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- Li Chengpeng: Patriotism With Chinese Characteristics
- The Daily Twit (@chinahearsay Twitter feed) – 2012-05-26
- Dueling Rights Reports: U.S.-China Political Theater
| Li Chengpeng: Patriotism With Chinese Characteristics Posted: 26 May 2012 04:21 PM PDT Writer Li Chengpeng is a prominent soccer commentator on Chinese TV. In 2008, he traveled to the area devastated by the Sichuan earthquake and writes about how the experience changed his attitude toward his country. From the New York Times:
Li Chengpeng has become a popular blogger and has five million followers on Sina Weibo. He also ran for local election in Chengdu. Read more by and about Li via CDT, including an essay he wrote about his experience volunteering in the earthquake zone, "The True Story of the Miracle Survival of the Students and Teachers of Longhan Elementary School in Beichuan." Read also more about the Sichuan earthquake of 2008. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us  |
| The Daily Twit (@chinahearsay Twitter feed) – 2012-05-26 Posted: 25 May 2012 08:59 PM PDT
© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
| Dueling Rights Reports: U.S.-China Political Theater Posted: 26 May 2012 02:35 AM PDT
Here's how it works. First, the State Department issues their annual report; the country report on China is lengthy, as usual, and covers topics such as civil liberties and Net content restrictions. The State Department has a press conference, speeches are made, the press writes the usual news articles, etc. Standard stuff. Second, the government over here in Beijing cannot let this go without a comment, so the usual denunciations are made by officials and/or surrogates. Again, pretty much what you would expect. However, that's not the end of it, and if you are not a regular China watcher, this next part might surprise you. Part three of this story is the issuance of a China version of the U.S. report (available in English of course). Well, it's not exactly the same kind of report. The China version criticizes fewer countries. Actually, a lot fewer. To be honest, it's only one country: the United States. The point of the report, I suppose, is not to replicate what the U.S. did. After all, China, which officially has a "non-interference policy," is not in the business of criticizing other countries' domestic records. No, the point of the report is to reveal American hypocrisy. If you have nothing better to do, you can check out the report and read about U.S. problems relating to "Personal Security," "Civil and Political Rights," "Racial Discrimination" and other topics. Which brings us back to the document dump in China Daily that might have disturbed some folks who were unaware of all the rest of this. You might have seen these fun stories today and thought to yourself "WTF is going on?" US-led wars create humanitarian disastersUS conducts human experiments, sparking outcryQuite a lot Americans have no access to healthcareUS leader in gun violence, gun deathsMillions homeless in US: reportEthnic minorities discriminated against in USPoverty rate among American women, children hits record highTo be fair, I'm sure there are just as many, if not more, articles in the U.S. press on any given day that are critical of China. On the other hand, they usually aren't all in the same publication. By the way, all of the above articles were posted to the China Daily RSS feed at the same time (i.e., I received them in one big {ahem} dump). I point out hypocrisy a lot of the time on this blog, so I sort of do the same thing that China Daily, and the government here, is doing. On the other hand, I'm not doing it to draw attention away from my own record, and I'm definitely not trying to make some sort of equivalency argument with respect to the U.S. and China. That being said, certainly the U.S. has its own problems domestically, and a lot of what went into the China report are valid criticisms. Moreover, the U.S. doesn't always exactly follow through with its condemnation of other nations' records with actual foreign policy initiatives; sometimes an annual chiding is all the U.S. government is willing to do, particularly if the country in question has oil or another strategic asset. But hey, nobody's perfect. So if you got weirded out reading the press today, you can relax. This is all "normal" political theater. I do, however, feel bad for all the writers and editors at Xinhua, China Daily and the State Council Information Office who had to churn it all out. Honestly, a standard condemnation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would have been just as persuasive. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012 |
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