I am out of town and I will try to get the problem fixed when I am back in China. First I need to find someone who can help me port the whole site off of MT and into a more user-friendly environment like WordPress. For now the comments are hopelessly screwed up, and without comments this blog isn’t very interesting. Any site designers out there?

I’m afraid I don’t know how to fix the problem, but in the meantime, here is another open thread to use until it gets FUBAR’d too…

No comments for nearly 8 hours – sorry, something happened to corrupt the last thread. Let’s hope it’s only a temporary problem. Let’s try to resume here.

There have been several posts here recently about the problems China’s overly passionate, overly nationalistic youth are causing for their country, and how their tendency to over-react to what they perceive to be overly harsh criticisms of their country gives the world an even worse impression of China. (And yes, I know, thats a lot of “overs” for one sentence.) It is painful to read about this, because as all of us know, there is at least some validity to these students’ viewpoints – on some topics the outside world really is overly harsh and at times misinformed – but the way they go about expressing themselves only adds fuel to the fire and diminishes their argument.

Articles like this from today’s Times underscore the vicious circle:

When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the front of the University of Southern California lecture hall to answer questions, the Chinese students who packed the audience for the talk last Tuesday had plenty to lob at their guest:

If Tibet was not part of China, why had the Chinese emperor been the one to give the Dalai Lama his title? How did the tenets of Buddhism jibe with the ‘slavery system’ in Tibet before China’s modernization efforts? What about the Dalai Lama’s connection to Hitler?

As the monk tried to rebut the students, they grew more hostile. They brandished photographs and statistics to support their claims. ‘Stop lying! Stop lying!’ one young man said. A plastic bottle of water hit the wall behind the monk, and campus police officers hustled the person who threw it out of the room.

Scenes like this, ranging from civil to aggressive, have played out at colleges across the country over the past month, as Chinese students in the United States have been forced to confront an image of their homeland that they neither recognize nor appreciate. Since the riots last month in Tibet, the disrupted Olympic torch relays and calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games in Beijing, Chinese students, traditionally silent on political issues, have begun to lash out at what they perceive as a pervasive anti-Chinese bias.

Clearly, this kind of reaction – throwing bottles in a USC classroom or throwing rocks in Korea – is not the best strategy for winning hearts and minds. But at least this article tells us where these students are coming from. Too rarely in the Western media do we see any meaningful insights into why the young people feel so frustrated and filled with pent-up anger. The article, however, also exposes their weakness, such as emotional but factually challenged “documentation” of Tibet’s progress. (And I’m not saying Tibet hasn’t progressed since its “liberation”; in many ways it has. But the materials the students are brandishing, described on page two of the article, do little to further this argument.) And a shaky grasp of history. And a childish manner of self-expression.

While I sympathize with the students frustration at what they see as the world’s refusal to listen to reason, I also know they are using exactly the wrong strategy to get their message out. With each new horror story I wonder, why can’t they take a step back and see how the Antichrist the Dalai Lama has managed to arouse global sympathy? He didn’t do it by throwing rocks. He didn’t do it by scowling and chanting furious slogans.

I am traveling and will have to cut it short. But let me just finish by qualifying a point I’ve made in earlier posts, namely that nearly all of the young Chinese I know, no matter how intelligent and urbane, are adopting the anti-CNN mentality. Since I wrote that, I’ve talked with at least a few who have voiced genuine concern over their friends’ un-thought-through approach to speaking out. Most of them are a bit older than my angry friends, mainly in their 30s, and they are in despair over the immature and ineffective tactics employed by their younger countrymen. “Why do they always have to show the world their anger? Do they think that helps?” bemoaned a business friend of mine earlier today, and I felt his pain.

Maybe the 20-somethings will grow out of it. I think most of us can look back to our 20s and cringe at some of the things we did back then. But I fear the anger may be too ingrained, a strain of disease the Party cultivated to protect itself that has now run amok. No matter how grounded in fact some of their arguments may be, as long as they present themselves like over-testosteroned adolescents, China has yet another big problem on its hands. This image of a nation overrun by strident, violent youth who threaten to once again turn China inward is exactly what the country doesn’t need on the eve of it’s long-awaited and very expensive coming-out party. It could really damage the big show. And it isn’t doing much to further China’s image on college campuses outside of China.

If this post rambled or appeared more incoherent than usual, apologies in advance. I’m on the road and as sleep-starved as usual.

In every way, as I again head for the airport. I’m afraid my schedule will bring the recent party over here to an end, but here’s another open thread in case anyone has something to say.

Raj

Recently I blogged on Grace Wang’s editorial in the Washington Post. ESWN found a rejoinder to this here.

In my view, Grace Wang’s essay is political suicide. In the language of past history (and somewhat ironically here), she has decided to stand diametrically opposite to the Party and the People. Objectively, one can say that she is a “Public Enemy.”

Ah, yes. China, a country where having an opinion that doesn’t go with the flow is a serious crime. She should have kept her head down and accepted the abuse for not following along with the rest of the herd. After all, internet thugs know best, don’t they?

First, I think that Grace Wang is wrong. The negative impact of that essay goes far beyond her imagination. She has been completely exploited by western media.

Let’s be honest here. The trouble started when Chinese students decided to launch an internet bullying campaign and this was continued by thugs who started harrassing her family. The “Western media” had nothing to do with it. Yet of course, true to form, non-Chinese are quickly blamed as being the source of all evil by “Chairman Rabbit”. Oh, surprise-surprise, there’s more on the I.M.C.M.C.L.B. (“International Media Conspiracy to Make China Look Bad”).

If Grace Wang really wanted to solve the problems and if she loves China, she would have asked the western media to report a fuller picture of China as opposed to just satisfying their pre-defined prejudices and imaginations.

Yes, no need for Grace Wang as a young Chinese woman to try to reason with her own people on the issue in hand. Chinese regularly say that its not for outsiders to comment on “Chinese issues”. Yet if Chinese people disagree with something China does, it’s implied that they have to sort out the rest of the world first? What utter hypocricy.

I tend to think that she is too young and she is very politically naïve to hold those kinds of views.

Now we’re on to age discrimination! Yes, Grace Wang is too young to have her own political views, despite the fact she is probably old enough to vote in most democracies. Or is she too young because she disagrees with the prevailing Chinese attitude?

(more…)

Radio silence for the next few days as I travel, except for a possible guest post or two. Discuss what you’d like.

I really, really, really want to believe that this is not the start of a new trend. Even with the updates and modifications, it’s quite scary. I see nothing like this – nothing even remotely close – here in Beijing. I hope it stays that way. If not, China’s whole coming-out party is in jeopardy.

Is this really the best way to express your grievances with France? Go see the photo. Another blogger quoted in the post wisely notes,

It’s not hard to imagine how Chinese people would react to having symbols of their World War 2 occupier added to China’s national flag or the moral integrity of China’s national heros slandered.

Not hard at all.

Don’t miss the same blogger’s excellent post on why some foreigners in China are starting to worry about their safety. For the record, I feel no such worries myself, at least not yet, though if the trend he describes keep escalating, that may change. I don’t see it happening any time soon.

I believe the CCP is going to go on overdrive in an attempt to calm the people down. They know this is not the face China needs to put forward as “friend to all the world.” They’d rather show off the fuwas, not shrieking banshees waving swastika-adorned French flags. What a dilemma they’ve put themselves in. They saw blind nationalism as a useful tool – when they could manipulate it. I don’t think they factored in how mass movements can take on lives of their own. How to get the genie back in the bottle?

Here’s an open thread to do so.

I just noticed Blogspot is open again, after being open for a couple weeks and then slamming shut again a few days ago. The Cybernanny is being unusually bipolar lately.