- Senator Obama’s Other Brother Who Lives in China

A recent UK Times Online news headline reads: Barack Obama’s brother pushes Chinese imports on US 

Media in the US have focused on Barack Obama’s half brother living in Kenya. George Hussein Onyango Obama, Barack’s half-brother, is said to be living in poverty on a dollar a month in a Nairobi shantytown. This article is about Barack Obama’s other half-brother, Mark Ndesanjo, who lives in Shenzhen, a southern Chinese city bordering Hong Kong. While we believe the Times used such a headline to help attract readers, we wonder how those words relate to Mark’s real life in China. 

To clarify in readers’ minds the true subject of the story, Chinationreport editors translated an online article from the Mandarin, as it appeared in the South China Daily. The article was written based on interviews with Mark’s close friends and partners. Below is the English translation of this article:

Slim, healthy, vegetarian, over 6 feet tall, strongly built, short-cropped black hair, often seen with a baseball hat on, dark brown skin, black eyes with very clear facial features. This is Mark Ndesandjo, the half brother of Senator Obama, the US Democratic Party presidential nominee.  Mark has been living in Shenzhen in the past six years and wishes to continue to live in China. He is married to a Chinese woman from Henan province. Mark shares the same father with Senator Obama but carries his mother’s last name.   

The Nanfang Metropolitan Paper reports that - after Mark’s relationship with Senator Obama was revealed - he has gone underground, avoiding public attention. Mark is a pianist. 18-year-old Long Ben, who was raised in the Shenzhen Social Welfare Center Orphanage, is his piano student. On the evening of August 1st 2008,  Long Ben received a text message from Mark, saying: “I have a very urgent matter to take care of immediately. Very sorry that I couldn’t make the lesson that I promised last time. After I deal with this matter, I will try to call you. Okay?”

From the date of that text message until this edition of the paper hit the street, Mark hadn’t come to the Orphanage for classes, a period of three weeks. This is the first absence since Mark started teaching at the orphanage in 2002. Long Ben has no idea what the Mark’s ‘urgent matter’ was, however, he admits the media has recently taken an intense interest in Mark’s young student. “I don’t want to be interviewed, especially by those who would use me to learn something about Mark.”

From Sui Zheng Jun, Mark’s best Chinese friend in Shenzhen, who owns an online information service called Worldnexus, reporters worldwide are gradually learning more about Obama’s half brother Mark.

Since July 27th 2008, when Mark received the phone call from Times followed by the publishing of article, an outpouring of interview requests has interrupted his normal life. In Shenzhen, Mark’s relationship with Obama was exposed at the same time. While Senator Obama lives as a public figure, Mark prefers to lead a quiet, ordinary life in the big, bustling city of Shenzhen.  

After this ‘breaking’ news, reporters, including those from Hong Kong, were searching Shenzen for any possible clues about Mark. According to Sui,“Some of them found the company where Mark used to work. Several dozen reporters were waiting outside the building, collaring anyone they thought might know something about Mark for questioning. “What does Mark look like? How to find him?” were the questions, an old colleague of Mark recalled. “The reporters even found the bar Mark frequented.”

Interestingly, on March 18th, 4 months before the UK Times article appeared, there was a report on Xinhuanet indicating that The New York Times reported on the 17th that Obama’s younger brother is in China. Missing catchy headlines, both Xinhuanet’s piece and the original The New York Times article completely passed under the radar screen. 

In order to evade the irritating reporters, Mark and Sui Zheng Jun have chosen to leave Shenzhen. Sui still found it hard to believe that the media are trying everything to tie his friend of six years with now the very famous Obama.

Mark and  his six years of volunteer work at an Orphanage

Before the revelation of the relationship between Mark Ndesandjo and Barack Obama, the only media article found about Mark dates from March 2004. The Nanfangnet Daily’ English edition reported in an article entitled Not Just a Donation that Mark “…had successful experience in remote communications. He is also a self-taught musician.”

In the article, Mark is quoted as saying “Here the children have enough food. What they are lacking is art and music. Music unites humans in a spiritual level. It has a long and deep effect on children. So I decided to teach music here.”

Since 2002, Mark has been closely connected with Shenzhen. Ever since making their acquaintance Mark’s and Sui’s life in Shenzhen have been closely interconnected. Sui said, “Before coming to China, Mark had never taught school. He came as a member of a Sino-American culture exchange program. As part of this program, Mark worked in a Shenzhen foreign language school. During this period, he nurtured the idea of establishing a non-profit organization in China to help orphans.”

According to Sui, before coming to China, Mark tried contacting a lot of people, including some media and even Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He sent them his proposal but nobody replied. Back in 2002, who knew the name Obama, let alone Ndesandjo? Finally, Mark got some donations from his MBA classmates in Emory to bring to China. When he first arrived in Shenzhen, he even didn’t know where the orphanage was located. He knew Sui through an English teacher in Shenzhen. Sui brought Mark to the orphanage. They brought milk, milk powder, DVDs, etc to the orphans.

Mark doesn’t have much money. His goal is to bring the art of music to the orphans. He believed an orphan’s life needs not only the essentials. The arts are needed, too. Mark began teaching piano lessons at the orphanage every week – at least until events of this year overtook him.

The orphanage workers were all moved by his persistence. He came almost every week. No other volunteers gave of themselves as much. Since 2002, Mark has taught several dozen piano students. Two of his students studied with him for more than two years, one is Xing Yun, who went on to college in Guangzhou. The other is Long Ben. 

So, who is this Mark? He is a very talented, self-taught musician The only printed material that can be found is on the sleeve of a compact disk which was sent as a gift to Long Ben in the Orphanage. It’s printed in black and white, titled Nightmoods and includes some Chopin pieces. On the dedication, it says, “To my most trustworthy and best friend Ruth Ndesandjo”

Ruth Ndesandjo is Mark’s mother, the third wife of Mark and Barack Obama’s late father. When Mark was very young, they divorced. An honor student from Harvard, Ruth runs an upscale daycare center in Nairobi, Kenya.

Within this CD, the short biography of the performer says: 

“Mark is a writer, painter and composer who spends most of his time in Asia and USA. He was born in Kenya. He studied at Brown and Stanford Universities. He published 3 CDs and one book. The book’s title is Observations in Africa and others. This (semi-autobiographical) book is about a young Kenyan man who immigrated to the US and lived in a metropolitan city there. He studied Communications and worked at Lucent Technologies and Notel Networks in high positions. His hobbies included sky diving, skiing and surfing.”

Mark’s friends know that he moved to the US after spending the first seven years of his life in Kenya. He graduated from Brown University with a mathematics and arts degree. Then, he attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California for a Physics degree. After that, he received an MBA degree from Emory University. In 12 years, he worked for several companies in the US.

After playing a piece of Chopin, Long Ben revealed to the article’s reporter, “I have become a lot happier since I started taking piano lessons from Mark.” Long Ben was born in Shenzhen in 1990. He came to the orphanage at the age of three. After finishing middle school in 2006, Long Ben started to take piano lessons from Mark. Before Long Ben, Mark taught several other kids. But none of them continued for various reasons. Mark taught Long Ben every weekend, no matter how busy he was. He always seemed to be in a hurry. On the evening of August 1st, Long Ben received the short text message from Mark saying that he had something very important to deal with and he would call after he handled the urgent matter. At 10PM, Long Ben called Mark and chatted to him about his own small issues. At 1:19AM, Mark left another message saying: ‘Don’t worry. I support you. Try your best to practice piano.’  

Teachers at the orphanage noted that Long Ben has become confident and strong thanks to Mark’s help. Long Ben says he loves music, especially classical music, particularly Chopin to whom he feels emotionally connected. Long Ben says he received a lot of support from others and he will also try to help people in return. “I am happy and content with what I have.”

Mark’s real passion and life in China

Sui Zheng Jun said, “You will never guess what Mark imagined about China before arriving there!” Before 2002, Mark felt that China, though beautiful, was undeveloped. He thought that China was a very poor country with many orphans. He wanted to walk in the country with a backpack, getting to know China while helping them. After he settled in Shenzhen, he realized there was a big gap between his old perceptions and reality. It was a lot better than he had thought. He liked Shenzhen very much. More than one time he expressed his wish to live and work there. 

Not Just a Donation mentions that Mark wanted to organize a charity concert performed by foreign musicians in order to collect donations to buy musical instruments and equipment for the orphanage. To prepare, Mark and Sui strategized and planned for a long time. It did not happen for a variety of reasons. During this time, both of them cemented their friendship. They decided to continue to do something together.   

Sui used to be a branch manager of a bicycle company. When he met Mark, he was planning on getting his MBA and needed someone to help him improve his English. He was also making his next career move. He registered an information consulting company under the name Worldnexus. Sue was the owner. He appointed Mark chief consultant. “We are partners!”

Business was very tough. Day after day they worked hard but made no profit. Sui, Mark and other partners worked for free, receiving no salary. Each was using up savings. In the evenings, after an exhausting day, they got together to have a beer and barbeque from street vendors. Mark always ate dried tofu and potato chips. He is a vegetarian and always wondered why Chinese grilled tofu tasted so delicious. 

While dining, Sui came up with a plan: Instead of just consulting, why not also open a barbeque stand? This idea excited Mark a lot. He said he wanted to open such stands in Kenya to introduce grilled tofu and potato chips to his countrymen. While enjoying their beer and chips, they drew up a business plan on a piece of scrap paper. They even designed a menu. Mark insists that it has to be natural. He wanted a very simple, unpretentious hut instead of a fancy restaurant. They named the hut-restaurant Cabin BBQ. At the end of 2003, the first Cabin BBQ was opened in Shenzhen, adjacent to their existing information consulting office. ?
 As of today, Cabin BBQ has seven branches, including one in Yingchuan in the northwest of China, far away from Shenzhen. They are also planning on entering the Kenyan market with their next Cabin BBQ. Sui said, “From a simple joke out of desperation to a viable business, we feel like we’re in a dream!” Thanks to the opening of their first Cabin BBQ, which became a very successful, profitable business, they were able to pay themselves a salary while covering the overhead of the consulting firm, which is still not profitable.

In the beginning of 2006, Mark said he wanted to leave our team to start learning Chinese. Mark spent a whole year just studying Chinese at Shenzhen University. He is very capable of learning. After just more than one year, he started reading A Dream of Red Mansions, the most famous work of Chinese classical literature. Mark’s Chinese friends often tease him when they see him read the book (as reading this book is often considered old fashioned by the young generation -ed.). 

Although they are not working together any more, Mark and his Chinese friends get together often. They go hiking, swimming, and especially, all activities involving nature and Chinese tradition. Sui asked Mark to come back to work with him again. Mark promised that he would come back after 2008. Sui was pleased to hear that but had no clue why he needed to wait until after 2008. Sui felt that it was probably a personal issue. 

Regarding Mark’s personal life, Sui knows very little. He knew that some of Mark’s siblings are in the USA and some are in Kenya. Mark rarely spoke of his family. He only talked about his career, education etc. Sui learned more about Mark’s family only after his mother’s visit to Shenzhen.

Mark’s mother Ruth came to visit Mark about three years ago. She left Sui deeply impressed. She is a woman, but one almost has to borrow the word gentleman to describe her. She plays the piano beautifully. She was Mark’s first piano teacher. 

There is something in which Mark put Sui, a real Chinese, to shame. Mark started to become interested in Chinese calligraphy. Mark thought this was an authentic representation of Chinese culture. Once making up his mind, Mark soon found a teacher. He even learnt the Xing (cursive) style of calligraphy. Sui remarked, “I first thought he was just kidding. After he showed us his work, we were all shocked. I admit, although I am Chinese, his Chinese calligraphy is much better than mine.” 

Not long ago, Mark visited his brother Barack and gifted him with his Chinese calligraphy. “I saw Mark do the Chinese idiom in calligraphy. But I promised him to keep its content a secret. It is between him and his brother.” 

Mark’s friends did not find out about his relationship with Senator Obama through the media. Mark revealed it by himself after he had been exposed by Times. (Note: Although Mark’s Chinese friends did not read the story published by Times, Mark had to admit his identity to his friends to explain the foreign media’s intense pursuit of him. He feared that they would find out about it sooner or later – ed.) On July 27th, some friends invited Mark to go to an outdoor photography event. The organizer of the event was a Chinese-American, ‘Hua Jiang,’ (meaning a gardener) who had heard from Sui a few times about this American friend of Sui’s. What intrigued Sui and ‘Hua Jiang’ was that Mark was trying to avoid having pictures taken all day long. They all knew he was a passionate photographer, but he refused to pose as the subject before anyone else’s camera. 

Everyone was puzzled by Mark’s actions on that day and wondered what was wrong with him. On the way home, Mark started talking: “You know that I am from Kenya. You know that I have a brother in America. My brother is Barack Obama” Sui stopped breathing for a moment. “What? How come you never told us?” Mark explained that he never wanted to tell anyone, but now, referring to the news article from the United Kingdom, the cat’s out of the bag. Everyone stood there awestruck in mute silence.

On the same evening, some pictures from that day’s event got uploaded to the Internet. At midnight, Sui called ‘Hua Jiang’, asking him to delete all pictures containing Mark. Sui had to explain the real reason.
 Since then, Sui has not been left in peace. He gets hundreds of messages and phone calls daily. Everybody wishes to get information about Mark through him. He has even received girls’ love letters addressed to the married man. Mark’s Chinese friends all share the same view about Mark. He is intelligent and well educated - an intellectual with high class wishing to keep his modest, simple, anonymous life in a rented apartment in Shenzhen, a city with a population of millions. Mark’s Chinese friends also believe that Mark likes China, especially now, since he married a Chinese girl from Henan. 

Chinationreport is not responsible for the accuracy of the content of this article.
The original article in Chinese was posted on www.wenxuecity.com with credit to Nangfang Daily

DENVER, United States — Barack Obama has no intention to transform and challenge the one-China policy should he be elected as the US president, his senior foreign policy advisors said Monday.

Gregory B. Craig, a long-term advisor of Obama on foreign affairs, told a press conference that the Democratic presidential nominee to be would observe the one-China policy stipulated in a set of institution of understanding between China and the US.

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks to supporters at a campaign event at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, Iowa, August 25, 2008. [Agencies]

The Illinois senator has made it clear that the relations with China is a very important and key one for the US, said Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman, a former aide for former US State Secretary Madeleine Albright, at a press conference during the Democratic National Convention here.

Obama will be officially nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate at the gathering. “People said that the 20th century is American century, and the 21th is Asian century,” she said.

She said that she has no doubt Obama would visit China in his early presidency if he is elected in November.

“We are economically interdependent on each other, and there are many places that we can work closely together as China becomes a more and more responsible stakeholder,” she said, citing the six-party talks as an example.

On the Taiwan issue, she said Obama’s policy will be the continuation of American presidents’ one-China stance and that he hopes to see the constructive relations between two sides.

Source: Chinadaily.com.cn / 2008-08-25 09:02

‘TAIPEI - Taiwan is considering building a bridge linking Kinmen, one of its outlying islands, to Xiamen city in Fujian Province on the mainland, the Central News Agency said on Sunday, in a sign of improving cross-Straits ties.

“The idea, talked about by many Kinmen residents, of building a bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen in southeastern Fujian province could also be discussed,” the agency quoted Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou as saying.

The government will complete a proposal by the end of the year on whether constructing the bridge would be feasible, Ma was quoted as saying in Kinmen.

Ma, who was in Kinmen to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1958 artillery battle between Taiwan and the mainland, also said the island planned to offer landing visas or multiple visas to mainlanders visiting Kinmen, to boost tourism exchanges.

Ma has been unveiling a slew of policies to boost trade ties with the mainland, such as allowing more tourists to visit Taiwan and increasing direct flights.’

Chinationreport considers this news to be very significant for the future of Taiwan and China relationship.

According to Wikipedia/Kinmen:

Kinmen or Jinmen means literally “Golden Door” or “Golden Gate” in Mandarin. It is administered by Republic of China (ROC) government. But it is claimed as part of Fujian’s Quanzhou Prefecture by the People’s Republic of China. The island was the site of extensive shelling between PRC and ROC forces in the 1950s and 1960s and was a major issue in the 1960 United States Presidential Election between Kennedy and Nixon. In the 1950s, the United States threatened to use nuclear weapons against the PRC if it attacked the island.

Kinmen was originally a military preserve. However, the island was returned to the civilian government in the mid-1990s, and travel to and from Taiwan was allowed.

Kinmen witnesses history: ‘Retaking the mainland’

‘Wu Wang Zai Ju’ stone written by Chiang Kai Sek, photographed by seasurfer on 6.7.2005 in Kinmen.

中文: 蔣中正的毋忘在莒石碑 金門縣的莒光樓

English: Calligraphy by former President Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan) etched on a rock in Kinmen reads, “Forget not that you’re in J?” - an allusion to the Warring States Period when the State of Qi, cornered into the City of Ju by the State of Yan, successfully counterattacked and retook its territory. This is intended as an analogy to the situation between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China. Other slogans alluding to “retaking the mainland” can still be found in Kinmen.

Xiamen is a coastal city in Fujian province, People’s Republic of China. It looks out to the Taiwan Strait and particulary Kinmen. Xiamen and the surrounding countryside are famous for being an ancestral home to overseas Chinese and one of China’s earliest Special Economic Zones in the 1980s. It covers an area of 1 565 km² with a local population of 5 million. It was recently named China’s 2nd most livable city.

View of Xiamen from Gulangyu Island’s mountain peak. Foreground: Gulangyu. Background: Xiamen
Taken 2008-06-15, picture released in public domain
Text source: Wikipedia.org/Xiamen

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Please share your thoughts on the future of Taiwan and Mainland China. It is our goal to facilitate dialog and increase understanding of different views and perspectives. Serious bloggers only please.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinmen

By: Chinationreport Editor

Allegedly three Chinese Gymnasts are under 16, the minimum age allowed to compete in the Olympic gymnastics. This incident has caused serious global consequences, namely:

• America lost one to two gold medals in the Beijing Games.
• The hard work of American gymnasts is not fairly awarded and recognized.
• The feelings of 300 million Americans are hurt.
• The feelings of Chinese gymnasts are also hurt. They insist that they did nothing wrong.

The Chinese government denies this allegation and has since shown various official documents and explanation to prove its innocence.

According to numerous sources, the pre-war Iraq intelligence was forged. The Huffington Post reports on August 5th, 2008:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery - adamantly denied by the White House - was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

By now we also know that the forged CIA intelligence has had and is still having some severe global consequences, namely:

• A war has been waged against Iraq.
• Saddam was captured and executed, followed by domestic violence in Iraq and increased tensions between US and Iran.
• Over 4000 American soldiers lost their lives.
• An Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey conducted August 12-19, 2007 estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths due to the Iraq War (range of 733,158 to 1,446,063). Out of a national sample of 1,499 Iraqi adults, 22% had one or more members of their household killed due to the Iraq War (poll accuracy +/-2.4%). – Source: Wikipedia.org/Iraq-War
• During an NPR interview on March 3rd 2008, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of The Three Trillion Dollar War explains that Americans will spend decades treating the physical and psychological wounds of Iraq veterans — and when the economic consequences of the invasion are taken into account, the costs are staggering. – NPR.org
• Indirect consequences may include: US record budget deficit, record oil price, US and global financial crisis

On August 24, 2008, I searched ‘CIA Forged Document’ and ‘under age gymnasts’ on Google with the following results:

Results 1 - 10 of about 59,600 for cia forged document

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,110,000 for under age gymnasts

My dear loyal visitors:

I am not trying to defend China on this age controversy. I am not trying to accuse the USA on its CIA intelligence. History will be our best judge. I ask why our freedom loving Western citizens, given the dramatic different impact of these two incidents, you are more outraged by China’s unproven cheating than America’s well-documented lying?

If China is proven wrong, the medals can be returned to the USA. When USA is proven wrong, can any lives be returned to their loved ones?

James Shen’s response to Joe’s criticisms on his article

“Mainstream Western media stages Blemishing China Marathon” at www.Chinationreport.com

Thank you, Joe, for your patience to read my article “Mainstream Western media stages Blemishing China Marathon” and your criticisms.

You were right to point out some quotation discrepancies. Indeed, there are different versions of translations for the saying of Confucius (己所不欲，勿施于人), and I agree that your version of translation is more suitable in the context of this article. Also you mentioned about the biblical source of “let he who is not sin cast the first stone”. Again there are multiple sources including John 8:1-11, Matthew 7:12 in the Bible citing this criticism of Jesus on Pharisees. I have updated my article to reflect your suggestions. Thank you for helping me improve this article.

However, I have to say you have misread some parts of my article and I feel obliged to clarify and respond.

I do know Barack Obama is neither a Muslim nor the “anti-Christ” and I only cited media reports of these lies to show how some Western media would like us to believe them despite how obvious the truths are. For the record, I happen to be an Obama supporter.

I also happen to know very well what cannibal or cannibalism is. While my English may or may not be as good as yours, it certainly is much better than the Chinese of most, if not all, Westerners living in China.

Your comments seem to suggest that I was advocating for the official Chinese media, but if you read my article carefully then you realize I was only hoping that there was more positive coverage on China by the mainstream Western media so that people who do wish to read about some positive developments in China do not have to rely exclusively on the official media.

You also indicated that I do not know what is really going on in China. I don’t know where that came from, but let me tell you I spend at least three months in China each year, work with ordinary Chinese employees routinely, have a blog in Chinese where I share thoughts with Chinese bloggers, read internet news in Chinese often, and have the experience of worshipping in house churches, government-approved churches and international churches in Beijing. Do these convince you that I may know just a little more than you or Western reporters about China?

However, I am particularly disappointed that you have repeatedly referred China and the Chinese government as “your country” and “your government” in your comments to me despite my statement in my article that I am a Chinese American and a naturalized American citizen. For your information, my government is the US government and I am electing a new president in November. Regardless how some Americans would like to discriminate or prejudice against my ethnicity and race, I refuse to give up my rights and entitlements as an American and no one can take away my pride as a patriotic American with Chinese heritage.

Indeed, the rights of minorities in America have improved dramatically in the past 50 years. But by no means has racism submerged in today’s Western societies. While you may wish to dispute it, my personal feeling is that racism and racial prejudices are simply taking new forms, and racial tension is growing in political, social-economic, legal and cultural arenas in Western countries. Your own assumption that I, a Chinese American, am somehow an outsider serves to show the racial mindset of many Americans.

Your criticized my citations of various political and social problems as well as foreign policy issues in the US and the West. You also implied explicitly that I am somehow ignorant about the foreign policies of “your country” although I clearly indicated in my article that I am a Chinese American who has lived here for 19 years and received advanced education in the West.

If studying, living and working in the UK and the US for a total of 24 years does not qualify me to comment on the problems and politics of “your country” where I live, work, pay taxes and vote, why do you feel those Western journalists who have little or no living experience in China know that country better than me and deserve to bash China regularly for its policies and problems?

It is obvious you felt the discomfort of “your country” being criticized by an “outsider”, but please don’t get too excited about it – it is not good for your health – I learnt it from having to deal with similar discomfort every day

Well, I have to admit my article was intended to give you and people in the West a taste of that discomfort in the hope you realize how we, as Americans with Chinese heritage, feel when China is pushed around by over-simplistic, ignorant and biased media reports routinely.

The point of my article is neither to criticize the West nor to enter into debates about race and international politics, but rather about “don’t do unto others what you don’t wish to do unto yourself” and “to live and let live”. It is obvious there are differences and disagreements between countries, races, religions and interest groups, if we choose to focus too much on them, we will argue and fight forever without peace, no to mention living in a better world.

Lastly, you spoke about appointing a Uighur or Tibetan to the position of the Chinese premier. Perhaps you are not aware of the fact that Uighurs and Tibetans are already well-represented in the governments of their respective autonomous regions. People from these two minorities also hold important positions, such as the Vice Chairman of the National People’s Congress, in the Chinese political system. Dalai Lama himself held an important position at the CPPCC before rebelling in 1959.

As to a Uighur or Tibetan premier for China, I am quite hopeful you will see this happen by the time we have an American Indian as President of the US.

With reference to the remarks that China does not allow Tibetans to read religious texts, I am surprised that you actually bought the story since you quickly pointed it out that Obama is not a Muslim. I have not been to Tibet, but at the least I do know there are many monasteries and monks in Tibet. If they don’t read religious texts in the monasteries, do they study and read English instead? No wonder the Western journalists can communicate with them so well.

Since you touched on the issue of minorities and minority regions in China, let me share another personal story with you to show where I am coming from. I have always wanted a big brother from very young. The fact is I do have a big brother but I hardly know him at all. He was a well-educated young man with a lot of future, but he responded to the callings of the government and volunteered to relocate from Beijing to Kashgar, Western Uighur in late 1960s to support the development there as a technician for the local frozen-meat factory. He passed away two years ago in Uighur at the young age of 59 due to various diseases associated with the hardship he endured there. Make no mistake about it, he was just one of the many many Han Chinese who volunteered to help Uighur and Tibet in the past fifty years. For whatever that is worth, they deserve to be remembered and our respect.

……………………..

Finally, I apologize if I hurt your feelings in any way because it is not my intention to be mean. Wisdoms from the Bible and my Chinese heritage teach us to be more generous and not mean-spirited, but I guess we are all too weak when provoked. This is probably why the Chinese culture always calls for harmony and avoidance of direct confrontations.

The Bible teaches us “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9) and “…be at peace with one another” (Mark 9:49). Let me conclude by offering my reconciliations to you despite our disagreements. Let’s focus on our common values and interests rather than underscoring differences, and join hands in the hope of a better and more unified world….

…. if not anything else, for the sake of our children and their children!

Joe’s comments on my article : Mainstream Western media stages “Blemishing China Marathon”

You should read more carefully. Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim. Confucius said that you shouldn’t do unto others as you would not want done to you. You might have been quoting Jesus in Matthew 7:12. I’m also not sure if you know what a cannibal is. Eating scorpions is only cannibalism if you are another scorpion.

In case people only like to read what Xinhua tells them or watch cctv, these same criticisms of China are available from Indian, Korean…media.

There are a plurality of sources for media in the West be they independent, not for profit, single issue, for profit, institutional, governmental, non-governmental, international. Also, almost every country has an English language paper which western viewers can read wherever the country is …Xinhua is a government mouthpiece.

To talk about CNN putting up phony pictures and praising Xinhua is a horrible hippocracy. Some of the pictures in Chinese papers are flat on their face fakes to the naked eye.

It is a huge step towards infantilism to believe what your government tells you time and time again. It is worse off to portray run of the mill propaganda as a positive Chinese trait.

It is a moot point to talk about other countries biases when you don’t even know what is going on in your own country. If people get news from official sources and foreign sources aren’t let in, then it is a monument to self deception for someone to think they know what is going on anywhere.

It is also absurd that you talk about racial tensions becoming worse in the last few decades in the US. Do you think the situation was really better in the 1930’s? The 1800’s? Even comparing the 1980’s to today, you believe racial tensions have increased?

I don’t agree with Bush on the vast majority of issues, I believe the war in Iraq was completely wrong and I do believe there is a lot of media bias towards China in General, but to show Western foreign policy as retrograde in the last few decades is not really sound either. While World war 1 killed more than 9 million people and World war 2 killed 50 million. Since then, however, the cold war resulted in the Korean War and Vietnam, but the total death tolls in both wars combined was less than half of World war 1’s.

Countries such as Japan and Germany were engaged as allies and enjoyed great leaps in prosperity, and stability instead of being humiliated and robbed. The US is unique in history of ending wars and leaving without family ties as in the old European system. Did Germany do this? Did England? Did Japan?

Past choices by China are the reason that it wasn’t the world’s richest country a long time ago. It’s allies as well as its fellow communist countries have also suffered economically. Chinese support for Burma has meant nothing but poverty and death for a nation bounding with minerals. Chinese support of Sudan, has left Arabs richer, but has meant that blacks are victims of genocide with Chinese weapons or being pushed into deserts to die. Chinese Weapons to Zimbabwe go to a dictator who has completely ruined his country’s economy and killed his own people…

To bring up this lovely 5,000 years is really to look past the fact that the country itself is less than 50 years old and that large swaths of it are regions of other groups such as in Xinjiang. If you want to talk about a Chinese way in reference to the country, then why not make an Uighur or Tibetan premier and then prove how unified you are instead of sending a bunch of han to live in their regions and not letting them read their religious texts?

Mainstream Western media stages “Blemishing China Marathon”

By James Shen

Synopsis

Ignoring outpouring hospitality of the Chinese people, Mainstream Western media has waged a negative campaign against China recently to punish the country’s failure to comply with Western requests at the Beijing Olympics. This article examines the roots of the mainstream Western media’s anger towards China, exposes its hypocrisies and double standards, and advocates the development of a positive-spirited media system that is built on the basis of upholding Chinese public welfare and interests.

Full text

If you google “China” or “Olympics” on any given day in recent months, with the exception of the few weeks China was stricken by deadly earthquakes, you will be overwhelmed by the shower of negative coverage from the mainstream Western media against China and its hosting of 2008 Beijing Olympics.

For months leading up to the Beijing Games, China has been put under the Western microscope with accusations and complaints against the country and its government sweeping across all terrains, from big political issues such as Tibet, human rights, protest rights, press and religious freedom; to social problems including air pollution, government relocation of Beijing residents; to conspiracy stories about special visual effects of the opening ceremony and ultra performance of Chinese athletes; and to more trivial displeasures about losing a pair of expensive sunglasses, difficulties to access Olympic Green, English standard of volunteers, and over-eagerness of residents to help the foreigner visitors. The list goes on and on.

As if that is not enough, an NBC correspondent went on a live TV hunt for Chinese foods in Beijing. Let’s take a look at what she found: giant scorpions, lizards, silk worms, seahorses, iguana tails and dung beetles. Other Western reporters also cited rabbit head, pig brain and animal penis. Being a native of Beijing with 20 plus years of living there and a food lover myself, I have little knowledge where to look for these exotic things, not to mention ever eating them. Come on, China has a civilization of 5,000 years – Western reporters can’t be seriously thinking about portraying the Chinese as barbaric aboriginals or man-eating cannibals, right?

In fact, Dave Barry of Miami Herald admitted to a blog “beijingboyce.com” that “The Chinese people I saw all seemed to be buying things like lamb kebabs and fruit. On the other hand, the people gathered around the centipedes and scorpions on a stick were, in almost every case, tourists or American TV reporters doing fun features on weird Chinese food…. The Chinese don’t eat scorpions. They feed their scorpions to TV reporters. I would not be surprised to learn that the Chinese word for scorpion is “TV reporter food.”

Granted, China is not completely innocent from many of the aforementioned allegations and criticisms, but it is neither an evil host which deserves no credit at all. As the world’s fastest growing economy and one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, there has got to be something positive to report on.

You can be easily frustrated, however, if you are looking to read something more positive or, at the least, constructive about the country and its hospitable people. Sure, there is always the official Xinhua News or China Daily one can read for a change, but any praise from self-proclaimed independent and objective mainstream Western media is surprisingly hard to come by.

Meanwhile, for average Westerners, it is hard not to be misled by the drowning negative coverage on China. A homemaker in the US told reporters that she does not want to “legitimize the Chinese government” by supporting the Beijing Olympics.” Didn’t President Bush just open a bigger US Embassy there? What are we talking about here exactly? I am as puzzled as an Atlanta man who demanded an online answer for not seeing Russian tanks there.

As much as I disagree with President George W. Bush on many things, I have to applaud his recent TV interview in Beijing with NBC in which he stressed that the US and China as two very different countries and cultures are bound to have agreements and disagreements on a range of things, but it is important to have a constructive relationship which will help each other communicate disagreements.

Wow, how I wish that he had possessed this wisdom before starting the Iraq war – lives of estimated 1.2 million Iraqis and 5,000 US soldiers could have been saved.

Should the 2008 Olympics be awarded to Beijing in the first place?

Although the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games is coming up in a matter of few days, the arguments surrounding if IOC had made a mistake in letting China host the 2008 Olympics and if China had fulfilled its relevant promises seem to have just started.

Why pick a heavily-polluted country that is dictated by “free market Stalinists” which suppresses human rights, religion and press? China broke its promises to IOC for all of these areas, charges the mainstream Western media.

However, according to the IOC, its mission is “to build a peaceful and better world in the Olympic Spirit which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play - Olympic Spirit strives to inspire and motivate the youth of the world to be the best they can be through educational and entertaining interactive challenges. Olympic Spirit seeks to instill and develop the values and ideals of Olympism in those who visit and to promote tolerance and understanding in these increasingly troubled time in which we live, to make our world a more peaceful place.“

Does China deserve to be awarded the hosting right of Olympics? Apparently, the Chinese people said a loud “yes”. The whole world witnessed how much grass-root support China got from its people when it applied for and won the hosting right of the event.

As a country with more than one fifth of the world’s population – should it not be given a chance to host one of the many games? With 1.3 billion people not represented, can any Olympic Games truly promote its mission of “building a peaceful and better world with mutual understanding”? That is why the IOC made its decision and it is undoubtedly a correct one.

By comparison, I have serious doubts if the mainstream Western media truly understands and honors the spirit of Olympics – questioning China’s legitimacy to host such an international event only gives away its arrogance, self-righteousness, entitlement and cultural supremacy in international affairs.

If the mainstream Western media is still the true believer of human rights and continues to uphold the universal belief that “all men are created equal”, it should acknowledge the birthright of any country including China, for hosting the Olympic Games.

While China needs improvements in many areas as every other country on this earth does, the changes and progresses made by the country in the past 30 years are unmatched in the its own history, which can not be hidden from view by the mainstream Western media.

China should not be forced to make any concessions or promises to any interest groups in order to be “bestowed” the hosting right of Olympics, thanks to the downfall of colonialism and imperialism! The country’s pursuit of reform in all domestic political and social-economic fronts, including but not limited to human rights and freedoms of its people, can and should only be driven by desires of its own people, rather than being imposed on by external forces.

In addition to disputing China’s hosting rights, the mainstream Western media also has aired many conspiracies about China’s intention for hosting the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Show of power? Self-interiority? Promoting China’s development path to replace the US model? Bla, bla, bla….

We all are humans and predictably we all want similar things in life at the end of the day. Splendid displays, inflated egos or decorated ideologies can not replace people’s basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and healthcare.

For hundreds of years, the Chinese people have craved for a peaceful environment where they can focus on making a better living for themselves rather than laboring for self-serving emperors or greedy foreign opium traders. They have been quite successful in the past three decades and now they simply wanted to party and celebrate with the world through Beijing Olympics. Is that so hard to understand?

Why is the mainstream Western media so angry with China?

In his recent article “Are the Media Being too Mean to China?” published on slate.com, Prof. Tim Wu of Columbia University wrote that “China’s idea of what makes for a better Olympics for foreign consumption—tightened security and cleaning up marginal elements—is exactly what makes Western reporters crazy.”

While Prof. Wu’s observation only touched on one of the surface symptoms that irritated the mainstream Western media, it does shed some light on the current tension. What he described is in fact a cultural difference in how the Chinese and the Western people receive and entertain their guests. But the root of problem is the ethnocentric mindset of the Western reporters to the cultural differences and their entitlement that things should only be done in their ways.

Similar examples are abundant, whether it is about different ways under which Chinese and Western athletes are trained or about how they differ in keeping their personal appearance or etiquettes. I am particularly disappointed with Prof. Wu’s comments that “China doesn’t have the manners and grace of the richer countries, even if it has increasing economic and political clout.”

While making noises during eating is a taboo in many Western cultures, being openly confrontational in social interactions is a sin in many Asian cultures. These are simply cultural differences that should not be judged as superior or inferior, or we risk entering the boundaries of cultural supremacy.

Unfortunately, it is this arrogant mindset that has led the mainstream Western media to judge China by its own culturally biased standards and self-centered expectations. It is not a surprise they drew the conclusion that China broke its promises for hosting Olympics, an allegation China has denied.

What followed was an irrational unleash of anger by the mainstream Western media towards China in an attempt to force the country into the direction the Western media desired to see. The collective media assault on China, however, is more based on self-interests and ethnocentrism, rather than fairness, objectivity and independence which the mainstream Western media often preach.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!

A recent issue of Newsweek carried an article, “Rise of the Sea Turtles”, that found “Westernized Chinese people” tend to be more resentful to the West. Although I wasn’t particularly impressed with its analysis of the root causes, the article does provide us with a good pointer to an emerging trend.

I can probably qualify as one of the “Westernized Chinese people” the article was referring to, although I prefer to identify myself as a Chinese American after becoming a naturalized US citizen for many years.

I think it is unfair and simplistic to conclude that the “Westernized Chinese people” are more resentful to the West, because the situation is far more complicated than portrayed. The resentments, in fact, are not the towards the West in its entirety but more targeted at the double standard and intolerant attitudes often adopted by the mainstream Western media and Western governments towards China and other non-Western countries. “Westernized Chinese people” tend to be elites who are educated in the West and their advanced training and intellect make them independent thinkers. They are sensitive towards the hypocrisies of the mainstream Western media which scrutinizes China with one set standards while closing its eyes to the same problems at home.

No one person or one country is perfect and the Bible tells us that everyone is a sinner. If we (Americans) can allow ourselves make mistakes and accept skeletons in our own closets, why should we dissect other countries under our tinted lenses and punish them for not satisfying the standards that even ourselves often can not meet?

We should pursue “constructive dialogues” rather than endless “regime changes” by using force - ironically both strategies were supported by President George W. Bush. I salute his newly-found wisdom which helped him reach a peaceful resolution with the North Koreans and hopefully the same can be done with the Iranians.

If we desire international solidarity against terrorism, why is the mainstream Western media always so reluctant to condemn those who terrorize China? Read its coverage of recent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and you know what I am talking about.

If the mainstream Western media wants to be the role model for its Chinese peers, why does it conveniently distort facts, use phony pictures and brush away people who have different opinions and deny their right to have their voices heard? A Chinese American confronted a CNN journalist a few months ago in LA when she and many other pro-China protestors were denied chances to be interviewed, the journalist responded harshly - “don’t tell me how to do my business!”

We teach every citizen in the West to respect laws and regulations, yet the mainstream Western media participated in cheering the illegal protests and vandalism in Beijing.

Personally I had a painful experience demonstrating on London streets in 1989. It was cold in that morning and I stepped out of the picketing line for a few minutes to get some desperately-needed sunshine. I was subsequently handcuffed by force and arrested by the London police. When my petite wife disputed their action, she was also handcuffed and arrested. We were locked into separate cells for hours with no food and water, not to mention access to a phone and legal advice. We were only released after the demonstration organizer intervened and after being forced to sign the British equivalent of confession statements.

If being out of the picket line for some sun is a crime that deserves to be handcuffed and thrown into jail in London, why should the Chinese be criticized for expelling illegal protestors in Beijing who purposely climb lamp-posts, buildings and advertising billboards to display unauthorized banners?

Why should an American “pastor”, who proudly vandalized the two Beijing hotel rooms and then cowardly sneaked away, be cheered as a “righteous protestor” by the mainstream Western media?

If a Chinese protestor goes to the 2012 London Olympics to protest against the British suppression of Northern Ireland and hang banners on the Big Ben – can he or she count on the mainstream Western media for for the same “heroic” coverage? Should we also question the right of London for hosting Olympics and its commitment for press freedom if its police arrests the protestor?

Food for thought - “Don’t do unto others what you don’t wish to do unto yourself” (Confucius) and “let he who is without sin cast the first stone!” (Jesus, John 8:1-11, Matthew 7:12)

Is Western-styled press freedom what China needs?

A highly-respected US scholar once told me that the Western media is founded on the spirit of challenging authorities and it is the media’s job to be cynical, vigilant, critical, defiant and negative.

I am a strong believer of the fundamental principles on which the US political system is founded. Besides many merits of the system, media stands out as an indispensable component designed to supervise, on behalf of the public, the three branches of the federal government. This is almost a perfect setup except three potential flaws – firstly, there is no mechanism in place for the supervision of the media itself; secondly, there are serious conflicts of interests between the two contradictory roles of media both as a representative of public interests and, at the same time, as self-serving profit-making enterprises; and thirdly founding media on the basis of cynicism and negativity has its own social costs.

For media to fulfill its role to supervise the government, it needs to serve public interests, rather than its own interests. It needs to be unbiased, objective and independent.

Nonetheless, it is well-known that the mainstream Western media has long blended its role for public welfare with relentless pursuit of ego, power and profits. As the world enters the information age, the mainstream Western media has become a new rising superpower with ever-increasing influence on domestic and international politics, economy, social structure, value systems and people’s everyday life.

Does Americans really have as much freedom as the mainstream media would like us to believe? As the mainstream Western media pursue freedoms in other countries, Americans are losing so many freedoms that once made them so proud.

In the past few decades, America has experienced a string of serious challenges and setbacks including the breakdown of family/social structure and value systems, falling religious influence and freedom, popular abuse and dependence of narcotics and prescription drugs, rising violence across the country, escalating racial tension and police brutality, widening gap between the rich and the poor, dropping standard of literacy and basic education, failing healthcare system that denies coverage of 23 million Americans, and a tendency of resolving international disputes with “regime change” by military force rather than diplomacy, violations of on constitutional civil and human rights under the cover of anti-terrorism, to name just a few.

Our children can no longer walk to the school bus by themselves for fear of drug pushers and child snatchers on the way. By the time they arrive in their schools, metal detectors await for them in some inner city schools. They have to leave their bags in lockers and no colored drinks are allowed for fear of bombs. Their teachers are not allowed to mention any religion or teach morals in schools. Even “Christmas trees” must not be called “Christmas trees” but “family trees”. They have to go through evacuation drills often to remain vigilant because school shootings are spreading. Now people are even more scared because a school district in Texas took the lead to allow teachers carrying guns to the classroom. But can we trust the teachers? Do we have to outsource our teachers from India or China one day?

As an American citizen, nothing is more valuable than my voting right. But even that has depreciated. Why? Because the mainstream media is not doing its job of dissemination of objective information. Instead it confuses me with a constant stream of selectively edited, distorted and manipulated information in order to advance its own preferences, agendas and commercial interests.

Let’s take a look at the tainted media pictures of presidential candidates. John Edwards is a wife cheater, but that has been kept from the public until now; Hilliary is a liar who believes she is entitled to be the President and her husband Bill is hostile to the mainstream press; John McCain is a patriot but a war monger who knows nothing about economy; and finally Obama, alas, is actually a celebrity, radical of racial politics, Muslim (not that there is anything wrong with it) and “Anti-Christ”! For God’s sake, stop harassing me with all this sensational talk designed to boost ratings and I want to vote for Paris Hilton, but unfortunately she is not on the ballot. So my pathetic one vote looks quite useless, well, at least for now.

Moving back to topic of Beijing Olympics. A Western journalist was quick to point out his disagreement with the slogan, “One World One Dream”, which is meant by the host nation to stress the commonalities all peoples share. Nevertheless, this reporter chose to emphasize the different values he has from the Chinese host.

Fine, let’s talk about the differences. If the mainstream Western media can acknowledge that peoples on this earth are different and that there are vast differences between them in the geographic landscapes, population structures, social-economic hierarchy, cultural values, beliefs, religions and ideologies, it should not be difficult to appreciate that their political, legal and media systems also need to differ from each other to accommodate for the specific needs of each country. It is dangerous to assume the systems of the West are somehow superior which can be transplanted to other countries.

Does China need a Western-style media system? I doubt it. While fundamental Western media principles of cynicism, defiance, negativity and confrontation may or may not work well in the Western cultures, they most-definitely will not be successful in the Chinese cultural environment which values hierarchy, harmony, benevolence and tolerance among people.

However, it is the Chinese people who should decide eventually what political, economic and media systems are the ones they need. I have faith that with five thousand years of civilization, China has the wisdom to draw from the strengths of the West, avoid its fundamental flaws and ultimately develop a positive-spirited media system with Chinese characteristics that is built on the basis of upholding public welfare and interests.

Final conclusion

By blemishing a hospitable nation, which worked hard and sacrificed dearly to be a good host, mainstream Western media only exposed the self-interest and ethnocentric facets of itself to the whole world. Such irrational and frantic behaviors will only serve to bolster more media scrutiny by the Chinese government, further alienate the Chinese people and erase any remaining credibility and relevance of the mainstream Western media in the post-Olympic China.

I love the motto of Beijing Olympics - “One World One Dream” - the dream of the Olympic Spirit under which all peoples of the world will be united with mutual understanding, friendship, solidarity, fair play and tolerance to build a peaceful and better world together.

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James Shen is a US-based independent business analyst supporting multinational companies that seek cohesive growth in China. He is a native of Beijing and a naturalized U.S. citizen. He studied in the UK in the 1980s and has lived in the US in the past 19 years.

Source: Bizchina, China Daily, August 21st 2008

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-08/21/content_6956968.htm

The US and China should continue to seek a mutual understanding to strengthen the nations’ relationship and the next US Administration needs to continue to engage in dialogue with China, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said.

“One of the first challenges the next US president will face will be how to respond to China’s emergence as a global power,” Paulson said in an article in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. “I believe that engagement is the only path to success.”

In the article, Paulson said that the worries held by some Americans regarding China’s economic development were wrong, and China’s stable development was good for both countries.

“Americans who worry that China might overtake the United States are worrying about the wrong thing,” said Paulson in the article titled “A Strategic Economic Engagement -Strengthening US-Chinese Ties”.

Instead of worries over China’s development, Paulson said those people should be concerned that serious troubles in China’s economy could threaten the stability of the US and global economies.

He said the two countries have many overlapping interests in sectors such as trade, investment and environmental sustainability, and particularly in energy security. As the two largest consumers and two of the largest importers of oil in the world, China and the US are “natural allies”, he said.

In a telephone conference held on Tuesday, Paulson said China was moving in the “right direction” on its currency reform efforts even though some US lawmakers are probably dissatisfied.

“I think Congress…can see change because the rate of appreciation has increased,” he told reporters.

He said he believes China was “moving in the right direction” when it comes to currency reform. “I think a good number of people think the movement is inadequate, but I think people recognize that the pace of appreciation has accelerated,” he said.

Paulson said he hopes the Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED), a biannual event attended by high-profile officials of the two countries initiated in 2006 will continue. “It is my hope that the next US president will expand on the SED to take US-Chinese relations to the next level,” he stated in the article.

Paulson said the next round of the SED would focus on energy and environmental issues, and efforts to agree on an investment treaty.

He said the discussions, which will take place at the end of the year in China, would advance efforts by the two countries to work on a 10-year cooperative agreement aimed at addressing energy security and environmental pollution issues.

Original post By: Mike Adams at: http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/2908/2/

The author lists the faked Olympic items: • The weather is fake: Beijing is usually a smog pit with very polluted air. Beijing is made clean overnight by faking. Manufacturing plants are shut down. People and cars are ordered to stay home to ease traffice jam. • The free speech is fake: All the freedom protestors are denied permission. Or they may be arrested. • The opening ceremony was faked: The fireworks were faked using pre-programmed computer generated images. The singing was lip-synced! • The Internet access is censored: Fake free access. • Swimmer Michael Phelps’ food is fake: Consuming a whopping 12,000 calories a day, Michael Phelps is a junk food junkie powered by empty calories. While you can get away with that when you’re 23 and exercising six hours a day, if Phelps continues his ingestion of fake food beyond his peak training years, he’ll soon have REAL diabetes and obesity. Fat makes you float, by the way, so it might actually provide real buoyancy to his swimming career… • The ages and passports are faked: The Chinese gymnastics team won gold, helped in part by a tiny gymnast. The IOC apparently has no interest in investigating this apparent fraud. Most of the athletes are real, of course, but the whole show surrounding it is fake, fake, fake! It’s all a fabricated show to keep the world occupied while your money, your health and your future is stolen from you by the criminal institutions of the world (governments, corporations, etc.), many of which are actually sponsoring the Olympics. Much in America is fabricated, too… Now, just in case you think China is the only country engaged in fakery, the author reminds you that the United States is just as fake, but in different ways. In the U.S.: • The war on terrorism is fake: It was all fabricated to keep the population in a state of fear so they wouldn’t notice their freedoms being stolen away. • The mainstream media is fake: The news is largely fabricated or selectively edited to brainwash American consumers into thinking they live in a free country. Corporate press releases are run as “news” and any real news that threatens big advertisers is routinely censored. • The money supply is fake: The U.S. is running on monetary fumes, borrowing trillions from countries like China that actually have REAL money. • The housing bubble was fake: As publicly predicted here nearly two years ago, the housing bubble was fake, creating false wealth that created the impression that the economy was doing well. The whole thing was a charade, of course, and now housing values are plummeting and consumer spending is in a tailspin. • Health care is fake: There’s no “health” in health care, and the entire disease industry in the United States is based on keeping people sick, ignorant and bankrupt. • The corporate green movement is fake: Corporations love to act like they’re really “green” even as they continue polluting the planet. • Even the breasts are fake! The U.S. is the plastic surgery capital of the world, where moms are now giving their teenage daughters breast augmentation surgery as a high school graduation present. The author concludes: It’s quite fitting that American viewers who live in a fabricated American reality can watch the fake Olympics by tuning into a fake television network where they can watch a fake opening ceremony that celebrates competition among fraudulent Olympics participants who compete for the only thing that’s still real in this global economy: GOLD! Are you upset at this? Why?

By ASSAF LICHTASH

The politics surrounding Beijing’s hosting the Olympic Games have exposed two interrelated phenomena: the wounds and self-consciousness of the Chinese, and the extent to which the West misunderstands them. But they also represent a significant opportunity to better understand a country that will play a more influential role this century than previously.

For several thousand years, China existed as a regional hegemony. Its soft power extended to the far reaches of East Asia, and its riches drew bold explorers from the West. China’s very name - the “Middle Kingdom” - indicates it has long viewed itself as a leader, and was indeed long regarded as such. Yet by the middle of the 19th century, China had become a vastly different place. Foreign invasions and occupations devastated China’s national pride. The most traumatic of these were the British Opium Wars of the 1860s and Japan’s brutal occupation prior and during World War II. For a nation that had traditionally dominated its region, the slicing and dicing of the homeland by foreigners constituted a profound humiliation from which the Chinese are still recovering.

The years following the war saw a beleaguered China emerge unified, thanks to Mao Zedong. While his rise to power and solidification of communist rule featured extraordinary brutality - including the political persecution of hundreds of thousands - Mao ushered in a period of massive transformation and an invigoration of Chinese national pride. His exclamation on independence in 1949 that “the Chinese people are back on their feet” still reverberates in China. Like Russia’s current image of Stalin, the Chinese (many of whom did not live under Mao) see his legacy as the man who unified China against all odds and reclaimed its dignity. Such is the power of a national symbol in China.

For the Chinese, Beijing’s

hosting of the Olympics is yet another national symbol, a step in reclaiming the national pride stripped away 150 years ago. In this regard, the discourse headed by prominent Western leaders such as Angela Merkel of Germany and Gordon Brown of the UK prior to the Games on targeting the opening ceremony for boycott is indicative of how misunderstood China is, and the extent to which such threats could backfire.

CRITICS RIGHTFULLY point out China’s myriad political shortcomings and problems. China’s violence toward the Tibetan minority and its own citizens, its support of Sudan’s genocidal regime, and its harmful environmental policies are surely unacceptable. We must demand of China that it assume the role of global leadership more responsibly. Nevertheless, the attempt to bully it into changing its policies through a symbolic Olympic boycott only exacerbated these problems.

The core of the problem is a failure to adequately distinguish between the policies and shortcomings of the Chinese government and the views and aspirations of the Chinese people. The threat of an Olympic boycott embarrassed the latter, while doing little to sway the behavior of the former.

Despite China’s rapid ascendancy, we must remember that the Chinese people are deeply suspicious of the intentions of foreigners; at the same time, they desperately wish to be included in the global community. Calls for boycotts and other forms of delegitimization, rather than encouraging China to change, have deepened these public feelings of suspicion. Overall, they have made it less likely China will respond positively to the goading of Western democratic powers.

Even those Chinese who oppose the policies of the Communist Party of China have rallied around it when they felt their national identity under attack. Continued threats to delegitimize China will push the Chinese people further into this defensive posture. If we truly want to positively impact China, our engagement has to be constructive and carefully weighed. Gradual engagement, rather than rhetoric of shaming China, should be our modus operandi, if we wish to avoid alienating the Chinese people. After all, it is the will of the Chinese people, rather than any one particular policy of the communist party, that represents the best long-term hope of greater democratization and political freedom taking hold.

PAYING HOMAGE to China’s rich history and culture at the Olympics is a good starting point. This should be concomitant, though, with calls on China to improve itself on various issues. Criticism must be aimed squarely at the CCP while keeping China’s national pride intact, as US President George W. Bush wisely chose to administer in Bangkok on his way to the opening ceremony.

Western governments should enrich relations between the Chinese community and their own by means of cultural exchange and cooperative projects. The message needs to be unequivocal: We respect China and celebrate its culture, but demand responsibility on China’s part. Mismanagement of foreign policy, including decisions by Western leaders to pursue delegitimizing actions such as cultural boycotts, will create greater distrust bereft of constructive policy impact.

The writer is a graduate of the departments of international relations and East Asian studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in Chinese studies.