When we were the Sick Man of Asia, We were called The Yellow Peril.
Actually, the Japanese were called the 「Yellow Peril.」 Kaiser Wilhelm II coined the term after Japan defeated China in the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895. I accept the broader point—that there is a racial component to Western worries about China—but it's best to be clear about the historical facts. And while the racial element is there, that doesn't mean that western attitudes can be reduced to racism. The illegitimate aspects of Western fears do not prove that there are no legitimate grounds for concern.
Actually, you are wrong, even though we have no desire to hold this discriminative “title”. Your Kaiser Wilhelm was no better getting his inspiration of “peril” from “terror” in 1878. For your information, we don’t make the distinction, be it peril or terror, we only have one word for them “disaster” and that dated as far back as the Yuan Dynasty when Möngke’s army penetrated Eastern Europe in the 13th century. Your claim for insufficient reduction to racism is absurd, judging by how White supremacy had acted in the past towards the Jews in Europe and towards African ethnic group in your own country, not to say how Chinese railroad workers and early immigrants were treated in North America on the whole. The Head Tax in Canada took almost a century to be reverted, decades later than the apologies made to Canadian Japanese who were kept in restricted camps soon after WWII broke out, not because they are more in number than Chinese victims or more aggressive in their claims, but rather because China, twenty years ago, still lagged behind the G7.
When we are billed to be the next Superpower, we are called The Threat.
Well, yes. Welcome to the club. 「Superpower」 has never been an unalloyed compliment. China, as you know, has been a leading critic of American hegemony.
It’s quite amusing to see a Westerner becoming so “modest” for the term “Superpower” per say. Just wonder if Russia feels the same way as we feel with respect to NATO though! Should the significance lie on if US is, in fact, practising hegemony, rather than who is the leading critic though?
When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets.
True. That was bad. It is also true that most of the opium smoked in China during the period referred to was grown in China and, of course, transported and smoked by Chinese. That doesn't excuse Western perfidy, but it does cast doubt on the simplistic Evil Foreigners/Innocent Chinese narrative that is peddled in much Chinese writing about the period. It is also true that, during the same period, the「imperialists」 brought the first universities, modern hospitals, women's education, railroads, streetlights, etc., to China. You might fairly respond that Chinese were perfectly capable of adapting the fruits of modernity to China in their own time and manner, without arrogant foreigners forcing these things upon them while violating China's sovereignty, exploiting its natural resources, etc. This is the classic argument between colonizers and colonized. Interestingly, China now stands on the colonizer side of the discussion when it defends its actions in Tibet by pointing out how investment has saved the Tibetan people from their own feudal, backward ways. How worms do turn.
It is totally unacceptable for an intellect like yourself to turn blind on hard rock facts as to the opium plantations were located.
http://www.plantcultures.org/plants/opium_poppy_history.html,
which we quote the followings:
Opium poppy was first grown in the western Mediterranean, in the region of southern France and Italy. There are archaeological finds in that area dating to about 4000 BC……
……The history of opium poppy use is relatively recent in South Asia. Arab trade and the expanding world of Islam are assumed to have introduced knowledge of the opium drug to the Indian subcontinent by the 12th century.
I
n particular, we invite you to read the paragraphs titled “European Impacts” and “the Opium War”. Your assumption that “most of the opium smoked in China during the period …. was grown in China and, of course, transported and smoked by Chinese” amazes us. Pure common sense, simply why on earth the Dutch, the Portuguese, and in particular the British, being so brilliant merchants, would not to smuggle in the final products for the huge profit of sterling silver, and tried to establish opium plantation on China’s soil? What happened then to Indian economy, which was still British colony? How did they manage to protect their plantation as well as the production if the “majority” was “grown” in China, and where were these plantation located then? There got to be certain documentary proof for you to make such claims, right? Enlighten us please.
When we embrace Free Trade, You blame us for taking away your jobs.
It's a complicated issue, but the West can be tagged with some hypocrisy on this one. Sorry about the whining. And hey, congratulations on raising the standard of living of so many people.The Chinese have worked hard and deserve to live more comfortably.
It seems to be your tactics whenever you fall shorts of argument, you slide away under the cover of "complication", excuses of the like, eh? Isn't it true that the average American consumers enjoy better good at cheaper price, or else your inflation will be sky-rocket, and cost of living for the poor will reach unmanageable levels? Isn't it also true that your job loss is to your neigbour south of the border due to NAFTA signed hastily by Clinton?
When we were falling apart, You marched in your troops and wanted your fair share.
There was some marching, but it wasn't all that bad in the grand scheme of things. Take a look at the experience of countries that were reallycolonized, like the Belgian Congo, to put China's experience in perspective. Again, the forcing open of China's door brought benefits to China together with the insults and exploitation. See the 「What did the Romans ever do for us?」 scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
If this is not hypocrisy, then what is? One of us suggest that your statement about benefits to China, is also more or less the same tone when you tell a girl who got sexually abused, that "look, that rapist also brought you sexual enjoyment with his raping you. Now you might even got the chance to have a baby, if not HIV.
When we tried to put the broken pieces back together again, Free Tibet you screamed, It Was an Invasion!
The history of Sino-Tibetan relations is more complex that either the People's Daily or the Free Tibet movement claim. For a balanced discussion, listen to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' recent conference call at here.
When we tried Communism, you hated us for being Communist.
True, more or less. And China hated America for being a capitalist liberal democracy. It was a hate- and fear-filled time all around.
Wrong again, Chinese don't dislike America for a capitalist liberal democracy, some of us even admire or envy you at certain point of time before 6.4 incidence. But more and more Chinese see how double standard you guys are, (which is the essence of theme of this poem, if in case you fail to appreciate) that on one hand you advocate democracy, that everyone should exercise his/her own free will. But when we do, you say we don't know as much as you guys, and your values are the only set of values that everyone else should adopt. Then, please, where is our free will and individual judgment, if those are what you guys are advocating under democracy in the first place? What we hate is that you switch and sway in your standards and claims for situations which are no different from one another, the only difference perhaps lies with your national interest ONLY. If American global interest is so important to allow you adopting such practice, then why can't we do the same, eh? You are more human than the rest of the world??
When we embrace Capitalism, you hate us for being Capitalist.
Not exactly. But America does fear China, in part, because China is gaining wealth and power through following (with Chinese characteristics) prescriptions that were offered by the West.
This is getting more and more amusing. It sounds as if because China is gaining through the avoidance of quite a bit of mistakes and falls based on Western experience that we are in your debt and shouldn't utter any complaint on injustice and unfairness? Well, didn't the West also gain a great deal from our discoveries centuries before, silk, compass, paper, gunpowder, printing, and did we ever fear Westerners until they tried to tear us apart, dividing our lands as if they had a rightful share of this treasure chest?
When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet.
The United States is obviously not in any position to offer a moral critique of environmental destruction wrought by other nations. But it is in an excellent position to offer observations from environmental science, to describe best practices based on long experience, and to promote greener technologies in concert with the many Chinese, in and out of government, who are concerned about China's poisoning of its own land, air, and water. The complaint in this line is symptomatic of one of the most dangerous (and charmless) Chinese psycho-rhetorical moves:the tendency to focus on the emotional response to a critique—the perceived insult—rather than the factual claims of a critique. My suggestion is that the Chinese ignore the insults,evaluate the facts, and clean up China's environment for the sake of the Chinese themselves.
When we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abused human rights.
The issue was not the goal, but the methods. In my experience, most Chinese support the One Child policy, at least in theory, even as they are saddened by it. This difficult moral equation is best worked out by the Chinese themselves. But I would have more confidence in China's ability to create an effective and humane population policy if every aspect of the issue could be openly debated and continually re-evaluated.
When we were poor, you thought we were dogs.
This is untrue, and the self-pity in the line is worrisome. America's long record of sympathy for China's poverty is one of the brighter spots in the history of bilateral relations. Americans have donated money, material, expertise, and, in some cases, their lives to alleviate Chinese suffering. While China's great material progress is due primarily to the hard work and sacrifice of the Chinese people, one would be hard-pressed to point to any aspect of China's development that has no connection to the United States. There was some condescension and self-aggrandizement in American sympathy for China, but it's an imperfect world and motives are always mixed.
True to the single drop! The Americans are nice only when they can manipulate us or when they see those of us having no threat to them - that is, they are nice to Chinese selectively, for example, the DPP or KMT, Chinese in Taiwan, the "democratic party" in HK like Martin Lee, but not Communist China, because your government and media have always been demonizing Communist China, even when Nixon had no choice but to establish diplomatic relationship with Mao, you still alienate China. The diplomatic relationship was and is still a mere strategic move for US in its global setup. In fact, the Americans are even more brain-washed than the mainland Chinese. You can conduct a survey on a effective and representative sample from each country.
When we loan you cash, you blame us for your national debts.
Yeah. Sorry about that. And thanks for the cash.
When we build our industries, you call us Polluters.
China's industries are major polluters, as China itself acknowledges. America is a major polluter too. We must work on the issue together. Again, the tone of the line is worrisome: one should be able to point out, as a matter of fact, that a country is producing a lot of pollution, without being accused of 「calling that nation a polluter.」 A doctor who tells a patient she has cancer is not calling that patient 「cancerous,」 or asserting his superiority, or claiming that he has never had or does not currently have cancer himself. He is simply taking an essential step on the road to a cure.
When we sell you goods, you blame us for global warming.
I think we've covered this one. I'll try not to be as redundant in my comments as the author was in his or her indictment.
When we buy oil, you call it exploitation and genocide.
No one has said that buying oil is genocide. What has been said is that arming and abetting an oil-rich government that slaughters its own people makes one complicit in genocide. The point seems too obvious to spell out, as is the point that the American government has underwritten more than its share of noxious regimes.
When you go to war for oil, you call it liberation.
I don't want to defend the invasion, but I should point out that Americans do not speak of 「The Liberation of Iraq.」 They call it simply「The Iraq War,」 and most of them oppose it. They oppose it freely in print, in film, and on street corners. They are free to criticize their government's positions, to unpack their government's propaganda, and to not vote for politicians who support the war.
Sorry to get up on the soapbox. Two of the nice things about defending American positions, no matter how wrongheaded they may be, are (1) in a pluralistic society, there is no such thing as 「the American position」 because the government doesn't have a monopoly on meaning. There is therefore no such thing as the unitary 「You」 in China's Grievances.(I don't believe in the unitary 「We」 either.) (2) No foreign critique of the United States is ever as scathing, informed, or effective as critiques offered by Americans themselves. That gives us a thick skin, confidence, a certain immunity to insult.
When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you demanded rules of law.
No. Deng Xiaoping set China on the road toward Rule of Law so that China, in its own interest, could escape from chaos by attracting foreign investment, technology, and managerial expertise
When we uphold law and order against violence, you call it violating human rights.
「Law and Order」 is not the same thing as 「Rule of Law.」
When we were silent, you said you wanted us to have free speech.
Sure.
When we are silent no more, you say we are brainwashed- xenophobics.
Americans are too quick to call the Chinese by unpleasant names: brainwashed, xenophobic, nationalistic. This impulse hurts American understanding of what is really occurring in China. But asking your opponents where they get their information, requesting that they make reasoned arguments that consider all of the available evidence, and suggesting that serious historians be consulted in discussions of history is not the same thing as name calling.
Why do you hate us so much, we asked.
No, you answered, we don't hate you.
We don't hate you either,
Glad to hear it. One of the things that has concerned me about this spring's dustups is that they have created the impression that Americans are anti-Chinese and Chinese are anti-American. Neither is true. I've worked in U.S.-China relations for 22 years, spending equal amounts of time in both countries. There are blowhards in both nations. On balance, however, our mutual fascination outweighs our mutual frustration. The Chinese are gracious hosts, are internationally minded, and are more patriotic than nationalistic. Americans are interested in and impressed by China. That is why we welcome so many Chinese to our universities, our workplaces, and our families.
But, do you understand us?
When most of my Chinese friends use phrases like 「understand China,」they really mean 「accept China's understanding of itself」 or, more specifically, 「accept the Chinese Communist Party's interpretation of things (the π˙«È).」 But nobody gets to be viewed only as they wish to be viewed. People are smarter than that. My understanding of China is no doubt incomplete (how could it be otherwise?), and is certainly different than the CCP's, but that doesn't make it illegitimate. There are innumerable Chinese 「understandings」 of China just as there are innumerable American understandings of America. Perhaps we'd be better off if we dropped talk of 「understanding」 altogether.
Dropping off again eh? Very smart weight-loss program from Jenny Craig, I believe. Here you formulate your own interpretation of "do you understand us", then go your merry way to elaborate. OK going your line, but is it not true that while nobody gets to be viewed only as they wish to be viewed, the same is true that nobody should view and believe they have fully understand?? This is exactly the problem!!! All these few weeks, a lot of Westerners made a lot of comments in writings as well as on the video. Haven't you seen a footage called "Where is Tibet?" Certain Californians were asked to point out where is Tibet on a map, nobody got it right, and finally a "proud" middle-aged guy claimed that he doesn't need to know where is Tibet to express his opinion. Perhaps this is the way you come to your conclusion that nobody is viewed the way they want to be viewed. Fair enough, but should it be a view that make sense first? By understanding, that is exactly what we are furious about -- people being so ignorant themselves who pose as if they become an expert of China, or Tibet for just being there once or twice; people who clearly knows little about Buddhism or Lamaism, or Chinese history (we don't even dare to claim we know every bits of Chinese history or all of our country), yet these people boldly comment as if they know China more than we do, Just to be fair, would you like us having the same attitude toward your country , your internal affairs, your history? This is what we mean when we say "Do you understand us?" So, please don't attempt to make a detour on this subject.
