14th July is the first day of new EU parliament. The clash between Griffin, the far-right BNP (British National Party) leader and MEP, and Baroness Kinnock, Britain’s minister for EU, bursts. It implies there is a huge gap amongst British attitude to EU. Indeed when European parliament election was happening in June, the diversity of the EU emerged cross the continent, not limited in Britain. The message is clear. The turn-out hit the historical low. The voters lost their interest in the EU. The right wing was winning. After this election, the EU will confront the Irish second referendum on Treaty of Lisbon. The first referendum has been vetoed last year. The referendum will determine whether Ireland accepts the EU constitution-like. If the referendum was failed again, the EU would face a constitutional crisis.
Such hesitation also presents Chinese dilemma. It is apparent that China has not found a united Europe when facing EU. Chinese EU policy seems fragile and isolated. In order to deal with the massive diversity inside the EU, China has developed a buy-your-bill’s strategy with European countries. To maximise Chinese benefit, the most ideal deal should be that China could buy at a whole-sale price. However currently China has to make individual deals with each member and the total cost is more expensive than the whole sale.
The case of Sarkozy claims the failure of Chinese strategy. China always takes it for granted that French like China for Chinese had so many old French friends like Chirac, Mitterrand. All of them and other Frenchmen loved Chinese culture so much. Even to Sarkozy, China once offered generous support when he was in the lowest in his political career. When Sarkozy visited China in 1995 and 2005, he was expelled from Chirac’s inner circle but was arranged to meet President Hu Jintao. Additionally, in 2008 China also secured its friendship with France by purchasing Airbus and nuclear technologies in order to comfort French. But in the end, China still can not tame the energetic little Napoleon. Sarkozy’s tricks on Tibet and tax haven blacklist have demonstrated China’s failure.
Crossing the English Channel, though China has no such old English friends as Chirac, Mitterrand in France, the bilateral relationship of China-UK has developed rapidly and fruitfully since 1999. Chinese students have become the largest international students group there. Most of them are self-funded. To normal Chinese, Britain is more attractive and recognised. (need more info to support relations developed rapidly and fruitful since 1999: the next is the supportive cases)Last October, David Miliband (full name), the UK foreign sectary, recognized China’s sovereignty over Tibet by announcing “we regard Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China” Immediately, UK foreign office published the memorandum of the UK and China: the framework of Engagement in the early of 2009.To differ from buying French airbus, Chinese are more prefer to import British ideas in politics, finance and R&D. Even the crisis beats UK’s reputation in finance, China still like to learn from London City and their financial regulation.
The development between China and UK implies some possible cooperation on EU’s affair. Britain is a veteran to play with Europe. Euro-skepticism is always a long controversy in British politics. However, Britain would never withdraw itself from EU. Both Tory (spell the full name: Tory is the nickname of Conservative) and Labour share the intention of bringing British influence to play the game in EU. The euro-skeptic Tory deliberately ignores this EU’s strategic value: Britain is not only a member of EU, but also a spokesman for EU. The spokesman’s role has given British the credit in the front of his ally American during the WWII and Cold War. Entering into 21st century, Britain transferred the credit in the War on Terrorism. Today it is fighting global recession.
With the end of Iraq and Afghanistan war, Obama intends to end the tension between America and the other worlds. To avoid losing his weight in the America-Anglo special relation, Britain must find a new interest point with America. The fight against global recession is the next one. The G20 summit showed that Brown still can work with America, but Obama switches his weight to European gradually.
The competition in EU is coming. Sarkozy leads France back to NATO. He shows his intention to pursue a European leadership. Britain’s role of the EU spokesman is under threatened by Sarkozy’s aggressiveness. The time is coming that Britain and France will compete inside Europe and global. In the global stage, Brown needs find a leverage to sell his spokesman’s role. Undoubtedly, Brown shows his friendly and comfortable gesture to China, for example the flexibility on Tibet and the warmth for long-term engagement. As a return, in this G20 summit, China reacts positively to Brown’s fiscal stimuli plan.
The fight against global recession implies the UK need China to buy the bill. It predicts the further cooperation in a wide range of issues. On the EU affair, it has to been admit that China is not a veteran. The more reasonable and pragmatic way is to select a potential collaborator inside EU. Britain may be a good candidate. The recent development on Sino-UK has set their milestone for future. To integrate Britain into China’s EU policy could be an attempt to end the dilemma of buy-your-bill’s strategy.
A new race model may be worthy of being considered to China’s EU policy. In this model, China need not use his economy power to comfort the each country in EU. What he can do is to choose some potential candidates for the race. Only the winner is awarded. Obviously Britain and France are good candidates. It seems that today Britain is Chinese favourite. The British duality of EU spokesman and traditional Euroskeptic provide himself enough space to manipulate. Therefore China should throw away the efforts and illusions to find a united Europe. Put the bet on a qualified horse and tame some old naughty friend.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Friday, 1 May 2009
A book wanted to read
I posted 5 books to Oxford, which cost 5.56 Pounds.
On the way back home, I stayed in Oxfam shortly and skipped the book of What the Media are doing to our Politics.This is the second time to read this book. In my mind, it can be listed with Andrew Marr's My Trade and Alistair Campbell's The Blair's Years. These two have been on my bookshelf. But I just read the preface of the latter and the contents of the first. John Lloyd's work seems more plain and frank for me.
On the way back home, I stayed in Oxfam shortly and skipped the book of What the Media are doing to our Politics.This is the second time to read this book. In my mind, it can be listed with Andrew Marr's My Trade and Alistair Campbell's The Blair's Years. These two have been on my bookshelf. But I just read the preface of the latter and the contents of the first. John Lloyd's work seems more plain and frank for me.
Recently I have bought several second hand books from Oxfam. The current reading on my bed table is Illustrated English Social History by G.M.Trevelyan. I just open the first pages. It is very attractive, especially when I returned from the travle to Wales. After hesitating, I put the book back to the shell and give me some time to finish the four volumes of Trevelyan's books firstly. The big weekend is an opportunity.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Who is the racist of political correctness?
There is always a question haunting in my mind: whether English ever eat turtle, at least in history. The question was raised after I read a commentary last year. In that article, the writer scornfully ended that he would not like go to a country of tortoise-eater. I have to say it totally undermined Chinese appetite for deliciousness. Actually they only eat the turtle, not tortoise. They are absolutely dissimilar tastes.
But to eat the turtle is not the Chinese or other East Asian privilege. In his Hard Time about 19th century intention between capitalist and miner, Dickens painted the upstart of Bounderby’s dream in such words “turtle soup and version of golden spoon”. It sounds that the turtle was the rising upper class’s favourite in Victorian era. Thanks to Heston in Channel 4. His programme confirmed my assumption recently. In his experimental chef show of Heston’s Victorian Feast”, he reconstructed a typical Victorian dinner according to an archived menu, the turtle was the delicious option in the table.
The selective amnesia about turtle meat would sometimes lead the misunderstanding and confliction amongst cultures. There is an example in China’s cyberspace this week. It is a stir triggered by a cartoon about evolution from apes to future human amongst various areas. In this satire picture, to African, the evolution ends as an anthropoid. And the destination of Chinese is a crab with three luxury watches. In Mandarin, the crab is homophonic to harmonious, the contemporary political slogan. And the three luxury watches implied the today CCP’s politics strategy, named three representative theory. Representative is identically pronounced as “to wear a watch” in Mandarin.
To a normal Chinese, the cartoon deems to be extremely satire about Chinese censorship. However, Custer, an English blogger from South Africa and in China, stamped racism to this picture and regarded it offensive politics correctness. He Caitou, who is a famous Chinese blogger and posted this picture on his own blog originally, refuted scornfully Custer’s commentary in his blog yesterday. This debate has attracted lots of comments and posters in both blogs.
Of course Custer’s opinion is constructive and friendly; moreover, it is not wrong to claim the racism is a bad social behaviour and politics incorrectness today. But the hidden problem is how Chinese think about the racial issues and whether they are aware of the linkage between racial issues and political correctness, as if which had been really established social issues in contemporary China.
Unfortunately, political correctness is rarely one failed case of the massive imported western ideas to China. I still remember it was first to read this word from a magazine more than nine years ago. In the following years, it failed to be popular as democracy, soft power or other keywords. Officially, in China, we have to admit some political tattoos which play as the roles of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as racism in western nations. But few label them with the term of political correctness. To Chinese, racism seems to be an issue beyond political correctness. You are very easy to find some funny stereotypes and negative jokes about black man in China. As turtle to Chinese, the sort of discrimination mostly is based on the stereotype from folk media, it is different from racism to the western, which is rooted in the brutal slave trade and colonial past.
Dr. Ferguson commented that, in Victorian era, British Empire was unsatisfied with the goal of just ruling this world, instead, redefine it. Today the allegation of racism has been established as a universal political correctness, ironically by these previous colonial nations. It can be regarded as the extension of British Empire’s narrative. It is supposed to introduced acceptably and prevail in post-colonialised countries.
Unluckily, it is not fit to Chinese context. Initially, as China has never colonized and treated brutally Africa like main European countries, the accusation of racism would not inspire Chinese guilt as ex-conical countries like UK, Spain, German and France. More importantly, China has either been colonized as India or most Asia-Africa-Latin American countries. Therefore, Chinese are lack of sympathy for the colonial memory and experience. The seemly hint of racism left to Chinese might be the war of Sino-Japan, or the faded history from late Qing dynasty. However, these miserable past emphasises Chinese that “lagging behind leaves one vulnerable to attacks.” It did not drive anti-racism to be a prevailing civil campaign in China.
The controversy in this week’s cyberspace reminds that China has come to a vanishing boundary world: globalisation. The dilemma is that Chinese is adopting a language system defined by English and subject itself to an Anglo-Atlantic predominated context. This is not only of racism, but more.
But to eat the turtle is not the Chinese or other East Asian privilege. In his Hard Time about 19th century intention between capitalist and miner, Dickens painted the upstart of Bounderby’s dream in such words “turtle soup and version of golden spoon”. It sounds that the turtle was the rising upper class’s favourite in Victorian era. Thanks to Heston in Channel 4. His programme confirmed my assumption recently. In his experimental chef show of Heston’s Victorian Feast”, he reconstructed a typical Victorian dinner according to an archived menu, the turtle was the delicious option in the table.
The selective amnesia about turtle meat would sometimes lead the misunderstanding and confliction amongst cultures. There is an example in China’s cyberspace this week. It is a stir triggered by a cartoon about evolution from apes to future human amongst various areas. In this satire picture, to African, the evolution ends as an anthropoid. And the destination of Chinese is a crab with three luxury watches. In Mandarin, the crab is homophonic to harmonious, the contemporary political slogan. And the three luxury watches implied the today CCP’s politics strategy, named three representative theory. Representative is identically pronounced as “to wear a watch” in Mandarin.
To a normal Chinese, the cartoon deems to be extremely satire about Chinese censorship. However, Custer, an English blogger from South Africa and in China, stamped racism to this picture and regarded it offensive politics correctness. He Caitou, who is a famous Chinese blogger and posted this picture on his own blog originally, refuted scornfully Custer’s commentary in his blog yesterday. This debate has attracted lots of comments and posters in both blogs.
Of course Custer’s opinion is constructive and friendly; moreover, it is not wrong to claim the racism is a bad social behaviour and politics incorrectness today. But the hidden problem is how Chinese think about the racial issues and whether they are aware of the linkage between racial issues and political correctness, as if which had been really established social issues in contemporary China.
Unfortunately, political correctness is rarely one failed case of the massive imported western ideas to China. I still remember it was first to read this word from a magazine more than nine years ago. In the following years, it failed to be popular as democracy, soft power or other keywords. Officially, in China, we have to admit some political tattoos which play as the roles of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named as racism in western nations. But few label them with the term of political correctness. To Chinese, racism seems to be an issue beyond political correctness. You are very easy to find some funny stereotypes and negative jokes about black man in China. As turtle to Chinese, the sort of discrimination mostly is based on the stereotype from folk media, it is different from racism to the western, which is rooted in the brutal slave trade and colonial past.
Dr. Ferguson commented that, in Victorian era, British Empire was unsatisfied with the goal of just ruling this world, instead, redefine it. Today the allegation of racism has been established as a universal political correctness, ironically by these previous colonial nations. It can be regarded as the extension of British Empire’s narrative. It is supposed to introduced acceptably and prevail in post-colonialised countries.
Unluckily, it is not fit to Chinese context. Initially, as China has never colonized and treated brutally Africa like main European countries, the accusation of racism would not inspire Chinese guilt as ex-conical countries like UK, Spain, German and France. More importantly, China has either been colonized as India or most Asia-Africa-Latin American countries. Therefore, Chinese are lack of sympathy for the colonial memory and experience. The seemly hint of racism left to Chinese might be the war of Sino-Japan, or the faded history from late Qing dynasty. However, these miserable past emphasises Chinese that “lagging behind leaves one vulnerable to attacks.” It did not drive anti-racism to be a prevailing civil campaign in China.
The controversy in this week’s cyberspace reminds that China has come to a vanishing boundary world: globalisation. The dilemma is that Chinese is adopting a language system defined by English and subject itself to an Anglo-Atlantic predominated context. This is not only of racism, but more.
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