Sex and Shanghai / 欲望上海

Reason Number 50 - The Voice of China

2008-10-07T18:04:00.002Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 97
“We have asked thousands of questions over the past twenty years and carefully considered each reply. We have read stacks of articles, documents, papers and reports, seeking one answer that seems impossible to find.

Chinese people often wish to impress upon us the fact that 5,000 years of history holds great richness and meaning. But for as long as we have been in China, and as many times as we have put our ear to the ground to listen, what is it that we hear?

Absolutely nothing.

Who do Chinese people ‘think’ they are? Who do the Chinese people think they will become? Who do the Chinese people think the rest of the world wants them to become?

As we said in our introduction, this book has no balance. Some readers may feel that it also has no sympathy or comfort, and that it seems totally lacking in empathy.

It is difficult to have these emotional qualities in a society that does not itself reflect them. It is hard to write positively about a people who care so little about each other, and indeed care so little about the rest of the world. The citizens who made the fake milk power to financially enrich their lives while babies died were not hardened criminals. The ‘chemists’ who make fake drugs which are delivered to patients and will surely cause the death of those patients are not lifetime crime barons. The owners and operators of the mines that catastrophically eliminate thousands of lives each year are not competing to see who can cause more deaths. They are all, most certainly, gentle, loving family men when they go home at night. They are ‘just’ average people in today’s China.”

So there you have it.

Fifty reasons.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 98
“It is not for the authors – or indeed anyone but the Chinese people themselves – to define greatness for China. But it is for the world to inform China that the automobile, CO2 emissions, and rubbish, all products of peaceful development, will not aid the achievement of greatness. Greatness for China must come from its uniqueness, its individuality of concept, its singular perspective. From the dream of what China could be.

But if this dream never becomes real, surely part of the world will die along with it. If this dream does not fill the world with cures for cancer, succor for the environment, and spiritual fulfillment for all the planet’s people, who should be found guilty?

If the Chinese people cannot grasp what their thousands of years of history really means, if they only listen to communist political theorists who merely offer ‘peaceful development,’ spoken in a single breath, then they will lose the chance to change humanity. And Armageddon will come. Apocalypse.

Greatness shouts from the rooftops. Greatness is heard throughout the canyons of business. Greatness should echo across the planet.

But the voice of China is mute.

And so is China’s greatness.”

Reason Number 49 - Daughters, Wives, & Mothers in Fear

2008-10-06T17:48:00.003Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 95
“One of the key problems holding back women is their under-representation in politics and business. Though China does have some prominent women, such as China’s Vice-Premier Wu Yi (cited as the third most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2006) Xie Qihua, chairwoman of China’s biggest steelmaker, Baosteel, and Ma Xuezheng, a senior vice president of computer manufacturer Lenovo, (named by Forbes as one of the world’s most powerful women in business in 2006) these cases are very much the exception.

Wu Yi is the only woman at the highest level of the Chinese government, and Xie Qihua was the only female boss in her industry until her retirement in 2007. Ma Xuezheng also retired in 2007 for ‘personal reasons’ though Forbes hinted this was to do with problems in Lenovo’s takeover of IBM’s global PC business.

China’s political and business culture is a world of men. Only 20% of members of China’s National People’s Congress are women, and only about 16% of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. China did not get its first female governor, Gu Xiulian, until 1983. Nationwide, there are 15 million female officials, accounting for 38% of the total number of officials. But most of these 15 million serve at a low level. Only 9.9% serve at provincial or ministerial level. And at the highest level of government, just 2% are female said media in 2005.”

And even Wu Yi has now retired – replaced by a man. The one thing, more than any other, that unifies all my experience of China is the unhappiness of its women. The consistency with which my female friends tell me tales of harassment, belittlement and sheer contempt is implacable.

I don’t recall ever hearing from any woman in China that she feels she is treated equal to a man.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 96
“It is true that China has some laws that at least address domestic violence. Yet these laws are both weak and unclear. China’s revised Marriage Law of 2002 does outlaw marital violence. But it does not say how violence is to be defined, leaving victims in a legal grey area. China’s previous marriage law, drawn up in 1980, did not mention domestic violence at all. Between 2001 and 2005, just 10 sexual harassment cases were heard by China’s courts. Of these, just one plaintiff won. One!

Even Beijing, the center of law making, did not hear its first sexual harassment case until 2003. The woman in that case, Lei Man, lost because she was unable to provide proof of her claim, and because medical authorities for the defense diagnosed her as ‘suffering from paranoia.’

Sexual harassment is also a problem in China due to the cultural reticence to talk about sex. This reticence means children are very rarely taught about the dangers of sexual abuse. ‘People in China have read of cases of sexual abuse in other countries, but many do not seem to realize that it’s a problem here as well. Many children and parents simply ignore it and know little about it’ said Chinese media in 2004. The sexual abuse of children was not made a criminal offence in China until 1991. It was not until 2007 that China’s Ministry of Education released a guide, to be taught in schools, telling tell minors of the dangers of sexual abuse. The concept of ‘street proofing’ children appears to be unheard of in China.”

Weekender -- Hospital Visit

2008-10-03T16:35:00.005Z

My first experience of Chinese healthcare, then.

This was some time back, in April 2000, or so. I had been in Shanghai a few years by that time, and I had been loving it – expect for the couple of months leading up to that April. Most every day at that time was misery and stress.

Not, I should say, my sensitive soul lamenting at the plight of the Chinese people. No.

Hemorrhoids.

Piles.

By god they hurt. I’d had the odd bit of arse agony back in the UK, but nothing like this. I guess it was the change in diet.

I remember the day I was in the Watsons’ drug store, by the Portman, and I saw there on a shelf – glowing like a grail, a carton of H, Preparation H. What bliss! It was that moment in Handel’s Messiah, when the band sing “And god said, ‘Let there be light' and there was........." and then the pause, followed by "....Light!” A fine, wonderful bit of music and quite what I felt when I saw the H.

And – a slight aside – wonderful though ‘The Messiah’ is – glorious, expansive, moving music – it has fallen foul of the Commies. The Academy of Ancient Music, a fine UK based ensemble, was due to give a public performance of this at the Beijing Music Festival. But then the scumbag Chinese government decided to insist it had to be an ‘invitation only’ gig – which meant the general public could not attend. Likewise, a performance of Mozart’s Requiem, intended to raise money for the Sichuan quake victims, was cancelled. The reason for this being that the thugs and goons who run China did not want this ‘christian’ music played, for fear it might turn more Chinese people into believers. Now, sure, in the 21st century, like also the 20th C, to genuinely believe god exists is either a sign of moral cowardice or mental illness. But to ban some of the greatest music humanity has produced is simply risible, absurd. And to ban it even when it is intended to help people who are suffering in China! These guys are the leaders of 20% of the human race, and they are clods and cretins.

Anyhow.

So I grabbed the H, paid my 49.50 yuan, and scarpered to the lav. I’d never used Prep H before (but every schoolboy knows what it is) and when I slapped it on – oh, the bliss, the cessation of pain. I could feel ‘em shrinking, tingling, retracting. What joy!

And what a contrast to my prior attempt at medicating my poor arse. At that time I could speak no Chinese, and so I had to make do as best I could. I went into one small pharmacy and inspected what they had for sale. Most of it, being written in Chinese, meant nothing to me. But I did see one product that sounded familiar – Tiger Balm. Balm! Balm sounded good to me. My arse needed some balm. Balm was what I wanted.

I should, of course, have focused on ‘Tiger,’ not ‘Balm.’ I did not. I brought it, took it home, and applied it.

Only the once. Just the once.

Anyhow, fast forward to the blissful days of Preparation H. That was good. I remember its greasy, aromatic, fish-oil smell with pleasure.

But this was when I got an early lesson in how to live in China. And that is – if you see something on the shelves you really like or need, buy as much of it as there is, or as you can afford. Because sure as shit it’s like to be gone the next time you look for it. So it was when I went back to the Watsons, the shelf empty, a promised land no longer. Worse, far worse than being stood up on a hot date. More annoying even than arranging a hot date and finding (this has happened) I have actually invited a bloke, not a woman – and what a boring type he was. That’s a tale for another time.

Faced with the empty shelf – double, tripled checked and other areas of the store searched – I asked an assistant for help. I’m not really the type to be embarrassed by this sort of stuff (I think I already told the tale of taking Mona on a shopping expedition for extra-big condoms – to use with a new Western lover of hers, after our relationship had become just platonic), but the assistant was somewhat ill at ease, uncomfortable, red-faced as he told me “We will have more in soon.”

That was bullshit, of course. I went back several times over the next couple of weeks. Never any H. Always the empty shelf… always the embarrassed assistant.

A week or two more of the pain, and sitting on my chair wriggling my butt cheeks as tight together as possible, thus to squeeze the throbbing pile back inwards, was enough; I headed to a hospital, the one just near Huaihai Lu and Shaanxi Nan Lu. And since I spoke no Chinese at that time I had to rely on my then-girlfriend to come with me to assist me in finding the right doctor.

We did this easy enough and the doc took a look at my arse, sucked in his breath, shook his head, tutted, the medical equivalent of kicking my tires, and suggested I book an operation. ‘You’ll need a few days off afterwards’ he said, which, with the May holiday week upcoming, was easy enough to arrange. Then he wrote out a prescription for a several-day course of laxatives. Gotta clear out the arse, see.

Only, it did not work – first dose – no effect. Second, third – not a thing. I drank down the whole prescription. Zip. Went back to the pharmacy, got more. Perfectly useless.

Operation day comes round. I go back to the same area I’d met the arse doctor before. He greets me, and gives me a gown to put on. I do so, and look about me for the way to the operating room.

No operating room. The doc indicates a raised, tiled slab, right there in the public area, surrounded by a low wall. I lie on it while he injects my arse with anesthetic. Gives it a few moments to work, then dives right in. Gets his assistant – a young woman – to hold open my arse while he, with a scalpel, cuts out a bunch of the piles therein. It is a pretty uncomfortable operation, and gets more uncomfortable as it goes on – and it seems a lengthy process, 10 or 15 minutes. I feel a rising sense of sickness and weakness, and put it down to all the blood I feel I must be losing out of my arse, though I doubt it was really that much.

And all this while my girlfriend is standing there watching, and random patients walking by take a peek, me on my side, my arsehole wide open to the world. And I can feel that damn scalpel scratching around inside me. As this is going on I think of my brother.

See, piles runs in the ChinaBounder family. The ol’ man, the brother. Brother had his fixed a year or two prior, and for his operation they just stuck some sorta’ probe up his arse which put elastic bands round the piles – they then shrivel and fall off over a few weeks. Quick, easy, painless. So I gotta say I did rather curse ‘Bloody second rate Chinese hospitals with their old fashioned outdated equipment.’ But that was unfair, as the doc was doing his best.

The doc announces he is done. Gives my arse a clean up and prepares to swathe it in lint. But not so fast doc – for now, after a week of laxatives, now I need to take a shit. I get to my feet, find myself weak, and have to rely on my girlfriend (how remarkably patient she was with me!) to escort me to the toilet – which is, of course, the typical Chinese squat toilet. But I barely have time to think off a curse before I crouch and let fly a simply phenomenal amount of turd. It feels pretty good, I gotta say.

Of course this being a Chinese toilet, no matter in a hospital, there is no paper. So I have to stagger back to the poor ol’ doc, all besmeared in shit, and collapse back onto the table, where he tuts and gets going with the swab.

And then he writes out one more prescription, gives it to my girl, and, while she goes off to the pharmacy to get it, I sit wan and weak in a chair – sit carefully – and think myself moderately heroic. Thence to a taxi and home. Arse seems good. I sleep.

I wake. Arse on fire. Arse agony. Oh to bring back the piles, trade them for this pain. True, the body has no memory of pain, and I do not now remember the pain itself – rather just the awareness of it. Remember from time to time pounding my fist on the mattress for the pain – and one time thumping my girlfriend really hard, waking to pain out of a doze and not knowing she was lying beside me. She was cool about it. Shame I ended up really hurting her a year or so later.

That final prescription the doc gave her was for arse healing medicine – traditional Chinese arse healing medicine. It was a bunch of bits of bark and twig which I was meant to steep in hot water, let cool, and dip my arse in for half an hour a day. I did so. Zero effect, as far as I can tell. The pain subsided in three or four days, and I’m pretty certain it would have done so with or without the TCM. But that is the grand con of TCM – it is ‘slow acting’ – which is another way of saying ‘makes no difference to the normal healing process, but if you believe in it, it’ll make you feel better.’

The first post-op dump was sheer agony, of course, even coming several days after the scalpelling (soup diet only up til then) – but things healed up pretty good after that, and soon it was a bliss to be able to walk the streets normally, not waddle like a duck, butt cheeks clenched together.

So all in all I was pretty pleased with my first experience of Chinese healthcare. And the bill for it – around 2000 yuan – seemed a fair price too. They did try on a little con, wanting me to pay 6000 – cos I was a foreigner, you see – but my girl would have none of that and let them know it.

Easy enough.

But without that money, even if I had been really ill, had been dying, I’d have been on my own. There’d have been no healthcare for me. If you’ve got plenty money life in China is pretty good. If you only got a little – or indeed only have the average wage for which so many tens of millions toil – then life is brutish.

Reason Number 48 - Red Medicine

2008-10-02T17:35:00.002Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 93
“China announced the results of its first national survey of mental illness in 2007. This survey found the country had nearly eight million people suffering from schizophrenia, and that 30% of them do not take drugs for the problem, either because it is ‘too troublesome’ or they fear side-effects. Doctors said the number of patients with mental health problems was on the rise.

Additionally, China has at least 26 million sufferers from depression, with many more undiagnosed. Ten percent to 15% of those attempting suicide, and 50% to 70% of all people who commit or attempt suicide, suffer from depression. But 90% of sufferers get no treatment, and most clinically depressed people fear being stigmatized for their illness, because, say doctors, Chinese society simply does not understand depression and tends to blame the individual.

Poverty, not depression, drove a couple in central Hunan Province to suicide in 2007. The husband, 38-year-old Chen Zhengxian, suffered from hepatitis-B and kidney stones, among other ailments, but could not afford medical care. Chen and his wife tied themselves together with a rope and leapt into the River Yangtze, leaving behind a 12-year-old son and Chen’s mother. They had spent their life savings in 2005 on medical treatment for the son, and still owed more than 8,000 yuan from that time. They could not even afford to pay the 60 yuan fee for the family of four that would have given them basic medical insurance.”

I’ve always found Chinese hospitals pretty efficient. They’re not quite as spick and span as a Western hospital – or even a Thai hospital – and their equipment is a bit beat-up and out of date. But of course China is a developing nation and so I do not expect to see parity with Western hospitals.

I’ve also always found Chinese doctors to be efficient and polite and knowledgeable. And I’ve never had to wait more than a few minutes – half an hour at most – for treatment.

But then, I can pay for it. I have the money, and a few hundred yuan to me is nothing much. Also - I am white, and as I have said many times before, white skin is a badge of privilege in China. Add to that the fact that the doctors are nearly all highly educated and enjoy the chance to practice their English, and there are seldom any problems for me in getting treatment. Plus of course I know a bunch of doctors from my teaching work, so from tooth pain to heart trouble I can pretty much call up a specialist.

If I was Chinese, of course, and in particular one of the millions of poor in China, it would be a totally different story. I would be one of the hundreds of timid, lost and harassed folk I see wandering about the place every hospital I go to.

But any readers wandering by know that, and I know that, so no tub-thumping. Instead I shall tell you about my first trip to a Chinese hospital – tomorrow.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 94
“Other dangers abound. In 2004, State media announced that 390,000 people had died prematurely from unsafe injections, without giving a time-frame. Three hundred and ninety thousand people.

Thirty percent of immune injections and 50% of therapeutic injections were unsafe, said the report, adding that in China’s poor western rural areas, more than 70% of ‘disposable’ syringes intended for single use were in fact reused without effective disinfection measures.

Though disposable syringes cost just 1 US cent more than a reusable needle, they are seldom used. While China has the manufacturing capacity to make 1.7 billion disposable needles a year, sales are stuck at only 100 million a year.

Another 200,000 people die a year just using drugs improperly.”

Reason Number 47 - Micro-Faults

2008-10-01T17:58:00.001Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 91
“More than any other country, China seems to be able to produce dozens of problems, unnecessarily created by inattention, greed and a lack of care, problems that perhaps would overwhelm other smaller countries. In this chapter we look at just ten such problems.

Official Fortune
In 2007, nearly 60 years after ‘New China’ was founded, theoretically ending feudalism and superstition, more than half of government officials still believed in ‘reading faces and stars, predicting dreams and ‘qiu qian’ – casting lots at a temple to tell their fortune.’

Superstition may be more understandable among less well-educated communities. Many rural farmers, for example, are often reluctant to pay into heath care plans because they believe that since they have to be sick to see any benefit from their investment, they are inviting bad luck.

When leaders are guided by superstition – such as the official who moved his ancestral family tombs thousands of miles to the foot of the famed and spiritually positive Tianshan Mountain in northwestern Xinjiang Province to boost his career prospects – then China’s prospects of becoming a well-run and developed country may be questioned.”

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 92
“The Lovers of Rumor
In a nation like China where the news is directly controlled by the government, people have learned not to place much trust in the media. They rely on word of mouth and gossip, and due to the prevalence of mobile phones with text messaging and the internet with email sometimes a groundswell of dubious or fallacious information is created.

One such rumor that did the rounds in 2007 was ‘SARS in bananas.’ In early 2007 a mobile-phone SMS message spread across China saying that bananas in the nation’s southern island of Hainan had been found to contain a virus similar to SARS. Zhang Xingwang, deputy director of China’s Ministry of Agriculture’s market department, said ‘It is utterly a rumor. There has not been a case in the world in which humans have contracted a plant virus, and there is not any scientific evidence.’

But this had no effect. Prices for the fruit immediately plunged as credulous customers shunned it. Chinese media described a Hainan farmer, a woman surnamed Zhang, as saying that in 2006 she got two yuan (25 US cents) per kilogram for her bananas. But after the SARS rumor, the price plunged to 0.2 yuan per kilo.

In a country where few people believe the official news, such rumors become part of life. But the ‘SARS in bananas’ rumor was particularly effective since the government had created a climate of fear surrounding the disease by covering it up in 2003.”

Reason Number 46 - Meet the New ‘Ugly American’

2008-09-30T14:58:00.003Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 89
“China implicitly links its history with that of Africa, suggesting the two countries share a common experience. According to Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, China ‘stood firmly with the African people and provided them with moral support and material assistance in their strenuous struggle to overthrow colonial rule and gain national liberation.’

In explaining China’s policies towards Africa, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency said that ‘Sharing similar historical experience, China and Africa have all along sympathized with and supported each other in the struggle for national liberation and forged a profound friendship.’

It is our view that the above comments are profound nonsense. The experience of China, for fewer than one hundred years subjugated to the economic whims of Western and Eastern colonial powers, simply cannot be compared to the centuries that Africa, as an entire continent, suffered of slavery, one of the gravest sins committed in world history, exploitation by white colonialists, and the continuation today of a lack of positive investment from developed countries. China’s suggestion that its own history mirrors that of Africa is every bit as offensive as its claim that the Nanjing Massacre was equivalent to the Holocaust.”

I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

Till China and Africa meet

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street

But what would Wystie have said if he saw what really happened when China and Africa met?

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 90
“The truth of the matter is that China’s behavior in Africa is greedy, rapacious and cruel. Under a mantle of ‘mutual benefit’ China is exploiting Africa at a colossal rate, buying up vast amounts of mineral resources from the continent and offering little but window-dressing such as stadiums, bridges and other infrastructure in return.

Far from wanting to help Africa, the record shows that China has explicitly hurt the continent, by using its membership of the UN Security Council to veto action aimed at stopping genocide in Sudan. Though in 2007, under international pressure and the threat of an Olympic boycott, China began to make limited moves to allow international action in the country, it is clear that China is perfectly willing to tolerate any level of abuse in its quest for resources. And not only did China veto UN action in Sudan – it also sold the Sudanese government weapons with which it committed crimes against humanity.

China is very quick to downplay suffering in other countries, claiming the death toll in Sudan (around 200,000) was greatly exaggerated. Yet when anyone has the temerity to suggest that the China’s figure of 300,000 victims in the Nanjing massacre is exaggerated (for example pointing out that many estimates place the death toll between 150,000 and 300,000) Beijing reacts with apoplectic fury.

For China, Africa is just a continent to be exploited – a source of raw materials and a destination for goods produced so cheaply that they drive African firms out of business. While China is happy to build extensive infrastructure which will let it more efficiently plunder the continent, purely altruistic investment, such as in schools and hospitals, is almost unheard of.”

Reason Number 45 - The Generals Theory

2008-09-29T17:53:00.007Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 87
“The governments of developed nations have a clear divide between military and political power. Military control most usually remains beholden to leaders directly chosen by the people. This is not the case in China, where a number of senior military leaders are members of the government.

Generals are asked by non-military CPC leaders to demonstrate the PLA’s loyalty to the Party at every opportunity. Giving a speech to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the PLA, President Hu Jintao said ‘To follow the CPC’s command is the overriding political requirement that the Party and Chinese people have placed on the PLA and is the unshakable and fundamental principle for the PLA.’

The Party’s increased stress on the loyalty of the PLA rose to a noticeable crescendo in 2007. Why? Perhaps it is because the Party feels losing its grip on the PLA would lessen its ability to control the people.”

It’s certainly true that the PLA is a threat to China. If the CPC is seen to lose the confidence of the people, then the army will simply take over. China will turn into a military dictatorship overnight.

But the PLA is a tool of brute might, not of sophistication. Indeed, China’s armed forces are often rather clumsy and inept.

Now a few of my Chinese readers might recall a little before the Olympics that there was a big ‘terrorist’ incident in Kashgar. This was a most convenient event for Beijing, for they took it as legitimacy to justify their ongoing crackdown on the Uighurs. Naturally, its very convenience raised suspicions in those with some experience of China – or, indeed, thug governments throughout recent history; say for example Gliwice, Poland, in August 1939 – or, better still, the Mukden Incident.

The New York Times is reporting the testimony of tourists in Kashgar who were eyewitnesses to this event. Xinhua and the slavish Chinese press all reported that ‘terrorists’ had attacked an army base, detonated a bomb, killed many brave and true and blah blah blah Chinese heroes.

Not so, say these tourists; they say they saw a group of Chinese paramilitaries and a group of uniformed Chinese men attacking each other, and that there was no explosion. You can read it here, though you'll need to sign up for a login to do so.

Sure, the Western press does get it wrong from time to time – as, for example, in certain aspects of their coverage of the pre-Olympic rioting in Tibet. But when they were shown to be wrong, they apologized. I don’t recall Xinhua ever doing that. So before the few people still bothering to read this blog have a pop at the New York Times, I would ask them to consider how many times and to what level of seriousness the NYT has been caught lying – and then compare that with the record of the CPC.

I have no problem in believing the NYT. It makes perfect sense to me that the CPC would make good use of a lesson from the Japanese Imperial Armies of the Second World War – the CPC has, after all, always been a good student of the Japanese invaders, using their cruelty to harm China even more than the Japanese themselves.

But underneath the minatory thuggishness of China’s leaders, glad to seize a chance to play on race hate and make the Han fear the Uighur even more, lies a simple fact – China’s armed forces are often ill-behaved and amateurish.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 88
“The Party’s traditional use of the army to maintain its lock on power has resulted in high-ranking generals now permeating every sector of Chinese political life. In previous outbreaks of social unrest in China – most notably the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 – the Party was able to rely on the loyalty of the PLA to comply in murdering the innocent citizens of China. A military takeover at that time was simply unthinkable. But today things are very different. Today’s political leaders have only managed to acquire the passive and acquiescent support of the people, not the active worship that Deng and Mao enjoyed – however dogmatic that worship was. China’s current leaders inspire no affection and no loyalty, either among the soldiers of the PLA or the ordinary people of China.

Should China experience profound social turmoil in the coming years – unavoidable in the opinion of the authors – then something very different will happen. There will be bland, anodyne press announcements that the current crop of political leaders is stepping down or has been removed from power. Those leaders without military connections will disappear, silently, quickly, to be replaced by a military junta.

The Party knows this and fears this, hence all the demanding rhetoric about PLA loyalty. This, in the end, will count for nothing against the personal charisma of one single man, regardless of the vaunted Chinese theory of rule by consensus. This man, this Chinese Napoleon, is today just one more PLA general. But a time is coming when not just China, but the whole world, will know his name.

There are 167 generals in the PLA today. Choose one.”

Reason Number 44 - The Gamblers & The Purpose of Unemployment

2008-09-25T13:16:00.004Z

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 85
“In China’s rush to become an economic superpower, the nation’s leaders have followed Deng Xiaoping’s famous phrase – ‘Let some become rich first’ – by creating an increasingly wealthy and pampered upper class. Deng’s phrase today is more appropriately stated as ‘Let some become richer and richer.’

When Deng Xiaoping opened the doors to China in 1979, he was effectively opening the doors to the world’s biggest casino, and formally declaring that its almost 1.3 billion citizens could step up to the tables and throw the dice.

Deng also said ‘To become rich is glorious.’ And China’s middle classes are enjoying scooping up as much of this type of glory as they can possibly find. That’s why China’s booming cities are becoming temples to conspicuous consumerism. It is why, despite the easy access to fake goods such as Louis Vuitton handbags, many young and well-heeled Chinese prefer to pay for the real thing, at a price which may represent many months’ salary for them and perhaps a whole year’s salary for those in the rural areas. It is why, in 2006, Chinese people bought over 12% of all luxury goods worldwide. Luxury car maker Bentley, for example, has sold more units of its US$1.2 million Mulliner 728 model in Beijing than in any other city in the world. Yachts. Cars. Houses. Jewelry. International travel. They’re all being sought and bought by China’s new rich.

Not bad for a country that continually claims it is ‘poor,’ often describing itself as a ‘developing nation.’”

Of course it’s this lust for profit that is the direct cause of scandals such as the tainted milk that has killed four children and put the health of fifty thousand more in direct danger. The sad fact is too many Chinese companies put profit above morality. It is a way of business that is deeply ingrained in the nation’s culture. Money, money, and more money.

Get this: China’s government knew of this problem during the Olympics, but they kept it hushed up.

That’s just so fucked up. What kind of monstrous, twisted outlook could allow that? How the fuck, how the fuck can the Chinese people be so passive about this? A bit of grumbling in cyberspace – fuck that. Why are they not marching in the streets? Why are they giving their leaders a free pass?

But hold the outrage. I know better. I know perfectly well that the death of a few more children and a lifetime of worries for thousands more children and parents meant nothing to the chance to strut and boast on the world stage. And the death of kids is an everyday thing in China anyhow. It’s no big deal. As long as your precious kid is okay, the rest can be forgotten. So the fortnight of the Olympics, just like the pursuit of profit, mattered far more than any amount of pain, suffering and death.

For the government it was as much about political pride as it was about money. But despite their belated promises to stop such things happening again, despite Wen Jiabao’s cynical photo-ops with kids in hospital, despite the resignation of Li Chanjiang, nothing will change. It’s just more window-dressing bullshit from the same bunch of criminals and scumbags. And the milk scandal is no more than the flavor of the moment – there will be another one next month, or the month after that.

Nothing will change until China has political and business leaders who must face public accountability. But, more fundamentally, nothing will change until China learns to value morality more than money.

`Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 86

“But this middle class – and China’s economic miracle itself -- exists by economically preying on the much larger group of China’s generally poor and less well educated rural citizens. China’s growing wealth, in other words, relies on a combination of low wages, high unemployment and foreign direct investment.

Trouble for China’s labor market can already be seen, as state media reported at the end of 2006. ‘Despite government figures to indicate China still has a contingent of 150 million migrant workers awaiting to be transferred from rural to urban areas, signs have emerged to show that the country’s labor resources [are] on a trend of shrinkage,’ said reports, noting that booming Guangdong Province was already experiencing an annual shortfall of two million laborers.

One of the reasons behind this impending labor shortage is not, in fact, a lack of people to do the work – it is instead a lack of decent wages on offer. The much trusted American concept of ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ has no place in the casino that is China. China’s government in fact needs unemployment to remain high and wages to remain low, and the continuation of China’s economic success is based on the dangerous gamble that the millions of poor will continue to bear this rapacious exploitation in silence.”

Reason Number 43 - Can You Trust a Man to Hold up Half the Sky?

2008-09-24T17:00:00.002Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 83
"In any average human population, natural male births tend to outnumber female births by about 105 to 100, though numbers tend to differ slightly among various ethnic groups. In some areas of China, upwards of 138 boys are born for every 100 girls.

The results of these skewed birth ratios will leave an astounding number of men unable to ever find a woman, make her his wife, have children, establish a home and leave his name behind. Projections on the size of this aberration of nature vary, from 30 million to 43 million in 2010. Other reports put it in a different way, saying that one out of every ten male children born today in China will never find a woman to marry.

Studies have long shown that women have a pacifying effect on men. A man unable to marry will often become restless, violent, aggressive, and will have a destabilizing effect on society. This gender imbalance is what will create the 5th Army of Instability for China, an army manned by upwards of 40 million men unable to find a wife. The level of disharmony created by the lack of the ability to enhance their life through marriage and build a family will fester and cause disruption within society."

That’s a pretty shocking statistic – one in ten males born in China today will not be able to marry. There just aren’t enough women. Now I could make some glib statement as to how that is worrying news for the would-be philanderer, since women will be able to be more choosy about their mates. But of course that’s not true – success in the bedroom is more about social status than mere numbers. Yet that’s really nor here nor there; it’s the sheer appalling social engineering of it, the fact that so many millions of people have been denied a shot at happiness even before their birth, before their conception. They’ll be born into a society where the odds are irrevocably stacked against them. They’ll be born into a world where the most basic of human needs – love, connection – can never be satisfied.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 84
“This demographic time-bomb is locked in for these men’s lifetime. Even if the government reversed the birth ratio today, these men would still be unable to become husbands and fathers. The vast majority of these men unable to find partners will come from the countryside, where the gender imbalance is highest, and where limited educational opportunities will doom them to unskilled labor that will make it even harder to find a wife.

The creation of the 5th Army is based entirely on the concept of female infanticide. The ‘death’ of millions of female fetuses in the march of time is populating this army with men who quite likely will do incredible harm to the women who have ‘survived’ and been born. Demand for prostitution will increase, the selling of young female child brides, and violence against women, including rape, will create additional instability beyond natural order due entirely to government policies.

Mao stated in one of his most famous quotations that ‘women hold up half the sky.’ Nowhere in his writings does he mention whether men are equal to their half of the task, no matter how many more of them there are than women. The soldiers of the 5th Army of Instability will certainly not be up to the task, but will seek masculine forms of rebellion as retribution for government meddling in the laws of nature.”

Reason Number 42 - Sino-spite

2008-09-23T12:37:00.000Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 81
"Spite is a petty emotion, often driven by a sense of trivial revenge and a feeling of being both wronged and powerless.

Sino-spite, however, is an act of Chinese political bluster. It is an expression of self-righteousness and strident belief that, for any given problem, someone else must be the cause, the originator of the trouble. Sino-spite currently shapes China’s relations with the world.

For China, the solution to a problem rarely invokes an official apology, and if it does come, it is seldom conciliatory. China never says ‘We were wrong,’ but instead adopts a more aggressive hectoring and lecturing tone.

Sino-spite exists most frequently on a government level, though sometimes on a corporate level too. In the political and corporate world of Sino-spite, no criticism of China is justified. Ever.

Sino-spite is a way of ignoring China’s problems and negating the concerns of other nations. Sino-spite is a black and white world view. There are no shades of gray, no soothing words of understanding as China promises to investigate a problem. In the Sino-spite view of things, the equation is simple: The world is against China. And China’s going to let you know it knows it.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 82
"Sino-spite is even applied to matters outside China’s borders. At a Foreign Ministry press conference, spokeswoman Jiang Yu was asked a question about political reform in Myanmar (the former Burma). 'China has been insisting the issue should be resolved by the Myanmar government and its people through consultations,' she said. 'The international community should adopt an active and constructive attitude to help Myanmar promote the process of national reconciliation without damaging the nation’s sovereignty and national dignity.' Dignity and national pride come above human suffering. Sino-spite is also self-serving as political policy.

In the us-versus-them world view of Sino-spite, the basic level of care and concern for human suffering is missing. Toys containing poisons that might harm a child? ‘Alarmism.’ Food that does not meet basic hygiene regulations? ‘Scaremongering.’ Concern over human rights in China? ‘Politicization.’ Rejection of China-made technology that does not meet demanding standards? ‘Anti-China prejudice.’

Stiff, inflexible and unyielding, Sino-spite grows out of a government view that is used to demanding, not persuading."

Reason Number 41 - A Nation of Health Terrorists

2008-09-18T21:22:00.001Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 79
"Spitting in public is an extremely common phenomenon in China, along with related health dangers such as public urination and ejection of nasal mucus by forcible expelling of breath through the nose. For example, the Shanghai Patriotic Sanitation Committee monitored spitting at ten public spots in the city. In just one of these spots, it recorded 164 people spitting in half an hour. The city government’s response to this was to impose a new regulation. ‘Spit sacks’ were attached the city’ taxis for both passengers and driver to spit into should the need arise (it is very common for taxi drivers to spit out of the window of their vehicles).

After the pilot scheme was introduced, the Sanitation Committee monitored the same public spots again and found ‘just’ 46 people spitting in half an hour. Spit sacks, the government says, will now be attached to all taxis in the city’s fleet.

Spitting, nose picking and coughing without covering the mouth, even in crowded and congested areas such as public transport, are common among Chinese travelers, according to the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee of the Communist Party."

Terrorism – what a buzzword! Used to justify American retrenchment on civil liberties and Britain’s vast network of surveillance cameras, spying, monitoring, judging the population. And used by China, of course – a good apprentice to Western corruption – to repress and shackle its captive possessions of Tibet and Xinjiang.

But what about China’s own terrorism? The way China spreads true terror, real terror? The thousands of terrified Chinese parents, fearful their children have been terribly harmed by the latest milk scandal – the terror of rotten, poisonous food, of factories dumping poisons into the land; what of that, what of China’s environmental terrorism?

What about the terrorism of SARS, Beijing’s very own dirty bomb? And SARS was just a warm-up for the big one – for H5N1, for bird flu. The Black Death wiped out maybe a third of Europe. What percentage of the world will die if H5N1 mutates to human-to-human form – a mutation which China, with its intensive farming practices combined with a routine culture of lying and cheating, is providing the perfect conditions for?

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 80
“Though China still has a relatively low number of AIDS sufferers (about one person per 2000), the disease is increasing fast – at 11% a year – due to widespread ignorance of the transmission of HIV. A survey in one of China’s northern provinces found that almost 60% of government officials lacked even a basic knowledge of AIDS. And along with ignorance, fear is widespread. Nationwide, about 50% of the population feel that AIDS patients have no right to work or study.

One survey among more than 400 homosexual men found that only 15% of them understood that they were at risk of contracting HIV. Another survey of more than 200 men found that only 20% used a condom, and yet another report found that 80% of gay men said they knew nothing about how HIV/AIDS was transmitted. Up until 2004 homosexuality was classified as a ‘psychiatric disorder of sexuality’ in China.

The picture for the future looks bleak. Professor Jing Jun, a member of the AIDS Policy Center at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, said, in April 2007, that ‘I think China is entering a stage of AIDS fatigue. Now officials are questioning how much more should be invested in the field, and some scholars working on AIDS have now transferred to other fields. … There was roughly 3 billion yuan (US$388 million) invested last year, which is 20 kilometers (12 miles) of expressway in Beijing.’”

Reason Number 40 - Party Capital & Sino-Cash

2008-09-17T18:12:00.001Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 77
“Perhaps the biggest admission of the failure of Chinese Communism came in 2002, when then-president Jiang Zemin delivered the keynote speech for the 16th Party Congress.

Jiang said that ‘the CPC should admit into itself advanced elements of other social strata who accept the Party’s program and Constitution, work for the realization of the Party’s line and program consciously and meet the qualifications of Party membership following a long period of test, in order to increase the influence and rallying force of the Party in society at large,’ reported media.

Behind these rather bland, anodyne words lies something truly startling, for the ‘advanced elements of other social strata’ that Jiang was keen to allow into the Party were in fact private businessmen – in other words, capitalists, in this case Chinese citizens with cash. The most exclusive working club in the world opens its door and finds a long line of rich citizens salivating to get in. Men with money welcomed by men with power.”

Who believes in communism? Does anyone still believe China’s rulers seek equality and fairness? Does anyone believe China’s rules really believe a single word of the political philosophy they claim to follow? Cash is king. Greed and power, that’s all that matters.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 78
“But perhaps the real reason behind admitting businessmen into the Party was less altruistic and more to do with control and greed. In today’s China, the Party wishfully attempts to control everything. Rather than persecuting private businessmen as it once did, it now welcomes them with open arms – after all, it is new money that provides the fuel for the economic engine, and new money is the new god in China.

A clear example of the change in official attitudes to businessmen is illustrated by the case of Yin Mingshan. Yin, said state media around the time of these changes, is ‘listed in Fortune magazine as one of the top 50 millionaires in China, is chairman of the Chongqing-based Lifan Hongda Industrial Group and vice-chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce of Chongqing Municipality. He is also a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC.’

What media failed to mention was that for much of Yin’s life he was ruthlessly persecuted by that same Party. He was expelled from high school in 1960 for making ‘rightist’ remarks and, three years later, he was jailed. He remained a social outcast, spending many years laboring on a farm until 1979, when the Party informed him his punishment had been a ‘mistake.’ He did not receive any apology for the nearly two decades of his life that the Party had wasted. However, when he built his firm into one of the nation’s leading motorbike manufacturers, the Party was suddenly keen to hear what he had to say. Money and success mean far more to today’s communists than morality, and indeed more that individual freedom itself.

While maintaining lip-service to socialist goals, the government embraces any political strategy that will either enrich its members or cement its grip on power. The vast majority of Chinese citizens, those that are not Party members, those with limited finances, have just fallen farther behind.”

Reason Number 39 - Red China Crime

2008-09-16T10:55:00.002Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 75
“Red China Crime is the best game in town – but you have to be a Party member to get a seat at the table.

Forming the last element of the 4th Army of Instability, Red China Crime has been entrenched as the thing to do since even before the Party gained power. Favoritism and nepotism may not appear basically criminal in nature, but down the line the cash goes into someone’s pocket.

Today’s cadres (political functionaries) and Party officials mouth political perfection while devising new methods and policies, the best of which take tiny, innocuous slices of the pie from millions of unknowing citizens. Red China Crime creates headline stories in major Chinese newspapers and around the world. It includes theft of public funds, bribery, extortion, prostitution and cronyism, all of which are endemic among Party officials, including spouses, lovers, offspring and relatives. Corruption is simply a way of life for today’s government.”

The crimes of the Communist Party are unending. Corrupt and evil, the Communists have brought China nothing much but misery.

But the people of China are complacent. They tolerate their leaders. They focus only on the ‘good’ the Party has done, even though that good has only been done by default, by the cessation of madness.

It’s the same tired refrain – ‘China is getting better’ – that allows government officials to keep their hands in the till.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 76
“In 2006, 97,260 members of the Communist Party were disciplined for corruption, among whom 3,530 cadres were prosecuted, said Gan Yisheng of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. China’s first regulations to specify what punishment corrupt officials would receive went into effect on June 1st 2007.

Between 1978, when China began to open up to the West, and 2004, the country’s Ministry of Commerce said that about 4,000 Party officials suspected of crimes involving US$50 billion of public money had fled overseas.

These crimes would cause a freely-elected government in a democratic country to fall immediately. But in China, without the aid of independent oversight bodies, the bags of money will continue to walk out of the door.

On the face of it, the 4th Army of Instability’s Red China Crime element would seem to be the most evil. But with more than 70 million Party members, and with an enrolment system that sees that number grow by around 2.3 million a year, the ‘face of evil’ may become as familiar as the people next door.”

Reason Number 38 - The ‘Big’ Factor

2008-09-14T22:21:00.000Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 73
"Every national entity, no matter what the size of land area or number of people, feels its particular national interests are significant, perhaps even unique. Even the smallest countries in the world feel their own problems are big. Certainly no exception, China, since 1949, has discovered its own unique set of big considerations.

China’s perception of itself as an emerging and developing nation has inherited many difficulties and paradoxes from its past history. But modern day leaders have in many cases exacerbated some of these ‘traditional’ problems, leading the country into a maze where they are forever trying to find the way out, often with a limited handful of solutions.

Part of the problem is that China wants development now. It wants modernity now. And it wants a technologically developed society now. But the breakneck speed at which the leaders are driving the country causes them to miss the road signs warning of danger ahead. A few of these warning signs, such as false claims of ‘growth’ which resulted in great famine of the 1950s, Mao’s encouragement of large families, and again Mao’s encouragement of students to become Red Guards, heralding the start of the ten-year ‘Cultural Revolution,’ show a lack of insight into the simple notion of cause and effect in China, which is often followed by big problems."

And most of all, China wants money now. That’s why there will be no end to the nation’s problems and scandals. You can’t ‘cure’ greed. You can’t slay cupidity.

That’s why China learned nothing from the 2004 scandal where hundreds of babies were hospitalized and many died after being fed substandard milk powder. There was a lot of fuss and hurried promises of serious action at the time – and then everyone forgot about it.

So here we are in 2008 and much the same thing is happening again, a company selling shit quality milk, eye on the profit and fuck the danger. More babies in hospital. More death. But more money too, and that’s the point. The same thing will happen next year, and the year after.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 74
"Per dollar of GDP, China uses five times more energy than the US average and an astonishing 11.5 times the Japanese average in its industrial production, countries that China wishes to emulate in order to establish its world-leader status.

Let’s put that in dollars and cents. As the China Economic Review explains, a single kilogram of coal used as energy to create industrial products in China earns only 36 US cents worth of GDP in China. The same kilogram of coal if used in the Japanese industrial sector would generate US$5.58 worth of GDP.

Even the most glorious of all resources is being eroded faster than nature can possibly handle. The Qinghai-Tibet plateau was once home to one of the world’s largest alpine wetlands. Yet in recent years, this area – also one of the planet’s most important areas in terms of biodiversity – has shrunk by 40% due to human activities. A single lake in this region, the Xingcuo Lake, used to span 469 hectares. Now it covers 10. Desertification is increasing at 12% a year, with another 135,333 hectares under threat of desertification. Laobuza, a Tibetan who was born and grew up in this area said 'There are now very few swamps in the reserve. I could ride my horse for 50 kilometers and not find one.'”

Reason Number 37 - Brand China

2008-09-11T23:03:00.000Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 71
“Developing international brands is a matter of great importance to China’s government today. Speaking in summer 2007, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that domestic firms should improve the quality of their products and develop world-class brands.

But the 2007 Global Business Leadership Survey, created by Fortune China and a consulting firm, found that while 83% of respondents saw the importance of developing a global brand name, only 22% demonstrated the necessary skills for operating in the global marketplace. The survey was conducted among senior Chinese business leaders and also revealed that, while 75% of them had traveled overseas, most travel was for a short period of time, and only 45% of the total was business travel.

Surprisingly, only a third of leaders maintained personal networks outside China, indicating an isolationist attitude among Chinese business leaders. ‘The report indicates that there are capability gaps between business leaders who are effective and capable in the domestic market and those who can operate effectively at a global level,’ said media.”

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 72
“China’s attitude to building globally recognized brands seems to be based more on the assumption that China has a right to such kudos than the need to earn it. Unfortunately, China’s ‘victim mentality’ when it comes to its rights in the world is creating real victims.

In the wake of a series of scandals linked to Chinese-made products, China testily complained about ‘smear attacks’ on its goods. ‘Blowing up, complicating or politicizing a problem are irresponsible actions and do not help in its solution’ China’s Washington Embassy said in summer 2007, perfecting its ‘Sino-spite’ vocabulary. ‘It is even more unacceptable for some to launch groundless smear attacks on China at the excuse of drug and safety problems.’

One of these ‘safety problems’ occurred in 2006 when tainted cough medicine from China led more than 100 deaths in Panama. The medicine had been made with a chemical called diethylene glycol, instead of the correct chemical, gylcerine. The products also used the trademark ‘glicerine.’ The original source of the diethylene glycol was a factory in China’s Jiangsu Province, which has labeled the chemical as ‘TD Glycerine.’ This product had been sold to a Spanish firm. The Chinese firm said they told the Spanish firm the product should not be used in medicines. But Panamanian businessmen brought the chemical from the Spanish firm, changed its name to ‘Pure glycerine’ and extended its sell-by date.”

Reason Number 36 - Hot Borders

2008-09-10T10:56:00.002Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 69
"In the language of politics, the German word ‘lebensraum’ (living space) has deep meaning. If you were to translate its feeling and the sense of trepidation it creates in other countries, from the German word to a Chinese equivalent, one would need to also translate the sense of need to expand, a sense of righteousness, and a sense of superiority.

Today, China has chosen ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘peaceful development’ as catch-all phraseology to help pacify the fears of the independent nations orbiting the middle kingdom. But the reality of the behemoth that China is becoming both militarily and economically is casting a long shadow over the 14 nations who share a land border, and sometimes a troubled historical relationship. China presently has a common land border with more nations than any other country in the world.

China’s ‘neighborly conduct’ sometimes has resulted in aggressive expansion, as is quite obvious in its military control of Tibet and Xinjiang, its claim to Taiwan, and its recent regain of control of Hong Kong and Macau."

Not much needs to be said here. China’s ‘peaceful rise’ is such obvious bullshit as not to be worth commenting on.

Now the Olympics are over, Taiwan better watch out. And as the world runs short of fuel, China will look to its immediate neighbors – and then beyond. Mongolia’s the most obvious target after Taiwan.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 70
"Current claims of ‘peaceful rise’ aside, in its short history since 1949, China has fought wars with four of its land-based neighbors – Korea, India, Russia and Vietnam. These wars came at a time when China was surrounded by far fewer independent states than it is now, as well as at a time in which its need for resources was much lower. But today China is sucking in vast quantities of material and energy resources from all around the world and also has a much more pugnacious sense of international self-identity.

China is in effect like a youth who has just joined the circus. Hired as a juggler, the ringmaster requires the youthful apprentice to juggle a far greater number of balls - or in this case, countries - than has ever been achieved before.

His juggling should be ‘measured – peaceful – not aggressive,’ causing awe and respect in the audience. The task is formidable. Our juggler is allowed practice. A failure, a dropped ball, merely stops his exercise and he begins again, while the audience applauds his humility. In the reality that is China, there is no practice time, no appreciative clapping for a nice try. And China feels that its true historical calling is not to be the juggler, but the ringmaster."

China’s failure in juggling just one ball – one country, carefully -- could result in catastrophic results for itself, Asia, and possibly the world.

Reason Number 35 - Looking for Mr. Anuode Shiwaxinge

2008-09-08T23:41:00.002Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 67
“If you say the name ‘David Beckham’ many Chinese people won’t know who you’re talking about. You must say ‘Dai wei Bei ke han mu.’ And if you want to talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger, you have to call him ‘A nuo de Shi wa xin ge.’ The vast majority of Chinese people, even those with good English skills, find themselves restricted in conversation with non-Chinese speakers because they lack the understanding of other tongues due to Chinese government restrictions.

In many ways the Chinese language, spoken by more than 20% of humanity, has reached a dead end. No new characters can be made. New words have to be coined by combining the present set of characters, which is a problem when using hieroglyphic languages (one character for one word).

While English has been adapted by many other cultures, the Chinese language has never exerted the same influence. Historically, many characters in the Japanese language came from China, but the Japanese written language has gone off in its own direction. But Chinese does not easily incorporate new words into its lexicon.”

As far as Republicans go, A nuo de Shi wa xin ge seems largely free of the ideological lunacy of that party. Politicians are mostly image, yet they like to pretend they have substance. By that measure it’s at least a step towards pragmatic clarity to have a man who is explicitly defined as image becoming a politician. Indeed perhaps the fact that he is so overtly manufactured gives Arnie an added strength as a politician. He has no need to deny the obvious, and that endows a certain sort of freedom.

But Sarah Palin…. Now that’s some scary shit. A woman who believes in creationism possibly the next in line to the presidency of the USA? China’s leaders certainly believe in the power of violence, greed, and corruption and tell endless lies about the good things they have done for the country – but at least they stop short of the colossal stupidity of believing the world was made in seven days. They may be brutes and thugs, but they are not as cretinous as creationists.

I’ve focused a lot of the negative aspects of life in today's China, and though I have (apparently to little notice) mixed that in with positive comments throughout this blog, here I will be more overt. If I had to choose one achievement of modern China that deserves respect, I would cite its removal of the virus of religion from the mass of its people.

Now whether the ends justify the means is an argument for another entry. And certainly the bloody glee with which China went about expunging religion from its culture was a crime every bit as bad as the monstrosities christianity has visited on the world. For example, China’s suppression of Tibetan religion, a genocide in progress at this very moment, is a stain on humanity.

But even though the means are evil, the ends teach us a lesson. The majority of young people in China today have no belief in religion – and on the whole (spite of my many criticisms) they are pretty well-balanced, rational and moral. That’s one of the greatest lessons China has to teach the world – people get on just fine without religion. Sure, it’s not an undiluted lesson, for though China has dismissed the fairy tale of faith, it clings on to numerous other nonsenses, many of which have been discussed in the entries preceding this one.

Perhaps humanity needs to believe in nonsense, whether it’s the blustering arrogance of communism or the absurd self-contradictions and logical impossibilities of religion. I don’t know. But at least China has tossed one grand lie into the dustbin of history – the lie of religion.

Good for China.

Yet no message can be unmixed, and so I’ll end this entry with a thought for Thubten Jigme Norbu, who died on the 5th of this month. A great man and a fine writer, thoughtful and balanced. The world is the less for his death.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 68
“The very fact that Chinese is such an ancient language makes some commentators see it almost as an antique. According to Wang Shuda, writing for China Daily, “You cannot learn Chinese without understanding basic background knowledge.” That’s a fair enough statement in any language. But what does Wang mean by “basic background knowledge”?

‘Do you know “wu xing,” the five important elements: metal, water, wood, fire and earth, the relationships … among them?’ Wang asks, suggesting that a cultural understanding of these elements in a Chinese way equals an understanding of Chinese as a language.

‘Do you know Chinese classical poems, such as “tang shi,” the Tang [Dynasty, 618-907] Poems? How many can you recite?’ he writes, as if a modern language must first be respected for its roots. His implication is that a student of English could not learn the language without first understanding the sonnets of Shakespeare.”

Reason Number 34 - White China Crime

2008-09-04T23:25:00.004Z

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 65
"The second element of the 4th Army of Instability’s triumvirate of crime is made up of those wearing white shirts and dark ties with direct access to the finances of companies and banks nationwide.

White China Crime rarely involves just a single culprit, simply because it is almost socially acceptable to rip off the hand that feeds you. While they form an element of the 4th Army of Instability, White members rarely have contact with Blue China Crime members by virtue of their social standing.

White China Crime is a rampant force in China, especially in the country’s banking sector, because that’s where the real money is. "

Crime is another of those areas where China is so much a mirage. Crime in China is omnipresent yet hidden. It’s present everywhere and visible almost nowhere. Come to most any big city in China and your level of personal safety is – for the most part – rather higher than it would be in many Western societies. Certainly I’d feel safe anywhere in Shanghai at any hour. That’s not something I could say for London.

But while you might be safe in personal terms – at least in a big city – you are surrounded by frauds and scams. Yet the low visibility of crime in China has led many Chinese people to believe theirs is a safe and law-abiding culture. And this is about as far from the truth as you can get.

And in corporate terms the amount of theft and thievery is simply staggering. Most every overseas firm in China will know this – in China, a contract is worth jack shit. If you’re a Westerner doing business in China, watch out, for you are regarded as fair game. Swindles, theft, cooked books, bald-faced lies; it’s all fair play.

Trouble is, there is no public acceptance of this fact – no – let me rewrite that – there is no public anger about this fact. Corruption is accepted. And until the people of China begin to get angry about corruption – do something about it – then China will remain a crook’s paradise.

Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 66
"Judicial corruption, another form of White China Crime, is widespread in China. In 2006, five judges in Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court were arrested for soliciting and taking bribes. Also in 2006, three top judges in Fuyang Intermediate People’s Court in eastern Anhui Province were charged with taking bribes.

In 2004, 461 judges were charged with corruption. In 2005, the number was 378, and in 2006 it was 292. But even though the number of judges being prosecuted is dropping, China’s Chief Justice, Xiao Yang, says he still has ongoing fears about the “grave situation” of judicial corruption.

A judge’s skill may also be measured by his ability to keep himself one step ahead of the laws he has been entrusted with.

Over the next few decades, the ranks of White China Crime will swell because it is incredibly easy to join up and ‘share’ the wealth. All the new recruit will need is a job with position, the ability to play with the figures, and a willingness to recruit others in the grand scheme.

With an uncontrolled booming economy, unfortunately it is fitting that China should have an uncontrolled booming crime industry."

Reason Number 33 - Marching On

2008-09-03T23:33:00.002Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 63
“Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves;
With our very flesh and blood
Let us build our new Great Wall!
The peoples of China are at their most critical time,
Everybody must roar defiance.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of hearts with one mind,
Brave the enemy’s gunfire,
March on!
Brave the enemy’s gunfire,
March on! March on! March on, on!

The above words, China’s National Anthem, were written by the poet and playwright Tian Han, in 1934. Tian died like so many of China’s other citizens during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ (1966-1976). ‘In 1968, Tian Han disappeared after endless torture of being criticized and beaten. He never left a word to anybody. Even his bone ashes couldn’t be found. Ten years later, [he] was finally exonerated,’ following the normal in-and-out of favor process, says the state-run China Radio International.

When the national anthem was written, the target of ‘marching on’ was clear – the Japanese armies which had invaded China. It was ‘fighting’ against the Japanese on which the People’s Liberation Army hangs it reputation after being formed in 1927. But today its goal is less clear, less defined, obscured by military inactivity and often politicized by grand-sounding rhetoric.”

The fact that Tian Han was beaten to death would come as a surprise to most Chinese people today – at least, to those who had any idea who he was.

To those who know China, his murder is of course no surprise. One of the reasons China has such a dismal record in innovation and creativity is because standing out is dangerous.

Take Lao She (老舍), for example. He was a wonderful writer, creating novels of great sensitivity and insight. For me, his greatest work is ‘Camel Xiangzi’ (骆驼祥子), since I feel it gives more insight into Chinese society than his play ‘Tea House,’ (茶馆) which is especially venerated in China. Lao She committed suicide in 1966 after having been paraded through the streets and beaten by the Red Guards.

Again, few people know this. It is seldom mentioned in China today. He is simply accepted as a great writer, and the appalling way in which China treated him is simply airbrushed out of history. Today’s students are not to blame for the crimes of their forebears – but the fact that China does not admit to its history is a problem indeed.

Happy those who died of natural causes. The big names of modern Chinese history, from Sun Zhongshan to Lu Xun were lucky if they died young. Had they lived, China would have murdered them. But in death they became safe objects for veneration, and so venerated they were, even though both were totally ineffective men.

People tell me the ‘Cultural Revolution’ mentality is in the past. This is bullshit. It is still part of the fabric of contemporary Chinese society, and in a future entry I shall set out why this is so.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 64
“How should one interpret China’s ‘unconditional’ pledge ‘not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states’ and its ‘policy of no first use of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances’? Do the words ‘not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states’ imply that use of nuclear arms against nuclear states is open and available as part of national policy?

Let us here remind ourselves of the words of PLA general Zhu Chenghu who, in mid 2005, said that if America came to the aid of Taiwan in the event China invaded the country, ‘I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons.’ Zhu said that “We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

And it is interesting that while Zhu said these remarks were his personal opinion, and while Beijing said they did not reflect official policy, internal criticism of General Zhu was remarkably limited. A senior general in an army in a developed nation that made such inflammatory remarks would face almost certain demotion, perhaps even forced retirement. Yet General Zhu apparently went unpunished, keeping his post as a head of the College of Defense Studies at China’s National Defense University, where he was still making policy pronouncements in 2006 and 2007.”

Reason Number 32 - China Fat

2008-09-02T22:55:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 61
“In 1982, just three years after China’s opening-up policy began, researchers commented that ‘Chinese food policy planners are doing much better from a dietary point of view than their Western counterparts, while avoiding problems associated with increased obesity and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease.’

In 1985, just 0.2% of urban boys between seven and 18 years old were overweight. By 2006 that figure had risen to an astonishing 25%. That’s an increase of more than 100 times.

Yet more than 9% of children five years old or less in China’s countryside were underweight in 2005, and in the poorest rural areas, 14.4% were underweight. Furthermore, 17% of rural children were growing more slowly than was normal.”

Another chance squandered by China. That lead in public health back in the 80s, sure, it was the upshot of many years of such poor management of the nation by the government that people were too poor to have access to fatty, sugary foods – or, indeed, even much meat. And, certain, there is no argument to be made for keeping people on a restricted diet.

But the fact remains China had a brief period of being a healthy nation and it pissed it up against the wall.

Today China apes the West as much as it can – all our dirty, squalid habits, our pollution, our selfishness and greed, our irresponsibility. All that is good in China is forgotten and all that is bad from the West is glorified.

It occurs to me that China’s attitude today is precisely the same at the attitude that many people ascribe to ChinaBounder – one of exploitation and indulgence. China wants, needs, takes; more money, more resources, more luxury goods, more conspicuous consumption. The mindset of China (swept with a broad brush, coasting over the minority of exceptions) is that of the child in the sweetshop, greedy for every colored bonbon.

ChinaBounder and China – not at all so different.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 62
“Shanghai is China’s fattest city, with 15.1% of boys and 9.2% of girls obese (as opposed to merely overweight), compared to an average of 11.9% for boys and 5% for girls nationwide. One of the reasons that boys are fatter than girls is that boys are still viewed as superior to girls, and thus are spoiled much more by parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

In Beijing, more than 50% of middle school and 60% of high school students have abnormally high blood pressure. A survey of more than 13 million students found that lung capacity – a key measure of overall health – had fallen by more than 300ml since 2000. To put this into context, the average lung capacity of a six-year-old is about 2100ml and for a 14-year-old about 3600ml.

According to China’s Ministry of Health, urban Chinese boys at the age of six are 2.5 inches taller and 6.6 pounds heavier than six-year-old urban kids 30 years ago. They are three feet 10.5 inches tall and weigh, on average, 47 pounds. In America, urban six-year-olds average out at the same height and are just three pounds heavier. China is catching up fast.

In China, the saying that ‘A fat child is a healthy child’ is still widely believed.”

Reason Number 31. Taiwan - The Poison Pill of Democracy

2008-09-01T12:40:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 59
"Democracy is bitter medicine, and for some political regimes it is difficult to make them take it. As a medicine, democracy protects the individual and grants immunization against party politics. Like all medicines, democracy contains many negative side-effects, yet also provides the individual with a basis in which to survive and grow strong. A more unique method of injecting democracy into a totalitarian or communist state would be in the form of a ‘poison pill.’

Currently, Hong Kong is a limited democracy, and its freedoms are closely monitored and often controlled by Beijing. The Party resists the pressure of democracy within Hong Kong in a cat-and-mouse game designed to keep the people of Hong Kong waiting. The Party knows that they only have approximately 40 more years to wait until the 50 years timeframe of guaranteed political autonomy for Hong Kong has expired, whereupon a smile will return to the faces of Party bosses as they tell the world ‘things change’ and end any hint of democracy in the former colony.

If Hong Kong were to achieve full democracy, could a Hong Kong citizen travel to Beijing on June 4th to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, exercising his or her democratic freedoms? Could a Hong Kong democratic political activist use his or her freedoms to set up a democratic political party in another major city in China? Or could a Hong Kong journalist ask a party politician a question which may reveal ‘state secrets’? Clearly the answer is ‘No.’ Beijing could not tolerate any of these scenarios. This is why, in the opinion of the authors, Hong Kong will never be granted full democracy by Beijing."

These days the relationship between Taiwan and China seems to be warming up. Ma Ying-jeou is making the right noises to please Beijing, and, both parties with their eyes on the buck, direct flights between the two countries have been opened up. This is being hailed as a great achievement: why, Ma has achieved more in the few months of his administration than any other leader of Taiwan since 1949. “Cross-straits peace will be remembered as the most important accomplishment of my administration” he said recently.

It’s sheer bullshit, of course. Anyone who thinks China’s Communist leaders will show the slightest bit of flexibility towards Taiwan knows nothing about China. For Ma to talk of ‘warming relations’ is the grossest sort of hubris. China has only arrogance and contempt for Taiwan, for the wishes of Taiwan’s people. China has no interest in ‘dialog.’ China does not even see Taiwan as the free and independent nation it so obviously is. What kind of respect is that?

China is all smiles for now, now that Ma is not talking of secession. But should Ma ask for the smallest concession, he will be swatted aside like the tiresome bug Beijing views him as. He will never be allowed to deviate from the ludicrous ‘One Country, Two Systems’ fairytale formula, and he will never be accorded the smallest measure of real respect.

China will never change; for China’s leaders and 99% of its people, all indoctrinated, inflexible, and positive about what Taiwan ‘is,’ there remains only one attitude – Taiwan is part of China.

Forget this talk of warming relations – it is a mere passing mirage.

There can be no peace in the Taiwan Straits for the simplest and most obvious of reasons. The Taiwanese people are just that – Taiwanese.

They are not Chinese people, and they have zero interest in being part of China. None whatsoever, none. What free citizen of Taiwan would want to become a slave of China? It is absurd.

And so it is war we are talking about. War is still on the cards, and one day soon China will move to invade Taiwan. The plans are already drawn up and the political calculations made. China will seize Taiwan even if it means killing every person in that nation.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 60
"Should Taiwan be taken back with its political system intact, the situation would be profoundly dangerous for China. Other ‘autonomous regions’ such as Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia would see democracy of Taiwan and demand the same for themselves. China’s system of provinces, fractured by democracy, would collapse in on itself, with the Communist Party unable to stop the democratic leaks in the dikes as democracy starts to ‘cure’ the Party’s previous indiscretions.

Taiwan, aside from being the largest democratic poison pill for China, may thus also be viewed as a democratic silver bullet.

But slaying the often-demonized communist Party of China with one ‘shot’ of democracy is simply not going to happen. The attempt by the Beijing government to force other countries to kowtow, accepting the ‘One China Policy,’ is mere bluster. China seeks validity for its policy of reunification in order to legitimize any untoward action such as war in the Taiwan straits.

The game of indignation that Beijing plays to perfection masks their awareness that to swallow Taiwan, with all its democratic energy, would poison the communist system beyond recovery."

Weekender -- The Reasons behind '50 Reasons'

2008-08-30T09:29:00.005Z

Perhaps a country’s ability to take a take a punch, shrug off perceived insults and face up to criticism squarely is one of the first signs that a nation had achieved maturity and its people their place at the table of great nations.

Not yet China.

Good fortune, and a marvellous relationship with the English books editor at Random House Kodansha in Tokyo was the reason ‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never be Great’ was first published in Japan, a country still felt by most Chinese as its greatest enemy.

To actually manufacture an insult to the motherland and the people of China by intentionally publishing our work first in Japan is far beyond our ability and actually bestows upon us a deviousness that is – well – insulting.

We have joined rather good company. Companies such as Starbucks, Deloitte Touche, Toyota and many others have all been tarred with the ‘insulters of China’ brush of shame, usually applied by the government, but sometimes also fostered by highly educated Chinese experts who should have better things to do.

Why?

The authors of ‘Fault Lines On The Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great,’ David Marriott and Karl Lacroix, feel the answer harkens back to the opening statement of this piece.

Maturity and subsequent greatness -- both of which China has yet to achieve.

Our book does not attack China. Our book is a warning cry to the Chinese people that failure to achieve greatness is the most likely possibility IF the motherland fails to open its eyes, ears, and heart to its problems....now.

The book details 50. We discovered dozens more. China plays a dangerous game turning one eye towards its obvious successes, while keeping the other eye blind to its failures.

At fault is certainly the government, but more so the very people, the citizens who readily perceive supposed insults but fail to recognize dangerous decay within their society. The Communist Government builds a paper tiger while what the people of China should demand and well-deserve is a real blood and guts dragon.

‘Things are getting better’ or ‘things are changing’ are the standard phrases that must be included within every ‘critical’ article published in the Western Press. Why? Balance. The authors of such articles and indeed the journals publishing them want to be seen as balanced, fair, and moderating.

In FAULT LINES there is no balance. No apologies. No self appointed moderation. In FAULT LINES there are just problems, difficulties, 50 failures that need attention desperately. The authors feel ‘balance’ is a wasted journalistic emotion.

But for this reason the authors have yet to capture an English publishing contract. Western editors who have zero China experience, but an abundance of balancing ability claim it is ‘too critical.’ Their attitude is that the authors’ combined 25 years of China life means nothing, without ‘balance’

For the authors, however, our experience means a unique ability to define, illustrate and detail at least 50 faults within China today, faults that run concurrently, destructively holding back the greatest society to ever have a chance to join man’s march into the future.

For the authors David Marriott and Karl Lacroix, our attitude means loving China enough to shout out a warning, to try to illustrate the plain facts and to tell the truth. The truth as we know it, without false ‘balance.’

While we did write the book with a Western audience in mind, we are very keen that Chinese people should be able to read it too. It would be totally wrong to say we wrote the book for Western people but not for Chinese people.

One of the reasons we have been using the ‘ChinaBounder’ blog as a vehicle to discuss our book is to help generate awareness of it among a wider audience. But we are also very keen that Chinese people should be able to get an idea of the topic of the book. There is no way ‘Fault Lines’ could ever be published in China, and this is our only route to raising the issues we discuss with the people of China.

We are happy to discuss our book with anyone who wishes to comment at 50faultlines@gmail.com

Writing the book took over one year, not including thousands of hours of research and hundreds of interviews, ‘Fault Lines’ was carefully and meticulously researched, written and footnoted.

We have made a great deal of use of Chinese media sources. Though the Chinese media is carefully controlled by the government, there is a still a huge amount of valuable information to be gained from it – not just in plentiful facts and figures, but also in attitudes, assumptions and beliefs about what China ‘is.’

We hoped to avoid the charge that we were relying on ‘biased’ Western data and opinion sources by proving each of the 50 Faults with information gleaned from Chinese citizens and media sources. However, for topics such as Tibet and Xinjiang, we did make wider use of international sources, since there is simply no objective reporting on these issues in China.

Currently we are working through ideas for several fact-based novels. All our China themed work must be thoroughly researched, whether fiction or non-fiction. Only the ChinaBounder character takes liberties with reality, but even behind his remarks lurks an element of truth often ignored by the character’s detractors.

Black comedy, satire and risqué humour is not allowed within China when directed towards government leaders and institutions. Sadly most Chinese readers miss the point when trying to digest the comments made on the infamous blog. In more open and perhaps democratic societies, political satire is seen as a safety valve, a way for citizens to jab politicians, and themselves in the ribs to say ‘Hey! Don’t forget, we are watching you.’

Within the book’s title, ‘Fault Lines On The Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great,’ there is a concession, at least within the Japanese edition. We anguished for weeks over the two words ‘may’ and ‘will.’ The word ‘will’ seemed much more negative, more certain and certainly too strongly opinionated against the future. The word ‘will’ seemed to doom China.

In the end we chose the word ‘may’ simply because our work ‘Fault Lines On The Face of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ is a warning, and when giving notice to a people and a country there must be hope.

The last chapter or ‘reason’, number 50, is the most important for China to pay heed to. Entitled ‘The Voice of China’ we ask for the reason that China will give for its existence to the rest of the world. How will China motivate the world? Another great consumer society, preyed upon by megacorporations is not needed. Nor is a ‘harmonious’ society dictated to on a daily basis by an archaic political system.

We ask China to show the world the way into the future, for surely we and the rest of the world have yet to find an answer. Then China will not only be great - it will be the greatest nation of all time

Karl Lacroix Biography:

Karl Lacroix’s arrival in China in the summer of 1992 was for him a dream come true.

Intoxicated as a young boy on the spirit of adventure, Karl found the warmth of the muggy night air of Shanghai filled his need for a ‘new’ land.

In the early nineties, indeed China was the new ‘promised land.’

Karl’s family, directed by the Canadian army, had pulled up stakes and moved across oceans many times, instilling within Karl at a young age a sense of wanderlust that only China has really satiated. An English-born mother and an American-born father gave impetus to a sense of internationalism that formed his character.

Writing came to Karl at an early age, acting as a cub reporter for a local city newspaper in Ontario, Canada. Words became important, not because they were rewarded, but because they generated human reaction.

Now in his late 50s, Karl’s power of observation and experience , combined with a liberal viewpoint, has directed him to voice his ‘protest’ over China’s failure to seek a higher calling than that of being the largest consumer market in the history of the world.

Karl Lacroix expects to live out his life in the most fascinating and compelling area of the world - Asia.

David Marriott Biography:

David Marriott is a collector of fine wines and a voracious reader of books that never leave once they are acquired. The occasional bottle of wine however, disappears without remorse, its preservation within the collection be damned.

His attendance at Oxbridge almost convinced him that a life of academia was his until an opportunity arose that could not be denied – China.

Working as an editor, developing 'free journalism' within a state owned newspaper, for two years David found that in China 'free' means exactly what the government wants it to mean.

Pursuing the family journalism heritage gave David a sense of purpose which was unfortunately limited by rules, regulations and interpretations that were less than logical.

A chance encounter and a quick discussion of a book project provided a different direction and a 'Brotherhood of China' relationship with Karl Lacroix.

David, now in his late thirties, is an avid linguist and has managed to learn to speak, read and write enough Chinese to avert the potentially disastrous situations both Karl and David seem to find themselves occasionally.

David Marriott's life will continue within Asia, so deep has the influence of his present life in China been. The Brotherhood of China has tales to reveal and truths to expose on a journey that will continue book after book.

-The comments and material above have been prepared by Karl Lacroix.

Please feel free to contact us with any more questions or expansions on the ideas that have presented.

Reason Number 30 - The Fallibility of Chinese Characters

2008-08-28T23:07:00.002Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 57
“The Chinese definition of literacy is the ability to read and write at least 1500 Chinese characters. In 1949, when ‘New China’ was founded, the illiteracy rate was more than 80%. By 1992, 22.3% of adults in China were illiterate. Ten years later, that proportion had dropped to 8.72%.

While 8.72% seems relatively small, that translates into a total of 85 million illiterate people in China at the beginning of this century. Twenty million of them were between the age of 15 and 50, with 70% of the total number of illiterate people being women.

Despite China’s huge recent economic expansion and the country’s trillion-dollar plus foreign reserves, the total amount of money allocated per year since 2000 to fight and eliminate illiteracy among 85 million people was just eight million yuan (US$1.03 million). Education was worth a paltry 0.07 yuan per person, an amount that would certainly not buy a book of lessons, nor even a pencil or one single sheet of paper to write on.

Small wonder then that by 2007 the number of illiterate people had not dropped -- it had risen. Since official figures were released after China’s last census in 2000, giving a base of 85 million illiterate people, China has experienced an increase in illiteracy equal to the entire population of Canada -- 30 million people – becoming unable to read or write. Today, 116 million people are unable to meet China’s definition of literacy.”

Think about that statistic carefully. Since 2000, there has been an increase in illiteracy in China of thirty million people. China, with its vast wealth and its billions to waste on Olympics and armies and men in space. Can’t even fix the most basic, fundamental problems.

What does that say about the ‘progress’ of China?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 58
“Although not all would do so, each and every citizen of these 116 million people is denied the opportunity to unleash their potential, both for self and country, simply through the malaise of illiteracy. In order to put the size of these figures into perspective, in the year 2000, 11.3% of all illiterate people on the planet lived in China. Incredibly, by 2005, that total had risen to 15%.

A full 40% of Chinese people cannot speak Mandarin and, once again, it is the countryside population rather than the city elite who suffer. The isolating factor of speaking only your own dialect in a country of 1.3 billion people fractures the very nationhood of China. This mosaic of language prevents the government from giving a clear message of unity to all citizens. In addition, the inability to speak a common language, combined with the inability to read and write, dooms China’s poor citizens to a life of very few opportunities.”

Reason Number 29 - Blue China Crime

2008-08-27T21:54:00.001Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 55
"Shanghai is remarkably safe. The Shanghainese are still the ‘special ones’ of China. They still get the added respect from criminal elements from other parts of China that affords them an additional layer of protection, something the folks in booming cities like Shenzhen across from Hong Kong no longer have. In Shenzhen if they want your purse but you hang onto it too tightly, they might just cut your arm off.

But even as residents here in Shanghai for over 20 years, the authors have not been touched by it, or even really seen it. Sure, a pick pocketed wallet and a pinched mobile, both lost more from carelessness than to an exercise of someone’s criminal ability. But real crime? Best to watch the late night local TV news to see that.

But the bad guys are coming sure enough. And the young ones are in training.

Blue (collar) China Crime forms the most fearful element of the 4th Army of Instability. In the end, the White and Red elements of the 4th Army may cause more financial long term harm, but it is the physical nature of the Blue Army that paralyzes most people with fear."

Shanghai is indeed a point of relative calm in China. Rich city, there is less of the desperate crime of the provinces. Closest I ever came to crime was getting my pocket picked, and pretty ineptly at that. I was with Gloria, taking her to the Shanghai railway station to see her off on her journey back home at Lunar New Year. The crowds were intense, as always, but I was paying a modicum of attention and I felt a hand slide into my pocket. I grabbed that hand, and with it a youngish boy of 14 or 15 or so. And, having caught him, had little idea of what to do with him. But Gloria was in a hurry to get her train, and urged me to let him go. That’s what I’d have done anyhow, I guess, for I would not leave him to the care of the coppers and, besides, I am sure he had few options but to be a pickpocket, China being what it is.

But often I think if China had the crazy level of gun ownership of the United States, Shanghai crime would be a different story. You only have to look at the city’s drivers to see that – the anger, the mad, enraged, passionate anger that most all drivers show a dozen times a day is evidence enough; these are guys who, armed, would leap from their cars and shoot each other dead over the most trivial incident.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 56
"China, a country that often professes its modesty, its calmness, has its own demons to slay. Rapidly following the path of developed countries, China’s list of serial and mass killers grows ominously.

In southwestern Guizhou Province in November 2006, a magistrate, Wen Jiangang, his wife, his son, his sister-in-law, his mother-in-law and even his nursery maid were all murdered. Police rapidly arrested 42-year-old Cao Hui, announcing he had murdered Wen and his family purely for money. Yet other swirling rumors suggested that since Wen had been in charge of closing down illegal mines in the area, it might have been resentful mine owners who arranged his killing. The same month that Wen was killed also saw the murder of a restaurant owner and three of his relatives in Dongguan city in Guangdong Province.

The month after, December 2006, saw the murder of a family of five in southern Guangdong Province’s Foshan city. Also in December 2006, another magistrate, Chen Yiming, was murdered along with his wife, seven-year-old grandson and housemaid in northwest Gansu Province. Another family of six was murdered in southern Guangdong Province in May 2007. After taking the contents of the safe the burglars killed everyone present, including four children, the youngest of whom was four years old.

According to Ministry of Public Security spokesman Yu Xinmin, mass killings in 2006 were 63% lower than in 2005. In the same report, a professor at the Chinese People’s Public Security University, Li Meijin, said that 'In a big country such as China, 10 mass murders a year is relatively low.'

With the acceptance of such figures, does this mean that mass-murder is a tradition in China?"

Reason Number 28 - A Traditional Feast of Cruelty

2008-08-27T00:20:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 53
“Cruelty to animals has a long history in China. ‘Rich people in ancient times used to put live ducks onto hot iron plates and the ducks end up dancing themselves to death. The diners then eat the meat on the ducks’ feet because it was said to be much more delicious than the meat of ducks cooked in the ordinary way’ said media.

China has many cruelly-prepared dishes. One is called ‘the three squeaks.’ This dish consists of live baby mice, and its name comes from the fact they squeak first when picked up by the diner’s chopsticks, second when dipped in sauce, and third when placed in the mouth and bitten.

Media also noted that while some people were kinder to animals, this could ‘stem from a fear of being punished if animals are treated badly’ because ‘Buddhism encourages people not to eat animals since … after death, people may become animals themselves.’ It is fear of religious retribution that may dictate positive treatment of animals rather than the natural expression of kindness itself."

Among the few people still bothering to comment on this blog there’s a bit of a debate going on about the merits of TCM – traditional Chinese medicine.

As a rationalist I no more believe in most of TCM than I believe in other equally preposterous fairy tales such as Jesus and Allah. Sure, TCM has its testable benefits, but only insofar as its shamanistic recipes coincide with the proven benefits of many types of plant. The bulk of it is sheer nonsense, from yin and yang to acupuncture.

This is not to deny it can be effective – for what TCM most does is soothe the mind of those who believe in it – and if the mind is convinced, the body often can be. That’s why there is such a vast army of idiots who believe in homeopathy and crystal healing and aromatherapy and so on.

But these ‘medicines’ are nothing more than placebos – in the case of acupuncture, for example, an experiment last year found that “There was no statistically significant difference between proper, genuine acupuncture and fake, ‘bung a needle in, anywhere you fancy, with a bit of theatrical ceremony’ acupuncture.”

The problem with TCM is that it sees nature as an allegory. It imposes a very human interpretation on the world, and suggests that the way ‘we’ see the world is how the world really is. In short – the essence, the very theory and core of TCM is ignorant and arrogant.

Take the case of tiger bone. Tiger bone – indeed all parts of the tiger – are highly prized by TCM since they are held to endow great strength on those who ingest them. This is because, from a human perspective, the tiger is a signifier of power and prowess; it is an animal of grace, speed and deadliness.

TCM sees the tiger as an answer; in fact it is just an equation. The tiger is made out of the same stuff as any other animal, and it is the inescapable Darwinian response to its environment. It is merely a staging post in the grand flow of evolution. But TCM views it as a finished, almost designed product; TCM sees it as an embodiment rather than a process.

But nature is not an allegory; eating the tiger does not make us strong any more than eating the mole makes us miners. To see animals as signifiers is to misunderstand nature and our place in it. And that is why TCM has done so much damage to the natural world, driving the tiger and the rhino close to extinction. It is also why China’s attitude to the animal world (all parts of it save small fluffy dogs) is so monstrously cruel, stuck back where the West was in the age of bear-baiting and cock fights.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 54
“China does have laws to protect its endangered species, though like so many laws in the country they carry little judiciary weight, the result of which leaves rare animals hunted for food in an age of grocery stores and supermarkets.

A nationwide campaign called Spring Thunder in 2003 saw Chinese police inspect nearly 16,000 animal fairs and 67,800 hotels and restaurants across the county. During the inspection, which lasted just nine days, 838,500 endangered animals were confiscated, saved from China’s kitchens. About 45,000 of them were wildlife with first-class state protection.

In 2007, demand for wild and exotic animals on the dinner table was still high. Thirteen people were sentenced to up to 14 years in prison after they were found guilty of illegally buying and selling thousands of state-protected wild animals in the largest wild animal trade case the country had seen, said media. One man, Ma Weihu, illegally bought about 900 owls, a Grade-II state protected animal, to sell to restaurants in southern Guangdong Province.

While China’s laws on endangered species are clearly ineffectual, the country also does not have a single law ruling against animal cruelty. None. ‘(Animal abuse) cannot be tackled with public opinion or moral pressure, it’s time for legislation,’ said Mang Ping, assistant professor with the Central Socialist Academy, and a long-time advocate for animal rights in China.”

Reason Number 27 - The Chinese ‘Gold’ Push

2008-08-25T21:31:00.001Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 51
“Coming from countries like Canada and Britain, the authors have the ability to appreciate coming second or third, even the necessity of it. There is true glory in silver and bronze.

Not if you are a citizen of China. Unless you achieve gold medal ranking, your accomplishments will disappear along with hundreds of thousands of other second and third place finishers. On Chinese television, if you win on a live broadcast, you are certain to be replayed over and over. If you or your team loses, a terse three sentences on the evening’s sports program will be all the glory you will receive.

An example of the obsession with coming first was seen after the 2004 Athens Olympics, when only gold-medal winners from mainland China were allowed the grace of celebrating their achievements in front of politicians and the public in Hong Kong. Silver and bronze medal winners had to be content with the warmth of family congratulations at home, out of the limelight. Only mere fractions of distance and milliseconds of time separate winners from losers. But in China the gulf between winners and loser is physical, spiritual, and huge.”

‘…the ability to appreciate coming second or third’ – or perhaps even fourth, which is where ‘we,’ the British, came in the Olympics. ‘We’ are of course celebrating, since though we had hoped to retain the third place slot we had held for much of the games, we were content to end up fourth. Best result in a century and so on.

But what is ‘we’? I am British, and I do feel a certain sense of pleasure that Britain has done so well at the Olympics. And I could get pugnacious about it, could point out that with ‘our’ population base, being 60 million or so, we won one gold per 3.15 million people, and that China, with its base of 1.6 billion, won one gold per 31 million. Does that make Britain ten times better than China?

Yet in the end I cannot really feel much sense of personal pride. I honor the achievement of the British athletes, just like I honor the victories of the Chinese athletes. But it does not really have anything to say about what Britain is, or how the world should view the nation. These victories are ultimately just personal events.

The cult of personal victory is fine; but the idea of national victory is dangerous and threatening. And it leads to great sacrifices, as so many of China’s almost-made-it athletes know. The pressure to win, to win gold, finally does more harm than good.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 52
“For China, coming first in major international competitions is almost a matter of life and death, and is comparable to a major military campaign. Liu Peng, President of the Chinese Olympic Committee, said in early 2007 that “Battle preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games are in a grave state. To the outside, we must display humble troops and keep a low profile, but inwardly we must plant grand ambition to scale great heights, and there can be absolutely no slackening.” Would words of actual war be any less bombastic? Would the call to arms be any less spiritually demanding?

The pursuit of titles is so dominant that it restricts the personal freedom of athletes. In late 2006 Liu Peng announced ‘In order to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, our country’s athletes, including celebrity athletes, are banned from participating in all kinds of social activities.’ In typical Chinese fashion, what was meant by “social activities” was not specified. And while media suggested the ruling was primarily aimed at sports stars who gave commercial endorsements to products, the vaguely worded nature of the statement meant it could be used to control athletes in the widest possible range of ways.

In China, trying counts for very little. All that matters is success, and the concept of the ‘noble failure’ is virtually non-existent. The ‘success at all costs’ attitude is at the root of many other social phenomena observable in China today. It is the reason behind the stock market frenzy, and the reason behind the fact that manufacturers are willing to sell low quality or dangerous goods just so that they can close the deal. It underlies China’s conspicuous consumption, and it explains why students are expected to seek financial success over personal satisfaction – and why the student who wants to be an artist or musician faces social derision.”

Reason Number 26 - The Migrant School of Revolution

2008-08-24T21:42:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 49
“China’s migrants have built the factories and office blocks that support the country’s rise to economic supremacy. They have built roads, rail, docks and airports that allow it to import and transport the millions of tons of raw ingredients it needs and export the billions of dollars of finished goods it produces. And most of this has been done by sweat and muscle power rather than by hi-tech machinery. Spade and sinew are the most common sights on China’s construction projects, often without labor-saving hydraulic equipment.

China’s migrants also work in the kitchens of the cities, providing meals for socialites and office workers that they could not themselves afford. They clean the houses of the richer city elite. Migrants are available for any job beneath the social and economic standard of the city’s better-educated residents.

Life has always been hard for such people in China – so much so that their way of existence has entered the very language. The English word ‘coolie’ is taken from the Chinese words ‘ku li,’ meaning ‘bitter strength,’ a testament to how many centuries China’s poor have labored for China’s rich. Such language and such attitudes reinforce the ostracization of these city-builders to a point where they feel they live in one country while building another.

Their numbers continue to grow, and as they come to the clear realization that they will never share in the good life enjoyed by the millions of city dwellers, China’s migrant workers will form the 3rd Army of Instability.”

So, goodbye to the Olympics for another four years. It was about what I expected – a mix of glitzy show, Chinese powerhouse athlete success, and lies and dissimulation.

The last two weeks cost the Chinese people more than forty billion US dollars. Was it worth it, guys, when so many of your nation still struggle to attain even the most basic necessities of life?

Yeah, a pretty stunning medal tally. Soon as China got the games I knew they’d get the most medals. No two ways about it – all those years to round up promising young children and put them in the concentration camps of modern Chinese sport. For China’s athletes, life is a regime of the most arduous physical exercise, with no love, no care, no education. There is just one goal – to be the best. If you’re not the best you’re cast aside like trash. Doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved – fail, and you’re fucked. Look at Liu Xiang. Where was he in the closing ceremony? Where was the respect and honor for him?

I admire and respect China’s athletes. They are glorious. But the world should know that the athletes who performed so wonderfully over the course of the games are just a tiny layer on top of a huge mound of sacrificed bodies, the bodies of the tens and tens of thousands who did not make the grade -- who gave everything and got nothing.

That’s how it is in China, from the children to the aged. From the young girl who practiced to sing in the opening ceremony, tossed aside because she was not cute enough, to the 200 million migrant workers who face contempt and hardship every single day, the message China gives is clear -- Be perfect or fuck off.

China calls itself a socialist country. And the impulse behind socialism – the sense of equality – is indeed noble. But China is a more rapacious and brutal nation than any capitalist country on the planet. Greed and selfishness, that’s the core of life in China today. And so the ‘socialist’ claim is a monstrous crock of bullshit.

But what is to be expected from China when the very name of the nation is a lie?

China – ‘The People’s Republic of China’ – as if the people owned anything – as if they were in charge! China is run by the crooks and thieves of the party and the few millions of citizens who have managed to make some money trading on the misery of the poor.

Bring on the uprising of the third army, that’s what I say.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 50
“A major survey undertaken by China’s Ministry of Labor and Social Security, which covered 2.84 million migrant workers across 19,000 enterprises in 40 cities, found that 79.2% of workers listed their greatest concern as income and nearly 40% talked about lack of social insurance. Just over 25% said unpaid wages were a major concern. Of those who had not been paid on time, said the survey (without giving the precise number of unpaid workers) the average amount owed was 2,100 yuan (US$270).

Regardless of the lack of a precise number of unpaid workers, fully one in four migrant workers has not been paid, fears they will not be paid, or has reservations about the truth behind the company that they work for and the ability of the government to enforce the retrieval of the funds should they be withheld.

Article 36 of China’s 1995 Labor Law says “The State shall practice a working hour system wherein laborers shall work for no more than eight hours a day and no more than 44 hours a week on the average.” Such words indicate a labor utopia which is not to this day enjoyed by any migrant. A survey by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in June 2007 found that most migrant workers received no payment for overtime, and that two thirds of them had no opportunity to negotiate wages. It also found that more than 30% of migrant workers injured in industrial accidents received absolutely no compensation.”

Top 10 Possible Reasons Why Liu Xiang Walked Away

2008-08-21T19:04:00.004Z

Guest Post by Karl Lacroix

1. Liu was the only athlete in the history of sports with 1.3 BILLION coaches. Everybody in China knew what Liu should do, but only he knew what he COULD do.

2. Liu was and will forever be a ‘one hit’ athletic wonder. A lot of athletes are like that. He should have walked away after the world record was set. Chinese people were shocked that he, an Asian, had beaten the clock in basically a Western competition. The shock was right. He will never do it again.

3. The Chinese forgot that he was a hero of the last Olympics, not the 2008 Olympics. Hero status today is something each athlete MUST earn and you are nothing till you do. Who remembers who won what in 1996 or 2000? The voracious appetite for heroes prevalent throughout the world is damn near a fever pitch in China. Does anyone in China care who the No.2 Chinese 110m hurdles runner is? Nobody in the rest of the world does either, Eat ‘em up and spit ‘em out. (Shi Dongpeng by the way).

4. Liu failed because he spent too much time chasing kangaroos in TV commercials in China. Hell, even Aussie runners don’t chase kangaroos.

5. Liu had too much money to carry on his back each time he ran a race...bundles of it strapped on his back. And the biggest currency note in China is only worth 100 rmb. He was in effect a race horse with a huge handicap under his saddle. Alas now he will only be able to spend it. (Crocodile tears all around...).

6. No sex! Liu had bad skin, obviously meaning he was not getting laid. Sex relaxes the muscles. He looked so tight the night he walked away, like he had a terminal case of blue balls. (Now I can hear my Chinese readers saying ‘Blue balls?’- - never mind).

7. Too much sex! Liu was a pretty boy. Maybe he had too many girls sapping his strength. On the other hand maybe he had too many gay lovers slapping him silly.

8. Liu knew the Cuban was going to win. Athletes in any TOP sport know if they will get beaten or not. The great ones find another way to win, usually with heart. Being not so great....Liu took the shower (read ‘easy’) road.

9. The Communist government told him to quit. Why? Well, right now, can you name any Chinese superstar (with a moniker as recognizable as Liu Xiang) who has won gold at this Olympics in a heroic way? Nope. So the government views the gold medal count as a victory for communism.....individuals not wanted. The leaders of China know that the record book will show that the 2008 medal haul by China will be forever recorded as the biggest win by a ‘political system’. Hey they beat the Nazi’s totals of 1936. Sick!

10. The sad thing is I think Liu knew he was not able to run that night but because Chinese people have conspiracy theories worse than Americans, he HAD to come out, show himself and then bust up his foot for the ‘fans’ just so they ‘knew’ he really tried. Athletes at that level of fine tuned skill, know when they are not right.......they KNOW. So out he came, said ‘Watch me citizens of China’, and then zapped his foot.

And that, for me is the most heroic thing that has happened in sports in a long time. Damn stupid, but heroic nonetheless. I predict after suitable medical consideration Liu Xiang will retire.

Karl Lacroix

Reason Number 25 - The Silence of Chinese Conservation

2008-08-21T18:57:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"The River Yangtze is the third longest on the planet. It is approximately 6,300 km long and accounts for more than a third of China’s total freshwater supplies. It discharges more than a million million cubic meters of water into the sea annually. A river so huge, it might be thought, would be almost impossible to pollute heavily.

Yet according to the 2007 health report on this river (which, despite being billed as ‘annual’ by the Chinese government is the first of its kind) it is under major pressure. Around 10% of the Yangtze is in ‘critical condition,’ and 30% of its major tributaries are seriously polluted. According to Yang Guishan, a researcher at a department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the nation’s leading intellectual body, this impact is ‘largely irreversible.’ In 2006, the Yangtze fell to its lowest level since records began in 1877.

Every species that lives in the river is in decline, most dramatically the white-flag dolphin, or ‘Baiji,’ one of only five species of freshwater dolphin in the world.

A six week search for the white-flag along the river did not find a single dolphin, leading some researchers to conclude it is in fact extinct. If so, it will be the first time mankind has driven a cetacean to extinction."

China’s lack of concern for the environment is pretty shocking. There is almost no environmental activism at any level in society. The sector I am most familiar with, the highly-educated, are no exception.

Now these guys are environmentally aware. They have some idea how fucked-up China’s environment is (though they only know a mere fraction of the true situation) but they simply don’t care. I’ve never seen a student turn off the air conditioner after class, or turn off a light. Most dump their trash – food wrappers, drink bottles – on the floor and saunter out of the class uncaring.

For most of my stay in China, I’ve never seen a Chinese person take a used plastic bag to the store. When I go to the store, I take a plastic bag. And when I get it out at the till, most times the checkout operator and the people in the queue smile, or laugh – ‘Look at the funny foreigner!’

I guess that’s slowly going to change now that Shanghai government compels stores to charge for plastic bags. The many years of ‘patriotic education’ – the slogans plastered everywhere exhorting people to ‘Love China’ and so on had precisely zero effect. There is very little sense of altruism in China; most everything is filtered through the lens of immediate personal benefit.

That’s why most Chinese people care nothing for the environment, but they do care to save a coin.

And that’s why China’s environment will continue to be raped, ravaged and exploited for the foreseeable future.

There’s money in it.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 47
"It’s safe to say that the idea of “harmoniously coexisting with nature,” which China introduced in 2003 as a “new concept” is not working. One reason that the national government has such limited success in controlling pollution is that local governments do everything they can to keep the inspectors out.

For example, many local governments set up industrial parks which banned other government departments from conducting any inspections whatsoever without direct approval. This is why most of the hundred firms in one such industrial park in Henan Province did not install any pollution control equipment at all, and instead just dumped untreated waste into a local river.

Similar parks can be found in Anhui, Gansu and Zhejiang Provinces. All across China county governments collude with polluters to keep the money flowing into their pockets and the poison flowing into the environment."

China is still brutalizing Tibet, even as the Games are underway. Heavy-handed crackdowns, making sure no Tibetan voice is heard free and clear. So if you are in China and can be on camera, make a ‘T’ sign for Tibet and an X sign for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 24 - Why am I Speaking English?

2008-08-21T00:14:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 45
"Between the years 1978 and 2006 China allowed 1,067,000 of its young citizens to study abroad. More than 792,000 of those citizens never came home.

They never returned to ‘the motherland,’ and have never returned to be Chinese. Three out of four of those more than one million minds, full of new information, education and ideas, nation-building qualities, are still keeping the company of Western economies and living a Western lifestyle.

In the earlier years of this exodus, the most popular study designations were the US, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. But more recently many other countries have joined the list. New Zealand. Ireland. France. Germany. Italy. Spain. Austria. Even Russia and the Ukraine. It seems that almost any country is preferable to departing Chinese youth than China."

The exodus of students from China is indeed vast. And that’s largely commendable – Chinese university education being so shit, the only way to get a decent education is to leave China. And while overseas education does indeed change students, it is not perhaps as effective in doing so as it could be.

The reason for this is that Chinese students, on the whole, opt for an exceedingly narrow choice of study subjects. And the most single popular topic of study is greed. Greed, money, cash, capitalism, all that – students want to study accounting, business, finance, management… and, of course, MBA degrees. Anyone who studies an MBA degree is pretty much guaranteed to be a wanker, by the way.

Add to this a good proportion of students studying computer science (also perceived as a path to financial success) and a smaller (but much nobler) number aiming at medicine, and you pretty much cover the whole diaspora.

These students may well help boost China’s economy.

But where are the students who will help expand China’s soul?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 46
"Nearly 80% of Chinese students – from primary age to undergraduates – list learning English as their top priority. One survey, said Chinese media, suggested that 56% of students not studying English majors spent ‘a large portion’ of their time on English, and another 19% spent almost all their time studying the language. All Chinese university students – no matter what they are studying – must pass English exams otherwise they cannot graduate. For many students, cramming to pass these exams is the single biggest burden on their time.

According to China International Business magazine, English is a ‘status symbol’ and can even be a factor in marriage. 'A man without a grasp of English is nearly paralyzed”'a young Chinese woman told the magazine, describing her requirements for a potential husband. 'It is obvious that a young man without a fair command of English won’t be able to climb up the social ladder.'

English can be viewed as a ‘virus’ in terms of the effect it is having on China. The combination of the internet and widespread ability to read English has created a democracy of communication in China. Government censorship of English-based websites is much less severe than Chinese-based websites – a ‘one internet, two systems’ culture. Yet China does not have a democracy in thought, since its government restricts the combination of free thinking and free expression among its people.

While the Party is remarkably efficient at controlling how people think and speak using the Chinese language, when it comes to English their control is severely limited. Knowledge of English allows Chinese citizens to escape the straitjacket of government control."

Perhaps knowledge of English might also help those Chinese citizens with an open mind read more widely about Tibet and Xinjiang and learn to see that these countries are indeed captive possessions of China. 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 23 - Graying Reds

2008-08-19T18:48:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 43
“China’s constant talk of a ‘peaceful rise’ and of ‘peaceful development’ is an attempt to create an image of a young and dynamic new economy. The astonishing growth of the country’s economy in recent years can make it appear like a strong economic youngster growing into powerful and confident world of developed countries.

Yet real Chinese society is gray, both in age and numbers. According to the World Health Organization, an ‘aging society’ is either one in which 10% of the population is over 60 years old or (in another measure) 7% of the population is over 65.

Nationwide, by the end of 2005, China had almost 144 million people over the age of 60, accounting for 11% of the entire population. The number of elderly people is rising fast, at 3% a year overall, with the number of those over 80 rising by 5% a year. By 2010, other estimates say China will have 174 million people over 60, more than 20 million of whom will be over 80.

By 2025, there will be 280 million people in China over the age of 60. By 2045, that number will have risen to 400 million. The average age in China, which was around 30 in 2000, will rise to 39 by 2025. By 2040 the average age will be 44, meaning the country will age faster in a generation than Europe has in a century. To put it another way, by 2050 average age will be three years higher than average lifespan was in 1950.”

Many of the commentators on this blog say that China is the coming nation. China is developing, they write – China is getting stronger every day. And that is a China I would like to see – strong, confident, just, capable and creative.

But how can that China ever come into existence when so many of its citizens are elderly, and when so many of its youth are taught to think and act like the elderly – conservative, inflexible, convinced they understand the world?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 44
“China’s dilemma is that it will grow old before it grows rich. As the number of elderly continues to rise and China’s use of the one-child policy prevents an increase in younger people to support them, the situation will get exponentially worse.

By 2050, by some estimates the average lifespan will be an incredible 85 years old. This means many one of the one-child workers of the future will have to devote even more resources to supporting two retired parents and four retired grandparents. About 65% of the elderly population in rural areas receive no benefits from China’s social welfare system. By 2040, when China’s aged population will be at its peak, the country’s social security budget will have a shortfall of US$128 billion annually.

China’s government has plenty of bland pronouncements to make about its attitude towards the elderly. 'The State values and cherishes senior citizens for their knowledge, experience and skills, and respects them for their good ethical values. It thus makes vigorous efforts to create good conditions for senior citizens to bring into full play their expertise and capability, and gives them encouragement and support to integrate into society and continue to make contributions to the social development of China' said a recent white paper on the elderly from the Information Office of China’s State Council. But apart from mentioning current facts and figures – such as that the nation had only 20,000 professional nurses for the aged by the end of 2005, the 7,500 word document (released at the end of 2006) had almost nothing concrete to say about what needs to be done in the future.”

Still some days to go in the Olympics. The world's eyes remain on China. 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 22 - Once the Masters of Invention

2008-08-18T16:32:00.005Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 41
"Any great nation needs to rely on creativity and innovation in order to leave its mark on history as well as to drive its economy. For China’s economic miracle to continue, it is imperative to re-discover its native sense of inventiveness, the same inventiveness that created China itself.

However, the country’s leaders know that a truly creative and free-thinking population will also be much more likely to demand innovation in politics as well as industry, meaning the Party remains wary of too much reform. Democracy is a great energizer of invention, but is a step too far for the present government.

Instead, the Party has sought to channel national innovation into paths that will bolster its own hold on power. Rather than allow any form of ‘blue skies’ thinking (that is, free and undirected scientific enquiry), the Party directs innovation and a huge amount of finance into politically impressive projects such as its space program. Whereas in the United States, cash and ingenuity results in creativity (as in the case of Microsoft, for example), in China the government’s money directs all things, which usually dampens the sparks of innovation."

So where is China’s inventive streak? The nation that gave the world the compass, paper, the printing press, gunpowder - what has it created in the last few hundred years?

I see that I got precisely zero answers to an earlier question, in which I asked how Taiwan could possibly 'part of China' be when it had its own laws and leaders. So I’ll try a simpler question.

Which of my nationalist Chinese readers can tell me what China has invented to make the world a better place in the last century or two?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 42
China’s space program put the nation’s first man in space in 2003 (more than forty years after the Russians did it) and in 2005, Hu Shixiang, deputy chief commander of the space program, said China would put a man on the moon and build a space station within ten to 15 years.

Projects such as this contribute very little to the sum total of human wellbeing, and they certainly do not make the life of the average Chinese citizen any better – indeed, the life of the average Chinese citizen becomes worse given that billions of dollars poured into space projects becomes unavailable to provide the schools, hospitals and social welfare that rural China so desperately needs. This money also siphons off research funding for scientists who are working on projects of real benefit.

The space program unites the Chinese people with a feeling of pride, and it is this pride the Party uses to leverage its grip on power. Yet national self-esteem is only one aspect of China’s rush into space. China’s wish to put a man on the moon has perhaps more to do with Chinese desires for military expansion into space.

Sadly, the vast majority of Chinese people quickly smile and register self-satisfaction when the space race and the new arms-in-space race is brought up in general conversation. For them, the allocation of billions of dollars of research funds to vanity projects, when domestic matters require creative solutions to real problems, is totally acceptable.

And while China provides the biggest show of all, the Olympic games, still its captive colonies suffer. 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang, every chance you get.

Reason Number 20 - Suicide China

2008-08-18T01:26:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 39
Around 250,000 people kill themselves every year in China, according to statistics from China’s Ministry of Health. To put this another way – every two minutes of each hour, 24/7, eight Chinese people kill themselves. The figure of 250,000 is those whose deaths are reported as suicide. It does not include the suicide deaths that are hushed up or attributed to other causes.

A further two million people attempt suicide annually, according to statistics from 2003, the latest year for which information is available to us at the time of writing. Furthermore these two million attempts were just the ones that ended up in hospital, indicating a far higher true total.

Even more shocking, of these two million, “less than one percent receive psychiatric assessment and guidance during the emergency treatment” said Chinese media.

The suicide death toll among today’s Chinese citizens is beyond the ability of government officials to calculate accurately. According to the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center, which was set up in 2003 by the Society of Neurology and Psychiatry of the Chinese Medical Association and Beijing’s Huilongguan Hospital, the figure is 23 suicides per 100,000 people. Based on an official population of 1.3 billion, that’s almost 300,000 suicides a year.

Suicide is the number one killer of Chinese people between the ages of 15 and 34. Surprising, when you consider the burgeoning economy and new-found ‘freedoms’ offered by the state that pronounces stability and harmony as its watchwords. In a country where young people have everything to live for, they are ending their lives at a rate that surely must make government leaders question the speed of change that is overtaking the Chinese people in the name of progress.

My only question here, to all those Chinese citizens leaving comments to defend China -- why is it that so many of your fellow citizens are killing themselves? If China is ‘getting better every day,’ why the huge death toll?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 40
The suicide rate among women is 25% higher than among men, and rural suicide rates are three times higher than urban rates. The causes of suicide in rural areas tend to arise out of different factors, most commonly poverty and domestic abuse, with women suffering by far the most.

According to Xu Rong, who works with the Cultural Development Centre for Rural Women, “Most suicides in rural areas start with small quarrels between couples…Some of them are accidental; some are actually rooted in unhappy marriages.”

In China’s countryside, there is great pressure on young women to conform to society’s expectations of traditional marriage, meaning many arranged marriages.

Many marriages are not based on love, and, says Xu Rong, “Rural men tend to be reluctant to express their love or care for their spouses, who have more romantic emotions.”

One of the problems that Xu Rong’s organization faces is that it remains very small scale. She says that when the project began she faced criticism because people felt suicide was a “private issue.” Even though the project soon began to achieve good results, it only served six villages in three rural counties.

Acknowledging this problem, Liu Denggao, a vice-director at the Ministry of Agriculture, said his ministry would restrict production of the most poisonous insecticides, change the color and smell of poisons, package chemicals in small amounts, and educate the public about appropriate uses and storage of pesticides. He was speaking as a workshop on a National Suicide Prevention Plan for China in 2003.

In 2006, Xu Rong said it was still too easy for women to obtain pesticides, three years after the Ministry of Agriculture had said it would address the problem.

Lethal pesticides today are freely available off the shelf, are inappropriately stored in home environments, and this inexpensive answer to a moment’s anger or feeling of depression too readily is the answer taken.

Early in 2007, a young woman was preparing to kill herself in the central city of Chongqing. As she stood, ready to jump off a six-storey building, a crowd gathered below.

Some yelled for her to jump, and some phoned friends to “come and enjoy the spectacle.” Others were upset she had not jumped before the emergency services arrived to try and talk her down. One young man sat in the window of an opposite building playing his guitar to entertain the crowds. When the emergency services persuaded the woman to give up the attempt, the crowd below booed. The unfolding of tragedy before the eyes of many Chinese citizens is today viewed with a sense of pleasure.

‘T’ for Tibet and ‘X’ for Xinjiang. Make the signs every chance you get. Tibet and Xinjiang will one day regain the freedom China has taken from them!

Reason Number 19 - Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics

2008-08-14T22:36:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 37
In China, the ‘kowtow’ has long been the traditional form of obeisance on meeting the emperor. The ceremony involves crouching on one’s hands and knees and knocking the head against the floor, and a full performance of the ritual requires the giver to fall to his knees three times, each time knocking his head to the ground thrice.

Kowtowing to your immediate superior and those above theoretically ended when the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911. Occasionally you will see staff members at various hotels genuflect with less formality and depth, indicating a sense of the past still lives in China.

The idea that China is still the center of the world has reappeared in subtle ways, although perhaps subtlety is not the correct term to use when considering China’s approach to Taiwan – which is unification by any means, with force if necessary.

Today China has reached back into its traditions to create the ‘Taiwan kowtow,’ a kowtow with politics added to it, easily the one overriding political idea that consumes Chinese political cadres, as well as the public.

It appears that every single country’s leaders, freely elected or not, must mouth the golden words of the new Taiwan kowtow.

ChinaBounder comments:

Poor old Taiwan.

Taiwan is an example of what China could be. Taiwan, in its 36,000 square kilometers, has a hundred times more greatness in it than China does in its near ten million square kilometers.

In just 50 years Taiwan achieved what China, in 2000 years, never managed. Democracy. Freedom. A voice for the people!

Taiwan is to be honored. Taiwan, proud, strong independent. It is a great nation.

And it is most emphatically not part of China.

Now I’ve asked this question a thousand times and I’ve not yet met the Chinese citizen who is able to give me a coherent, logical answer.

The people of Taiwan choose their own leaders. Their own law. They have their own currency. Their own passport. In every yardstick by which a nation can be defined, Taiwan is a nation.

China, for all its childish huffing and puffing, has precisely zero control over Taiwan – save, of course, the only thing that Chinese politicians really understand – the threat of force. That’s all China’s got. That’s China’s one claim to Taiwan – be part of us or we will obliterate you to the last man woman and child.

And so by what measure, I ask my Chinese readers, can you claim Taiwan is part of China?

Now first of all, you can fuck off with your historical bullshit claims. History means precisely shit, and I have hashed this over so many times with indoctrinated Chinese people that I now am simply abrupt about it. Fuck history. It does not matter. Even if the ludicrous claims that Taiwan has ‘always’ been part of China were true, even if it could be proved Taiwan’s been part of China since the Han Dynasty it would matter precisely nothing. (And in any case, the truth is that China paid no attention at all to Taiwan for much of its history. There was a brief incursion in the early Qing, but even by the late Qing the government of China stated ‘Taiwan is beyond our dominions.’)

Because today is what matters. Right now is what matters. Right now China has zero control over Taiwan. And right now Taiwan has zero interest in coming back to China.

Indeed I guarantee – I guarantee – that there is not one single young Taiwanese citizen who wants the nation to be part of China. Not one.

And that’s the equation. It’s what the Taiwanese want today that matters.

I ask my Chinese readers: Why should the Taiwanese people be bound by ‘history’? Even if your preposterous version of history were true, why should the destiny of today’s Taiwanese people be decided by the actions of generations long dead? Why do they not have the right to choose their own path?

The only people who use ‘history’ as an argument are those who have no other argument to make.

It’s just the same with Tibet, guys. What matters is now. What matters is what the people who live in Taiwan and Tibet (and Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, those other nations China holds by force) want now.

And by fuck they don’t want to be part of China.

Of course one gets used to lies and bluster from China. That’s the way of it, and there are a dozen examples everywhere you look – as, for example, John Ray found out the other day. He’s a BBC journalist. He was in China, doing his job, reporting on activists from a group called ‘Students for a Free Tibet.’ The Chinese police, who were beating seven bells of shit out of these guys, as is fully to be expected, also had a crack at Mr. Ray, dragging him away, bundling him into a van, and forcibly restraining him there.

China, when it won the right to hold the Olympic games, said it would respect media freedom. That was, of course, a lie. When will the world realize it can expect little but lies from China’s leaders?

And so the lies and shit over Taiwan that spew from China are no real surprise, and nor is the ignorance of young Chinese people regarding Taiwan.

The real injustice here (for one cannot expect justice from China) is how the rest of the world treats Taiwan. Taiwan’s achievement in reaching democracy should be honored. It is magnificent. It is a triumph of the human spirit, and the people of Taiwan deserve the highest respect and praise for sticking to their democracy in the face of their thuggish and belligerent neighbor China.

Do they get that respect? Do they fuck. Most of the rest of the world has proven happy to turn its back on Taiwan, to pay lip-service to the objectionable twaddle of ‘One China,’ to fleer and jest at what Taiwan has achieved. The order of the day is ‘Fuck Taiwan’s democracy, keep the criminals in Beijing happy, for that’s where the money is.’ Yeah, when it comes to money, where are the West’s fine morals?

And yet despite all that, Taiwan remains proud. Taiwan remains strong. Taiwan remains a nation.

Good for the nation of Taiwan!

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 38
In April 2007, Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong met Germany’s Defense Minister, Franz Josef Jung, in Beijing. Jung said Germany would adhere to the one-China policy.

Perhaps Defense Minister Jung forgot that Germany’s reunification was accomplished by democracy, something at this point that only Taiwan has accomplished.

Again that month, Chinese Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu met the Dutch Foreign Minister, Maxime Verhagen, in The Hague. During the meeting, Verhagen reiterated the Dutch government’s continued adherence to the one-China policy.

In May 2007 Wu Bangguo, one of China’s most senior leaders, was in Warsaw, Poland, to discuss relations between the two countries and to collect the prerequisite Taiwan kowtow, meeting the speaker of the Polish parliament’s lower house, Ludwik Dorn

Dorn said that Poland’s position on the issues of Taiwan and Tibet will never change and that the Polish government and its people firmly oppose any secessionist activities in any forms.

A remarkable statement from a leader in a nation that suffered so much at the hands of so many totalitarian occupiers throughout its history. Poland only found its freedom through the democratic Solidarity movement which allowed it to break away from a communist regime and form a free nation – similar to some of Taiwan’s democratic intentions.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was again busy in this month, visiting his Canadian counterpart Peter Mackay. Foreign Minister Mackay said that the Canadian government would stick to the one-China policy and would not develop official ties with Taiwan.

While mouthing the required Party line kept his guests happy, perhaps Foreign Minister Mackay’s political party also gained votes from the vast number of Chinese who have made Canada their new home – unless of course some of their reasons for moving to Canada were to escape Chinese communism.

Soon after his election, French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with Chinese President Hu Jintao. Sarkozy said that Taiwan is an indispensable part of China, and France would firmly adhere to the one-China policy.

France’s famous national motto is ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’

But not for Taiwan.

Taiwan has fought for and found its freedom. But Tibet and Xinjiang are still fighting. Don’t forget the fight. Whenever you get the chance to be on camera in China, make a ‘T’ sign for Tibet and an ‘X’ sign for Xinjiang. One day those nations will be as free from China as Taiwan already is.

Reason Number 18. The Mirror of Japan - The War of Apology

2008-08-13T22:43:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 35
“Despite the signing of the 1972 ‘Joint Communiqué of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China’ which normalized relations between the two countries, for China, the ‘Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression,’ as the China-Japan war of 1937 to 1945 is called in China, has never truly come to an emotional closure. When China looks in the mirror of Japan, it sees an enemy, a country with which it is still fighting a war of apology.

And the one constant refrain of this emotional war is that Japan must ‘truthfully face up to history.’ The youth of Japan are declared ignorant about the need for reflection, and the youth of China therefore reflect only hatred.

How deep Chinese hatred of Japan goes was made clear in an editorial in People’s Daily in June 2007. Li Xuejiang, the newspaper’s chief resident reporter in the US, wrote that “The massacre of the Jews by the German Nazis during WWII was a trampling upon the human justice, and the issue about ‘sex slaves’ is an identical one and has no reason whatsoever to make it fade or weaken” [sic].

To equate one of the greatest tragedies in all human history – the Holocaust – with sex slavery, which, though a grave crime, is one that has been committed in almost every war ever fought – is simply obscene, and a deep insult to all Jewish people as well as many other nationals who suffered the horrors of the gas.

In making a link between the Japanese nation of today with Nazi Germany of the past, China simply distorts history and keeps hatred alive.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Ah, Japan. The one thing, above even Tibet and Xinjiang, which is guaranteed to provoke anger and misunderstanding from China.

Japan shows that just like many Chinese people don’t really understand the truth inside China, they don’t understand the truth outside China either.

I’ve written about Japan before, two years ago. In the time since then there has been a tiny glimmer recognition within the Communist Party that the policy it has held ever since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, of blaming Japan for everything, may be unwise. The force of nationalism, once created, is hard to kill. But this is a faint spark indeed, for Japan remains a whipping boy too tempting to ignore. And so the drumbeat of hate for Japan continues to sound, creating an endless supply of angry Chinese nationalists.

I really don’t think people who have never visited China have any understanding of just how deep this hatred runs. It’s not present in all people, not by a long way. But it’s certainly a significant part of life in China today.

The hatred that wells out of China in response to Japan is an ugly thing. I’ve met it in people who are otherwise calm and rational, and in people who are highly educated.

But one incident more than any other sticks in my mind.

It took place, naturally, in the classroom, for it is in the classroom that I have really learned the mind of modern China. It was a class of younger students, around 17 to 19 years old, and at the time I was working for one of the many private language schools in Shanghai rather than a university. A few of the students were keen to work, but most were rather lazy– they were that new breed of young Chinese student, the idle rich. Offspring of newly-wealthy parents, they had never had to want for anything, never had to do much work.

Most of them were too idle, too lazy, to get a good score in the all-important college entrance exam, and so their parents had sent them here to brush up on English before paying hefty amounts of money to have them educated overseas. For most of them, the outlay would have been a waste of time, since for sure these guys would not work any harder abroad than at home – but as few had the gumption to work hard enough to learn the language skills, it was a moot point. They’d never get the visa to leave China.

Anyhow, there was one chap, a rather conceited fellow, who spend most of the class slumped on the table asleep (though of course that could have just been because I was a shit teacher.) Generally I don’t let students do this – I give ‘em the old ‘If you want to be in my class, you have to pay attention’ routine. But it hadn’t worked with him.

One session, I got to talking about Japan, and attitudes in China to that nation. This particular student was, as usual, slumped on his desk. I asked the student next to him, ‘What do you think of Japan?’

This question obviously penetrated the fog of the sleeping guy’s oblivion, for he sat bolt upright, stated ‘I hate Japan. We should kill all Japanese. I want to kill them!’

And, that said, he settled his head back into his folded arms and slept out the rest of the lesson.

That’s what I think of when I think of China and Japan. Because while you can’t extrapolate a whole nation from a single individual, every individual carries something of the nation inside.

What Japan did to China was indeed a grave sin against humanity.

But often I think there are many young people in China who would love the chance to visit those same horrors on Japan.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 36
“Giving a speech in September 2005 to mark the 60th anniversary of Japan’s surrender at the end of World War Two, Chinese President Hu Jintao said that ‘After the end of the war, many Japanese from all walks of life faced squarely the historical fact that Japanese militarists had launched the war of aggression against foreign countries and strongly denounced the atrocities Japanese aggressors had committed in China. Their conscience and courage are highly commendable.’

But the words do not stop there. Hu goes on to say that there are ‘…forces in Japan that have categorically denied the aggressive nature of the war Japan launched against China and the crimes it committed, and have tried their best to whitewash its militarist aggression and call back the spirit of those Class A war criminals who have been condemned by history.’

It is true that there are those in Japan who downplay or even extol its wartime past. Yet these are a minority voice, and a regrettable but unavoidable side-effect of living in a democratic nation. When citizens are allowed to voice their opinions freely, some of those opinions will be objectionable. But, short of direct hate speech, such freedoms must be honored. This is something China, in its War of Apology, and without democracy, simply cannot understand.

‘The past, if not forgotten, can serve as a guide for the future,’ said Hu. ‘By emphasizing the need to always remember the past, we do not mean to continue the hatred. Instead, we want to draw lessons from history and be forward-looking. Only by remembering the past and drawing lessons from it can one avoid the repetition of historical tragedies.’

But in what must rank as one of the most breathtakingly false, mendacious and hypocritical statements ever issued by any world leader, Hu said ‘History has eloquently proved that only when it adheres to the leadership of the CPC and the socialist road with Chinese characteristics can the Chinese nation create a brighter future.’

Exhaustive and meticulous research by Professor R. J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii, suggests that between its founding in 1949 and 1987, the government of the People’s Republic of China was responsible for the death of more than 75 million of its own citizens.

75 million.

This is the leadership that, says Hu, history ‘eloquently’ proves leads to a ‘brighter future.’

The failings of the CPC are not open to inspection, like the failings of other governments in other powerful nations. To replace this inspection process, China showers blame on what it views at excesses from outside its borders.

Hatred should be based on facts, not half-truths, rumors and misinterpretations of historical conflict, now only teachable by history books written by the citizens of each country, each book containing prejudices the other country will never accept. Teaching children how they should act in future may be more valid than teaching them how they should be guided by historical mythology.”

What Japan did to China, China has done the peoples of its colonized territories. Don't forget - if you're on camera in China, make a 'T' for Tibet and an 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 17 - Faux Pop-Culture

2008-08-12T22:47:00.005Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 33
“Mando-pop (Mandarin pop music) is characterized by softness. No hard edges are exposed where young people might cut themselves some independent thinking. No difficult subject matter interferes with the music from mesmerizing young minds.

The typical male mando-pop star is a designed metrosexual. Reasonably good looking, his hair, never long, is designed to gently fracture his face, the eyes possibly kohl shadowed. It is permissible to unbutton the shirt exposing an oiled, or sparkled hairless chest. Wiry thin, dressed in dark tones or blinding bright colors, the male mando-pop star whispers his song, never yelling, at least until the penultimate moment when all the girls will have their hearts stolen as the music in its crescendo closing requires our star to give it all he has.

In the audience hearts and glow sticks are all a flutter. One, possibly two well-mannered girls jump up on stage with bouquets of flowers. Our male star offers his cheek which the two girls shyly kiss, to the orgasmic cheer of the audience. Glow sticks flutter double time.

For the typical mando-pop female star, perfect in her makeup, dress and hair must be wistful, wishful and virginal. No sex allowed. That is reserved for Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese pop stars. If she can produce a tear, not during the song but when her adoring fans shriek her name through their glow sticks, a tear that she wipes away ever so gently with a single finger, then her concert will be considered a smash.

The songs are soft, breathy love ballads, almost spoken, and with the one essential quality that guarantees their success – they can be sung by anyone.

It is in the KTV parlors that a mando-pop’s star quality is manufactured. Hundreds of thousands of locations throughout China require the latest superstar efforts to be available for local singing fans, 15 to 25 years old, to duplicate the sounds of their favorites. If you can sell your songs to the KTV palaces, you are ensured stardom.

The kids can’t sing rock ‘n roll, so don’t bother making it. It’s just too Western for sensitive Chinese ears. And rock n’ roll just might tell the kids something they do not even want to hear.”

ChinaBounder comments:

So already that spectacular Olympic opening show is unraveling. The ‘firework footprint’ was faked, a hash-up of computer graphics – though to be fair it was totally obvious it was computer generated when it was played, and I am surprised anyone thought it would pass for real.

But today it was revealed that the little girl who gave a solo song was faking it too. This girl, Lin Miaoke, was a last-minute replacement for Yang Peiyi. Yang, it was planned, would sing the song live; and indeed the song that the world heard was sung by Yang. But Yang did not make it to the stage because – get this – her teeth were too crooked. And those crooked teeth apparently were a threat to China’s national dignity.

According to Chen Qigang, who was the music designer for the show, Yang was chosen for her perfect voice. But then some cocksucker from the Poltiburo came down “who gave us his opinion: It must change.”

China has changed - that’s what I’m often told. I say bollocks to that. China’s change is only superficial. All the shit surrounding the Olympics – the waste of money, the press-ganged thousands of performers, the poor thrown out of their homes and the rural workers thrown out of the city – the chest-beating, the boasting, the sheer mendacity of it. It’s all straight out of the CPC fuck-humanity copy book.

After all, what is this episode of insufficiently cute Yang Peiyi but the same old shit as no-longer-liked leaders being airbrushed out of photos?

Yang is seven years old. Imagine what a lifelong memory appearing in the opening ceremony would have been for her. And imagine what a memory it will be for her now. Imagine how she’ll feel about it.

This is more than just a story of China faking it to live up to some fairytale image of itself, a past that has been mythologized beyond far beyond reality. In fact it’s fucking despicable – Yang Peiyi has, in effect, been told that she looks so unattractive that she’d bring shame to her whole nation.

When China’s leaders can do that kind of shit to China’s children, how much of a fuck do you think they give for the rest of China’s citizens?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 34
“While young Chinese people are fascinated with overseas culture, that culture is most often presented to them in a highly controlled fashion – Western Culture with Chinese Characteristics. It is a simplified, sanitized version of Western culture, with anything thought-provoking or challenging scrubbed out.

The huge success of the US TV show ‘American Idol’ led Chinese TV to invent its own version of the show, which it called ‘Super Girl’ (or, to give it its full name, ‘Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest.’) Aired in 2005, this proved extremely popular, with more than 400 million people watching the final episode. The show, in all practical terms, copied the American production.

However, in 2007, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) issued ‘a list of rules to uphold high moral standards on a sequel.’ These rules said that the show ‘should include only “healthy and ethically inspiring” songs and try to avoid “gossip” about the contestants and scenes of fans screaming and wailing, or losing contestants in tears.’ In other words, less emotionally American.

The censors also ordered the title of the show to be changed, banning use of the word ‘super’ along with ‘girl’ (it became ‘Happy Boys’ Voice’ instead), restricted its running time to six weeks, and ‘decreed their hairstyles, clothes, fashion accessories, language and manners should be in line with the mainstream values.’ There was to be ‘No weirdness, no vulgarity, no low taste,’ and contestants from outside China were banned. Once again, Chinese culture was copying the West, yet Party bosses were dictating that culture should be a pale shadow of ‘Chinese characteristics.’

While Chinese people today are consumed by Western culture, the culture they actually receive is thus very carefully controlled. Chinese society appropriates Western culture without actually understanding what it means, sometimes producing a Western culture with Chinese characteristics / Chinese culture with Western characteristics hybrid.

Sadly, it is not only Chinese understanding of Western culture that is weak. It is now becoming true that Chinese people’s understanding of Chinese culture is also weakening. Young people tend to follow their peers in the chase to be popular. What is popular now in China has virtually nothing to do with Chinese history, traditions or culture. The result is a pseudo-culture environment leading eventually to a huge generation gap between children and their parents larger than anything that has ever existed in the West."

Remember that under all the fakery and manipulation that China has poured into the Olympics, its colonies still suffer. 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 16 – Mt. Rubbish

2008-08-11T22:03:00.004Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 31
In the year 2000, China produced 100 million tons of rubbish. By 2004, this had risen to 190 million tons in its urban areas alone. By 2020, it is predicted that the nation will produce 400 million tons annually. The quantity, in millions of tons, cannot possibly be understood. So, to put it another way, in 2020 it is predicted that China will produce as much rubbish as all other countries in the world did in 1997. China’s mountain of waste must of course be added to the rest of the world’s rubbish, exacerbating its global impact.

While China’s richer cities can afford to build high-tech rubbish treatment plants, this is not an option for the many less wealthy cities in the nation. And even in the wealthier cities, there is strong opposition to paying rubbish disposal fees. In Shanghai, for example, a 2004 survey found that most people over 35 found it hard to accept the fees being levied for waste collection. Even those under 35 who were more accepting of fees only wanted to pay between 3 yuan (US$0.36) and 10 yuan (US$1.2) a month per household. The trouble is, the city government factors the price out at between 10 and 20 yuan a month for efficient waste collection.

ChinaBounder comments:

An odd concatenation of circumstances that the day after I should speculate about the murder of Chinese citizens overseas, a story breaks about two Chinese students in Newcastle upon Tyne, Zhou Qian and Yang Zhenxing, who were murdered. At least, those are the names Xinhua (which should be more reliable) gives them; other media, such as the Guardian, names them as ‘Xi Zhou’ and ‘Zhen Xing Yang.’

Reaction is, naturally, spreading through other Chinese students in the UK and would-be students still in China. Xinhua quotes one Xin Yang, studying in the same city, as saying that “he received some emails from China telling him that some of the students who are preparing to study in Newcastle have stopped their process, and are considering shifting to other cities or even countries for their overseas education.”

But I suspect that it will turn out that Zhou and Yang were murdered by another Chinese student.

I say this because reports indicate there was no sign of a break-in, and no sign of theft. Yang, say reports, was wearing nightclothes. This suggests (as police have said) that the unfortunate couple knew their killer.

And so I feel it is most likely the killer was a fellow Chinese citizen.

I say this because the Chinese student community is just that – Chinese. Chinese students overseas, overwhelmingly, do not mix in with locals. They hang out with other Chinese students – eat Chinese, speak Chinese, think Chinese. Indeed I saw exactly this today, when I met a couple of Chinese friends for lunch in a university town in the country where I now write. As I waited for my friends, various other Chinese students passed, all speaking Mandarin; and not one of them was accompanied by a person of a different nation. China all the way.

Indeed, the Daily Telegraph reports another student in Newcastle upon Tyne, ‘Ishaopeng Wu,’ as saying “I am very shocked, I cannot see if we should live in this area any more. It is a tough area, but convenient for the university. As Chinese students we do not have any affairs with other people. I want to know why this happened. Sometimes local children attack us, I don't know whether it is because we come from another country.”

This says it all. “We do not have any affairs with other people” – that’s exactly the attitude for most Chinese students. They are notably more insular than students from any other nation (except, perhaps, Japan, also a nation with seemingly little interest in interacting with other cultures).

But the rest of what Mr. Wu says is equally telling – “Sometimes local children attack us.” Xinhua, in their murder report, cover the same tack, quoting Xin Yang as saying “the security situation is ‘not satisfactory’ as quite a number of students have been harassed by local teenagers.”

I know this to be true; I have heard it time again from my Chinese friends overseas. While physical violence is rare, many have told me of other forms of abuse, from “Bloody Chinese, why don’t you go home?” to casual, belittling treatment in the regular course of the day.

Indeed, both the Guardian and the Telegraph show their casual attitude towards Chinese people by making such a hash of their names. ‘Ishaopeng Wu’ is, presumably, meant to be ‘Wu Shaopeng,’ and the Guardian (which, to be fair, is generally sensitive to Chinese culture) has made a mess of given names and family names.

The sad fact of it is that Britain remains a racist country. Most of the racism is of the casual, careless kind, devaluing or ignoring anyone who is not perceived as ‘British,’ but a certain slice of it is also straight-up abuse and even violence. And while the latter type of racism is worse, it is all deeply objectionable and morally repugnant.

Now I am not my country; I am not responsible for the actions of such fellow citizens, even as I condemn them wholly. To feel shame is the wrong emotion. I am not ashamed, because I am not guilty of it. To feel shame is to think with a group mind, and I reject that. I am not tarred with the racism of other Brits simply because I am a Brit. That is not how it works.

I say this because many commentators to this blog have whaled on Britain today for the sins of its past. Those sins are real, indeed; but the British people are not to blame. Their duty is to be aware of that past and know what it means. In the same way, today’s young Chinese are not to blame for the many crimes against humanity of the Communist Party, but they are to blame for being ignorant of it. And, likewise, today’s young Japanese are not to blame for the crimes of Japan in the past (even though many Chinese feel they are), but they are to blame for ignorance of it.

But the racism of many of my fellow Britons, be it overt or covert, is only part of the story.

Chinese students overseas are not, in fact, isolated because of racism. After all, their direct community, the student community, is explicitly anti-racist. Anyone who has spent any time on most any Western campus will know this – most (sure, not all) students pride themselves on their liberalism, their color-blindness. And the universities themselves take racism very seriously, and generally will be quick to punish students or staff guilty of it.

The problem is that Chinese students are simply not good at interacting with non-Chinese students. The reasons behind this are many and complex, a mix of education (that is, poor education that fails to teach social skills), pride, shyness, inflexibility, misunderstanding and much more besides. Culture plays a big role in it, on both sides of the gap – Western students misunderstand Chinese students and wrongly feel they are aloof and proud, and Chinese students simply do not understand the ways in which Western students socialize.

I’ll give a good example that crystallizes this. A close friend of mine, Zhou, from central China, has been studying in Europe for several years. Zhou enjoys life in Europe, and most of his friends are European. He does what all students going overseas should do – he integrates with the local community. Zhou’s friends are drawn from all over the world, though naturally most are European. And because he has this wide circle of non-Chinese friends, the Chinese students on his current campus look down on him. They think he is a snob. It’s a bizarre reaction.

This same friend told me recently that he was studying in his room one evening when there was a knock on the door, and he opened it to find a Chinese person outside. This person explained he’d recently arrived on campus and he had gone from door to door looking at names. And when he found a name that he recognized as Chinese (that is, Zhou’s name), he knocked on the door. He assumed that Zhou would be his friend merely by virtue of their shared Chineseness. Now if this chap had been smuggled into Europe as an illegal worker, alone, afraid, I could understand it. Yet he was highly educated, fluent in English and perfectly capable of integrating in the wider community. But, no; he chose to seek out Chineseness.

And that is why, so often, the Chinese community overseas remains isolated. Chinese people take their Chineseness with them, wherever they go, and seldom look beyond it, seldom add to it.

And that is also why, even though I fully accept Chinese students face a tough time studying in the West, this murder in Newcastle upon Tyne will most likely have been committed by a fellow Chinese student. And the motive will have been love or money.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 32
"Today, China has around ten million junk collectors, who are, in truth, the only ‘green’ recyclers in the nation. They traverse the streets of China’s cities, often on tricycles ringing handbells. They collect bottles, glass, paper, cardboard, pots and pans, old electrical goods, clothing – in short, anything that has even the smallest cash value based on its recyclability. They are, in effect, recycling ‘road warriors.’

In May 2007 a new law came into force. The Regulation on Recycling Resources stipulated 'that scrap collectors should not only obtain a business license, but also register with their local commerce bureaus.' The reason these millions of people work as junk collectors is, of course, that they have only received the most basic (if any) education. Most of them are among the poorest levels of society. How can such disadvantaged people as these recycling road warriors be expected to enter into and negotiate the complex labyrinth of Chinese bureaucracy?

'If they’re driven out of business by strict enforcement of the regulation many scrap collectors would be left with nothing to do as most are from the countryside and have had little education or skills training' noted media. Collecting recyclable material on the roads and streets of China is not a career choice. It is, however, a logical choice brought about by desperation. The Chinese government, by restricting them, is pushing them down rather than helping them up, seemingly not realizing that the road warriors are the first soldiers of the Green Army."

So China faked the 'footprint fireworks' in the Olympic opening ceremony. Don't forget China's equally fake claims to 'own' Tibet and Xinjiang. 'T' and 'X' for those occupied nations, whenever you get the chance!

ChinaBounder Weekender -- Murder, East style, West style

2008-08-10T00:06:00.006Z

I see another of my top ten Olympic predictions (number four) has come true – a protestor at the games, Christina Chan, tried to unfurl a Tibetan flag. Security goons covered her with a drop cloth and, when she refused to leave, simply carried her away. This incident took place in Hong Kong, not China – so much for China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ bullshit. And shame on Hong Kong for allowing this suppression of free speech to take place. Shame indeed.

But there’s one Olympic prediction I did not make – a visiting tourist will get murdered. I did – and still do – expect activists visiting China to get badly beaten by the thuggish ‘security’ services, and maybe a few life-threatening injuries as a result of that. But an outright murder did not make it to my list. Perhaps it should have, for China is a violent society, though the muzzled Chinese press downplays the true extent of the murder and carnage that is played out every day across the nation.

Even so – for the most part – white guys get a pass. Sure, we’re fair game for pickpockets and swindlers, but murder is less common. That’s partly because all Chinese citizens know that murdering a foreigner is far more serious than murdering a Chinese person. The murder of a Chinese citizen can be hushed up, but not so when a white guy gets it. The police, to whom the death of a Chinese citizen would be nothing much to worry about, would be far more vigilant in tracking down the killer of an overseas visitor.

That, at least, is how it works within China.

But when a Chinese citizen is murdered outside China, the reaction is totally different. And the murder of the American in Beijing this weekend has set me to thinking of this contrast.

The victim’s name was Todd Bachman. His daughter, Elisabeth, is a former Olympian in volleyball, and she is married to the current coach of the US volleyball team. Todd Bachman was stabbed to death while visiting the Drum Tower in Beijing, and his wife was seriously injured. His killer was a Chinese citizen who has been named as Tang Yongming, 47, a native of China’s southeastern Zhejiang Province. Tang killed himself after the murder.

George W. Bush said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families… The United States government has offered to provide any assistance the family needs.” Clark Randt, the U.S. Ambassador, said the attack “appears to be a senseless act of violence.”

Andy Banachowski, head coach of the women's volleyball team at UCLA, where Elisabeth Bachman played, said “I am shocked and saddened by the news of the attack on Wiz (Elisabeth) Bachman’s parents, Todd and Barbara, in Bejiing.” The U.S. woman’s basketball coach, Anne Donovan, said “It’s just tragic.... I don’t know if there’s another word for it. We said a prayer for them in the locker room. I get goosebumps talking about it.”

U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth said, “It is impossible to describe the depth of our sadness and shock in this tragic hour... Our delegation comes to the Games as a family, and when one member of our family suffers a loss, we all grieve with them.”

Xinhua mentioned the murder. But it was not covered on the national television news.

What would happen if the table were turned, if a Chinese citizen was murdered by an American citizen in similar circumstances?

I think it’s pretty clear.

For though the murder of a citizen within China seldom matters much, as I wrote below, when any harm befalls a Chinese citizen outside China, then China goes crazy. The case of Bu Luowei was not an isolated incident. Consider, for example, the case of Zhao Yan. She was a Chinese businesswoman on a trip to America. Coming across the border from Canada after a trip to the Niagara Falls, one of the border guards ordered her to stop for an inspection, under the belief that she was smuggling drugs. Refusing his order to stop, she ran away.

The officer involved chased her, tackled her and sprayed her with pepper spray.

This event caused a major wave of protest all across China. The then-foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, telephoned Colin Powell, at the time the US Secretary of State, expressing “China’s strong demand that the US side do serious and thorough investigation on Zhao Yan’s suffrage in terms of human rights in the United States, during her stay there, and punish hard the wrongdoers concerned.” [sic]

Chinese media jumped into the fray, saying that “There has been a long list of US law-enforcing departments’ brutal execution, willfully trampling upon human rights. Some of them.... despise law and human rights are obviously affected and driven by US hegemony mentality and arrogance…Justice and truth must be upheld and those who trample upon law and human rights must be punished. Zhao Yan’s tragedy reminds the US government of self-warning and self-discipline in human rights issue, and also tells the world that the United States has no right at all to criticize other countries." [sic]

The homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, also had to eat crow, a Chinese-American trade group lodged a protest, and Zhao Yan sued the US government for US$10 million.

All that, for a single incident of a woman getting manhandled by an overzealous security officer – a beating is bad, sure, but in the end it’s still something you recover from.

Imagine, then, the anger in which China would erupt if one of its citizens was murdered.

America’s reaction to harm befalling one of its citizens abroad – sorrow and concern. A sympathetic, measured response.

China’s reaction to harm befalling one of its citizens abroad – anger, finger-pointing, point-scoring and politicking. Bile and nationalism.

And - given that the American team was booed at the opening ceremony - I wonder how many Chinese citizens felt secretly glad it was an American who died?

Respect to Christina Chan for standing up for the oppressed people of Tibet. I urge others to follow where she leads -- 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

ChinaBounder Weekender

2008-08-08T16:17:00.005Z

The Olympic opening ceremony… astounding. I was half expecting some tacky nonsense along the lines of the Lunar New Year TV specials that CCTV puts on. But this was in a different league.

Now, sure, I part want to ask how much all that cost, how many millions of dollars for an hour of spectacle, money spent on show in a nation where millions lack basic health care or education. I want to ask how many hundreds of hours of rehearsal that all took – rehearsal under obligation, not choice. And the whole idea of spectacle – spectacle as a planned, coordinated event – has some uncomfortably fascist overtones to it.

And the ceremony did a pretty good job of reminding just how great China was in the past, surveying the four major inventions, the compass, paper, gunpowder and printing, and that great individual, Zheng He, a man who, had he had more voice, would have utterly changed China’s destiny. Where did that China go?

The modern era, naturally, was neglected. After all, what is there to say about the Communists? They have done nothing for China except made China suffer. Indeed, when it came to the current era, out came the lies and bullshit, all of a piece with CPC style – spinning this as the ‘green games,’ claiming China cares for its environment. Arrant bollocks, that, just like the other standard lie they always trot out at such times – namely, all China’s ethnic minorities being one big happy family.

But all that to one side – this was a virtuoso display, a triumph of planning and coordination and, indeed, imagination, something China does not always do so well. Yes, some creative stuff here, though with one or two slightly random left turns such as Sarah Brightman (though she did sing in Mandarin, which deserves a nod.) And while I suspect many of those 15,000 performers involved did not always do so willingly, there is still pride and awe to be had out of performing with such skill to an audience of billions. I’m sure the UK’s opening ceremony in four years’ time will come nowhere close to that.

So, yes, a fantastic opening ceremony and one that does indeed live up to China’s aspirations of impressing the entire world.

But what about the rest of it? Looking back to my ten Olympic predictions, it’s time for a review of some of them.

7. Chinese spectators will boo and jeer any Japanese athlete who wins gold.

No golds won yet, of course. But the mood has already been set -- the ‘welcoming’ Chinese audience just got in a little warm-up, booing the American athletes as they walked out into the stadium during te opening ceremony. There’s China’s sporting spirit for you.

6. At some point in time during broadcasts from China there will be a sensational event (in the eyes of the Chinese government) resulting in a blackout of TV transmission signals. China will claim a band of ‘terrorists’ from Xinjiang or Tibet were about to hijack the TV signal with the help of ‘foreign elements.’

Half way there. Beijing is busy stoking fear of the Other, fear of Muslims from Xinjiang. Beijing has paraded the ‘terrorist threats’ from its western colony. Expect that drum to be beaten much harder in the next two weeks.

And lesser ‘threats’ are showing up too – the pro-Tibet banner unveiled recently by two Western activists in sight of the stadium, for example. Both people were deported, of course, as was another activist, Phill Bartell. His ‘crime’ was putting up a poster reading ‘Tibet will be free.’ Three more Americans were detained for questioning China’s one child policy. Others were detained for holding prayers in public and calling for greater religious freedom. One woman was threatened with jail and told she’d be unable to see her children – and she was not even an activist. But she was Tibetan – and the Tibetans, like the Uighurs, are treated with fear and suspicion by the Han. This kind of shit will continue throughout the next two weeks (and indefinitely beyond that). The Olympic Games will be held strictly on the terms of the CPC. China’s claim to respect free speech is a lie.

5. All China’s top leaders will attend the Olympics and will be seen to have new coiffures and dye-jobs.

Check. Camera close up on Hu Jintao. I’ll admit he at least tried to crack a smile, but he couldn’t pull it off. So he relapsed into default mode – stiff waxwork, barely moving, no hint of emotion on his face.

2. Beijing’s Special Forces police will be involved in a shoving match with NBC or some other Western media concerning where they move the broadcast trucks, what time they are broadcasting, who they are interviewing, or some minor action that the broadcast team considers a democratic right.

The crackdown on press freedom is continuing apace. There have been a few showy demonstrations of ‘press freedom,’ for example a number of blocked websites being opened up. But even that shows the communist mindset – the sites were opened just before the beginning of the games and they’ll sure as shit be closed off again a few minutes after the last strains of the closing ceremony have died away.

Already two Japanese journalists were rousted by Chinese paramilitary police, beaten and kicked for merely trying to explore the veracity of Chinese claims about a ‘terrorist incident’ in Xinjiang. Police in the region also forced their way into the hotel room of an AFP reporter and forced him to delete pictures he had taken of the scene of the attack. There should be no surprise that this happened. The Chinese security services are largely manned by thugs. To imagine they will be able to change their style, even for the two weeks of the games, is naïve in the extreme.

1. ChinaBounder Olympic Edition panties will outsell all other brands of panties throughout China.

Well… they’re not quite outselling other brands yet. But they’re surely getting more popular. I hear from my sources (ok, former lovers) that ChinaBounder brand panties are now on sale in cities from Guangzhou in the south to Harbin in the far north. And indeed one enterprising journalist, I am told, has been following up on this story. But more of that over the weekend…

And, now that the Olympics has begun... you know the drill if you're a visitor in China. 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 15 - The Value of our Death

2008-08-07T22:10:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 29
"Every day in China, 320 people are killed in the workplace. That’s around 110,000 people per year, says the head of China’s State Administration of Work Safety, Li Yizhong (apparently forgetting some 6,800 victims indicated by the mathematically correct figure).

Li says that he does not expect this situation to improve significantly over the next ten to twenty years.

Mining is the single most deadly industry. In addition to the huge number of disease victims it causes, over 6,000 people die in China’s mines every year, due to fires, floods, cave-ins and gas build-up.

Many of these deaths are due to managerial indifference to safety rules or lack of safety equipment. And labor rights groups say the true figure is several times higher than this, due to extensive cover-ups of accidents.

China frequently launches showy crackdowns, announced with glowing headlines in the media, to try to reduce the endless cycle of corruption and death.

In 2005, it announced a campaign to close 7,000 small mines. This was slightly under a third of the total number of mines operating at the time, approximately 24,000. But the central government soon had to back down on this plan due to extensive opposition around the country.

Officials admitted that by January 2006 nearly 60% of the 5000 mines they had ordered to close had refused."

ChinaBounder comments:

Out of the weak comes forth strength.

This is the China the West knows little about. This is the real China – the millions upon millions working out of sight, out of mind – digging the coal, mining the minerals, making the toys and shoes and bags and food and white goods and clothes and electronics and all the rest of it.

These are the millions who give China the economic strength it has today. Without them, China would remain the nothing-much nation it was for much of the 20th century.

Hidden behind factory doors, exposed to danger and death, denied any meaningful chance to speak up. No rights, no trade unions, no voice.

That’s what China’s strength is built on. Exploitation, initiated by the Communists and seized upon by the West.

When I go back to my home country I’m struck each time by the cheapness of many goods in the shops – and depressed, for I know the cheapness of those goods is predicated upon the suffering and exploitation of workers in China.

It’s maybe no surprise the West sucks up these cheap goods eagerly, for the misery that produces them is from far away, in another country. What does the suffering of nameless, faceless Chinese workers matter to the West? The square root of fuck all, as far as I can see.

But it is a surprise that China itself does not care about its own workers…

No, fuck that; it’s no surprise at all. Of course the workers of China get a raw deal. They’re the poor, the insulted and the injured, and in today’s China such people simply do not matter.

So let’s toss another 320 on the pile – that’s today’s total of dead – and celebrate the booming economy, the flow of cheap goods, and the chance for some tiny fraction of us to keep on getting richer.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 30
"Ironically, while attention at home to 320 people dead a day stirs not one change to regulations concerning safety, Chinese politicians instantly demand actions, solutions and apologies when problems involve their citizens overseas.

In April 2007, in Milan, Italy, police gave a Chinese woman a parking ticket since she was unloading goods from her car in a restricted area. They also tried to confiscate her car documentation. The woman, Bu Luowei, says that the policeman turned his back on her and began insulting Chinese people with his colleague. Police say Bu pushed them, and have charged her with insulting a civil servant and injuring police officers.

Whoever is telling the truth, what happened next is not in doubt. Hundreds of Chinese staged a protest, and fighting broke out when Italian riot police were called in to stop the unscheduled gathering. More than ten Chinese were hurt along with seven police officers.

In the days following this event, China protested. “We hope the Italian side deals fairly with the issue and seriously considers the justified demands of local Chinese nationals and takes real measures to protect their legitimate rights and interests,” a statement on the ministry’s website said.

The Chinese government demanded a meeting with Milan mayor Letizia Moratti, and China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao, demanded a report on the riot.

For China, a relatively trivial incident overseas in which no one died and no one was seriously hurt creates a diplomatic storm and nationalistic breast-beating because it plays well in the international press – China cares for its citizens.

Yet the more than 300 deaths every day from workplace accidents within China, plus the thousands of serious injuries and poisonings every year, indicate a little less care on the domestic front."

My repeated exhortation: 'T' for Tibet. 'X' for Xinjiang. It's important. It's humanity.

Reason Number 14 - The Glass Children

2008-08-06T22:53:00.006Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 27
"The Glass Children of China now number over 90,000,000 according to figures provided by government authorities in Beijing. They are the children that have been allowed to be born to couples since the 1979 implementation of the ‘One-Child Policy,’ which constitutes the largest birth control restriction in the history of mankind.

They are ‘glass’ children because they are easy to see through or perhaps see ‘into,’ seeming to have a similar set of physical and psychological problems. The Glass Children of the one-child policy are also very fragile.

These ‘Little Emperors’ and ‘Little Empresses’ are only-children and are the object of their parents’ love as well as that of four grandparents. Such children are often known as ‘one mouth, six pocket’ children. Even though boys tend to be spoiled more than girls, both boys and girls suffer from an excess of love and an upbringing that would be considered astonishingly cosseted by any world standard.

According to Chinese media reports, they are ‘described by critics as spoiled, self-centered and in need of discipline.’ Their built-in fragility is quickly exposed should a parent ever actually say ‘No.’

Those Glass Children born since the early 80s are now of legal marriage age in China (20 for women, 22 for men), and now adult psychological problems are beginning to surface. Tan Jianfeng, a psychological expert, said that China had around 16 million patients with psychological problems, one third of who witnessed the first symptoms during their childhood or puberty. It is estimated that psychological problems exist in some 20% to 30% of the population, but that most sufferers are children.

Even though through their young years to adulthood these 90 million plus children have such similar and easily-identifiable psychological problems, they have few resources to call upon.

China has only 17,000 professionally registered psychiatrists, according to the Chinese Psychiatrist Association. That is 113,000 psychiatrists short of what is needed to meet rising demands. Another estimate puts the figure at an astonishing 2.4 psychologists per million people. Most Western countries have a 10-times better ratio."

ChinaBounder comments:

It’s a common enough stick the West uses to beat China, the one-child policy. But for me the real problem is simply one of legitimacy. The human race is clearly expanding too fast and if, as a species, we do not control our reproduction, then there can be little hope for a fair existence for most of us. The world will simply polarize into a few haves and billions of have-nots.

In those terms, then, China is showing leadership. But it is not so, really, for the choice to limit the size of a society must be taken by that society. In the case of China, the one-child policy has been decided by diktat, by the crooks and thugs who have seized power. The people of China had no voice in the decision, though they are the ones to suffer for breaking the rule (from punishments such as fines through to forced abortion and sterilization.) For that reason more than any other, the policy is illegitimate.

Yet what most interests me about China’s single-child policy is how it makes children a commodity.

One of the problems of the policy is that, in a patriarchal society like China, it leads to gender imbalance, as would-be parents abort female fetuses hoping for the subsequent conception of a male child.

Beijing’s first response to this was to ban gender screening of unborn children. Of course, in a country of cut corners like China, that was wholly ineffective. Bribe-driven, it was an easy matter for parents to find the gender of their child and order up a termination accordingly.

So Beijing’s next step was to change the rules, at least for those in the countryside, where attitudes are most traditional. The new rule said that if your first child was female (or disabled, which is much the same thing), well, bad luck, have another go and try to bring forth men-children only.

Thus the system which already valued male over female now had official blessing, a girl worth less than a boy – say, a dollar to a euro. That was the first step in the commoditization of children. A quick fix, a fudge – much easier to implement than the more ‘difficult,’ ‘radical’ solution of leading by example, of allowing women to take positions of power in Chinese society.

The next stage was akin to the periodic fine-tuning of the Federal Reserve, or the Bank of England, an ad-hoc adjustment of the children-marketplace. Thus, when there was a dip in the liquidity of the children-market – as, for example, during the recent Wenchuan earthquake which led to the death of so many thousands of children, killed due to the greed and negligence of all those layers of Chinese officials – the government’s response was to prime the market by telling bereaved parents they could have another child.

When you try to make a society through social engineering, you turn people into mere nuts and bolts.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 28
"These 90 million plus loners form the 2nd Army of Instability. From their university-educated ranks will come the officers, the captains, and the generals – giving leadership not in the traditional sense of the military, but offering leadership as individuals asking psychological questions.

The 2nd Army’s intellectuals are already asking the simple yet dangerous questions such as ‘Who am I?’

China’s government champions that its family planning policies have been successful, and frequently offers the fact that birth of 400 million children have been prevented as a great success story.

Seen in a different light than the one shone from Communist doctrine, these 400 million could have been family members, siblings - brothers and sisters - unborn souls who may have provided normalcy, trust, happiness, and the continuation of family blood for those 90 million who were allowed to have life.

The Glass Children may eventually take the view that their parents were tricked, fooled and finally coerced into limitations on a scale never experienced by any non-warring society. The 2nd Army, with 400 million forbidden souls in tow, will then seek justice both for their parents and the liberation of the Chinese family."

'X' for Xinjiang. 'T' for Tibet. Make the signs with your hands, your crossed forearms. Don't let the lies and spin from Beijing make you forget China's captive peoples.

Reason Number 13 - Culture’s Price Point

2008-08-05T20:50:00.008Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 25
"You cannot see the Great Wall from space. Yang Liwei, China’s first man in space, said he was unable to see the Wall while orbiting the globe in October 2003.

But in today’s China it’s getting even harder to see it from the ground. Photos taken of the Great Wall a century ago show one that is very different to what the world knows today. One such picture of a section of the Great Wall known as the Sister Towers shows two mighty stone guard towers built into a hillside dotted with trees and shrubs. Strong and imposing, they overlook a broad river. They are a sign of strength, confidence and glory, a symbol that all China could be proud of.

A photo showing the condition of the towers today is deeply shocking. All that remains is a few layers of base stones of one of the towers. The other is wholly gone – a phantom. The two photographic images placed side by side play tricks with your mind. First the shock, then comes the wonder, then comes sadness as you realize that in this case ‘gone’ means forever.

Even the river has gone, sucked up by China’s overuse of water and neglect, both based on the fallacy that economic development should take precedence over historical preservation. The hillside shows a few straggly trees and an expanse of bare soil and rock.

William Lindesay, a British activist dedicated to protecting the wall, spoke to a local dweller, 82-year-old Lu Wencai. 'The Towers aren’t here anymore, they’re gone' said Lu. Lu told Lindesay that the towers were first damaged by Japanese bombers in the Second World War. But, says Lu, the real damage came in the 1970s when the People’s Liberation Army built a railway into the area. They dismantled the towers and used their stones to build temporary shelters. Once the soldiers had gone the locals used the bricks themselves.

Lu’s story can be found repeated all along the Great Wall as decades of neglect and active abuse have destroyed one of the greatest feats of construction completed by mankind. Often China cries ‘We are the victim of foreign intervention,’ which in many cases has caused big difficulties for the country. However, the destruction of the Great Wall and the present lack of attention it receives is entirely caused by the neglect of the Chinese people. It is as if the words ‘Chinese’ and ‘culture’ are at war with each other."

ChinaBounder comments:

Another question I like to ask in class: ‘What do you do that is Chinese?’

‘Huh?’

‘I mean… what do you do that makes you Chinese.. what do you do that is a part of your culture, that is unique to China, that is traditional?’

Perhaps it’s an unwise question to ask. After all, the point of the class is to get people talking, and this question pretty much shuts down conversation. Few students have an answer.

Calligraphy’s the obvious reply, and indeed a few students will offer this answer, for calligraphy is still quite widely practiced (though often I get the sense that most students only do calligraphy because their more-traditional parents force them to.)

But after calligraphy the well is pretty much dry. Sometimes a student will offer ‘table tennis’ as an answer. And – having done this so many times before -- I have my response ready. ‘So table tennis is a Chinese tradition, is it?’

‘It is.’

‘Really? How long has it been a tradition?’

‘Well.. I don’t know exactly.. but for a very long time…’

Then I tell the student in question that the sport was invented in England in 1880 or so.

In the larger classes, at least one student will play a traditional Chinese instrument, a guqin, an erhu, the pipa or what-have–you. But for the most part it’s piano, violin – the standards of the Western orchestra.

Where is China’s culture? Where, when the nation’s most-loved sports are basketball and football, when its favorite festivals are increasingly Christmas and Valentine’s Day? I have found that more students know the date of those festivals than, say, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival or the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Even the strongest part of Chinese culture, its greatest claim to world fame, its cuisine, is sapping strength, evaporating into a mere simulacrum of what once it was. McDonalds and KFC and Pizza Hut are making inroads into the Chinese palate, and expanding Chinese waistlines accordingly. And indeed maybe that’s a synecdoche for where Chinese culture as a whole is heading -- at weekends, for example, there are long queues outside the Pizza Hut branch in Xujiahui, a central area of Shanghai. It’s a bizarre sight to see, and indeed I often shout out to the queue of assembled simpletons that they are lining up to eat high-fat low-nutrition high-cost low-taste shit. Why would anyone choose to eat Pizza Hut’s foul offerings? If it’s pizza you want the city has dozens of fine pizza places (JimiX on Beijing Xi Lu for example). But no – it’s Pizza Hut that takes the custom.

And that’s Chinese culture today – the victory of show over substance, tinsel over taste, glib over great. Sure, Chinese food remains strong and right now Western junk food is only a part-time choice. When Chinese tourists travel abroad, the majority of them only eat Chinese style food. It’s very rare for them to show much interest in the foods of other cultures – and while that’s no more than good sense in the case of eating British food, ranking rightly low in the global scale as it does, the rot has begun, it’s clear. China’s educated young largely do not know how to cook. Too much used to being cosseted by Mum and Dad, they have never learned basic kitchen skills. And along with this, many of the most glorious dishes of the Ming and Qing have been all but forgotten.

And so it seems to me that Chinese culture, once the greatest in the world, the most inventive, creative, energetic and daring, is today just a mummified husk. A few more taps and it will turn to dust.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 26
"But one part of China’s cultural history does get a lot of attention – the Yuanmingyuan, or ‘Garden of Perfection and Delight.’ This garden, painstakingly built by six generations of Qing Dynasty emperors, was burned and looted by British and French forces in 1860 as a ‘lesson’ to China.

Since that time, it has remained a ruin. But in 2004 a meeting was held to discuss whether it should be restored. The consensus was that it should not be restored.

'The ruins are the most concrete evidence of Western atrocities and should be reserved as the scene of a crime. The lonely, desolated site is a silent accusation of the aggressive acts of foreign invaders, serving as an ideal place for a ‘patriotic education' said Ye Yanfang, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Another commentator said 'Without rehabilitation, the Yuanmingyuan displays explicitly the crimes committed by the Western allied forces. As time goes by the new Yuanmingyuan may obliterate the painful history in the minds of Chinese people.'

The victim mentality again.

But as so often, China is as much the victim of its own people as of external powers. Many cultural relics did in fact survive the looting by the British and French, but they were lost over the succeeding decades as the Chinese people themselves slowly took away objects from the garden. And, in the Cultural Revolution, there was extreme destruction as 800 meters of garden wall were knocked down, 1,000 ancient trees cut down, and numerous other objects looted or destroyed.

Who is calling for a memorial to the destruction China has visited upon itself? No-one. For China, as a victim, the aggressor must always be someone beyond its borders."

Keep the symbol in mind and in the public eye -- make a 'T' for Tibet and an 'X' for Xinjiang if you're visiting China for the Olympic games.

Reason Number 12 - The Conformists

2008-08-04T21:15:00.001Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 23
"In China, everyday rules are there to be ignored. Bicycles and mopeds ride on the pavement. Pedestrians jaywalk, even on the highways. Subway passengers push on to carriages before those inside get off. Queues deteriorate into melees of pushing and shoving as more and more people simply jump to the front. Customers negotiate purchases without receipts, meaning neither party pays tax, and street-corner touts hand out fliers for all manner of illegal services from satellite dishes to fake diplomas.

Ignoring the rules is so pervasive that it has simply become a part of life. It is accepted and even tolerated, and hardly ever directly challenged by the police or other authorities. In many ways China is a freer country than you might have imagined. Not all Chinese people, of course, ignore the rules, but quite often the option is there should the inspiration hit you.

Not surprisingly, because people have no respect for the rules, they also have little respect for the sometime guardians of the rules. Every roadside altercation in China, from a minor dispute between two pedestrians to a collision between two cars, results in a crowd of eager watchers and usually the intervention of a policeman. As the policeman tries to sort out the arguments, those involved shout and even curse the police officer, at times jabbing an angry finger to dent the shirt on his chest. In a nation like America, even a raised voice to a law enforcement officer would bring the threat of arrest. In China, on-the-job abuse is apparently part of the job description.

For China today, ignoring the rules is a rule for life itself."

ChinaBounder comments:

Conformism. Indeed that’s the curse that afflicts the China I know. A sameness of opinion, word and deed. The individual with individual ideas – that’s what’s hard to find. I’ve met a few, a rare few, in my years in China.

Mostly it’s conformism all the way. Again I will use an example from my life as a teacher – in which, now I think about it, perhaps I am rather the conformist too, given that my lessons are themselves settled and seldom-changing.

One part of the stuff I teach involves students giving a one or two minute presentation on a set topic. This is generally simple stuff, such as a favorite restaurant or sport, a trip somewhere, a close friend and the like.

With some questions, such as the best friend, there is necessarily a range of different answers. But when it comes to the favorite film or book question, or an admired hero, then the range of answers I get is tiny.

For the film question, far and away the most common answer is ‘Titanic,’ an excruciatingly bad piece of dross. Five out of ten students will always offer this answer, even this many years after the wretched film came out. Following this, the next most common answer is Forrest Gump, another dreadful film, and then Gone With The Wind (after reading the first badly-written sentence of that novel, I gave up on my plan of reading it). Next up it’s Harry Potter (also dreadfully-written tosh) and then Braveheart. After this there’s a smattering of whatever the latest blockbuster is (Transformers was very popular for a while). And that, more or less, is it. Perhaps five percent of students will pick a film other than these.

Perhaps half a percent of students will pick a Chinese film.

As for books, the range is much smaller. Top choice is Jane Eyre, and then, of course, Jane Austen. She is always identified as a writer of love stories, and students are surprised when I explain she is not a romance writer at all. And after Jane, the next big choice is Harry cunting Potter, again. Now, most of the students take the class to prepare for an English exam which assesses their readiness for university study in an English-speaking country. So at this stage of the class I’ll usually say ‘So… you’re having an interview to test your readiness for university, and you want to speak about a children’s book. What do you think that says about you?’

And for an admired hero? Top of the list, it’s Bill Gates. That’s for cupidity. Second, it’s Yao Ming. In the China sports scene, you’re no-one until you’ve got to the top. Trying doesn’t count. Heart doesn’t count. Only success matters, and if, as in the case of Yao, that success is found abroad, then worship is legitimized at home. It’s almost as if you’re no-one in China until the West says you’re someone. And third, it’s Michael Jordan, followed by Li Ka-shing – there’s the greed factor again. Everyone wants to be a billionaire.

The students I teach are among China’s best, the cream of the cream – they’re the ones who aim at big-shot universities abroad, they’re the tiny percentage of Chinese society with the money and the plans.

And if such students cannot be original even in something as trivial as ‘What’s your favorite film?’ how can they ever be original when they begin working life? How can they ever be anything but conformists?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 24
"Ignoring the rules is, often, a socially trivial matter, certainly when it is accepted by the masses. But breaking the rules is a very different matter from ignoring the rules. Breaking the rules takes bravery. It requires great courage to stand up in China today and say ‘Stop. This is wrong. I protest.’ And doing that, in China, is dangerous.

The lack of those citizens with the courage to stand up and say ‘I protest’ is today the weakest link in the connection between China and greatness. Those few who do stand up suffer perils beyond imagination.

China has its dissidents, but they do not have a tradition of dissent and struggle in which to orient themselves, at least not a Chinese one. Their idols and role-models are also foreigners, such as Lech Walesa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel. And the dreamer, Martin Luther King.

Brave Chinese dissidents are very much a minority, and they are almost totally ignored by Chinese society. There are no parades calling for the freeing of China’s prisoners of conscience. How can there be? Most Chinese people are not allowed to know such prisoners exist, and of those who do know, many simply do not care enough to raise their voice, possibly to suffer a similar fate.

Think of William Wilberforce, who did so much to end slavery at the beginning of the 19th Century. Think of Emmeline Pankhurst, who fought to get women the vote in the early 20th century. Think of Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book ‘Silent Spring’ sparked off the global environmental movement.

These are people who did not just ignore the rules. They broke them, and allowed their countries to grow positively and dynamically freer. It is not that such people do not exist in China, it is that they will not raise their head above the parapet. Today, Chinese culture and society stresses conformity and consensus above all else. There is conformity in ignoring the rules, and conformity in refusing to break them.

When Chinese people feel fear, the fear that comes when they see their country is not changing, not developing its political liberties, then and only then will the charge be led over the parapets and into the firing line"

It's coming up soon -- the Olympics. Don't forget, if you have the chance to be on camera -- make a 'T" sign for Tibet and an 'X' sign for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 11 - Crossing the Line for a Penny

2008-07-31T21:51:00.005Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 21
"China has the world’s fastest-growing economy, but many millions in China’s countryside have been left behind, forming the ranks of the 1st Army of Instability.

In 1978, before China reformed its economic policies, the country had 250 million people who lacked adequate food and clothing. By the end of 2005, that number had dropped to 23.6 million. By 2007 that figure had dropped a little further, to 21.48 million. In addition to these people, defined as living in ‘absolute poverty’ there were another 35.5 million in the ‘low-income’ category, said Zhang Baowen, vice-minister of agriculture.

It is easy to be impressed with the drop of poverty accomplished no matter which accounting method is used. However, even under the best circumstances, there are still 23 million living in absolute poverty. That’s equal to two-thirds of the population of Canada or one-third of the population of the UK. It’s more than the entire population of Australia – or the State of Florida. That’s twenty-three million citizens who cannot even afford an extra change of clothes or nutritious daily food. Or afford school fees for their children. Or a simple visit to a doctor."

ChinaBounder comments:

I wonder what it’s like to be poor? I wonder if any reader of this blog knows what it’s like to be poor?

Sure, I’ve had to count the days to the next paycheck from time to time, after, say, too many dinners out in a month, too much temptation from the wine list of Le Garcon Chinoise, Shanghai’s finest restaurant.

But true poverty? No, never. Nor, I suspect, any of the readers of this blog. All you readers read English. In China, that’s the language of privilege. If you speak English, you’ve been lucky enough to have an education. You’ve got options. English is the language of empowerment, of success. English is caste.

The mere fact you are here, you are online -- that sets you above hundreds of millions of people. You're not poor.

Certainly not the kind of poor that sends so many of the elderly out into the streets to scavenge for rubbish to recycle. The kind of poor that makes every day a struggle, the kind of poor that saps the joy out of existence, that wraps itself around your soul and sleeps there.

And what must that poverty be like when you’re surrounded by flash cars and glittering buildings, when your great motherland has (though you likely don’t know it) the largest pile of foreign reserves in the world? When it has forty billion dollars to spend on the Olympics, seventy billion to spend on the army, and untold billions, wealth beyond counting, diverted into the pockets of its corrupt officials?

I’ve read the statistics. I’ve seen the pictures. Worse, I’ve seen the people – seen them every day in Shanghai, the people with nothing. I know what poverty is. But can I feel what poverty is? Hardly.

Can you?

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 22
"Just how serious is China about poverty reduction? In 2005, the central government assigned about US$1.7 billion for poverty reduction. In the same year, it said it spent more than US$30 billion on its armed forces. The Rand Corporation, a US-based nonprofit think-tank, estimated the true figure was closer to US$70 billion per year.

In China’s western regions, home to about 400 million people, 20% of the population cannot afford hospital fees and more than a third cannot afford high school fees. Sending a child to college took 74% of an average family’s entire income. Again –74%! Illiteracy, another side-effect of poverty, was at 28%.

These millions of ‘low income’ individuals exist in something like a state of limbo. Hovering just above absolute poverty, they face a daily struggle to keep their sanity and their bodies functioning for the next day of work.

We have seen these members of the 1st Army clustered around the single television in their village, which is often perched on the shelf of a store owner’s establishment. They watch in disbelief at the flickering pictures from Shanghai or Beijing, and they see the glittering towers of modernity. Programs, commercials and reports show cars, restaurants and the happy and content life of the upwardly mobile new middle classes.

They do not see their own life. They see the good life.

One day, when they finally realize this good life is not on another planet, but is in their own country, and that the pictures on the screen represent now, not some promised future, they will begin to march, the first of the armies that spell a colossal threat to China."

Don't forget, even for a moment - every chance you get when in China -- 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 10 - The Builders of Myths, the Tellers of Tales

2008-07-30T22:24:00.003Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 19
“The Party has an irresponsible approach to history as part of its modus operandi, consistently fabricating stories to glorify its own actions, often at the expense of others. The true ‘Long March,’ for example, bears little resemblance to the internationally famous version the Party gives of it, and the many mistakes of Mao Zedong, which led to the death of tens of millions, are airbrushed out of the official record, at least within Chinese history books.

The government claims that “China has never launched pre-emptive strikes against any country. It is not part of its defensive ministry strategy.” This statement, made in blustering denial of Pentagon worries concerning China’s huge military spending, is simply a lie. China’s invasion of Korea in the 1950s was clearly a pre-emptive strike, and its attack on Vietnam in 1979 was wholly unprovoked.

With its upbringing of historical falsehoods, it is perhaps no wonder that myths and lies are virtual ‘truth’ for the government of China today.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Here’s another thing I like to do in class – to play the ‘China is a peace-loving country’ card. It’s a simple enough trick, and pretty childish too. But it’s fun.

It’s easy enough to get into this game – a mere mention of America will give rise to disapproving comments about the way that nation swaggers around the world. And pretty often a student will mention Britain, yapping along like a little dog behind the States. Fair enough.

‘But China is a peace-loving nation, yes?’
‘Yes’ reply all the students.
‘So China would never attack another nation?’
‘Never!’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not even a pre-emptive strike?’
‘No!’
Then I fake up a ruminative pause, before the big reveal. ‘Ah. So… what about the Sino-Indian war? The Korean War? The attack on Vietnam?’

Now this might set off a faint recollection in some people’s minds – some of them think back to high school and the single paragraph they might have read in school on some of these wars.

But really that makes no difference at all. Fact is, they do not need to have heard of any of these wars. Because the answer is always the same. ‘They’ – meaning the other country – ‘started it.’

That’s always the way. ‘It wasn’t us. It was them.’

Now, sure, the Sino-Indian War was an obscure mess on both sides. But that is not the point. The point is there is no willingness to countenance debate. There’s no willingness to even consider another point of view. No, sir! ‘They started it. They attacked first.’

The Korean War is perhaps a more interesting example, because here I can really press my students into thinking in shades of grey – something they find pretty hard when it comes to analyzing their own country.

Often I’ll begin with a potted history of that particular war. I’ll say how the North attacked the South, and here most students will agree that was wrong. They still feel they’re in familiar territory. One country should not attack another. Yes. They’re pretty sure of that. Black and white.

Then I’ll talk about the UN response, using force to drive the North Koreans out of the South. ‘Right or wrong?’ I’ll ask. ‘Right’ they will most often say. They like the UN. (I save how China has several times blocked the UN from helping stop war crimes for another class.)

Usually when I do this routine I’ll draw up a map of the Korean peninsula on the board. So now I’ll put the UN forces at the 38th parallel. ‘Should they stop?,’ I ask.

‘Yes.’

So there we are, united in righteous indignation, watching as they cross the parallel and barrel into the North.

Then I put the UN forces up against the Yalu River. ‘What happened then?’ I ask.

‘China attacked.’

‘Hmm… isn’t that a bit of a … pre-emptive strike?’

A ripple of discomfort here.

But I do not press this – instead I get the class back on-side by saying how the Chinese then forced the US Eighth Army to make the longest retreat in American military history.

That goes down well.

Next, I put the Chinese at the 38th parallel. ‘What happened?’

Here the most usual answer is silence.

Silence, or someone will tell me, ‘China stopped there.’

Because, of course, that’s the default answer. China can do no wrong.

‘Not so. China crossed the border and captured the South Korean capital.’

More discomfort here.

Then the killer question.

‘So, was China wrong?’

This they mostly cannot cope with. They know they’ve said the UN was wrong to cross the parallel. But they just can’t bring themselves to apply the same yardstick to their own nation.

The most common way they break this impasse?

‘You must be wrong. It cannot have happened. Your history books were telling lies.’

And so then to 1979. Now for most Chinese people, 1979 is a year to be proud of, for it was the year when Deng Xiaoping embarked on China’s ‘opening up and reform’ program (also known in regular language as ‘Behaving with the common sense you’d expect from anyone over the age of 10.’)

But 1979 is also the year that China attacked Vietnam. And again, I get the usual bullshit. ‘Vietnam attacked us first’ they’ll say, oblivious to the fact that this is akin to a mouse ‘attacking’ a gorilla.

And so I lay it out. How Vietnam attacked Cambodia to try to end the insanities of Pol Pot – how China had supported Pol Pot, paid him and armed him. How millions died thanks to Chinese cash. How China decided to ‘punish’ Vietnam for trying to stop the genocide.

They know nothing of it, nothing at all. They cannot accept that China does the same shit as so many other countries. Again, they tell me I must be wrong, that this must be Western propaganda. I urge them to research it themselves, to look beyond the textbooks of their own nation. But I know they never do.

Lies are comforting. Lies are honey.

Myths give a certain sort of strength. Myths are steroids for the soul.

It’s easy to believe the Party line.

Much harder to open your mind and try to consider both sides.

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great’ - Excerpt 20
“China applies its culture of myths and lies not just to territories it has colonized, such as its ‘autonomous’ regions Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, but to those it seeks to colonize, such as the vast areas of maritime territory it claims sole right to.

On 25th May 2007, media reports announced ‘conducive’ talks between China and Japan concerning territory in the East China Sea which both countries laid claim to. The territory in question lies midway between China and Japan, and is the site of several large gas fields. Japan had proposed a median line giving each nation roughly half of the disputed area. China’s proposed line pushed significantly past the median line suggested by Japan, putting the gas fields in their entirety on the Chinese side, leaving Japan with nothing.

The Chinese side was represented by Hu Zhengyue, Director of the Asian Affairs Department of China’s Foreign Ministry. He said the talks were a ‘new beginning’ and said China was ready to make joint efforts with Japan to push forward consultation. In another article published on the same day, Feng Zhikai, a senior researcher at China’s Institute of Japanese Studies, said that ‘It is fair to say China’s emphasis on cooperation in energy development has been a prominent feature in the development of bilateral relations.’

The very next day Chinese media issued another report, this time quoting Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Jiang said ‘that China wanted to promote the negotiation process and achieve a joint development plan at an early date, and reiterated China’s opposition to a demarcation line proposed by Japan, adding that ‘China has not and will never accept the median line and will not accept the median line as the basis for discussing joint development.’

Jiang Yu’s words made it clear China had no intention whatsoever of backing down from its greedy and rapacious desire to exploit the gas fields to their utmost, sharing them with no-one.”

Just a few more days until the Olympics begins. Will you be there? You know what to do, right? Make a 'T' sign for Tibet, an 'X' sign for Xinjiang.

Reason Number 9 - The Largest Box of Toy Soldiers in the World

2008-07-29T20:58:00.007Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 17.
“`The Chinese army started its IT revolution in the 1990s’ said media in 2007. ‘Digital technology allows commanders to electronically monitor the borders right around the clock even while cooks in the barracks are rustling up some tasty grub using a recipe from an e-Book consulted on a scr'een in the kitchen.’

‘With regiments … far from towns, soldiers used to have to travel a long way just to buy a tube of toothpaste. But in January 2007, an online shopping site appeared on the district’s military LAN -- and now a soldier staring out at the hillside in a remote border post can simply click on a website to whistle up his favorite brand of rice cakes’ said reports.

But perhaps worried that too much hi-tech would corrupt the troops, state media also announced that ‘the tradition virtues of frugality, discipline and readiness to serve the people remain unchanged among the troops.’ One can almost see young lads vying for the hard-to-acquire ‘frugality’ merit badge.

To remind new recruits of the importance of these virtues, members of the PLA are shown the ‘classic’ Chinese film romantically called ‘Guards Under Neon Light.’ This film, made some forty years ago, details the virtues of the PLA’s Eighth Company while stationed on Shanghai’s famous Nanjing road. The film shows how the ‘soldiers who patrolled on a dazzling road of Shanghai…resisted various lures of the booming city and remained frugal, well-disciplined and ready to serve people.’"

ChinaBounder comments:

The Communist Party’s attempt at bait and switch. Worried about the tens of billions of dollars the CPC is spending on the Chinese army? Worried that the troops are being used in Mini-Tiananmen Squares all over the nation?

Hey! We got rice cakes! We got the internet! We got stirring, patriotic films!

So that’s all right. Let’s forget about the other stuff, shall we?

It’s all part of the way the CPC frames what passes for public debate in China. Trivial. Infantile. Bipolar. Such and such is bad. So and so is good.

There are no shades of grey in China.

But indeed sometimes it’s good be stark, to be emphatic.

So here’s a stark tale.

The classes I teach are pretty poor value for money, I have to admit. I spent, say, six months or a year refining my class style, finding the routines that worked best; and after that I have always just done the same shtick, every class. I always begin with the same routine, coming into the first class and doing a whole thing about ‘Why is no one here talking English?’ In eight years of teaching I have never once walked into a class and heard the students practicing English with each other. Chinese language all the way. It just never occurs to students that, given they are in a class to practice spoken English, every else in the class will have a certain level of spoken skill, and thus be a great practice partner.

So I give ‘em a little lecture about that. I tell them the truth, which is seldom wise – but here it is, for what it’s worth. ‘If you just spent an hour each day talking English to a friend you’d improve fast. You don’t need to come to this class. You don’t need to pay this school’s high fees.’ That’s the boiled down version, by the way. In class I make it at least five times as long as that, just to run down the clock.

Then I talk about how to improve written English, and I use newspaper headlines from China’s English language media as talking points, showing how to get a conversation going on that basis.

Naturally, I focus on the headlines that interest me – the stories of corruption, pollution, politics. And I often work on death penalty stories, a fairly common item in the paper given the glee with which China’s government washes its hands in the blood of its people.

So the story will be of some hapless guy being put to death by the state, and I lead the conversation into a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the death penalty.

Most students are bloodthirsty. The death penalty’s fine by them – helps keep order in society, they say, suggesting that without the death penalty Chinese society would degenerate into violence and chaos.

Then I say, “Here is a statistic for you..” and write up on the board, “In 2006, China executed more people than the rest of the world put together.”

“What do you think of that?” I ask.

Some students look uneasy. Some point out “But China is so much bigger than any other country, and not all nations use the death penalty.” True enough.

Then I say, “But in fact what I just wrote on the board is not completely true…” and here I will often observe one or two self-satisfied smiles, as if to suggest “He is about to admit this is more Western anti-China propaganda…”

On the board, I add to the end of the statement “In 2006, China executed more people than the rest of the world put together…” the words, “…in the previous five years.”

This, at least, creates a deeper ripple of discomfort, yet even so many of the students will still support it. They know the government is corrupt, the police are corrupt, the courts are corrupt. But they still support the mass executions, the show trials, the public executions.

And so to the point of this entry.

A couple of years ago, at the end of one class, a student stayed behind to talk to me. Turned out he’d been in the armed services, though whether it was the People’s Liberation Army or the People’s Armed Police Force I confess I cannot now recall.

He told me he had participated in an execution.

“I got about half an hour’s notice” he said. “My superior came into the dorm and told me and the other guys to get ready for the duty. We prepared and went to the place where it was going to happen. They brought in the guy. He was utterly terrified. We lined up and each of us aimed our gun at him. We were given the order to shoot, and we shot. He collapsed, but he did not die. So then my commanding officer told me to use the … what it is called, knife on the gun?”

“Bayonet.”

“Yes, bayonet. He told me to use my bayonet to kill the guy. So I went up to him and stabbed him in the neck and then the chest. Then he died.”

This student was around 26 or 27. He told me this story with no more emotion than he might have recounted killing a chicken at the market.

“How did you feel about it?” I asked.

“It was my job.”

“What did the guy do? What was his crime, I mean?”

“I don’t know. They never told you that.”

“Didn't that bother you?”

“No. They told me to kill someone, I killed them. That was my job.”

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 18.
“A more truthful ‘healthy’ view of the PLA might be to reflect that since 1949 over 300,000 members of the army have died on active service. This is according to government figures which are, naturally, much lower than outside independent estimates. According to Beijing, for example, the official death toll in the Korean War was around 140,000 deaths. But the historian Jung Chang, citing an unofficial statement by Deng Xiaoping, puts the number at 400,000.

When a soldier dies for his country it should mean something, serve a purpose, or gain freedoms. What do China’s 300,000 military deaths mean? What purpose have they served, what freedoms have they gained?

China still vilifies Japan for its military past. But it can be suggested that Japan’s recent military history since 1945 is far more successful than China’s. In the same decades that China has lost at the very least 300,000 soldiers, Japan had no military casualties at all.

None.

Zero.”

Traveling to China soon? Have a real impact -- 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang. Every time you're near a camera, don't forget to make the signs.

Reason Number 8 - The Godless

2008-07-28T20:28:00.005Z

‘Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.’ Excerpt 15.

“One strand of Chinese belief well-exposed in Western media is Falun Gong, which at this date is still totally outlawed. Part cult, part religion, part exercise, the Falun Gong followers fatally attracted attention to themselves when using an internationally recognized method of religious protest -- the non-violent demonstration. The crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999 when members of the group gathered near Zhongnanhai, the residence compound of many of China’s top leaders in Beijing, to protest about perceived unfair treatment. This unified display of political protest outside Party control terrified China’s leaders. Within weeks, China banned the movement with extreme prejudice.

Amnesty International reported soon after that 'Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arbitrarily detained by police, some of them repeatedly for short periods, and put under pressure to renounce their beliefs. Many of them are reported to have been tortured or ill-treated in detention. Some practitioners have been detained in psychiatric hospitals. Those who have spoken out publicly about the persecution of practitioners since the ban have suffered harsh reprisals.' It has recently been alleged that many Falun Gong detainees who died in custody had been used to provide organs for transplant through organ harvesting.”

ChinaBounder comments:-

Fear.

Fear. Sheer, pure, fear; fear that at any moment the police might come, that you might be taken off to jail, beaten, tortured.

Fear. Fear that you cannot trust anyone, not your neighbors, not your friends, not even your family members.

Fear. Fear, because the whole of society hates and despises you, views you as an enemy of the state.

Fear. Fear that if anyone knows what you are – who you are – they will inform on you, betray you; and you will become one of the vanished.

Many groups have known this fear at different times in history. Jews. Gypsies. Homosexuals. Intellectuals. A death sentence always waiting, watching, hovering behind you simply because of who you are.

Today, in China, it is followers of Falun Gong who feel this fear.

Sure, Falun Gong is just as berserk as any other religion, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, whatever; it is all a bunch of dark ages fairy tales that impedes human progress. To be religious is to embrace ignorance.

But that is hardly a reason for persecution.

And it is persecution, persecution of the most brutal and horrible kind. And just like being Jewish in 1930s Germany, or a suspected ‘red’ in 1950s America, virtually the whole of Chinese society condones, even approves, the persecution.

This is why Falun Gong followers live a life of silence and terror.

Yet in a nation where telling the truth means prison, means pain, some Falun Gong supporters will talk. Not to their fellow Han, of course, but to people like me – foreigners. Just like the people of Xinjiang, like the Taiwanese, Falun Gong followers can speak the truth to foreigners. They can say what they believe, sure in the knowledge that they will not be informed on, will not be handed over to the police.

They cannot trust their countrymen. The risk is too huge. They cannot say what they are to any Han, no more than a Tibetan can tell a Han ‘Your country invaded mine,’ a Uighur can say ‘You are murdering my culture’ or a Taiwanese can burst into laughter at the preposterous, absurd notion their proud and praiseworthy nation ‘belongs’ to China. But to me – to any foreigner – they can speak clear.

And so I have met several of these despised and persecuted people. Some drew strength from their crazy beliefs, strength enough to leave China, and set up lives in other nations, countries where they get the basic human respect denied to them by the motherland.

I cannot forget one young woman I met, two or three years ago now. This was in a class, of course, and there was something … broken, snapped about her. There was a pallor to her skin, a timidity, a fear to her body language. She seemed too scared to even make eye contact with me, and she did not interact with the other students at all.

It bothered me, worried me. She was always the last to leave the class, sitting at her desk, pallid, passive, until the other students had all gone. So at the end of that course of lessons, I tried to get to know her. And, with the other students away, she began to open up a little – made eye-contact, spoke with a little more conviction.

She had spent a year in a labor camp, she told me, undergoing ‘re-education.’ She’d followed Falun Gong, and the State, with its tentacles, its informers everywhere, had found out. What life was like in the camp she would not say. But she did not need to. It was obvious – obvious from the pain and fear in her demeanor, obvious from her broken, shattered spirit.

Tortured, brutalized, destroyed. That’s what China had done to her. Violence, wrath and anger – and she would never be free, she knew it. China would never let her go. Monitored. Watched. Under surveillance. Made a pariah, an outcast in her own nation. And of course her family, her friends, anyone she talked to – they, too, would come under suspicion from the police, the security services – from guys who would be just as happy working in the Killing Fields as downtown Shanghai.

I wanted to keep in touch with her, wanted to reach out – wanted her to see that not all her fellow humans distrusted her. She gave me her phone number. I tried sending a few messages. Nothing came back.

This was, as I say, two or three years ago. I have never forgotten her. Not least because I now carry my own fear, my own worry. For in sending her even one sms message in English I put her in real danger. The police would have intercepted that message, traced it back to me (for the Chinese state will happily see its poorest starve while spending tens of millions of dollars on the most elaborate surveillance) – and would have persecuted her yet further for it. Talking to a foreigner! That was crime enough to put her right back in the labor camp.

I wonder where she is now. Is she even alive? Has she been put to death, has she taken her own life?

It bothers me.

But I cannot imagine it will bother many of my Han readers.

'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 16.

‘Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism were ruthlessly suppressed for much of “New China’s” history. Today, however, the Communist Party has begun to embrace Confucius once more, using the philosopher to support its own target of ‘harmony’ – a sort of Confucius dressed in Marxist clothes. A communist Jesus.

What is noticeably absent is the Judeo-Christian ethic of doing good, of helping the less fortunate. In Chinese belief, both ancient and modern, wealth is a sign of heavenly blessings. Even Deng Xiaoping said ‘To get rich is glorious.’ Rather than wealth being seen as a mandate to help the poor, it is viewed as approbation from heaven. The wealthy man is the righteous man, often above reproach, as is demonstrated by the way some wealth-seekers in China disregard public welfare, environmental concerns, and often basic human morality. ‘Glorious’ in China has nothing to do with graceful.

Religion is comfort. That so many lives in China are devoid of comfort only increases the vacuum for the religions of the world to flow into. Although the Party has yet not imagined such a theoretical catastrophe, communism is not one of those religions.’

Not long now. The Olympics will soon be here. So - don't forget, 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang.

ChinaBounder Weekender Part Three

2008-07-25T03:55:00.005Z

BIG NEWS!

The Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games has asked ChinaBounder to provide a list of 10 ‘gold medal’ winners from among the many dissidents, victims, and visionaries who truly want change but have been beaten, jailed or executed by the Communist Chinese government.

No, not really -- but here are my suggestions.

Woeser. She’s a Tibetan poet. She writes about AIDS, the environment, and social problems. She wants to travel outside China. The Chinese government refuses to give her a passport. “If I really am posing a threat to society, doesn't it make the great country of China seem very weak?" she told the Associated Press recently. “I still have hope in China, which is such a strong nation," Woeser said. “I hope it will be strong enough to give me a little space." A champ!
Rebiya Kadeer. A Uighur businesswoman. She was arrested in 1999 for the ‘crime’ of sending newspaper clippings to her husband in the United States. She wants a peaceful solution to the occupation of her country, the area known as Xingjiang, by China. So she is reviled and abused by China. After six years in jail she was released and allowed to go to the States. Then the Chinese came after her sons, two of whom have received long jail terms on politically motivated charges. Kadeer continues to speak for her oppressed people.
Huang Qi. Recently he tried to help the parents of the thousands children who died in the recent earthquake. After speaking out about what happened in the quake he was arrested for ‘illegal possession of state secrets.’ Still under arrest, he’s been denied access to any legal representation. He was jailed previously, for five years, after writing online about the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Hada. A Mongolian, he’s been in jail for more than a decade because he called for greater rights and freedoms for the people of Inner Mongolia. He also ran a bookshop selling books, in Mongolian, on Mongolian topics. Add the Mongolians to the list, with the Tibetans, the Uighurs – another minority oppressed, belittled and abused by the Han.
Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Abduweli Imin. This one is a posthumous gold medal, for Setiwaldi and Imin were recently executed by China. China said they were terrorists – not freedom fighters or resistance fighters against occupation. In China freedom is terrorism. They received a show trial, that still active remnant of authoritarian regimes from Nazi Germany to Stalinist Russia. Beijing invokes the specter of terrorism to sow hatred and fear of other ethnic peoples among the Han population, the same way the Nazis did to those of Jewish faith. The government can crush the people of those ethnic nations and the Han, normal Chinese citizens, will applaud when they do.
Hu Jia. He speaks out on AIDS, the environment, human rights and democracy. He’s in prison now, locked up for three and a half years because he wanted the leaders of his nation to do more about AIDS. The state came after his family. His wife lives under constant police harassment. That is the Chinese way – if you speak out you make your whole family a target.
The Dalai Lama. He has made it his life’s mission to call for a peaceful solution to the Tibet problem. The government constantly misrepresents him, spewing out lies and disinformation, misleading the people of China so that they believe he is a man of war, not peace. Does anybody disagree with this choice?
Sting, along with a range of other artists – not Chinese, but they wanna be. The ‘Songs for Tibet’ project gathers a group of internationally-famous singers and musicians to record an album to highlight the plight of the nation of Tibet. The album is proposed for release on August 5th. Songs of and for peace and harmony. China will spin it as ‘an attack on China,’ ‘meddling in internal affairs,’ ‘foreign machinations’ and so on. China will invent music terrorism.
Leung Kwok-hung. He’s a Chinese Hong Kong politician, often known as ‘Long Hair.’ He’s always been a man to speak with his own voice. He wanted to travel to Sichuan to learn more about the earthquake victims. He was banned from doing so. In the words of Leung himself: "It’s so ironic. People said the Olympic Games will make China more open up, I think it’s going backward." Leung, a socialist, truly believes in the things the Communist Party of China only pretends to believe in. That’s the real irony.

And now to No 10……………… and the answer is up to you. I challenge you to choose the 10th most worthy individual from China who may honorably receive gold. Post your selection in the comments box.

To help you out, a few more who have suffered under the hammer of communist rule: Du Daobin. Shi Tao. Wang Dan. Huang Liangtian. Sun Lin. Pang Jiaoming. Zhang Mingxuan. Gao Zhisheng. Bao Tong. Ma Jian. Yang Jianli. Wang Xiaoning. Liu Xiaobo. Wei Jingsheng. Jiang Yanyong. Zeng Hongling. Gao Yaojie. Chen Guangcheng.

There are many I have not even mentioned. Heroes who should be honored by China, but who will only receive abuse and contempt while the semi-fascist government holds sway.

Any students who wish to have a new experience and life-long memory as a protester for 60 seconds form a 'T' for Tibet and 'X' for Xinjiang and expect to get your ass booted.

Reason Number 7. Better than Cheap – It’s Fake

2008-07-24T16:00:00.003Z

'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 13.

“An inspection launched across nine provinces in China found 775 bogus military vehicles and more than a thousand stolen or faked military license plates. Criminal gangs faked military certificates and seals to produce the bogus vehicles, which they then sold for many thousands of dollars profit.

In Shanghai, the trade in fake tires is big business. Employees in underground workshops gather dumped used tires and cut new grooves into them, making them resemble new products. Each worker can make 30 to 40 such tires a day, and these are then sold on for 25 yuan (US$3) each. A genuine new tire costs 300 to 400 yuan. The fakes are prone to explode at high speeds.

In eastern Zhejiang Province, a factory manager, Ying Fuming, was arrested after it was found his factory made ‘edible’ lard from animal swill, sewage and even recycled industrial oil. The Fanchang Grease Factory, in the city of Taizhou, produced six tons of lard a day, and sometimes ten tons. It sold its lard to hotels and restaurants across the country at prices 50% lower than average.”

ChinaBounder comments:

Coming to Shanghai, the visitor’s first destination is seldom the much-touted tourist attractions, but instead the markets, to buy replica Louis Vuitton handbags, designer labels, scads of pirate DVDs – all that stuff. And China fakes far more than this, for if there’s even a fraction of money to be made in faking something, it will get faked. Food, medicine, car parts, what have you; it all gets knocked-off, putting lives at risk for a handful of profit.

But I often think China’s essential fakeness runs deeper than this.

Xintiandi, for example, one of Shanghai’s premier tourist spots. A few years back, real people lived there. Sure, it was a run-down, beat-up neighborhood. But it was a community. Rather than renovate this community for the benefit of those who lived there, the residents were thrown out, palmed off with often sub-standard housing, often far away from their former friends and neighbors. Then their original houses were more or less torn down and rebuilt, brick by brick into what you see today – a picture-perfect Disneyfication of ‘classic’ Shanghai. A careful, cautious, sterile facsimile.

Few of the residents who used to live there could now afford even a single drink in Xintiandi. It is simply a site for well-heeled Shanghainese to strut, and for gullible foreigners to get the ‘Old Shanghai’ experience. Colossally expensive, with restaurants serving mostly mediocre food, Xintiandi is little more than corporate styling. And hugely successful it is too, so that now politicians all across China are letting their lack of imagination run riot as they order up their own Xintiandi clones. Eyes on the dollar, as always.

When I go to Xintiandi, I feel shame for China.

Same is true for that other famous Shanghai tourist spot, the ‘Old City’ area, and the ‘City God Temple,’ near the Bund. Here, tourists are pressured to buy ‘antiques’ from Ming and Qing China, all fake; and this happens in a venue which itself is fake, since the entire area was rebuilt in the 1930s, and has been renovated again several times since then. Fakes inside a fake, and the whole a dream of what China imagines itself to be. And all over China, pagodas, temples, wells, gardens, rockeries – so many are fake, modern-day reconstructions of the priceless heritage China destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.

But it is not just the fabric of China that is so often fake.

I often feel the Chinese national character itself is fake.

For what does it mean to ‘be Chinese’ today? Too often, it means to be the image, the embodiment of what the Communist Party says ‘being Chinese’ is. Every reader with a more than transitory experience of China will have heard the six famous words – ‘As a Chinese person I think…’

And, ‘as a Chinese person,’ what the vast majority of people think is nothing more than what the Party wants them to think. On Tibet. On Xinjiang. On Japan. On Taiwan. ‘As a Chinese person I think…’ and fill in the blank. And the flip side of those six famous words – ‘You are not Chinese, so you do not understand.’ Knee-jerk reaction, pre-programmed. How many of the people who use that phrase really examine their opinions, question them, shape them?

They take their opinions, and thus their very character, from Party hand-outs.

And so effective is the Party at this that most people do not even notice. Many citizens of China have criticisms of their government. Yet few see how wholly, how intimately, this same Party has constructed the national character. Teaching hatred. Bigotry. Intolerance. Xenophobia. Racism. Ingorance. And, to top off this poisonous mix, the Party instills the sense among its people that the world owes China an apology. That all of China’s current problems lie at the feet of Imperial Japan, or the British Empire.

The truth, of course, is that 95% of today’s problems in China are the fault of one group of people, and one group alone: the Communists. It is the Party that owes the deepest and most profound apologies to the Chinese people. Alas! With their Party-sanctioned personalities, how are the people to know it, how can they ever demand it?

Character should be self-created. Authentic. Yes, our genes, our environment, shape us in ways we do not fully understand. But still we can make what we are, can decide what we are. We can choose to be.

But in China? I do not often see that. What I more frequently see is the group reaction, the Party line, the cultural identity – ‘I am Chinese; therefore I think that...’

'Fault Lines On The Face Of China: 50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.' Excerpt 14.

China is home to the sweet wormwood plant, which is a source of the chemical artesunate, used to make artemisinin, a potent defense against malaria.

Malaria kills one person every 30 seconds, and up to three million people a year. Ninety percent of the deaths are in Africa. Most of the victims are children. Yet Africa, the continent that needs the drug most, is being flooded with fake versions of it. Fakes made in China that either contain too little artesunate or none at all. The copies are highly detailed, even down to fake security holograms. And they are cheap – around forty US cents, as opposed to US$2.20 for the real thing.

“Most of these find their way into the hands of poor people, they don’t have any choice. They buy these drugs with the little money they have and they die,” says Kevin Palmer, a World Health Organization official working in malaria prevention. “People die. We have plenty of instances when people have taken these fake drugs and then they are dead. It’s murder.”

Athletes and students: make your mark in China. ‘T’ for Tibet, ‘X’ for Xinjiang when you’re on camera in Beijing.