“Their real aim is not Tibet or the Olympics, but rather to force China to pay the bill for their economic depression. Don’t pay the bill: screw yourself over, you’ll die, and everybody dies together. Pay the bill: have a seat and talk, you agree with me, I make concessions to end the trouble.”
A self-proclaimed average Chinese citizen wrote an article on July 31, on “Skyline Forum” at tianya.cn, claiming that Western anger over Tibet and the Olympics actually has nothing to do with the events themselves; the real motive is to force China into paying the bill for the West’s declining economy. The author qualifies the rant: “As a normal layperson, I have not researched anything about international economics.”
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THE ARTICLE:
Daring to become enemies with China: have three Western countries — England, France and Germany — taken drugs?
Why are the Western countries so united this time? Europe’s Germany and France usually would not dare to risk offending China in this way, this country with a big economy. At the time of the Iraq war, Germany and France were both on the same side as China, not supporting America’s attack on Iraq. Indeed, siding with China and offending the US wouldn’t correspond with their national interests. Ten years ago, in order not to offend China, France stopped arms sales to Taiwan, losing a multi-billion dollar profit. And, why today would they take this great of a risk to become enemies of China? Is it actually for the sake of Tibet and the Olympics which are fundamentally not connected to themselves?
And another question worth making people think about is, all along the US has been the West’s boss, why this one time is it keeping such a low profile? Allowing England, France, Germany to take the leading role? Concerning Tibet, the Western countries are very clear, no matter how much noise they make, it’s impossible for the Chinese to make concessions. Concerning the Olympics, they also clearly understand, even if Western countries do not have a leader at the Beijing Olympics, it would only make China lose face; would it have a substantial impact for China? No.
So, Tibet is a front, the Olympics are also just a front. So then, what on Earth do they want to take from China?
The Western countries are confronted with the most severe economic decline in the past 10 years. They must have a powerful country pay the bill for their current economic decline. It goes without saying, they naturally thought of China. As a normal layperson, I have not researched anything about international economics, but at the beginning of 2008, I was still vaguely aware of the perils facing China’s economy, right now I also remember Premier Wen said a sentence: “2008 may also be the Chinese economy’s most difficult year.” Right now, thinking of the current farce, it really makes people feel extreme dread and panic*. America is not keeping a low profile; rather, it is very calm, and they have already secretly adopted some strategies:
1. Depreciation of the American dollar. Because of the depreciation of the American dollar, the RMB appreciated, 3billion of 1.6 trillion American dollars in Chinese foreign exchange reserves already evaporated, and are still continuing to disappear. What is worse is that, because the RMB appreciated, Chinese exports’ costs have increased, heavily hurting Chinese exports; many enterprises are facing the peril of bankrupcy. Because of Chinese enterprises’ bankruptcy, Western countries created projects that can begin resuscitation.
2. Devastating the Chinese economy via high crude oil prices. The Chinese economy’s fast speed of development requires a great amount of crude oil imports. Moreover, the Western countries plan to perpetually increase oil reserves, perpetuating high oil prices, to increase the costs of building the Chinese economy. This is the reason why America wants to attack Iraq and Iran: to control oil is to control the economic lifeline.
3. Swell the Chinese financial bubble. With the appreciation of RMB, a greater amount of “hot money”** will naturally pour into China, generating China’s economic bubble with high costs and high currency value. Perhaps, this is the reason why the government decided to burden itself with a thousand accusing fingers*** and refused to save the market: possibly for the sake of attacking international speculative capital in order to, possibly, attack the “malicious ‘money-grabbing’ behavior”**** of international speculation capital in China. However, on the other hand, this strategy of not saving the market could possibly cause social crisis because of the revile from thousands of Chinese shareholders. Right now, looking at whatever issue about Tibet, or boycotting the Olympics, both are just trivial affairs.
Therefore, “Tibet issue” and “Olympics”***** are just the two “hostages” kidnapped by Western countries. Their real aim is not Tibet or the Olympics, but rather to force China to pay the bill for their economic depression. Don’t pay the bill: screw yourself over, you’ll die, and everybody dies together. Pay the bill: have a seat and talk, you agree with me, I make concessions to end the trouble.******
The Chinese government is right to be calm. Hold on for dear life, building the economy — this center cannot waiver — this is the key. If the economy collapses, then everything collapses. People should be calm, understand each other, and not cause problems for the government. Still, here is the sentence, “Development is a firm principle, stability solves everything.” Every common Chinese person can appreciate this, let alone the government. I believe the government can easily respond. We should support the government to win the battle, which superficially seems to be a battle of public opinion, but in fact is an economic war.
We need more unity, hoping that everyone can quickly spread the word.
1. Save more oil and ride public transportation more, don’t drive a car, open the window instead of using the air-conditioner.
2. Save more electricity, when street lamps aren’t being used, just turn them off. It’s possible to use headphones, just don’t use speakers. When household electricity is not being used, just turn everything off. This, on the one hand, can save electricity, and it’s more safe. Hopefully the government can turn off the night worklights of engineering projects.
3. Support national products, it’s possible to buy national products, just don’t buy foreign products, stimulate domestic demand, want to give the profit to one’s own people.
4. Work hard, develop and manufacture better products. Industry is savior of the nation.
5. Respect yourself, respect countrymen. Don’t hold foreigners in blind esteem.
6. Tell the youth in Taiwan, Tibet and other nationalities that the reason why, right now, we are still suffering other countries looking down upon us like this is because our ancestors paid too much attention to internal conflict rather than self-development.
7. Tell everyone around you, only if China has strength can it be a better nation. Lagging behind will take a beating, will be mocked.
8. The government is improving, encourage the government to improve even faster, but don’t push it, doing that would only make the US and Japan happy and anguish oneself.
SOME READERS’ COMMENTS:
1. 狗屎一坨！
Piece of dog shit!
2. 不是与中国为敌，是与我党为敌，楼主不要搞错了。。。
They don’t want to be enemies with China, it’s with my party. Author, don’t misunderstand…
3. 呵呵呵又是幼稚贴，根本原因在于政权价值观不同！
Hahaha….again so naïve.. the fundamental reason is that the regimes’ values are different.
4. 我们还是过我们自己的艰苦日子,政府的事情我们不懂
We are still going through our own difficult time, we don’t understand government affairs.
5. 如此浅显的道理，国人往往不明，爱国不代表爱党
Herein lies a simple point, country people sometimes don’t understand: nationalism does not represent a love for the party
6. 坚决的,无条件的支持楼主
楼上所有骂楼主的,都是全家死光光的狗汉奸
Absolutely and unconditionally support the author.
Whoever criticizes the author, die a penniless dog you fucking betrayer!
7. 屁!
咱老百姓算毛
先把公款吃喝和公车消费那5000亿省下来再说吧
Fart!
We normal people count for nothing.
First save 50 billion yuan, for the public expenses of eating and drinking and bus fare, and then we’ll talk. ❑
— Translated by Chris Tao
ORIGINAL STORY: 竟敢公然与中国为敌，英法德三国吃了兴奋剂了？
EDITOR’S NOTES:
* 毛骨耸然 (máogǔsǒngrán), an idiom that describes extreme dread and panic. See Baidu’s explanation of 毛骨耸然 (Chinese).** speculation capital.
*** 千夫所指 (qiānfūsuǒzhǐ), literally, a thousand husbands point fingers. Condemned by absolutely everyone. Chinese explanations: 形容触犯众怒 — outraging a crowd of people. 为众人所指责 — condemned by everyone. See Baidu’s explanation (Chinese).
**** 恶意”圈钱”行为 (èyì “quānqián” xíngwéi), literally, malice “circle” behavior. Chinese translators variously give this phrase as “malicious ‘money-grabbing’ behavior” or “malicious ‘financing’ behavior” or “deliberate ‘financing’ behavior.”
***** Tibet is written in this article as “xz” (西藏) and Olympics as “aoyun” (the Pinyin for 奥运). In this instance, they are also written in quotation marks.
****** The author is giving two predictions, depending on whether China pays the bill or not. The narrative voice is in the first person, as if the writer is channeling the voice of China. The idiom at the end of the sentence is 息事宁人 (xī shì níng rén), literally, rest matter peaceful person. To make concessions to avoid trouble. See Baidu’s explanation (Chinese).
Zizek in his recent letter to the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n08/letters.html) offers one of the more interesting interpretation of the West’s fascination with Tibet:
“One of the main reasons so many people in the West participate in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly propagated by the Dalai Lama, is one of the chief points of reference for the hedonist New Age spirituality that has become so popular in recent times. Tibet has become a mythic entity onto which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of an authentic Tibetan way of life, it isn’t because they care about real Tibetans: what they want from Tibetans is that they be authentically spiritual for us, so that we can continue playing our crazy consumerist game. ‘Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l’autre,’ Gilles Deleuze wrote, ‘vous êtes foutu.’ The protesters against China are right to counter the Beijing Olympic motto – ‘One World, One Dream’ – with ‘One World, Many Dreams’. But they should be aware that they are imprisoning Tibetans in their own dream.”
It is simplistic to frame the issue merely in economic terms although there is a growing awareness that we pay for capitalism with counterfeit money.
I agree, Zizek injects a fresh perspective into the discussion. A while back, I meant to link to an article by him at Le Monde Diplomatique, in which he says something along the same lines: http://mondediplo.com/2008/05/09tibet
His idea about using others as spiritual surrogates seems to work so well because he locates it at that fundamental level, instead of founding it on the political questions themselves. Still, I see Zizek himself commenting more on Tibet than on China, so I wonder what he would say about China itself, without Tibet as the sounding board.