A steam bath at the Forbidden City

BEIJING – China is a land of contradictions.  I think I speak for many foreigners living here that one minute, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else – the next minute, you want to be anywhere else.

We’ve been roundly criticized on this blog for being anti-Chinese or biased, especially during the Tibetan controversy back in May (and how long ago that now seems).  We took the tack, at that time, that criticism is directed at the government and not the people, a distinction we argued can be difficult to make in a country where the government is perceived to be the people.

The contradiction here, of course, is that as a foreigner who is heavily invested in China (I’ve lived here for four years and have a long-term Chinese girlfriend) I continue to love the people of this country and recognize their great potential to change the world.  But while I feel this way about the Chinese people, I feel – again – that the government is letting them down on the world stage to the point of near embarrassment.  And I’m frustrated – and perhaps slightly disappointed – that many Chinese people fail to at least recognize this perspective, if not agree with it.

I was in Osaka over the past several days and spent some time watching CNN while in my hotel room.  Obviously the stories were focused on the Olympics, and Beijing’s notoriously bad air quality seemed to lead off the news each time I turned it on.  In one instance, anchor Kristie Lu Stout stood before a large plasma-screen which showed a picture of Beijing.  As she correctly pointed out, the skyline was barely visible through the thick smog.  Then CNN cut to this quote from Du Shaozhong, the Deputy Director of the Beijing Municipal Environment Protection Bureau, which I found via the Wall Street Journal:

It is quite natural. For example, when you are taking a bath in the bathroom, you are unable to see the one opposite us. It does not mean there is pollution.

Lu Stout returned and, deliberately or not, left a long pause before saying something to the effect of “Okay, moving right along.”  The absurdness of the quote above, and what it implies, is almost laughable.  Does Beijing really believe that there is no pollution?  Or that pollution levels are not severe or even slightly dangerous?  And how long can this government call black white, and have people believe it?

And make no mistake, people do believe it.  The people arriving from abroad won’t, but the people in China will.  I’ve had numerous first-hand accounts of Chinese friends asking me why foreigners keep complaining about the pollution.  “It’s not that bad,” a colleague at China Radio International once told me.  That colleague, of course, had never been outside of China and didn’t have much to compare it to.

Then there’s the people interviewed by CNN outside the Bird’s Nest.  I couldn’t find their exact quotes, but they were along the same lines:  This is a normal weather pattern. It will be okay. It's not that bad.

But it is that bad.  The Chinese government can fool some of its own people, perhaps, but I’ll take the word of the World Health Organization, which reported that for four days last week pollution levels were triple what the organization recommends.

The PR fallout from this, of course, is China looking foolish.  The government has, for years, been explaining away the pollution and justifying its own measures with little or no results.  Stories are printed, almost daily, in the Chinese media about the actions the government is taking to clean the air and make it, as John Stewart once joked, “hospitable for human life.”  Right now, though, the rhetoric is meeting reality, and the rhetoric is being unmasked for what it is:  pure propaganda at best, and outright lying at worst.

Caught in the middle are the Chinese people, who after listening and believing the government for so long are embarrassing themselves by parroting the government line on international television.  I’m not advocating a revolt, but the Chinese people need to demand more honesty and accountability from their government.  If they choose not to, they must accept the fallout, which will be intense criticism of China and potentially a very negative global image of their country.

Throughout history, the Chinese government has always been viewed as a “paternal” force for the Chinese people.  The rulers are given a mandate of heaven, and may retain that mandate by looking after the people.  This government has perfected the balancing act of alienating those abroad, bringing unnecessary criticism to China, and polluting the air that Chinese people must breathe every day.  But it has succeeded in convincing large swathes of the Chinese people that it has their best interests at heart.  China will become a truly global country when it realizes that governments – both western and Chinese – make their own survival the top priority.  China’s government has some accomplishments the people can be proud of.  But when it makes mistakes and causes international embarrassment for the people of China, the citizens of this great country need to stand up and make it clear that they demand the truth.