Hidden Harmonies China Blog

Have lived in U.S. for over 50 years, yet because of my Chinese root, I am always attuned to what happens in China. I avidly read all books about China and Chinese history. From Edgar Snow, William Hinton, to various China experts. From People’s Daily to New York Times about recent events. I consider my schooling up to 8th grade in Shanghai during the 50s as inoculation against biases against China. Last month in one of the comments Ray recommended guancha.cn for better sourcing about China. I have been reading it everyday since and suddenly I am awakened like the character in the “Body Snatcher” movies that I have been consciously or subconsciously blinded to what’s happening. Unlike Borg in the “Star Trek” TV series, Capitalism doesn’t act immediately by just touching you, yet it acts slowly and inexorably with the same motto, “Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.”.
Reading guancha.cn I realize left is very much alive in China, there are a diversity of opinions and views fiercely debating on the direction of the country. That Eric Li gave a speech in Tsinghua University on meritocracy and there were critiques from both right and left, that a French Chinese gave a question and answer session at Jinan Art Institute where students asked questions about events in 89 and Occupy Central, that those students are not ignoramus or totally censored as NYT led you to believe. That Xi and politburo met to study dialectic materialism to counter corruption. Hell. they even have Paul Krugman gave a speech in Shanghai recycling his view Chinese economy will crash and rebuttals. And the comments are much better informed and wittier than the comments in NYT. One comment on the politburo article recommended they restudy “Communist Manifesto”.

It seems inevitable that Japan would start whitewashing its textbooks  its WWII atrocities.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/01/09/national/tokyo-based-textbook-publisher-to-delete-depictions-of-comfort-women/#.VLw_T0fF8pA

Now the word “comfort Women” has been removed from High School textbooks and instead replaced by South Korean “individuals victimized by Japan during the war seeking to file lawsuits in Japanese courts to seek apology and damages.” like these people are a bunch of money grubbers.  Not to mention that Japan want to portray themselves as liberators in Asia from American, European, French and Dutch colonialism.

What’s surprising is that Japan not only seeks to dilute the issue of the atrocities during WWII, but they want to do it to American textbooks as well.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/15/japan-urges-us-publisher-delete-references-comfort-women

Rather a surprising move: “Japan’s foreign ministry requested that McGraw-Hill delete a passage containing a reference to comfort women from a text on world history used by high schools in California. The passage says that Japan’s imperial army “forcibly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as many as 200,000 women aged 14 to 20” to serve in military brothels.”

Also Japan goes after its own citizens who want to publish truths about comfort women issue.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/japan-reporter-files-lawsuit-comfort-women-stories-28103776

Even its own citizens are targeted when trying to write about the ‘controversial’ comfort women issue.  A Japanese journalist is being sued for defamation and personally threatened because he has written articles about Comfort women.

In an effort to rearm themselves and want to remove article 9 out of its constitution, Japan want to relive its ‘glory days’ as Imperial Japan and remove any references of atrocities during the last World War is dangerous indeed.

As an avid follower and enthusiast of modern trends in Sino-Russian relations (and media coverage thereof), I saw this “jewel” of an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week, titled “Why China will Reclaim Siberia“. This type of Sinophobic fear-mongering is nothing new in the western media. With amusement, I read through it with the slight hope of finding some new, compelling arguments other than the same old rhetoric of “there are so many Chinese and so few Russians”. Unsurprisingly, there were none. I have written on this subject previously, and demonstrated why the so-called “invasion by mass migration” from China into the Russian Far East is a myth. Ethnic Chinese consists of 3% of the Russian Far East regional population, and most of that 3% are seasonal migrants with no intention of long-term settlement. Another noteworthy nuance is that these ethnic Chinese are concentrated largely in Russian urban centers where they have no chance of attaining a numerical majority. Reality aside, I understand that in the realm of propaganda and misinformation, facts and data-driven logic are optional conveniences.

Nevertheless, I will pose another question that few, if anyone, has asked in the discourse over this topic – is it actually in China’s strategic interests to seize sovereign control of the Russian Far East (RFE) or any part of Siberia? It seems like few, if anyone, has done any basic, high-level cost-benefit analysis from a Chinese strategic perspective. When we put forth even a casual effort to weigh the costs and benefits, the answer becomes quickly apparent – NO, it’s not. As usual, for those who do not want to read too much, the bolded text provides an adequate summary. Read more…

The common western narrative is that China’s government is oppressive and fear that its citizens would discover freedom and democracy through those websites. On the social-economic level, they imply that China’s leadership lack confidence when dealing with the western world. The underlying message is that that those rich multi-billion corporations are somehow purveyor of freedom and democracy. Google even used “Don’t be evil” as its formal corporate motto. Read more…