UC Irvine history professor Jeffrey Wasserstrom has an article in The Nation this week about recent criticism of China. First off, let me say that I have enormous respect for Professor Wasserstrom and have enjoyed his essays a great deal. I also fundamentally agree with the general premise of his most recent piece.
Professor Wasserstrom argues:
I’m distressed by the tendency of so many Americans to assume that everything that goes on in China and everything about the treatment it gets is exotic and unusual. Often things that happen in or involve China are normal–even routine–and we can understand them without factoring in esoteric cultural traits or thinking of the country as a place that, in the global arena, always mysteriously gets handled with kid gloves.
Fair enough. I am no big fan of “Chinese exceptionalism” whether in the field of historical research or in the discussion of contemporary issues, but the examples that Professor Wasserstrom uses in his argument beg certain questions.
For example, he argues that, for all the talk of boycotts, China is hardly the first state with a poor human rights record to host the Olympic games:
Take the Olympics. To read some