Picture of the Week: Lonely Dog

The Bund, Shanghai

That said, some­thing has been both­er­ing me for a while now. Maybe it’s the one-sided view of the prob­lem. Maybe it’s because I feel we’re witch-hunting. Maybe it’s because I can’t take hypocrisy very well. or maybe I’ve just been brain­washed my the Chi­nese as my friends like to joke.

I’m a for­mer Langues’O stu­dent. I’ve been study­ing Chi­nese for over 12 years now (yeah, I started young… French cur­ricu­lum, you know). I lived in China, I stud­ied, I and worked there. I don’t nec­es­sar­ily know more than you about the coun­try but I can see the other side of the story.

So, what’s the deal with China?

Well, first of all, China is a young Repub­lic. The coun­try was ruled by feu­dal dynas­ties until the 1911 repub­li­can rev­o­lu­tion. And then, China didn’t really have a steady gov­ern­ment until Mao took power in 1949. After Yuan Shikai and the war­lords, after the Guo­min­dang dic­ta­tor­ship, after WW2 and the Japan­ese inva­sion, the Com­mu­nist took power quite eas­ily. They had a strong new ide­ol­ogy and they had resisted against Japan — that’s what peo­ple mostly wanted at the time.

Sec­ond of all, there is one think you should know: China hate to be told what to do. Espe­cially by West­ern­ers. Hey, we all have a weak­ness, don’t we?

Remem­ber what I was say­ing above? The last dynasty, the Qing, fell in 1911. Well, at the time, China was pretty weak and def­i­nitely not “mod­ern” by West­ern stan­dards, Diplo­macy and trade, for exam­ple. China was the “中国”, rul­ing over Asia, cen­ter of its world. The Qing did accept for­eign trade, but on a lim­ited basis (spe­cific har­bors, Chi­nese mid­dle­men…). And mean­while, the rest of the world was enter­ing the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion. And then… clash.

Chi­nese tea, silk and porce­lain were in high demand in the West, yet China wanted lit­tle that the West had to offer, caus­ing the West­ern­ers to incur an unfa­vor­able bal­ance of trade. A rem­edy was found: Eng­land got into opium trade. Imported from India, it was used to buy Chi­nese goods, then for­warded to Europe. Chi­nese opium con­sump­tion soon became a social issue, but the trade ben­e­fits Eng­land, which just had attempted to estab­lish, one more time, an embassy and got turned down. Eng­land even­tu­ally picked a casus belli and started the Opium Wars. The Qing Dynasty, already in inter­nal tur­moil, couldn’t resist. In 1842, the Nan­jing Treaty was signed: China had to cede Hong Kong to the British, open har­bors to for­eign trade, limit duty, grant British national extrater­ri­to­ri­al­ity etc. Britain was to have most-favored-nation treat­ment: it would receive what­ever trad­ing con­ces­sions the Chi­nese granted other pow­ers. They later obtained the con­struc­tion of rail­ways, zones of the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal influ­ences in their leased ter­ri­to­ries. The Treaty of Nan­jing set the scope and char­ac­ter of an unequal rela­tion­ship for the cen­tury of “national humil­i­a­tions”. The treaty was fol­lowed by other incur­sions, wars, and treaties that granted new con­ces­sions and added new priv­i­leges for the foreigners.

This short war sym­bol­ized the bru­tal inte­gra­tion of China in a new world order, invented and dom­i­nated by the USA. The con­tin­ual ref­er­ence to the Unequal Treaties marked Chi­nese his­tory: it is only by recov­er­ing Hong Kong that Deng Xiaop­ing “washed the honor of China”.

Even after WW2, when the new Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Party and the Guo­min­dang fought for power, the USA tried to influ­ence the out­come, in the hope of avoid­ing another “red coun­try”. Basi­cally, it’s only when Mao took power in 1949 that West­ern­ers left China for good… well. almost for good. Remem­ber… Hong Kong and Macao were only returned to China in 1997 and 1999!

So you can imag­ine why China doesn’t like to be told what to do. To the West­ern world, espe­cially to North Amer­ica, the “new con­ti­nent”, a cen­tury is a long time. To the Chi­nese, it’s yes­ter­day. Appar­ently, when Kissinger once asked Zou Enlai if he believed whether the 1789 French Rev­o­lu­tion ben­e­fited human­ity, he replied, “It’s too early to tell.”

So, for me, it all comes down to one thing: who are we to judge China?

First thing, pretty much all coun­tries around the world have active seces­sion­ist and auton­o­mist move­ments: La Réu­nion, Brit­tany, Cor­sica (France), Québec and West­ern provinces (Canada), West Papua (Indone­sia), Brus­sels and Flem­ish region (Bel­gium), Azores (Por­tu­gal)… just to name a few ran­domly. So no prob­lem, go demon­strate for a free Tibet but you may open a Pan­dora box — how would you feel if Chi­nese were demon­strat­ing for the inde­pen­dence of Que­bec or Alaska?

We are out­raged against Chi­nese impe­ri­al­ism: yet, a hun­dred years ago, we had no prob­lem invad­ing China. Some may argue that the cur­rent war against ter­ror­ism is just another face of impe­ri­al­ism. France and many coun­tries are still influ­enc­ing their for­mer colonies… and so on.

China and human rights? Not the best match, agreed. Nonethe­less, China is mak­ing progress. And let’s look at our­selves, once again. How long did it take us to abol­ish slav­ery? To stop killing peo­ple because they had darker skin or just looked dif­fer­ent? To allow women to vote?

Now, can we just stop being so blind and look around us? Are we that good and that vir­tu­ous that we can blame other coun­tries? And why China, sud­denly? Is it the worse coun­try we know? Do we usu­ally boy­cott what we think are dic­ta­tor­ship? Because I clearly remem­ber us hav­ing a pretty good rela­tion­ship with Saudi Ara­bia (hello, human rights, any­one?), Libya, for­mer Zaire… just to name a few. Let’s just stop being hyp­ocrite.

I won’t boy­cott the Olympic Games. I love China and I love its peo­ple. I keep on hop­ing the coun­try find its own way to be, between West­ern influ­ence and the weight of its his­tory. I hope human rights keep on mak­ing progress, because there were progress. And I hope I was able to show you another side of the story.

You’re wel­come to argue with me!

Related posts:

1. The Lord Of The Visa
2. Eight Ran­dom Facts About Me
3. Tianan­men Square (天安门广场)
4. The United Nations At Home
5. The World For Dummies