English blogs in China:the disappointing ethnocentrism majones bbs.chinadaily.com.cn Updated: 2005-07-22 09:48
I would like to draw the attention of readers to the plethora of
English-language China blog sites that currently pollute cyberspace. As a
foreigner living here in China, I am deeply disturbed and embarrassed by the
blatant anti-Chinese discourse that most of these sites peddle.
Sites like Peking Duck (www.pekingduck.org), The Horse's Mouth
(thehorsesmouth.blog-city.com/) and the Angry Chinese Blogger
(angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/) all identify themselves as anti-Chinese
Communist Party sites, though they also pretend to like and to admire the
Chinese people.
The problem with these sites is that they not only attract anti-CCP rants,
but also vomit loads of puerile China-bashing. Just take one of today's threads
from the Peking Duck for example: one contributor, a guy by the name of Gordon
(who also happens to run the Horse's Mouth site), posted a passage from John
Mandeville's "Travels" which he described as "humorous" even though it is
blatantly insulting to Chinese culture. Here is the "humorous" passage:
"The aims of meals in China are to transfer food onto the table and floor,
and to get other people's spit into your mouth. These purposes are facilitated
by eating with sticks, and by swirling your sticks round in the communal dishes.
It's also polite to talk with your mouth full, so that everyone can see exactly
what you're eating. And the Chinese love dogs and cats; normally one between two
is enough. Amuse your friends by showing how far you can spit the bones! Chinese
restaurants are easy to locate: just look out for what appears to be a pet shop.
Most Chinese people like the idea of trying Western food, but in practice they
are invariably disappointed that it does not taste like Chinese food. Ideally,
Chinese food should not taste of food at all, but instead of chilli paste, salt,
vinegar and of course MSG."
This kind of "humor" in my opinion is outright insulting to all Chinese
people and their food culture. But what I find particularly sad is that this
kind of vindictiveness is typical of many of the contributors and hosts of
English-language China blogs. They seem to always find it necessary to ridicule
China every chance they get, and most of the bile that dribbles from the mouths
of these self-proclaimed China "experts" constitute little more than pure
nonsense. Today's conversation over at the Peking Dork (sorry, Duck) centres
around the safety of Chinese food, with some commentators arguing that the only
safe food to eat in China is KFC or McDonald's! Everything that grows in China,
some of them are claiming, is far too toxic to consume.
Earlier this week, the Peking Duck crowd were busy filling in their time
whinging about how many Chinese are in the habit of allowing their young
children to defecate everywhere in public, and even on the floor of other
peoples' homes. The subtext in all of these rants is always the same: that the
Chinese are somehow less civilised than Westerners.
Here is yet another typical example of the kind of ridiculing so common to
these blogs, this time from Gordon of The Horse's Mouth: "Not only does this
country lack the rule of law," he says, "but it also lacks quality control for
any and every goddamned thing it produces. It doesn't matter if you buy a 30rmb
CD or a 300,000rmb flat, you still get short-changed."
It's absolute nonsense of course, but Gordon would rather portray China as
being dysfunctional and inferior instead of producing far more balanced
assessments.
In another of Gordon's threads, titled "China, the beautiful", a guest
blogger complains how he thinks "China is a nasty filthy country" characterised
by extreme pollution, populated by people who spit everywhere and whose public
toilets are too dirty to even describe. The point of this rambling overstated
case soon becomes clear when the guest blogger draws a comparison with his own
country: "I am willing to concede that there are places in my own country, the
US of A," he says, "that sometimes are not clean, but by far, the United States
most certainly exceeds anything in China in hygiene, hospitalization, and
charitable trusts."
And that sums up what these blogs are really all about: they provide forums
for arrogant ethnocentric Westerners to boast about how great they think their
own countries are when compared to China - and in doing so they can't help but
to ridicule and to belittle and to exaggerate and to distort.
The other thing that these sites all share in common of course is that they
reserve all of their most stinging attacks for the Chinese Communist Party, and
when doing so, they almost always fail to acknowledge any of the positive
legacies of the Party. They prefer instead to view the CCP as monolithic and
"evil". Richard Burger, who runs Peking Duck, outlines the "purpose" of his site
in his rant titled "Looking back at China, the purpose of this blog": The CCP is
a "destructive" force he claims, "like an elephant brushing up against a sapling
and crushing it....I also have understood for a long time that the current CCP
is amazingly similar to the ancient emperors' regimes, in which government was
to be used not for the benefits and protection of its subjects, but for ensuring
the survival of its leaders."
And Richard's ranting silliness continues: "As far as trade and commerce
goes, I think the CCP has been a bungler, hardly the geniuses some would have
it. The people made their money because the government got out of their way, not
because the CCP offered great financial wisdom. With foreign trade, the party
deserves even less credit. Ask any foreign company doing business in China what
kind of hoops they had to jump through and how many palms they had to grease
along the way. It's as though the CCP has put up every conceivable obstacle to
real free trade for outsiders. This is a key component of the corruption system
that keeps Party members rich and that created the 'princeling' phenomenon."
What Richard and others like him fail to appreciate and to adequately
acknowledge is that the CCP has brought about more good than it has bad. They
refuse to see that China's stunning economic development has produced a dramatic
political liberalisation in this society compared to two decades ago, one that
promises to eventually transform China into a modern nation. Impatient
Westerners like Richard do not understand how much China has changed. Consider
Deng Xiaoping's wider legacy for example: according to the World Bank, since
China opened its economy in 1978, when Deng first came to power, its gross
domestic product has increased from $362 billion to $11.9 trillion. Last year
alone, GDP grew 9.1 percent. As a result of the rapid economic growth and
adequate poverty reduction policies that include having wealthy cities forming
partnerships with poorer areas, the number of people in China living on less
than $1 per day dropped from 490 million in 1981 to 88 million last year. During
this period the country's output has increased more than eightfold and the
average income has risen by 7% a year, passing $1,000 for the first time in
2003. China's economic expansion has been on a scale and at a speed the world
has never seen before. Since opening its economy in 1978, China has accounted
for three-quarters of all the people in the world lifted out of abject poverty!
Perhaps no other world leader can claim to have done so much for humanity, as
Deng Xiaoping. Still, his legacy is certainly a mixed one, for he nevertheless
does have some blood on his hands - but too many foreigners prefer to fixate
themselves on "that" incident, rather than to open their eyes to the bigger
picture.
If we accept the notion of modernity with Chinese characteristics, as I do,
then the need for a critical reading of it cannot be denied because Western
modernity itself has also been subjected to sharp criticism. Many of the
criticisms raised in these English-language China bog sites are valid, for sure,
but the problem with most of them is that they seriously lack in fairness and
balance. They are nowhere near objective enough. Instead, they serve as little
more than hate sites.
by China-lover!
The above content represents the view of the author
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