I don't know what to think

[theladyrose]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=570&e=1&u=/nm/20050505/sc_nm/china_japan_war_dc

The thing that scares me the most about this article is how so many people don't know about the Japanese war crimes in China during World War II. Japanese agression in China itself has been largely ignored by most Westerners; face it; how many people know about the rape of Nanking? When I first saw this article and a series of other articles about flaring Japanese-Chinese tensions over past war atrocities, I was pretty damned pissed at Japan. It's partly personal for me because they killed some of my relatives and caused the rest to flee elsewhere.

And then I'm even more disgusted with Chinese conduct. Does Japan deserve blame for taking so bloody long to even recognize that they had committed these attrocities? Bloody hell, yes. But the Chinese are hardly acting as the moral superiors with the recent wave of anti-Japanese riots that come and go. I then think about all of the human rights atrocities that the Communist government (the Chinese government's only interest in the West is commercial; they'll pander and milk out Western favor to get all of those contracts. The communist economy totally died out some time ago.) has committed against its own people in peacetime and then become more disgusted, if that's possible. What about the Cultural Revolution? Still today few Westerners know the full horrors of what the Communist Party members under Mao Zedong did to those who didn't support the regime. Even today in China if your grandparents owned a shop you won't be able to get a government job unless you want to work as a janitor. It took twenty years for my oldest half uncle to get a teaching position at the Beijing University because he was branded "child of capitalist." The Communists seized huge amounts of property and then killed off the owners. Even more of my relatives were murdered by the Communists than by the Japanese because my grandfather was a cloth factory owner. Not all of my family was able to flee; those who had to stay in Hanzhou have led very difficult lives. It's no wonder that so many of my relatives have scattered to the various corners of the globe because they couldn't take it any longer. They were the lucky ones.

It's at times like these when I really wish I wasn't from a long line of people who have a tendency to kill each other off when they don't think anyone is looking. I never wanted to belong to a race that's so backwards when it comes to basic human freedoms.

Culturally I'm not from China, though. I will slap the next person who claims that I'm from China. I'm from Hong Kong, the old British colonial Hong Kong. I spent my early years divided between the old Hong Kong and California; it was only when I turned nine when I officially stepped foot on Chinese soil. And even Hong Kong now-it's not the same anymore after it's been taken over by China. We've got a puppet Chinese government protecting Chinese interests. Nobody gives a damn about what the natives of Hong Kong want for themselves. I don't call that a "special autonomous region."

I'm not even going to talk about Taiwan. This supposed detente brought on by the Chinese president and the Taiwanese opposition leader disgusts me beyond measure. Taiwan is an independent nation and always has been. Taiwan is so politically and culturally separate from China that it is impossible to unify the two nations. We'll only have another civil war on our hands, and China has had enough of those. I have never met anyone from Taiwan who claimed to be Chinese. China has enough land and capital pouring in from the West; it doesn't need Taiwan, too. Neither does it have a legitimate claim to Tibet. Who the hell besides the Chinese government doesn't want a free Tibet?

I will save my rant about the Asian educational system for another time. I'm normally not this angry, really, but these sorts of issues always make me very touchy. I'm oversimplifying stuff, too, which is a bad habit of mine.

Comments

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

I think if you delve into the history of any country or race you'll find things to get depressed about! Human history is very depressing. You'd think by now we'd have learned to get along in a civilised fashion, but there's still no sign of that happening!

Here in Australia we have things to be thoroughly ashamed about, once you do a bit of digging into our history. Our treatment of the country's original inhabitants is just the start. We imported slaves to work sugar plantations. And we practised the most appalling racism towards anyone who happened to be Asian for most of our history, and sadly that kind of racism still hasn't died out. Even more depressingly, we have a government that exploits racism and the ignorance and fear that fuels it for political advantage.

[theladyrose.livejournal.com]

The more I end up learning about history, the more I wonder about when people will tire of killing and torturing each other. You'd think we would have learned something about compassion over such a long span of time.

Studying American history more in depth this year has been somewhat appalling finding about all of the nasty things the American government has done. The treatment of Native Americans and slaves is one thing; the various corrupt, repressive military dictatorships we've backed to protect American economic interests in those parts of the globe are hardly an improvement. We're exporting cruelty abroad.

I have heard a little about racism in Australia; an Australian-American friend of mine said that she had much laxer Australian citizenship requirements (she was born there but currently spends most of her time in the US) when applying for citizenship. Apparently the citizenship office bureaucrats were delighted to discover that she wasn't an Asian applying for citizenship and took about 1/3 of the time it takes for an Asian to get an Australian passport.

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

Sadly anti-Asian racism has been part of Australian culture since the 19th century. There were many Chinese immigrants in Australia at that time and a lot of people became obsessed with the idea that our "British Culture" was under threat. Until the late 1990s it looked like Australia as a nation was finally growing out of its racism, but there's been an upsurge in racism since then. Mostly fueled by a very irresponsible and cynical media, and some appalling conservative politicians. Like the US we seem to be retreating into paranoia. It's terrifying to see how easily dormant racism can be re-awoken.

Doomed to repeat it....

[a-mire.livejournal.com]

It's at times like these when I really wish I wasn't from a long line of people who have a tendency to kill each other off when they don't think anyone is looking. I never wanted to belong to a race that's so backwards when it comes to basic human freedoms.

Well, and perhaps I am oversimplifying, too, but the race you belong to which does such things, followed by ignoring them if they were done by "US" and memorialising them if the were done by "them", is the human race. It is uniquely human, in fact.

Although there are no longer any members of my family alive to talk about the Clearances, thank God for small favors, that's the reason I am American now instead of Scottish. Some Englishmen decided that it would be more profitable for them if the Scots were replaced with sheep, in more ways than one. So they started exterminating us. No one likes to think of those (stereotype coming) polite, soft-spoken gentlemen as the harbingers of genocide, but they did it.

And let's not go into the Irish line. What a mess there! I still think they'll never have peace until the island government is turned over to Druids again.

Sad thing is, different lines of my family were scattered in the exact same fashion as yours over a century and two centuries before, and even though we have no eyewitnesses left to tell the stories and don't blame the current English citizenship for the crimes of their ancestors, we are still touchy about it. And you are much closer to what actually happened, so you know, rant on. For me, I knew most of this, but it's better to get a perspective from an actual human than a history book, you know? Then it's not just a run of dry interrelated facts.

Hmm, did that make sense? I drank some Nyquil about 15 minutes ago and things are getting blurry....

Re: Doomed to repeat it....

[theladyrose.livejournal.com]

Nah, you're perfectly lucid :)

I have a rather idealistic tendency to assume that humans generally are good at heart, and that cruelty is largely in the minority. It's mostly my not knowing so much about genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, and the like in so many different parts of the world that probably leads to my rather optimistic view. When will people tire of killing each other?

Mostly my opinions about Chinese-Japanese relations are pretty much personal with some weak attempts using historcal justification. I personally have nothing against the Japanese and love their culture, even more than I do Chinese much to the chagrin of some of my family. I have a terrible addiction for Japanese sweets and Japanese food in general, among other things :P

Re: Doomed to repeat it....

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I generally assume that humans in general are vicious, stupid and cruel until they prove otherwise. For a while in the late 20th century there seemed to be some grounds for believing we were finally learning marginally more civilised behaviour. So much for that hope!

It horrifies me to see the constant glorification of the military and of war on US cable TV channels, and increasingly we're seeing the same sort of thing on Australian TV. And it saddens me to watch Australians celebrate Anzac Day, our annual glorify-the-military day. Ironically the day actually memorialises a pointless slaughter in a war that had nothing whatever to do with us. We were fighting the Turks, for goodness’ sake, we had no idea why we were fighting them, and we still don’t. A hundred years later we're still marching off to fight in wars that have nothing to do with us.

[horosha.livejournal.com]

I equate China much to a modern Sparta: people are afraid of growing US influence and so turn to the only nation that can seemingly mount a successful challenge. China has a seat on the security council, nukes, and a swiftly rising economy. Oh sure, they don't care about human rights or civil liberties. But no one really gives a damn about that on the international scene. Hell, Russia is selling missiles to Syria and we're selling jets to Turkey. And we all know where France's next arms deal is going.

Did you know that our biological weapons program came almost entirely out of Japanese war atrocities in China? If you want to talk about crimes against humanity that nobody knows about, Japanese bioweapon testing on Chinese (and American) POWs ranks up there. They even dropped plague-infested fleas over towns. After WWII we shipped the entire program back to America, which is why we have such a big bioweapons program while other countries are mainly chemical. The Rape of Nanking is just one of many. And of course China then goes and has its revolution. Sometimes I think I'm the only person my age who knows about Tiananmen Square.

I love the delicious irony of liberals in this nation, who are quick to point out that Wal Mart is "exploiting" Chinese workers through poor wages and such, completely missing the point that this exploitation is possible only because of such a repressive government. Has the entire world gone mad? The West loves to talk about a rising China. Check out the latest Newsweek. It's got a big cover story on China's rising economic status. Yet, here the media is condemning Japan for not acknowleging war crimes while in China such crimes still happen every day. I don't remember who said it, but in America there's a scandal. In China they award medals.

It's in people not understanding the implications of the present day that fuck things up. Look at Ho Chi Minh. Imagine how different the world would be if America had listened to his pleas for democracy rather than turning him away. Imagine if we'd invaded Iraq with an actual reconstruction plan. Imagine if we'd sent more than a handful of troops to Afghanistan, and instead of ordering troops NOT to touch the Opium fields actually tried to convert the economy to something productive? Global politics is nothing but hypocrisy. Don't even get me started on Tawain.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. It just really pisses me off.