A little bit of China-bashing
Lately, there's been a string of negative news articles about China in the NYTimes.
I'm starting to wonder if the Times is just really anti-China, or if the Chinese government just really is that bad.
Probably both.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/international/asia/26uzbekistan.html
May 26, 2005
China Gives a Strategic 21-Gun Salute to Visiting Uzbek President
By JOSEPH KAHN and CHRIS BUCKLEY
BEIJING, May 25 - China honored Islam A. Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, with a 21-gun salute and a private meeting with President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, courting him shortly after his army led a violent crackdown on dissent.
The meeting underscored China's emphasis on maintaining stability on its Western border and supporting leaders who take a hard line against Muslim extremists, as Mr. Karimov has done, as well as Beijing's aggressive search for energy resources in Central Asia.
In granting Mr. Karimov the trappings of a full state visit less than two weeks after Uzbek troops killed protesters in the northeastern city of Andijon, Beijing may have been seeking to forge a stronger political alliance with a government that the United States and other Western countries have accused of mass human rights violations, analysts said.
Uzbek authorities have said 169 people died in the Andijon protest, including 32 government troops. Opposition and rights groups say that the number was several hundred and that most were unarmed civilians.
Ahead of Mr. Karimov's arrival on Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry endorsed his position that the crackdown was necessary to suppress an armed insurrection and that most of the dead were Islamic extremists.
Both China and the United States have sought closer relations with Uzbekistan, part of the former Soviet Union. Beijing has tried to enlist the support of Uzbekistan in fighting Islamic separatism in China's western region of Xinjiang, while also lining up secure supplies of oil and gas.
The United States built an air base in the country, part of its drive to fight terrorist activity in Central Asia.
But their responses to the shootings there differed sharply. Washington called for an independent inquiry and threatened to withhold aid unless an impartial investigation is conducted.
"Energy is clearly one driver for China in the region," said Arthur Waldron, a China expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "My sense is that they also tend to think that anything that throws sand into the face of the U.S. is a good thing."
As China begins to exert greater sway in Asia and around the world, it has stepped up diplomatic, economic and military links with countries the United States has sought to punish or isolate.
Beijing has resisted American efforts to use greater economic and political leverage to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear program. China has enhanced economic ties with Iran while the European Union and the United States seek to prevent Iran from becoming a full nuclear power.
Myanmar, Nepal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe are among the other countries that China has actively courted even as they come under heavy pressure from the West.
In Uzbekistan, Chinese experts said Beijing's overwhelming concern to maintain regional stability and prevent recent unrest spilling over into Xinjiang overrode any concerns about Mr. Karimov's harsh rule.
"China's main concern is preserving regional security in Central Asia, and in particular fighting separatism," said Wang Jinguo, an expert on China's role in Central Asia at Lanzhou University in western China. "Everything else is secondary."
Officials here may also hope to persuade Uzbekistan to accept an expanded role for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the body that China founded in 1996 as a forum for encouraging Central Asian cooperation in fighting separatism and militant Islam and encouraging trade.
Not only does the Chinese government brutally suppress dissenters, it salutes other governments who do the same!
They've been implicitly condoning Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions, enhancing economic ties with Iran, and now they're applauding a massacre of civilians in Uzbekistan!
If China wasn't so economically important to us, it might already have its own official spot in the "Axis of Evil!"
After all, the Chinese Empire seems to be doing everything it possibly can to sabotage American (and other Western) geopolitical interests, while encouraging other authoritarian governments.
So why aren't Chinese people revolting against their repressive government, and making the wet dreams of all these NYTimes journalists come true?
Simply put, they're proud of their country--from the perspective of a typical Chinese person, this is the best government China's ever had.
As Jeremy Goldkorn of danwei.org put it, "This writer has lived in China for ten years. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Westerner talk about democracy and free expression in China, I would be a rich man. If I had a hundred dollars for every time I've heard a Chinese person talk about the same things, I might just be able to afford to buy a couple of fake Dolce & Gabbana shirts."
By the way, here's the article Mr. Goldkorn was referencing in the above quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/opinion/24kristoff.html
May 24, 2005
Death by a Thousand Blogs
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Beijing
The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet.
The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at www.yuluncn.com.
That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China.
Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him.
His biggest case so far involved a deputy mayor of Jining who is accused of stealing more than $400,000 and operating like a warlord. One of the deputy mayor's victims was a businesswoman whom he allegedly harassed and tried to kidnap.
Mr. Li's Web site published an investigative report, including a series of photos showing the deputy mayor kneeling and crying, apparently begging not to be reported to the police. The photos caused a sensation, and the deputy mayor was soon arrested.
Another of Mr. Li's campaigns involved a young peasant woman who was kidnapped by family planning officials, imprisoned and forcibly fitted with an IUD. Embarrassed by the reports, the authorities sent the officials responsible to jail for a year.
When I caught up with Mr. Li, he was investigating the mysterious death of a businessman who got in a financial dispute with a policeman and ended up arrested and then dead.
All this underscores how the Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West. The Internet is also eroding the leadership's monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of "nei jin wai song" - cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open.
My old friends in the Chinese news media and the Communist Party are mostly aghast at President Hu Jintao's revival of ideological slogans, praise for North Korea's political system and crackdown on the media. The former leaders Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji are also said to be appalled.
Yet China, fortunately, is bigger than its emperor. Some 100 million Chinese now surf the Web, and e-mail and Web chat rooms are ubiquitous.
The authorities have arrested a growing number of Web dissidents. But there just aren't enough police to control the Internet, and when sites are banned, Chinese get around them with proxy servers.
One of the leaders of the Tiananmen democracy movement, Chen Ziming, is now out of prison and regularly posts essays on an Internet site. Jiao Guobiao, a scholar, is officially blacklisted but writes scathing essays that circulate by e-mail all around China. One senior government official told me that he doesn't bother to read Communist Party documents any more, but he never misses a Jiao Guobiao essay.
I tried my own experiment, posting comments on Internet chat rooms. In a Chinese-language chat room on Sohu.com, I called for multiparty elections and said, "If Chinese on the other side of the Taiwan Strait can choose their leaders, why can't we choose our leaders?" That went on the site automatically, like all other messages. But after 10 minutes, the censor spotted it and removed it.
Then I toned it down: "Under the Communist Party's great leadership, China has changed tremendously. I wonder if in 20 years the party will introduce competing parties, because that could benefit us greatly." That stayed up for all to see, even though any Chinese would read it as an implicit call for a multiparty system.
So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.
President Hu has fulminated in private speeches that foreign "hostile forces" are trying to change China. Yup, count me in - anybody who loves China as I do would be hostile to an empty Mao suit like Mr. Hu. But it's the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Party's grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.
Read it, perhaps fantasize a little, and then read this counterpoint from danwei.org and get a dose of reality.
http://www.danwei.org/archives/001617.html
Ankle-biting by a thousand blogs does not a revolution make
New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof seems to be getting a little overexcited by the potential of the Internet to foment dissent and challenge the status quo.
Kristof's latest column discusses Yuluncn.com, "the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde" who "travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing ... [and] writes about them on his Web site". Kristof concludes:
But it's the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Party's grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.
That's an outcome that Kristof would like very dearly. But there are a few things to consider before you believe that the Internet is somehow going to unseat the Party:
- People like Li Xinde are far and few between.
- Li Xinde's website is decorated with a banner featuring a picture of Hu Jintao and animated Party slogans like "Completely implement the Three Represents" (reproduced above). Li Xinde is himself a Party member.
- The government is becoming increasingly sophisticated at using different techniques to influence public opinion on the Internet. Aside from blocking websites and monitoring email, the government also employs propagandists to push the Party line on Internet forums and bulletin boards.
- Anyone with an Internet connection is already doing well economically: China is a country where the majority of the population comprises very poor peasants. People with Internet connections are the least likely of all Chinese people to rise up in rebellion against the government.
- Yuluncn.com is inaccessible in China. Yuluncn.net is however accessible. Something funny is going on, and it seems to involve the Nanny.
- This writer has lived in China for ten years. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Westerner talk about democracy and free expression in China, I would be a rich man. If I had a hundred dollars for every time I've heard a Chinese person talk about the same things, I might just be able to afford to buy a couple of fake Dolce & Gabbana shirts.
Mr Kristof's 'Death by a thousand blogs' is simply wishful thinking.
I'm starting to wonder if the Times is just really anti-China, or if the Chinese government just really is that bad.
Probably both.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/international/asia/26uzbekistan.html
May 26, 2005
China Gives a Strategic 21-Gun Salute to Visiting Uzbek President
By JOSEPH KAHN and CHRIS BUCKLEY
BEIJING, May 25 - China honored Islam A. Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, with a 21-gun salute and a private meeting with President Hu Jintao on Wednesday, courting him shortly after his army led a violent crackdown on dissent.
The meeting underscored China's emphasis on maintaining stability on its Western border and supporting leaders who take a hard line against Muslim extremists, as Mr. Karimov has done, as well as Beijing's aggressive search for energy resources in Central Asia.
In granting Mr. Karimov the trappings of a full state visit less than two weeks after Uzbek troops killed protesters in the northeastern city of Andijon, Beijing may have been seeking to forge a stronger political alliance with a government that the United States and other Western countries have accused of mass human rights violations, analysts said.
Uzbek authorities have said 169 people died in the Andijon protest, including 32 government troops. Opposition and rights groups say that the number was several hundred and that most were unarmed civilians.
Ahead of Mr. Karimov's arrival on Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry endorsed his position that the crackdown was necessary to suppress an armed insurrection and that most of the dead were Islamic extremists.
Both China and the United States have sought closer relations with Uzbekistan, part of the former Soviet Union. Beijing has tried to enlist the support of Uzbekistan in fighting Islamic separatism in China's western region of Xinjiang, while also lining up secure supplies of oil and gas.
The United States built an air base in the country, part of its drive to fight terrorist activity in Central Asia.
But their responses to the shootings there differed sharply. Washington called for an independent inquiry and threatened to withhold aid unless an impartial investigation is conducted.
"Energy is clearly one driver for China in the region," said Arthur Waldron, a China expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "My sense is that they also tend to think that anything that throws sand into the face of the U.S. is a good thing."
As China begins to exert greater sway in Asia and around the world, it has stepped up diplomatic, economic and military links with countries the United States has sought to punish or isolate.
Beijing has resisted American efforts to use greater economic and political leverage to pressure North Korea to end its nuclear program. China has enhanced economic ties with Iran while the European Union and the United States seek to prevent Iran from becoming a full nuclear power.
Myanmar, Nepal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe are among the other countries that China has actively courted even as they come under heavy pressure from the West.
In Uzbekistan, Chinese experts said Beijing's overwhelming concern to maintain regional stability and prevent recent unrest spilling over into Xinjiang overrode any concerns about Mr. Karimov's harsh rule.
"China's main concern is preserving regional security in Central Asia, and in particular fighting separatism," said Wang Jinguo, an expert on China's role in Central Asia at Lanzhou University in western China. "Everything else is secondary."
Officials here may also hope to persuade Uzbekistan to accept an expanded role for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the body that China founded in 1996 as a forum for encouraging Central Asian cooperation in fighting separatism and militant Islam and encouraging trade.
Not only does the Chinese government brutally suppress dissenters, it salutes other governments who do the same!
They've been implicitly condoning Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions, enhancing economic ties with Iran, and now they're applauding a massacre of civilians in Uzbekistan!
If China wasn't so economically important to us, it might already have its own official spot in the "Axis of Evil!"
After all, the Chinese Empire seems to be doing everything it possibly can to sabotage American (and other Western) geopolitical interests, while encouraging other authoritarian governments.
So why aren't Chinese people revolting against their repressive government, and making the wet dreams of all these NYTimes journalists come true?
Simply put, they're proud of their country--from the perspective of a typical Chinese person, this is the best government China's ever had.
As Jeremy Goldkorn of danwei.org put it, "This writer has lived in China for ten years. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Westerner talk about democracy and free expression in China, I would be a rich man. If I had a hundred dollars for every time I've heard a Chinese person talk about the same things, I might just be able to afford to buy a couple of fake Dolce & Gabbana shirts."
By the way, here's the article Mr. Goldkorn was referencing in the above quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/opinion/24kristoff.html
May 24, 2005
Death by a Thousand Blogs
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Beijing
The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet.
The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at www.yuluncn.com.
That's the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he's started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China.
Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him.
His biggest case so far involved a deputy mayor of Jining who is accused of stealing more than $400,000 and operating like a warlord. One of the deputy mayor's victims was a businesswoman whom he allegedly harassed and tried to kidnap.
Mr. Li's Web site published an investigative report, including a series of photos showing the deputy mayor kneeling and crying, apparently begging not to be reported to the police. The photos caused a sensation, and the deputy mayor was soon arrested.
Another of Mr. Li's campaigns involved a young peasant woman who was kidnapped by family planning officials, imprisoned and forcibly fitted with an IUD. Embarrassed by the reports, the authorities sent the officials responsible to jail for a year.
When I caught up with Mr. Li, he was investigating the mysterious death of a businessman who got in a financial dispute with a policeman and ended up arrested and then dead.
All this underscores how the Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West. The Internet is also eroding the leadership's monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of "nei jin wai song" - cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open.
My old friends in the Chinese news media and the Communist Party are mostly aghast at President Hu Jintao's revival of ideological slogans, praise for North Korea's political system and crackdown on the media. The former leaders Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji are also said to be appalled.
Yet China, fortunately, is bigger than its emperor. Some 100 million Chinese now surf the Web, and e-mail and Web chat rooms are ubiquitous.
The authorities have arrested a growing number of Web dissidents. But there just aren't enough police to control the Internet, and when sites are banned, Chinese get around them with proxy servers.
One of the leaders of the Tiananmen democracy movement, Chen Ziming, is now out of prison and regularly posts essays on an Internet site. Jiao Guobiao, a scholar, is officially blacklisted but writes scathing essays that circulate by e-mail all around China. One senior government official told me that he doesn't bother to read Communist Party documents any more, but he never misses a Jiao Guobiao essay.
I tried my own experiment, posting comments on Internet chat rooms. In a Chinese-language chat room on Sohu.com, I called for multiparty elections and said, "If Chinese on the other side of the Taiwan Strait can choose their leaders, why can't we choose our leaders?" That went on the site automatically, like all other messages. But after 10 minutes, the censor spotted it and removed it.
Then I toned it down: "Under the Communist Party's great leadership, China has changed tremendously. I wonder if in 20 years the party will introduce competing parties, because that could benefit us greatly." That stayed up for all to see, even though any Chinese would read it as an implicit call for a multiparty system.
So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.
President Hu has fulminated in private speeches that foreign "hostile forces" are trying to change China. Yup, count me in - anybody who loves China as I do would be hostile to an empty Mao suit like Mr. Hu. But it's the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Party's grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.
Read it, perhaps fantasize a little, and then read this counterpoint from danwei.org and get a dose of reality.
http://www.danwei.org/archives/001617.html
Ankle-biting by a thousand blogs does not a revolution make
New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof seems to be getting a little overexcited by the potential of the Internet to foment dissent and challenge the status quo.
Kristof's latest column discusses Yuluncn.com, "the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde" who "travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing ... [and] writes about them on his Web site". Kristof concludes:
But it's the Chinese leadership itself that is digging the Communist Party's grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband.
That's an outcome that Kristof would like very dearly. But there are a few things to consider before you believe that the Internet is somehow going to unseat the Party:
- People like Li Xinde are far and few between.
- Li Xinde's website is decorated with a banner featuring a picture of Hu Jintao and animated Party slogans like "Completely implement the Three Represents" (reproduced above). Li Xinde is himself a Party member.
- The government is becoming increasingly sophisticated at using different techniques to influence public opinion on the Internet. Aside from blocking websites and monitoring email, the government also employs propagandists to push the Party line on Internet forums and bulletin boards.
- Anyone with an Internet connection is already doing well economically: China is a country where the majority of the population comprises very poor peasants. People with Internet connections are the least likely of all Chinese people to rise up in rebellion against the government.
- Yuluncn.com is inaccessible in China. Yuluncn.net is however accessible. Something funny is going on, and it seems to involve the Nanny.
- This writer has lived in China for ten years. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a Westerner talk about democracy and free expression in China, I would be a rich man. If I had a hundred dollars for every time I've heard a Chinese person talk about the same things, I might just be able to afford to buy a couple of fake Dolce & Gabbana shirts.
Mr Kristof's 'Death by a thousand blogs' is simply wishful thinking.