Crap and uninteresting: Tibet protesters in The Australian

APRIL 28, 2008: To my loyal readership: you might have noticed i appear to have abandoned my previous efforts at making this blog interesting for you, its audience far from China.

The posts below were originally written a few days ago, but i pulled them down after deciding they were both crap and uninteresting.

However, i came round to thinking, a blog with so few readers has every right to be crap and uninteresting.

So it continues, for nobody in particular.

On Friday i sent a letter to The Australian attacking the torch protests as counterproductive and wrong. I also claimed that the protests had "destroyed any chance of rational dialogue on the subject of Tibet for some time".

With all the timeliness of a large shipment of large Chinese flags and 80 buses to Canberra, the front page of the edition with my letter reported the earth-shattering news that China had agreed to talk with the Dalai Lama's emissaries.

Of course, as the really, really bright ones on the Australian's website pointed out, this meant that the protests had OBVIOUSLY worked.

Unfortunately the comments section is closed now so i can only correct this childish assumption here.

These torch relay protests have been a PR coup for the extremist Tibetan Independence movement in the West and a PR coup for the Chinese government in China. That is, they have driven public opinion in China and the West further apart than ever.

Sure, the talks are a good thing. The Australian's opinion leader says "Tibetans have an opening to secure concessions". But they don't. Just watch. Why? The fact is, on issues that the majority of the Chinese population feels strongly about, the unelected Communist Party government certainly is answerable to its people. By riling the Chinese people by attacking - so it appeared from here - their hard-earned right to host the olympics, the protesters have left them in no mood to accept concessions in Tibet. That is, the protesters' actions have left the Chinese government with no room to make concessions. The population won't have it - not for a long, long time and not before a lot of rational discussion.

And people chanting "free tibet" and "liar" over the top of each other doesn't constitute rational dialogue.

A couple of points to consider in a "rational discussion".

- Tibetan independence is not going to happen. The Dalai Lama realises this and is not pushing for it. Shouting for it is irrational, inflammatory extremism.

- Chinese people were most grievously offended by the lack of acknowledgement that the March 14 violence was committed by Tibetans. Innocent people were attacked, some killed, in the most brutal manner. The state wemt in to restore order - please, name a state that wouldn't - and foreigners start disrupting the olympic torch celebration in protest.

It's pretty basic: consider the way the other side sees it. It's actually quite important when the other side happens to be hundreds of millions of people strong.

Selling your people's intelligence out

The French government got down real low last week, and all because of a few rabid nationalist loonies kicking up a stink about the Paris olympic torch protests.

I don't support the torch protests at all, and i also happen to think Jin Jing is pretty worthy as far as media-hyped heroes go (see link below) but this is just ridiculous.

The President of the French Senate, a Mr Poncelet, was despatched to China to meet with Jin Jing, the one-legged fencer who heroically clutched the torch to her body as a protester tried to snatch/wrestle it from her. The personal apology he delivered was from Presidente Sarkozy, who said: "I was shocked to see what happened during the torch relay. It is understandable that the Chinese people feel hurt ... I hereby strongly condemn what they did."

If he's apologising because the security was inadequate to guard Ms Jin, that doesn't warrant a presidential apology. But i fail to see how it's really the French people or the French government's fault that a mad Tibetan guy got through the security cordons. What it's really about is the rabies-infected Chinese nationalist movement that's been holding protests outside the French supermarket Carrefour. If i was French i'd be genuinely pissed - it's like he was saying "we all learned a lesson that day...", as though all French people supported the Tibetan independence extremists. Selling out the French people's intelligence, apparently for the sake of a handful of French corporations worried about their image in China.

Fair enough, condemn the Parisian government for recklessly provoking China with the Dalai Lama's honorary citizenship (really did it absolutely have to be now?) and the huge banner on city hall that embarassed the Chinese organisers. Even express your disagreement with French participation in the protests, which i think are a bad idea - a case, i think, of people seeing things in black and white getting involved with murky shit they don't understand. Explain that the protests don't represent either the government's position, or French public opinion. But it's France's fault that there were angry ethnic Tibetans present at the torch relay? I'd prefer that to the alternative they enacted in India, which was a torch relay no-one could see.

The irony is the Chinese government has been discouraging the Carrefour boycott, it stands no chance of makin a lasting impact, and the tiny lunatic fringe of the population represented by the Carrefour protesters were already condemning Jin Jing for not supporting their direct actions - they're only going to see this as evidence of collusion between a "national traitor" and an insulter of the motherland!

Given most Chinese support neither the Carrefour boycotts or the condemning of Jin Jing, it was totally unnecessary.

"Netizens" ≠ internet citizens

Too much is made of the rage of Chinese "netizens". "Netizens" are not citizens of the internet - they're not even citizens of their country.

I launch this diatribe because too often recently the "netizens" of China have been getting accorded with the significance of the citizens of China. But there's a difference between the rantings of internet users of China and Chinese public opinion, for reasons that should be quite obvious.

China has, by liberal estimates, 250 million internet users. Now, anyone who might read this is an internet user. What percentage of you post to bulletin boards?

Given "you" are probably a foreigner, let's not impose cultural norms on the Chinese nation. They do many things their own way, and there have indeed been waves of rage poured out on Chinese bulletin boards - maybe the Chinese actually have a real affinity for these things.

So never mind that 90% of the "netizens" i walk past daily in internet bars are occupied with either games or instant messaging chats. Let's just presume the other 10% of Chinese internet users madly post to bulletin boards. Let's double it for good measure - perhaps, every so often after they've bashed the keyboard for a few hours defeated gamers let off their steam in short, fuming diatribes on bulletin boards. So we'll say 20%.

Now 20% of 250 million is 50 million - a lot of angry little flag-wavers, when they can find time outside their busy schedule of slaying orcs (or busting out phat-ass hip hop dance moves with combinations of the num-lock keys.)

But even using these ridiculously liberal estimates, the mood of the so-called "netizens" can't account for the mood of than a tiny fraction of the population. Moreover, the non-gaming "netizens" are a very particular fraction of the population. What sort of fraction?

I really hate the word "Netizen". It seems to imply that it's something to do with citizenship. Sure, one definition of citizen is simply "inhabitant". But when people talk about "netzens" they often are according them a kind of solemn significance - something harking back to the days (ancient or imaginary) of the "public sphere", with well-informed 'citizens' debating current affairs and government policies in city squares with fountains, cafes, libraries and newspaper letters pages. Here, being a citizen presupposes having a fixed identity in engaging with others, some kind of "rights and responsibilities" shit. On the contrary, internet chat rooms and message boards are places of rumours and throwaway, knee-jerk, semi-anonymous responses (even if you use your real name, especially in China where huge numbers of people share common names, you're probably not going to meet the people who read your 'opinion').

To me the identities people assume on the internet are a new thing, unique to the medium and the era. For one, they don't share the common background "netizen" implies. Discussion between 'citizens' implies both some level of mutual understanding (if not background) and expression of rational opinions that are pinned to one's public identity.

The only mutuality between most of the world's so-called "netizens" is that they use the internet. Sure, there are small corners populated by semi-permanent 'identities' (what a great word, probly should thank Mark Drummond or someone at The West for that) from different real-world backgrounds who engage each other anyway. That's great. But in the case of Tibet and the Torch relay the discussions take place mostly among 'citizens' of China, or the UK or "the (globalised) west".

Where people share common background. So between, at times, citizens of various nations or cultures. Not citizens of the net.

The sporadic ongoing comment wars between Chinese and foreign "netizens" about Tibet, the western media's coverage of Tibet, and the olympic torch protests illustrated the consequences: in most cases where Chinese and foreigners have engaged each other, it's been as though the two sides were from different planets. (If you care, read the other "SchizOlympics" posts on 'Mutant Palm'.) But overall, while the internet does facilitate some great discussions, most of what it facilitates are throwaway opinions one makes anonymously and holds no responsibility for.

That's because on the internet you can be and do just about whatever the hell you want, anonymously. And that goes for China. That's not being a citizen of the internet, that's being free to do and say whatever the hell you want. It's great for many reasons, and one of those is it lets you vent your spleen without being held responsible for what you say. The novelty of it is it's both anonymous and semi-permanent - i.e. quotable. More often than not what is said in online chats is a throwaway opinion, and shouldn't be treated the same way something written on paper would be.

This is made clear by the difference between the online rage and the continuing hyper-friendliness of everyone i talk to in the street.

They're the reason your clothes don't stink

Hmm why even continue...this pretty much says it all, thanks Titcho.

APRIL 11,2007: Unless you're a Tibetan, disrupting the Olympic torch relay is plain wrong. (If you are a Tibetan it's hopeless and counterproductive, but more understandable.)

It's true that much of the Chinese population is rather ignorant when it comes to Tibet. So is much of any country's population when it comes to just about anything political. Unfortunately, judging by the comments on the ABC website, where educated Australians get their news, many educated Australians are pretty ignorant of some important points:

- March 14 riots were riots - very bad race-hate riots in which innocent people were beaten to death and burned alive for being ethnic Chinese. (Also plenty of videos on Youtube). The kind of riots that would clearly be put down by force in any place you care to name. How would the Australian government respond to Aboriginal riots, including killings and burnings, against whites and asians in Australia?

- China does in fact have a historic claim to Tibet. Like almost everything political in China it's complicated, but generally when China has been strong, Tibet has been part of China and when China has been weak, Tibet has been independent or autonomous. China is strong now, and there isn't a hope in hell of it letting Tibet go.

- The claims of the Chinese military killing Tibetans are unverified. The fact is we don't know what's happened, and not knowing what happened isn't doesn't exactly constitute a "brutal crackdown". In fact, in the words of the Economist's correspondent - the only foreign reporter in Tibet, who was there until the 19th, 4 days after the riots finished - "It was only when they felt safe I think that there would not be massive bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that decisive force".

- The furore about the "shady" Olympic torch "thugs" is pure and blatant demonising and hatemongering behalf of the media. Media thug Andrew Bolt's blog on the subject started as "Rudd won't let Chinese invade" and has been updated to "So they are coming after all". But these guys are actually nothing out of the ordinary.


- The Dalai Lama was funded for decades by the CIA and supported the Iraq war. He didn't order the riots - it was clearly against his interests to do so. But he isn't "a simple monk". (And the theocratic state he ran before the commies invaded was not exactly all rainbows and sunshine.)

- The Chinese government doesn't care about "international shame" - in fact it helps it in its only real objective: maintaining power in China.

To top it all off, not even the Dalai Lama is calling for Tibetan independence.

As for the Chinese people, it's probably better they don't know the realty of these Paris, San Francisco and London protests. They genuinely are looking forward - like crazy - to welcoming the world to come and see how far they've progressed. And the fact is they have come a very long way, and a good 90% of them - or well over 1 billion of the people on this earth - are more than content to be hosting the Olympics. To overlook this, to deny or attempt to spoil for over 1 billion people the celebration of tangible (and historically unprecedented) progress that they are so eagerly awaiting would be, well . . . we should have a hell of a problem with them, as a people, for that to be justified.

But in fact, barely anyone is claiming or admitting to having a problem with the Han Chinese people, who don't actually have much more in the way of human rights than the Tibetans.

Don't forget how genuinely they deserve this, the Chinese. Our richness is in a very real way subsidised by the ordinary Chinese, as they have been and continue to work their arses off to better their own position - in many cases pulling themselves out of poverty as well - by their hard, hard labour. Though unintentional they've enriched the the positions of each other and people all over the world. If it wasn't for them, plenty of us would probably still only have our "sunday best" as a change of clothes. How could anyone in their right mind deny that number of people an occasion like this that they both deserve and desire, just because we don't like their government?

Not only that, as i mentioned above, the international criticism only serves to help that government we don't like. Having those thousands of reporters in the country before, during and after the Games is likely to teach the government some lessons about the advantages of allowing information to flow.

The Chinese government's heavy handedness and lack of understanding of minorities' concerns is stupid. The Chinese government's jailing of dissenters is stupid - these guys get virtually no mainstream international attention until they get locked up. The government's controls on information are to an extent unfathomable, because they involve so much history, and we find them abhorrent. Somehow despite this, plenty of Chinese citizens are as well informed as other truth-seeking 'global citizens'. "The rest" may wallow in apathy (majority) and/or blind slogan-shouting (minority), but that's a pretty apt summary of the populations of western countries like the US and Australia. Does this mean the Australian and US people deserve to be similarly penalised for their government's actions?

Yes, says Matt Taibbi: "We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals . . . What a bunch of turds we all are."

Ha ha ha. But while our apathy means we get who we deserve ruling us - people who stand for nothing - the Chinese can't be blamed in the same way. After a torrid century in which China lost successive wars and was in parts occupied by foreign powers and subjected to long periods of warlord rule, little wonder unity was seen as the first step towards a decent life. Now as the people get richer, and keener to protect their individual rights, I think it is pretty inevitable that they're going to be granted.

By bringing the world to China the Olympics can only help to bring that about. As for the Tibetans, they probably look at examples like East Timor as a reason to keep fighting, and the Olympics as a reason to keep fighting NOW. But East Timor got free because the Indonesian people brought Suharto down. Ironically the Olympic torch protests, by causing Chinese people to rally as they have behind the government against the "outside forces" it says are pitted against China in its moment of glory, are actually making the Chinese people less of a threat to the Chinese government.

Chinese comedian-goose

APRIL 6, 2008: After last year's tragicomedic saga (which pre-dated this blog but if you're reading this it probably went to your in-box) heading back out to Hong Kong this time we were ridiculously, boringly well prepared. Photos (HK)

We even booked accommodation. Yes, that would be the second time that we have arrived in a town with accommodation booked - the first time being when Bill booked it for us in Beijing. The hotel turned out to be on an island out of town, whose locals deny there is "anything" there.

But the room was on the 30th floor, right above the busiest port in the world, with surreal, kilometre-long stacks of sea containers looking like the baby blocks of a spoiled child showing signs of OCD. From our vantage point the entire operation looked like lego.


We didn't quite prepare well enough, however, and found out in short order that we would have to wait 3 days for our Mainland China visas and another day for a train, and, in turn that we had to be out of our room the following morning because they had already rented it out. Probably to some South African Rugby Sevens watcher or a Communist Party family with two kids who chose it for its proximity to Hong Kong Disney Land. After two hours of non-stop searching and calling, we secured a room in a place near Central Hong Kong. This time from the 16th floor, the view out the window was again nifty in its own Hong Kong sort-of way.


Not so this place's electrical plugs, which grabbed onto my mp3 player's Chinese charger plug so fiercely that it came apart in my hands, sending what i can only guess was a 240-volt shock through my body.

Perilous too was, nay is, our financial predicament, so we took to riding the trams for our night time entertainment. Still, i discovered that HK trams, combined with HK lights, make randomly pointing the camera and pressing the trigger almost worthwhile. (Sorry if you hate these kind of photos.)





Our arrival back at the migrant workers' den dispelled all doubt about greasy, suspicious-looking Mr Shi: all our possessions were in perfect order, we now owe them a large sum of money, and he's letting us pay it when we get some money. Unpacking and setting up the brick stilts and wooden board that is our bed here in the darkness of the Shanghai day brought up a weak feeling of sadness, probably due to the objective shitness of our surroundings. After 2 months in Australia, the days seem very very dark here. It's good here in other (more shit) ways.

But why are we here? It's rare that a forienger - let alone 2 - will get to live so freely in China, not tied to an employer and not registered with the authorities. The situation that they don't actually know where we live is very rare. Chance like this asks for something special to be done with it, and that's how i'll measure this year.

Accordingly, I began my grand journalistic foray by trying to hawk off a shitty, average, mediocre travel story to get some money.

This required my first interview of a Chinese expert in Chinese. The interviewee, a Professor Chen, i'm reliably informed, is THE authority on Ming Dynasty history, and his voice is nothing if not authoritative. 'Warlike' would probably be a better description. The task was simple: just establish to what extent the Ming Dynasty undertook forced relocations of their population to the Great Wall frontier.

But of course after 2 months in Australia my Chinese had declined alarmingly. 15 torrid minutes later, when i played the recording back to myself, i could barely contain my laughter. I had people all around me (in the internet bar) looking to see what hilarious comedy the foreigner was watching. It sounded like the equivalent (in Chinese) of some young fresh-off-the-boat Oriental guy who can barely string a sentence together ringing up some recently-retired US military general to ask him about the inner workings of the "Coalition"s Iraq exit strategy.

"Uhhh, harro, uhhhh, my name......Zhu Hong Bing.......i a Austraria uhhh......." i trailed off mid sentence, ".....traverr writer."

"Yes," he replied, faintly chuckling.

"I want askeee......uhh.......i do some re......rea......readi.......reassssss........reasearch.....Ming Dynasty, did have any f....f...f....f....fooo......"

[Silence]

"Me have Ming Dynasty question-thing," I ventured, hopeful the more simple tack would turn the game.

"Aaaaaaahaaaaa, Ming Dynasty what question-thing eh?" the Professor demanded light-heartedly.

"Uhhh, Ming Dynasty........so, so do Ming Dynasty, did have any f....f...f....f....fooo......fourth.....fourth.......forced rela....relatio.....r...rrrr.....resuscit......re.....[long pause]......rerocation?"

Doing the opposite of what one should in an interview, i attempted to reduce the inevitably interesting and elaborate answer he'd want to give me down to a closed yes or no question. Alas, he responded to my question with the expected nuance, and I understood about 5 per cent of what he said.

I was saved by the fact you can now record Skype calls, in doing so breaking both Australian law and the journalists' code of ethics. But we weren't in Australia, and what the hell - only one person stood to be shamed due to the resultant recording, and that person knew all right.

Maybe i could become a famous comedian in China just by deliberately not studying and then trying to talk with really imposing, intelligent people. They'd lap it up!