A group of UCI chinese students gathered outside a performance hall. They are not there to demonstrate, but to prevent a demonstration from happening. To them, a group of 'ignorant' americans will gather to discrupt an olympic-related performance. According to them, this group is related to Falun Gong.
Not too long ago, Chinese across the globe are incinerated by incidents of olympic torches being snatched off by demonstrators. The most vivid case happened in France, where a torch bearer was flung off her wheelchair. It was, for many Chinese who were otherwise indifferent to their own country, an event that pull them together. One blogger said,
"I have not sing the national song for many years... And I don't even know when is the olympics in beijing... but in that moment in time, we decided to stand together."Unknowing the significance of this situation, western media are bomdarding China' s 'human rights' failures and that it should not hold the olympics. It touted on guerillanews.com , that:
"Is the unity that is being touted ‘unity’ in the sense that all peoples can come together despite their differences? Or is it ‘unity’ in the traditional Beijing sense of the word — everyone will unite under the same party line and those who don’t will be punished?"We can almost see a world of a different viewpoints that people have towards their country and their roles towards it. Without arguing for its right or wrong, I assumed here that 'freedom' and transparency is what most westerners, in the sense of Plato and Socrates decent, will believe in. Also, democracy emerges out of violence, of people revoting against 'tyranny.' Yet, Chinese wants neither violence nor do they see tyranny. China is a fast growing body that needs help, but not in the sense of overhaul in its culture and history.
Cultural departure in dealing with country-wide disagreement is a major point of conflict. A western reader Xenophane replied to the protest and said,
"My point is that the Chinese government is corrupt and violates human rights. The evidence is clear. It ranges from their restricting searches on Google.com to Ti'an Men Square to Tibet to poor environmental and labor policies. It does not detract from the people. The Chinese people are fantastic people!"But to Chinese, its people are the country. Its hard to see individual 'rights' without seeing how it impact on other people. As Phoenix, a blogger and Chinese student, think that if everyone has rights to do or act as they like, she would exercise that right and ban people from her website.
In fact, western 'rights' do come in a package. While everyone fights for his/her own rights, it requires a system to support these actions. These include legal system for settling disagreements, a culture of friendly debate, an education that emphasize articulation, a cultured need for social involvement, and communities supporting information transparency. Arguably, neither China nor any Chinese society have all of these. Therefore, any attempt to implement such 'rights' would only topple an originally balanced system and break the country.
As I speak, an event happen in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where 300 professors risk their jobs as their resumes are reviewed by overseas reviewers for tenureship. They are not informed of the criteria and some had been in NTU for twenty years. The sudden change in reviewship is due to a string of implementations to adopt 'best practices' from the US. However, I feared for a mere copying of methods, without considering the cultural backdrop and infrastructure to support them.
