Site visitors since '05:
Friday, January 21, 2005
via: peking duck, read the original post: here
also read realted links: the little green book of a taiwan separatist
to be honest, i begin to feel a little pity for this hatred-harbouring soul.
sorry for saying that. may the God forgive him.
Despite the dogmatic illusion of 'inseparatable part' of China (turn a blind a eye on reality of a over 50 years separation), there are sensible people in China who approach the issue with open mind. For example, Anti (his penname) is arguebly the best journalist under 30 in China, and has visited Taipei amid 2004 election. He has this in his blog (in Chinese):
http://anti.blog-city.com/index.cfm?d=12&m=1&y=2005
Though he emotionally appeals to Taiwanese to remain somewhat associated to China (not PRC) and wait until China has a democracy, he totally respect their desire to be independent. Democratic value, seems to Anti, is above all - certanly above China's national ambition.
Anti's voice maybe a lone one, but I'd like to point out the irony, that a home grown voice (Anti's education was exclusively in China) can still be rational, democratic and Western (count me in), but a US-educated voice like JR's can be very Eastern and mideaval.
"...be rational, democratic and Western (count me in)..." - bellevue
_____________________
"I'm sure your shitty Mandarin is no better than your broken English, inland redneck! Hell to you, and your corrupt country!" - bellevue
"Come on, people love ThinkPad. Who is going to buy a ChinkPad? Not in wildest dream! " - bellevue
"I'm yet to find any Japanese that would degrade himself by pretending to be a Chinese" - bellevue
"it's a compliment to you by saying you are a prostitute...you think it's easy to be a prostitute in a highly competitive enviornment like shanghai? you think you could be a prostitute by being shameless as you? f**k..." - translated from bellevue's original words in chinese
"there are bunch of no-brains like you in shanghai, same in the states and canada... the moderator of bcchinese blog is f**king the same with those in china, like a sh*t eating dog can't give up eating sh*t"- translated from bellevue's original words in chinese
"...you pig-head ..." - bellevue
"i don't understand why your IQ is so low" - bellevue
much much more ....
oh, this world is really amazing ...all original words of bellevue is here:http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2005/01/07/7041.aspx
Bingfeng, keep it nice or I'll delete. No more comments like that. Stay on the subject and avoid the attacks -- they aren't necessary and only reduce the dialogue to juvenile name-calling.
richard,
delete it if you want. but i feel very bad to see someone is lying in front of me.
sorry for that.
You may not like his language. But what is the lie? (Honest question -- what are you referring to?)
oh, he lies a lot by purposefully presenting only part of the whole pic or twisting the truth.
his mind harbours only hatred towards chinese, nothing else. he is not rational, not democratic, and not western.
i didn't see anything constructive from him and didn't see anything that could convince me he was trying to be constructive
btw, richard, i strongly believe people with a mindset similar to bellevue, no matter they live in taiwan, mainland china or in the states, are the real troubles to us.
remember mr. soog?
back to the topic.
i have been to inner mongolia two years ago. it is very "chinese" although old people still worship Genghis Khan.
it's not necessay to make outer mongolia a part of china. this is 21st centruy. there are a lot of better and moral ways to get the same thing without invading other countries.
taiwan is totally different. taiwan is chinese soil and it is not only political, economic or history issue but also a very emotional issue.
ask germans if they would like to give a chance for "bayern independence" or ask japanese if they would consider "independent Hokkaido" an option.
no way!
like Jing said, it is totally furitless to arguing whether taiwan is part of china.
time should not be wasted in this
if someone is so symapthy to taiwan secessionism, like some japanese right wings,why don't donate Hokkaido to these taiwan secessionists and help them establish a "republic of taiwan" there?
taiwan is chinese soil and is my soil, unless 13 billion chinese all agree, there is NO WAY to make their day dream become true.
but i won't against a "republic of taiwan" in Hokkaido or Alaska or somewhere else, provided they don't launch terrorist attacks in mainland and taiwan.
I think all of us are actually in debt to JR, for his articulation of what makes a 'Chinese mind': the unchallengable monomania (Da Yi Tong), the ethnic-based devotion to China (ye luo gui gen), and so on. At least he is honest, doesn't even pretend that democracy or humanity is a Chinese value.
Let me tell you my story, maybe a bit off topic.
On that morning of September 11, 2001, a Chinese media delegation invited by the State Department to the States was touring the east coast. With a full schedule they got up early in their hotel. When the first plane struck the North Tower, those Chinese officials and reporters were having their breakfast in the lobby, and were alerted of what's going on by overhead TV. According to witnesses, all of sudden, a loud cheer came from those Chinese, now standing up on their feet, all applauding.
I don't know if bingfeng joined their cheer in Shanghai, or if Jung Rhee joined his Chinese compatriots applauding here in American soil over the smoke from ground Zero, but if they did, I wouldn't be surprised. Later the news came, a burst of joy raged over China's cyberspace and cubical space as well next morning, turning the day a festival for them. To quote one typical post on Internet, 'I can't be happier, and I have not been happy like this for many years.'
Why? Why is that? I leave the question to Thomas Friedmans and Nicolas Kristofs. All I know is if this is the Chinese way, then I'm not a Chinese.
911 is the moment that changed many's life forever, and touched many other's. It's also a defining moment for a person like me thousands of miles away. For the first time, I use 'we' and 'us' referring to America and Americans, unabashedly, regardless of the legality.
Let's face it: they hate us. Somehow they believe we get in the way of their great Da Yi Tong cause, and for that, our civilians have to die because what we are. Let's not hate ourselves so much into believing that diversity means we should tolerate the idea of killing innocent civilians en mass. We can't change what they think, but we can change ourselves, for the better: be informed, and be vigilant.
Bellevue, that is incredible. I will believe you -- but only after you provide a link documenting this. So please, share your sources. We can't make judgements based on acecdotal evidence, I'm afraid.
that "gentleman" is trying to agitate hatred towards chinese people again.
he will never mention that so many chinese cried when watching twin towers collapsed, and will never mention that many young american wee boys just shouted to chinese of "nuking shanghai" in the "spy plane debate".
i watched the "america under attack" from CNN that morning, and as a chinese, i called my american friends in shanghai to express my sorrow that so many lives lost. actually my family asked me if we should do something for my american friends in shanghai.
come on, you really believe anyone will be happy to see civilians are attacked by terrorist? they just hate those war fans in pentagon. they are just too stupid to mix up those innocent americans with those war fans in pentagon.
the anger and hatred harboured in that guy's mind could generate the electricity for whole shanghai!
just unbelievable.
Richard:
I assumed you know that!
Later on the delegation's itinerate was cut short by State Department, citing technicalities (flights grounded for 4 days). There was also a Chinese outcry for that: America is no longer honorng free expression, just as what China is!
Drawing moral equation is CCP's favorite game. I don't get why it's also a favorite for, well, someone on the same side of the aisle I'm in.
Ok, I'll try to find English links, but if I can only find Chinese ones, no problem for you?
"Let's face it: they hate us. Somehow they believe we get in the way of their great Da Yi Tong cause, and for that, our civilians have to die because what we are" - bellevue
no chinese will ever think that civilians should die.
the God will curse you for saying such an evil lie.
Remember, I was living in Honk Koing at the time, so I did not know all these details....
somebody is making his death struggle by attacking chinese after i make clear what his true face is.
LOL.
great show!
Richard: it's AFP news on 9/15/2001. Do you have an easy access to back news of AFP?
and i seriously doubt one's sense of sound judgement if s/he will believe a person calling himself a former "chinese" while calling other chinese "chink".
I already found a bunch of links, and also China's rebutal (China insists that they were not expelled, but inconvenienced by traffic so changed plan). The news also says, one HK-based English newspaper (SCMP) ran an editorial on that, and Richard Boucher had to respond on related questions.
I now begin to realize that despite the presence of the Internet, there is still a huge gap between news discourse in English and Chinese. Virtually every Chinese netter are aware of the contraversy surround that China delegate, but few English readers are aware. This should be my mission to try to bridge the gap. Sure it makes someone's life a bit uneasy. Sorry about that.
For the old 'who-is-Chinese-and-who-is-not' topic, do you want to end it by conference phone call? DNA check is not feasible over Internet. :)
If AFP news backs up their archives I'm sure I can check it. But it should also be easy for you to provide a link. It isn't that I disbelieve you (really), just that I was out of America at this time and I was out of touch with things like this.
Sure Richard. My problem is that I can't find the AFP story at the moment. AFP story is the single source of all the others. China's rebutal is also informative - who they are, what they do, what other people say (Phoenix TV). They also name names.
I'll post Chinese links first, then back up with English ones.
Voila! I found AFP 's original story via a Chinese expat site:
****************************************************WASHINGTON: The United States has expelled a group of visiting Chinese journalists, some of whom reportedly applauded at this week's terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, a State Department official said.
``On September 14, we curtailed the visit of a group from China under the International Visitor Programme,'' the official said.
``Under the current circumstances, it was decided not to continue the tour.''
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to elaborate on the circumstances of the group's expulsion, but others confirmed there had been reports that some of the journalists had applauded and cheered when they saw television footage of hijacked planes slamming into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
It was not immediately clear where the alleged incident occurred, but the group, which was being hosted by the New York-based Institute of International Education, had been scheduled to visit New York this week, the official said.
The 14 journalists from China, were on a 28-day study tour funded by the State Department's International Visitor Programme, which brings foreign professionals to the US to meet their American colleagues. The official said the status of all other similar tours now under way was being reviewed ``on a case-by-case basis''.
The 40-year-old programme has brought more than 186 current and former heads of state and more than 1,500 senior foreign government officials to the US since it was founded. -AFP****************************************************
http://www.xys.org/xys/netters/others/essays/wtc117.txt
You can find Chinese rebuttal on the same page. Analysis of this rebuttla was from Mr. Fang Zhouzi (real name Fang Shimin), a famous Chinese cyber personality notable for his frequent pieces exposing CCP lies. He is San Diego based and can be reached at smfang@yahoo.com.
For the first time of my life my credibility hinged on a few Frenchmen. Merci beaucoup!
Although State Department's decision to 'curtail' those happy Chinese's travel plan is not unreasonable, I wish that they had done the otherwise. Those journalists missed a chance to see in their own eyes the magnificent of a nation, the outpouring of people, and a civil society made up with its responsible citizens much different than the one they came from. If they had eywitnessed all these, they might have a second opinion of America.
Other links to the same story:
http://www.dawn.com/2001/09/16/int3.htm
http://forum.japantoday.com/Is_Jacques_Chirac_the_ANTI_CHRIST%3F/m_258613/tm.htm
http://www.freeserbia.net/Documents/2001/September.html
The Chip on China’s Shoulder
Author: Nicholas D. Kristof Publication: The New York Times Date: January 18, 2002
As soon as the two planes hit the World Trade Center, Chinese Internet users logged into online chat rooms to discuss the terror attacks.
"Just one word: cool!" says the first of 6,000 comments on the attacks in a chat room on Sina.com, a leading Chinese-language portal. "Now the day has come for the American dogs."
"Why not the White House?" asks another a moment later. The gleeful declarations continue in a rush:
"Excellent!!!!!!!! But the hijacked planes didn't carry a nuclear bomb."
"Just great. Really fantastic. Serves 'em right."
"So cool to see America bombed. Guys, let's use the Internet to wage war on 'em as well. This is the perfect moment for it."
"I'm waiting for the third plane, the fourth plane, the fifth plane, the sixth plane. Ha, ha!"
Not until the 44th message is there a reproach: "Do you people here have no shame?" someone writes. "Do you have no morality?"
The messages are still sitting there in cyberspace on the Sina.com site. A few days ago, I logged on using a Chinese-language computer here in Beijing and read through these messages. To anyone who deeply loves China, as I do, it is devastating to see how the deaths of thousands of Americans left many people here chortling.
I asked Chinese friends whether these online comments were representative of public opinion. Not entirely, they said, but the stories they told left me pained.
One friend who runs a business financed with American money found on Sept. 12 that the company's e-mail message system was full of jokes about the attacks. Another recounted how at the Communist Party School (where officials stayed up late to watch satellite television feeds of the destruction and showed unseemly good cheer), a luncheon for more than 80 top officials echoed with positive comments about the terror attacks.
All this has to be put in perspective. Most Chinese I talked to were appalled by the attacks, and the United States Embassy in Beijing was showered with messages of sympathy from ordinary Chinese and with cash donations for the victims. Jiang Zemin and other Chinese leaders drafted an immediate message of condolence that they sent to Washington.
Even in the chat rooms, the initial tone of xing zai le huo (gloating at the pain of others) faded as the death toll grew.
Yet there is something going on here, something more complex — and, to me, far more worrying — than simply schadenfreude at seeing America humbled. It is a rapidly increasing Chinese nationalism.
This nationalism has deep roots in China and results in part from the battering that the country suffered at foreign hands over the last 200 years. But the latest surge in nationalism is the result in particular of "patriotic" campaigns planned by President Jiang since 1990 as a way of knitting together the country, of providing a new "glue" for China to replace the discredited ideology of Communism.
I spent a couple of days at Beijing University talking freely to the nation's best and brightest. This in itself, along with the relatively free debate in Internet chat rooms, is a sign of real political progress in China.
When I lived here in the late 1980's and early 1990's, there was no outlet like the Internet to express one's views, and I could talk to university students only after escaping the goons who routinely tailed me. This time I had no tails to shake.
Yet what I found heartbreaking is that this new openness and political maturity in China is accompanied by a dangerous sign of political immaturity: this booming, aggrieved, chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism among many ordinary people, much more so than even a decade ago.
Why is this a risk? Think of Japan, where nationalism combined with an economic boom to help lead to the Asian half of World War II. Or of Germany, where a similar combination helped cause World War I. Or even — this is an example Americans tend not to recall — the way nationalism and new-found strength in the United States led Washington to provoke the Spanish-American War.
Elsewhere in the world, we were far too late in recognizing the way movements in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan arose to preach intolerance and hatred. In China it is still early enough to reshape this nationalist tide.
I'll have to jump in here.
First, on the AFP story. All the links (whether Chinese or English) go back to that one source. There is no corroboration. This is not very convincing. After 9/11, all sorts of trips were cancelled because civil aviation was stopped for a week. So it would be normal to abort any trip. The explanation in the article is oblique and you have to extrapolate on your own what really went on.
In any case, please remember that this is a group of 14 people. They are 14 individuals, and they cannot be said to represent 1.3 billion chinese people. If you think that they are, then the 7 military policemen in cellblock A of the Abu Ghraib prison should represent all Americans. They don't. This AFP story is conflated far beyond what it admissible in the context of this thread.
What about the thousands of chat room comments? Shall I introduce you to The Corner at the National Review Online or the Little Green Footballs? They are mean, nasty, vitriolic and indifferent to human values, and I can come up with any number of appalling quotes from the comments. But they do not represent America.
It is an easy exercise to take Nicholas Kristoff's article and completely transpose it into another context with Americans for Chinese, and some other tragedy for 9/11 and it will work wonderfully well. It would be a interesting parody, it will be documented properly but it will also be wrong.
You can also check out Jalan-Jalan for one instance of an American reaction to the Asian Tsunami:http://beta-blogger.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_beta-blogger_archive.html#110601281166914053It does not represent America at all, but someone can make a nasty story out of this.
I don't like passing judgment on a people, because I know that the next person that I will be meet is a unique individual and I had better be prepared to think that way.
eswn:
I agree that theoretically the AFP story could have been treated as an isolated case, given the scanty of coverage, and you probably can't convince a jury of anything. That said, I make judgement not on the basis of a single event, though a case like this did ring an alarming bell and had greatly impact on my emotion. I have other evidences and experiences supporting my conclusion.
Look at the second link I found. In that analysis, Mr. Fang states, that during his Beijing trip after the WTC attack, most Chinese reporters he met were just happy about 911 - their knee jerk reaction immediately after the attack, and for many the mood stays. In a welcoming banquet held by Beijing intellectuals, Fang recalled, majority were excited over what's going on in Manhattan and criticised Fang for 'being on the wrong side'.
(Anyone starting to call Mr. Fang a Japanese?)
This is not a problem of 14 people, or 14,000 Internet cafe dwellers. It's about a cultrue of hatred, and systematic brainwash by Chinese government, resulting in an ideology against anything America. And they think they can get away with it hiding behind language barrier. They can't. I know it, and Fang knows it: everyone with China background know the dirty trick involved. By the way, don't forget it's China: you really think any internet hate message can survive 10 minutes if the hatred is not towards the 'right direction'?
Now that we have removed the tangential issues out of the way, let us get to the matter of epistemology: how could you know what you claim that you know?
You cite Mr. Fang and you cite your own experience. How many people do you think you know? Sociologists estimate that a person may known about 200 persons with some depth, and perhaps recognize 1,000 persons by name and face. Beyond that, everything is a blur. Do you think the people that you managed to communicate with represents all 1.3 billion people of China? The answer is emphatically NO!
I love Nicholas Kristoff when he narrates the story of the two Cambodian girls that he 'purchased' to spare them a life of prostitution. That story rings true and warm because it represents two individuals. Nicholas Kristoff annoys me when he starts talking about the People of China or the Europeans, because I don't know how he deduces these universal values from the selective set of people he communicated with.
Let me be very concrete. For the 2004 US Presidential election, I was certain that John Kerry had it won. I live in New York City. I polled the mixed group of people in my office, and I spoke to the mixed group of people in my social club. There was no doubt that it was going to be a landslide win for Kerry. Indeed, Kerry would win 81% of the votes in New York City. Unfortunately, I don't talk to enough people in mid-America, and I am thoroughly humbled by the eventual outcome.
So can you tell me how you can extrapoloate from Mr. Fang's conversations with various people and/or your own personal experience to an all-encompassing judgment on the Character of the People of China? If I had said that 'Every Chinese that I know is not nationalistic in the vulgar sense', it would not pass your laugh test. So can you offer me a more convincing argument?
"This is not a problem of 14 people, or 14,000 Internet cafe dwellers. It's about a cultrue of hatred, and systematic brainwash by Chinese government, resulting in an ideology against anything America. And they think they can get away with it hiding behind language barrier. They can't. I know it, and Fang knows it: everyone with China background know the dirty trick involved."
I am amused and surprised just how stupid so-called China experts can be.
In elsewhere I found you said:
I have never, ever endorsed his viewpoint on 911.
I'm simply not soliciting your endorsement, but just out of curiosity, what's the basic flaw in my viewpoint on 911?
You also said it could be not 'smart' or not 'true' to view Chinese reaction and 911 that way. Well, I think I offered enough links to be duely diligent on that. Everyone can make his own conclusion. BTW, my opponents have yet to back up their point with a single proof.
It's all too common. You might be right: it's no smart at all to aggitate those people, but my reader in mind is not them.
Sorry again, but talking about fairness, it looks like those defamatory posts claiming that I am Japanese, Taiwanese or any non-Chinese origin have found a safe niche in your site. That's OK, but you never commented that. Doesn that mean you think it's 'smart', or even 'true'?
And you never ask them for proof, not even a web link.
Bellevue, I can't police every comment. I am a blogger, not a judge, and I don't always have time to be as fair as everyone would like. And I absolutely can't respond to all the comments I get. I have tried to tell all of you to stop the personal stuff and stick to the topic.
About 911 -- I am neutral on this topic. I don't know enough about it to take sides. I heard what ESWN said and what you said. I'll let readers decide what to believe.
Perhaps it was not obvious, but I am also neutral on the Chinese reaction on the 9/11 incident. I don't know what happened. The reason that I jumped in at a very late stage was really an epistemological issue.
I don't accept that from an uncorroborated AFP article about 14 people that one should infer that was how 1.3 billion Chinese people are.
I don't accept that from a sample reading of a few thousand internet comments that was how 1.3 million Chinese people are.
I don't accept that from a sample of one's social ties that this was how 1.3 billion Chinese people are.
Bu,t by symmetry, I am just as tough on the other side of the argument.
I won't accept a message of condolence from the Chinese Foreign Ministry as proof that it was how 1.3 billion Chinese people felt.
I won't accept newspaper paper interviews with sympathetic citizens in the streets as proof that they represent how 1.3 billion Chinese people felt.
I won't accept a selection of sympathetic internet comments (and I will be able to find them among the millions of comments) that it was how 1.3 billion Chinese people felt.
I won't accept anyone telling me that all his/her friends felt sorry that this was how 1.3 billion Chinese people felt.
Any of these requires a huge leap of faith that is not supported by the available evidence.
How could we know what the Chinese people really felt? You might think that this can be done with a large representative sample survey. Unfortunately, it won't work. You can do surveys to figure out the gender distributions and some such. But you can't ask questions like bigotry, racisim, or patriotism, because you will only get socially desirable answers that mask true feelings. For example, a racist is unlikely to subjectively consider himself/herself as such, even though objectively he behaves in a racist way.
My specific interest here is that I once wrote a journal paper on The Spriral of Silence theory of German socioologist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. The idea is that only a small number of people tend to speak up whereas the majority remain silent. After a while, the nutcases (namely, the Nazis in her work) appeared to be the majority because they dominate the share of voice when nothing of the sort is happening.
So I am only asking that people not take the nutcases and trolls who post crap like celebrating 9/11 as being representative of the general Chinese population at large. I should think that there is no disagreement on this point.
No disagreement at all, but your comment raises several questions, again from an epistemological perspective. How do we ever know what "the American people" or "the Chinese people" are thinking? I don't have an answer, and yet there are many times when I can safely say I did know how they felt. I believe I know how the Chinese people feel, for example, about Tibet, because every Chinese voice I have heard on the topic, whether within my own social circle or not, has been essentially the same. I have seen it mirrored in state articles, in blogs and in many other places. This is an unscientific process, yet I believe my take on the situation is accurate. Am I deluding myself? (I am no philosopher, so if this sounds like embarrassingly elementary Logic 101, forgive me.)
The depressing part of your comment is that it dooms us all to ignorance. It appears there is no way to ever assess how "the people" feel about anything. And yet, don't we all know how America felt on 911? By your equation, none of us can say that for a fact. Damn, do any of us know anything??
Thanks, ESWN, for leaving me hopelessly confused. :-)
posted @ 8:53 AM