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Edinburgh2002

Listed below are comments made by Edinburgh2002 between Wednesday, 16th July 2008 and Wednesday, 16th July 2008.

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National sentiment 1:35pm on 16 Jul 2008
I know once I start to say anything bad about China. Loads of people will start to criticize me being a betrayer or something like that. We just can’t bear anyone saying anything bad about our country. This is very typical communism.

I think the source of the nation pride is from the government. This kind of patriotism happened in former soviet union. Looking at the education part first, as early as primary school, the government start to choose and train it is political members. If you are a good student, you will be rewarded as young pioneer, and it is a honour. You would feel disheartened if you were not. At least, in my generation, it was like that. Now, in university, many people try to join communist party, because that means you are a good student and will be in an advantageous position in terms of employment prospect, especially in state-owned companies. From history education perspective, the history we learnt is more or less modified. Well, I am sure every country is the same, including UK. There is not that much difference between governments in history education. However, media can play a very important role in shaping people’s perception. When I was in primary and high school, (that is an important period in a person’s life in establishing the judgement of what is good and bad) we were taken to cinema very often to see the movies about how Chinese communists fought with Japanese or other foreign countries. Chinese always won and we were proud of it. Our education emphasises on collectivism rather than individualism – which means country and communism should always come first, individual comes second. Can you see country and communism are always together? That make Chinese people think loving communism is loving country. They feel hard to separate country and government. This goes through from the basic education to higher education. That is the source of nation pride. Nation pride is not a bad thing, but proud of things stupidly can be very dangerous.

Last time when I travelled to India, I met lots of Tibetans. That changed my perception where I gained from school completely. From that time on, I started to doubt Chinese government. Majority of Tibetans are refugees in India. They are having a very hard life. They make little money. Lots of the money will have to give to Indian government for keeping them there. Why do they have hard lives? Do they no want to go back to Tibet and unite with families? Who wants to suffer? No one, not even a small insect! One of the guys in the shop was Tibetan. I thought they would hate Chinese. Instead, he told me he did not hate Chinese, he just hated Chinese government. Even Tibetans know Chinese government is different from Chinese people, but we don’t.

In terms of Taiwan, Yes, it was part of China and I am sure it will be. But why do we want it? why do you want it? As long as people have happy lives, is that not enough? Too much artificial politics have made our lives so complicated. Oh, this is non- related to the source of nation pride.

My background – living in UK for 6 years, was brought up and educated in a rural place in China. My parents are very nationalistic. They don’t use anything produced in Japan. However, I have my own thoughts and opinions.

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