Jottings from the Granite Studio

CDT last week posted a series of interviews with Chinese journalists, including one with a (more or less) anonymous Chinese journalist.  (Read other interviews here, here, and here.)  It’s a good read, as this particular journalist gives, to my mind, a pretty balanced perspective on the problems between Chinese nationalists and the Western media, while providing a good accounting of the misconceptions and misunderstandings from both sides of the ledger.  I did like his take on nationalism, in part because it more or less jibes with what I’ve been writing this past year:

CDT: WHAT APPROACH WOULD YOU PREFER THE CHINESE TO TAKE?

Journalist: First of all they should figure out where this kind of nationalism came from. I think there are two reasons. The first is that the Chinese people have been educated by this kind of patriotism or nationalism in their textbooks, which teach how China had suffered from its past history. They tell about China’s humiliating history, being invaded by Japan and western countries. This kind of education easily gives its people an impression that they should fight against any disrespect or invasion. So people become very sensitive about these international issues.

The second part is that most of the so-called nationalists are young people. They have not experienced too much in their lives. They have not experienced frustrations about jobs, about bad treatment,and other injustices from the government side. So they think it’s legitimate for them to stand by the government unquestioningly and they regard this kind of nationalism as patriotism. I feel that patriotism is a positive word and nationalism is negative. Patriotism makes people like heroes, but nationalism is kind of a blind patriotism. Based on these two reasons, I think the effective way to deal with the situation is to release more truth and allow the information to flow freely and more freedom of speech and expression, or let the average Chinese people know it’s normal for outside people to protest. We should deal with it with confidence and tolerance and try to dissolve any misunderstanding between both sides.

In any case, the whole series is well worth reading in its entirety.

I can’t emphasize enough the value of China Digital Times, it is the first place I look every morning and the staff and volunteers who maintain the site deserve a huge amount of credit for compiling and indexing the cacophony of China-related writing in print and on the web.  Kudos.