Food for thought

It is a peculiar trait of Chinese office culture that most people communicate via MSN, even if you happen to be sitting right next to the colleague you are speaking to. Recently, my Chinese colleagues have en masse added the prefix "I love China" to their MSN names. One has even added "no Carrefour" next to hers as a boycott of French goods is being proposed here due to the recent torch relay protests in Paris.

This is all very worrying. Speaking to another colleague, she said the symbols were designed to show solidarity with the Chinese students in the West who may be coming under pressure in the current media climate. It is a fair point, but one that illustrates the continuing impasse between the views of Chinese and the West. To me, I love China campaign makes the Chinese appear homogeneous or “faceless automatons” as I provocatively suggested to my colleague.

The way CNN has been held up as a pariah for the comments of one misguided anchor somewhat reinforces this point. Amid all the shouting and flag waving, I have not seen one article that has tried to address the root cause of all the angst, apart from perhaps Simon Barnes in the Times. There is a huge gap that needs to be bridged. Chinese media has jumped on these comments to the exclusion of pretty much everything else that has been said in the Western press about Tibet, the Olympics and Beijing. They do not see the irony that Chinese media consistently prints untruths, or that one opinion amongst many is not representative of intrinsic bias.

So where is it all going to end? I have noticed that on many of the comments left on Western news articles, both sides have begun to address each other’s points, rather than just wading in all guns blazing irrespective of what has been said before. This is progress, of a sort. I have not even attempted to cover the back and forth in detail, primarily because I have not had time, but also because it really is very difficult to weigh the arguments objectively.

The debate raging next to me about the CNN comments at the moment is a positive thing, and hopefully the clash of cultures will make the West more introspective as well as the Chinese. Why do we feel the need to uphold the values of the Enlightenment so vigorously? How can we counter the accusation that British and American actions in Iraq are in no way different from China’s in Tibet? For me, this all comes back to democratic accountability and the free press, but trying to argue this with people who have no experience of either has made me realize the breadth of the chasm that separates our cultures.