Hi IGF
I entirely agree with you. What I detect in Beijing (a place I visit yearly for work reasons) is a general attitude that is inclined to poo-poo "whatever the West says". They've done the volte-face Milosevic achieved in Serbia... to transmute "Communism" into "Nationalism" (some might argue that Mr Putin, who lives 20 mins down the road from me, is the same kind of one-trick pony). It suits them, in their internal propoganda with their own people (which is intense and highly organised, viz the blocking of all external news sources on the internet and scandals relating this week, Yahoo shopped a dissenter to the Chinese cops) to portray China as the aggrieved victim of unreasonable foreign interference. These crosshairs can be brought to bear upon almost any issue, justified or not:
- demands for WW2 reparations from the Japanese (an ongoing grievance which the current Tokyo govt have stoked)
- carbon emissions
- repression, torture, ill-treatment, discrimination etc of religious minorities within what is currently the PRC
- repression of all political dissent
- anything to do with Taiwan (Frau Merkel happily signed-up to what Beijing calls the "One China Policy" this week - in fact it is a charter for the PRC to invade and occupy Taiwan with the tacit complicity of other nations. Bush signed too.)
- abuse of wildlife
- what textbooks can be used in Japanese schools
- how to run the Olympic Games
It's a surprisingly effective blunt instrument. Most Chinese believe implicitly whatever is reported on their tv (a medium to which they are utterly addicted) and will parrot anything they heard there as "the truth". It's very worrying to find apparently intelligent and educated people repeating utter lies about the Chinese invasion of Tibet, for example. What I find more worrying, however, is the outrageous racism directed at the non-Han races within the PRC's borders. This is institutionalised at every level of Chinese society. Textbooks about Chinese history have been written in such a way as to show that the Han were always the native people of all regions of the area the PRC now covers, and that other peoples who live there should be grateful to the kind Han who took them in. Wherever you go, you will find examples in which the locals are portrayed as loveable simpletons who needed Han Chinese assistance to lift them out of their hut-crouching primitivism. For example, I was in Turfan earlier this year - a two-thousand-year-old oasis town in the Taklamakan Desert, traditionally a Uighur community (ie entirely non-Chinese - Uighur language is 65% understable by neighbouring Kazakhs, which tips you the wink on the ethnic allegiances here). The main industry is agriculture (primarily currants and raisins from Grape Valley) - which all hinges on incredibly ingenious irrigation systems in such unpromising terrain. They are so proud of these irrigation systems there's a Museum Of Irrigation (there's a Museum of everything in China) to which foreigners are taken, and here you'll see photos from the 1950s and 60s of Mao-Tse-Tung and his Ministers supervising the construction, opening the first sluices, a gift to the poor Uighurs etc etc. But it's all a lie. The present irrigation system dates from the C18th and was built entirely by Uighurs, who thought it up for themselves. Mao had sent agronomists from Guangdong and Heilongjiang (who knew about growing rice and corn) because their regions bought in the best crops... without any regard for the fact that the terrain in those areas was paddyfields, and the Taklamakan is one of the most deadly deserts on earth. They diverted rivers and built canals, but as a result of intensive agriculture the topsoil was blown away into the desert, creating a famine in the regions (for which the people were punished by the People, for their "laziness"). They have now gone back to growing grapes (ie what actually works) and have been able to rebuild much of the C18th irrigation system that was dynamited by the "advisors" from Beijing. However, at the Museum Of Irrigation they tell you that it was Mao who ordered the upgrading of the C18th irrigation network, and there are pictures of CPC officials in suits being greeted by caricature Uighurs with dopey expressions on their faces. The saddest thing is that some young Uighurs are now in a kind of self-hatred, because they really believe that they come from a backward people who couldn't say boo to a goose unless a Chinese Commisar was present to give instructions.
Arising from this, the persecution of minorities in China is easily accomplished... not only do the majority of Han Chinese (who are the largest ethnic group in China by a staggering proportion) approve of it and see nothing wrong in punishing "backward", "lazy", and "subhuman" people... the Han (who are by no means as naive as CCTV-9 TV makes them appear to be) have even convinced those minorities themselves of the need to stamp-out and kill-off "primitivist" trends which conflict with the needs of the modern Chinese State.
I managed to find the House-Museum of Wang Luo-Bin - a Han chinese composer who took an interest in Uighur music, and went around the area collecting and notating folksong, gathering instruments, publishing collections of songs etc. His museum doesn't mention the 18 years he spent in a Chinese Reeducation Camp for doing any of that, although it grudgingly mentions he faced "some difficulties with his work" during the Cultural Revolution. He was "rehabilitated" later as he became useful to Beijing... a Han Chinese whom the Uighurs respected, and infinitely preferable to promoting any Uighur composers.
