Chinese blogger's home destroyed

by iosaf Tue Apr 03, 2007 18:04

I just caught reference at the end of your report to the role citizen reporting is playing in spurring on one region to a self-awareness which includes and necessitates self-criticism. I'd suggest that's where progress (in the sense you want) will first be made and seen. Because it makes most objective sense to me and also because I've been learning about how Olympic events are organised on the human resources level this last year and know a Chinese citizen who has gone through the same curve and after many years working "and complaining & being self-critical" at the service of and independent of the Chinese state in Europe.
Chinese culture, shares aspects of self-awareness with many other oriental cultures which at first glance appear to have more in common with "pride" and "honour" than much else. It's a subtle difference which makes it more natural for such cultures to be slower than some in the west to embrace the positive benefits of a "loyal opposition". But the century progress of the poorest on the planet and the continuing safety of the rights the western societies built for themselves on the back of their imperialist global expansion are inseparable from the route China and the Chinese take.
Many of us are rightly terrified of the nightmare possibility of Nixon's US capitalists unfettered by legal restraint and Chinese employees without the benefit of workers' rights establishing the first truly globalised market at some point in the next generation. It would mean the collapse of hundreds of years progress on our behalf.

Sporting fair-play & the need for honest self-appraisal in preparation for the "show case" city ought offer opportunities to all Chinese to play as a team. We in the west are so blind to our own faults that when criticising those of another country immediately begin with the "who" (not "what" is wrong. It has never escaped the attention of others from China, Japan, Pakistan, India or to complete the list of potential trade and political partners of Asia - Iran) how much effort we put in to bickering between ourselves over what's worse about their state all the time illustrating how utterly impotent we are to change their states in any other way but military aggression.

I'd be very interested to learn more about the preparations for the Olympics. It is a global event of gigantic proportions which causes changes wherever it is celebrated and from wherever the athletes who are selected by their states come from. Not all of those changes are visible in the new city or architecture it leaves behind once the torch is passed. Just one thing on the giggle level - the most vigorously protected trademark of any non-commercial entity in the world are those of the IOC - it would be a bad idea for local entrepreneurial types to pirate copy the t-shirts. ;-)

I look forward to your next post Ed. thank you.