I finally managed to get up nice and early in morning today, before anyone else in the family. It’s freezing. My fingers are stiff with cold, and I want nothing more than to go back to bed after I’ve finished my morning routine of chatting and writing. There is no one online at the moment, no one to talk to. I am feeling a bit bored. Somehow, I have once again embroiled myself in a debate about the topic of Tibet; to be independent or not to be? I’m taking the latter.
The thing is, I feel rather indignant about a lot of things which concern my country. To me, it feels as if China has been demonized by Western media. Someone in the Times said that the Chinese are all like robots, accepting every piece of propaganda from the state. Um, excuse me; robots? Can I say, racial discrimination? In fact, the Chinese are no more responsive to propaganda than any other race. We just happen to have a different world view from Westerners. The East does not work like the West. End of story. We’ve developed differently, we have different values. It is unfair to impose one set of values upon people who have already accepted another set of values. There are no right or wrong values in the world. Who can judge which set of values are better? No one in this world. To judge is to claim superiority, and didn’t the Declaration of Independence and a heck of a lot of other declarations by heroic revolutionaries/freedom fighters say that all men (I’ll assume this means the species of Homo sapiens) were created equal?
All we can do is to form our own opinions, but as human beings, we do not have the right to condemn another group of human beings just because we feel that they believe in the wrong thing. There is a reason why I admire President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran so much. He is a man who stands up for his beliefs, no matter what adversity he faces. As a man, he might not be very friendly or tolerant, but he sure has courage. You have to commend him for that.
I am also sick of the fact that every government which does not conform to American ideals is labelled a dictatorship. Just because these nations (e.g. Russia, China) are powerful, and slightly more autocratic than the ‘democracy’ in the United States does not mean that they are dictatorships. Sure, their people seem unusually united, but that only means that the people believe in unity and their government. After France suggested boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics, ordinary Chinese banded together and boycotted France. That was done without the government saying anything. That the government has that much support from ordinary people shows that it is not a dictatorship. Dictatorships thrive on fear. This was not driven by fear, but by patriotism and loyalty. We Chinese are proud to be Chinese, and we know that our strength lies in our unity. Now, I have nothing against France. In fact, I love French culture, history, language etc. I write about France almost as often as I write about the Holy Land. However, I cannot say that I’m unhappy that my compatriots boycotted the Gallic nation. I myself would never do it. I like French products a bit too much.
Most often than not, I have to explain to people that while the ruling party in China is called the Communist Party, it is in no way communist. In fact, I believe that the Chinese are some of the most capitalist people I have ever met. There are a lot of international students who originate from China, and they spend most of their time overseas buying flash cars and generally wasting money and time. If China was communist, then people would not be able to do that. All that money would’ve belonged to the state, but as it is, there is a lot of cash in private hands. The Chinese government of 1970 is not the Chinese government of 2008. At the moment, China is implementing state-funded education (and I believe, it’s even better than New Zealand, a western country, because in China, state-funded education means providing stationery for the students).
The steps to democracy and freedom are slow and tedious. We should let developing modern states do just that; develop. It is most unhelpful to have criticism coming from every direction during the entire course of the journey, and instead of being ‘helpful’ (wherever did you get that idea?) this criticism only makes the people of that developing nation more resentful of those criticizing them. Demonization and undeserved attacks do one thing, however, and I think it’s a very good thing; with China, as with Iran, these attacks have only served to make the people more aware of their national identity, and their strength in their unity. They know they have to unite, or else they will be smashed, the way a wall of crumbling rock is smashed by the catapults of invading enemies.
