Cold War Mentalities?

First of all, I would just like to apologize for the recent lack of blog activity. I’ve been extremely busy lately (I'll explain later). In fact, this is the first day I’ve had completely free in a while. Anyway…

I didn’t know this, but apparently each year, when the US State Department releases its typically scathing report on human rights in China, the Chinese release their own, also scathing, report on human rights in the US. Two Fridays ago, the translated version appeared in the China Daily (China’s daily English newspaper). When I glanced at the paper after picking it up from the people at the front desk, I noticed that news of the report appeared on the front page under the headline, “US report on human rights ‘shows Cold War mentality’” (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2007-03/09/content_823143.htm). The opening paragraph states, “The United States is adopting a ‘Cold War mentality’ by pointing its finger groundlessly at the human rights situations in other countries, according to a report published by the Information Office of the State Council yesterday”.

I was intrigued by the article, which went on to mention that the report could be found in its entirety in section 2 of the paper, so me being the curious China watcher that I am, I immediately flipped to section 2. Sure enough, right after an extensive article about US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s visit to China and the global importance of Sino-US relations and right before the day’s feature sports articles on the “amazing golf legacy” of Tiger Woods and, of course, the latest news from around the NBA, was the Chinese report on human rights in the US, under the heading, “Are truth, justice the American way?” I’m going to provide a link to the page so you can see it for yourselves – it really is worth glancing over if you have the time... http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2007-03/09/content_823215.htm

What I found somewhat surprising about this government-issued report was the fact that, as evidenced by the citation listed after each issue, all of the information comes from American news sources or various reports issued by a range of different US governmental agencies and NGOs. It’s as if someone did a LexisNexis (a search engine used to find articles from a wealth of news sources) or Google search for an assortment of problems that currently exist in the US and plastered it all together under the guise of a “Human Rights Report”. As I was perusing the report, I simply grew more and more baffled at what I was reading. My sense of bewilderment did not come from the fact that that the Chinese had listed false information. In fact, everything in the report is true, however unfortunate that is. I was bewildered because literally every issue listed was something I was already aware of, something I knew Americans read about regularly in books, magazines, newspapers, and the internet, or see frequently on feature nightly news segments, or hear discussed in the halls of Congress and various state and local governments – yet the Chinese government was reporting all of this as if it were new information. I’ll agree that the information in the report does not necessarily reflect well on the US, but at least it’s not hidden information, and at least people are working everyday for solutions to the problems listed. That’s the main difference between the two reports: The Chinese report on the US consisted of the reiteration of problems that are public knowledge and that people are constantly working to remedy, whereas the US State Department report on China consists of problems the Chinese government refuses to acknowledge and, in most cases, resolve. At any rate, it was an interesting read and was something I considered worth mentioning.

On a different note, I recently took some pictures of inside the subway station during rush hour on my way back from work to give you somewhat of an idea of what the Beijing subway is like…

Also, this past week/weekend I participated in the Asian International Model United Nations conference here at PKU. It was an amazing experience, and I’ll make sure to update all of you with a blog entry about it soon!