Originally written April 8, 2008:
The Demonization of China …
on being chinese in the us and watching media coverage of the olympics
by Diana Pei Wu
April 8, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO - I was walking out of San Francisco City Hall yesterday on a lunch break, in between testifying against the reappointment of a racist public officer and hearings on public policies that will open the door wider to the further gentrification of the working class neighborhoods of this City. There was a rally on the front steps of City Hall, like many days. This one was Students for a Free Tibet protesting the Olympics in China. It was picturesque, and emblematic of this city known for supposedly progressive politics - the flags and the monks, the students with headbands, the marble steps, the gilt lettering framing the scene, the squadron of police across the street.
I think it’s a hard thing for us - people of Chinese descent in the US, seeds of the diaspora, boat people of the dragon, sometimes many times removed through other countries, concentration camps or refugee camps - to paint media coverage of China and the Olympics in simple binaries because we see the complexity of issues and positions. We have double vision, double luck, sometimes double pain. sometimes triple or quadruple ….
In the media coverage on this issue over this year, I see clear China bashing that harkens back to the racist narratives of the 1890s. And I think the actions to boycott the Olympics, as are the demands that China do this or that on an international foreign policy level, are indicative that there has not been any attempt to have the kind of serious discussions that diplomacy is ostensibly about. That is, China is not to be taken as an equal, an entity with whom one has dialogue. The people in the West feel entitled to simply demand that China do This or That, as if China were a child to be bullied into compliance. Historically, we on the other side of modernity have always called this paternalism, colonialism and imperialism.
I see that China clearly abuses those who work towards social justice, Helen Zia’s experience notwithstanding (Zia, SF Chronicle, April 8, 2008). The official line is still that Tiananmen did not happen, and the truth is still that the Chinese government is extremely oppressive - military actions in minority areas and in poor areas is extremely common.
I also see a rising middle class in China, one that is mostly sold out to capitalism as the cure-all to dictatorship or communist authoritarianism, confusing capitalism with democracy. At the same time, there are those who work dedicatedly and stealthily for workers’ rights in the economic free trade zones of ShenZhen, as Helen Zia mentions, and who struggle within government bureaucracies to make more humane policies (such as friends in the Health and Environment ministries). And the workers, and the environment, in China, are truly the ones bearing the cost of the move towards capitalism and this Olympic effort.
I see, finally, this weird thing that happens with many colonial and imperial situations - the appropriation of regional or ethnic minorities’ cultural traits to represent the nation, while squashing and obliterating those same regional or ethnic identities and peoples. So why is the Tibetan ram the symbol of China? And why were the the Olympics opened with “folk dancers” - Han Chinese doing a Tibetan dance in Beijing? Those are the kinds of things that i understand to be extremely insulting to the minority or ethnic group in question and a serious misrepresentation of historical and contemporary relationships and power between regions and ethnic or racial groups. The US does it with Black culture, Mexico with indigenous culture, Brazil with Afro-Brazilian culture, Turkey with Kurdish independence day. Think jazz, blues, food, aztec symbology and language, samba, capoeira.
The other part that’s insulting is that some of the folks work for justice here in the US, or wherever they are based, some of these liberal and progressive people are critical of their own governments’ roles in creating inequities, abroad, and also in their own countries of residence. Some are not and they just buy into what has been already called a global imperialist logic. And others have called that hypocrisy.
I have to say, for folks in my family, in the circles of my extended family and extensive community, it’s a big deal that it’s gonna be in China. It’s like this extended national pride thing. I may not feel the same way, but it’s very real, and very beautiful. It is worth observing, mentioning, honoring.
It is not a dichotomy, to critique China for human rights abuses which are real, and at the same time support the opportunities this is creating in China – and in the Chinese diaspora – for more interesting dialogues. The Old Left used to call it political education …
We know that whatever profits are made for infrastructure built up in this period will go to the already-rich. They will be Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, U.S., European. And we knew that thousands of poor people were displaced for the Olympic stadium to be built there. We also know that African American homeowners were threatened, cajoled and bribed to sell their homes and land so the Olympic stadium in Atlanta could be built. Those that refused to comply were burned out. The only thing that didn’t happen were crosses on the front lawn.
So what does that mean? Will I be watching the Olympics? Will I be celebrating with my compatriot workers in restaurants and garment factories, domestics and youth? Will I be present at the pro-Tibet rallies like the one at City Hall yesterday? I’m really not sure yet. I’ll probably keep track of what’s going on. What I know is, before, during and afterwards, I’ll still be walking in and out of City Hall to and from one of the many meetings I attend there, fighting for policies that represent and support the jobs, lives, housing and basic education of the poorest people in one of the richest cities in the richest nation in the world.
Diana Pei Wu is a co-founder of Chin Jurn Wor Ping (Moving Forward for Peace), a San Francisco Bay Area network of progressive Chinese Americans, and faculty lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.