China: Spin Doctor on Tibet and Olympics

ESWN translated an article written by Huangfu Ping on Tibet and Olympics. He is a former deputy editor for China Daily and a famous political commentator.

3 comments

  • Huangfu Ping is right about the anti-China bias in the Western media generally as well as among too many Westerners. That this bias comes at a time when China is hosting the Olympics — and when people, including anti-Chinese, need to be apolitical rather than propagandist — is the main reason why Internet chat rooms in China are rife with outrage against the West. But it’s important to keep in mind that those in the West who know China and understand its history well have been outraged as well. Among many such knowledgeable people is the veteran Sinologist and UCLA Political Science Professor Richard Baum, who recently resigned from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign after the Democratic aspirant to the White House indulged in some blatant China-baiting on her campaign trail. To know more about Baum’s genuine empathy for China as well as his professional scrupulousness in critiquing some of China’s most pressing social, economic and political issues, read his exhaustive and exclusive interview to the Asian affairs website AsiaScoop. The interview, titled “China Syndrome,” is available at http://asiascoop.com/conflict/china-tibet-101/.

  • Wei

    I find this to be very true to the point.

    What about human rights?

    Most people aren’t dissidents in China. Most people are sort of satisfied to put one foot in front of the other as long as there’s a paycheck at the end of the week and an opportunity for their kids to have a better life. The human rights community in this country talks about thousands of political prisoners—there aren’t thousands of political prisoners in China. Maybe hundreds. There maybe 50 journalists in prison in China, maybe an equal number of Internet bloggers who have crossed the line of political dissent. In a country of 1.3 billion, that’s not so many. And in terms of the prison population, we are way ahead of the Chinese.

    What’s really more important than the concerns of human rights activists are the thousands of petty indignities that occur every day to ordinary people—the corruption, getting thrown out of your house without adequate payment, the problems of dealing with corrupt, incompetent, local officials. That just makes people’s lives very difficult. The local governments are self-contained because Beijing can’t police everything and because it rewards officials who deliver on economic growth, stability and, at least until recently, one child per family. Those are the things that get attention—not whether people are happy or whether justice and equality is served.

  • Not many supporters of a free Tibet know about one of the major reasons for the widespread frustration among Tibetan exiles over their community’s failure to gain independence from Chinese rule: The sheer incompetence of the Dalai Lama’s government in exile. A well-reported feature story, with excellent photographs, on this highly under-reported issue, can be found at:

    http://asiascoop.com/conflict/tibetan-blunder/

    Cordially,

    Ajay Singh
    Editor, AsiaScoop
    Email address: ajay.singh@asiascoop.com
    Website URL: http://asiascoop.com

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