Obviously non-Chinese (why was the warning only for “Caucasian readers”?) should avoid Carrefour in China for a while.

Chinese, too, should avoid Carrefour for awhile. The fenqing turned on torch martyr Jin Jing, calling her a traitor and worse after she expressed opposition to the demonstrations outside Carrefour.

Reminds me of the American soldier who was stabbed in Haebangchon back in 2002. That was worse.

Obviously non-Chinese (why was the warning only for “Caucasian readers”?) should avoid Carrefour in China for a while.

Here’s an email we received from a volunteer teacher from an Ivy League university volunteer programme in Hunan Province (who shall remain unnamed to protect the identities of everyone involved) — a chilling account of an attack on his colleague by an anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou. The matter has been brought to the attention of the US Embassy in Beijing and should serve as a warning to all Caucasian readers, particularly those living in second-tier cities, to avoid large crowd gatherings at all costs during these crazy, crazy times. Our foreign correspondent friends in Shanghai and Beijing have been receiving death threats on their mobile phones and through their faxes, but clearly, this is something else:

Im also sending this letter to the embassy.
People need to be more much careful.

I don’t think you can really compare the freedom fries incident to what has repeatedly happened in China. To my knowledge, during the whole controversy over Chirac’s betrayal at the UN over the Iraqi campaign, there were no anti-French demonstrations, no threat of violence and no French property was destroyed. We basically jeered the French privately and that was that. The Chinese government has a record of punitive actions against countries that speak out against them. Chinese demonstrators destroyed an American consulate in the aftermath of the accidental bombing of a Chinese consulate in Yugoslavia, and inflicted major damage on other consulates and the embassy.

The level of Chinese vitriol in response to criticism is part of an old tradition. Anything less than worshipful obedience and admiration is cause for Chinese anger. This sense of entitlement is encapsulated in the Emperor Qian Long’s edict to King George back in the 18th century “Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!”, when the Chinese viewed Britain as a minor tributary state (to China). There are a lot of people who view the Communist system as being the source of Chinese xenophobia and arrogance. I think it’s more the product of thousands of years of Chinese propaganda. The fact is that Imperial Japan’s attitudes probably owed more to the bits of its culture borrowed from China than from Western ideology.

The Austrian, Spanish and Ottoman Empires were at different times referred to as “the Sick Man of Europe”. These empires are now history. There is a case to be made that they ought to be resentful of that description, now that their circumstances are much diminished. But it is Chinese who get all ticked off at having been described, at one point in time, as being the Sick Man of Asia. This is in the here and now. You don’t get anywhere near as much resentment and anti-Western vitriol from Asian countries that were completely occupied by Western countries. But China, which ceded mere fishing villages to the West and had them developed into major metropolises, is keeningly resentful of the West.

Bottom line is that the average Chinese has an overdeveloped superiority complex and sense of entitlement to worshipful admiration. Combine this with China’s two-millenia tradition of territorial expansion during times of military strength, and we have both a long-term goal and the fuel (bodies) with which to achieve that goal. Any of China’s neighbors that isn’t feeling nervous is brain-dead or deluded by notions of yellow solidarity.

Whether or not Western demonstrators really care about Tibet is irrelevant to the fact that they and their demonstrations pose no threat to China. They are merely a nuisance. Who cares if Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy stay home? The games survived previous boycotts. The USA had a rousing good time in ‘84 without the Soviet Bloc. Boycotting Carrefour, which could not even stop the demonstrations if it wanted to, is as stupidly nationalistic as Americans eating freedom fries.

FYI, I am not sympathetic to the demonstrators at all. I see them as useless at best, harmful at worst because they feed Chinese nationalism. To appreciate the ugliness of this nationalism and irrational netizen frenzy, read about the fall of paralympic torch bearer Jin Jing from martyr to traitor after she voiced opposition to the Carrefour demonstrations:

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200804b.brief.htm#030

EastSouthWestNorth has lots of good posts about Chinese public and netizen reactions to the demonstrations and Western media coverage.

Don’t bother with irrelevant tu quoque arguments. This isn’t “China bad, America good.” Criticism of another country does not imply that one thinks one’s own country is free of blame. A rational discussion deals with each issue on its own merits. I’ve made my views on Iraq very clear on numerous threads.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com.....9/BNStory/

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