Chinese Blogs, Netizens React To the Tibet Issue

Bibek Paudel writes "Over the past few weeks Chinese bloggers and people on Internet forums have been reacting to events in Tibet and the protests disrupting the torch relay. The BBC and Global Voices have interesting insights on the recent happenings on the Net. A western commentator says, 'Lots of Chinese people now view the Western media, human rights groups, and Western leaders' criticisms of their country as part of the Racist Western Conspiracy to Stop China From Being Successful.' One of the most vocal appeals by the Chinese blogs, forums, and text-messages has been to boycott French goods in response to the protests that accompanied the torch relay in Paris. One response post reads, 'Who is abusing human rights? Who is bringing violence to this world?' There also are two versions of music video of the song Don't Be Too CNN, and its lyric has assumed the status of a cult catch-phrase. Sina.com has a popular page: 'Don't be too CNN, fire to the Western media.' Many analysts believe that the protests over Tibet have only served to strengthen Chinese nationalism rather than evoke sympathy for the Tibetan cause. Sina.com has a petition against the Western media which has reportedly accumulated millions of signatures. There is also Mutant Palm, a blog by an expatriate in China who has been watching and commenting on the fallout from Tibet and torch protests online."

History

One of the most vocal appeals by the Chinese blogs, forums, and text-messages has been to boycott French goods . . . Many analysts believe that the protests over Tibet have only served to strengthen Chinese nationalism rather than evoke sympathy for the Tibetan cause.

And 5 years ago just about every American was in favor of war against Iraq, and boycotting French goods due to their being "against us" in the UN?

I'd like to say nationalism is the new evil, but, unfortunately it's been around for as long as there has been nations.

Re:History

And 5 years ago just about every American was in favor of war against Iraq, and boycotting French goods due to their being "against us" in the UN?

Not true, really. A lot of Americans were either ambivalent or against the war. It's just that our news media decided that they supported the war and that serious foreign policy thinkers were those that 1) supported the war, and 2) show up in the same cozy Washington/NYC cocktail party circuit as the reporters. Part of this was because the Republican party made damn sure to question the patriotism and intelligence of anyone who didn't strictly believe the Bush administration's bullshit.

One day, I hope to have a full accounting of exactly how intentionally bullshitty the case for war really was, as well as some nice war crimes trials in the Hague for the responsible party. I'll not be holding my breath.

Re:History

Umm, please don't revise history this way.

You know full well it was precisely because the french were not only not going to commit forces to Iraq, but actively opposed it and rubbished the evidence. They turned out to be correct.

yes, they may have had dodgy financial involvements in the region, but it was the sheer gall to oppose the US in its supposed hour of need (bullcrap) that caused the backlash.

Re:History

I still would like to see the USA withdraw all troops from Europe and the middle east, and let those people get their own oil, for the things Chirac said.

A pretty significant number of people both in Europe and the Middle East would thank you if you did.

Mod Parent UP PLEASE

A pretty significant number of people both in Europe and the Middle East would thank you if you did

This makes me feel good actually. Don't you think the world would be better off if the USA had business office overseas, rather than troops. I keep asking myself, what country in their right mind really likes having foreign troops on its soil. I mean, I wouldn't really care for it too much if a German division was stationed in Delaware, and I can't imagine the Germans feel any differently. Now with the USA and UK, its a different animal and for some reason I could see the British being in the USA just because my grandfather and my wife's grandfather fought in the Pacific during World War II and to this day I am grateful that the British sent the largest fleet they ever produced (18 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships, and more), to have Seafires flying CAP over American landing forces at Okinawa. And, the British are with us in Iraq...

I keep thinking that the perception of America military hegemony with troops all across the globe is bad for public relations. The Cold War is over... if someone invades Europe, America will be there to defend you, but right now, I honestly think the best thing for the USA is to be a trading empire, not a military one.

I do not want the USA to make the Athenien mistake.

Totalitarian regime

As long as they call all non-Chinese media "Western Media" they clearly cannot seriously criticize it in any meaningful way. I mean, Fox News, Slashdot, BBC, FAZ and Corriere della Sera are all part of same group of anti-Chinese conspiracy? With that argument, dear Chinese blogging friends, you are becoming pretty laughable.

a little note

please never use the word "netizens" ever again, in any circumstance.

thank you,
the internet users who aren't douchebags

Brilliant, evil, or both?

On one hand I don't get good coverage of the situation in Tibet because western reporters just do not go there. And on the other hand Chinese reporting is state run and thus essentially a state run propaganda outlet.

Having observed the Dali Lama's tours and speeches for the last few year I find Chinese media assertion that The Dali Lama is running a terrorist network absurd, but their reporting to the contrary might be causing Tibetan supporters of the Dali Lama to become more extreme as the only media source available to them tell them that the Dali Lama is urging armed uprising.

In many ways the Chinese government is seeding the dissent which will give them an excuse for violent oppression of the Tibetan people. I am not sure whether this is evidence of a brilliantly executed evil agenda or standard government incompetence.

Re:They're Right

WEll maybe we are hypocrites, but I can still write an invective against my government and not get trundled off to prison where I'm to be re-educated.

Better a hypocrite than a slave to tyrants.

No, they are not

They're calling us hypocrites, and as a citizen of "the West" I can say they're exactly right.

No they aren't. There's no censorship in the west to the extent there is China. There's no individual right to keep and bear arms in China like there is in the west. The differences are staggering and people that proclaim dictatorship whenever politics don't go their way do more to undermine the very definition of what a dictatorship really is.

Re:No, they are not

There's no individual right to keep and bear arms in China like there is in the west.

What do you mean by "west"? Is this U.S. American arrogance or ignorance? I am from Western Europe. Last time I checked we were part of the "West [wikipedia.org]." European countries tend to have much tighter gun laws than the United States. When I was in graduate school in physics in the U.S. I had friends from all over the world, including Europe and all of them agreed with me on thinking that Americans are crazy to tolerate their lax gun ownership laws. In fact all agreed that guns do not belong in the hands of civilians with the possible exception of hunting rifles. So be careful when you say "we", you Americans do not automatically speak for all Westerners. (A good example would have been the initiation of the Iraq invasion.) Of course I agree on your other point about the extent of censorship in the West vs. China even though I had my doubts about the U.S. in this area just prior to the Iraq invasion.

Re:They're Right

I have long held that Tibetans are doomed. It is the exact reason why Gandhism fails - it has in the core a belief that oppressor will feel you pain at some point (or shame at oppressing you, whichever way you put it).

But in this day and age of "remote" media, there is no (visual) connection between people - and the assumption fails at the very premise.

If Tibetans had an army, fought a war - and lost - they would have a much better say.

Re:They're Right

I am Chinese and I received this poem circulating in the Chinese circle which I think captures the sentiment of ordinary Chinese rather well .
A LETTER FROM AN ORDINARY CHINESE

When we were seen as "Sick Men from East Asia", we were called The Peril.
When we strived to get stronger, we are called The Threat.

When we closed our doors to the world, you forced them open with drugs and guns.
When we finally embraced Free Trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs.

When we were falling apart, you marched in your troops and robbed us blind.
When we put the broken pieces back together again, "Free tÂbet" you screamed, it was an invasion!

So, we tried Communism, you hated us for being Communists.
Then we learned from Capitalism, you hated us for being Capitalists.

When we had a billion people, you said "The planet is starving."
So we tried to limit our population, you said it was Human Rights Abuse.

When we were poor, you think we are dogs.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you blame us for global warming.
When we sell you goods you can afford, you blame us for dumping inferior products.

When we buy oil, you called that exploitation and assisting genocide.
When you fight for oil, you called that Liberation of Its People.

When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you wanted Rules of Law for us.
When we uphold our law and order against violence, you called that Violating Human Rights.

When we were silent, you said we have No Free Speech.
When we are NOW silent no more, you say we are merely "Brainwashed".

"Why do you hate us so much?" We asked.
"No" You answered, "We don't hate you."
Truth is we really don't hate you either, but do you understand us?
"Of course we do" You said, "We have BBC, CNN and AFPs."
So we ask you now "What do you really know and want from us?"
And "Why do you find it SO hard to accept us?"

Re:They're Right

Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are not that far in the past

So our ongoing injustices excuse their behavior in Tibet and towards their own people?

Re:They're Right

Would you consider our ongoing injustices an internal matter or one that should be roundly discussed, with a final course dictated by the international community?

Two things:

1. I think it's pretty dangerous to try and 'dictate' anything to a country armed with nuclear weapons and ICBMs. This includes China and the United States.
2. Yes, I think our ongoing injustices (Gitmo comes to mind) should be part of the global discussion. I also think our Allies and Trading Partners should be encouraging us to live up to past promises (*cough* Geneva Conventions *cough*) and the better parts of our history.

In that same vain, I don't think the West should be dictating anything to China. But we don't need to be their lapdogs either. We don't need to overlook their abuses simply because it's profitable to do business with them.

Personally, while I'm not going to encourage a boycott of the Olympics, I'm not really feeling any particular desire to go out of my way to watch them either. I felt a lot better about them when the Chinese were treating them as a well-deserved (IMHO) reintroduction to the World after decades of oppression and stagnation. If they turn them into a nationalist spectacle than I don't think comparisons between 2008 and 1936 are entirely unjustified.

Re:so the french get it both ways

People's Fries.

Re:Matter of culture

That and people don't like to be told why their country is bad. Just look at America.

This is rubbish. There are always large numbers of Americans to be found who hate Bush and the Iraq invasion and are willing to say so loudly. For Pete's sake there are plenty of idiots who believe Bush planned 9/11.

Similarly, in Europe, there are lots of anti-government groups (just look at the anti-globalism nuts) who get lots of airtime.

Wherever the whole country agrees, you can be sure you're not in a western democracy.

Re:Uh..

different leaders at different times...

china helping out north korea was one communist nation helping out another, after UN forced had chased north korean into chinese territory iirc...

on the other hand, the leadership of china during ww2 ended up fleeing to what is now taiwan after the communist uprising.

and btw, china do not recognice taiwan as a nation. they insist that its chinese territory. but they do not invade as that would risk all out war with usa, who helped set up taiwan...

got to love that stuff. in us eyes, anything other then communist leadership was good. it could be just as dictatorial or worse then the communists, as long as they where not communists...

Re:Uh..

after UN forced had chased north korean into chinese territory iirc

At which point in the war (prior to the Chinese intervention) did the UN violate Chinese territory?

on the other hand, the leadership of china during ww2 ended up fleeing to what is now taiwan after the communist uprising.

If you mean the Nationalists/Kuomintang fled to Taiwan then you are accurate. But they weren't the only 'leadership' of China during WW2. The Communists contributed more to the defeat of the Japanese than the Nationalists did. The Communist leadership was also engaged by the Western Powers during this period -- Stillwell in particular spoke highly about the Communists and their resistance towards the Japanese. So it's a bit of a mistake to say the 'leadership' of China during WW2 fled to Taiwan -- part of the leadership did. The part that actually resisted the Japanese stayed behind.

got to love that stuff. in us eyes, anything other then communist leadership was good. it could be just as dictatorial or worse then the communists, as long as they where not communists...

Well, if you consider the context of the times and the Soviet actions in Europe/violation of their wartime agreements (Potsdam and Yalta) then it really isn't that hard to understand why we were afraid of Communism. In retrospect our actions (particularly in Latin-America) weren't justifiable but it's too easy to condemn them with the full benefit of historical hindsight.

Re:Uh..

Actually, the Japanese actually helped the Communists in China. At a time when the communists were about to be crushed by the national government, the Japanese invaded and distracted the national army long enough to let the communists get strong.

It's a pretty dramatic story, actually. The nationals had chased the communists all the way from southern China up to the north, spent months doing so in what is known as Mao's Long March, and were finally about to crush the rebellion. The nationals were camped at the ancient hot springs outside Xi'an (these springs have been in use by kings in China for 1,500 years at least). The Japanese had invaded, but the leader still wanted to crush the Communists before facing the Japanese. At that critical moment, some of the nationalist troops kidnapped the nationalist leader and forced him to give up chasing the Communists. This event is memorialized in Communist tradition as 'the Xian incident.'

Re:Uh..

If they want to make this into a nationalist cause celebre then somebody should remind them that there's a lot more history behind Chinese relations with the West then just the unequal treaties and not all of that history is the West "oppressing" China.

But, the government of China isn't interested in the unbiased version of history. I'm sure the same can be said for Western governments on some topics as well to be fair.

It purely is about being able to control perception of their own citizens by controlling the message. "We have always been at was with East Anglia" from 1984 comes to mind.

Chairman Mao himself was the one who laid down the foundation for controlling the message of history. Make them believe your version of events, and you can shape how they'll feel about future events.

The more they can pretend that Tibet has always been under the direct control China, and that the people who lived in Tibet were "liberated" from slavery and serfdom when the Chinese army came in, the more they can change the focus of the issue. Their claim is that the people lived under a cruel and oppressive theocracy, and the Dalai Lama is secretly a villain is designed to support their position.

Sadly, if you get the whole Chinese populace riled up into thinking that everyone is picking on them, they have no strong basis for comparison. Heck, it's not like most of them know about what actually happened in Tianamen Square. They certainly don't really understand the oppression that has happened in Tibet over the last 50 years.

And, don't get me started on the Panchen Lama debacle -- the Chinese government don't feel the need to tell the truth about such things. They have always manipulated the truth to their own ends.

It is often hard to tell when the Chinese nationals are shouting down dissenting points of view if they actually believe that crap, or if they're just doing what they're told. I have a suspicion that a lot of them (even the ones here in Canada who were protesting against Western media bias last week) honestly don't know any different version of events. Therefore, they assume that we really are trying to hurt their national pride. They don't want to be told that their government is and has been lying to them.

Misinformed nationalism can be manipulated in lots of ways by those in power. As I said, I suspect some of it happens in the West as well. The "Us vs Them" mentality that it drives doesn't always help with informed debate.

Cheers

Re:Uh..

And how did the West get repaid for taking that stance and helping to liberate China? With the Chinese intervention against the United Nations (not just the United States) during the Korean War.

The US helped "liberate" China in such a fashion that it pretty much handed the country to Mao on a silver platter. American leaders were foolish enough to swallow propaganda pieces like Red Star Over China and so thought that the Communists were a little rough, but they were basically nice guys who were concerned with workers' and peasants' rights. (Some of them probably were, but by then Mao was in control, and he was not a nice guy at all.) In that mistaken belief, the Americans twisted Chiang Kai-Shek's arm (by threatening to withhold aid) until he agreed to continue co-operating with the Reds rather than mopping the floor with them when he had the chance.

Not that Chiang was exactly an angel, either, but - had the Chinese Civil War played out differently - the country might have been spared a generation having its soul ripped from it as a hyper-Stalinist slave-labour state. But I digress.

While support of the right of Tibetans to national and cultural self-determination is laudable, one must also have some recognition of China's recent history. The Chinese are very sensitive to anything they perceive as an attempt to divide (or even dismember) their country. This perception is quite understandable, given the number of foreign colonies, puppet states, spheres of influence, and disvestitures that China saw in the 19th and 20th centuries. They're not anxious to see Tibet become another Mongolia (which exists as an independent country today only because Josef Stalin wanted to be able to station troops within 500 km of Beijing) or Manchukuo (Japanese puppet régime in North China).

Given the circumstances - rather than demand Tibetan independence - I think that a much more reasonable solution would be encourage China to adopt a 'one country, different systems' policy similar to how it has handled Macau and Hong Kong, where I've personally had the opportunity to see Falun Gong meetings taking place, in the open and unmolested, within sight of the PRC flag flying over Bauhinia Square.

Re:Uh..

Yup - you're absolutely right. It's nothing but nationalism run amok. I find it particularly amusing that the Chinese are pissed off at the French as well. This has the exact echoes of the nationalistic frenzy many Americans were in when the French decided to not believe the WMD bullshit.

To be honest, I'm far more concerned about that than Al-Qaeda. Remember what happened the last time nationalism was this rampant and blind? 2 countries were invaded - 1 without any reason. Furthermore, many of the internal violence across the world can be traced to excessive attachment to a particular tribe/ethnicity/nation. The exception to that are the various communist movements and drug cartels.

Here's something else I've learned from the comments left by Chinese nationalists on various blogs and news stories: they have less in common with me than I have in common with Iraqis. Their concept of free speech is completely different. Their concept of human rights is completely different. Their concept of historic relativism is completely different. Here's what I see:
Chinese nationalists value territorial integrity, international face, unity and harmony above all. I value individual self-determination and free speech above all - in other words, chaos over harmony.

You can easily see this in their rage against news outlets, where a bad story about a Chinese government action is taken as an insult from all of western civilization against all of China.

Re:Brainwashed.

you have no idea how true this is.

I am currently teaching ESL in Korea.

there are a lot of Chinese people working in Korea, and since they speak limited English, and I am here with a friend who speaks Chinese, and we are foreigners in a strange land, we spend a lot of time together, talking.

One day, Tienanmen square came up, and they wondered why Westerners always made a big deal about that particular spot.

"it was just a bunch of bad students" one said to me. she knew something happened there one, but no specifics.

that was all they knew.
Tienanmen was just "A bunch of bad students"

I went online, showed them that famous footage.
there was shock, outrage, and disbelief.
2 of them now refuse to return to China.

makes you wonder what our governments are hiding from us.

My Chinese friends are always making little jabs at me here and there, because British Colonialism was so awful, and wrong. And being white makes me inherently guilty of everything wrong with the world. (despite the fact that i am not British)

They all agree that Tibet is a part of China

I told them all "fine, i will agree to that, Tibet is as much a part of China as India is a part of Britian."

Re:The reaction should not be surprising

My God, Slashdot groupthink at its very best.

I was born in China but I grew up overseas. I have tons of relatives who live all over the world, from Paris to New York. They have access to all the information in the world.

But let me tell you this: Not a single person in my family supports Tibetan independence. Everyone supports the Olympics 100%.

My grandparents were Party members so we are relatively well off. Most of my aunts and uncles had university education and my cousins are studying overseas. These are people who regularly criticize the government in daily conversations over things like corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies, because they are well-informed and aware of what is happening.

Westerners just can't grapple with the reality that the Chinese government is still generally popular and it's people, though overly addicted to nationalism and cultural pride, are NOT ignorant slaves that your corporate media and your condescending feel-good activists like you to believe.

I personally am very much against the operating principals of the Chinese government, as are my parents. But I think this whole Olympic protest business is just bullshit. It will only strengthen ugly nationalism and serve as an ego trip for those hippie protesters.

To fucking hell with karma. :/