A friend I met in Vietnam writes me from China:
Needless to say, I am inexpressibly delighted to be labeled dangerous by the Chinese goverment (or by whatever version of Net Nanny the goverment uses to weed out subversive thought). You better believe I’m dangerous. Never before has the Red Army faced such a potent source of snideness.
I make no secret of the fact that I abhor the Chinese government, although I do, in fact, have a somewhat nuanced view of the situation. I recognize, for example, that the present goverment has done a reasonable job of fostering economic development, which is at least as important as democratization in a country as large and as poor as China. Since the ’80s, China’s leaders have been pragmatists as well as dictators, and life certainly continues to improve for the average Chinese. Draconian measures such as the one-child policy often make sense in overpopulated China, although such measures are usually enforced with a despicable ruthlessness.
Nevertheless, the Chinese goverment’s litany of human rights abuses could fill many books (and has). And for that, I despise them.
It was with interest, therefore, that I noticed copies of “Human Rights: China’s First Magazine on Human Rights” in the Chinese embassy in Laos. I swiped two issues on the way out.
The magazine is pretty much exactly what you’d expect it to be. Both issues have articles on Tibet. Specifically, articles on how much the lives of Tibetans have improved under Chinese rule. One article takes pains to point out that the very notion of Tibetan autonomy is a fiction devised by British colonialists.
The bulk of the magazine, though, is spent favorably comparing human rights in China to the situation in everyone’s favorite global hegemon, the United States.
You get the idea. All of it adds up to nothing, and yet it’s almost impossible to argue with a spew of anecdotes, decontextualized statistics, and gross distortions. Frankly, it’s just depressing.
Another article’s praise of the U.N. has probably done more to undermine my confidence in that organization than any of the events of recent months. Why does China love the U.N. so? Because it’s not America and because it’s largely ineffectual!
Let’s set aside the hypocrisy of that last statement for a moment, and quickly move on to an article in which the author seeks to philisophically redefine the very concept of rights. After stating that the Western notion of human rights is basically an anticommunist tool that was used to successfully topple the Soviet Union, the article continues:
Strike the hysterical last clause, and everything in this paragraph sounds pretty good to me. I’ll be the first to sign up for the transnational civil society that promotes and enforces universal human rights.
When I picked up the magazines, I was looking for a laugh, hoping for a bit of the mirthless propaganda that autocratic regimes so excel in. Unfortunately, the self-serving rhetoric about American hegemony dovetails too nicely with current world sentiment regarding America’s motives in Iraq. Though I disagree with much of that sentiment, I do understand its appeal. The whole thing just depresses me.
This posting wasn’t supposed to be so longwinded and full of bile. Sorry.
In an attempt to create a silver lining where there is none, I pledge to be as open-minded as possible when I get to China, even regarding issues about which I already have strong opinions. I know how distorted a picture most people have of life in the U.S., so I will assume I know nothing about Chinese civil society, and take it from there. We’ll see how it goes.
