Somewhere in the blitz of articles and threads and forums going on about the Virginia Tech massacre I saw a prediction that now Americans would turn on South Koreans and lay bare their racism. I never believed it for an instant (what does the shooter’s race have to do with anything?). And when I read this a few minutes go I felt the kind of pride I used to feel as a boy about America, a feeling that, sadly, I haven’t felt in a long time.

The day before yesterday, the Student Government Association of Virginia Tech sent an e-mail of appreciation to the Korean Embassy in the United States, in spite of its own agonies after the horrific massacre at Virginia Tech. In the letter, the students acknowledged their gratitude for the compassion and condolences that President Roh Moo-hyun, the leaders of Korea and other Koreans have demonstrated.

“Our strongest feelings are those channeled towards restoring sanctity and safety for students and people of all ethnicities, faiths, and representations. We are grateful to the Republic of Korea for expressing solidarity in this common pursuit,” read the message from the SGA. It also said, “(The) actions of one man will not and do not serve as a barrier between our students and the people of Korea.”

You can say a lot of negative things about America nowadays, and I’ll agree with many of the criticisms. But it’s still a great country with great people. I know, I know – that sounds trite and mawkish. But that’s okay once in a while. After looking evil in the face, literally, all week, maybe it’s time to take a look at man’s better side, exemplified by these wonderful students.

The following is from last week’s Economist. I thought it interesting because I have always thought that if the middle classes in China object to CCP rule, it will be over things related to money and luxuries – tax is therefore a key issue.

China’s tax system: Return to sender

The well-to-do in China have snubbed their government. This year for the first time, anyone earning more than 120,000 yuan ($15,500) annually is supposed to file a personal income-tax return. Yet by the deadline of April 2nd (extended by a couple of days because of low compliance), only a small minority had done so. Threats of massive fines have gone unheeded.

The problem facing the Chinese government is that they need to get more revenue from people that avoid paying full tax on their earnings, especially given the population will continue to age and more pressure will be created for them to be cared for (their children are already becoming less willing to look after them personally). The abolition of the agricultural tax and other initiatives to try to “pay off” the rural poor has also led to increased pressure on government budgets.

However, as the Economist points out, a lot of Chinese will ask why they should pay all their taxes when they get little or nothing in return from the State – they can’t even elect it.

But very few bother to pay personal income tax unless it is deducted automatically. As some Chinese newspapers have pointed out, this is partly because many Chinese believe they get little in return for their taxes. They have to pay through the nose for health care and for decent education for their children. They are also resentful that few officials pay tax, even though many have big incomes from shady dealings.

Even the words “no taxation without representation” have found their way into print, in an article in the Information Times, a government-owned newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou. Noting that half of the delegates to China’s legislature were officials, the newspaper reported that commentators had pointed out that the parliament should have “fewer officials and more taxpayers”: an interesting distinction suggesting the taxman has struck a raw nerve.

“No taxation without representation” – is that a phrase that could be heard more and more in the future in China?

Read his brief biography and the incredibly poignant comments, several from readers in China, and tell me you weren’t moved. What a horror.

I watched in amazement as CNN showed the video clips this morning. Sickened and riveted, I wondered about the decision to air these things – something about it was so utterly foul, so filthy and revolting. I tried so hard to feel compassion for the deranged young man, and all I could feel was dread and sickness. Should they be running these tapes again and again, I asked myself? I don’t know. It seemed to cross a line from news into pornography of the darkest and most perverted kind. Yet it is news, so I understand why they ran it. Any child who sees it, however, might be traumatized for a long time. I might be, too.

To follow up on a comment posted by Nanheyangrouchuan, The Chicago Sun-Times reports today that authorities are investigating whether the Virginia Tech shooter was from China.

Authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.

The 24-year-old man arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source said.

An eyewitness to the shooting, Erin Sheehan, described the man as:

“He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet (183 cm) tall, young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely, almost like a boy scout, very short-sleeved light, tan shirt and some sort of ammo vest with black over it,” Sheehan said.”

Obviously details are still sketchy and while police admit that they have identified the shooter, they are not officially releasing his name or any other details at this time. It’s too early to say for sure who committed this heinous act or where he was from.

CCTV was–of course–all over this story (sickeningly giddy, really) during the morning newscast with plenty of images of the violence in the USA. I do wonder if CCTV will continue to be so excited if it turns out the shooter was actually from China…

UPDATE: Got a call while at The Roots concert in Beijing (They rocked, by the way) that the shooter has been identified as a 23-year old South Korean student. Yes the American media got it wrong. Of course CCTV was already broadcasting this morning that it was a “meiguoren” who was responsible for the shooting…not sure if they’re going to apologize for their “rush to judgment.”

As for those who think we are “disappointed” that it was not someone who was Chinese–that’s simply incorrect and vile. This was a major news story and China was dragged into it by reports in the US, European, Australian AND Chinese media. That put the story into the purview of this space. There was no “wish” on anyone’s part (except perhaps CCTV) that a particular country be implicated. Our thoughts, as everyone’s should be, are with the victims and families of this tragedy regardless of the national origin of the killer.

Been a busy month…to say the least. But in my travels, I’ve come across a few conundrums all having to do with Lao Wai in China. I don’t really have an opinion on any of these things, so don’t take this post as a declaration of a particular set of positions–I’m genuinely interested in people’s ideas on these thorny little problems.

1) A friend of ours in town asked us how common was it for arguments/altercations to flare-up or even get physical when some people encounter a Chinese woman/foreign male couple. (There was apparently some sort of small bang-up at the local IKEA over the weekend.) While it has never happened to us (Jeremiah & YJ), we’ve heard stories, caught the occasional intemperate remark, and/or received the less infrequent glare or gawk, but nothing overtly hostile. Have people had these experiences? Is there a shift in the perceptions of these couples, or is it the same old same-old?

2) We’ve discussed this in the past, but at a fabulous dinner party hosted by Jack H. last weekend, we met a couple traveling in Bejing who asked us, point blank, why so many couples in Beijing are Chinese woman/foreign male and not the other way around. It was a hard question to answer because, appearances aside, all couples are different and it would be hard to find one reason or even one set of reasons that would apply in all cases. But the demographics of the situtation suggest that this is a topic worthy of serious (as opposed to simply race-baiting) discussion.

3) There was a recent thread on an academic list-serve in which somebody casually dropped the word “Laowai” into the conversation to describe foreigners who study China. One of the other listees objected saying that “Laowai” does not mean ‘foreigner’ (i.e. Koreans and Japanese are not usually referred to as ‘laowai’*) but specifically ‘white people’ and that, furthermore, the term is occasionally used as a derogation. I’ve had my own problems with the word, but the sensitivity to it by some foreigners reminds me a little of Lydia Liu’s discussion of the usage and objections to the word (what she calls a ‘supersign’) “yi” (夷) in the 19th century. Is the term “laowai” really so objectionable? What is the general consensus on this?

4) Finally, when I mentioned to a Chinese colleague recently that many in the foreign community here in China loathe “Da Shan,” he was shocked. He asked me why and I, lacking the Chinese word for “minstrel show,” couldn’t really answer effectively. I’ve never really had feelings one way or the other about the man, so I call on the Quacking Canard community to help me out here.

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*And, as the old Talk Talk China boys once pointed out, many Chinese who visit America are genuinely perplexed when some of us walk past in the airport and refer to THEM as the ‘Lao Wai.’

What a shame, that one “incident” did so much to damage the reputation of Deng Xiaoping, the man who did more than any other to set China straight after Mao killed off nearly all the remaining brain cells in the world’s most populous country. I haven’t forgiven him for the incident, but I don’t deny his greatness either, and would feel much happier were I to see his huge portrait looming over Tiananmen Square as opposed to the pig he replaced.

Which brings us to today’s article, which addresses a topic I’ve thought a lot about over the years, i.e., the achievements of Deng and Nixon in comparison to their reputations. I hated Nixon and always will, but there’s no denying his achievements, especially in terms of foreign policy. (Though there’s still a very dark side to these achievements, like the secret bombings of Cambodia and a host of other atrocities; like I said, I still hate the guy.)

I don’t hate Deng. I respect him and think if China really needs a hero to adore it should be he. Of all the scum Mao surrounded himself with, Deng was consistently the pearl among the swine, and while there are things I will always despise about Deng, I will always feel this respect and sympathy for him.

Rarely in history has one dictator held in his hands such discretionary power to choose between further enslavement of his subjects and their rapid empowerment through economic liberation.

In disassembling Maoism, Deng chose the latter route, validating both Nixon’s previous strategy and discrediting Gorbachev’s later decision to pursue political glasnost before economic perestroika in the now-defunct Soviet Union.

Richard Nixon routinely ranks as one of our nation’s worst presidents, and Deng Xiaoping appears forever doomed to live in Mao’s dark shadow, but neither deserves this historical fate.

Instead, both should ultimately be appreciated for what they were: lead architects of our globalized world, one marked by more peace and poverty reduction than ever before witnessed in human history.

You look at what Nixon did, love him or hate him, and his importance can’t be argued. And yet, the man who ended the Vietnam War and opened relations with China will always be remembered for the unforgettable line, “I’m not a crook.” Just like that other president who did not have sex with that woman. Well, he was a crook, but he was more than that, just as Deng was more than the man who gave the final orders to use live ammunition on June 4 in Tiananmen Square. I do believe he had China’s interests at heart, and I still can never, ever forgive him totally. And neither can I deny his greatness in saving China from complete annihilation in the face of the Gang of Four and suceeeding in perhaps the most astounding turn-around in all human history.

It’s the proverbial week from hell, and I’ll be away the entire week. You can use this as an open thread.

A guest post. Its views do not represent my own.
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A Lesson for China
by William R. Stimson

Every morning as I make breakfast, I listen to my Mandarin lesson. This morning, the sentence I learned was, ‘Taiwan is about the same size as Holland.’

It struck me there wasn’t just a Chinese lesson in this for me. Here was also a Chinese lesson for China. Not just in size is Taiwan comparable to The Netherlands.

The people, culture, and language of Taiwan are Chinese. Those of The Netherlands are Germanic.

Somehow, however, The Netherlands didn’t get absorbed into greater Germany, as did so many comparable areas with their distinctive local cultures and ways of speaking. It got to pursue a different course of development and came to play a unique and important role in history. Europe would be poorer without the little Netherlands, and so would the world.

Asia, and the world, would similarly be poorer without little Taiwan.

In ways that were unique and different from any other country, Taiwan – its business community that is – was able to make the early move into China and set in motion developments that later made China into a great economic power.

Nowadays, the economy of big China eclipses that of little Taiwan, but Taiwan’s usefulness to its big neighbor is far from ended. Taiwan will again play a unique role in what promises to be China’s next big crisis and perhaps most difficult transition.

Should it come as any surprise that freedom can sometimes happen in a small place easier than in a large one? When the U.S. became free it was little and England was big. However, now that the U.S. has become a big superpower, it is losing what was always most special about it. Being big isn’t as important as being free. Hence the importance of the small.

The Hindu elephant God named Ganesha represents, among other things, what is big and powerful. Always, at the feet of Ganesha there is a little mouse.

Thus, it can be seen that the Hindu religion recognizes that the power of the big is connected with the power of the small.

Taiwan is the little mouse at China’s feet. The reason Taiwan is so important to China is because it is small, independent, and free.

In the history of Europe and the world, small independent states have often played a role out of proportion to their size. Why is it proving so hard for Beijing to grasp that Taiwan’s value to China is in its independence from China and that it serves China better if it remains the way it is?

The answer is simple. Just as a small bird will grab whatever is at hand to weave its nest, even bits of trash and refuse, so China, in its frantic scramble to reinvent its identity, has snatched up an inappropriate aspect of its past and woven it into the nation’s new self-concept.

The notion of a so-called ‘One China’ that Beijing has wielded to bully Taiwan has to finally be seen for what it is – a euphemism for the brutal central dictatorship that for too long now has crippled so many prosperous and promising regions of China and forced them into a misguided cultural and economic stagnation.

The ‘one China’ notion needs to be discarded before it does more damage than it already has.

Taiwan’s politicians often act like a bunch of circus clowns. And that’s all they would be – were they not inventing from within Chinese culture a form of democracy that is as uniquely Chinese as the economic miracle their fathers invented before them, and then passed on to China.

Small Taiwan hasn’t stopped cooking. It’s just got something new on the stove right now. It’s more useful to big China and the world than ever. It would be a tragedy if China grew too big and too full of its new wealth and power to grasp this.

As the example of the U.S. illustrates today, big, arrogant and proud countries can be the slowest to learn – which is all the more reason why the small, independent, and free ones are so useful to have around.

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William R. Stimson is an American writer who lives in Taiwan. More of his writing can be found at www.billstimson.com.

Via Global Voices Online comes a link to photos of the world’s timeliest sandstorm…right in the middle of a speech by Pan Yue during a tree planting event. Who says nature doesn’t have a sense of humor?

A 10-part indie video series. Do not miss it. Repeat, do not miss it.

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All hail the Great Helmsman, the man who gave China its spine and pulled the broken country up by its bootstraps. Every time I pass by one of his ubiquitous portraits or statues, I stand up a little bit straighter and think about just how lucky China was to be the recipient of his magnanimous and beneficent rule. So, so lucky.