China Bashing and Western Hypocrisy

The following is a response to an invective filled diatribe against China I recently received:

I understand where you're coming from, and can agree with the facts as you present them. I am not naive about the situation in China, but I have a totally different perspective. I come from a country that enslaved millions of Africans under the most brutal conditions and which still discriminates and oppresses the vast majority of their descendants. The Obama's and Michael Jordon's are the exception to the rule. My country has also committed the most heinous genocide against millions of Native peoples who had a high spiritual civilization and who, in their remnants, live in dire poverty with a suicide rate nearly 5 times the national average. I live in a country that conquered one third of Mexico and now declares it's citizens, who once roamed freely through their own territory, illegal aliens. I will not criticize other countries, including China, for the sins that my country has not fully addressed or has ignored. China has its own national minority problems of which I am well aware. I have traveled through Xinjiang and areas where Tibetan nationals reside. I know of and have heard the prejudiced views that many Chinese have towards Tibetans, Uigurs, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, South Asians, Arabs, and Europeans. Guess what. Chinese people are human and have similar prejudices as do people all over the world. This is not to make excuses, but I try to fight the good fight at home not thousands of miles away. The old cliche applies, people in glass houses should not throw stones.

The Han Chinese have a history of expansion and absorption of minority peoples that extends back to at least the Han dynasty. Most southern Chinese are genetically more similar to their non-assimilated minority neighbors than they are to northern Han Chinese. So given the history of my country and what we have wrought on African slaves, Native Americans and Mexican nationals there is little I can say about the situation in China. I wish China's national minorities had their rights better protected as the Chinese constitution warrants. I wish there were equal rights in my country as my constitution warrants. The civil rights movement in my country has met with equal measures of success and failure and I hope similar movements develop in China. But it is for the Chinese people in all their diversity to come to grips with their history and reach necessary accommodations.

I'm also very much aware of the problems engendered by Chinese industrial development. But my country with 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of it's energy production, while China with 20% of the world's population consumes 15%. If China consumed the same per capita amount of energy as the US they would consume 100% of the world's energy production. On a per capita basis China produces one fifth the greenhouse gases as do Americans. We have the luxury of being "environmentally conscious" while we contribute more greenhouse gases to global warming than any other country in the world. Of course we can't help ourselves because if we reduced our emissions it would lower our standard of living. But woe be it if China wants to raise living standards to a fraction of ours. So I will not sit on my high horse and criticize a country that has brought 100's of millions out of poverty in a mere two decades and which feeds one fifth of the world's population on 7% of the world's arable land!

As regards the situation in Tibet, I am a secularist and a fierce opponent of organized religion. While I have an affinity for eastern thought and philosophy over that of the West I will not pander to any god-king of whatever faith. To my mind the Pope, The Grand Ayatollah, the Chief Rabbi and the Dalai Lama are all frauds. They voice their pious platitudes while in the lap of luxury (by how many millions has the CIA and its front groups and the Indian government subsidized the Dalai Lama?). Read Wang Lixiong's Reflections on Tibet, Michael Parenti's Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth and William Blum's China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics. There are two sides to every story.