How the Olympic Torch Relay inflamed Chinese nationalism

Following the undignified public reception of China’s Olympic Torch Relay in London, Paris and San Francisco, Chinese blogs and chatrooms around the world were ablaze with passion and fury at what was perceived as the West’s deliberate rubbishing of China’s national pride. What was perceived as the West media’s biased and sometimes erroneous reporting added to the sense of injustice. For example, CNN had to tender an uncharacteristic apology because their images of alleged use of force against protesters by Chinese police were actually taken in Nepal. When BBC was showing a Lhasa official clearly saying in Putonghua ‘Rioters disrupting the relay will be dealt with according to the law’, the English voice-over was ‘We will show no mercy’. For what had been running the gauntlet of unruly protests and media aspersions is more than the Olympics Torch Relay. It is not even the issues of Tibet separatism or China’s human rights. It is nothing less than the restored pride of a modern China after centuries of foreign humiliation.

To the vast majority of Chinese, Tibet is and has long been an inseparable part of China. To see so many Western protesters demanding separatism when the Dalai Lama is openly against it smacks of opportunism. Some protestors admitted that they were hirelings. Some do not even know where Tibet is. Much of the West’s commentaries revealed at best a glaring economy with the truth if not total ignorance of Tibet’s long history in the context of China as a nation. A rare article by Foster Stockwell on Tibet entitled Myth and Reality was published online in the Telegraph dated 5 March 2008 (http://my.telegraph.co.uk/elle/march_2008/myth_and_reality_of_tibet.htm )

A PEW Global Attitude Survey in June 2006 found that 81% of the Chinese were satisfied with the state of their nation, compared with 29% for Americans and 35% for Britons. Indeed, the Chinese satisfaction figure increased from 48% in 2002 to 72% in 2005. Although the survey may be biased towards urbanites, this is hardly a picture of suppressed people under a repressive regime as painted by some of the West’s commentators.

After centuries of blood and tears of foreign aggression and partition, the vast majority of the Chinese people really love their country, warts and all. They are proud of China’s modern achievements and feel able to hold their heads a little higher in the world. They don’t understand why a non-confrontational China preaching a philosophy of Harmony should attract so much animosity from the West.

An anonymous poem entitled ‘What do you want from us?’ as quoted in one of the Chinese blogs best captures the flavor of the emotions.  'When we toil for your goods, you blame us for the pollution. When we loan you our hard-earned cash, you blame us for your debt. When we multiply, you blame us for consuming the planet. When we restrict our numbers, you blame us for violating human rights'.

Most of the Chinese supporters at the scene are overseas university students. Many are studying for advanced degrees in humanities in some of the world’s best universities. They can’t  all be brain-washed by the Chinese Communist Party, as some Western media appeared to think.

However desirable, it would be naïve to think that the Olympics could ever be separated from politics. It would be unrealistic to expect the Western media to be totally unbiased. It is fair to say that if you go near the kitchen, you have to stand the heat. It would also be unrealistic to expect the West not to harbour a sense of fear, misgivings or unease at a Rising China with a different ideology and a different approach to international politics. These legitimate concerns underline most of the West’s media commentaries.

As I write, the wave of nationalistic boycotts against Carrefour in China has been sweeping across many provinces. Fresh in the mind are TV footages of how Jin Jing, China’s paralympian girl in a wheel chair, was attacked during the Torch Relay in Paris. As forewarned by Peter Hayes Gries (China’s New Nationalism, University of California Press, 2005), unfair and selective demonization could stoke China’s vengeful nationalism. Indeed, the Chinese leadership is very much alive to these dangers. As the tide of nationalism was beginning to appear, the official media immediately called for calm and rational thinking. The barrage of the West’s negative reporting was compared to ‘rains before the rainbow’, extolling citizens to turn their patriotic zeal to continuing building the country’s economy. Much more direct supervision involving China’s security police was later reported in the Financial Times of 2 May.

With a host of pressing internal and external challenges, including inequalities, unbalanced development, pollution, inflation, corruption and a looming aging population profile, China needs all the help she can get in an increasingly inter-dependent world to maintain a relatively benign internal and external environment in the coming decades, so that she can realize her ambition of achieving a middle-income economy by mid-century. While nationalism has its values, the risks of it getting out of hand are far too great. But in the long run, with the Me Generation of the ‘Little Emperors’ (the product of China’s One Child Policy) coming to their own, mere control and suppression of rising nationalism cannot be the answer. A better way has to be found for the Chinese people to live down their historical demons and to embrace a truly diverse and open civil society in the Global Village.

Andrew K P Leung, SBS, FRSA

www.andrewleunginternationalconsultants.com

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