Daoist Rap

Tibet, well balanced

Use this link to read a fair and balanced op-ed thast focuses on the Tibet issue. I think that it is fantastic

China and Demonisation

This article by Daniel Bell has recently come to my attention. For those of you who can't be bothered to read it, I'll give a quick summary here. Bell criticises the tendency of the Western press to demonise China. He admits that it is important to cover such issues as the Tibet riots because the Chinese press isn't able to, but that there is a dearth of coverage of the positive developments. He lists improvements such as increases in personal freedom, increased acceptance of homosexuality, and economic improvement as cases in point.

Bell also mentions negative news coverage of China, such as its involvement in the Darfur is reported whereas Japanese and Russian involvement is ignored by Western news outlets. Furthermore, comparisons to the Nazi Olympics are useless hyperbole; China is not out to start a world war and has no genocide policy.

Bell calls for some self-reflection, lest we create overly-antagonistic relations with the Chinese. China is not some sort of 'Evil Empire' out to swallow the world. At the risk of being labeled an apologist for the regime, I ask why it is that musicians (such as those who appeared at last week's V-festival), journalists, and semi-educated protesters single out China for attention that is deserved of many other nations of the world. It would seem to me that we are still dominated by xenophobia and a style of issue-populism. Is it any wonder the producers of the videos that I posted earlier this month feel set upon by the Western media?

A couple of years ago I was part of an Australian university student delegation to China. We were traveling with Hon. Greg Hunt MP (yes, that is his real name) who expected us to be a bunch of China-bashers. Consequently, his welcome speech in the forum of the Beijing Hotel urged to stand up for our beliefs and be proud of Australia as a nation. In a return address, from one of the students present, we did just that. Laurie intimated that we were proud Australians and we stand up for our beliefs, but we weren't anti-China.

Yes, China needs to improve aspects of its social policy. But to demonise China is a mistake that serves neither China nor the rest of the world any clear purpose. Anyway, I must go, so I apologise for the weak conclusion.

Mao Zedong

A good film about China's Cultural Revolution is Morning Sun. It is quite amazing to see and hear the story of China during that bloody period of history through the ears and eyes of Red Guards, Black Liners, heroes and bastards because it shows how not one person was left unscathed.


Considering how the Cultural Revolution panned out, it is quite easy to think of Mao Zedong as a crazy old bastard, bent on ruling China with an iron fist. In fact, it is ridiculously easy, considering the disaster that was the Great Leap Forward, and the various anti-rightist campaigns that dated from the Yenan period right through to the end of his life.

However, there is a recent book that seeks to reevaluate this position on China. Rather uselessly, I have forgotten the title of the book and rather lazily I can't be bothered looking for it. Nonetheless, I've been doing a bit of thinking about Mao myself. It is quite possible that Mao was a man who truly believed in socialist theory as a means of keeping China safe from foreign incursion and making it great once more. This ties quite closely into the "Century of Humiliation" and his insistence at the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 that China has 'stood up.' Despite the failures of that theory in agricultural and industrial sectors on their application, it was always going to be very difficult for him to relinquish what was his life's work and ideology.

One might find parallels with John Howard, who was unable to accept that his increasingly right-wing and conservative policies were no longer relevant to Australia, or indeed wanted. However because we have the ability as a democratic nation-state to remove outdated policy-makers at a convenient juncture, the balance can be restored. There was, and is, no such balance in China- remember Liu Shaoqi.

Tibet's Sovereignty

As I was going through some old notes this afternoon, I came across this article which I had copied down last year as an example of how non-officialised information is transmitted throughout China via P2P and blogs.

Professor Ge Jianxiong from Fudan:

"If "China" means the land of the Tang Dynasty, the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which was ruled by Tubo/Tufan (吐蕃), does not count. Tubo/Tufan was a sovereignty independent of the Tang Dynasty. At least it was not administered by the Tang Dynasty. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Tang Taizong to marry Princess Wencheng to the Tibetan king; there would have been no need to erect the Tang-Tubo/Tufan alliance tablet. It would be a defiance of history if we claim that since the Tang Dynasty Tibet has always been a part of China - the fact that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau subsequently became a part of the Chinese dynasties does not substantiate such a claim ... " (From Letters from China blog)

Letters from China also has links to the Chinese article. I've not been able to access the China Review article, but it is still possible to read articles on Netease and QQ. Follow the links if you can read Chinese.

What was interesting at the time I first read these was the appearance of the articles themselves in China where the official line is quite clear about the status of Tibet as a Chinese territory. Now, with recent events in mind, I am more interested in whether Professor Ge has made a reappearance in the news, whether of his own volition or through the general public outing him.