MCLC: myth of China as a harmless tiger

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: myth of China as a harmless tiger
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Source: Washington Post (2/13/12):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-myth-of-china-as-a-harmless-tige
r/2012/02/10/gIQAb7DxBR_story.html

Opinions: The myth of China as a harmless tiger
By Yu Jie

Yu Jie is the author of several Chinese-language books, including ³China¹s
Best Actor: Wen Jiabao.² He left China last month for the United States,
where he intends to study and write on religious freedom.

Chinese dissident writers exiled to the West today get a very different
response than Soviet writers received not so long ago.

In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised President Ford not to
meet with writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, warning in a memorandum that
doing so would offend the Soviet Union. Now, similar views are held not
only by pragmatic politicians but also by multinational corporations with
large investments in China as well as universities and foundations with
inextricable links to China.

The Chinese communist regime¹s penetration of the West far exceeds that of
the former Soviet Union. In the Cold War era, the Soviet Union was blocked
behind the Iron Curtain; there were few links between Soviet and Western
economies. An average American family would not be using products ³made in
the USSR.² Today, China is deeply embedded within the globalized system.
An American recently wrote an interesting book
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470116137/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF
8&tag=slatmaga-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0470116
137> detailing a year of her refusal to buy products that were ³made in
China² and the many difficulties she encountered as a result of this
decision.

On the surface, the West has profited from its trade with China. Western
consumers can buy vast amounts of cheap Chinese products. However,
fundamental values of the West are quietly being eroded: Who knows whether
the American flag flying outside your home was manufactured by inmates in
Chinese prisons or by child labor?

I arrived in the United States a month ago, thinking I had escaped the
reach of Beijing, only to realize that the Chinese government¹s shadow
continues to be omnipresent. Several U.S. universities that I have
contacted dare not invite me for a lecture, as they cooperate with China
on many projects. If you are a scholar of Chinese studies who has
criticized the Communist Party, it would be impossible for you to be
involved in research projects with the Chinese-funded Confucius Institute
<http://english.hanban.org/node_7716.htm>, and you may even be denied a
Chinese visa. Conversely, if you praise the Communist Party, not only
would you receive ample research funding but you might also be invited to
visit China and even received by high-level officials. Western academic
freedom has been distorted by invisible hands.

I believe that China is a far greater threat than the former Soviet Union
ever was; unfortunately, the West lacks visionary politicians, such as
Ronald Reagan, to stand up to this threat. President Obama might perceive
the Chinese Communist Party as a tiger that does not bite and, hence, is
looking forward to Vice President Xi Jinping¹s visit this week. Will
Obama, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, openly request that China
release Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace laureate imprisoned by the Communist
Party? Why did Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have the courage
to meet with Burma¹s Aung San Suu Kyi but not to meet with Liu? Is it
because Burma is weak, while China is strong?

The Chinese Communist Party remains a tiger that will bite. For working on
human rights with Liu Xiaobo, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, I was
tortured by the country¹s secret police and nearly lost my life. Since
then, dozens of lawyers and writers have been subjected to brutal torture;
some contracted severe pneumonia after being held in front of fans blowing
cold air and then being baked by an electric furnace. The secret police
threatened me, saying that they had a list of 200 anticommunist party
intellectuals whom they were ready to arrest and bury alive. Over the past
year, the number of political prisoners in China has increased, and the
jail sentences have become longer ‹ yet Western voices of protest have
become weaker.

Harsh internal repression and unrestrained external expansion are two
sides of the same coin. The Chinese Communist Party recently vetoed the
U.N. Security Council¹s resolution on Syria because killings not unlike
those committed by Damascus continue in Tibet. More than a century ago,
Westerners described China as a ³sleeping lion²; today, it is the West
that has fallen asleep. As an independent writer and a Christian member of
a ³house church,² I have the responsibility to tell the truth: The Chinese
Communist Party is still a man-eating tiger.