Here's a screenshot for posterity, because their "special issues" tend to go back to normal pretty quickly.
I always think it's a little odd that the Chinese government don't have anyone whose default assumption is that they're in the right. Whenever a Western or a Western-aligned country does something morally... questionable, you can count on conservatives to defend it. Whereas countries with a history of Western exploitation generally enjoy the benefit of the liberal doubt. But China, almost uniquely, gets it from left, right, and centre equally.I remember a colleague's astonishment when a Chinese post-doc expressed the opinion that Tibet was part of China and should remain so. This was an idea that she'd just never heard before, and she clearly thought it was entirely bizarre. Yet it was only 40 years ago that many French people were of the opinion that L’Algérie est française et le restera - Algeria! And there are still people in Northern Ireland who might kill you if you suggest that that province doesn't belong to Britain.
7 comments:
If you're looking for someone who'll defend even the more indefensible aspects of Chinese policy, then there's alway Brendan O'Neill's articles on Comment is Free.
Oh, OK. Actually, I'd noticed that Spiked takes an unfashionably pro-China line sometimes.
Historically, Tibet was part of the Manchu Empire. So was China.
The advantage is that China has quite a few people very keen to defend it within the country itself (in fact - I don't think I've ever met a Chinese person face-to-face who wasn't massively pro-China and its government) - they just don't seem to need outside help.
pj: Oh, sure. But my point was that no-one in the West defends it, to the point that as a culture we don't really have any concept of what it is to be pro-China, although millions of people are.
I suppose what I'm saying is we don't understand China. I guess we don't really understand France or Chile, but, China is in an entirely different league.
Or perhaps we understand China only too well - there's the combination of authoritarianism, paternalism, extreme nationalism and a belief in striving for 'progress'.
The problem is that an authoritarian dictatorship rarely does stuff we're going to be keen on.
Oh, I missed the more recent strand of hedonism and entitlement in the young urban elite.
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