Beware an angry China

International Herald Tribune ^ | Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | Philip Bowring

[indcons]

Tibetans have a strong case against Beijing. But mixing it in with the Olympics and Darfur is a red rag to a wounded young bull.

Nationalism is more often aroused by setbacks than success, so the Tibet problems and the possible threats to a triumphal Olympics are stirring it in China.

On the horizon is the possibility that these will combine with high inflation, stagnating exports and trade tensions with the United States to create a perfect nationalistic storm.

The Chinese leadership faces a difficult balancing act.

As its legitimacy is now based on national achievement, not communist ideology, it must appear in step with popular feeling. Yet stability at home and good relations abroad require keeping nationalist emotions in check. The paranoia about evil foreign designs that thrived under Mao and was discarded by Deng Xiaoping is still close to the surface.

Almost all of China is offended that foreigners are so keen to lecture them and to encourage the petty boycotts that could spoil the Olympic party. It genuinely infuriates the Chinese that they are blamed for Darfur while their Western critics occupy Iraq. Beijing is happy to let such nationalist resentments vent in the sometimes violent language of Internet blogs and chat rooms.

[butterbattle]

"The right to practice their religion is not a right at all." lmao

[I. M. Trenchant]

Your assailants are the same group of people, or their descendants, who wanted to see Nixon impeached for having visited China in February of 1972. They were led at that time by Wm. F. Buckley Jr., recently deceased. His brother, James Buckley, later led the Senate charge to impeach Nixon over Watergate, which was one of the thinnest scandals ever put over on the U.S. public. As the years passed and he saw how wrong he had been about Nixon's 'opening to' China, Wm. F. Buckley, with great stealth, increasingly implied he had not objected to Nixon's approach to China, but rather, that he had only objected to Nixon's having been civil towards Chairman Mao -- as if diplomacy could be conducted with the sort of mailed fist approach that some of your critics have used in this thread in addressing your posts. As a member in good standing in Free Republic forums for a decade or so, I welcome your views. Unlike most of your critics, I have a fine Tibetan rug as the showpiece in my living room. Cheers.