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Avalanche of criticism unites the Chinese

The avalanche of international criticism being heaped on China in the run up to the Olympic Games has many in the country lashing out against perceived bias, fuelling a strong streak of nationalism that could end up having the opposite effect to that desired by Beijing’s critics. Rather than helping the Tibetan cause, the sustained attacks against the government in China, including attempts to disrupt the Olympic torch relay and calls for a boycott of the Games, are causing many Chinese to rally around the flag, united in their feelings of victimisation by a West they perceive as inherently anti-Chinese in outlook.

Following decades of economic reforms, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has come to rely on nationalism as a major ideological mooring. The government’s legitimacy is thus increasingly linked to its role in promoting and defending Chinese nationalism. The current upsurge in nationalist sentiment is fuelled by the authorities; this simultaneously makes it imperative for them not to appear weak and back down in the face of foreign interference.

The last few weeks have seen an outpouring of anger against alleged western media bias, with large-scale online petitions calling for apologies from leading foreign news media and even advocating the boycott of certain foreign businesses.

The latest outburst is directed against the television news network, CNN. Remarks made last week about the Chinese government by one of CNN’s commentators, Jack Cafferty, have been widely interpreted in China as racist and slanderous. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Jiang Yu, said at a press conference in Beijing earlier this week, that she was “shocked at and strongly condemned the vicious remarks” by Mr. Cafferty “against the Chinese people,” and demanded an immediate apology. The remarks were made by Mr. Cafferty on April 9 on a programme called “The Situation Room,” in which the discussion focused on comparing China today with a few decades ago.

“I don’t know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different,” Mr. Cafferty said, on the programme. “They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food.” He added, “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” The description of Chinese products as “junk” and of the Chinese as “goons and thugs” has created an uproar among Chinese people abroad and at home.

CNN has issued a statement saying that Mr. Cafferty’s comments represented his “strongly held” opinion of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people. The network added, “It was not Mr. Cafferty’s or CNN’s intent to cause offence to the Chinese people,” and said that CNN “would apologise to anyone who has interpreted the comments in this way.” Many Chinese however appear to be dissatisfied with this response. “The CNN statement in no way can be interpreted as an apology. I don’t see any sincerity in that. It tried to defend its insulting remarks,” said one posting on China Daily’s website. In a written statement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao added: “CNN’s ulterior motive in targeting the Chinese government, continuing to mislead public opinion as well as deceiving the Chinese people will never succeed.”

Even prior to the Cafferty incident, an anti-CNN website was up and running in China, garnering the support of several tens of thousands of netizens. The website accused the TV network of using a photograph in the aftermath of the Lhasa protests that cropped out Tibetans throwing stones at Chinese security forces. Calls for CNN to be expelled from China are now making the rounds via mobile phone messages.

Chinese websites have in fact been flooded in recent weeks with criticisms of western media coverage of the Tibet protests in general. Most of these have focused on mislabeled photo captions that wrongly identified police action against Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu as occurring in China.

The attempted disruptions of the Olympic torch during its passage through Paris and President Nicolas Sarkozy’s public musings regarding his possible decision not to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics have led to attacks aimed at French media and even a French supermarket chain. On April 12, a commentary in the English language China Daily, titled “French Media reports slap Paris in the face,” blasted leading French newspapers like La Libération and Le Figaro for having “lost the ability to tell right from wrong, choosing instead to side with the law-breakers and the criminals.”

A campaign to boycott Carrefour, a supermarket chain which has 122 stores in China has also gathered pace in recent days through text messages and e-mail chain letters. “Boycott Carrefour. Slap them in the face. Let the beast disappear from Chinese territory,” read one chat-room post. According to government reports more than 20 million people have signed online petitions supporting the boycott of the supermarket chain, Louis Vuitton and other stores linked to France. On Friday and Saturday last week, protesters gathered in front of a half-dozen outlets of the supermarket including a demonstration in Wuhan city in central China that reportedly drew several thousand people, according to Agence France-Presse. The Chinese government has refused to condemn the boycott call. “Recently some Chinese people expressed their views and sentiments. I think there is a reason for this, and the French side needs to review and consider it,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said on the matter.

How widespread such sentiments really are in Chinese society is difficult to judge given the monitoring and the censorship of the Internet. The rural populace, minorities and dissidents are largely unrepresented on the Internet. The main upsurge of nationalism and anti-western feeling thus seems to be coming from the urban, educated middle-class. This is a group that has almost uniformly benefited from the economic reforms in China over the past 30 years. Often ignorant of problems on China’s periphery, the Chinese middle class has real pride in the country’s achievements. The adversarial manner in which the foreign media are currently portraying the Chinese government is thus bewildering to them. The worrying outcome is an increasing xenophobia, buoyed by a “West vs. Us” mentality.

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