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Jul 12

Speaking about the Three Self Patriotic Chinese Christian

Written by: snow | Filed under:Analysis, culture, q&a, religion | Tags:, ,
16 Comments » newest

In response to Marc (who wrote in #189 “What Does It Mean to Chinese”)

“However, the reason that I brought up house church vs. Three-Self church initially has a lot to do with nationalism. You see, Three-Self church was started by some nationalistic Chinese Christians in the early 1900’s (way before communist took over power in China). Hence they called themselves Three-Self (meaning self-governing, self teaching, self supporting). They hated Western Christians in China then. They teamed up with communist government later in the 1950’s to start persecuting other Chinese Christians who didn’t see things their way. That’s when house church Christians started to emerge. Anyway, the whole conflict started out with nationalism.”

I am glad that you put Christianity in China in historical perspectives, but your interpretion of important, complicated historical events is a bit oversimplified and biased. Still, you are right, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement was initiated by patriotic Chinese Christians and endorsed by the government, not “created” by the government as the PBS article claims to be (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/china_705/history/china.html, a companion piece to Frontline/World Jesus in China).

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Jul 11

翻译：对人民币的高期望

Written by: opersai | Filed under:-chinese-posts, Analysis, News | Tags:, , , ,
No Comments » newest

[原贴 Original Post]

总结 Francesco Sisci 的 “看法：八国高峰会到底想要中国的汇率人民币怎样”：

＊他们希望人民币飞速上涨由此减慢中国便宜货进口的速度
＊但是，他们又希望避免接下来因为变的更贵的中国货而导致的国际通货膨胀
＊其外，他们更不希望中国用变强的人民币吃下更多的石油和原材料

你不觉的这些让你想起那个说法么？ “小心你许什么愿，它或许真会实现。”

Jul 08

Building Envy – Chinese and American government offices

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, General | Tags:, ,
66 Comments » newest

Many discussions involving China and the West end up being a competition: you have this, but we have that.

Here is one very popular competition, passed around in different forms on numerous Chinese internet forums for many years. It’s about the glory of our government buildings. The captions below are translated from the Chinese original:

The city hall in Marion, Iowa. In China, this kind of building would’ve been torn down long ago.

Government offices for the Fangshan District of Beijing. It’s far from the downtown area; a relatively poor mountain area!

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Jul 07

Wall Street Journal gets it wrong on Weng’an

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, media | Tags:,
43 Comments » newest

A few days ago, an assistant working for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong emailed me an inquiry, asking for my thoughts on the Weng’an story. They were working on a story about the significance of citizen bloggers like Zola, and were interested in my input.

Unfortunately, the version they finally went to press with is simply wrong. I usually am more politic on this blog, but I feel entitled to judge this article, especially after they asked me for my opinion. The title and introductory paragraph from the article tell you all you really need to know about the rest:

Chinese Bloggers Score a Victory Against the Government
Firings Indicate Growing Power; Exploits of ‘Zola’

Aggressive Chinese bloggers make an art of challenging Chinese government propaganda. This week, they can claim a victory.

…
That change in stance appears to be a direct result of pressure brought by journalists and Chinese bloggers such as Zhou Shuguang, a self-styled “personal news station,” who didn’t allow the issue to drop, posting to the Internet unofficial reports along with photos and pleas from the family of the dead youth.

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Jul 06

The challenge in Taiwan

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:
 78 Comments » newest

Ties between the two sides of the Taiwan strait are growing warmer and warmer. This should be no surprise, as its exactly what ROC president Ma Yingjiu promised in his campaign leading to a landslide victory earlier this year. With the arrival of mainland tourists in Taiwan representing another new milestone, we are clearly living through an inflection point in cross-strait relations.

But where will cross-strait relations go from here? That’s where the difference in opinion lies. One expat commentator in Taiwan offers this analysis (courtesy of A-gu’s blog):

Most KMT party members and supporters seem not to believe that China actually means any harm to Taiwan– and especially not now that there will be a unified KMT government. They believe that the anger of China and the rest of the world is directed solely at Chen Shui-bian and the DPP. They think that if Taiwan’s government can just behave, quietly cooperate with Beijing and give up the quest for de jure independence, that China will reciprocate by allowing Taiwan to indefinitely maintain the “status quo” of de facto independence.

So far, so good. I believe that to be an accurate statement on pan-Blue beliefs, and I also believe it’s an accurate statement of what most Chinese (certainly myself) firmly believe. However, he follows up with this:

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Jun 28

The Prospects of Democracy in China

Written by: Nimrod | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:, , ,
201 Comments » newest

Our guest Youzi has given us a kernel for further discussion in one of his comments:

And even within China, between different provinces and peoples are tremendous psychological differences, perhaps even greater than those between two countries. As time has passed, as the people’s living standards have grown and as awareness of personal rights has woken… if the traditional methods of political pressure and thought control are used, it’s already become very difficult to maintain the China unity and a sense of belong to the Chinese people. The government has observed this point, but unless it implements effective political reform that respects and tolerates the interests of different groups of people, it will not resolve this fundamental problem simply by waving the worn-down flags of patriotism and nationalism.

I don’t think we disagree on this point, but I think Youzi goes a bit far to berate some of us for suggesting that an “awareness of personal rights” alone and a shallow understanding of “fighting for personal rights” without civic values and respect for law is a recipe for disaster. It’s a two way street. What makes “Western-style democracy” tick isn’t the prescription of “freedom, democracy, and rule of law”, but the deeply ingrained sense in every single citizen that their interests lie in their responsibility to and stewardship of the country, its institutions, and values, of which such rights are a part — in short, true patriotism. That prevents people from ripping the constitution apart when they don’t get their way. Sad to say, China isn’t there yet.

So what are “effective political reform that respects and tolerates the interests of different groups of people” at this stage? Well, there is a model and there is dynamics. Nobody is sitting idly on their hands. I want to direct our readers to this article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year titled

Long Time Coming – The Prospects of Democracy in China.

I posted it weeks ago in a comment but it really deserves its own highlight here.
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Jun 27

Is Fiat too clever?

Written by: DJ | Filed under:Analysis, News | Tags:, , , ,
45 Comments » newest

The story of Fiat apologizing to China for its Richard Gere and Tibet themed ad for a new car was first reported on June 20. At that time, I quickly dismissed it as nothing but another blunder by the marketing department of a global company that should have known better. The ad itself wasn’t problematic per se. But it was clearly created with Richard Gere’s Tibet oriented activism in mind. Somebody should have foreseen that it would be perceived as provocative by some (or a lot) people.

So my first impression was quite similar to how Stan Abrams reacted in his China Hearsay blog.

Someone should get fired for this, and not because of the political overtones themselves. No, someone should be fired for incompetence. Through the whole vetting process for this ad, no one thought this was a bad idea? Really?

But interestingly, the story didn’t just die. I keep seeing reports of this matter in the English based media, perhaps because Fiat was also rather loudly insisting that the commercial would continue to air. “That’s odd,” I thought, “What’s the point for Fiat to apologize in the first place?”

Tim Johnson, in his China Rises blog, offerred an explanation.

Maybe it is a new corporate strategy. Mount an ad campaign. Anger Chinese. Capture lots of newspaper headlines. Issue an apology. Keep the ad campaign running anyway.

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Jun 25

On China and Religion

Written by: Oli | Filed under:Analysis, culture | Tags:, , , ,
71 Comments » newest

For different cultural, political and historical reasons, the Chinese government officially recognises Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism as religions. As in the realm of commerce, medicine, the legal profession or any other human endeavours, China, like many nations and for her own reasons have chosen, as it is her right, to lay down a legal and regulatory framework within which religions are practised.

Within the above five religions, the government does not prefer one religion to another and neither does it care about ecclesiastical or inter-faith doctrinal differences. It does not care whether Jesus is the Son of God, one of the Prophets of Allah or just a mere rabbi. It does not care whether the Virgin Mary or the Saints ought to be worshipped and much less whether the Quakers are pacifists who live according to personal beliefs. Like any other governments in the world, what it does care about are whether they break China’s laws while in China and whether a belief system contravenes the public interest.

In no countries are the clergy or religious institutions free from or above the temporal laws of the land. An American Catholic priest convicted of paedophilia, fraud or mere speeding in America is still guilty and may suffer the appropriate judicial consequences, irrespective of the fact that he is a priest. Should the Church as an organisation in any way be involved, it too is liable to criminal as well as possible civil lawsuits.

Just as there is no such thing as absolute political and commercial freedom, neither is there such a thing as absolute religious freedom. There are only varying degrees of religious freedom that is regulated in turn by ecclesiastic rules, doctrines, temporal laws, social customs and traditions in accordance with the demands of the relevant state and society. For example, many in the UK believe in Fengshui, but nevertheless in a test case before the English Court of Appeal, the Judges, as it is within their remit, chose not to recognise it as a religion, just as they do not recognise any religion that is not monotheist as a matter of policy. By contrast, because of its Chinese community Indonesia recognises Confucianism as a religion when China only sees it as a school of philosophy, so that just because something is lawful in one country does not make it so in another.

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Jun 25

A Discussion On Religion in China

Written by: Oli | Filed under:Analysis, culture, q&a | Tags:, ,
31 Comments » newest

This is a continuation of the discussion from the June 14th 2008 blog entry “Chocolate City” – Africans seek their dreams in China“, an article originally published in The Southern Metropolis Daily Jan 2008. Because of axes and grinding the discussion morphed from a debate about race relations in China to one about religions in China. As I have been invited to turn it into a blog entry and the issue of religions in China appears topical, I am posting the extract from my comments and other posters’ responses and questions, sans editing (apart from my own extract’s typos).

Please Note: I am a newbie at blogging and nor am I a full- time blogger. Any perceived expletives occurred in the heat of passion(ate) (debate), as these things are wont to happen and I beg readers’ indulgence.

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Jun 25

A Discussion On Religion in China

Written by: Oli | Filed under:Analysis, culture, q&a | Tags:, ,
31 Comments » newest

This is a continuation of the discussion from the June 14th 2008 blog entry “Chocolate City” – Africans seek their dreams in China“, an article originally published in The Southern Metropolis Daily Jan 2008. Because of axes and grinding the discussion morphed from a debate about race relations in China to one about religions in China. As I have been invited to turn it into a blog entry and the issue of religions in China appears topical, I am posting the extract from my comments and other posters’ responses and questions, sans editing (apart from my own extract’s typos).

Please Note: I am a newbie at blogging and nor am I a full- time blogger. Any perceived expletives occurred in the heat of passion(ate) (debate), as these things are wont to happen and I beg readers’ indulgence.

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Jun 24

Prices in the Mao era – a peasant’s view

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:, , ,
15 Comments » newest

The vast majority of Chinese favor and support the “opening up and reform” period started in 1978. But many are also very nostalgic for the Mao era, a time when equality was guaranteed, a time when socialism in China was far more than just a hypothetical. One simple example is translated below.

This article has been spread around numerous Chinese forums, actual origin not clear. (原贴)

I was born in 1954, in a village in Shandong province. I have a sister, and our parents are also peasant farmers. I want to start by talking about the prices of agricultural goods, starting with wheat as an example. From 1970 – 1980, the market price for wheat was: 0.35 RMB/shijin (ed: 0.5 kg), later growing to 0.35 RMB/shijing. The cost of things didn’t really change, it was very stable during this period. So the problem I want to discuss is, when a farmer sells a half kilogram of wheat on the market, what can he do with that money?
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Jun 23

Political unification and China’s Grand Union ideal

Written by: Nimrod | Filed under:Analysis, culture | Tags:, , , ,
53 Comments » newest

On this site, we’ve come back to the question of secession several times. The news a week ago that Ireland, with less than 1% of the EU’s population, single-handedly derailed the second EU attempt at political centralization (Lisbon Treaty) strikes me as the perfect opportunity to talk about the flip side of the coin: the ideology of unification.

Because let’s face it, unification is an ideology.

The EU prides itself on moving towards unification only through debate, consensus, and democratic decision-making. But increasingly, it finds itself in the impossible position of trying to convince every member state that there is something to be gained, when in many cases, the benefits are uncertain, long-term, or abstract. The EU leaders had high hopes of being written in history books when they signed this and the last treaty. In the aftermath of this episode, however, we have seen ideas seriously floated like ignoring Ireland’s vote, of procedurally maneuvering around it, of making them vote again and again until passed, even of expelling Ireland from the EU! If this isn’t the unification ideology working, I don’t know what is.

To Chinese people, the existence of such ideologically driven motivation seems only natural. Human history is one of successively larger units of cooperative society. Without pre-commitment (generally founded on an ideological faith), there is nothing to guarantee cooperation among actors, no matter what their best intentions are. If you want gains, you have to put your chips in, even as you don’t know what you will get out of it for certain. The only thing to make people realize this is a negative consequence for not participating, which often means war. Chinese thinkers have figured this out thousands of years ago, when they faced the kind of calamitous warfare like the two World Wars that finally drove Europe to embark on its current path…
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Jun 23

Don’t indulge our “race complex”

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:
 55 Comments » newest

Many are now aware there are 56 different nationalities in China. There is another lesser known community, however, that sometimes refer to themselves as the 57th nationality. (Some in the community actually hate that term… but we’ll get to that later.)  These are the Minkaohan (民考汉), ethnic minorities raised in Han-language schools alongside Han classmates. The term Minkaohan literally means “minority testing using Han”. With their perfect grasp of putonghua and numerous Han Chinese friends, Minkaohan are often the best economic achievers in their community, and a successful model of the Chinese government’s policies towards minorities. But with their non-Han faces, and with their inability to read/write their own language, they often find themselves uncomfortable in both communities.

Their fate, their experience is critical in understanding the future of multi-ethnic China.  Their support, their contribution is critical in building a China that lives at peace with itself.

This post (原贴) is from a regular Uygur poster at a Chinese forum dedicated to Minkaohan (民考汉论坛).  Most posters to the forum are Uygur and Kazakh.

Don’t indulge our “racial complex”
I’ve been silent for several days; I’ve maintained my silence out of doubt.

These few days, I’ve been thinking a lot.  I’ve been thinking of my childhood; at the time, I was the only minority student in my class, and all of my friends were Han.  We went to school together, went home together, and played together.  In the alley where our home was, the left side was entirely Han, while the right side was entirely Uygur.  During hot summer evenings, everyone sat together cooling off in the courtyard, talking about every day things.  The alley was filled with harmonious laughs and chatter.

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Jun 21

Dalai Lama tries speaking to the Chinese

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, Environment, General | Tags:,
67 Comments » newest

If there’s one thing we’ve consistently criticized here, it’s that the Dalai Lama (and “clique”) has largely failed to reach out to the Chinese people directly. For every interview he provides to the Chinese-language press, it seems he’s done fifty for foreign language press. And even when he makes an attempt to speak to the Chinese (as with an open letter released earlier this year), his ignorance and lack of familiarity shows through.

But he is at least making an active effort to change this. He has met with individual Chinese in the United States and Germany in recent months. And in his just completed trip through Australia, he met with the Chinese-language press, and also hosted an open Q&A session targeted at overseas Chinese. (Unfortunately the session was organized with a dissident group with links to the FLG… but that’s not the point here.)

Here’s what he had to say in Australia, courtesy of the International Campaign for Tibet (原文):

Dalai Lama: … Problems related to Tibet must absolutely be resolved between the Han and Tibetan races, no one else can deal with this type of problem. And precisely because of that, the Chinese, the Han in inland China, you must understand the real situation, this is very important.

So, what is the real situation in his opinion? Read on for more.

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Jun 13

So China is responsible for the sub-prime loan crisis as well?

Written by: DJ | Filed under:Analysis, News | Tags:, ,
38 Comments » newest

[Update inserted at the end]

The U.S. Fed chairman Bernanke gave some amazing recycled remarks to the International Monetary Conference on June 3, 2008. In that speech, he offered some gems of wisdom such as:

In the financial sphere, the three longer-term developments I have identified are linked by the fact that a substantial increase in the net supply of saving in emerging market economies contributed to both the U.S. housing boom and the broader credit boom. The sources of this increase in net saving included rapid growth in high-saving East Asian countries and, outside of China, reduced investment rates in that region; large buildups in foreign exchange reserves in a number of emerging markets; and the enormous increases in the revenues received by exporters of oil and other commodities. The pressure of these net savings flows led to lower long-term real interest rates around the world, stimulated asset prices (including house prices), and pushed current accounts toward deficit in the industrial countries–notably the United States–that received these flows. … The housing boom came to an end because rising prices made housing increasingly unaffordable. The end of rapid house price increases in turn undermined a basic premise of many adjustable-rate subprime loans–that home price appreciation alone would always generate enough equity to permit the borrower to refinance and thereby avoid ever having to pay the fully-indexed interest rate. When that premise was shown to be false and defaults on subprime mortgages rose sharply, investors quickly backpedaled from mortgage-related securities. The reduced availability of mortgage credit caused housing to weaken further.

As Mike Whitney so nicely summarized for Bernanke: “It’s all China’s fault. Really.”

Whew. That’s a pretty long-winded way of saying the Chinese are to blame for everything that’s gone wrong in the markets for the last 10 months.

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Jun 12

Taiwan and Diaoyutai

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, News | Tags:,
11 Comments » newest

Two different Diaoyutai’s are front-page news today.

First, Diaoyutai islands: a Taiwanese fishing ship collided with a Japanese patrol ship off of the disputed Diaoyutai islands. One man was slightly injured as the boat sank; the passengers have been repatriated, but the crew remains held under Japanese custody.

The sovereignty of Diaoyutai is disputed by all sides on the basis of conflicting history; it’s either part of mainland China, Japan, Okinawa, or Taiwan depending on who is doing the talking. Wikipedia has the details in English. It certainly remains a potential flashpoint. Chinese nationalists (from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland) have at different times made attempts to plant Chinese flags onto the island. Japanese nationalists have done the same.

These pictures come from an attempt in 1996, during which a Chinese activist (David Chan) tragically drowned.

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Jun 03

Internet Lynch Mob gets their Fan

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, News | Tags:,
9 Comments » newest

Roland at ESWN gives us this excellent account of the Internet Lynch Mob again blindly rushing after a target… and sadly, this time, it’s gotten the wrong person.

Fan Xiaohua (范晓华) produced the official statement form the Mianzhu Communist Party Committee: “Comrade Fan Xiaohua (范晓华) has not been to Mianyang since May 12. She has not been to the May 1st Plaza of Mianyang. Mianyang and Mianzhu are not the same place. Comrade Fan Xiaohua (范晓华) and her family did not have any tents since May 12, so they could not be staying in one. Each night, Fan Xiaohua (范晓华) and her colleagues slept inside cars. Comrade Fan Xiaohua (范晓华) and her family have never owned a car. The Mianzhu city Communist Youth League car has license number Sichuan F70034. The Sichuan BD3732 license plate has been found to belong to Fan Xiaohua (范小华) of Jiangyou city who is not Mianzhu Communist Youth League secretary Fan Xiaohua (范晓华).

After Fan Xiaohua was involved in first stealing a disaster tent and second assaulting an old woman, arguably, he/she deserved some amount of public scorn. The problem with the Internet Lynch Mob is that it spreads rumors blindly. The Internet Lynch Mob has become judge, jury, executioner in one, and operates with little rational thought and discourse. I increasingly believe it’s becoming a scourage on modern Chinese society.

Roland provided a translation of part of a Southern Metropolis article on this. I’ll translate the rest; I completely agree with its sentiment:

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May 30

Even more reader questions on Tibet

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:q&a | Tags:
 20 Comments » newest

On a previous thread, Otto Kerner poses some excellent questions on Tibet. (Here is an earlier thread with a reader’s questions about Tibet.)

I give an attempt at addressing these questions below. I hope others will contribute their thoughts as well.

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May 29

Political dissent in China – glass half full, or completely empty?

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:, , ,
26 Comments » newest

This article from the IHT inspires me to write about a topic that’s been on my mind in recent months. The article is about the well-known Tibetan-Chinese writer Woeser. The title of the article alone gives you a pretty good idea of what its going to say: “Tibetan writer alleges harassment by Chinese police…” Woeser lives in Beijing, and is the daughter of a Han Chinese People’s Liberation Army general and a Tibetan woman. She also happens to be wife of Wang Lixiong (discussed previously). She has written extensively about Tibetan issues for years, both in print and on her blog.

A more detailed feature on Woeser comes to us from the Washington Post, which has also kindly provided a platform for other Chinese voices: Wang Qianyuan, Yang Jianli. I don’t think it takes too much brain-power to guess the criteria by which the Washington Post selects its Chinese guest editorialists. Of course, I think it’s fair to say these three voices represent probably millions of Chinese voices, so I certainly understand the Western media’s right to feature their stories. My only question is… when will they give print real estate to Chinese voice that can speak for the other hundreds of millions of Chinese that disagree with them fervently?

All of this adds up to one question about the status of political dissidents in China: is the glass half-full, or is the glass completely empty?

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May 26

Taiwan’s Ma Yingjiu – A New Era

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis | Tags:, ,
50 Comments » newest

This year has so far been confusing and surprising for many Chinese.

We’ve been faced with a number of challenges none of us expected: January snowstorms, Tibet riots, Olympic torch protests, and then the devastating Sichuan earthquake. But surprisingly, one potential flashpoint that many of us have been worried about for a decade seems to be settling down into an orbit that most of us appreciate and support.

I’m speaking, of course, of Taiwan. On May 20th, Ma Yingjiu (a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party) was inaugurated in Taipei as President of the Republic of China.

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May 24

Chinese netizens continue to monitor earthquake corruption

Written by: Buxi | Filed under:Analysis, News | Tags:, ,
3 Comments » newest

The Red Cross corruption story yesterday was only the tip of the iceberg. A number of subsequent stories have since floated to the surface; in some cases, there have been been clashes between police and angry citizens.

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