Why can't China's future be left to the Chinese -- not the west?
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His message was that for the last 30 years, China has been making reforms step by step, but it was naive to think that one of the world's oldest civilizations, with a history of states and cultures dating back more than six millennia, could or would make all the remaining changes in the three-week period of the Olympics.This is so true. Why is the west so obsessed with its anything-is-bad-about-China attitude? Yes, China has problems: be they human rights, poverty, freedom blah blah blah. But China is soooooooo huge and issues are naturally diverse. The problem of Tibet, for example, is of concern to only 1% (if not less) of the population. What about the rest 99%, or even just 70%? Ask any Chinese who are 30ish, ask them how they feel about their lives, ask them if they want drastic changes to the communist government as wished by the west (don't tell me crap such as 'oh those Chinese are brainwashed by government propaganda blah blah blah... the Chinese people isn't as dumb as the west wishes to believe). Ask average Beijingers, that although they don't like their lives being disturbed during the Games, do they support what is being staged in the capital? Why can't the future of China be left to the hands of the Chinese people, and not by the west who poorly understands what really the majority of the Chinese want?
"I was secretary-general of the bidding committee," said Wang. "I was confronted with many questions about the opening up and the reform of China and I did say that the Olympic Games coming to China would help China open up and reform better. And the effects show.
"After 30 years of reform, China is developing quickly. People enjoy more freedom and they have a lot to say and the welfare of people has improved a lot."
He said there are, of course, exceptions. Not everyone is doing better and some people have been disenfranchised. But it's important to handle those grievances through the legal process because the country can't be allowed to fall into "chaos."
It's irritating, he suggested, that some journalists have come only to "peek and be critical, to dig into details and find fault with that."
But finding flaws, he said, doesn't mean that China is not trying to fulfil its promises.
"If you want to come over here and you want to be critical, it's all right. But you have to believe the majority of the people, otherwise I think you are quite misled."
The west should stop using its rhetoric of democracy and liberty and force it upon other countries.. I wanna borrow a few lines by Paul Well of the Macleans when he writes about the Georgian/Russian conflict:
What’s killing Georgia today — besides hordes of Russian soldiers and irregulars — is Western rhetoric about democracy and liberty, and the reluctance or inability of assorted peddlers of that rhetoric to check it, now and then, against reality.
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i have been flip-floping between cbc english and cbc french watching the olympics, one interesting comparison is that both channels have a comedian on board, shaun majumder for the english and jean rene dufort for the french. majumder kept on trying to make jokes that really have nothing to do with the chinese milieu but dufort went into everything chinese, like eating fried scorpians and dog penises. (vraiment degeulas - really disgusting - he said) dufort made fun of how rigid the chinese police must be standing guard at the tianmen square. dufort spoke directly to the people when majumder often talked directly to the translator. what is happening is that the english media are not interested in what is really happening to the chinese, they just want to bash them - and the english reports are always biased.
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