of them. Dispossessed and despised migrant workers.

David Marriott and Karl Lacroix list the Five Armies as:-

The poor
The only children
The migrant workers
The criminals
The single men

I’ll deal with each of these armies in later entries.

Again and again, talking to students and friends, I have found that problems are something that most people in China are simply unaware of. The entire Chinese education system is predicated on stopping young people from thinking – or at least, thinking about political solutions.

Though the threat of force (running from a shake-down by the local cops to a lengthy jail term and all the way to being beaten to death) awaits those who do voice an alternative political opinion in China, it is not force that is used to drive the political spirit from the young, but rather a more effective weapon – boredom. An endless diet of state-approved political rhetoric is taught from the first day of school to the last, and this diet is such a mix of preposterous nonsense and mind-numbing tedium that, surfeiting, the appetite sickens and dies.

Except for, of course, the Five Armies of Instability.

The Chinese people understand, in a vague sort of way, that China has problems such as poverty and crime. They watch it on TV, but they have little idea of the scope, the magnitude of these problems.

The same is true at the government level. China’s leaders are indeed aware of some of the problems, such as poverty and unrest in the countryside. But rather than take any serious measures to address these problems, their response is the only response tyrants know – force. Silence the protest. Crush those who speak out. Ignore the problem. Deny it. More police. More soldiers. More brutality. More ‘harmony.’ In reality, more candidates for the June 4th Remembrance Revolution (6/4RR).

It’s effective, for now. In the prosperous cities, among the middle classes, there really is a genuine belief that the future is bright. There is very little awareness of the vast and deep level of unhappiness outside the cities, even as there is no real understanding of the true extent of the city-based problems such as corruption and violent crime.

The CPC has done its job thoroughly. The people are docile, and never ask the difficult questions. They never look under the glitzy veneer of the good life in which they are immersed.

According to ‘Fault Lines on the Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China Will Never Be Great’ the five armies will not just ask. They will demand. They will take. Payback for this crime of ignorance which the CPC has forced on the people of China.

Excerpt 4.

“These armies represent a colossal problem beyond the ability of Beijing to handle. Yet Beijing is giving very little thought to the looming catastrophe that they clearly indicate. The Party, in its obsessive quest for ‘harmony’ and ‘stability’ has kept a very tight lid on these problems, either downplaying them or refusing to acknowledge them.

That just increases the pressure. While the strength of the Party – backed by the huge force of the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police – is currently able sit on it to keep the lid firmly jammed on, it will not be able to do so indefinitely.

When the pressure does finally escape, the explosive force on China will be profound.”

And, again, I ask all Olympic attendees -- when you are on or near any TV broadcast camera, make a ‘T’ for Tibet sign with your hands (like the ‘time out’ gesture) or make an ‘X’ (Xinjiang) sign by crossing your forearms, or two fingers.

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Reason Number 1 - The Domestic Imperialists

Posted by Unknown Senin, 14 Juli 2008 0 komentar

Excerpt 1
“A young Tibetan man stands outside a monastery in his homeland. He looks up at the clear blue sky around him, and then down to the white snow sparkling on the ground. His eyes are dazzled by its purity.

His mind is always full of the stories his father and grandfather told him, and of the thousands of years of glorious history before the Han. His grandfather tells him that before the Han ‘liberation’ Tibet had more than six thousand monasteries. Six thousand monasteries full of monks and nuns, and the spirit of Tibetan culture. And he knows that even today everything he does, says – everything he thinks, almost – is watched and judged and allowed – or not -- by the Han colonizers.

His language. His history. His religion. His freedom of thought. All lie just beneath the surface of his skin, hidden from the Han. On this first day of his initiation into monkhood, the hope of allowing his own culture to grow stronger, beneath his skin, not visible to the Han, makes him proud - makes him Tibetan.”

Dilution.

When I was a young boy I enjoyed pouring Kool-Aid into a jug of water, watching as the red strawberry or the green lime slowly infiltrated through the jug, turning it all a uniform color.

Dilution.

My favorite was to drop white cream into my father’s dark coffee and not stir the spoon, watching as the smaller amount of the intruding cream eventually overpowered the natural dark of the coffee.

Dilution.

Dilution is the perfect word to describe what the Han, the majority ethnicity in China, are doing to other minority cultures in the supposed borders of the country. In Tibet it’s dilution. In Xinjiang Province it’s dilution.

True – there was brutal violence used against the Tibetans in the 1950s and again in the Cultural Revolution. That’s when Tibet’s ancient monasteries were destroyed, its culture throttled, its monks and nuns killed. Tibet has suffered many Mini-Tiananmen Squares. Xinjiang, China’s western colony, has experienced them too, its people terrorized, imprisoned, tortured and put to death.

They call it murder in civilized countries.

Now, most insidiously, the Chinese have added dilution. Slow. Effective. Unstoppable.

Watch, watch as Tibet’s culture disappears, obliterated by a politically-driven infiltration.

But this dilution works in two ways. There’s the Kool-Aid version, the general dilution, which colors the whole area Han.

Then there’s the oil on water dilution. If you pour oil onto water it does not mix but rises to the top. The Han are the oil – they rise to the top of Tibetan society, of Xinjiang society. The Han take all the jobs. The Han keep all the money. Han business. Han power. Han control.

That’s what the new railway to Tibet is for. Not to bring jobs to the Tibetans, but to bring yet more cultural pollution.

Some people say the railway is a chain linking Tibet ever tighter to China. I disagree. It is not a chain; it is a syringe, a hypodermic injected directly into the muscle of Tibet, pumping in more cultural pollution.

Dilution.

But not blending.

When I teach, I often ask my class: ‘Who here is Han?’ This leads to a ripple of discomfort. I usually have to cajole a little. ‘Are you Han?’ I will say to one student. And once that student has said yes, others will follow (no-one likes to be the first to speak in China.)

‘So everyone here is Han?’

Most of the time the answer to that question is ‘Yes.’ More than 90% of China’s population is Han, after all.

But not always. Sometimes there will be a student from one of China’s minorities – the Hui, perhaps, or the Yi – or from one of China’s conquered dominions, Tibet and Xinjiang.

And when this is the case, all the Han in the class know it. They know. ‘He is not a Han,’ someone will point out. The non-Han student generally looks uncomfortable with this. But the student is also used to it. He, or she, knows very well he is not Han – knows, because he or she can never forget it. The Han will not let him forget it. ‘You are not one of us.’ That’s the subtext of every day for a non-Han person.

Expatriates living in China know something of this. Every single day, every single foreigner will hear at least once the whispered words ‘Lao Wai’ – Chinese for ‘foreigner’ - from a Han. I have heard it every day of my whole stay in China. Every expatriate I know tells me it is the same for them.

But we foreigners get it easy compared to China’s subjugated peoples, to its colonized multitudes in Tibet and Xinjiang.

I think of one of my friends from Xinjiang. He’s got the typical Uighur face – square jaws, blue eyes. Handsome. Strong. But what use is his strength against the Han? He studies in one of China’s big southern cities, among the Han. The authorities at his university insist he shares a dorm with others of his nationality. He is not allowed to room with Han. He has no Han friends, and it’s not through want of trying. But they do not want to know him. They want nothing to do with him.

Almost none of my Han friends know any Tibetan people, any Xinjiang people at all. That’s what I feel many of the Han are – inflexible, culturally abrupt. No interest in understanding other cultures. No respect for other cultures. No respect for the Tibetans. No respect for the people of Xinjiang.

For the purpose of this Han dilution, from the government’s point of view, is not for the two cultures to become one. It is for Han culture to utterly obliterate the culture of the colonized people. The culture of Tibet and Xinjiang is being swamped so wholly in Han ways that it is weakening, withering – and will die.

Now here is a irresponsible responsible idea….I ask all visitors to China attending the Olympics, when you are on or near any TV broadcast camera, to make a ‘T’ for Tibet sign with your hands (like a time out gesture) or make an ‘X’ (Xinjiang) sign by crossing your forearms, or just use two fingers.

The Beijing Olympic Committee says No to any ‘display for commercial, religious, political, military purposes, or those for territory, human rights, environmental protection or animal protection…’ So you might get your ass kicked, but it will be worth it.

‘T’ and ‘X.’ For a Free Tibet and a Free Xinjiang – and for a better, more humane China.

Excerpt 2
“While possessing a high degree of sensitivity to their own culture, and perceived insults to that culture, the Han people as an ethnic group show little true interest in other cultures. In Tibet, in Xinjiang, and all across China’s minority areas, Han citizens bring their culture with them. Local cultures simply cannot survive the onslaught.

Ethnic cultures in modern day China have become nothing more than tourists attractions for Han tourists on holiday. Tour buses filled with eager city travelers descend on ethnic villages, historical locations and religious centers, degrading ethnic culture into nothing more than a photo-opportunity.”

For some cultures, the only evidence of their existence will be that found in family photo-albums full of holiday snaps, kept on the book shelves of wealthy Han tourists.”

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ChinaBounder Returns….

Posted by Unknown Minggu, 13 Juli 2008 0 komentar

Do you know the most productive thing about local police beating 500 Chinese schoolchildren, protesting the death of a friend, Li Shufen?

Such children received a history lesson in the form of their own Tiananmen Square, a mini-version.

Tiananmen 1989, a historical blight on Chinese society, remains completely untaught within the halls of China’s educational facilities to this day.

The local police claimed Li Shufen committed suicide. They did three autopsies, so they must be right.

Her parents say she was raped and murdered – as did 30,000 other local villagers. Villagers are always wrong in China.

So the schoolmates of the mysteriously dead 16 year old girl wanted to protest, a right accorded to them by the Chinese constitution.

Grouping together in the schoolyard before they marched to the police station to protest her death, these children were unaware of the reception they would receive. They were unaware of how much the Chinese state hates children. They thought the words of the Chinese constitution, force fed across their school desks on an almost daily basis, supposedly allowing the exercise of rights and freedoms, meant something – meant protection.

But the Chinese constitution means nothing down at the local police station.

The rewards for the students’ attempted demonstration of social conscience were bruises, cuts, blood and verbal abuse they could not imagine would be uttered by adults wearing uniforms of authority, especially in the country touted as the ‘motherland.’

Those children survived, unlike young Li Shufen, and will become adults, their minds scarred from the moment when the batons hit their bodies and heads. They will as a result grow up to be potential June 4^th Remembrance Revolutionaries (6/4 RR).

The more the brutal police state of China creates such Mini-Tiananmen Squares (MTS), the better off Chinese society will be in the future.

There have been thousands of Mini-Tiananmen Squares in recent years, each one moving Chinese society closer to the day when the Chinese government stops in its tracks and says to itself ‘Something’s happening here – what it is, ain’t exactly clear’?

I have yet to read a single incident where an MTS is dealt with using an open mind and in a conciliatory and civil fashion. The people are always rejected and set upon, often by gangs of police wielding excessive force on a populace that simply wants clear answers, understanding, and an open door through which to walk to dialog with those who control their lives.

Over 90% of such protests are categorized by Communist Party cadres with demigod fantasies as being criminal in intent and often directed by ‘villainous outside forces’ with the intent of ‘destabilizing the orderly progress of the great Chinese nation.’ In fact, the ‘criminal intent’ is all on the government’s behalf as it flaunts its own contempt for its paper tiger constitution.

The more that the central government of communist China tries to mask citizen protest as ‘foreign’ or ‘criminal activity,’ bent on the destruction of the upward mobility of the CPC-directed Chinese economy, the more the world will see progress towards democratization of China.

The rallying cry is: ‘More beatings! More bullets! More blood! Civilize our motherland China!’

The more mind-numbing, stupefying and self-immolating the decisions made by the central government and its cronies in the countryside, the sooner the grace of democracy will come to China, and the better off the entire world will be.

True ‘press freedom’ has been proudly offered by China’s central government, in the run up to and during the Olympic Games.

Press freedom. It sounds like a good opportunity for ChinaBounder to return, and I will do so for the next 50+ days.

Life tells us there are no free rides. But I’m going to attempt to hitch one by using the Olympic opportunity of a ‘free and open press’ to talk to the Chinese people.

Here is a copy of a press release sent by two writers, David Marriott and Karl Lacroix, to Chinese media for their recently-published book, which I will serialize with excerpts over 50 days, up to and through the ‘free press’ Olympics.

PRESS RELEASE

FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA:

50 REASONS WHY CHINA

WILL NEVER BE GREAT

‘China has NOT changed’ say the authors of ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS WHY CHINA WILL NEVER BE GREAT,’ David Marriott and Karl Lacroix.

‘FAULT LINES’ peels back the political stage make-up, thickly applied by China’s communist government on the visage of ‘the people’s motherland.’

Published in Japan on May 21^st 2008 by Random House Kodansha, ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA’ presents China bare-faced, by revealing 50 real-time and deeply scarring fissures that prevent the country’s march towards global superpower status.

‘FAULT LINES’ may unfortunately incite Chinese rage into a storm of anger, instead of what is really needed – perfect reason. As an example the authors will reveal the identity of ‘ChinaBounder,’ the blogger who enraged Chinese public opinion in 2006.

The authors show readers why China’s communist clique, desperate to maintain its grip on power, is repeatedly rolling the dice and gambling with the futures of 1.2 billion people.

Fascinating, informative and startling in its detail, the book offers chapter titles such as:

· The Domestic Imperialists

· Children – The Endangered Species

· The Godless

· The Mirror of Japan – The War of Apology

· Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics

· Once the Masters of Invention

· The Fallibility of Chinese Characters

· A Nation of Health Terrorists

· It Takes a Man to Hold Up Half the Sky

· Daughters, Wives and Mothers in Fear

‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS WHY CHINA WILL NEVER BE GREAT’ is designed to create multiple discussion points for politicians, philosophers, historians, economists, teachers and students, businessmen, journalists, and all those who seek the truth from the myths and lies offered as the face of today’s China by its Communist rulers.

Communication with the authors is available at: 50faultlines@gmail.com

Some lyrics come to mind…..

There's something happening here.
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
Telling me I got to beware.
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down.

There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds,
Getting so much resistance from behind.
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down.

Buffalo Springfield, 1967, `For What It’s Worth’ …………and nothing changes

Returning after such a long break, I guess readers will have many questions. So, to answer those burning issues, I give you:-

An ‘Interview’ with ChinaBounder:

1. Why exactly have you decided to reappear after such a ‘layoff’?

Bullshit. I smell bullshit, and if I can smell it there must be a lot of it.

2. What is the nature of this ‘bullshit’?

Well, there are a number of sources but the location is the same - Beijing. The key source right now is the pending Olympics, which will result in a fawning Western press, and glad-handing politicos passing PR turds the size of the Birds’ Nest Stadium.

3. So what will you do with this pile of ‘bullshit’?

Stir it! I am going to stir it so the smell can be enjoyed - or suffered - by all.

4. You’re going to be a ‘shit disturber’?

Sighs softly and approvingly………….

5. Tell us why you think ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS CHINA WILL NEVER BE A GREAT COUNTRY’ deserves our attention?

Unrelenting truth without apology. The authors, David Marriott and Karl Lacroix, never once offer up that ‘bon mot de jour’ - ‘but things will hopefully improve.’ Did you know it’s a scientific fact that bullshit never improves with age? Nor will China’s.

6. How do you intend to present this material? …… My first thought is, do you have permission?

It has been published in Japan, so the material is now in the public domain. I will throw in a few excerpts from the English version chapter by chapter on a daily basis. ‘A chapter a day helps keep bullshit away.’ So that will be 50+ straight days of the ChinaBounder for all my fans and fanatics to enjoy.

7. Do you think those ‘fans’ in China will be able to read you, uncensored?

Haven’t you heard that the Chinese government has guaranteed press freedom during the Olympic Games? Of course the Chinese people will wait breathlessly each day as I drop truth bomb after truth bomb on their repressed psyches.

8. Why you, a writer known for sexual perversion?

Steady on – unless, of course, that is a compliment. While my writing attracted more flak about the sexual content, there was a running commentary on the China condition missed by most. This time I will pump up the commentary part.

9. No sex then?

What, you mean like ‘ChinaBounder Monk Version 1.0’? Your question indicates a level of latent perversity you ought to seek clinical help for. Chill, my friend, and wait.

10. Was what you wrote before true?

Does it matter how I answer that? Whatever my reply, those who think what I wrote was false will continue to think it is false. Those who think it is true will continue to think it is true. Readers decide what truth is. Writers decide only what words appear on a blank page.

11. What do you think of Zhang Jiehai? Do you think he may try to contact you?

This current material may be beyond his ability to assimilate. I could help him to get laid.

12. Are you still in China?

Ask the girls in Shanghai – for them I will always be in China.

13. Do you feel regret for what you wrote before?

No. I only have regret for the things I did not write.

14. What about the death threats you received on your blog and by email?

Death threats? Xenophobic reactionary Chinese bleating? No surprise there. Salmon Rushdie – now that was death threats.

15. What qualifies you to write about China?

First I am qualified because I am not Chinese, which means I have experiences inside and outside of China that give me greater perspective than any mentally and politically blocked Chinese theoretician. And to those many Chinese commentators who say ‘If you don’t like China, go home,’ I reply – If they feel China is the birth place of history and civilization all men should be ‘at home’ in the motherland. That’s freedom. That’s a part of democracy, just in case they do not know.

16. You alone are the author of this blog?

No. I have over 1.3 billion people helping me 24/7/365.

17. Do you think you understand China?

Sure. In all my years in China I have never met a Chinese mainlander who really knew the facts about Chinese history, ancient or modern, or the state of the nation as it exists today. The people who understand China least are the Chinese themselves. They have no history of modernity, and the speed of change wipes out what they fractionally understand far quicker than their ability to assimilate it.

18. What will you do if no one pays any heed to your non-sexy politically directed blog?

First off, Chinese politics is the sexiest politics available (except for its leaders). Second…I enjoy talking to myself.

19. Will there be any surprises your readers should look for?

Well, in the book, the authors of ‘FAULT LINES ON THE FACE OF CHINA: 50 REASONS CHINA WILL NEVER BE A GREAT COUNTRY’ reveal my TRUE name and identity.

20. What? You mean they know who you really are? Will you allow that to be known - here on your blog?

Yes! It’s the TRUTH BOMB the Chinese people have been waiting for….so the answer is absolutely….YES!

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So, China Dirt #3

Posted by Unknown Senin, 07 Januari 2008 0 komentar

I shall give some attempt at an answer anyhow.

The problem is – and this can be clearly seen on Chinadirt – that expat women still hold to the Western mode of dating.

“Running Man” ends:-

But if you ever stop running for just a moment and look around, you'll find that all you have are quirky travel stories, boxes filled with pictures of exotic lands, a map punctured with holes, but nobody real to hold while you stand still.

But this is no answer at all. He doesn’t want that. He’ll never want it, and nor will most of us guys here – certainly not in the terms of ‘real’ which you offer; that ‘real’ is a straightjacket, stifling, repellent. Did you think he was trusty and faithful? Did you see no further than his façade, his smooth and tolerant manner? Did you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man? It was all maya, illusion. ‘Somebody to hold us while we stand still’? – oh, please!

Guys like him, guys like me, guys like us – we who let you down so deep and often – we know romance is illusion, and the more we fuck around, the more clear we are about that.

This life corrupts us; we can’t go back to your limitations of ‘the one’ and ‘true love.’ When we stand still we hear time’s winged chariot – and we run once more. We see the deserts of vast eternity. And this is just why Running Man wants his box of pictures, his map punctured with holes, far more that he’ll ever want you. They are fragments he has shored against his ruin. They are to be his memories when he is old, the proof he existed, lived.

He, like me, like us - we see this woman, that, you, her, she…. Interchangeable, a pack of cards, now you, now you; each an individual, sure, within a certain set of limitations, but in the end shuffleable, changeable. There is nobody ‘real’ to hold us; we each exist alone.

You are not going to change us; it is too late for that. And while Chinadirt as a whole is admirably unconcerned with trying change us, but rather only expose us, some individual contributors surely wish to.

But they are playing by rules we have abandoned -- hence their endless disappointment in us. And because we have left that system, those rules, behind, Western women are generally invisible to us.

Believe it, when I and a thousand others like me walk down the road we do not even see the white women; you are nearly always just invisible to us. An absence, empty air. And on the rare occasions we do see you, all we see – forgive me – is how you are nothing as slender, lithe or trim as a Chinese woman. We look at your thighs, your belly, your butt and think ‘thank fuck’ and ‘I will never date Western again.’

Now I most firmly believe anything a man can do a woman can do; and so perhaps the solution is that Western women should switch over, just like we have. An obvious solution, of course, which is why it has already occurred to expat women. Ah, but -

Not sure if you've tried it but finding a good Chinese man is pretty hard. It's not like the streets are exactly filled with good-looking, funny, socially adjusted Chinese men are they? We're not against dating Chinese guys but you're attracted to who you're attracted to. Lets be honest, Chinese women are often MUCH better looking than Chinese guys. We'd dare say its a 10 to 1 ratio of hot Chinese women to hot Chinese guys. Yeah, you can blabber on about how that's SO superficial but attraction is important. More often than not the hot, funny, cool Chinese guy, already has an even hotter, cooler and funnier Chinese girlfriend so how can we even compete?

Personality is important too and oftentimes many single Chinese guys (and expats) are lacking in that arena as well. If there is a hot, available non-douchbaggy Chinese guy please let us know. We'll be more than happy to date him.

The Chinadirt author of the above is right that attraction is important, and there’s nothing superficial about it. Now I have at times been somewhat critical of Chinese men. But that is because I am a haphazard and slapdash writer. The truth is that China really does have plenty of cool guys, stylish, witty, assured – ride the tube, walk the streets, there they are; sure, they are generally younger, under 30, more often under 25, but that need not hold back any woman. If we guys can date younger, why not women?

Perhaps what Western women do not always understand is that they are just as attractive to Chinese guys as Chinese girls are to us. Now most of the reason we guys chase Chinese women is lust, it is the younger, firmer, sexier body. And you Western women can’t compete there. But lust is not the whole of it; there is pride, too. To have the young, beautiful woman on our arm, that’s our peacock tail, but displayed for other men alone. Look at me; look what I have. When expat meets expat we see this in each other’s eye, in each other’s stride, the slight falter, the hesitation as we pass each other.

There is a card game, ‘Top Trumps,’ each deck of which (and there are various decks to collect) focuses on one area alone – it might be cars, or ships, or tanks, or trucks. The car set, for example, will show various supermodel cars, anatomized; and the players play card against card, choosing one from the various parameters on each – engine size, top speed and so on - with the winner being decided by the better specification. And this is why – when expat meets expat – we hesitate, just a little; for we are still children, still playing ‘Top Trumps.’ Only now – of course – we measure the woman on the other’s arm. Looks? Height? Breasts? Hips? Butt? Dress sense? Deportment? Who’s better, who’s best? We who have been here long enough play the game incessantly – and we know which of our fellow men are new to the game by the grade of woman on their arm. And we are also showing off to those outside the game, the temporary tourists, the guys with the woman of a similar age on their arm. Oh, how we smirk inwardly at you and preen ourselves then!

But this works the other way round too. To a Chinese guy, a Western woman has this same cachet. You’re his status symbol. You’re his prize.

This does not make you a possession. It makes you powerful. So you rightly despondent Western women should play on it, should do just what we Western men do; we know our money and skin give us prestige, and we use it. Why not you?

However – venturing into a generalization, unwise as all generalizations are – I think it is fair to say that most Chinese guys simply would not know how to go about pursuing a Western woman.

Now back home a guy that is too timid to approach you probably would not be worth dating. But you have to dump that Western attitude, just like we have. Fuck, yes, work on superficial appearance, go chat up that good looking guy just because he’s good looking. Once he gets over his shock at being approached by you (and it will be a great shock to him indeed) perhaps you’ll find a guy who’ll treat you a fuck sight better than the average Western expat will.

So try it. Do what we do. Approach the guy, make the first move. Forget the Western expat community, largely made up of bigots, fools and moral and emotional cripples as it is, and see that all the choices China offers to us, it offers to you, too.

It’s not much of a solution, but it’s all I’ve got.

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So, China Dirt #2

Posted by Unknown Jumat, 07 Desember 2007 0 komentar

And China makes it easy for us to lounge through existence, to sink like sediment through the day. It is the difference between Chinese and Western women that allows guys like me, guys in general, to live in the way that gives Chinadirt so much contempt to pour on us.

Chinese women have a very different tradition to follow than Western women. Personal freedom has always been denied to Chinese women by their country’s culture. Even today, for all its patina of modernization, the personal life of Chinese women is still controlled – cabined, cribbed and confined.

Mona, for example, a fantastic former lover, bold and imaginative – Mona represents the best of modern Chinese woman (not that I in any way wish to prescribe what a woman ‘should’ be). But even Mona, smart, confident, determined, funny, even Mona is controlled by the wider patterns of society. Her mother was staying with her for a few weeks, and while Mona was at work, the mother would go through every inch of her flat, her drawers, cupboards, wardrobe. And not at all covertly – to her, it was simply a mother’s right to do this. Mona, being quite up to the minute, has several mobile phones, and one of these she left at home. Her mother read all the messages on it and found one from a lover saying something along the lines of ‘You were great in bed the other night.’ This lover was a Chinese guy, and his message was thus in Chinese, meaning Mona’s mother understood it, as would not have been the case was it from her Western lover.

Mona’s mother was horrified by this, and when Mona came home asked, incredulous, “You are not a virgin any more?” Mona concocted some tale about this being a message she was relaying for a friend. Her mother, Mona told me, did not really believe it.

I suggested Mona could have just told the truth, and said this was how her life was, and she was nothing different in it. But she told me her mother would not have been able to handle that. And indeed she said ‘Already she’s said she wants to die, she’s said “The only reason I’ll stay alive is because of your grandparents”’ – What awful parental blackmail! How little the parents understand their children, and how much they want to control them.

Now of course Chinese women today have far more freedom than even a few years ago, and Mona does indeed live a relatively free life. But even so, she still lives that life within strict confines. She cannot show the reality of it to her mother, and her freedom is thus only a limited, carefully defined level of freedom. Nor can she show the reality of it to most Chinese guys. She, like many of my women friends, has told me several times that too many Chinese guys simply cannot handle the reality of the life today’s Chinese women often live, or at least want to live.

And this is why she is leaving. She wants out. She’s been driven away by the bullshit this culture imposes on her, by its petty restrictions, by its inability to take her for what she is rather than what it would have her be. She’s got her residence visa to another country, going to that freer country like so many of China’s smartest and brightest, going to be more than she can ever be here. Going against the wishes of her parents, who would have her settle down and produce them a grandchild, going against the advice of her boss that she should stay in her easy, undemanding job. Going, and will not come back.

It is this background that is the walls and bars to the cage a Chinese woman dates in. When she dates a Chinese guy, she is usually in that cell, hemmed in by the strictures of a culture that she knows well. Must play the virgin. Must be bashful in bed. Must have no desires but what her man wants.

But a Western guy is outside that culture; and so when she dates him she is free of the imposed attitude of Chinese culture. Dating a Western guy, she has no framework in which to orient herself. Dating becomes a chance for a different level of personal freedom for her, and (too often) an avenue of exploitation for him

Now Western culture gives women far more freedom to dictate their dating lives than Chinese culture does, which is why Western women won’t put up with such bullshit from Western men. This is unarguably a good thing, and if Chinese culture allowed more of this freedom for its women – if China’s women would fight for it -- then their life would not be quite so overwhelmingly shit as it is now.

But no matter how right or just, when guys like me can escape from those expectations of Western women, we don’t look back. Out here we embrace our nature. Yes; it is oafish, crude, and after many centuries of struggle in the West when women have at last gained some measure of respect (though not much) it is profoundly depressing. But this is who men are. Hence China’s concubine system, for example. Men want to fuck around.

The kind of thing we’re escaping from is clear on Chinadirt:-

To the FHMs [Finding himself man] out there I say:

FIND some maturity by getting a real job. And no, filing one story a week to an unnamed newspaper back home, occasional modeling as the token white boy in some baijiu billboard, and “tutoring” Chinese college girls does not count!

FIND some decency by appreciating your girlfriend-the one who cooked for you after 10 hour workdays, ironed and laid out clothes for you when you had interviews, who puts up with your equally immature friends and pretends not to be lonely when you leave her four times a week to go find yourself on Sanlitun.

FIND some courage to tell your girlfriend the TRUTH about the other woman you’ve been seeing so that your girlfriend doesn’t have to hear about it from other sources and suffer a near anxiety attack in the middle of a dinner party being thrown by her boss.

If you were a real man, you’d FIND a doorway out of this little box of selfishness and oblivion in which you live. You’d FIND a way to recognize that living like a nomad does not make you deep, only pathetic. You’d FIND out that responsibility and commitments aren’t evil constraints but realities of life. You’d FIND that you can’t live like a teenager forever!

Well, what a list of demands, Dame Partlet the hen! And you expect us to stick around for all that? That we will listen to your shouty capitals, your martinet demands, when we could be in the arms of a pliant Chinese woman? Come, come. ‘If you are a real man’ – now there are words to send us right out the door.

And so what is the answer? Perhaps there is none, and nor are the writers of Chinadirt looking for any. They certainly don’t want to hear any advice from us expat guys – though I’m sure most of the email they’ll be receiving from ‘my’ community will be the offensive misogynist bullshit we do so well. No, the point of the site is just to expose what swines we expats can be, and that’s a fine thing to be doing. Seems to me (spite of my comments above) the women writing it know pretty well what they’re about. Long may they shout and punch and scorn. Power upon power to you -- You are right, my dears, all your voices are right. We are the inconstant ones.

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