Response re Facebook conversations 2020-07-28

            First, it’s pretty counter-intuitive to call it hypocrisy when I am legit concerned about my own country’s human rights record (well, before I am able to renounce my Chinese citizenship) and speak out about it.

            Should we go by your logic, Canada is still one of the only countries, if not the only country, to have such moral high ground to criticize what the Chinese authorities are doing. Yes, Canada’s historical and contemporary records are indeed not clean – from the Residential School System to Head Tax, sponsorship scandal to SNC-Lavalin, and historical and ongoing police brutality, the Canadian government and Canada as a nation has a long list of things that they are not proud of. However, the institutions of Canada have made or are making effort to correct, apologize, and reconcile with the wrongdoings, a behaviour that are almost never observed on the Chinese authorities, and certainly gave Canada a so-called moral high ground for criticizing the Chinese regime. The current Chinese regime’s human rights record is worse than that of Canada by about three orders of magnitude if not more. This is a regime that, in 2020, does the same cultural genocide things that Canada has done and corrected in past centuries, like disciplines and punishes students (like me) in schools for speaking their own mother tongues (1) and forces indigenous peoples to carry permits and harass them when travelling (2), and a lot more that are completely horrible, bizarre, and have never been witnessed in Canada, like enforcing an unanimous time that causing time discrepancies of 2–3 hours and trying to convince people that such time is correct (3) and threatening constantly to invade and absorb an independent country with a casus belli of bloodline (4). I haven’t even started on Uyghurs’ passports, Hong Kong, COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2, Great Fire Wall, disputed islands, Three Gorges Dam, Liu Xiaobo, Huawei, nmslese etc. By contrast, I have never seen Canada forcing people in BC and Alberta to live on an one-and-only Ottawa time, nor claiming the islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon (5) because the “same people” lives there, nor parallels to any of those bizarre Chinese examples I can think of. Canada with its democratic institutions and checks and balances of power (I mean, Trudeau is testifying before FINA in two days) has showed respects to its commitment in the rules, while the Chinese regime has yet done that. Anyone that would to suggest Canada, and specifically Canada, does not have a moral high ground to criticize the Chinese regime’s behaviour is, at the very least, unreasonable.

            Nevertheless, the logic that you described is dangerous to start with. If I may self-plagiarize, “The evilness of one doesn't disqualify that of another – the police brutality observed on the streets of HK and Minneapolis, and the camps that torture and separate families on America's southern border and in Xinjiang are all bad.” (6). Your logic shows absurd similarity to that of the current Chinese regime, which falls into the tu quoque fallacy. Indeed, the US’s human rights record is also hilariously bad – however, the human rights record of China is at such a level that anyone with a sound mind should at least feel unease about it, if not actively condemn it and/or take solid actions to change it. I believe that the entire Trump administration should be immediately prosecuted for their human and international rights violations, but at the same time I also welcome their stand against the Chinese regime, who, in its entirely, should also be immediately prosecuted for their similar human and international rights violations. My latter belief does not validate the former, and vice versa. The Chinese authorities has been laughing about our or American voices for a while, but it shouldn’t stop us/the Americans to continue criticize it.

            From your recent posts and comments, I can tell that there is a recognition of “change comes from within”, and such change is subjectively and objectively implausible. Objectively, the Chinese authorities essentially persecute anyone who dare to suggest a change in its regime, even those who complain, to the slightest extend, on social media; proofs are numerous. For example, after the earthquake in 2008, the authorities persecuted an activist (Tan Zuoren, 7) for investigating school casualties, then went after the artist that supported him (Ai Weiwei, 8), then went after the lawyer who defended both of them (Pu Zhiqiang, 9). The authorities’ bloodthirsty hands even reach people outside China who advocate for changes (10). Such high risk of persecution pushes every well-minded Chinese away from China. Subjectively, most of the Chinese people (that stayed) have absurd insensitivity towards politics, law, and people that doesn’t look like them, including visible minorities and/or other ethnic groups. They simply don’t care – the entire society cherishes stability at all levels more than anything else. It has its cultural and historical roots, but the reason is mainly the Chinese regime’s very successful Ingsoc-level brainwashing. Any hopes for changes from inside are unfortunately daydreaming. See, I used to be in the “inside” as well – not necessarily physically, but mentally. I was aware of the wrongdoings in the past and present, but I have the same hallucinatory hope that changes will “come from the inside”, i.e. the Chinese Communist Party itself. That has completely vanished, as everything I have seen and experienced about China since then simply pointed to the opposite direction – “the reverse direction” as we call it. The authoritarian regime is not going to dissolve itself.

            You also mentioned before in another comment that “China has never done anything to me”, and thus decide to be a bystander on Chinese issues. There is a tremendous amount of reports of the racism in China, and in particular towards the Black people, and has been well amplified during this pandemic, when malls deciding who can get in based on race (11). Such racism is even very well present among Chinese-Canadian communities (12). Alongside the cyber-attacks, resource-exploits, and increasing dependency on the Chinese market, it is very hard for regular Canadians to not be concerned with the authoritarian regime. If we stand aside, the effects of China will slowly sink in – Saskatchewan canola would be a great example (13).

            I understand that you are a Bernie supporter, so may I end with one of his quotes, written on June 4, same day of the Tiananmen Massacre 31 years ago: “we must stand with those working for democracy and dignity around the world, and practice and protect those values here at home” (14).

 

References and Further Readings

1. (a) Movement for Uyghur Mother Language Based Education, World Uyghur Congress, 2014 <link>. (b) Tsung, L. T. H.; Cruickshank, K. Mother tongue and bilingual minority education in China. Int. J. Bilingual Edu. Bilingualism 2009, 12, 549. <link> (c) Mother tongue squeezed out of the Chinese classroom in Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, Yuen Chan, Hong Kong Free Press, 2015 <link>. (d)  China: Tibetan Children Denied Mother-Tongue Classes, Human Rights Watch, 2020 <link> (e) Protection of Chinese Dialect in China, Chinese Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020, machine translated <link>.

2. (a) Tibetans, Uyghurs ‘Blacklisted’ at Hotels in Chinese Cities, Radio Free Asia, 2020 <link>. (b) Announcement of Yining Municipal People’s Government on Using the Floating Population Convenience Contact Card, 2014, secondary source, machine translated <link>.

3. Xinjiang Time, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>.

4. (a) Deteriorating relations (2016–present), in Cross-Strait relations, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>. (b) Possible military solutions and intervention, in Political status of Taiwan, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>.

5. Not an independent country, by contrast to Taiwan’s status of a recognized independent country, though no closer parallels could be found.

6. Tweet by me in a reply to Hua Chunying, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson <link>.

7. Tan Zuoren, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>.

8. Citizens’ investigation on Sichuan earthquake student casualties, in Ai Weiwei, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>.

9. Pu Zhiqiang, English Wikipedia, accessed July 28, 2020 <link>.

10. (a) Woman working in Australia films the chilling moment the Chinese police PHONE her after she criticised President Xi on Twitter - and claims her parents are now being harassed, Charlotte Karp, Daily Mail Australia, 2020 <link>. (b) Wu’er Kaixi: The Chinese dissident who can't get himself arrested - not even to go home and see his sick parents, Clifford Coonan, Independent, 2013 <link>.

11. A video shot in April 2020 in a Chinese mall, details unknown, secondary source <link>.

12. ‘Why don’t they just work harder?’ This kind of anti-Blackness is prevalent in Chinese-Canadian communities. It’s time to address it, Steven Zhou, Toronto Star, 2020 <link>.

13. Sask. canola hurt by China, 'but the market didn't collapse or anything,' says expert, Creeden Martell, CBC News, 2019 <link>.

14. Bernie Sanders tweet <link>.