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Today marks the 89th anniversary of the May 4th Movement here in China. So, on this anniversary, I thought I'd take a moment to analyze the parallels and differences that exist here in China today.

First, for those who are unfamiliar with the May 4th Movement, allow me to give you the historical background behind it. On May 4th, 1919, some 3,000 students from Peking University and other higher-learning institutions here in the capital gathered in front of Tian'anmen to denounce the government in power at that time for not doing enough to protect China's territorial integrity. What they were upset about at that time was the fact that the colonial powers (mainly England and France, though there was some frustration with the United States as well) screwed China over in the Treaty of Versailles which ended the First World War.

Britain and France were bogged down heavily in fighting against the Germans in 1917, and needed help from wherever they could get it. As such, the British appealed to the Chinese government to allow it to draft the thousands of Chinese nationals that were living in England at that time for the war effort. China agreed, under the condition that if and when Germany was defeated, the German concession of Shandong would be repatriated back to China. An agreement was struck, and over 100,000 Chinese nationals were sent in to action (mainly as runners, field engineers and laborers) and were said to be critical in helping to win the war. But when it came time to settle the score after the fighting was over, Britain and France screwed China over in the negations and handed Shandong over to Japan instead of back to China as was originally promised. And because of the political instability at the time here in China following the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Beiyang government (which was in power in the northern part of China and, internationally, was considered the legitimate government of China at that time) was not politically strong enough to put up enough opposition. As one might imagine, this created waves of anger amongst Chinese people, and led to the May 4th protests. And while the protests were suppressed in the capital, they spread throughout China in the weeks that followed, and eventually led to the birth of the CCP, among other political movements at the time, including the concept of 白话 (baihua, or vernacular Chinese) which allowed the average person to learn to read and write, given at that point, the Chinese written language was mainly only understood by the academic elite. As such, the May 4th Movement is considered by many to be the catalyst for the birth of modern China.

So if one were to look at the May 4th Movement in 1919 in today's context, you might be able to draw some similarities surrounding what is happening here in China today. All the recent fervor surrounding the torch relay and the protests against France and the 'western media' is basically all connected to indignation amongst young Chinese against being screwed around by other countries. The same thing happened 89 years ago. So, with this in mind, are we seeing the start of another May 4th Movement here in China? In my estimation, no. Allow me to explain why.

At the time of the 1919 protests, China was in political upheaval. Following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 that ousted the then-reviled Qing Government and ended thousands of years of dynastic rule here in China, China essentially devolved into a collection of feudal states that were governed by one warlord or another who were all vying and scheming to consolidate and expand their respective spheres of influence. As such, in my estimation, the Chinese people yearned for stability. So when China was screwed over by the 'west' back then, in my estimation, China was longing for a sense of nationalism and unity. Today, China is unified. As such, there's no yearning amongst the masses here in this country for mass political movements against the 'the west.' Sure, there are small shots of anti-'western' protests, like the Carrefour demonstrations, but they have basically petered out. Another reason we won't be seeing another May 4th movement here in China is because it's difficult to rally around a perception. In 1919, China had a tangible and tactile reason to be upset. 'Western' powers had physically ceded Shandong to Japan. A Chinese person 89 years ago could look at a map of his or her country and physically see that a chunk of its territory was not under its control. Today, frustrated Chinese are rallying against a perception. While there may be general agreement amongst many that there is an anti-China bias in the 'western media', the evidence - while being dolled out in many different forms - isn't tactile or 100 percent conclusive. Hence the great internet debates about whether or not there is or isn't an anti-China movement. In 1919, it was cut and dry. China had been screwed over. As such, I would argue, that - despite the thousands of voices crying out in protest on the internet and at demonstrations - there isn't anything specific enough to rally around to create a mass movement beyond what we've already seen.

The May 4th Movement here in China was a turning point, and should be celebrated. From its ashes came some of China's great leaders, including Sun Yat-sen, who, through great political will and determination, helped to unify this country and laid the foundation for China's strength today. I know, from a historical sense, we are talking about apples and oranges comparing then and now. But it is interesting to examine the political zeal that existed 89 years ago to that which is now in play here in today's China.

I have spent the past few days in Canada, and everywhere I go people ask me about how China is reacting to the torch protests. I was a guest on the Al Ferraby show in Victoria this morning, and he too admitted that there is not enough information in Canada from China's point of view.

I'll be on a flight to Hong Kong in a few hours, so thought I'd pass this along in the meantime: A good friend has sent me a Tianya post which summarizes, in the author's view, why the west (and United States in particular) is protesting China. This student goes by the online name of 仁者无敌, which roughly translates into "The Benevolent Have No Enemy". He is a Chinese overseas student in Germany who recently attended a seminar called "Human Rights in Asia". (The full Tianya post - in Chinese - can be found here. The author provided the translation.)

1. Historic review

Human right problem of China became a focal point to criticize China only after the foundation of PRC. This was based on severe ideological conflict. When china became a rising power, the western countries consider China as a strong potential enemy. Human right becomes an important civil weapon against China.

2. Malicious strategy of the US

Since the iron curtain was established after the Second World War, the US started to lead the western party, fighting for its own global strategic profit against the communistic world. After the disassembly of USSR, China became the only remaining potential enemy power against American global supremacy. The US established a malicious strategy, putting china into a dilemma.

First, the US wanted to repeat the victory against the USSR - to force China racing on armament. To achieve this, they apply deterrent (threatening) against China with extensive military pressure. China was forced to develop its economy and military force as fast as possible. China made his best to make economic and military wonder, but the price for this ultimate efficiency was the depression of social morality, unjust and severe environmental pollution.

Then, the US used the human rights as a moral weapon. In one aspect, the human right was an effective factor to establish solidarity all over the world against China. In western world, the mentality was similar. Western people tend to pay more attention on individual rights. With this method, the whole western world, from government to people, can be united against Chinese government. In another aspect, the overflow of the criticism against human rights in china can provoke the attention of the Chinese people on the accumulating unjust. This decreases the trust of people to the government, accumulating the anti-governmental force.

The power of China is based on its united reign and stable social community. In Chinese history, none of the dynasties died because of being invaded. They died because of the unstable society, and the invasions were just catalyst. If the anti-governmental force is strong enough, the current Chinese government will be undermined, and this biggest potential enemy will be turned into a new colony of western countries. This is proven by the history.

3. Popular psychology of western people

Western culture was based on nomad culture. A very dominant feature of nomad culture is that when a tribe is strong enough, he will definitely invade other tribes to control more territories and more resources, because they will soon deplete their own resources in a limited time. This means that every rising power will be a future enemy. Actually, the history of China proved that china, based on agricultural culture, has never invaded other countries for more territories or resources. But as western people don't understand this because of the different basis of culture, severe misunderstanding exists.

Nomad cultures believe in jungle rule, while agricultural cultures don't. Based on this, the colonization history provides the western people an important mentality: superiority over Chinese people (as well as almost all the Asian people). Because of this superiority and arrogance, they don't want to make effort to understand Asian cultures.

But the rapid development of China challenges the superiority of western people. The daily life of western people is largely dependent on China. The economy of western countries (especially Europe) is closely connected with China. Nowadays, China is independent of western countries on most high technologies. If you don't sell a product to China, Chinese people will make it (even better ones) in a short time. If you don't sell are source to China, we can find enough in our huge territory. This kind of asymmetrical dependence, i.e. western countries depend on China while China is relatively independent on western countries, raised huge panic of western people.

Because of the misunderstanding of Chinese culture, western people believe that china is no more a potential enemy, but a practical enemy, an enemy against their superiority. No one wants his enemy to live happily. However, the life of western people is highly dependent on China. They don't have enough ability to change the situation in the near future. So they dare not to see that China is already strong and prominent. They dare not to confess that they are being exceeded by China. They dare not to confess that any change on Chinese policy will deeply affect their life. They dare not to see that China is developing. In a word, they dare not to admit the fact that the former "lower class" China, is defeating them. So they have to filter out all the positive facts in China. They want to collect all the dark side of China to persuade themselves that "China is still very bad". This ostrich psychology can only relieve themselves from panic for a short while.

The best proof is that in the 1980s, when China is still very poor, and the ideological conflict was largely relieved, there were very less criticism on human rights problems in China. When the time flies, in 1990s, there were more and more criticisms on human right problems.

4. Globalization: strike to the self-confidence of western people

It seems unbelievable, but it's true.

A couple of years ago, Hamburg lowered the salary standard of workers. The reason was that some big companies wanted to move their factories to China, resulting tens of thousands of unemployment in Hamburg. Everyone knows that China is the world factory because we have cheaper workers. The Hamburg workers have to lower their salary in order to keep their job. This is just an example of the general lowering of salaries in all western countries. This is a natural result of globalization, because globalization makes the whole world as an entire market. But lowering the salary means lowering the living standards. Of course the western people complain. It's very likely that they believe that China is the reason why they live worse than before.

Actually, the western companies in China make many serious human rights problems:

• They force Chinese workers to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• They pollute the environment in China.
• They give extremely less salary to the workers, without paying any social insurance.
• They lower the protection of the workers, resulting many irreversible industrial diseases, but the companies refuse to be responsible for that.

Obviously, these problems are based on the greedy western capitalists, not China. They want to make more money, but they cause serious human rights in China, and also cause problems in western countries. Of course, these greedy capitalists won't confess that they are guilty for that. In their own country, they mislead the public opinion against China.

Since they have caused a lot of human rights problems in China, this is a good excuse to blame China.

Because of the historic and practical reasons, the western world, from government to people, would like to criticize China, especially on the human rights problems. Their aim of criticism is not to help Chinese people to live happier, but to try to make China poorer, less stable, less efficient, less developed, less challenging, less competent, and so on.　　

5. Sovereignty is the basis of human rights

The very basic human rights are the rights of survive, the right of development, and the right to keep his own dignity. The first line of German constitution is "The dignity of human beings is protected."

Without these very basic human rights, the other human rights are just Utopia.

In a country without its own sovereignty, the people there don't have those very basic human rights. We see the real examples in the history:

The US said that they wanted to bring human rights to Kosovo and Iraq. The US defeated their government and controlled those areas. But in those areas, do the inhabitants get more rights? They worry if they will be robbed or killed tomorrow. The US soldiers can torture man freely, rape women freely. That is the life without sovereignty.

If these areas are so far away from us, let's see the history of Germany in 1949-1950. An old German lady told me a story. After Germany was defeated, the French soldiers controlled her hometown. The Germans didn't have any rights. If the French soldiers were unhappy, they can catch any German freely and torture him or her, just for fun. The French soldiers lived in their beautiful house, and her family was driven into the small, cold and humid basement. She got serious problems in all of her joints - arthritis, till now. The French soldiers robbed her food. So her family was very often starved. Her neighbor was even starved to death. No one cares. Till now, this lady is still afraid of fireworks, because this will revoke her tragic memory. That is the life without sovereignty.

Besides the French soldiers, the Soviet soldiers raped over 2 million German women, according to the incomplete statistics. That is the life without sovereignty.

China suffered this kind of tragedy 70 years ago. We never forget that miserable history, and we don't want that this tragedy happens again to us. We don't want to be the second Kosovo, the second Iraq, or the second Germany, because we don't want a life without our own sovereignty.

Yes, you can write a long list, listing huge amount of cases that the individual human rights were broken in China. But this is much better than the semi-colony period. At least, now we have our very basic rights. Our rights to survive and rights of dignity are secured by our military force.　

6. Force is everything

Basically; Chinese culture is based on agricultural culture. This basis determines that China won't be an invading country; China won't be an enemy against anyone, even when it's strong. But the western countries forced us to join the game of their jungle rule. Just like Napoleon's famous sentence "China is a sleeping lion. Don't wake him up." The western countries forced us to wake up. And this lion roars.

In this world, if we come to the international affairs, we clearly see that there is no virtue and morality. The only determinant is the force. Of course, this force includes military, economy and culture. Now China is accumulating strong force, and the other Asian countries are also developing. The Asian power is rising in the world.

The US also has many serious human rights problems. They might be just a little bit better than in China - if at all. Why the criticism against American human rights problems is so less in the world, comparing to the criticisms against China? Very simple, because the US is very powerful, much more powerful than any other current power in the world. So, according to the western philosophy and history, the best way of China to get rid of the criticism is that we develop our country until we are much stronger than any western country. At that time, it's our turn to criticize the western countries on the human rights, and no one dares to criticize us

Yes, we have problems. But we develop. Not like the western countries, we don't have colonies all over the world. We have to accumulate every single cent by our effort. We will solve these problems, but not immediately, not under the pressure of western countries. We will solve these problems by ourselves.

We live happily in Asia. We live happily without you western countries. We welcome the communication with good will, of course. But we have to keep our sovereignty, because this is the basis of all the other human rights. We have our own culture and we have our own standards. We don't have to accept your standards. We have our own way to develop. We don't have to follow your way. The history has proven many times: China is a very good friend to the friendly people, but will be definitely a nightmare to hostility.

If you really want to do something to help China to improve the human rights, please do three things:

1. Stop your prejudice and hostility. Throw away your arrogance.
2. Come to respect, understand and experience our culture deeply.
3. Make the US less hostile to China.

If you can't do these, you, the western countries, should better shut up. You won't make things better. This is none of your business.

Human right is not an issue to discuss. Human right is an issue to fight for.

It was only a couple of short years ago that Chinese people smashed Japanese businesses in Shanghai and marched on the embassy in Beijing over former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and the use of school history textbooks that Chinese people felt washed over Japanese atrocities during World War II.

Well, how the tables have turned. While we know certain facets of Chinese history (ahem... like a little demonstration in a big square in 1989) are omitted from local history textbooks, the Chinese government is taking it one step further.

China is getting ready to open a museum on Tibetan history, and one in which the Dalai Lama will be edited out:

"He will not appear after 1959," said Lian Xiangmin, a Chinese scholar involved in the museum, referring to the year the Tibetan spiritual leader fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. "This is a Tibet museum, and we don't recognize him as part of Tibet anymore."

The problem with this, of course, is China's version of "history" and "reality" are becoming far more distant and isolated from the rest of the world. And that leads to misunderstandings like we're witnessing now.

(Photo of Chairman Mao with the Dalai Lama (right) and Panchen Lama from the New York Times)

With all the turmoil and controversy that's been brewing in China's southwestern regions as of late, I find it somewhat ironic that this week has seen a self-motivated decision of an autocratic leadership to endow its people with the right to choose. And right next door, no less. I direct your attention to Bhutan.

This country is really an enigma, and is simply unknown to the vast majority of the world, given its size, location and policies toward tourism. Known to its people as the Land of the Thunder Dragon, and often described as the last Shangri-La, Bhutan this week became a democracy. After just over 100 years of Royal rule, the people of Bhutan voted on Monday in parliamentary elections for the first time ever.

Bhutan is really an interesting story, and one that could call into question the CPC's theory about 'liberating a backwards people.' For those who aren't familiar with Bhutan, allow me to give you a somewhat brief synopsis of the country.

The Bhutanese people share a common ancestry with the Tibetans and the Nepalese. Some archaeological evidence suggests that the region might have been settled around 4,000 years ago, but no one is really sure. Bhutan wasn't even really a country until the early 1600's when a Tibetan lama unified a collection of tribal states under one law. And in 1907 Bhutan became an absolute monarchy. From all accounts, the Bhutanese people were quite happy to be ruled by the monarchy. But despite this, the monarchy decided in 2005 to bring in a new constitution, and the vote by the people this week officially sealed Bhutan as the world's newest democracy.

Bhutan's whole mandate is happiness. In fact, this is a country that has developed a system to measure happiness. It's even got a term: Gross National Happiness. Though it's pretty difficult to define, it is a system that Bhutan uses to measure quality of life. Because Bhutan is made up predominantly of Buddhists and some Hindus, there is a very strong spiritual base. As such, back in 1972 the then-king decided that instead of focusing on economic development, his country would try to grow under a more holistic approach, something that flies in the face of the break-neck economic growth mandate Bhutan's giant neighbor to the north has undertaken. Still, Bhutan's economy is growing quite quickly. In 2006, Bhutan's Gross Domestic Product grew by 14 percent, thanks to the sale of Hydro electric power to India. And a survey done to calculate the Gross National Happiness in 2005 showed that 45 percent of Bhutanese were 'very happy,' 52 percent were just 'happy' and 3 percent were 'unhappy.' It's with this in mind that I consider the 'liberation' of Tibet by China.

Nobody came into Bhutan and messed with it. Nobody tried to 'help' it develop. The world left Bhutan alone. As a result, the some 700,000 people of Bhutan are now determining their own political future and - according to the GNH stats from that country - seem to be doing just fine.

What's done is done. No one can change what has happened with Tibet. But given what is happening next door in Bhutan, I can't help but wonder what things would be like if the Chinese government didn't decide to 'help' in Tibet some 50 odd years ago.

This week has seen a new first for me here in China, and one that I'm actually hesitant to admit: I was actively captivated by something on Chinese television. I know, I know... it's hard to imagine, but it's true. But before you start calling me a sellout, a turncoat, mindless or downright insane, allow me to explain. I was about to pop in a DVD on Wednesday evening when something on the tube caught my attention. No, it wasn't CCTV's rousing coverage of 两会 (the CPPCC and NPC sessions) or some scantily-clad woman belting out Mando-pop. It was actually a documentary on CCTV 6, the movie channel. Wednesday, March 5th, happens to be the late Premier Zhou Enlai's birthday. (Rather than going into the details of his life, if you're interested in learning his past, I'll direct you to the Granite Studio for Zhou's past particulars) As such, CCTV 6 aired a retrospective of his life. And while watching, a couple of things really stood out in my mind. Firstly, it's amazing how little the propaganda has changed on CCTV from the 60's, through the Cultural Revolution to today! Though it was all in Chinese, and despite my somewhat limited comprehension skills, I was able to glean enough of what was being said to realize that this was an unabashed, glowing review of the late Premier's life, which included film of him meeting the masses, who all wore broad smiles and clamored to shake his hand and be next to him, along with soulful discussions about how he adored his wife, Deng Yingchao, and how, though he and the missus had no children of their own, the late Premier was like a father to the children of China. While trying not to wretch and throw my shoe through the TV because of the language being spouted, I did find it really interesting to watch the old footage of China during the Great Leap Forward, much of which I had never seen before. And watching it, all I could think was 'Damn that must have been a crappy existence for the average person back then!' The other thing about the documentary that really jumped out at me was there was - during the hour I watched at least - no film of him with Chairman Mao. The only time you saw Mao at all was if there was footage of Zhou Enlai standing in front of Tian'anmen, in the Great Hall of the People or in some peasant's house where a picture of the Helmsman was mandatory art work. Now I don't know if the people who put this documentary together did this intentionally or not, but it got me thinking about both the perceptions and the realities of Zhou Enlai as the Premier of China.

Talk to the average Chinese person today and they'll tell you that while they respect Mao Zedong for one thing or another, most will freely admit that he wasn't the greatest guy and that he made a number of mistakes along the way. But ask them what they think of Zhou Enlai, and virtually every one of them will have nothing but glowing praise for the man. As has been put to me on more than one occasion, 'Chinese people are often quick to question the top leader (obviously, not publicly very often) but almost always adore the Premier.' But when I ask these same people about why they revere Zhou Enlai so much, I'm generally never given anything more than 'he was a good man.' The question I have is: Who says? What do we actually know about Zhou Enlai? Sure, we know his official biography. And yes, the propaganda newsreels in the aforementioned documentary show a gleeful peasantry hanging off his every word and looking upon him like a 6 year old daughter does her father. And sure, international leaders of the day were quick to call him one of the best statesmen they have ever met.
But what don't we know about him? This is the same Premier who - along with the rest of the CPC - blindly followed down Mao's destructive paths of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This is the same Premier who stood by while massive government and non-government purges were taking place across this country. This is the same Premier who, while moving to save dozens, perhaps hundreds, of cultural relics during the height of the Cultural Revolution, also allowed thousands more to be forever lost to history. So were his hands really tied during these times by a repressive Mao Zedong? Or was he complicit in helping Mao screw up 30% of the time? (Official CPC figure) Is this the reason the makers of Wednesday's documentary kept Mao out of the film? Does the CPC not want to paint Zhou Enlai with Mao's somewhat tarnished brush?

I freely admit I'm somewhat arm-chairing this particular post, mainly because I don't think I've done nearly enough reading about Zhou Enlai. As such, I implore all out there to give me your thoughts on this man, good or bad.

Dedicated readers of this blog will know that I am unabashed about my love for all things history, particularly when it comes to China. Though I do love the ancient history of this country, I find myself intrigued more and more by the cold war-era history under Mao. When I walk around this city, I'm still fascinated by the faces of the older generation. I often wonder to myself whether or not they were caught up in the fervor of the Cultural Revolution, and if so, what side of the persecution were they on. And living in a neighborhood close to the Forbidden City and Zhongnanhai, I will occasionally take strolls around the area, and make note of places that have conspicuous, plain-clothes guards standing out front non-government looking buildings (though I'm almost 100 percent they have some connection to the government). And another thing I've also taken note of is the surprisingly large number of air-raid shelters I've found in my wanderings. These, of course, date back to the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split, when the central government feared (and some say rightfully so) a Soviet nuclear attack. But, unfortunately, these throwbacks to the cold war-era are virtually inaccessible to us today, unless you're willing to face arrest by breaking into them. However, at least one intrepid laowai has managed to worm his way into the underbelly of Beijing. I direct you to a wonderful blog being compiled by Eric Abrahamsen for a new book coming out, which I will definitely be picking up when it's finally finished.