Understatement: It’s a prickly issue

Finally, a word (literally – it was about a sentence long) of mention in regard to the Chinese student protest on Sunday in the Age today.

I’ve been trying to defend the Chinese community’s support of the torch relay for a long time and I’ve just got to say, this article makes them look like violent, racist nationalists. And all that talk about ‘one people’ of China, that reminds me of this song: 龙 的传人.

Chris Lee rock version:

Probably the ‘proper’ version:

Yes, yes. It’s all very emotive, patriotic stuff there. It can bring generations of home-sick ex-pats, students and PR to tears.

There’s also a radio interview with Zhong Rongan regarding the pro-China, Olympic torch relay support rally that’s been organised by the Chinese community. Let’s just say that this interview is not going to go down in history as well thought out or well spoken. Note also the tone of the interviewer. Professional? Objective? Hm.

For more coherent (and apparently more ‘informed’) opinion, we have the Chinese ambassador to London, Fu Ying.

I love how one of the comments under the article says:

Could anyone explain to me what happened in a tiny island located in the South Atlantic Sea, which is thousands miles away from the Great Britain in 1982? By the way, the island named Guerra de las Malvinas. Says Paul Hudson Leeds, “When Fu Ying felt that the chartered plane left the UK heavier than when it came she felt the great sadness that many of us have felt since the expansionist Chinese regime invaded Tibet in 1950.” The Folklands Conflict/Crisis seems more recent than what happened in Tibet in 1951, I have to ask Hudson to read some history books before making any comment here. In addition, Dalai Lama said clearly on his web-site that he does not want to seek independence of Tibet from China and he support Beijing Olympics. Why do we believe those so-called “Free Tibet” protesters??? We don’t want to see the Tibetan extremists do the same thing as what IRA did in the UK, or do we??? China has survived for 5000 years in this world, we should have accept the Chinese has their own “Human Rights” to choose their own way of life. Telling Chinese what to do is actually violating the China’s “Human Rights”!!

I had fun reading through them all but, in short, it’s just the same old, ineffective rhetoric from both sides – one person’s rights to be versus another person’s rights to be.

And now for a little history.

Friendly Feudalisms: The Tibet Myth.

I’ve been saving that one. It’s from Ben Hammersley’s blog. I do wish that some of the people I’ve been speaking to have read (or at least, know a little about what they’re arguing) things that aren’t just human rights groups’ reports because – frankly – they all sound like they copied their material off of each other, a fact that I know for certain is true about the majority of international Australian reporting.