China, Tibet, Cockles

I have been having some interesting conversations with my Chinese housemate recently. She does not fit my stereotype of an informed Chinese student rebel who is concerned about human rights abuses and resents the government. Perhaps it shows just how effective their propaganda is, but I welcome the different perspectives, as it is always refreshing to challenge our own perceptions. Are we just as subject to propaganda?

This article is an exploration of different perspectives, conceptions and starting points. I cannot claim to have a detailed or balanced knowledge of the Tibet issue. This is about how our perceptions are easily coloured even without such a depth of knowledge.

Her first argument is that politics should not impede on the Olympic games. Tibet is an internal Chinese matter that is not the business of the rest of the world. She compares government quenching riots to the riot police that were deployed in France race riots last year. The Tibetans are having a race riot, killing innocent Chinese. Barring of journalists is just 'The Chinese way'.

Such world events are always politicised, and the Olympics has always been so (think Munich) Sport cannot take place between countries without diplomatic relations. And the Tibetan protestors know that such a high profile event is a great opportunity to highlight their cause and likely force the Chinese government's by embarrassing them. They do it because they can successfully amplify diplomatic pressure on China's human rights record. People believe that a flagship event such as the Olympics should embody certain 'good' values.

I argued that China has chosen to engage with the world and therefore must play this diplomatic game. China has economic power and this is why it won the Olympics in spite of concerns about human rights. The rest of world (whilst not whiter than white) can choose to express its disapproval of human rights abuses through a boycott. In diplomatic relations far removed from the possibility of military force, sport forms one of many diplomatic levers.

In general, she feels 'The World' is always against China: In unfair trade agreements, in visa restrictions, in western investments in China that are exploitative. She does not see Chinese economic strength as a benefit arising from engaging with the world economy. She does not see that China is fairly good at fighting for itself on the world stage, and uses its economic muscle to cause others to turn a blind eye to the human rights record. She does not see that China owns a huge chunk of American debt by choice.

One example that highlights to me the intransigence of our different perspectives was the story of the 20-30 Cockle pickers who died last year in Morecoombe bay. From my point of view, the story is a tragedy in which illegal Chinese immigrants died whilst being exploited by a gang - the public outrage this led to a new bill covering gangworkers. To her, it was an example of British emergency services leaving people to die simply because they were Chinese. Clearly the reporting of this story that we had heard was very different.

At this point I said I couldn't proceed with the argument without having more facts to hand about the night in question: How far progressed was the situation when the emergency services were called? What information did they receive? What resources were available to them? From this information I could form a judgement about if the emergency services had acted appropriately.

Now whilst I accept that there is no such thing as absolute objectivity and the BBC news reporting is not perfect, this would often be my first reference in a question about a news story. In this discussion it could not be considered to be objective. A few Google searches from different (English language) news sources (and Wikipedia) brought no answer to my questions above and no mention of the allegation. I still await a news source to be shown to me which contains the allegation she made. With Google translate I might even have a bash a reading some Chinese ones.

Suddenly you find there are no starting points from which to begin a debate, no common ground to agree on. What I thought was my balanced, open, free thinking mind is viewed by another as dogmatic. If you question your own views with an open mind, you may admit that you are falling back on a perceived truth. And it is revealing. Somewhere we all put our faith in something.