TripDingo

I’m going to take some time to dissect and respond to a recent opinion/commentary article published recently on China Daily by a certain Huang Qing, whose authority comes from being a “council member of China Foundation of International Studies.” Titled “The world warms to China’s peaceful rise,” it is already thick with the suggestive rhetoric that is common with most headlines and narrative reeking of propogandic origins. What really ruffles my feathers isn’t just the language, but also the manipulation of information presented throughout the article. The piece is reprinted in full below with my comments should you not want to jump to the original article:

It is a media tradition to look back at what has happened in the past year and how things will go in the year ahead. For Western media in general, a popular topic in the recent year-ender and prediction season is China.

The Independent (daily newspaper) of Great Britain, for example, ran a series of articles about China on its online edition earlier this month. The authors described China as the world’s newest superpower, the third largest economy in the world, the leading consumer society and an engine of economic growth. They said China’s contribution to the world economy surpassed that of the US, that “Owned by China” will one day be as common as “Made in China” and that China’s culture of innovation will spread to the rest of the world, and so on.

Uh….

1. It wasn’t a series of articles. At best, it was two articles and two authors in a sea of articles about the circumstances surrounding the death of Pakiston’s former Prime Minister Bhutto.
2. Only one article discussed China as an emerging superpower while the other focused on arts and culture.
3. Despite the glowing summary given above, it isn’t too difficult to read the actual Independent article itself in context, which leads us to…
4. “Hungriest (and most polluting) consumer” does not mean “leading consumer society” and…
5. There is not a single mention of “China’s culture of innovation” much less it spreading to the rest of the world…”and so on.”

…so, not exactly.

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…which, to be honest, is actually pretty much true everywhere…but many of us just like thinking how barbaric the Chinese are when they provide a fine example of this regretable truth.

So, as many some of you already know, there was a Chinese guy who got his ass beat to death by some government representatives (”city inspectors”). He was driving by when he noticed about 50 of these “city inspectors” (think pseudo-police) beating up some villagers who objected to having truck-fulls of trash dumped near their homes. So, he took out his cell phone and began snapping some pictures. Apparently, the 50 some bastards were somewhat displeased with him documenting their ruffian tactics and decided to kick his ass for a good five minutes before he passed out and died on his way to the hospital. 

As soon as this news broke, Wei Wenhua (pictured), the dead guy, was hailed as a martyr for being a “citizen journalist” around the China blogosphere and amongst Chinese netizens. A few days ago, it even received some major coverage by CNN, thereby showing yet another sore sight of China’s to the ever critical West.

Having not visited CNN.com recently, I happened to catch the article yesterday while hanging out with a good friend of mine. Bemused by the news hitting a layman’s news portal like CNN, I pointed it out to my friend thinking we’d connect on this bridging event between China and, well, the outside world. Much to my dismay but perhaps not to my surprise, she barely glanced at the CNN article on the screen and nearly interrupted me to have me to switch windows over to her stock ticker and graphs.

You see, yesterday was something of a Black Monday here in China, with the index dropping over 5%, and much of her stock investments suddenly saw losses (which are depicted in green here instead of red, because, well, red is a more prosperous color than green for the Chinese). Now, that’s a big deal for sure, for her and for many people, and far more important and close to their lives. Wei Wenhua and the tragedy that surrounded him was old news, January 7th  news. As far as she was concerned, knowing how bad the market was doing now was more important than his death, the abuse of power by low-level government employees, and how such news would further give ignorant Westerners a bad impression of China.

I’ll be fair: Her more immediate concern with yesterday’s stock market performance doesn’t necessary mean she doesn’t care about human life or systematic corruption and abuse or the global image of her beloved nation. Likewise, simply not caring about the Chinese stock market sinking (for good reason) doesn’t automatically mean I care more about life than money and I’m somehow more human than she is. In fact, this turn of events ultimately says nothing about either of us.

I want to say the Chinese are far too quick to dismiss some horrible tragedy or injustice as being out of their control or none of their business. Saying so would let me hop on a soapbox and condemn them for really just being lazy and apathetic. Part of me even might pity them for being so demoralized with their own self-worth and individual potential for “doing something” and pontificate on the subjugation of the individual for the collective. I’d even throw in a few mockeries of “mei ban fa (???)!” for good measure.

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Yesterday, a good friend of mine (yes, I have friends) told me about Sunday’s protests around People’s Square here in Shanghai over the proposed extension of the Shanghai Maglev train. A few days earlier, there were similar protests (pictured above) around the XuJiaHui area also in Shanghai. Some protestors were out to complain about the dangers of the magnetic fields generated by the Maglev. Others may be exhibiting NIMBY motivations, fearing the construction of the Maglev train will reduce the value of their property. Still others questioned why the government seemed to keep the extension plans quiet, suspecting that the government had malicious reasons for not letting the public know.

Perhaps more interestingly (but somewhat expectedly), there was plenty of hearsay about the government cracking down on the protests and any dissemination of information, coverage, or discussion about the demonstrations. Supposedly, any threads about the incident posted on popular Chinese forums were promptly deleted within minutes and their posters punished (albeit by deducting various forum-based rewards points or whatnot). Several western blogs and forums still have some coverage and material so perhaps the censorship is mostly limited to preventing only the local Chinese from bitching too much amongst themselves.

What I found refreshing, however, was when my friend confided that this is perhaps the first time she has ever really felt upset and disturbed by government censorship. Maybe that’s the silver lining to this all.