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DEFENDING China
the unfashionable art of defending china
It is considered dangerously unfashionable to be defensive when responding to the world media's daily dose of China-bashing. It may seem paranoid to suggest that a propaganda invasion is taking place across the globe, with the creation of a 21st Century us and them at its core. So what if it is. The critics claimed China was paranoid for keeping out Google and Facebook, and continue to say so with a straight face even after the Edward Snowden revelations. Plus paranoia would be an affordable price paid to avoid the abominable examples in the Middle-East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. In this unconventional struggle, in some ways a mutation of imperial invasion, China is still at a historical disadvantage. Most China sympathisers, whether Chinese or foreign, have too long remained silent and timid.
The Unfashionable Art of Defending China
June 2, 2016
China is far from perfect; a country of its size and complexity could never be. Utopianists should keep walking and look elsewhere for a model upon which to nourish their idealism. Nonetheless, the country has done a miraculous job rising from the ashes of neo-colonialism, self-destructive corruption, cynicism, and diffidence induced partly by opiate dreams, barbaric invasions by democratic drug lords and the military overreach of its closest neighbour, and a civil war.
During this on-going reincarnation process, China has managed to redistribute wealth with commendable equitability, though the wealth gap has widened alarmingly in recent years in the wake of the nation's shift to marketisation. The penetration of new wealth has also created numerous side-effects, including reappearance of corruption and an entire generation of nouveau riche tu hao — an inevitable developmental stage experienced by all developed economies, though never before at this scale and speed.
However, instead of encouraging China to continue with this historic success, or offer constructive suggestions, the western propaganda machine has been working overtime to demonise the emerging state of Chinese affairs at every opportunity.
It would be interesting to know what blinds them from China’s measurable achievements in not just economic, but also human terms. In assessing this continent-size country, larger macro-evidence needs to be taken into account. For example, life expectancy was 35 in 1949, today it is in the mid-70s. Infant mortality has plunged steadily, now approaching a level equal to that of the USA, the world's richest nation with only one fifth of China's population. Lifting 400 million people out of abject poverty and urbanising 300 million peasants in just a few decades is no mean social feat. Yet, say anything negative about China, and it will be embraced eagerly as any unquestionable natural fact. Daily predictions of China's imminent collapse are more akin to voodoo than prognosis. And the academic community need to ask why.
James Tam is an environmental engineer and bilingual writer from Hong Kong, whose cultural viewpoint, rather than translation abilities, connect the two languages in which he writes. Tam offers an alternative to traditionally accepted, and particularly americocentric, perspectives on China's increasingly important global role.
Image credit: shongnayang
Written by James Tam
It would be interesting to know what blinds the media to China’s measurable achievements in not just economic, but also human terms. Lifting 400 million people out of abject poverty and urbanising 300 million peasants in just a few decades is no mean social feat.
It is no longer just ethnic Chinese who are beginning to defend China in this regard, just as a rising awareness and anger over the treatment of defenceless civilians in the Middle East has developed in civil society worldwide. Millions have been killed, or their lives ruined unprovoked, only then to face demonisation in the press. Entire nations reduced to hyperbolic buzzwords: terrorism (cyber or otherwise), extremism, human rights abuse. A dozen or so provocative cartoonists were gunned down in Paris, and it became the sensation of the century. Similarly, heads were gruesomely sawed off by an extremist group, and a deafening global outcry was orchestrated. What about the thousands of deformed children in Iraq, born after depleted uranium bombs had been nefariously dumped without even a contrived excuse?Are these grossly disproportional responses a manifestation of subconscious racism, cultural supremacy, or the brainwashing power of international propaganda?
Returning to China’s shortcomings, there are few leaders exhibit a higher level of self-awareness and openly critical as Xi Jinping. The top dogs in Beijing are not only concerned, but taking rectifying actions with unparalleled resolution and efficiency. More senior officials, including army generals, have been fired or demoted in China in the last two years than the USA has in the past two centuries. China is also doing an astounding amount of work to improve the environment, another inevitable victim of industrialisation. Sincere and well-meaning bystanders can surely afford to wait for results, rather than jumping up and down, hurling accusatory cliches, and wagging hysterical fingers at those who are busy fixing monstrous problems.
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