Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

The date 8-8-08 was chosen as the date the Olympics open because of the number 8 is supposed to be good luck in Chinese. So on 8-8-07 the news media all across the nation have articles about China. I have read articles in the LA Times, Time Magazine, and Sports Illustrated. It is like when a book came out about Billy Graham and all of a sudden every newspaper and network talked about Graham and his relationships with presidents. As I wrote in one of the blogs about the trip from China, you have to take the information you get from the media, whether Chinese or Western, with a grain of salt.

One of the common complaints from western journalists is that while China promised to open things up for the press during the Olympics, they still run into obstacles in trying to get interviews from athletes and go to rural areas. This is not surprising. Even coaches in this country have tried to control their athletes. Try interviewing Bob Knight's players without his permission. While Xiang Liu is not allowed to grant interview in China, he is allowed to travel abroad for meets and as SI pointed out he does give interviews in the U.S. Only in the U.S. he is not of any importance to the media while in China he would a symbol of China controlling their elite athletes. As far as traveling to rural area to report the vast difference in conditions between the rich cities and poor villages, these are trite stories that are well-known to anyone who have taken an interest in China. It would be like covering the LA Olympics and try to compare Beverly Hills with towns in Alabama.

There was a picture of a policeman questioning a journalist in LA Times. The article says that the police often intimidated the journalists. Now the picture showed a skinny cop with no weapons talking to a westerner. It didn't look very intimidating. There was a protest about freedom of the press held by westerners in Bejing and the police broke it up. But there was no injury or violence by the police. Contrast that with the LAPD's action on an immigrant march a few months ago where journalists as well as children were injured by the police. Yes, journalists should have the freedom of the press but they should also be fair in their reporting.

There was the obligatory mention of the human rights issues in Tibet and the Northwestern region of China which is populated by Muslims minorities. If I am the president of China I would grant independence to all these areas. The country would be smaller and population less. But so what? These areas are a drain to the country. It costs more to rule them than what they return. While China do abuse the human rights of these areas especially in terms of freedom of religion, it does provide an improvement of the economies of these regions. When there was a one child policy for the majority, the ethnic minorities were exempted from the policy. There was also affirmative action for things like college admission. (The Republicans would be shocked at this.) Holding these regions is just an ego thing and it is bad international public relations. So I would get rid of them. Of course if I am the president of the U.S. I would do the same and get rid of Puerto Rico and American Samoa for economic reasons. Journalists always write about the deculturalization of Tibet by China. The truth is Tibet is extremely poor. If China was to leave, Tibet will have to bring in business to survive. It will be westerners who will come in to exploit the area. McDonalds and other western icons will dominate the place. The deculturalization will go on anyways. Even now monks are skipping prayers to watch World Cup Soccer on t.v. So the purity of these regions has been long gone.

So forget about all the call for the boycott of the Olympics. As you know I am no fan of mainland China but it is not South Africa before apartheid was abolished. It is maybe similar to the U.S. in the fifties where the paranoia about Communism was similar to China's paranoia about Western democracy today. Remember McCarthy calling everyone a communist and Hoover spying on Martin Luther King? It will be many years before China will be free. In the meanwhile if the western press were to bring in democratic activists to complain about China, they should also mention about the history of colonialism by the western nations. This would be what a true free press would do. So my feeling is still the same: China is not as good as the state run media portrays it to be and is not as bad as the western press portrays it to be.