There used to be an era when the Olympic Games was a single event the whole Ancient Greece was expecting every four years. More than almost 3.000 years later, after the first revival of the Games in 1896 in Athens, Greece, thanks to the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympics is to happen this year in Beijing, China. The Olympic Flame was in London a few days ago, and just left Paris after a series of demonstrations in the streets of the French capital all along the torch relay... Contrary to the speech delivered by the French Secretary of State of Sports, many people, not only in France but in the whole world, do not think that these demonstrations were irrespectful. China won the organization of the 2008 Olympics, that is true, and no one is to contest this fact, but as we all know, China does not respect some of the most basic human rights. The Chinese government agreed to consider some progress about this issue before the beginning of 2008, but since no effort is perceptible and since China represents more than a billion possible consumers and is also about to be the most powerful economic country in the world, Western countries do not really know how to act towards the coming Olympics... Should we boycott the opening ceremony ? Is it really possible to boycott Chinese goods while we all know that our houses are full of "made in China" products from our computers to our clothing ?
Since France will have the presidency of the European Union, the participation of our president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to the opening ceremony is highly symbolic. When people watched the Olympic flame making its way along the streets of Paris, they heard the boos, and they saw that people were far from clapping and enjoying the event... In fact, it was the perfect contrary than four years ago while the flame came from Olympia and reached Athens a few weeks later. And while the flame was about to reach the City Hall of Paris, when the Chinese representative saw the large banner "Paris defends Human Rights all over the world" floating over the façade and all the Tibetan flags the crowd proudly showed, he wanted the policemen to tear it down and seemed really furious that freedom of speech and thinking is still allowed in France ! Most of French people do not really feel very patriotic compared to countries such as Sweden or the United States but there is still a feeling that our country had a rich past, filled with events that might have been really bloody, but France was the first Republic in Europe, and was one of the very first countries to write down in its common law that all human beings are born equals in dignity and rights whether they be White or Black, rich or poor... The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen guarantees freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion... It also recognizes the right to private property, the right to security, but also the right to be protected from oppression. Till now these values were these of democracy and progress, and China will not force us to step back just because of its world economic power !
Now, the Olympic Flame keeps on travelling around the world, through San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and it will reach Beijing before the end of the summer... But right now, there are troubles to solve and voices to be heard in Tibet. Whatever happens on this part of the Earth, human rights are not respected since no international law allows a government to repress demonstrations with the use of violence against human beings. History is filled with examples of how dangerous it can be to consider of no importance the first steps of repression : Protestants under the reign of Louis XIV in France, Blacks in the Confederate States of America until the end of the Civil War, Jews under the Third Reich in Germany, and so on... We, humans, do not live in a perfect world, but it is our duty to fight for a better world from any point of view. Yes, the Olympics is to be once again a "Citius, Altius, Fortius" world competition, but so will be the demonstrations if China does not prove herself more receptive to European and American proposals on the question of human rights and on the repression against Tibetan monks... Anyway, now that sport and politics are impossible to part ; in this context, which medal will Human Rights win ?
6 commentaires:
I really agree with you that your" country had a rich past, filled with events that might have been really bloody...first Republic in Europe..." I also agree with you that your "houses are full of 'made in China' products from ... computers to ... clothing?" Yes, but I am also wondering what is left now except your cold criticism on others’s HR problems?
OK, let’s have discussion on this point.
From a historical perspective, human right problem of China became a focal point to criticize China only after the foundation of PRC in 1949. It is easy to see that this was only based on severe ideological conflict. When china became a rising power, the western countries consider China as a strong potential enemy and then human right began to be an important civil weapon against China for several decades.
In one aspect, human right was an effective factor to establish solidarity all over the world against china. In western world, the mentality was similar. Western people tend to pay more attention on individual rights. With this method, the whole western world, from government to common people, can be united against Chinese government. In another aspect, the overflow of the criticism against human rights in china can provoke the attention of the Chinese people on the accumulating unjust. This decreases the trust of people to the government, accumulating the anti-governmental force.
The power of china has been based on its united reign and stable social community since the first dynasty was built more than 2000 years ago. In Chinese history, none of the dynasties in the history died because of exterior invasion. They died mostly because of unstable society, while invasions were just catalysts. If the anti-governmental force is strong enough, the current Chinese government will be undermined, and this biggest potential enemy will be turned into a new colony of western countries. This is proven by the history, and expected by the Western countries.
From cultural perspective, Western culture was based on nomad culture. A very dominant feature of nomad culture is that when a tribe is strong enough, he will definitely invade other tribes to control more territories and more resources, because they will soon deplete their own resources in a limited time. This means that every rising power will be a future enemy. However, the history of China proved that China, based on agricultural culture, has never invaded other countries for more territories or resources. But as western people don’t understand this because of the different basis of culture, severe misunderstanding exists. The Nomad cultures believe in jungle rule, while agricultural cultures don’t. Based on this, the colonization history provides the western people an important mentality: superiority over Chinese people (as well as almost all the Asian people). Because of this superiority and arrogance, they don’t want to make effort to understand asian cultures.
But the rapid development of china challenges the superiority of western people. The daily life of western people is largely dependent on China. The point can be easily seen as your "houses are full of 'made in China' products from ... computers to ... clothing?" The economy of western countries (especially Europe) is closely connected with China. Nowadays, China is independent of western countries on most high technologies. If you don’t export a product to China, we will make it (even better ones) in a very short time. If you don’t export a kind of resource to China, we can find enough of them in our huge territory and any other corner of the world. This kind of asymmetrical dependence, i.e. western countries depend on China while China is relatively independent on western countries, raised huge panic of western people.
The “threat of China” theory has been popular for quite a long time. Because of the misunderstanding of Chinese culture, western people believe that china is no more a potential enemy, but a practical enemy, an enemy against their superiority. No one wants his enemy to live easy. However, the life of western people is highly dependent on China. They don’t have enough ability to change the situation in the near future. So they dare not to see that China is already strong and prominent. They dare not to confess that they are being exceeded by China at least economically. They dare not to confess that any change on Chinese policy will deeply affect their life. They dare not to see that China is still fast developing. In a word, they dare not to admit the fact that the former “lower class” China, is defeating them. So they have to filter out all the positive facts in China. They want to collect all the dark side of China to persuade themselves that “China is still very bad”. This ostrich psychology can only relieve themselves from panic for a short while.
Economically, globalization is striking to the self-consciousness of the Westerners. A couple of years ago, Hamburg lowered the salary standard of workers. The reason was that some big companies wanted to move their factories to China, resulting tens of thousands of unemployment in Hamburg. Everyone knows that China is the world factory because we have abundant inexpensive labor force who are willing to work for a lower salary because of the low living expenditure. The Hamburg workers have to lower their salary in order to keep their job. This is just an example of the general lowering of salaries in all western countries. This is a natural result of globalization, because globalization makes the whole world as an entire market. But lowering the salary means lowering the living standards. Of course the western people complain. It’s very likely that they believe that China is the reason why they live worse than before just like in the 18-19century people blame on the machines for their poor living rather than the cold bloody capitalists.
Actually, the western companies in China make many serious human rights problems: They force Chinese workers to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. They severely pollute the environment in China. They give extremely less salary to the workers, without paying any social insurance. They lower the protection of the workers, resulting many irreversible industrial diseases, but the companies refuse to be responsible for that. Obviously, these problems are based on the greedy western capitalists, not China. They want to make more money, but they cause serious human rights in China, and also cause problems in western countries. Of course, these greedy capitalists won’t confess that they are guilty for that. In their own country, they mislead the public opinion against China. Since they have caused a lot of human rights problems in China, this is a good excuse to blame China.
Because of the historical and practical reasons, the western world, from government to people, would like to criticize China, especially on the human rights problems. Their aim of criticism is not to help Chinese people to live happier, but to try to make China poorer, less stable, less efficient, less developed, less challenging, less competent, and so on.
Sovereignty is the basis of human rights. The very basic human rights are the rights of survival, the right of development, and the right to keep his dignity. The first line of German constitution is “The dignity of human beings is protected.” Without these very basic human rights, the other human rights are just Utopian. In a country without its own sovereignty, the people there don’t have those very basic human rights.
We see the real examples in the history: The US said that they wanted to bring human rights to Kosovo and Iraq. The US defeated their government and controlled those areas. But in those areas, do the inhabitants get more rights? They worry if they will be robbed or killed tomorrow. The US soldiers can torture man freely, rape women freely. That is the life without sovereignty. If these areas are so far away from us, let’s see the history of Germany in 1949-1950. An old German lady once told me a story happened to her. After Germany was defeated, the French soldiers controlled her hometown. The Germans were not leaving any rights. If the French soldiers were unhappy, they could arrest any German freely and torture him or her, just for fun. The French soldiers occupied the German lady’s beautiful house, and her family was driven into the small, cold and humid basement. She got serious problems in all of her joints arthritis, till now. The French soldiers robbed her food. Her neighbor was even starved to death. No one cares. Till now, this lady is still afraid of fireworks, because this will revoke her tragic memory. That is the life without sovereignty. Besides the French soldiers, the Soviet soldiers raped over 2 million German women, according to the incomplete statistics. That is the life without sovereignty.
China suffered this kind of tragedy 70 years ago. We never forget that miserable history, and we don’t want that this tragedy happens again to us. We don’t want to be the second Kosovo, the second Iraq, or the second Germany after WWII, because we don’t want the life without our own sovereignty.
Yes, you can write a long list, listing huge amount of cases that the individual human rights were broken in China. But this is much much much better than the semi-colony period. At least, now most of the Chinese have our very basic rights. Our rights to survive and rights of dignity are secured by our own military force.
As Napoleon puts it, “China is a sleeping lion. Don’t wake him up.” We are waking up and the western countries forced us to wake up. The lion roars!
Let’s see the effects of POWER. The US also has many serious human rights problems. They might be just a little bit better than in China, if not at all. Why the criticism against American human rights problems is so little in the world, comparing to the criticisms against China? Very simple, because the US is powerful, much more powerful than any other current powers in the world. So, according to the western philosophy and history, the best way for China to get rid of the criticism is that we develop our country until we are much stronger than any western country. At that time, it’s our turn to criticize the western countries on the human rights, and no one dares to criticize us. After all, the West has taught us that in international affairs, there is no virtue and morality. The only determinant is the force. Now China is accumulating strong force, and the other Asian countries are also developing. The Asian power is rising in the world.
Yes, we have problems. But we are developing and trying to correcting the problems. Unlike the West that had golden 200 hundred years from 18-20 century to develop fast with abundant natural resources and colonies; we have to accumulate every single cent by our own efforts. We will solve these problems, but not immediately, and not under the pressure of western countries. We will solve these problems by ourselves.
We live happily in Asia. We live happily without the West interference. You are no longer the master of the world!!! We welcome the communication with good will, of course. But we have to keep our sovereignty, because this is the basis of all the other human rights. We have our own culture and we have our own standards. We don’t have to accept your standards. We don’t have to follow your path and we have our own way to develop. The history has proven many times: China is a very good friend to the friendly people, but will be definitely a nightmare to hostility.
If you really want to do something to help China to improve the human rights, please do three things:
1. Stop your prejudice and hostility. Throw away your arrogance.
2. Come to respect, understand and experience our culture deeply.
3. Make the West less hostile to China.
If you can’t do these, you, the West, should better shut up. You won’t make things better. This is none of your business.
Well, if you westerners do really want to help us improve our human rights, please use some efficient methods. And we will thank you for it.
However, if this is not your target, then just as someone say to the US in the Bali Conference:"If you do not want to help, please GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Actually what all of you have done is just make it worse. We have never seen any success from such boycott or any kinds of hostility behavior. But that's what you people like. So at first, we have to protect us from your cold attitude. Crap the liberty! That's what you like, but now we just want safe at first. Then should be our kind of liberty and rights.
So if you people still do nothing more than critic, boycott, and against us, nothing will improve. And those what you call human rights, liberty, pride of France, are just bullshit to us. And you French, American, British, all the European, are just as hypocritical and evil as you are 100 years ago. Then you will trembling for our raise.
hey, i was looking for some information about the sorbonne university and ive found this blog so im writting to you. im not from france but id like to come to study at sorbonne, so could you please write me what do i need to do to be accepted? i would be really thankful... :)
Dear arthur,
If you really want to do something to help the Western World to have a better opinion on China, please do three things:
1. Stop your prejudice and hostility. Throw away your arrogance.
2. Come to respect, understand and experience our culture deeply.
3. Make Chinese people less hostile to the Western world.
Bonsoir "Ani" j'ai retrouvé l'adresse de ton blog tout à fait par hasard, et j'ai lu une bonne partie de tes articles, ça me fait plaisir, je ne sais pas pourquoi, j'espére que tout va bien pour toi, je t'embrasse. Hermès
On dirait que ton blog s'est transformé en forum pour les droits de l'Homme!
Eva
Enregistrer un commentaire