The Communist Chinese Should Enjoy Wickham’s Article
That’s quite the article by Peter Wickham in the Nation News after his freebie trip to the People’s Republic of China.
Wickham describes western accounts of Chinese government monitoring of its citizens as “fanciful”.
Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who ordered the massacre of democracy advocates at Tienanmen Square is praised.
Everything is wonderful. They have McDonald’s doan ya know!
All those reports of human rights violations, China’s slave camp system, oppression of religious minorities, the beating deaths of folks wanting democracy and the jailing of people for praying in their own homes?
Lies! All Lies!
Kidnapping of pregnant women off the streets and ripping their unborn children from their womb as a method of population control? Starving girl orphans and crippled children to death?
Its all lies! Lies!
Everything is modern and beautiful. The police and government are just ordinary. Different than ours, but so nice.
Why don’t you go over to The Nation News and have a read of Wickham’s article People & Things – Perceptions Of China.
The Chinese Communists bought Wickham and the article so you might as well give them their money’s worth.
Wickham’s article is almost comedy!
You’re right, BFP. Bought and paid for in full.
I just noticed my comments for this post ended up in the item on the Chief Justice – gremlins at work. Mr Wickham’s article in the Nation refers to the population of Beijing as 170 repeat 170 million – actualy, the population of that city is 17 million. In all fairness to Mr. Wickham, many friends have visited China, some for extended periods, and they all have had positive comments on conditions. Which is not to say that there are not abuses.
I believe that there are human rights abuses in China but you cannot fault Mr. Wickham for what he saw, which was obviously the positive side. Making comments to the effect that he was bought by the Chinese Government is very disingenuous. The USA has human rights abuses too. Why not pick on them? This is supposed to be the richest nation in the world and look how they treat some of their citizens, e.g Katrina. Remember that? Mississippi, which has the highest level of poverty in the USA, people still using dry-earth toilets, people still going to stand-pipes for water. Talk about that and leave China alone. China is the emerging power house whether you like it or not. Please do your research and seek out other so-called democracies which have serious human rights’ abuses.
The Chinese Communists bought Wickham, the US and its media houses have got you for free. Man you worse than a sell out, you is a kiss up.
“Kidnapping of pregnant women off the streets and ripping their unborn children from their womb as a method of population control?”
are you serious?
Wickham’s article may not be entirely true but neither is the westerns portrayal of many places so its probably not as good as he says or as bad as others would have you believe.
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BFP says,
Hi jdid,
Yes, kidnapping of mothers and forced abortions are routine in China. Here are some references of which there are many on the net…
Why Forced Abortions Persist in China – TIME
Harrowing details have emerged in recent news reports of alleged forced abortions in China’s impoverished Guangxi province. Earlier this month as many as 61 pregnant women were injected with an abortive drug after being dragged to local hospitals, according to media accounts. Human rights activists say actions allegedly carried out by family planning officials there are unlikely to be isolated. Along with forced sterilization and other coercive methods of birth control, forced abortion continues to be practiced occasionally by officials in remote parts of China despite its having been banned by the central government in Beijing.
Enemies of the State?
The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan’s due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. “At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot,” says the 23-year-old. “Then, after a while, I couldn’t feel her moving anymore.” Ten hours later, Li delivered the girl she had intended to name Shuang (Bright). The baby was dead. To be absolutely sure, says Li, the officials–from the Linyi region, where she lives, in China’s eastern Shandong province–dunked the infant’s body for several minutes in a bucket of water beside the bed. All she could think about on that day last spring, recalls Li, was how she would hire a gang of thugs to take revenge on the people who killed her baby because the birth, they said, would have violated China’s family-planning scheme.
“Certainly as one is exposed to the vastness of the population of Beijing (alone) which is 170 million, it is difficult to imagine any government with sufficient time and resources to monitor the activity of individuals on a continuous basis. ”
“1.3 billion over nine million square kilometres and 23 provinces.’
Don’t mislead the public by using superfluous and historically inaccurate examples and reasoning, Mr. Wickham.
The USSR encompassed an area of 22 million square miles and stretched from Europe to the balkans to Asia with a population of 300 million. Now while this in no way compares to China’s 1.3 billion in terms of population the land area is much greater and the more remote your population and the sparser your density the more difficult it is to monitor. The USSR had no problem monitoring its citizens. Hell it had no problem monitoring lots of citizens who werent even theirs.
Now while most countries, USA included, monitor to some extent their citizens the problem with China is that the monitoring is not used to protect or safeguard National strategic interests , It is used to enable the government to crackdown on simple freedoms like free speech, freedom of religion, political association and social activism.
It never ceases to amaze me that people like wickham are so blind that they euphemise countries like Cuba and China without realising that they could not function there.
Imagine not being able to be critical in the paper or on a call in program or on a blog Mr. Wickham. Imagine doing 4 years hard labour for publishing a critique Mr. Wickham.
Imagine the government deigning that you are not allowed to have internet access or a computer like in Cuba up until last year.
Imagine going to jail for preaching or avowing your belief in God and saying that you dont believe in God so that don’t bother you doesn’t cut it.
Imagine being convicted for crimes against the state because you are homosexual which although I believe is an abomination is still a person’s personal choice.
Do not be deceitful and pretend that a democracy is simply the way a representative Government is elected. A democracy entails all the accepted norms, freedoms and rights that forward societies have accepted as being fundamental to a person’s existence.
‘To be sure, the Chinese leader is elected but by the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the fact that the NPC is also elected provides a clear link to people’s power and proves the existence of democracy in China.
As is the use in the United States (and Barbados) their system of democracy is not perfect”
More mumbo jumbo garbage. It cannot be a system of democracy unless the freedom of choice exists. the freedom of choice to change economic directions through the use of a vote. the freedom of choice to select through a vote the political expression of the country. To say yeah or nay , through the endorsement and selection of alternative leaders and governments to political and economic phenomena like nationalism, corruption, expansion or consolidation, industry or environmentalism or some hybrid of the two. the range of choices is endless and it is a people’s right to decide what is most important to them and to select a government which caters to fulfilment of that desire.
Yes jdid, BFP is very serious about forced abortions in China.
Here is an article about one such mother, but a google search of “forced abortions china” will give you everything you require to know that this is a true statement by BFP.
Mother Jumps From Second Story Window To Escape Forced Abortion By Communist Chinese Government
http://barbadosfreepress.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/mother-jumps-from-second-story-window-to-escape-forced-abortion-by-communist-chinese-government/
Jdid, you may not have heard much in the mainstream news media about forced abortions in China because journalists like Peter Wickham seldom write about such things after they have benefited from free vacations in China.
China has massive resources dedicated to surveilling and controlling their population on the internet.
Wickham must know this. Everybody knows this.
Beijing has recently added a new weapon to its arsenal of surveillance technologies, a system it believes to be a modern marvel: the Golden Shield. It took eight years and $700 million to build, and its mission is to “purify” the Internet — an apparently urgent task. “Whether we can cope with the Internet is a matter that affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state,” President Hu Jintao said in January.
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-11/ff_chinafirewall?currentPage=all
“China is correctly referred to as The People’s Republic of China. however, Western reference to this country invariably coins the phrase “Communist China” which conjures up ideas of a strong central government which imposes itself on the individual who has little freedom.
As a trained political scientist, however, my understanding of communism is slightly less narrow and relates to the economic arrangements which predominate.”
Again wickham misleads the public by actually using the narrowest possible definition of communism and ascribing it to his trained status. well even an ass can be trained so remember that.
i really should be above those comments but i couldnt resist it.
Here goes: In addition to being a system with economically defined arrangements communism is also a system with political parameters and should really be recognised as a method of government. If anything the economic arrangements are only one part of the form of government known as communism.
Let me give an example; If Iran started to allow and promote free market behaviour would that make it any less of a theocracy? Because a country has embraced a more open economy does not stop it from being communist. it is simply a communist country with a hybrid open market policy. Let’s not forget that if we want to use economic criteria as a definition that China still has many nationalised industries as is the norm for socialist states. What puts China over the line into Communism is its political structure and system of goverment as well as the philosophies which underly that structure and system.
Peter Wickham is an intelligent man and an experienced journalist. The trade-off for the free trip was to not ask any difficult questions and to not see anything that wasn’t positive.
He knows the trade he is making. He is not a stupid man.
I would personally pay for Mr Wickham to go to the US to the deprived areas in the South, to the places where “detainees” are held, to the areas where immigrants are ruthlessly exploited, to the people who would educate him on the true owners of the Federal Reserve and by extension the US dollar and so on, and have him report to the public on his findings. Do you think BFP would be interested in his findings?
Mr. Banned, in this very discussion, makes an astounding offer:
______________________________________________________
I would personally pay for Mr Wickham to go to the US … and have him report to the public on his findings. Do you think BFP would be interested in his findings?
______________________________________________________
That’s a remarkable and excellent offer, Mr. Banned. But would you only pay if it were Mr. Wickham who visited the United States and reported on his findings? If so, why?
Can we strike a deal here? I’ll do the trip and write the report if you only pay two thirds of the cost, not the whole thing. I’ll report fully, and I’ll plead with BFP to publish my findings.
I write at least as well as Mr. Wickham. And, in a recent poll among a representative sample of my family, a clear majority thought I was (i) more intelligent than he is and (ii) better looking.
What do you say? Do we have a deal?
Peter Wickham is a socialist, and this is the base for most of his positions. Nothing new there.
Ain’t nothing money can’t buy.
So anyone got any information about the St J’s hospital report “going missing” ?
Interesting discussion BFP, but I do feel it would benefit from the full article, whcih the Nation “clipped”. Note the final para, which speaks directly to Human Rights. I also object strongly to the suggestion that Jack is better looking than me. NO WAY!
PERCEPTIONS OF CHINA
Although the vast majority of our consumer durables are made in China, few Barbadians ever give much thought to this vast country and emerging super power that is literally on the other side of the world.
The fact that it takes 18 hours over 2 days to reach China’s capital city Beijing where the native tongue is hardly recognisable to most Barbadians, means that few of us visit that place or even give much thought to the politics and culture of a country that now occupies the spotlight as a result of the Summer Olympics.
In an environment where ignorance is the “norm” perceptions based on the propaganda of those who care to express opinion easily become our reality or worse yet, our gospel and in the case of China, we have more recently been reading from the book of CNN, BBC and (God forbid) Fox News.
Against this background, I along with five other journalists from Barbados recently welcomed the opportunity to briefly tour China and form our own perceptions of this Asian country and since I am inclined to take most interest in a country’s politics, that issue is central to my initial report on this sojourn.
China is correctly referred to as “The People’s Republic of China” however western reference to this country invariably coins the phrase “Communist China” which conjures up ideas of a strong central government which imposes itself on the individual who has little freedom.
As a trained political scientist, however, my understanding of communism is slightly less narrow and relates to the economic arrangements which predominate. In this regard, the reality of China surprised all of us, since the free market in that country is alive and well and the economy is anything but centralised. As it was explained, the 1978 reforms led by Deng Xiaoping radically changed the world’s largest economy to point where Communism appears to be more of a dream for Chinese leaders than a characteristic of the present economic arrangement.
Against this economic background the visitor to China is greeted by a modern infrastructure which appears to be “Western” and substantially more extensive than that which greets the visitor on arrival in New York or London.
Moreover, the traditional “signposts” of Western culture such as McDonalds are prominently displayed within the Chinese landscape to the point where a Western visitor should feel very much at home. It is clear that Communism in China is defined is a way that is very unique since the Chinese government encourages private sector enterprise without their participation and in some cases partners with the private sector to establish major projects, some of which revert to government after a fixed time period, but the vast majority remain private enterprises.
Remnants of traditional communism present themselves in relation to the organization of the Chinese central government where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leads and does not encourage the type of competitive elections between parties that we normally associate with a healthy Democracy in the west.
This is unusual, to us, however upon closer examination it is also clear that China does have its own unique system for electing leaders which might be different but is perhaps no less effective in the context of a population of 1.3 Billion people over 9 million sq km and 23 provinces.
To be sure, the Chinese leader is elected but by the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the fact that the NPC is also elected provides a clear link to people’s power and proves the existence of Democracy in China.
As is the case in the USA (and Barbados) their system of democracy is not perfect, however I am inclined to think that it is unrealistic (especially given their culture) to expect 1.3 Billion people to register and vote for one of several competing Presidential candidates who would each need to consume an inordinate amount of money to canvas and influence voters across that vast country.
Notwithstanding, it was clear that China maintains a substantial standing Army and Police Force, although it does not require national service in the way that Israel does.
As a result, there is a substantial Police presence most places which the visitor to Washington should be well accustomed to.
There are, however, also rumors of state monitoring which seem “fanciful” to say the least.
Certainly as one is exposed to the vastness of the population of Beijing (alone) which is 170 million, it is difficult to imagine any government with sufficient time and resources to monitor the activity of individuals on a continuous basis.
Finally, it would be imprudent not to address the issue of human rights since this is a major concern of those who are less sympathetic to China. It should not surprise readers to note that none of us witnessed major Human Rights abuses while we were there, however this does not mean that the Chinese government could not have abused the rights of its citizens in the past or might not do so in the future.
This author, however does not necessarily subscribe to the Western view that there is one appropriate standard of human rights, even as I am prepared to argue that the standards employed in the US, China and Barbados are all inconsistent with my own personal standard. Hence the Chinese government might be considered “heavy handed” in dealing with its citizens in some regard, but the Barbados and American governments are no less guilty.
In China you can be put to death for some infractions, which is no different to Barbados and the USA and this author believes that all three governments violate Universal principles of Human Rights by doing so. In the final analysis, Human Rights is always best defined within a specific cultural and historical context and will invariably run afoul of another person’s beliefs, hence this issue will always cause discomfort in the context of international relations.
Peter W. Wickham (wickham@sunbeach.net) is a political consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES).
Excellent piece Peter.
Keep the good work up. This century belongs to the Chinese and just because we do it one way does not mean its the right way or the wrong way, it just means they do it different and are still finding their way to be the next super power and the difficulties, privileges and responsibilities that come with that.
They are a different culture and as Peter said a whole lot more people, what applies to us may not apply to them. Who are we to judge their culture.
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BFP says,
Sure, what the heck… just because they kidnap pregnant women off the street, plunge needles into their wombs, and then drown the babies when they are born… who are we to judge?
I sure hope you would support them if you had of been born in China and they did that to your wife and son.
Yup… you sure do have a different standard than mine.
China’s All-Seeing Eye
by Naomi Klein (in Rolling Stone)
Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn’t exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong’s port — to be China’s first “special economic zone,” one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the “real” China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada’s favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats — a design intended, he says, to “suggest and illustrate the process of the market.” A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.
Many of the big American players have set up shop in Shenzhen, but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors. The research complex for China’s telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line. Pressed up against Shenzhen’s disco shopping centers, Wal-Mart superstores — of which there are nine in the city — look like dreary corner stores. (China almost seems to be mocking us: “You call that a superstore?”) McDonald’s and KFC appear every few blocks, but they seem almost retro next to the Real Kung Fu fast-food chain, whose mascot is a stylized Bruce Lee.
American commentators like CNN’s Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as “the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.” But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called “America” — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen’s transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called “market Stalinism,” it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.
Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)
Continued here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/1
Peter Wickham wrote:
Naomi Klein wrote:
(See also Klein’s description in her article of how the well the Chinese government were able to use their still rudimentary surveillance systems to shut down the Tibet protests and arrest troublemakers.)
Of course the fundamental problem is that, as Ms. Klein points out, these surveillance technologies being developed in China with assistance from US corporations are very likely going to be taken up and used by Western “democratic” governments as well at some point. It looks more and more like Orwell really did have the future figured out. In naming his novel 1984, he was just off with his dates by about 30 years or so.
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Did shoddy Chinese construction play a part in the high death toll resulting from the earthquake? What implications does this have for Barbados which continues to benefit from China State Corp?
full article here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-553660,00.html
In country where many families have been curtail by law to one child, there is bound to be anger and despair at losing that child, even more so when there is suspicion of shoddy construction.
“The government said it would investigate why so many school buildings collapsed in the quake — destroying about 6,900 classrooms, not including the hardest-hit counties — and severely punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction.”
From the begining of time the control and manipulation of information has been an ongoing and daily event by various regimes ( corporate, governmental and otherwise ) bent on the accumulation, consolidation and control of power.
The creation of a Super States whether it be China run by unchecked technocrat mandarins or the new Europeean Union Super State run by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats is a frightening opportunity for human right and other abuses.
In Barbados we look smugly at other countries problems while permitting all kinds of outrageous public abuses of our citizens rights.
What happened with the secret cabinet order to snoop on our citizens? Who authorized and more importantly who carried out these invasions of privacy? Why has Cable and Wireless, the RBPF and the AG not pursued those individuals promoting hate crimes and murder on the internet?
Thank God for blogs and thank God Mia Mottley never got her way to control freedom of speech.
What became of that secret cabinet order, indeed? Did it expire or is the new administration taking advantage of it too? And if not, why don;t they expose it? Hmmmmm, does it really exist other than in a fertile imagination?
Against this background, I along with five other journalists from Barbados recently welcomed the opportunity to briefly tour China and form our own perceptions of this Asian country and since I am inclined to take most interest in a country’s politics, that issue is central to my initial report on this sojourn.
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SOS to Peter Wickham
Peter, let’s be realistic with our views on China. Your sojourn in China along with the four other journalists was based on an ‘invitation’. Your movements throughout would have been controlled by the Chinese government. You would have been taken to places that would have been pleasing to you as guests. I am sure you had police outriders, thus it would have been impossible to digest the real negatives of China.
Based on your writing, I can tell that you wasn’t privileged to visit the trouble areas or speak to residents of poor communities where child labour is rampant and lil’ children to bent seniors rumbling through land fills for a little food.
So Peter, your views as I see it, is based on a theatrical theme, nuff lights and no action. What you got to say Peter? It is time you star writing out of the box and give the public the truth pertaining to the darker side since being a political scientist you must give the good, bad and ugly views.