24 October 2010
Preserving China's Humiliation
On Oct. 18, China began a month-long series of events marking the 150th anniversary of British and French forces destroying the old imperial Summer Palace. As on many previous occasions, the Chinese media is replaying with relish the bowdlerized official view that this was simply a wanton act of foreign imperialism.
Most Chinese just yawn at this, but a few well-meaning foreigners swallow the propaganda whole. They reason that if the Chinese government and people are still upset, then an apology should be made so as to bring the matter to a close. They don't realize that the Communist Party keeps harping on this episode to emphasize that its authoritarian style of government, which unified the country and threw out the foreigners, is still needed. Foreigners' acknowledgments of their past crimes are welcome, but attempts at reconciliation are, well, inconvenient.
The results of this misunderstanding have been entertaining. American Donald Young works for Global Partners in Hope, an organization that describes its mission as "bringing hope to communities around the world through partnerships between people who can help and people who need hope." In a speech he drafted for use on the anniversary he described Oct. 18, 1860 as "one of the most tragic days in all of Chinese history."
Canadian Gaetan Roy, who in 2004 started an organization called Roads to Reconciliation, drew up plans to apologize for the entire period from 1840 to 1900. But sensing that his elaborate apology was not welcome, he settled on a simple statement of repudiation.
"Some people said, 'Well, if you apologize, are we supposed to forgive you? Maybe that's an issue with the government.' Better to simplify things and use a strong word like repudiation because then it doesn't force anybody to have to do something other than to thank us," he says in a telephone interview.
When asked whether it made sense to apologize for something that happened a century before they were born, both men refer to a 2006 survey of 500 students at Peking University. Seventy percent of respondents said that foreign governments should apologize to China for events during the Opium Wars.
If the Chinese are angry, the two men argue, then we need to apologize. That the students might be simply regurgitating a line they had been taught since childhood and actually care little about does not seem to have occurred to them. Few Chinese are aware, for instance, that the destruction of the palace was intended as retaliation for the torture and murder of 18 foreign envoys, and was chosen as an attack on the property of the alien Manchu rulers of the Chinese in preference to one on the lives of innocent Chinese.
This doesn't impress Mr. Young. "You can't equate what happened in the pillage of that garden and all the artifacts that were there with the 18 people that died," he says. "Historical narrative is not really an issue for us," says Mr. Roy.
Mr. Young lavishes praise on Chinese President Hu Jintao and his campaign for "harmony"—oblivious to the fact that the word is now despised in China. It is code for the suppression of any opposition to Party rule using censorship, intimidation, imprisonment or violence. "I'm not about to say anything critical of the government," he stresses. "I respect [Hu] very highly, and I believe he's doing his best."
This single-minded support without reference to China's realities recalls the equally uncritical response of French literary giant Victor Hugo at the time of the Palace's demise. Hugo criticized the destruction, but let his imagination run amok. He described the complex as like something from the moon and the Chinese as supermen. He had never visited China, but unsurprisingly the authorities love to quote him rather than those who actually witnessed the events. A bust of Hugo was unveiled on the anniversary.
Apparently the word of foreigners carries extra weight, especially when it uncritically supports the official line. But Messrs. Roy and Young don't accept they might simply be minor players in propaganda efforts aimed at a domestic audience. Mr. Young wants to see the complex no longer used as a "center of hate," but as a place for peace and rest. Mr. Roy hopes to bring significant political, cultural, religious and military figures to China in 2011 or 2012 for further self-abasement, and symbolically to return a single looted item. He declines to name anyone involved, or the source of the item in question.
About a week before the anniversary neither man seemed clear as to what exactly would happen or where, and in the end most of their events were cancelled. Mr. Young stayed in the U.S., and Mr. Roy merely says that one representative of Roads to Reconciliation spoke at the site itself, although he did not provide information on who that was, whether an apology was made, and if there was any response.
Mr. Roy's stated aim had been to use the historic date to introduce his larger project to the media. But while the events were widely reported, and the usual antiforeign narrative supplied, mention of any apology, except a passing reference in one headline, was humiliatingly absent.
"People like yourself who've followed the events of the past weeks will understand," he remarks opaquely by email. Thoughts of "peace, cooperation, and harmony," supposedly the theme of the commemorations, have fallen by the wayside.
As Mr. Roy himself puts it, "The advantage of repudiation is that it's not like apologizing and apologizing again. You can always repudiate several times." He may find himself doing so on an annual basis. Yet as long as the Communist Party is in power, it's a safe bet he will be relegated to the usual role of "foreign friends," glimpsed in passing on the evening news but not heard.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment