China's neo-con nationalist youngsters go online
Fred sez, "This week's New Yorker feature article explores how Chinese nationalism is on the rise despite the proliferation of the internet and so-called "democratizing technologies" that many thought would help Chinese citizens break free of their country's tyranny. The author, Evan Osnos, is answering questions and comments on The New Yorker's website."
Link
"Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of M.I.T.’s Media Laboratory and one of the early ideologists of the Internet, once predicted that the global reach of the Web would transform the way we think about ourselves as countries. The state, he predicted, will evaporate “like a mothball, which goes from solid to gas directly,” and “there will be no more room for nationalism than there is for smallpox.” In China, things have gone differently." ..."In the anonymity of the Web, decorum deteriorated. “People who fart through the mouth will get shit stuffed down their throats by me!” one commentator wrote, in a forum hosted by a semi-official newspaper. “Someone give me a gun! Don’t show mercy to the enemy!” wrote another. The comments were an embarrassment to many Chinese, but they were difficult to ignore among foreign journalists who had begun receiving threats. (An anonymous letter to my fax machine in Beijing warned, “Clarify the facts on China . . . or you and your loved ones will wish you were dead.”)"
the latest
latest episodes
Fascism > technology
nope; technology beats fascism
I think the Great Firewall of China -- which intentionally excludes most of that democratizing information -- plays a role here.
And I don't think Nicheplayer is getting into Godwin territory by characterizing China as fascist. China's authoritarian state, governmental control/coordination of its economy, subordination of the individual to the state, suppression of dissent, pervasive military influence and overwhelming nationalism make it a modern fascist nation.
Do most Chinese believe in "race"?
You get aggressive dogmatists everywhere. Take the warbloggers/fiskers of post-9/11 America, whose arguments basically boiled down to "Oh yeah? Fuck you, douche-nozzle!". It comes down to the primal human instincts for circling the wagons and not only suppressing critical thought in oneself but classifying it in others as hostile whenever things are framed as "us vs. them".
Good thing this isn't happening in the West, you rancid of cow testicles!
Dang, killed by the lack of an edit function.
the worst crimes and excesses of theft, assault, rape and murder during the Cultural Revolution were committed by exactly these people. A new Red Guard looms.
It's very simple. The West doesn't understand Chinese culture.
Back in the day and even in the present, pundits make sweeping predictions which are predicated on their lack of knowledge of what the Chinese are actually like. Then they're suprised when their prognostications do not come to pass.
It's all too easy to say: "We're on the internet and look what we're like. Everyone on the internet is like us; they all behave the same way." But it's not true.
The Chinese are very nationalistic - it's where the strength and development of the country comes from. So it ought to come as no suprise when a homogenous race who are very proud of their continuous five thousand year history don't want to reject that overnight for an alternative that, at best, seems no better.
Thomas comes close when he says "subordination of the individual to the state", but it's more like subordination of the individual to the majority.
I'm no expert on the Chinese and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live there. But neither would I like to live in the USA.
I'm confused what this has to do with neo conservativism. Neither are terribly great ideas, but I fail to see how they are related unless you're following the "Let's call everything I don't like Fascist regardless of meaning" meme.
"It's very simple. The West doesn't understand Chinese culture."
NO. "Chinese culture" is EXACTLY the same as any other culture. Understand this or suffer.
Westerners always read China incorrectly. You would be surprised just how supportive the vast majority of Chinese people are towards their government as a whole, even if they don't agree with a lot of the specific decisions.
And yes, Chinese regularly use the word "race", but they don't really use it in the same way westerners do. Chinese will call themselves a "race", Japanese and other east asians are of separate "races" and so on.
As for Tibet, you won't find any Han Chinese who believe it should have any more autonomy than it currently has.
It would, of course, be easy to equate Chinese attitudes with being sort of backward and out of it, and this is true. However, China throughout the ages has really only begun to have significant contact with the outside world over the last few decades, and even then the vast majority of Chinese people will never have had a conversation with someone from outside China. So it has yet to internalize more modern notions of government, democracy, race, human rights and so on.
As somebody currently living in China reading this article:
"I think the Great Firewall of China -- which intentionally excludes most of that democratizing information -- plays a role here."
Not really. It certainly has an impact on public organizing, but I am right now, for example, reading and commenting on this article and checking uncensored Chinese news headlines on the BBC.
"Do most Chinese believe in 'race'?
And yes, Chinese regularly use the word 'race', but they don't really use it in the same way westerners do. Chinese will call themselves a 'race'"
I would disagree with this, and say that Chinese believe in race pretty much exactly the way I have experienced it being dealt with in the US.
My take is that a lifetime of conditioning propaganda will do that to you. Like some people of some unnamed country who don't grok the rest of the world's nuances... they need to get out more.
Now, like Keeper up there said, some will never step out of their world. Human Nature.
"The West doesn't understand Chinese culture.
I don't understand what's so hard to understand. China is made up of human beings. Human beings create cultures. They're not from Mars for god's sake. Their culture, while unique in its own context, is no different from the thousands of other cultures that exist and that have come and gone over the ages.
There are degrees of fascism in all of our modern cultures, I would say. China's variety is extreme. In the US, it seems there are forces of fascism and and forces of anti-fascism in struggle. In China, the forces of fascism have conquered completely. Seems like there was a window in the late 80s when anti-fascism had a chance. No longer the case.
Regrettably, it is beginning to look like technology is no cure for stupidity.
Humans have always chosen side based on some arbitrary aspect (race, religion, favourite football club, text editor) and had violent disagreements.
Usually, it's got nothing to do with the arbitrary aspect itself, and everything to do with dominance over limited resources.
Technology oppresses as surely as it liberates! All hail King Ludd!
Culture is how people make unimportant decisions. Most people agree that food, language, and clothes are important. The particular choice of food, language, or clothes is often not that important.
Problem is: most Americans and some Europeans imagine the World like their kindergarten.They think: "yeah, people around the World are watching our movies, hearing our music so they must love what we call Democracy".
Problem is: what those Americans and Europeans call Democracy? In USA you have indirect elections and a candidate don't need to have the majority of popular votes to become president (not to mention fraud and recounting...). Your representatives pass bills that allow torture, censorship, privacy invasion and other violent acts for the sake of "national security", you have Guantanamo and secret prisons in eastern Europe...
China has vivid memories of English and French colonialism. They have more than 1,2 billion people and they are running fast from the underdevelopment to be an economic power in the 21st century. I guess that if they find that their government is no good anymore, they'll change it. I guess they get angry when they see foreigners trying to say how their government should be.
Technically that would be King Ned of the House of Ludd.
Hey #15, as an addendum to your “West doesn't understand Chinese culture”; it's the western press, with a huge amount of buy-in to American platitudes about democracy, that doesn't understand China.
No one in their right and objective mind could look at the ugly aspects of Chinese Nationalism/authoritarianism and not realize the same has been on the wish-list of the current U.S. ruling administration.
The “horror” of realizing that this is among China's dirty little secrets speaks volumes about the writer's head in the sand attitude about any great power.
Look folks, in the U.S., you can't treat the majority of working class (so-called “middle-class”) people with the same contempt as is done in China, but a lot of contempt is heaped upon us. We just get a better deal than the Chinese because we get to have damn near every technological doo-dad under the sun. This seems to be coming to an end though, but that is a different argument for a different day.
Regardless of the presence of the internet (we have it too and look what you can find), the idea that there wouldn't be fierce nationalists in an enormously powerful country with global power projections reeks of an adherence to the morals and ethics of a junior-high civics education.
Why the term "neo-con" ?
fair analogy
I don't understand what's so hard to understand. China is made up of human beings. Human beings create cultures. They're not from Mars for god's sake.
Well, some of us are from Mars. ;)
The reason it's hard to understand other cultures is because the function of culture is that it structures your experience. You aren't going to understand a foreign culture while wallowing in your own. You have to get outside of your own first and as a bare minimum learn their language before you have a chance of understanding them. Whomever "they" are.
Something I don't get:
When the Chinese do something we didn't expect, in this case not democratizing because of the Internet, we don't understand their culture.
But when the US does something that other countries don't expect, in this case expecting the Internet to change the world, it's the US's error.
Why can't it be said that no one understands American culture?
because that would be nonsense
because american 'culture' is usually found in a petri dish.
It has always amazed me how many of my easy-going, intelligent, compassionate, liberal friends from the People's Republic of China turn into arch-Nationalists when the issue of Tibetan independence comes up.
These are people who genuinely believe to the core of their being in most of the principals of Socialism and self-sacrifice for the good of the community as a whole.
Suggest that Tibet might fare better running their own affairs, however, and their youths spent as members of Mao's Little Red Guard return, filling their eyes with fire and their minds with poison. Tibet is not an issue that can be argued rationally with most Chinese of my generation (age 35 to 50, let's say).
The internet may eventually help as a tool to mitigate these strong feelings that they have about this specific issue. In the meantime, it seems that an issue that isn't even worth attempting to address rationally with Chinese leadership or the Chinese Man or Woman On the Street.
Geming bushi qingke chifan!
27:
How's that? I don't get the metaphor.
it's more a simile than a metaphor.
I'm getting tired of folks from the UK in many recent BB posts looking down their noses across the pond and saying the US is like this or like that, and "I wouldn't want to live there." Maybe you should spend some time living here so you could get some perspective. What these folks are characterizing as US behavior is for the most part a relatively recent turn (the past 8 years) to the extreme that is rapidly running out of juice. The majority of Americans did not vote these Neo-Cons into power and are rapidly waking up to how our democracy was appropriated by them. Sure, we have our reactionaries who pontificate and grab headlines, but don't blame the whole country for the blowhard minority, please. Give us a break.
Dumb-fucks are not unique to the US either, even in the rural South. Many Americans are fighting the good fight to restore our Constitution, and luckily have the rights to still do so. We are not having to get in front of a stream of tanks in the main square, yet, but we are petitioning our government and marching in the street. Remember: the corporate-owned media are a big part of the problem too, which is something we have in common with the Chinese (to a slightly lesser extent) so please don't believe the hype. You are not getting the whole story. Every protest I have ever been in has been under-reported by the media.
Corporatists have invaded the highest offices in the land on both sides of the Atlantic, but you don't hear me blaming you when your PM is in Bush's pocket. At least we are not supporting an entrenched monarchical figurehead with our tax dollars as well as the corporate elite. The Corporations that run the world do not know national boundaries, and will abuse their people however they can get away with it in each country.
I think countries like Norway, Finland etc. are the only ones who seem to have it right. Though the information available to us in the internet age is unprecedented, it is ethnocentric to believe that people in countries that are used to having a heavy-handed authoritarian government will start singing the praises of democracy and freedom overnight. Thinking like this led to the Bay of Pigs and the Iraq quagmire.
Yeah, China's been hard-nosed about Tibet being a part of greater China — for about a thousand years. Get used to it.
Corporations that rule the world. America doesn't have a culture. The Chinese are from Mars and it is impossible to understand them.
Anyone else want to chime in? Seriously. Maybe we should bring in the anti-Israeli crowd, the real marxists, some people who believe in ghosts and maybe throw in a little anarchist propaganda for good measure.
China has nothing on Western extremism.
I get that conservatives want to keep things the way they were in the literal definition. In that sense you could call Maoists in China conservatives, and the young socialists neo-conservatives - I get it - but the analogy might be a bit forced if only because the term "neo-con" is loaded in world affairs, with specifically American connotations. That said, the headline was a bit funny - neo-cons supporting communist authoritarianism. Somehow it does capture slivers of bitter irony here in America.
Anyway, headline aside - yes, the idea of community and especially Han pride seems huge - almost latent but decidedly present in the ex-pats I know. The recent protests in Tibet and the very interesting reaction to the news coverage by Chinese ex-pats and citizenry was enlightening to me. I may not agree with them on Tibet, but can certainly understand their viewpoint on the matter.
@Kodabar - you mentioned the thousands of years - very big deal and huge point of pride, importance of unity, and reactionary attitude /fear by some towards the global cultural homogeny, loss of tradition (skills, expression, values). I suppose that is happening the world over to some degree. Some countries (ahem) bask in obtaining shiny new input to the cultural machine; but it can be argued that they are a bit Borg-ish in this passion.
30: But I still don't get it. Are you saying that America's culture is too chemical-based? Or that it's artificial, created in a lab so to speak, rather than arising organically?
In any case, if we're going to look at Chinese nationalism and say, in effect, "It's a Chinese thing; you wouldn't understand," then we must either admit that there are aspects of American culture that are beyond explanation and that may not be questioned, or declare that American culture can be questioned only because it is somehow above or separate from that of other countries.
FLAMINGPHONEBOOK@35:
MINTYFRESH seems to be trying to compare Americans to bacteria. And we're extreme?
Sorry to get off track. I know he's trying to bait us yanks, but I'll be happy to oblige with a little friendly reminder: If we have no culture, why have all the innovations in music in the last 100 years originated in America? Have you heard of Jazz? The Blues? Rock 'n Roll? (The Beatles didn't invent it. See Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, etc.) Psychedelia? even Punk? (yes, see the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Ramones for what the Sex Pistols co-opted (albeit splendidly.)) You didn't even invent Electronica in all of it's flavors that seems to be the mainstay in Britain ad nauseam (see German bands from the late 60's - early 70's Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream etc.) -And what about movies? What great cinematic gems have you poured out, decade after decade? What great cultural innovations have you given the world in the last 100 years? Let's hear what's in your petri dish, dude.
So it ought to come as no suprise when a homogenous race who are very proud of their continuous five thousand year history don't want to reject that overnight for an alternative that, at best, seems no better.
Seems that five thousand year continuous history ended in 1912 when they renamed the country to the Republic of China or in 1949 when they renamed it the People's Republic of China. Then again, there was only two thousand years of imperial rule in China to begin with and the Han cultural identity was created around 210 BC which is far short of "5 thousand years". Prior to the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC, there wasn't even a unified Chinese state.
Never mind that there were plenty of civil wars with a fractured China in the past two thousand years and the size and shape of the country changed.
Still they have an impressive history. If anything, overthrowing the government and starting a new dynasty would be totally in line with their history.
#31 Phikus
Whilst not characterizing myself as one of "these folks", I would politely point out that America's problems with the world certainly did not start eight years ago. Anti-American (foreign-policy or otherwise) feeling has been around for decades, over various actions and intrusions.
People can listen to your songs and drink your Coke, but that's because they like music and sweet drinks. American foreign policy has been an issue for a long time, the Bush presidency just made the shouting loud enough for the American people to finally hear it.
Again, I am certainly not anti-American, and believe America absolutely has it's own culture. However, I have the same issues with America's conduct (and lots of other countries, in different ways) as any rational individual would.
Fred sez, "This week's New Yorker feature article explores how Chinese nationalism is on the rise despite the proliferation of the internet and so-called "democratizing technologies" that many thought would help Chinese citizens break free of their country's tyranny. The author, Evan Osnos, is answering questions and comments on The New Yorker's website."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/news/desperate-hotels-slash-rates/2008/07/22/1216492434729.html
So there are some chinese people who are proud of their nation and get offended when anyone dares to suggest that there might be something wrong with it?
Phikus has demonstrated (granted less violently then the examples quoted in the article) that this is hardly unique to China.
Here is the correct link to the article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos
As of this comment posting, the link to the article is not correct.
Why does it always seem to be this way:
1) If its not a Democracy, it must be wrong.
2) If its not down like in the West, it must be wrong
3) If you love your country, but is not the USA, you must be under some kind of mind control.
4) Any resistance to Western influence must be the result of a brain washing.
Why do we always seem to think that we are right and everyone else is wrong?
Bitman, it must be your glasses, sometimes mine get warped too when I rest an agenda on them.
Phikus - In Britains favor (favour?) => Dr. Who.
They definitely gave us that.
hey phikus, !: i was born in los angeles. 2: what the hell are you blabbering on and on about 'amerikan kulture'? you mean genocide? rock and roll was southern blues ( coopted from ancient african folksongs) and hill music (coopted from irish folk music) sorta chukked into a blender and served in the honkey-tonks etc. jazz also has it's roots in african as well as carribean music. the only thing that ever truly came from america (i take it you mean the u.s.a.), was native americans, and even they came from across the pacific. 'american culture' is all the little things we steal , or coopt, from the thousands of other cultures that emigrate to this country over the nearly 250 years of it's 'grand experiment'. cinematic gems? yeah, 'death to smootchie' was pretty awesome, but not really the basis of 'culture'. next your gonna tell me what a great president geo.w. is, just misunderstood.
Why do we always seem to think that we are right and everyone else is wrong?
I'm guessing that this is a rhetorical question but I'll answer it anyway. The reason of course is that it is not possible to step put of one's cultural frame. You can learn about another culture and in time see things from their point of view but there is no final absolute frame of reference from which one can judge all cultures.
It is the belief in a black and white, right or wrong binary world that is the problem.
You cannot know the Other. You can, at best, exchange symbols and from them make guesses about their subjective experience. But there will always be a gap and in that gap, universes are born.
Is it surprising that China has a vocal ultra-nationalist presence on the internet? I don't think they're any more neo-con than the nationalists in Korea and Japan, there's just a lot more of them and they have tacit government encouragement.
Not sure how much the Great Firewall has to do with it when you get Chinese students at Duke University organising their own lynch mobs against "race traitors".
#46
Get a grip dude!
Everything is subjective and relative, even this debate. There are no BIG TRUTHS - just little ones.
China bad, America, bad - we all know this - what's bad is how governments and corporations work hand in hand to keep ordinary people down in the in the dirt, opiated in the mind (TV,Alcohol, McDonalds' etc). Go back 25 generations and we're all related to one another - people lose site of this simple and amazing fact.
Go back 25 generations and we're all related to one another
Actually, my people have been inbreeding for millennia, and I have the mutations to prove it.
I have a question: How would you feel if you were attending a peaceful demonstration against the policies of the current government of China in regards to their forcible occupation of another nation, in your own country and found yourself being aggressively photographed by Chinese nationalists intent on intimidating you into silence?
I'd be bummed out if I let them intimidate me, same as with anyone else who tries to intimidate me.
''Go back 25 generations and we're all related to one another...''
How come we're not still related?
I edit a telecommunications magazine in Hong Kong that covers all of Asia, which I mention for context purposes, cos this reminds me of the time we got a VERY angry letter from a reader in mainland China who was furious that we listed Taiwan as a separate telecoms market from mainland China – clearly a violation of the One China policy. He then went on to denounce me as a racist imperialist American pig. Ah, good times.
Question of the day, Buddy. :D
All of this is aside from the original thread, but I would like to reply to some posts directed at my comments:
ARKIZZLE@38:
“America's problems with the world certainly did not start eight years ago” –Certainly not, the military industrial complex has been building to a takeover for some time. There was a coup in ’63 and another in 2000. I think you’ll agree that our government took a rather sharp turn to the right at that point, in sharp contrast to its core beliefs (and Constitution.) The point I was making is that Americans as a people and as a culture are not the same as these assholes who have stolen our democracy from us. MINTPHRESH continues to make the mistake of lumping us all together to his satisfaction.
There are plenty of examples of American foreign policy failing in the post WWII climate. The Cold War aside, it was our joint meddling in the affairs of Middle East nations with the British that contributed greatly to the hatred we find abroad these days. All of this was at the behest of British and American owned petroleum corporations. The war behind the war we are in is not a war of nations, but a war of classes. In this, I believe we are on the same side, and I have the same issues with the conduct of this nation of late as you do.
ALLENNOBLE@41:
I am far from the jingoistic, nationalistic stereotype you seem to have labeled me with. My point is that these people are in the minority and their time is almost done. I happen to love British culture and be proud of it in my own heritage. But I won’t stand idly by and overlook snide comments by elitist jerks either, thankyouverymuch.
MINTPHRESH@46:
You were born in L.A? -That explains a lot!
I seem to remember a lot of British imperialism dominating your history in the last several centuries. You are ludicrously taking the position that we didn’t invent anything new? Wow, I was told they educated you well over there.
Everything comes from somewhere, surely, but where the synthesis occurred seems to be where the cultural boundaries are traditionally drawn, if you check your History books. Are you trying to say that England has a homogenous culture that invented itself? Your own culture is Welsh, Celt, Anglo, Saxon, Roman, Scottish and Irish, (and even a bit Germanic and Gaul) to name a few of its sources. I would argue that the unique environment that allowed these different cultures to blend in the way they did makes all the difference.
I’m not saying it has been perfect in the US. I certainly am not advocating the way it occurred, with slavery, 2nd class citizenry, and what was done to the indigenous peoples Europeans found living here when they colonized (if that was the genocide you spat out accusations of), but the British have traditionally been just as inhospitable to the indigenous peoples they conquered, but with all that British cultural pride getting in the way of any of those cultures rubbing off on them. Once we gained our independence, the US became a nation of immigrants, allowing us to be somewhat porous as we forged our national identity. That is the American experiment, and why great music and art has come from it (not superior, mind you, but simply unique to the world) especially in the last 100 years, which is what I was referring to when I issued you the challenge that you have so inadequately attempted to answer.
And by the way, I think george w. is a punk-ass bitch.
Phickus, I think mint is just pissing in your wellingtons.
Um, doesn't minTphresh live in the US where he or she was born and raised?
beware the Screwfly, his bite is subtle
Yes, but he appears to be wearing Wellingtons.
If MINTYPHRESH lives currently in the US and made that comment self-deprecatingly, then I apologize for thinking he/she was coming from a British perspective. It does not change, however, my defense of American Culture with a C. It was also actually a metaphor after all.
MDHATTER: Raathuur! =D
Phikus, well said!
However, I would add one point, for myself:
I'm Irish, so I get to mostly finger-point and grumble, as a bystander, at all that empirey stuff :)
Ok, what this thread needs is a viddy interlude:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaE3EaQte78
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMFKYTrckA
"In China, things have gone differently."
Not only in China. US is full of this "democratizing technologies", many invented by them, and still full of patriotic fanatics willing to kill or die for their country. Come on, this kind of shit is inherent to mankind.
► How do we know those nasty comments aren't just trolls for hire paid by the Chinese government?
[cow scratches head in wonder that no one has brought this up yet]
because the Honker Union has been ordered by Beijing to remain silent for the olympic run-up
☺ They seem to get enough volunteers without paying for trolls. These comments are quite low-key compared to the usual. If the post had used the T word, we'd probably be swarmed.
ARKIZZLE@62:
Thanks. I'm a Texan, and an Austinite. We'd secede if we could. (Austin from the rest of the state and country... governmentally speaking.)
american 'culture' is best described as a petri dish. i stand behind the statement. not comparing u.s. culture to bacterium necessarily, even though it is the most successful life-form on the planet. more about the experiment that is this country's origins, and the 100% immigrant mixture of the thousands of cultures that make up the country and it's 'culture'. never been to britain, would love to go sometime! i think there are other euro countries i would visit first. never wore a wellington, but might piss in one, if i ever find out what they are. i also like the petri dish analogy as it seems to get on the flamer's bunions. my bad. so there you have it.
Sorry, ANTINOUS, if I contributed to that. I guess I'm a little tired of being the Dixie Chicks... =)
What's wrong with the petri dish analogy? The US was founded as a great experiment and continues to be one. We push boundaries in every direction, good and bad.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jpwohGKYoYkU25FQRvnvm5-HIuDw
#67 posted by Antinous:
What makes you think they aren't govt. trolls, etc.? Because of the Olympics as Takuan has (jokingly?) suggested?
My friends who've visited China in RL did not experience anything remotely like this. Everyone was very nice. Also, many of the Chinese I've dealt with online would never say crap like that. At least in my small chasm of the universe this all seems contradictory and smells of govt. trolls.
I may very well be wrong, but I'd like to know what udder evidence there is besides these anonymous internet posts, faxes and stuff.
http://indiapost.com/article/perspective/3091/
...if it ain't the T-word, it's the F-word (flamer). Maybe some people simply don't like to be pissed on.
MINT: If by petri dish you mean "melting pot" you're not the first to use that analogy (I believe it may have been Adolph Hitler.) Maybe if you'd explained why you chose that metaphor initially, I would not have argued otherwise. It seems as though in your other comments you are trying to say that the US never forged a national identity, or had cultural relevance to the rest of the world. I was simply stating that there is an abundance of evidence to the contrary. Still got names you'd like to call me?
ANTINOUS: As opposed to what? I see what you're saying in that light, but then what is British or Chinese culture, respectively?
70 posts and nobody points out that it's a broken link? Did anybody else even read the article?
Real link
Not that T word. The one whose capital is Lhasa.
The post is about the article. It contains one sentence about the author's Q&A, which won't even be at that link next week.
FREE TIBET!
The link is not broken. The post is about the author's Q & A, which is what the link goes to.
The link goes to the page where one can submit questions for the author. There's a link on that page that takes you right to the article.
T is for TAKUAN, who was happy to break the seal on that, ANTINOUS.
I thought I would try to be as ubiquitous as he tonight... (not even getting close...)
Ridiculous hypocritical Americans trying to tell us Chinese what to do, what to believe, how to govern ourselves and lying about us at every opportunity. No American can ever understand the greatness of Chinese culture for all time.
You better not mess with China, we are a billion strong and like tigers when we are angered. You will not forget the day when we decide to show what happens to gweilos who don't respect us!
China media is not so "free" and wild as yours, but we know we hear TRUTH from our government, unlike the US, which lies 110% of the time, as everyone here knows. There is nothing good in US culture, nothing!
And if you don't like the security at the Olympics, don't come, we don't need you!
some naughty Japanese ultra-nationalist posing as a Chinese ultra-nationalist to make them look bad, no doubt.
no joke here though; it will be impossible to order a drink in Beijing if you are black - by government fiat.
Cowicide,
Will Anonymous @ #83 do? Normally I wouldn't put that through, but since it's the subject of the post... Of course, there's no guarantee that it isn't just counter-trolling.
"Some are already calling these the “no fun Olympics” for the rigid restrictions being put on visitors and the media. This example from The Age in Australia takes the cake:
Beijing police have been visiting bar owners in the popular Sanlitun area and asking them to sign pledges agreeing to not serve black people or Mongolians and ban activities including dancing."
Hey Anonymous - "There is nothing good in US culture, nothing!"
Then how the fuck did you end up on Boingboing in the first place?
buzz off troll.
Show your solidarity for Chinese bloggers who risk censure, arrest, torture and even imprisonment for peacefully expressing speaking out online.
Help them by taking part in Amnesty International’s online Day of Protest against Internet censorship. Check it out - http://action.uncensor.com.au/dop/
It only takes a couple of minutes and the more people that join the stronger the message it sends to the Chinese Government.
#85 posted by Antinous:
Nah, that's just a channer from Milwaukee
whoa, phikus. be still laddie. by 'flamer' , i was referring to 'phlamingphonebook' someone whose ideology i find somewhat repugnant and trollish. i wasn't trying to call you a flamer as in gay, i could care less who or what you enjoy yourself with as long as it harm none. oh, if i had wanted to say 'melting pot', i woulda said 'melting pot'. i know the difference. but yeah, i guess i'm hitler. you may unclench your sphincter now, if ya wanna. :J
Not the Dalai clique?
@83: Wow, I would not have expected to get such a nice example of what this post was originally about, gift-wrapped for us to regain our perspective from. Now even TAKUAN is making sense...
i wonder if, in video, the lips would match the words in the comment on #83?
steady there, it'll pass
MINT@91: Your concern for my sphincter is touching, really. I'm through taking your miscommunication as my problem. G'nite.
nitey.
some naughty Japanese ultra-nationalist posing as a Chinese ultra-nationalist to make them look bad, no doubt.
Takuan called it.
g'nite Screwfly
nite big fella. much love to all...
#83's command of English is impressive and rather conspicuous.
It didn't annoy me; I just didn't understand it. I mean, I get the pun on national culrure/bacterial culture, but that doesn't jibe with what you said above. You're saying we're the opposite of a petri dish--a non-sterile environment that absorbs everything it touches.
In any case, I didn't mean culture in terms of art and music and such, though we've certainly got our fair share of that sort of culture (I'll stack Twain, Faulkner, and Hemmingway against any other country's top three authors). I meant the same sort of political peccadilloes we're ascribing to the Chinese. Some Chinese act nationalistic and make threats, and it's something inherent; it can't be changed. Some Americans get in a snit about a flag pin or a head scarf, and it's jingoism, silly Americans worrying about silly symbols.
Why the double standard? Is it because American culture is in our faces so much that we don't see it as such? Is it a subtle racism ("they're just Chinese, they don't know any better. We're people so we should.")? Or is it the old saw of great power begetting great responsibility, which it ought not do? Or something else entirely?
I'm not sure why we'd expect the internet to rid China of aggressive jingoism among its people -- it certainly hasn't worked in America.
Wow, they created a middle class and instead of being harbingers of freedom and democracy they turned out to be insular, self-involved xenophobes with a profound sense of entitlement?
That's unprecedented!
Aiieee!! The Internet is Red!
I read the article and saw the video. These guys want to be the Righteous Fists Of Harmony, with a gloss of Leo Strauss by way of the video composer's academic guru (hence the neocon angle). The portrayal of President Hu Jintao selling out to foreign speculators (a more palatable explanation for current stock market woes than an overheated market) betrays a fundamentalist streak. It sounds uncomfortably like the "Fists"' denunciations of the Manchus as tools of foreign colonizers. That kind of talk led to the Boxer Rebellion (1900), or even the Taiping Rebellion (1861-63). The latter might have succeeded if the rebels had been better organized or its leader thought more like a general and less like Jesus's brother.
Another interesting point about the article is the factions within the Chinese student population, though the patriotic dudes are dominant for now. The government trying to co-opt them, maybe as cadres of the next Cultural Revolution, is risky. If the economy turns sour, some of those activists could turn on the government. Basically, the Chinese government can only afford to cultivate so much patriotic enthusiasm.
Dayv is right; no country has a monopoly on over-aggressive bloggers. The US has Michelle Malkin, for example.
On #83, I call fake troll. There aren't nearly enough adverbs, numbers or insults in his rant. Needs more stuff like "We wholeheartedly attack the Four Falsehoods of internet lies about China!"
@Tak #87:
Yeah, I don't really get it. The Chinese government seems to have a strange idea about what constitutes a good image of the country to visiting foreign nationals [here to view a sporting contest].
It's a pain, because all the good bars close early now, and the police having been clearing the (delicious, delicious, cheap) street food vendors off the streets. I don't really know what to do with myself anymore.
Also,
I'd like to redress my comment way back at #13. Apparently only English language news is left largely uncensored, while that in Chinese is still pretty much inaccessible. This thread inspired me to go digging and I found that more really is firewalled here than I had first thought. This greatly changes my opinion of the "Great Firewall", after living here for months.
Sing it with me, now:
"We're walkin' real proud and
we're talkin' real loud again ~ in America again!"
So we're supposed to be surprised, maybe, that another country has their own version of this chest-puffing, dick-swinging anthem?
As if every nation doesn't have a percentage of its population composed of jingoistic chowderheads?
Pffft. Swaggering idiocy is universal.
FlamingPhoneBook:
I'll take that challenge! Pick any three:
James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney (the last four are all winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature).
Why is it always assumed that the internet is a democratising force when there is no evidence to support it at all? It all seems like delusional self-congratulating phenomenon among westerners for bringing "the gift of internet" to illuminate the unfree corners of the world.
The internet is a bringer of information unavailable through normal channels to people who live in controlled countries but it delivers that information an more. You can read about police arresting protesters and you can also get baby-eating dog-raping Red Guards doing whatnot, if you dig deep enough. Naturally people stick to more "respectable" sources.
I also find strange how most BBers see only their viewpoint (western) to be the one and only truth and expect everyone else in the world to come to the same conclusions. You can't have western worldviews agree with non-western views as much as having a wolf and a lamb agreeing on what to have for dinner.
do "westerners" and "non-westerners" agree that torture is wrong?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/23/beijing.protests.ap/index.html
#56 posted by Phikus,
Military-industrial-[Congressional]
Sure, everybody agrees on that. The problem is that some people have a habit of defining "torture" to exclude anything they want to do, and anybody who objects is handwaved away because they're "arguing about the meaning of words".
Ooo. Author fight!
I see your Yeats and raise you a T.S. Eliot (even though he emigrated, the bum :)
Then I'll sweeten the deal with a Robert Frost.
And throw in some Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe and E.E. Cummings for good measure.
Heck, let's widen it and add some John Steinbeck, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, maybe a little Herman Melville
Note I included Isaac Asimov even though he was born in Russia. America has an unfair advantage in this discussion. Anyone who is born or immigrates here is is American - especially at a young age. It gives us an unfair advantage in these types of discussions. :)
The whole thing is silly though. Of course Americans have culture. Even if you claim that our music, literature, dance, etc. is a mixture of other cultures, it is still in itself distinctly American. The idea that somehow Blues or Rock and Roll or Jazz is not American because it has its roots in other music is ignoring the fact that very few things materialize out of the aether - cultures are inspired by other cultures and things evolve over time.
Phlamer:
''I'll stack Twain, Faulkner, and Hemmingway [sic] against any other country's top three authors.''
How about Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Dostoyevsky?
Or Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens?
Or, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...
Aristophanes
Euripides
Sophocles
@streakingsnake
This stems from the fact that freedom of press is seen as a democratizing force. Totalitarian rule can only be maintained when you have absolute control of the media. It is the primary method of controlling the hearts and minds of people. Without absolute control, people start to realize that there are more than enough dissenters to overthrow or threaten the government.
''FREE TIBET''? Why not? My ancestors were part of what you could call a ''Free America!'' movement, so my blood sings at a Free anything call. Although be careful; history hath shewn it never really works out the way you want it to.
or they can set up "protest zones" to show how liberal and freedom loving they are. This of course also means they will be able to clearly identify all protesters for later, quiet liquidation - but what are ya gonna do?
#4 posted by Takuan
'Do most Chinese believe in "race"?'
Alas, ''official'' Chinese anthropologists do. Despite irrefutable genetic evidence to the contrary, their position is that the Han evolved separately from homo erectus, while the rest of us are, well, ''other.''
Yes, westerners and non westerners agree torture is wrong, but everyone has ways of redefining what is torture and brushing it under the carpet of national security. The difference is how much redefining you want to do, and who you do it to. Where some see national security, others see repression. You can't please everyone but you'll do damn well to please your own.
@Aloisus, I've always seen freedom of the press as a hallmark of democracy rather than a force in itself, and that failure to implement effective repression of said freedom, does not exclusively generate a democracy, as dictator can be traded for despot. It is western-centrics which see democracy as the optimal form of government and hence assume that any regime change will lead to a democratic regime, which is sadly, not all the time.
It is sad to see that when people find foreigners with different opinions, they immediately assume that they are deluded or decieved. As if it were not condescending enough, the words brainwashed and indoctrinated get thrown around as well and no one even gives pause to consider that other people might know what's best for them.
@streakingsnake
The hallmark of a democracy is equal access to power by its citizens. Freedom of the press is a democratizing force simply because it provides access to power for people. Does that lead to a democratic government? Sometimes. It certainly leads to a more democratic society.
I would never claim that democratic governments are inevitable or is the final form of government. Far from it. Even when they do happen, they often devolve quickly into tyranny. After all, pure democracy (direct rule by the people) is horribly flawed. As Plato argued, people will put themselves in charge of the treasury and be corrupted by their new found power. We've seen this time and time again over the course of history.
I've personally have never heard anyone argue for authoritarian forms of government. I admit I'd scratch my head at someone who said they wanted to be ruled by someone they had no say in electing. Unless of course they already had power, were part of the ruling class or thought that they could attain power.
Should we assume that these people might know what's best for them? Absolutely not. The US is a democratic republic for a reason. We elect people who are more knowledgeable than us to make decisions about what is best for us as a whole. We also get to question those decisions constantly and if they turn out to be bad ones, remove them from office. I wouldn't trust my own mother to create a government let alone the average person.
It's not like governments are overthrown by the whole of the people. A small number of people decide that they know what's best for the country and often the rest go along for the ride. The whole point is assuming the average person doesn't know what's best for them. After all, if they did, the government would have already been overthrown!
When exactly are you going to start doing that? I can't recall any instances of a politician's abilities being tested before they were elected. It certainly sounds like a good idea, so why don't you?
While we're having culture wars, lets have the philosophers compete...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck
@Aloisius
You do agree that equal access does not necessarily push towards equal government. The real question I'd like answered is how the jump in reasoning was made so that the Internet itself became a force for promoting democracy, particularly when there is so much signal-to-noise ratio regarding information relevant to toppling governments.
I also didn't mean to say that non-democratic government was "good" for anyone, but that a great majority believe that maintaining the status quo would have greater benefit than making any premature changes.
excellent point Phikus @#125. In a free country one may enjoy the Philosophers World Cup. Under the worst excesses of Maoism, it could easily have resulted in prison or death just for watching it.
Has China now gone beyond Mao? Or are they waiting for the next one?
Re: The torture question
I may be completely wrong on this, but my impression is that the average Chinese person on the street here would not object to the use of torture if any given source said it was in the name of national security or a war effort.
just finishing up the bugs
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080723/ap_on_re_as/oly_building_evacuation