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Friday, 27 March 2009
Best-seller lashes ‘mafia don’ America
China’s sparring with the west has inspired its own angry best-seller, lashing foreign targets and the country’s own elite with scorn popular with some readers but worrying for a government wanting to tether nationalism.
China’s sparring with the west has inspired its own angry best-seller, lashing foreign targets and the country’s own elite with scorn popular with some readers but worrying for a government wanting to tether nationalism.
China is Unhappy has sold quickly since its publication earlier this month, but some state-run newspapers have fretted over its scathing assaults on the United States and the west – blasts that also spatter doubt on Beijing’s own policies.
President Hu Jintao goes to London next week for a G20 summit aimed at steadying the battered global economy. But Washington has behaved no better than a crime gang boss, write the five authors of this polemic.
“If we liken the world to a marketplace, the United States is like the mafia don of this marketplace, handing out IOUs to every stall and then carting off their stuff,” they write.
“The old mafia don, the United States, is already incapable of repaying all those IOUs, which are turning to scrap paper before our very eyes. But people have no choice for now but to protect him.”
Other targets include French President Nicolas Sarkozy, condemned by Beijing for meeting the Dalai Lama; liberal Chinese intellectuals accused of pandering to the nation’s critics; and the American public, scorned for living lazily off debt.
“I believe this financial crisis exposes the top-to-bottom degeneracy of US society,” writes one contributor.
The American people “were not entirely duped. They just wanted big houses without working for them”, he adds.
But the book, which is in the Chinese language, also lacerates China’s own policies, accusing officials of incompetence and stifling conservatism. And the book’s assault on these home targets may help explain the prominent criticism of it that has spread in official media.
“In fact, a key focus of the book is domestic problems,” Huang Jisu, one of the authors, told reporters.
“The global financial crisis has exposed many basic failings in contemporary capitalism, and China should actively participate in remaking the world order... But that also means we have to do our own things well and address domestic problems.”
In one chapter, Wang Xiaodong, a political writer long identified with assertive nationalism, reviles government handling of the infant milk powder scandal of last year.
“Here in the 21st century, we have this vast government apparatus and everyone says we have an authoritarian government. But actually it can’t even swiftly handle this problem. This reflects the decline and fall of Chinese civilisation.”
Chinese ruling Communist Party has encouraged ardent patriotism, but kept a tight leash on its popular expression, especially after anti-Japanese protests turned occasionally violent in 2005. And official media commentaries have accused the five authors of China is Unhappy of going too far.
An editorial in the official China Youth Daily said the authors were fanning ignorant anger to attract readers.
“These are some shrewd businesspeople and culture-mongers picking money from the pockets of angry youth and old folk fired up by nationalism,” the newspaper said.
The book echoes “China can say no,” a broadside at the west that sold well in 1996. That catchphrase later captured a mood of nationalist outrage after Nato forces bombed Beijing’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999, killing three people. One of the authors of the latest book, Song Qiang, helped write that earlier book.
The United States, which launched the bombs, said it was a mistaken assault on the wrong target. Mainland officials suggested it was deliberate, and many citizens also thought so.
This latest broadside reflects widespread Chinese resentment of western criticism over Tibet, which broke out into protests and boycott campaigns in Chinese cities last year.
With the west beleaguered by crisis, China should take more initiative and punish governments that expect Beijing’s help while criticising it over Tibet and Taiwan, say the authors.
“Western countries are fully at one in containing China,” they write. “China cannot use the approach of a kindergarten child - ‘I’ll be friends with you today, I’ll be friends with him tomorrow’ - to drive a wedge between them.”
1 comment:
Best-seller lashes ‘mafia don’ America
Reuters in Beijing
26 March 2009
China’s sparring with the west has inspired its own angry best-seller, lashing foreign targets and the country’s own elite with scorn popular with some readers but worrying for a government wanting to tether nationalism.
China is Unhappy has sold quickly since its publication earlier this month, but some state-run newspapers have fretted over its scathing assaults on the United States and the west – blasts that also spatter doubt on Beijing’s own policies.
President Hu Jintao goes to London next week for a G20 summit aimed at steadying the battered global economy. But Washington has behaved no better than a crime gang boss, write the five authors of this polemic.
“If we liken the world to a marketplace, the United States is like the mafia don of this marketplace, handing out IOUs to every stall and then carting off their stuff,” they write.
“The old mafia don, the United States, is already incapable of repaying all those IOUs, which are turning to scrap paper before our very eyes. But people have no choice for now but to protect him.”
Other targets include French President Nicolas Sarkozy, condemned by Beijing for meeting the Dalai Lama; liberal Chinese intellectuals accused of pandering to the nation’s critics; and the American public, scorned for living lazily off debt.
“I believe this financial crisis exposes the top-to-bottom degeneracy of US society,” writes one contributor.
The American people “were not entirely duped. They just wanted big houses without working for them”, he adds.
But the book, which is in the Chinese language, also lacerates China’s own policies, accusing officials of incompetence and stifling conservatism. And the book’s assault on these home targets may help explain the prominent criticism of it that has spread in official media.
“In fact, a key focus of the book is domestic problems,” Huang Jisu, one of the authors, told reporters.
“The global financial crisis has exposed many basic failings in contemporary capitalism, and China should actively participate in remaking the world order... But that also means we have to do our own things well and address domestic problems.”
In one chapter, Wang Xiaodong, a political writer long identified with assertive nationalism, reviles government handling of the infant milk powder scandal of last year.
“Here in the 21st century, we have this vast government apparatus and everyone says we have an authoritarian government. But actually it can’t even swiftly handle this problem. This reflects the decline and fall of Chinese civilisation.”
Chinese ruling Communist Party has encouraged ardent patriotism, but kept a tight leash on its popular expression, especially after anti-Japanese protests turned occasionally violent in 2005. And official media commentaries have accused the five authors of China is Unhappy of going too far.
An editorial in the official China Youth Daily said the authors were fanning ignorant anger to attract readers.
“These are some shrewd businesspeople and culture-mongers picking money from the pockets of angry youth and old folk fired up by nationalism,” the newspaper said.
The book echoes “China can say no,” a broadside at the west that sold well in 1996. That catchphrase later captured a mood of nationalist outrage after Nato forces bombed Beijing’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999, killing three people. One of the authors of the latest book, Song Qiang, helped write that earlier book.
The United States, which launched the bombs, said it was a mistaken assault on the wrong target. Mainland officials suggested it was deliberate, and many citizens also thought so.
This latest broadside reflects widespread Chinese resentment of western criticism over Tibet, which broke out into protests and boycott campaigns in Chinese cities last year.
With the west beleaguered by crisis, China should take more initiative and punish governments that expect Beijing’s help while criticising it over Tibet and Taiwan, say the authors.
“Western countries are fully at one in containing China,” they write. “China cannot use the approach of a kindergarten child - ‘I’ll be friends with you today, I’ll be friends with him tomorrow’ - to drive a wedge between them.”
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