Alex Goes To China

This is a response to a blog by Dedlam on his blog ‘Dedlog’ written on 3 June 2009 titled Justifying the [Great Firewall of China] GFW but nothing else. Unfortunately I cannot twitter or facebook update about this blog, as I have been blocked, the Great Firewall of China strikes again. It has many interesting insights into China, censorship and authoritarianism from an Australian that has been living in there. It inspired me to put my two cents worth forward, in response to him.

I agree with the assertion that there is no such thing as ‘evil’… at least in the Hollywood sense of the word. However, I disagree with Dedlam’s familial metaphor of Chinese governance as justification of the Great Firewall of China. My view is coming from a democratic politic, which has many flaws, but nevertheless is a more reasonable position than justifying authoritarianism.

Civil disobedience and political critique in China are dealt with through censorship and violence to her own people [1]. This is not a Right of Governance, but an Abuse of Power. Self preservation by a regime is no justification for this abuse. The fact that many Chinese citizens are susceptible to demagogy and fallacious appeals to patriotism is further proof of a successful 60 year long campaign of misinformation and ‘re-education’.

We should be equally critical of capitalism’s perversion of democracy. Americans, for instance, are perhaps even more susceptible to demagogy than the Chinese (for example G.W. Bush’s irrational rhetoric after Sept. 11 and his subsequent reelection). It seems that power corrupts no matter what the political or economic system. This is why the checks and balances of a self critical democracy should be obtained and preserved peacefully whenever possible in order to diminish the opportunities for corruption.

China is capable of a free democracy. It will take time, but a political system that can withstand critique and disobedience is more likely to be creative, innovative and modern. I hope the people of China will create a democracy that suits its recent trend toward modernity. It seems that this shift will happen sooner rather than later. The old ways of Maoist Communism and 1978 style ’socialism with Chinese characteristics’ are fast fading. They will be replaced with a socialist democracy… with Chinese characteristics.

These predictions for the future are fraught; and may not come to pass, but I hope they do. Ironically they will probably not be achieved through revolution, but rather through education, as the old PRC realises there is more power in a free democratic people than the doctrines of Marx and Mao.

[1]: ie/ The Great Firewall of China, Tienanmen Massacre, etc.

Here are some images in (sort of) chronological order from the trip so far. We are nearly halfway though our journey and so far we have been to Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing. We were planning to go to Guilin today, but the flood alerts are changing our thinking. Not sure what we are doing now… in the meantime, please enjoy my photos (click on the thumbnails below for larger images):

In 1937 Japan invaded China. In Nanjing over the period of 6 weeks an estimated 300,000 people were brutally murdered by the invading army. Thousands more were maimed, raped and had their lives turned upside down.

Today, Jo and I went to The Memorial for the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders. This was an important thing for me to do politically. When I lived in Tokyo in 2005 the “Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi … shrugged off Beijing’s complaints about his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honours Class A war criminal[s]…”[1]. At this time there were also claims made by families of victims who experienced the war crimes for compensation, which were denied by Japanese courts. For me this expressed the blatant war crimes denial and historical revisionism rife in contemporary Japan. To be able to witness the other side of the story in Nanjing today gave me some sense of resolution, although I think this feeling will be better served with cultural and political development in Japan.

Having said that, there were some interesting historical revisionist notions put forward by the Chinese governments influence on the exhibition. For example the claim to Taiwan being a province of China was made strongly (ignoring the past 20 years of democratic autonomy). Also the implication that China defeated Japan during WWII; omitting the atomic bombings by the USA. I guess every culture has its own version of history, and somewhere in between is what really happened.

Perhaps one day China will have a memorial for the millions killed by Mao Zedong and the PRC, or the west officially remembering the hundreds of thousands killed by the USA and its allies (including Australia) in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 7 years. Or we can imagine a world where Japan builds its own museum educating its people about the Nanjing Massacre.

Let me start this critical blog with a preface; Shanghai is an amazing city. Modern, eclectic and fascinating. The people, food and culture are all buzzing energy and humour. The Xiao Chi (particularly a savoury pancake made by street vendors whose name I do not yet know) is to die for and the sights and sounds are amazing. But that said there is still dark sides to the city which are not well hidden. Poverty, lack of basic hygiene and political oppression are rife in Shanghai. In the short 5 days Jo and I have been here we have already witnessed an obvious travesty of social freedom.

Jo and I went for a walk through the French Concession and saw a group of people watching a band with a woman singing a traditional folk song. Everyone was smiling and enjoying the hot, humid evening. This experience up to this point was very pleasant.

But then a stocky man in a white shirt walked through the crowd and went up to the amplifier and started turning the dials. This changed the pitch of the song, but failed to achieve his aim, I later realised, of silencing the music. The crowd started to get nervous, shifting on their heels and whispering to each other. Then two policemen dressed in riot gear (helmets with visors and body armour) pushed through, but stopped at the edge of the circle of people. The woman singing boldly finished her song with a lasting cadence which drew applause from the mildly defiant audience. Once the applause began the policemen stepped forward writing on a pad (I assume it was an infringement notice). The crowd then began to dissipate, yet some bunched around the policemen and protested politely. The man in the white shirt began unplugging things. I wanted to help in some way but failed to think of anything that would not make the situation worse. I was concerned that the scene would escalate and I wanted to get Jo (and myself) away from the scene. Regrettably, I didn’t have my phone on me or I would have photographed it surreptitiously to witness the event.

In some ways the most oppressed members of this situation were the policemen. My optimistic nature hopes that the policemen didn’t want to do what they did. When they waited for the song to finish I detected a sense of regret in their body language. But the fact remains, after Nuremberg – this is no defense. The freedoms of speech and expression simply do not exist in China, not even in modern Shanghai, and while there are still those willing to enforce the status quo the situation will not change.

I have moved my blog from http://alexgoestochina.wordpress.com to here because of ongoing connection problems caused by the fact that the PRC have deemed Wordpress.com to be counter-revolutionary during the 20 year anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Massacre.

Anyhoo, this is a nice work around thanks to my colleague Ed, who created this service for artists to have an affordable, easy to manage web space. You too can have one of these revolutionary sites by signing up here: artistspace.com.au

After that little hickup I can now post some images:

Human history is filled with horrors. Despots, dictators and socio-economic and political systems that are nothing but barbaric and atrocious. China particularly could make Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (a nasty little story) seem like a romantic comedy. Chinese empires have committed genocide, rape, torture and war for nearly 4000 years. The Cultural Revolution of Mao itself also has played its hand in a number of massacres which leave the number of dead in the tens of millions and the scars of its rule the continuing brain death of a nation.

Yet things are changing. I suspect that with the new international era of Chinese engagement, it will fair better (probably because I am a naive optimist). Also, I contextualise the above rant with the knowledge that Europe has a very similar history, as do many of the Great Civilisations of millennia past. Civilisation is not very civilised.

I hope humanity is not doomed to repeat the horrors of history, and I especially hope China will learn from its past and move forward.

“Chinese security personnel try to stop pictures being taken as they check the photographer’s documents in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.”

Source: telegraph.co.uk

20 years after the massacre

As a social media consultant and an Internet g33k, I am quite invested in the notions of freedom interwoven into the web. For this reason I am quite upset by China’s attempts to censor the World Wide Web (and equally upset by Australia’s recent attempts).

Something I take satisfaction in however is the counter measures being taken by white hat hackers the world over in creating easy to use tools for side stepping the censors. My personal favourite is the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIFC). With people like this in the world we will always have alternatives to fear, oppression and abuses of power.

And now on a lighter side, here is another conflation of Chinese and Australian politics.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptccZze7VxQ&feature=player_embedded]