Why Vietnam loves and hates China
By Andrew Forbes
For more than 2,000 years, Vietnam's development as a nation has been marked by one fixed and immutable factor - the proximity of China. The relationship between the two countries is in many ways a family affair, with all the closeness of shared values and bitterness of close rivalries.
No country in Southeast Asia is culturally closer to China than Vietnam, and no other country in the region has spent so long
fending off Chinese domination, often at a terrible cost in lives, economic development and political compromise.
China has been Vietnam's blessing and Vietnam's curse. It remains an intrusive cultural godfather, the giant to the north that is "always there". Almost a thousand years of Chinese occupation, between the Han conquest of Nam Viet in the 2nd century BC and the reassertion of Vietnamese independence as Dai Viet in AD 967, marked the Vietnamese so deeply that they became, in effect, an outpost of Chinese civilization in Southeast Asia.
While the other countries of Indochina are Theravada Buddhist, sharing cultural links with South Asia, Vietnam derived its predominant religion - a mix of Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism popularly known as tam giao or "Three Religions"- from China. Until the introduction of romanized quoc ngu script in the 17th century, Vietnamese scholars wrote in Chinese characters or in chu nho, a Vietnamese derivative of Chinese characters.
Over the centuries, Vietnam developed as a smaller version of the Middle Kingdom, a centralized, hierarchical state ruled by an all-powerful emperor living in a Forbidden City based on its namesake in Beijing and administered by a highly educated Confucian bureaucracy.
Both countries are deeply conscious of the cultural ties that bind them together, and each is still deeply suspicious of the other. During the long centuries of Chinese occupation, the Vietnamese enthusiastically embraced many aspects of Chinese civilization, while at the same time fighting with an extraordinary vigor to maintain their cultural identity and regain their national independence.
During the Tang Dynasty (6th-9th centuries AD), Vietnamese guerrillas fighting the Chinese sang a martial song that emphasized their separate identity in the clearest of terms:
Fight to keep our hair long,
Fight to keep our teeth black,
Fight to show that the heroic southern country can never be defeated.
For their part, the Chinese recognized the Vietnamese as a kindred people, to be offered the benefits of higher Chinese civilization and, ultimately, the rare privilege of being absorbed into the Chinese polity.
On the other hand, as near family, they were to be punished especially severely if they rejected Chinese standards or rebelled against Chinese control. This was made very clear in a remarkable message sent by the Song Emperor Taizong to King Le Hoan in AD 979, just over a decade after Vietnam first reasserted its independence.
Like a stern headmaster, Taizong appealed to Le Hoan to see reason and return to the Chinese fold: "Although your seas have pearls, we will throw them into the rivers, and though your mountains produce gold, we will throw it into the dust. We do not covet your valuables. You fly and leap like savages, we have horse-drawn carriages. You drink through your noses, we have rice and wine. Let us change your customs. You cut your hair, we wear hats; when you talk, you sound like birds. We have examinations and books. Let us teach you the knowledge of the proper laws ... Do you not want to escape from the savagery of the outer islands and gaze upon the house of civilization? Do you want to discard your garments of leaves and grass and wear flowered robes embroidered with mountains and dragons? Have you understood?"
In fact Le Hoan understood Taizong very well and, like his modern successors, knew exactly what he wanted from China - access to its culture and civilization without coming under its political control or jeopardizing Vietnamese freedom in any way. This attitude infuriated Taizong, as it would generations of Chinese to come.
In 1407, the Ming Empire managed to reassert Chinese control over its stubbornly independent southern neighbor, and Emperor Yongle - no doubt, to his mind, in the best interests of the Vietnamese - imposed a policy of enforced Sinicization. Predictably enough, Vietnam rejected this "kindness" and fought back, expelling the Chinese yet again in 1428.
Yongle was apoplectic when he learned of their rebellion. Vietnam was not just another tributary state, he insisted, but a former province that had once enjoyed the benefits of Chinese civilizationand yet had wantonly rejected this privilege. In view of this close association - Yongle used the term mi mi or "intimately related" - Vietnam's rebellion was particularly heinous and deserved the fiercest of punishments.
China on top
Sometimes a strongly sexual imagery creeps into this "intimate relationship", with Vietnam, the weaker partner, a victim of
Chinese violation. In AD 248, the Vietnamese heroine Lady Triu, who led a popular uprising against the Chinese occupation, proclaimed: "I want to ride the great winds, strike the sharks on the high seas, drive out the invaders, reconquer the nation, burst the bonds of slavery and never bow to become anyone's concubine."
Her defiant choice of words was more than just symbolic. Vietnam has long been a source of women for the Chinese sex trade. In Tang times, the Chinese poet Yuan Chen wrote appreciatively of "slave girls of Viet, sleek, of buttery flesh", while today the booming market for Vietnamese women in Taiwan infuriates and humiliates many Vietnamese men.
It's instructive, then, that in his 1987 novel Fired Gold Vietnamese author Nguyen Huy Thiep writes, "The most significant characteristics of this country are its smallness and weakness. She is like a virgin girl raped by Chinese civilization. The girl concurrently enjoys, despises and is humiliated by the rape."
This Chinese belief that Vietnam is not just another nation, but rather a member of the family - almost Chinese, aware of the blessings of Chinese civilization, but somehow stubbornly refusing, century after century, to become Chinese - has persisted down to the present day.
During the Second Indochina War, Chinese propaganda stressed that Vietnam and China were "as close as the lips and the teeth". After the US defeat, however, Vietnam once again showed its independence, allying itself with the Soviet Union, in 1978-79, invading neighboring Cambodia and overthrowing China's main ally in Southeast Asia, the Khmer Rouge.
Once again Chinese fury knew no bounds, and Beijing determined to teach the "ungrateful" Vietnamese a lesson. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, openly denounced the Vietnamese as "the hooligans of the East". According to one Thai diplomat: "The moment the topic of Vietnam came up, you could see something change in Deng Xiaoping.
"His hatred was just visceral. He spat forcefully into his spittoon and called the Vietnamese 'dogs'." Acting on Deng's orders, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam in 1979, capturing five northern provincial capitals before systematically demolishing them and withdrawing to China after administering a symbolic "lesson".
But who taught a lesson to whom? Beijing sought to force Hanoi to withdraw its frontline forces from Cambodia, but the Vietnamese didn't engage these forces in the struggle, choosing instead to confront the Chinese with irregulars and provincial militia. Casualties were about equal, and China lost considerable face, as well as international respect, as a result of its invasion.
Over the millennia, actions like this have taught the Vietnamese a recurring lesson about China. It's there, it's big, and it won't go away, so appease it without yielding whenever possible, and fight it with every resource available whenever necessary.
Just as Chinese rulers have seen the Vietnamese as ingrates and hooligans, so the Vietnamese have seen the Chinese as arrogant and aggressive, a power to be emulated at all times, mollified in times of peace, and fiercely resisted in times of war.
In 1946, 1,700 years after Lady Triu's declaration, another great Vietnamese patriot, Ho Chi Minh, warned his Viet Minh colleagues in forceful terms against using Chinese Nationalist troops in the north as a buffer against the return of the French: "You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history?
"The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life."
Yet Ho was an ardent admirer of Chinese civilization, fluent in Mandarin, a skilled calligrapher who wrote Chinese poetry, a close friend and colleague of Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Ho wasn't as much anti-Chinese as he was pro-Vietnamese. It was his deep understanding of and respect for China that enabled him to recognize, clearly and definitively, the menace that "a close family relationship" with the giant to the north posed, and continues to pose, for Vietnam's independence and freedom.
It's ironic, then, that as the current Vietnamese leadership strive to develop their economy along increasingly capitalist lines while at the same time retaining their monopoly on state power, the country they most admire and seek to emulate is, as always, the one they most fear.
Andrew Forbes is editor of CPA Media as well as a correspondent in its Thailand bureau. He has recently completed National Geographic Traveler: Shanghai , and the above is an excerpt from his forthcoming book A Phoenix Reborn: Travels in New Vietnam.
(Copyright 2007 Andrew Forbes.)
Monday, 15 November 2010
Chinese Invasion of Vietnam
Chinese Invasion of Vietnam
February 1979
China's relations with Vietnam began to deteriorate seriously in the mid-1970s. After Vietnam joined the Soviet-dominated Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (Comecon) and signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1978, China branded Vietnam the "Cuba of the East" and called the treaty a military alliance. Incidents along the Sino-Vietnamese border increased in frequency and violence. In December 1978 Vietnam invaded Cambodia, quickly ousted the pro-Beijing Pol Pot regime, and overran the country.
China's twenty-nine-day incursion into Vietnam in February 1979 was a response to what China considered to be a collection of provocative actions and policies on Hanoi's part. These included Vietnamese intimacy with the Soviet Union, mistreatment of ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, hegemonistic "imperial dreams" in Southeast Asia, and spurning of Beijing's attempt to repatriate Chinese residents of Vietnam to China.
In February 1979 China attacked along virtually the entire Sino-Vietnamese border in a brief, limited campaign that involved ground forces only. The Chinese attack came at dawn on the morning of 17 February 1979, and employed infantry, armor, and artillery. Air power was not employed then or at any time during the war. Within a day, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) had advanced some eight kilometers into Vietnam along a broad front. It then slowed and nearly stalled because of heavy Vietnamese resistance and difficulties within the Chinese supply system. On February 21, the advance resumed against Cao Bang in the far north and against the all-important regional hub of Lang Son. Chinese troops entered Cao Bang on February 27, but the city was not secured completely until March 2. Lang Son fell two days later. On March 5, the Chinese, saying Vietnam had been sufficiently chastised, announced that the campaign was over. Beijing declared its "lesson" finished and the PLA withdrawal was completed on March 16.
Hanoi's post-incursion depiction of the border war was that Beijing had sustained a military setback if not an outright defeat. Most observers doubted that China would risk another war with Vietnam in the near future. Gerald Segal, in his 1985 book Defending China, concluded that China's 1979 war against Vietnam was a complete failure: "China failed to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from [Cambodia], failed to end border clashes, failed to cast doubt on the strength of the Soviet power, failed to dispel the image of China as a paper tiger, and failed to draw the United States into an anti-Soviet coalition." Nevertheless, Bruce Elleman argued that "one of the primary diplomatic goals behind China's attack was to expose Soviet assurances of military support to Vietnam as a fraud. Seen in this light, Beijing's policy was actually a diplomatic success, since Moscow did not actively intervene, thus showing the practical limitations of the Soviet-Vietnamese military pact. ... China achieved a strategic victory by minimizing the future possibility of a two-front war against the USSR and Vietnam."
After the war both China and Vietnam reorganized their border defenses. In 1986 China deployed twenty-five to twenty-eight divisions and Vietnam thirty-two divisions along their common border.
The 1979 attack confirmed Hanoi's perception of China as a threat. The PAVN high command henceforth had to assume, for planning purposes, that the Chinese might come again and might not halt in the foothills but might drive on to Hanoi. The border war strengthened Soviet-Vietnamese relations. The Soviet military role in Vietnam increased during the 1980s as the Soviets provided arms to Vietnam; moreover, Soviet ships enjoyed access to the harbors at Danang and Cam Ranh Bay, and Soviet reconnaissance aircraft operated out of Vietnamese airfields. The Vietnamese responded to the Chinese campaign by turning the districts along the China border into "iron fortresses" manned by well-equipped and well-trained paramilitary troops. In all, an estimated 600,000 troops were assigned to counter Chinese operations and to stand ready for another Chinese invasion. The precise dimensions of the frontier operations were difficult to determine, but its monetary cost to Vietnam was considerable.
By 1987 China had stationed nine armies (approximately 400,000 troops) in the Sino-Vietnamese border region, including one along the coast. It had also increased its landing craft fleet and was periodically staging amphibious landing exercises off Hainan Island, across from Vietnam, thereby demonstrating that a future attack might come from the sea.
Low-level conflict continued along the Sino-Vietnamese border as each side conducted artillery shelling and probed to gain high spots in the mountainous border terrain. Border incidents increased in intensity during the rainy season, when Beijing attempted to ease Vietnamese pressure against Cambodian resistance fighters.
Since the early 1980s, China pursued what some observers described as a semi-secret campaign against Vietnam that was more than a series of border incidents and less than a limited small-scale war. The Vietnamese called it a "multifaceted war of sabotage." Hanoi officials have described the assaults as comprising steady harassment by artillery fire, intrusions on land by infantry patrols, naval intrusions, and mine planting both at sea and in the riverways. Chinese clandestine activity (the "sabotage" aspect) for the most part was directed against the ethnic minorities of the border region. According to the Hanoi press, teams of Chinese agents systematically sabotaged mountain agricultural production centers as well as lowland port, transportation, and communication facilities. Psychological warfare operations were an integral part of the campaign, as was what the Vietnamese called "economic warfare"--encouragement of Vietnamese villagers along the border to engage in smuggling, currency speculation, and hoarding of goods in short supply.
February 1979
China's relations with Vietnam began to deteriorate seriously in the mid-1970s. After Vietnam joined the Soviet-dominated Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (Comecon) and signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in 1978, China branded Vietnam the "Cuba of the East" and called the treaty a military alliance. Incidents along the Sino-Vietnamese border increased in frequency and violence. In December 1978 Vietnam invaded Cambodia, quickly ousted the pro-Beijing Pol Pot regime, and overran the country.
China's twenty-nine-day incursion into Vietnam in February 1979 was a response to what China considered to be a collection of provocative actions and policies on Hanoi's part. These included Vietnamese intimacy with the Soviet Union, mistreatment of ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, hegemonistic "imperial dreams" in Southeast Asia, and spurning of Beijing's attempt to repatriate Chinese residents of Vietnam to China.
In February 1979 China attacked along virtually the entire Sino-Vietnamese border in a brief, limited campaign that involved ground forces only. The Chinese attack came at dawn on the morning of 17 February 1979, and employed infantry, armor, and artillery. Air power was not employed then or at any time during the war. Within a day, the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) had advanced some eight kilometers into Vietnam along a broad front. It then slowed and nearly stalled because of heavy Vietnamese resistance and difficulties within the Chinese supply system. On February 21, the advance resumed against Cao Bang in the far north and against the all-important regional hub of Lang Son. Chinese troops entered Cao Bang on February 27, but the city was not secured completely until March 2. Lang Son fell two days later. On March 5, the Chinese, saying Vietnam had been sufficiently chastised, announced that the campaign was over. Beijing declared its "lesson" finished and the PLA withdrawal was completed on March 16.
Hanoi's post-incursion depiction of the border war was that Beijing had sustained a military setback if not an outright defeat. Most observers doubted that China would risk another war with Vietnam in the near future. Gerald Segal, in his 1985 book Defending China, concluded that China's 1979 war against Vietnam was a complete failure: "China failed to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from [Cambodia], failed to end border clashes, failed to cast doubt on the strength of the Soviet power, failed to dispel the image of China as a paper tiger, and failed to draw the United States into an anti-Soviet coalition." Nevertheless, Bruce Elleman argued that "one of the primary diplomatic goals behind China's attack was to expose Soviet assurances of military support to Vietnam as a fraud. Seen in this light, Beijing's policy was actually a diplomatic success, since Moscow did not actively intervene, thus showing the practical limitations of the Soviet-Vietnamese military pact. ... China achieved a strategic victory by minimizing the future possibility of a two-front war against the USSR and Vietnam."
After the war both China and Vietnam reorganized their border defenses. In 1986 China deployed twenty-five to twenty-eight divisions and Vietnam thirty-two divisions along their common border.
The 1979 attack confirmed Hanoi's perception of China as a threat. The PAVN high command henceforth had to assume, for planning purposes, that the Chinese might come again and might not halt in the foothills but might drive on to Hanoi. The border war strengthened Soviet-Vietnamese relations. The Soviet military role in Vietnam increased during the 1980s as the Soviets provided arms to Vietnam; moreover, Soviet ships enjoyed access to the harbors at Danang and Cam Ranh Bay, and Soviet reconnaissance aircraft operated out of Vietnamese airfields. The Vietnamese responded to the Chinese campaign by turning the districts along the China border into "iron fortresses" manned by well-equipped and well-trained paramilitary troops. In all, an estimated 600,000 troops were assigned to counter Chinese operations and to stand ready for another Chinese invasion. The precise dimensions of the frontier operations were difficult to determine, but its monetary cost to Vietnam was considerable.
By 1987 China had stationed nine armies (approximately 400,000 troops) in the Sino-Vietnamese border region, including one along the coast. It had also increased its landing craft fleet and was periodically staging amphibious landing exercises off Hainan Island, across from Vietnam, thereby demonstrating that a future attack might come from the sea.
Low-level conflict continued along the Sino-Vietnamese border as each side conducted artillery shelling and probed to gain high spots in the mountainous border terrain. Border incidents increased in intensity during the rainy season, when Beijing attempted to ease Vietnamese pressure against Cambodian resistance fighters.
Since the early 1980s, China pursued what some observers described as a semi-secret campaign against Vietnam that was more than a series of border incidents and less than a limited small-scale war. The Vietnamese called it a "multifaceted war of sabotage." Hanoi officials have described the assaults as comprising steady harassment by artillery fire, intrusions on land by infantry patrols, naval intrusions, and mine planting both at sea and in the riverways. Chinese clandestine activity (the "sabotage" aspect) for the most part was directed against the ethnic minorities of the border region. According to the Hanoi press, teams of Chinese agents systematically sabotaged mountain agricultural production centers as well as lowland port, transportation, and communication facilities. Psychological warfare operations were an integral part of the campaign, as was what the Vietnamese called "economic warfare"--encouragement of Vietnamese villagers along the border to engage in smuggling, currency speculation, and hoarding of goods in short supply.
越南的幸福指数
刚到越南24小时就感觉到了越南市井生活的悠闲和自在。河内街道熙熙攘攘，老建筑比比皆是，处处点缀着祠堂和小庙，门脸牌楼都写着中国字。踏板摩托车满大街乌央乌央地，像蝗虫一样，走路的行人一般都是像我这样的外来人口。
我在美国走在街上就算个“瘦子”，但走在河内大街上，绝对算吨位级的。这里路口都有越南人开小摩托车拉人的“摩的”。他们招呼我的时候，我心里想，等我坐到后座上，就根本性地改变了前后重量比，摩的是否能开走、保持平衡都成问题。
说这里熙熙攘攘，那感觉就像80年代在中国的广州和上海，那时候还没有大批的城市改造和重建，大资本还没有进来搞城市开发。老城虽然破旧，但是有人气，有传统特色，这是中国城市已经消失的东西。
在河内的朋友说，越南的幸福指数在世界的排名相当高，143个国家当中排第五。幸福指数是广大劳动人民的感受，虽然是主观的，但感受的人多了，就具有了客观性。据说这种幸福指数衡量了越南人民把自然资源转化成公民长远幸福生活的效率。
河内满大街的小摩托，我不知道世界那个城市拥有小摩托车的数量能够超过河内。这里的马路没有划什么单黄线，双黄线或红线这类的限制。河内的踏板摩托车在必要的时候可以逆行，可以上人行道，随便停车不用担心罚款。在欧美游客看来，乱是乱点，但似乎也没见什么交通事故。有惊无险，一切在越南人民掌控之中。
傍晚出去散步，城市到处是繁华的集市和摊贩。路边小馆子比比皆是，路边摆开桌椅，各种如美价廉物美的小吃和当地的啤酒。虽然没有奢华，但简陋中显得其乐融融。难怪有调查说，除了哥斯达黎加和加勒比海诸岛，就数越南人生活优哉游哉了。
我问了越南朋友，他们对我讲，并非他们不像搞像中国那样的城市改造，主要原因是没能像中国那样大规模招商引资，另外就是越南采取了不同的策略，即越南在保留老城区的基础上开辟新城和新开发区。
我在美国走在街上就算个“瘦子”，但走在河内大街上，绝对算吨位级的。这里路口都有越南人开小摩托车拉人的“摩的”。他们招呼我的时候，我心里想，等我坐到后座上，就根本性地改变了前后重量比，摩的是否能开走、保持平衡都成问题。
说这里熙熙攘攘，那感觉就像80年代在中国的广州和上海，那时候还没有大批的城市改造和重建，大资本还没有进来搞城市开发。老城虽然破旧，但是有人气，有传统特色，这是中国城市已经消失的东西。
在河内的朋友说，越南的幸福指数在世界的排名相当高，143个国家当中排第五。幸福指数是广大劳动人民的感受，虽然是主观的，但感受的人多了，就具有了客观性。据说这种幸福指数衡量了越南人民把自然资源转化成公民长远幸福生活的效率。
河内满大街的小摩托，我不知道世界那个城市拥有小摩托车的数量能够超过河内。这里的马路没有划什么单黄线，双黄线或红线这类的限制。河内的踏板摩托车在必要的时候可以逆行，可以上人行道，随便停车不用担心罚款。在欧美游客看来，乱是乱点，但似乎也没见什么交通事故。有惊无险，一切在越南人民掌控之中。
傍晚出去散步，城市到处是繁华的集市和摊贩。路边小馆子比比皆是，路边摆开桌椅，各种如美价廉物美的小吃和当地的啤酒。虽然没有奢华，但简陋中显得其乐融融。难怪有调查说，除了哥斯达黎加和加勒比海诸岛，就数越南人生活优哉游哉了。
我问了越南朋友，他们对我讲，并非他们不像搞像中国那样的城市改造，主要原因是没能像中国那样大规模招商引资，另外就是越南采取了不同的策略，即越南在保留老城区的基础上开辟新城和新开发区。
Friday, 12 November 2010
Question : What is globalization?
Question : What is globalization?
Answer : Princess Diana's death
Question : How come?
Answer :
An English princess with an
Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a
French tunnel, driving a
German car with a
Dutch engine, driven by a
Belgian who was high on
Scottish whiskey, followed closely by
Italian Paparazzi, on
Japanese motorcycles, treated by an
American doctor, using
Brazilian medicines!
And this is sent to you by a
Canadian, using
Bill Gates' technology which he got from the
Japanese.
And you are probably reading this on
one of the IBM clones that use
Philippine-made chips, and
Korean made monitors, assembled by Bangladeshi
workers in a Singapore plant, transported by lorries
driven by Indians, hijacked by Indonesians and finally
sold to you by a Chinese!
That's Globalization!!!
Answer : Princess Diana's death
Question : How come?
Answer :
An English princess with an
Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a
French tunnel, driving a
German car with a
Dutch engine, driven by a
Belgian who was high on
Scottish whiskey, followed closely by
Italian Paparazzi, on
Japanese motorcycles, treated by an
American doctor, using
Brazilian medicines!
And this is sent to you by a
Canadian, using
Bill Gates' technology which he got from the
Japanese.
And you are probably reading this on
one of the IBM clones that use
Philippine-made chips, and
Korean made monitors, assembled by Bangladeshi
workers in a Singapore plant, transported by lorries
driven by Indians, hijacked by Indonesians and finally
sold to you by a Chinese!
That's Globalization!!!
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
中国的微博，也就是中国的twitter
去新浪微博注册后看了些名人用户，文娱明星和名人，粉丝有好几百万的很随便。国内互联网发展迅猛，起码在数量上已经是世界独一无二。海外华文媒体和网站拿点击算成功，跟国内同行较劲，纯粹一帮2B二鬼子。按中国流行语，那叫输在起跑线上。
艾未未就算不被封，他吸引的点击估计不会超过芙蓉姐姐和黄健祥。文化名人估计和中国产业一样，可能有内向型和外向型两种。前者立足国内，吸引国内粉丝；后者面向世界，猛学英语，迎合西洋口味，制造国际轰动效应。
互联网上的博客和微博虽然有竞争的自由，但争取点击和粉丝，仍然要靠各种推手，也就是组织的力量。万类霜天竞自由似的民主，其中主宰或胜出的，仍然要依赖某种结构性力量。民主当中自由的个体性的虚幻破灭，民主也就烟消云散。
爱拿民主说事情的柿油党，特别是那些没有生活在西方民主制度下的空想柿油党，幻想民主的程度不亚于狂热大跃进中对共产主义的向往和迫不及待。
艾未未就算不被封，他吸引的点击估计不会超过芙蓉姐姐和黄健祥。文化名人估计和中国产业一样，可能有内向型和外向型两种。前者立足国内，吸引国内粉丝；后者面向世界，猛学英语，迎合西洋口味，制造国际轰动效应。
互联网上的博客和微博虽然有竞争的自由，但争取点击和粉丝，仍然要靠各种推手，也就是组织的力量。万类霜天竞自由似的民主，其中主宰或胜出的，仍然要依赖某种结构性力量。民主当中自由的个体性的虚幻破灭，民主也就烟消云散。
爱拿民主说事情的柿油党，特别是那些没有生活在西方民主制度下的空想柿油党，幻想民主的程度不亚于狂热大跃进中对共产主义的向往和迫不及待。
马悲鸣: 刘晓波领取诺贝尔和平奖之我见
一、索尔壬尼琴的先例
苏联作家亚力山大·索尔壬尼琴的《伊凡·捷尼索维奇一生中的一天》受到赫鲁晓夫的推崇，让他从此出名。该书有英译本，是本很薄的小册子。不管从艺术上，还是人文关怀上，都不如帕斯捷尔纳克的《日瓦格医生》。而《日瓦格医生》又比不上萧洛霍夫《静静的顿河》。
1964年赫鲁晓夫下台，“蘑菇云升起红戈壁”。1967年索尔壬尼琴给苏联第四次作家代表大会的代表们散发要求停止书报检查制度的「公开信」；之后他的作品难以在国内发表。1969年他被开除出苏联作家协会。同年四月，他和川端康成一起被选为美国艺术文艺学会的名誉会员。1970年10月“因他在追求俄罗斯文学不可缺少的传统时所具有的道德力量”获诺贝尔文学奖。当年索尔仁尼琴没有去领奖。1974年2月13日他被强行押上飞机，驱逐出境到西德，并被开除国籍。他也顺便前往斯德哥尔摩领取了四年前给他的诺贝尔奖金和奖状。美国政府也于同年授予他“美国荣誉公民”称号 。
1978年6月8日索尔壬尼琴在哈佛大学发表演讲，痛批西方社会的功利主义和自由主义。从此他不断指责西方道德堕落，甚至批评美国现代音乐令人难以忍受，并批评新闻媒体不加节制地侵犯个人隐私。他在《红轮三部曲》中阐述的理想是“以农业和手工业为基础”，依靠东正教，恢复“古老的俄罗斯生活方式”。
上世纪八十年代末期以后，苏联国内陆续出版了索尔仁尼琴原来遭禁的一些作品。1994年5月27日，索尔仁尼琴从美国佛蒙特州抵达海参崴，重返俄罗斯。可这时的苏联已经分裂成十九个国家。索尔仁尼琴回国后开始指责民主化以后的俄罗斯物欲横流和无法遏止的腐败；并对两千万平方公里的前苏联四分五裂痛心疾首。
晚年索尔仁尼琴对当年不遗余力地诋毁斯大林时代似有悔意，含糊承认当年斯大林同志是在带领整个苏联奔向前方。2008年8月3日深夜，索尔仁尼琴在莫斯科逝世，享年89岁。此时，他所愤怒抨击，并因此被开除国籍的苏联已经消失了17年之久。
有人说“索尔仁尼琴是上一代作家中最后一位代表良知的作家”。西方人则视其为与苏联当权者斗争的英雄和伟大文学家。但索尔仁尼琴同时抨击所有的民主派、资本家、个人消费者和自由主义者。美国国务卿基辛格曾在索尔仁尼琴流亡的上世纪七十年代警告时任总统福特不要接见索尔仁尼琴，并于备忘录上写道：“ 索尔仁尼琴是个著名作家，但他的政治主张是一件令追随他的异见者都觉得尴尬难堪的事。接见他不仅会得罪苏联，还会因其政治主张在美国及各盟国中引起论战。 ”
二、中国政府应该放刘晓波出国领奖
如今中国持不同政见的系狱者刘晓波获得诺贝尔和平奖。是否放他出国领奖成了中国政府手里的烫手山芋。我以为可以参考索尔壬尼琴的先例，不但放刘晓波出国领奖，而且禁止其重新入境。当年他坐完六四监后，曾出国访问，并顺利回国。中国政府没有给他设置任何障碍。但他不知改悔，仍是一波接一波地闹事。他在国内是个典型的不安定因素。把他驱逐出境，又说不出口。刘晓波是噎在中国政府嘴里的马粪，吃又吃不下去，吐又吐不出来。如今有个出境领奖的机会，正好可以把这块马粪吐出去。
缅甸的昂山·素姬就多次被动员出国领奖。她就是因怕回不了缅甸而坚决不去。现在海内外一起呼吁中国政府放刘晓波出国领奖，中国政府正好可以借此卖个顺水人情。只要出去，就别想再回来。
六四出逃人员和王丹、王军涛等保外出国者到了海外，没了根基，徒增民运内斗。所有民运宣传的，中国监狱虐待持不同政见者，如王丹得了脑瘤、王军涛肝炎要死、魏京生被暗中下了激素等，一到国外，经西方医生一检查，全都证明是谎言。刘晓波出国，也有澄清谣言的奇效。而且海外民运内斗不已。刘晓波在哪儿都是不安定因素，到了海外，自然也是海外民运的不安定因素。与其让刘晓波留在国内给政府添乱，不如放他出去和民运捣蛋。况且刘晓波手里这近一百五十万美元的现金，更是让海外民运痴迷者眼睛里出血。
911的当时，刘晓波就和包遵信等人给美国总统发信，声称∶今夜我们是美国人。
既然是美国人，就让他们回美国好了。美国一定会给刘晓波政治难民的身分，甚至和索尔壬尼琴一样，给他“美国荣誉公民”的称号。刘晓波手里有近一百五十万美元，买房子置地，象他这种自认生活放荡的人，再娶几房小老婆的钱都有了。
放刘晓波出国领奖享受生活，把节约出来的关押刘晓波的钱用来改善其他犯人的生活和给狱警发奖金，也算是沾了诺贝尔奖金的光嘛。
放刘晓波出境领奖的唯一坏处是要挨一段时间国际上的痛骂。其实只要装听不见，封堵住互联网上的消息，过些时候就没有声息了。然后就放大刘晓波在海外的放荡生活和引起海外民运内斗升级的消息。不出一年，刘晓波就要痛骂民运，不出三年就要痛骂资本主义，不出五年就要痛骂美国。刘晓波绝对耐不住寂寞。
三、刘晓波应该把奖金均分给六四死难者遗属以赎自己的罪过
夫人刘霞传出刘晓波的话，说这个奖是给六四亡灵的。不知刘晓波这话是真是假。他当然不会承认是假了。但如果是真，则这话如何兑现？
很简单，当年造成六四武装驱逐结果的三名现场责任人是出绝食主意的郑义、领队私占公共场地，非法割据的王丹，和最后为了投机出名，不惜再掀波澜，阻止撤退的刘晓波。我曾经著文呼吁这三个人自杀，以谢六四死难者于地下。结果是没一个真有自杀胆量的。刘晓波是压断骆驼脊梁的最后一根稻草。他对六四亡灵有着不可推卸的责任，也因此对六四亡灵遗属有不可推卸的赔偿责任。
当年洛杉矶暴乱也有死于流弹的过路民众。有记者质问时任总统老布什是否应该给以赔偿。老布什说不给。因为事先已经发布了实行紧急状态法的公告，要求民众待在家中，不要上街。政府尽到了发布警告之责，故对不服从者没有赔偿责任。
六四也一样。戒严令已经发布了两星期之久，可比洛杉矶暴乱发布预警的时间要长得多。武装驱逐开始前，政府再度发布要求市民待在家中，不要上街，否则后果自负的公告，在电视、电台和沿长安街大喇叭里不间断地高音重复发布，可谓仁至义尽。故六四亡灵即使不是蓄意抵抗戒严者，至少也是不服从警告者。政府尽到了警告之责，故不再有对不服从者的赔偿责任。
政府对六四亡灵遗属无赔偿之责，反而是刘晓波有赔偿之责。故刘晓波有义不容辞的责任用这笔诺贝尔奖金赔偿六四死难者遗属。小一百五十万美元折合成人民币大约值一千万。平均到两百名六四死难者，每户遗属可分得五万元人民币。
如果刘晓波均分了这笔奖金给六四亡灵遗属，我将不再敦促他自杀以谢六四死难者于地下。
这里顺便呼吁中国政府。六四死难者遗属都是和中国政府有血仇的。他们终生都不可能得到政府信任，不可能有任何政治上升迁的前途。尽管六四死难者都是不服从警告遇难的，但因为这是第一次城市武装平乱，他们没有经验。考虑到这一点，请中国政府法外施仁，放宽六四遗属出国谋生的限制，让他们离开中国，找刘晓波要钱去。
2010年11月7日 满山秋色
以上关于索尔壬尼琴的内容抄袭自维基百科有关条目，特此申明。
苏联作家亚力山大·索尔壬尼琴的《伊凡·捷尼索维奇一生中的一天》受到赫鲁晓夫的推崇，让他从此出名。该书有英译本，是本很薄的小册子。不管从艺术上，还是人文关怀上，都不如帕斯捷尔纳克的《日瓦格医生》。而《日瓦格医生》又比不上萧洛霍夫《静静的顿河》。
1964年赫鲁晓夫下台，“蘑菇云升起红戈壁”。1967年索尔壬尼琴给苏联第四次作家代表大会的代表们散发要求停止书报检查制度的「公开信」；之后他的作品难以在国内发表。1969年他被开除出苏联作家协会。同年四月，他和川端康成一起被选为美国艺术文艺学会的名誉会员。1970年10月“因他在追求俄罗斯文学不可缺少的传统时所具有的道德力量”获诺贝尔文学奖。当年索尔仁尼琴没有去领奖。1974年2月13日他被强行押上飞机，驱逐出境到西德，并被开除国籍。他也顺便前往斯德哥尔摩领取了四年前给他的诺贝尔奖金和奖状。美国政府也于同年授予他“美国荣誉公民”称号 。
1978年6月8日索尔壬尼琴在哈佛大学发表演讲，痛批西方社会的功利主义和自由主义。从此他不断指责西方道德堕落，甚至批评美国现代音乐令人难以忍受，并批评新闻媒体不加节制地侵犯个人隐私。他在《红轮三部曲》中阐述的理想是“以农业和手工业为基础”，依靠东正教，恢复“古老的俄罗斯生活方式”。
上世纪八十年代末期以后，苏联国内陆续出版了索尔仁尼琴原来遭禁的一些作品。1994年5月27日，索尔仁尼琴从美国佛蒙特州抵达海参崴，重返俄罗斯。可这时的苏联已经分裂成十九个国家。索尔仁尼琴回国后开始指责民主化以后的俄罗斯物欲横流和无法遏止的腐败；并对两千万平方公里的前苏联四分五裂痛心疾首。
晚年索尔仁尼琴对当年不遗余力地诋毁斯大林时代似有悔意，含糊承认当年斯大林同志是在带领整个苏联奔向前方。2008年8月3日深夜，索尔仁尼琴在莫斯科逝世，享年89岁。此时，他所愤怒抨击，并因此被开除国籍的苏联已经消失了17年之久。
有人说“索尔仁尼琴是上一代作家中最后一位代表良知的作家”。西方人则视其为与苏联当权者斗争的英雄和伟大文学家。但索尔仁尼琴同时抨击所有的民主派、资本家、个人消费者和自由主义者。美国国务卿基辛格曾在索尔仁尼琴流亡的上世纪七十年代警告时任总统福特不要接见索尔仁尼琴，并于备忘录上写道：“ 索尔仁尼琴是个著名作家，但他的政治主张是一件令追随他的异见者都觉得尴尬难堪的事。接见他不仅会得罪苏联，还会因其政治主张在美国及各盟国中引起论战。 ”
二、中国政府应该放刘晓波出国领奖
如今中国持不同政见的系狱者刘晓波获得诺贝尔和平奖。是否放他出国领奖成了中国政府手里的烫手山芋。我以为可以参考索尔壬尼琴的先例，不但放刘晓波出国领奖，而且禁止其重新入境。当年他坐完六四监后，曾出国访问，并顺利回国。中国政府没有给他设置任何障碍。但他不知改悔，仍是一波接一波地闹事。他在国内是个典型的不安定因素。把他驱逐出境，又说不出口。刘晓波是噎在中国政府嘴里的马粪，吃又吃不下去，吐又吐不出来。如今有个出境领奖的机会，正好可以把这块马粪吐出去。
缅甸的昂山·素姬就多次被动员出国领奖。她就是因怕回不了缅甸而坚决不去。现在海内外一起呼吁中国政府放刘晓波出国领奖，中国政府正好可以借此卖个顺水人情。只要出去，就别想再回来。
六四出逃人员和王丹、王军涛等保外出国者到了海外，没了根基，徒增民运内斗。所有民运宣传的，中国监狱虐待持不同政见者，如王丹得了脑瘤、王军涛肝炎要死、魏京生被暗中下了激素等，一到国外，经西方医生一检查，全都证明是谎言。刘晓波出国，也有澄清谣言的奇效。而且海外民运内斗不已。刘晓波在哪儿都是不安定因素，到了海外，自然也是海外民运的不安定因素。与其让刘晓波留在国内给政府添乱，不如放他出去和民运捣蛋。况且刘晓波手里这近一百五十万美元的现金，更是让海外民运痴迷者眼睛里出血。
911的当时，刘晓波就和包遵信等人给美国总统发信，声称∶今夜我们是美国人。
既然是美国人，就让他们回美国好了。美国一定会给刘晓波政治难民的身分，甚至和索尔壬尼琴一样，给他“美国荣誉公民”的称号。刘晓波手里有近一百五十万美元，买房子置地，象他这种自认生活放荡的人，再娶几房小老婆的钱都有了。
放刘晓波出国领奖享受生活，把节约出来的关押刘晓波的钱用来改善其他犯人的生活和给狱警发奖金，也算是沾了诺贝尔奖金的光嘛。
放刘晓波出境领奖的唯一坏处是要挨一段时间国际上的痛骂。其实只要装听不见，封堵住互联网上的消息，过些时候就没有声息了。然后就放大刘晓波在海外的放荡生活和引起海外民运内斗升级的消息。不出一年，刘晓波就要痛骂民运，不出三年就要痛骂资本主义，不出五年就要痛骂美国。刘晓波绝对耐不住寂寞。
三、刘晓波应该把奖金均分给六四死难者遗属以赎自己的罪过
夫人刘霞传出刘晓波的话，说这个奖是给六四亡灵的。不知刘晓波这话是真是假。他当然不会承认是假了。但如果是真，则这话如何兑现？
很简单，当年造成六四武装驱逐结果的三名现场责任人是出绝食主意的郑义、领队私占公共场地，非法割据的王丹，和最后为了投机出名，不惜再掀波澜，阻止撤退的刘晓波。我曾经著文呼吁这三个人自杀，以谢六四死难者于地下。结果是没一个真有自杀胆量的。刘晓波是压断骆驼脊梁的最后一根稻草。他对六四亡灵有着不可推卸的责任，也因此对六四亡灵遗属有不可推卸的赔偿责任。
当年洛杉矶暴乱也有死于流弹的过路民众。有记者质问时任总统老布什是否应该给以赔偿。老布什说不给。因为事先已经发布了实行紧急状态法的公告，要求民众待在家中，不要上街。政府尽到了发布警告之责，故对不服从者没有赔偿责任。
六四也一样。戒严令已经发布了两星期之久，可比洛杉矶暴乱发布预警的时间要长得多。武装驱逐开始前，政府再度发布要求市民待在家中，不要上街，否则后果自负的公告，在电视、电台和沿长安街大喇叭里不间断地高音重复发布，可谓仁至义尽。故六四亡灵即使不是蓄意抵抗戒严者，至少也是不服从警告者。政府尽到了警告之责，故不再有对不服从者的赔偿责任。
政府对六四亡灵遗属无赔偿之责，反而是刘晓波有赔偿之责。故刘晓波有义不容辞的责任用这笔诺贝尔奖金赔偿六四死难者遗属。小一百五十万美元折合成人民币大约值一千万。平均到两百名六四死难者，每户遗属可分得五万元人民币。
如果刘晓波均分了这笔奖金给六四亡灵遗属，我将不再敦促他自杀以谢六四死难者于地下。
这里顺便呼吁中国政府。六四死难者遗属都是和中国政府有血仇的。他们终生都不可能得到政府信任，不可能有任何政治上升迁的前途。尽管六四死难者都是不服从警告遇难的，但因为这是第一次城市武装平乱，他们没有经验。考虑到这一点，请中国政府法外施仁，放宽六四遗属出国谋生的限制，让他们离开中国，找刘晓波要钱去。
2010年11月7日 满山秋色
以上关于索尔壬尼琴的内容抄袭自维基百科有关条目，特此申明。
Monday, 8 November 2010
zt: How could Ai Weiwei POSSIBLY have been the "C0-DESIGNER" of the Birds Nest stadium?
The invitation to bid process began in 2001, bids were submitted, models were made, exhibitions of the models held, votes were cast and the winning birds nest design by Herzog and De Meuron working with leading Chinese architect Li Xinggang of China Architecture Design and Research Group (CADG) was confirmed by end of March / beginning of April 2003 ......... as is confirmed here:
Beijing National Stadium
and on this contemporaneous New York blog where the design was being discussed on 31 March 2003.......
Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "Bird's Nest") - by Herzog & de Meuron
Note the title of the thread: Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "BIRDS NEST") - by Herzog & de Meuron
AND YET
According to various sources - including Wikipedia - Ai Weiwei's role as "Artistic Consultant" began with a meeting in Basel in APRIL 2003 - so I ask again, despite the endless retrospective credits to and claims by Ai Weiwei as either 'designer' or 'co-designer' of the stadium - HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Has anyone actually spoken to Herzog & De Meuron or Li Xingang about that?
* * * * * * * *
Some of us are only interested in trying to get at the TRUTH about Ai Weiwei and his motivations. There are plenty of genuine dissidents in China worthy of your praise and sympathy - speak to human rights organisations, they'll give you a list.
However, I strongly suspect that Ai Weiwei is NOT one of them. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he cynically exploits the Western Media's appetite for anti-Chinese government stories for his own purposes. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he also callously exploits other peoples misery (within China) to further his own fame and artistic career.
Many genuine critics of the Chinese government are doing so because they have good reason to believe in their cause - i.e. schoolteachers in Sichuan complaining about the alleged school buildings scandal. Some of them end up falling foul of the authorities but Ai Weiwei has made himself a very rich man.
I believe that there are many claims made by Ai Weiwei which deserve closer inspection, for example:
- His claim (or at least lack of denial) that he was the designer or co-designer of the birds nest stadium, thus boosting his 'art' career in the first place.
- His claim that his brain Haemorrhage in 'Germany in September 2009 was directly linked to what he later described as a "severe beating" by chinese police in Sichuan one month earlier on the 12th August (there is even an article in the Guardian dated 12th August based on an Associated Press report quoting Ai Weiwei as saying that there "was a scuffle" in which he received a "punch on the chin" (the Guardian article is here - read the quotation from Ai further down the page) - how did this "punch on the chin" escalate to the "severe beating" including "heavy blows to the head"?
This link between the punch on the chin and the brain haemorrhage a month later is now reported without question in the media.
- What was Ai Weiwei doing in Sichuan / Chengdu anyway? He said he wanted to show support at the trial of Tan Zuoren but he had had nothing to do with the Earthquake or its victims in spring 2008 or Zuoren. He LATER said he was trying to embarass the Chinese government by publishing the names of child victims on his website but that didn't happen until March / April 2009 and the Chinese government published the names anyway in April 2009? So why would they have been embarassed?
The more you look into Ai Weiwei's activities, the less credible his claims really seem - such a shame for those genuine voices of concern he is blotting out by his continual media shouting.
by PantsOnFire2
shakinwilly, 8 November 2010 7:31AM
Ai Wei Wei - For someone lacking democratic rights you get an awful lot of air time. And your government seems content with that.
Beijing National Stadium
and on this contemporaneous New York blog where the design was being discussed on 31 March 2003.......
Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "Bird's Nest") - by Herzog & de Meuron
Note the title of the thread: Beijing Olympic Stadium (the "BIRDS NEST") - by Herzog & de Meuron
AND YET
According to various sources - including Wikipedia - Ai Weiwei's role as "Artistic Consultant" began with a meeting in Basel in APRIL 2003 - so I ask again, despite the endless retrospective credits to and claims by Ai Weiwei as either 'designer' or 'co-designer' of the stadium - HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Has anyone actually spoken to Herzog & De Meuron or Li Xingang about that?
* * * * * * * *
Some of us are only interested in trying to get at the TRUTH about Ai Weiwei and his motivations. There are plenty of genuine dissidents in China worthy of your praise and sympathy - speak to human rights organisations, they'll give you a list.
However, I strongly suspect that Ai Weiwei is NOT one of them. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he cynically exploits the Western Media's appetite for anti-Chinese government stories for his own purposes. I think there are good reasons to suspect that he also callously exploits other peoples misery (within China) to further his own fame and artistic career.
Many genuine critics of the Chinese government are doing so because they have good reason to believe in their cause - i.e. schoolteachers in Sichuan complaining about the alleged school buildings scandal. Some of them end up falling foul of the authorities but Ai Weiwei has made himself a very rich man.
I believe that there are many claims made by Ai Weiwei which deserve closer inspection, for example:
- His claim (or at least lack of denial) that he was the designer or co-designer of the birds nest stadium, thus boosting his 'art' career in the first place.
- His claim that his brain Haemorrhage in 'Germany in September 2009 was directly linked to what he later described as a "severe beating" by chinese police in Sichuan one month earlier on the 12th August (there is even an article in the Guardian dated 12th August based on an Associated Press report quoting Ai Weiwei as saying that there "was a scuffle" in which he received a "punch on the chin" (the Guardian article is here - read the quotation from Ai further down the page) - how did this "punch on the chin" escalate to the "severe beating" including "heavy blows to the head"?
This link between the punch on the chin and the brain haemorrhage a month later is now reported without question in the media.
- What was Ai Weiwei doing in Sichuan / Chengdu anyway? He said he wanted to show support at the trial of Tan Zuoren but he had had nothing to do with the Earthquake or its victims in spring 2008 or Zuoren. He LATER said he was trying to embarass the Chinese government by publishing the names of child victims on his website but that didn't happen until March / April 2009 and the Chinese government published the names anyway in April 2009? So why would they have been embarassed?
The more you look into Ai Weiwei's activities, the less credible his claims really seem - such a shame for those genuine voices of concern he is blotting out by his continual media shouting.
by PantsOnFire2
shakinwilly, 8 November 2010 7:31AM
Ai Wei Wei - For someone lacking democratic rights you get an awful lot of air time. And your government seems content with that.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
马悲鸣:我欣赏民运拉杆子打游击搞武装斗争
六四已经过去二十年了，民运还这般没起色。当年的八九民运效法的是「杨志卖刀」里的牛二。共产党是杨志，政权就是那把宝刀。这帮牛二学生想要杨志那把宝刀，又不敢明抢，就逼杨志拿自己的脑袋试刀。牛二料定杨志不敢真砍，那把宝刀就可无尝归他了。没想到那杨志给老钟经略相公干过，在边庭上一刀一枪见识过真家伙，哪吃牛二这一套，真被逼急了，只好应牛二的要求拿他脑袋试了刀。
八九年的学生也是如此，料定政府不敢开枪，便步步紧逼，终于逼得政府实在不得已被迫开枪了。这帮没用学生这一通鬼哭狼嚎。问题是政府已经退到最后一步，除了武装驱逐，就只有交出政权和自己的脑袋了。
学生也挺没意思的，让人家杀成那个样儿，居然二十年来还是不住嘴地喊冤。
有什么好喊的？
要么承认自己非法，活该挨杀。要么抄家伙给政府干！
王震老将军说过∶“共产党的天下是牺牲了两千万人换来的。你们想要，也拿两千万颗人头来换。”
这话说得难听，却是实话。哪有个让人家杀成那样了，还哭哭啼啼逼人家平反的。
中共什么时候逼国民党给四一二平反了？什么时候逼蒋介石给皖南事变平反了？
四一二发生在1927年，二十年之后就是1947年，解放军已经发展了数百万人的武装力量和大片根据地，正在准备大反攻。可这帮废物点心的六四学生，哭了二十年，一条枪的武装也没拉起来，就只会喊冤叫屈。现在又想出了一条证明中共政权非法的胡言乱语。
如果民运想证明政府违宪，则必是承认中共的宪法合法。如果中共的宪法合法，则戒严法就在宪法之内，则戒严合法。
陈小平搜肠刮肚想出了个国务院组织法里有个重大决策要集体讨论这么一条，非说李鹏的戒严令没经过讨论。问题是你陈小平怎么知道没经过讨论？当时的戒严是严格按宪法程序来的。戒严令里都写明了根据的是宪法某条某款。
如果民运说政府违宪，则就等于承认中共的宪法合法，那么政府的被迫武装驱逐就是合法的。如果民运否定中共政权的合法性，那么没有了法律也就无所谓非法。自然政府的武装驱逐就谈不上非法。不管民运是否承认中共政权的合法性，都无法证明政府非法。
中共不管承认不承认国民党政权的合法性，都自己拉杆子和政府干，最后把天下打下来了。国民党不管承认不承认北洋政府的合法性，也自己拉杆子和政府干，也曾把天下打下来过。
民运要想干点让人佩服的事，就只有指着国共两党说，他们两党能武装斗争夺天下，我们也能！
回国拉杆子和政府干去。不管占住广州还是井岗山，发动群众，筹集饷械，斗村干部，杀贪官污吏，多干些大快人心的事迹，在民间广为传诵，吸引广大青年才俊的加入。等你们把天下打下来了，我自然会替你们说话。
当然了，要是被逮着上雨花台刑场也别叫屈。怎么也得来段“我手执钢鞭将你打”吧。还有“二十年后又是一条好汉”。
等民运胜利了，自然会追认你们是民运烈士，让少年儿童向你们的墓碑行礼。
就这么哭哭啼啼二十年，一辈子也别想让人瞧得起你们。
八九年的学生也是如此，料定政府不敢开枪，便步步紧逼，终于逼得政府实在不得已被迫开枪了。这帮没用学生这一通鬼哭狼嚎。问题是政府已经退到最后一步，除了武装驱逐，就只有交出政权和自己的脑袋了。
学生也挺没意思的，让人家杀成那个样儿，居然二十年来还是不住嘴地喊冤。
有什么好喊的？
要么承认自己非法，活该挨杀。要么抄家伙给政府干！
王震老将军说过∶“共产党的天下是牺牲了两千万人换来的。你们想要，也拿两千万颗人头来换。”
这话说得难听，却是实话。哪有个让人家杀成那样了，还哭哭啼啼逼人家平反的。
中共什么时候逼国民党给四一二平反了？什么时候逼蒋介石给皖南事变平反了？
四一二发生在1927年，二十年之后就是1947年，解放军已经发展了数百万人的武装力量和大片根据地，正在准备大反攻。可这帮废物点心的六四学生，哭了二十年，一条枪的武装也没拉起来，就只会喊冤叫屈。现在又想出了一条证明中共政权非法的胡言乱语。
如果民运想证明政府违宪，则必是承认中共的宪法合法。如果中共的宪法合法，则戒严法就在宪法之内，则戒严合法。
陈小平搜肠刮肚想出了个国务院组织法里有个重大决策要集体讨论这么一条，非说李鹏的戒严令没经过讨论。问题是你陈小平怎么知道没经过讨论？当时的戒严是严格按宪法程序来的。戒严令里都写明了根据的是宪法某条某款。
如果民运说政府违宪，则就等于承认中共的宪法合法，那么政府的被迫武装驱逐就是合法的。如果民运否定中共政权的合法性，那么没有了法律也就无所谓非法。自然政府的武装驱逐就谈不上非法。不管民运是否承认中共政权的合法性，都无法证明政府非法。
中共不管承认不承认国民党政权的合法性，都自己拉杆子和政府干，最后把天下打下来了。国民党不管承认不承认北洋政府的合法性，也自己拉杆子和政府干，也曾把天下打下来过。
民运要想干点让人佩服的事，就只有指着国共两党说，他们两党能武装斗争夺天下，我们也能！
回国拉杆子和政府干去。不管占住广州还是井岗山，发动群众，筹集饷械，斗村干部，杀贪官污吏，多干些大快人心的事迹，在民间广为传诵，吸引广大青年才俊的加入。等你们把天下打下来了，我自然会替你们说话。
当然了，要是被逮着上雨花台刑场也别叫屈。怎么也得来段“我手执钢鞭将你打”吧。还有“二十年后又是一条好汉”。
等民运胜利了，自然会追认你们是民运烈士，让少年儿童向你们的墓碑行礼。
就这么哭哭啼啼二十年，一辈子也别想让人瞧得起你们。
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Under the Influence: Overseas Chinese-Language Media
H.W.
A media analyst sheds light on the concessions made by Western media companies in exchange for entry into the Chinese market.
Translated by Dušanka Miščević
Just as the world has favored the China market because of the country’s rapid economic growth, the foreign news media have also attached great importance to China’s media market on account of its large population and enormous potential. Yet for the past 30 years the opening and growth of the Chinese economy has not enabled economic development to bring about political democratization. As the Tsinghua University scholar Qin Hui (秦晖) puts it, China’s economic opening and market reform are a process of two-way influence: China is not just being influenced by the West, but also exerting influence upon Western institutions. Namely, the so-called China factor—China’s low human rights advantage—forms a challenge to the social welfare and rights of workers in Western countries; and China’s economic development affects global capitalism. In the same way, China’s news and public opinion marketplace, which is controlled and monopolized by the state, is also influencing Western media companies attempting to enter the China market. Many Western media outlets are paying the price of sacrificing some of their principles in order to gain entry.
The Internet companies Yahoo! and Google both made compromises with the Chinese government in terms of Internet censorship in order to enter China’s market. The international media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who attempted to break into the China market, recently ceded the controlling stake in Star Greater China1—a tactical adjustment after his great effort to enter China was thwarted. Murdoch’s News Corporation had acquired a majority stake in the Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite network in 1993, and had removed BBC World Service Television (now BBC World News) from the network in 1994, pandering to the Chinese government. This move had led to extensive criticism, but such accommodation of the Chinese authorities’ muzzling of the press apparently did not yield the business opportunities for which he had hoped.
Pan-Nationalism
China’s control of the news and state monopoly of the media market render ineffective the business development tactics of the chiefly market-oriented Western media companies that cater to the demands of their target audiences. But the control and monopoly apparently did not stop Western media, such as the BBC, from attempting to penetrate China’s market through commercial channels. For example, various overseas Chinese-language media, such as BBC Chinese and Deutsche Welle’s Chinese service, cannot help falling under the influence of yet another factor in their reporting on China, namely, the ever-growing Chinese pan-nationalism or pan-patriotism.
This transnational pan-nationalism chiefly expresses itself in the increased identification with and even loyalty to the Chinese state on the part of overseas Chinese, in the broad context of China’s ever-increasing economic power, particularly since the Western financial crisis, which has strengthened their confidence in China’s inexorable growth and power. The upsurge of nationalism on the Internet triggered by the support for—as well as the opposition to—the Tibetan protests before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games demonstrated that Chinese nationalism directed against the West often goes hand-in-hand with conspiracy theories that the West is anti-China and that the Western media demonize China.
This kind of pan-nationalism can interfere with the judgment of news professionals in their reporting on China and even prevent news organizations from performing their proper functions, which are to promote freedom of information, report the truth, and scrupulously abide by the journalistic principles of independence, fairness, and honesty. The 2008 controversy surrounding opinions expressed by Zhang Danhong (张丹红) of Deutsche Welle’s Chinese-Language Radio Department is a prominent example.
On the eve of the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games, Zhang, the deputy director of the Chinese- Language Radio Department at Deutsche Welle, said in an interview with a German TV station that China has lifted 400 million people out of poverty and that this shows that “the Communist Party of China (CPC) has made a bigger contribution to the implementation of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights than any other political force in the world.” Regarding the question of Chinese authorities’ blocking of the websites of Free Tibet and Falun Gong, she said, “You cannot open child pornography or extreme right-wing political party websites in Germany either.”2
Zhang Danhong’s opinions provoked intense criticism among Chinese dissidents and in German political circles. Under the pressure of public opinion, Deutsche Welle suspended Zhang Danhong’s duties in its Chinese-Language Radio Department. An intense debate ensued among the reporters of the Deutsche Welle Chinese-Language Radio Department itself as to whether Deutsche Welle’s Chinese-language reporting on China had displayed Chinese nationalist tendencies and lost its objectivity and neutrality.
Business Logic
In addition to the political leanings factor, the Western Chinese-language media’s reporting on China also suffers from the pressure of commercialization. For a long time, Western news organizations have been under pressure to become commercial, which has put a constant squeeze on genuine news reporting. After the financial crisis developed, this trend has become even more pronounced. Not even the BBC World Service could escape it.
In 2011, the funding for the BBC World Service will be decreased by one-fourth. The broadcast had already cut service in ten languages in 2005, saving £12 million [$18.6 million]. This year, it had to cut an additional £7.7 million [$12 million] in spending due to a funding shortage and a substantial depreciation of the pound.3
Financial pressures and business performance of news organizations are causing news reporting to be treated as a product aimed at the Chinese market. When the number of clicks and audience ratings become the primary standard for measuring a director’s performance, and even if the department in which that broadcaster works can survive layoffs, the fight to have the Chinese authorities lift Internet blocking and stop jamming shortwave broadcasts has direct bearing on the survival and the chance of promotion of any broadcaster who targets Chinese audiences. The BBC World Service management has set a hard target for the BBC’s Chinese-language website and those in other foreign languages to double the number of Internet users within a year and quadruple that of mobile phone customers.
The Self-Censorship Trend
Faced with the internal pressure of click-counting and the external pressure of China’s site-blocking, combined with insufficient human resources, the BBC Chinese- language website department transferred valuable resources to an apolitical webpage that the Chinese authorities could tolerate in order to increase the volume of clicks. With it, BBC went looking for cooperative partners in China, providing Chinese websites with culture and entertainment trivia, thus increasing the number of clicks on the BBC’s Chinese-language website. According to a staff member, in order to avoid angering Chinese authorities, BBC resorted to deleting sensitive contents from its interviews. Wang Weiluo (王维洛), a water conservation expert who lives in Germany, expressed resentment when the part of his 2006 interview in which he criticized Chinese authorities was abridged.
In addition, the BBC’s Chinese-language website has eliminated “The China Forum” (中国丛谈)—the program of in-depth analysis of China’s current affairs that had long been well-received by listeners and readers but viewed with hostility by Chinese authorities. This kind of self-censorship weakens the reporting on and analysis of sensitive political topics, and, to a certain degree, avoids sensitive subjects, such as political dissent and the Falun Gong.
In order to break into the Chinese market and have Chinese authorities lift Internet blocking, the BBC’s senior managers and editors have become product salespersons, repeatedly heading to China on public relations and sales-promotion junkets. At the same time, China’s propaganda and media officials, including embassy diplomats overseas, are treated as legitimate representatives of Chinese consumers and have become the guests of honor at news organizations, exerting influence on the overseas media reporting on China. At a time when Chinese authorities are suppressing freedom of the press and blocking the Internet, BBC executives repeatedly take part in various foreign propaganda activities organized by the Chinese government, such as the 2009 World Media Summit (世界媒体峰会) in Beijing among other media publicity events. In so doing, they become ornaments in China’s external propaganda and public relations efforts.
Officials in charge of the relevant departments of the Chinese government and diplomats at China’s missions abroad have used cooperation and even the granting of press visas as bait in an attempt to exert influence on the direction of the BBC’s Chinese-language website reporting. The most prominent example is the complaint of Tibetan exiles that the BBC’s Chinese-language website altered the interview with the Tibetan spiritual leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama, without authorization, so as to accommodate China’s news censorship.
BBC “Mends Its Ways”
Last year, the BBC interviewed the Dalai Lama and quoted him as saying that the Tibetan issue is a Chinese domestic problem, and used this as the headline of its web article.4 At the time, even China’s Global Times (环球时报), which is consistently fond of producing reporting that stirs nationalism, discovered from the BBC report that the Dalai Lama had not taken such a position and raised questions. The nationalist website Anti-CNN.com, which claims to fight against Western anti-China propaganda, went as far as posting an article praising BBC for “mending its ways.” The editor of the BBC’s Chinese-language website himself explained that his website is cautious in its reporting, and that it had sent the sensitive program containing the interview with the Dalai Lama to the Chinese embassy for officials to look over and to seek their opinions, winning praise from the embassy.
Wielding the increasing strength of the national economy, Chinese government authorities not only monopolize domestic public opinion and restrict freedom of the press, but also use economic enticements to influence overseas news media in an attempt to challenge the universal values of democracy and freedom. In attempting to enter the China market, the overseas media, and, in particular, the Chinese-language overseas media—which internally are under economic pressure to produce performance results and externally have to deal with Internet blocking and news control by the Chinese government—are quite likely to yield on the news reporting principles by which they have always abided, in exchange for the Chinese authorities’ lifting Internet blocking.
Endnotes
1. In August 2010, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation sold a controlling stake in Star Greater China (星空卫视) to China Media Capital, a private equity fund backed by the Chinese government. See Nick Clark, “Murdoch Cedes Control of Chinese TV Channels,” The Independent, August 10, 2010,http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/murdoch-cedes-control-of-chinese-tvchannels-2048034.html. ^
2. Wen Jing [文婧], “Zhong Weiguang: Zhang Danhong bei tingbo hehu yanlunziyou” [仲維光：張丹紅被停播合乎言論自由], Epoch Times [大紀元], September 14, 2008,http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/8/9/14/n2262723.htm. ^
3. While BBC faces cuts, its average employees are facing large-scale layoffs, their pension funds are in the red by large margins, and their retirement and welfare benefits have been substantially reduced. Yet the BBC executives are continuing to devise every possible way to raise their own salaries and are using public money to set up huge additional pensions for themselves. The salary of the BBC’s director-general was ten times that of an average employee 20 years ago, and has now grown to 30-40 times that. The deputy director-general’s pension is famously the highest in the UK public sector. See Jenni Russell, “This is the BBC—ruled by greed at the top,” The Sunday Times, August 1, 2010. That such scandals should be taking place at BBC, which regularly reports on the corruption of Chinese officials, has not only destroyed the confidence of its staff in the BBC leadership but also further weakened public support for this publicly-funded news organization. ^
4. Shirong Chen, “Tibet ‘Chinese Issue’ Says Dalai,” British Broadcasting Corporation, August 10, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asiapacific/8194138.stm. The article quotes the Dalai Lama as saying, “The Chinese government considers our problem a domestic one. And we also.” ^
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
go to Europe instead of India
When God closes a door, he will open another window for you. The door to india looks like closing fast(license Raj), there is always an open road to Europe. An alternative plan/way out ready always helps. Cross channel ferry, sat-navigator, cross europe AA breakdown insurance, my dear old 4-wheeled toyota is more comfortable than my new 2-wheeled honda for long distance tour.
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