A different point of view

I generally like CNN. But I don't like how it is covering the news in Tibet. But I can't blame them. Compared to their report on the Chinese hackers, this one at least appeared to be somewhat impartial. Again that is after the hard facts of how the riot really happened, they couldn't do anything but report the impartial truth. I like how they say that in Iraq, trust and truth are all relative. What they do not realize is that it applies everywhere.

The current western view of Chinese government's censorship has been pretty consistent - China is one of the worst offender of human rights in the entire world. The new human rights report that has been published by the U.S. government ranked China in the top spots. As Bush would say, we, the good doers would have to save these people from their suffering. What is ironic is that the same kind of mentality and almost exact same kind of words have been wielded as the political means to justify the Communist regime by Mao. Yes that didn't happen for Mao. Mao couldn't lead his Communist party and went around the world to save people from suffering but his failure has many layers. The flaws in the Communism ideology for one, and the blind philosophical crusade was probably the actual cause of the fall of China in modern history. 

The world is connected yet segregated, much like our country the United States. People really need more understanding and need less judgement. We all respect human lives, however, as a nation, we ought to respect its sovereignty and ideology as well if not more. Maybe it is my collective utilitarianism renders my way of thinking. But I think this collective utilitarianism is very universal and very human. It is this very idea that enabled our troops to serve in Iraq for reasons that are not in serious doubts. So I think I have a lot of ground to say that a nation's stability is more important than a lot of issues, such as the relative truth of human rights issues in Tibet. 

What I do not understand is that so many people, either naive or clueless, are so ready to judge other people or other nation simply because they didn't do certain things in certain ways at certain time. Well there is a good reason behind a lot of things that you have no clues about. I mean just apply the standard regarding human rights from America to America 100 years ago, I am sure America would also be one of the worst offender of human rights in history. The point is that Chinese Empire has fallen and people have revolutionize the nation with new ideas and formed new government. Yet it fell again in World War II. The neighbor nation, Japan, way smaller than China almost succeeded the invasion. At one point it had controlled up to 80% of the territories in China with its military forces. When the Chinese won World War II, basic survival was in question. Then there was the civil war and when that was over, it was Mao's philosophical crusades against the Capitalism. Also, that hatred toward Capitalism wasn't from some sudden light bulb that went off in fanatic leader, it also had its histories and reasons, which I won't talk about. So when the Chinese finally had good enough environment to not to STARVE to death as the biggest and poorest nation in the world just about 60 years ago, the first thing on their mind was definitely not about media censorship. And let me tell you this, if anyone or anything in China that risks to jeopardize the stability that came with millions who died or suffered through the war, post war reconstruction, and the cultural revolution, the Chinese government will oppress it, and by the contrary to the Western world's believe, even with the full coverage of the incidents, even with the deaths tolls, the majority of the nation will fully support the actions taken by a landslide. That will definitely be true for the incident that is going on Tibet. 

Another point of view that sounds extremely alien and orthodox and brainwashed and yet it is really the truth, or at least the relative truth that the West and the East will never have a fair dialogue regarding this issue. 

Also see this post by MSTP Bound.