BBC Blog Network

User Profile

zhangchi36

Listed below are comments made by zhangchi36 between Thursday, 22nd January 2009 and Wednesday, 10th June 2009.

«Newer
Older»

Conflict of party and private lifestyles 2:04pm on 10 Jun 2009 "China has no direct equivalent of Hello magazine"

what a nonsense! James, may in ask you that you've ever gone out and had a look around in the local shops in Beijing? Celebrity magazines are every where, maybe too many of them. Maybe they don't have any fancy pictures of Wen or Hu, but Hello doesn't do Gordon's either, none of them are lookers!

If you reporting China, please do some reaserach, and provide your readers with a fair background of the news.
The China syndrome 6:53pm on 07 Apr 2009 This is an extract from an expact in China, i think it very well summarised how the Western world and chinese people sees China differently.

"In the case of China, if you are a Westerner, I’d bet good money you might think like this: “China is currently an authoritarian state with many human rights abuses and lots of injustice, although the government does provide for decent economic growth and does many things fairly well. The problem is, they have the legacy of having a top-down Communist-imposed Leninist structure, and they have the legacy of a large, uneducated rural population. But, as time goes on, as the middle class grows and the Internet allows for more freedom of thought, it’s really only a matter of time before the country allows for more democratic reforms and more human rights”.

many Chinese people actually think something similar to this: “The Chinese government, and we the Chinese people, generally view our system as an extension of our 5000 years of history. Western democracy hasn’t brought great economic growth to developing countries in SE Asia, India, Latin America, and Africa, and in fact, has often times widened ethnic tensions, and increased dependence on former colonial oppressors. Human rights, although good in theory, in fact are just the West’s way of weakening the government and encouraging rebellion, and the West doesn’t have our interests at heart anyway, after all they invaded us in the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. Instituting a popular vote would almost certainly weaken Chinese rule over ethnic areas. The last 30 years shows that the government indeed has taken many effective economic measures to spur on growth (such as the complete transformation of cities or the building of dams, the restructuring of SOEs) that simply wouldn’t be allowed under a democratic system. The top leadership of the Politburo is, in fact, chosen through a fairly rigorous internal process, and our system could never produce a George W. Bush or a Chen Shubian. Blindly copying a Western liberal democracy means we’ll always be a second-rate copy of the West, and we’ll lose our soul in that process. The last 30 years have shown that we can achieve economic growth, achieve worldwide respect, and maintain our utmost independence by sticking with the system that allows us to stay Chinese and keep our traditions. ”.

Certainly, anyone who has been in China a while is familiar with those views. You may claim that they are historical distortions or half-truths, or convenient lies propagated by an elite so that they can plunder the country blind with corruption, but I’d argue that whether or not any of the above is true or not isn’t as important as assessing to what degree those views are widely held. I would say that, especially after last year, they are very widespread, even though there are quite a few “rightists” who vigorously argue for universal values, and in fact have quite a bit of influence in the commercial media and on the Internet. As important as individual rights are, for many people, especially outside of the West, group identity politics in deciding which “we” "I" belong to emotionally trumps ideas related to abstract political systems."
Communists turns to Confucius 4:58pm on 20 Mar 2009 it's not translated as "When three people travel together, one must be the teacher.'"

it should be "When three people travel together, one of them must be MY teacher. "

Confucius always talked about the ideal man, who he called ??(jun zi), yet when asked, he always said that he was not a jun zi. He said that he was not an innovator, but that he was merely a transmitter of ideas from a glorious antiquity. He possessed humility, which we can all agree is a pleasant personality trait. Perhaps Confucius was a ?? but just wouldn’t admit it. In this saying, we can see this humble character.
Super China 12:24pm on 06 Mar 2009 @188

"one of the most fair countries in the world. How about the complaints of many adolescents? How about numerous kids with glasses? Do you really think it is just what they want or they deserve for being addicted to computers like those in US? Do China really deserve the honor of sports giant? In China, it's common to see the phenomenon that kids are deprived of the right to have PE lessons."

you can easily find the same thing happend in Taiwan, Korea and Japan, and teenages, well, they are teenages. If you think all Chinese teenages are glasses wearing book-worms, like you think all Chinese are brainwashed fanatics, then you don't know China. TBH, i found there are a lot more creative teenages activities in China than UK, when i was in High-school, we have our own manga workshop, Starcraft guild, cosplay guild, poem society,because it's not approved by teachers, poem society, so we felt more rebellious, and more fun. in China many young people likes to watching art house films and read non-mainstream literatures, and we can read translation from many differnet countries, but here in the UK, young people tends only to watch hollywood blockbusters, knows nothing about other countries, bookshops only sells best-sellers, hardly you read anything translated from other language. I think western culture did a much better job for brainwash then Chinese government.
Saying sorry to the Chinese 6:29pm on 12 Feb 2009 for marketing ppl, sports stars normally give the images as healthy life styles, looking after your own body, smoking ciggrates has the potential to damage a sports star's image, not to mention this is marijuana.

Making a simple statement to say sorry, it's a small gesture, doesn't cost much, but makes it a lot easy for everybody, his agent, the products he represented, the customer buying the products.. so why not
Chinese charm 12:53pm on 06 Feb 2009 If western medias can do bit more homework, giving bit more broad and fair report about China and Chinese people, i believe more people would have a better understanding about China. Currently, the report on China is very imbalanced, if you asked me what i learned from the report about China, the keywords are "Tibet" "Evil" "human rights" "pullution", it is very unfair for the medias to limit the information and knowledge about China to western readers.

With Chinese readers, because everyone knows that the state controlled media is biased, so everyone seeks meaning to find true information, but for Western readers, because people believe there's a free media, so people can become lazy and be more easily manipulated.
The Semi-Attacked Politicians' Club 02:46am on 04 Feb 2009 i think it's not fair to keep implying that China hatched the nationlistic mood by teaching Chinese youths about the country's "Century of Humiliation", if you haven't done it, they wouldn't really have any of the materials to teach them, or you expecting they teach the kids that during that time all the western countries loved China and helped Chiense people progress and relax by doing Opium trade??

We can forgive but we cannot forget, history is history, what have been done has already been done, we pray and sometimes fight to make sure that bad things will not happen again : )
Taking the new year train (2) 3:49pm on 22 Jan 2009 thanks for giving us a true picture of chinese ppl's life, one of your best blogs :)
The wrong side of history 2:10pm on 22 Jan 2009 I think what Chinese media did was actually showing they would prefer a friendly link with the new American gover. If the speech was fully translated, it just may angry the mass of Chinese people, and require the government to take some action, that would put Chinese gove into an awkward position.

and really, who is judge who is at the wrong side of history. just look what western civlization did, it was such an aggressive civlization, no matter where they went , America, Australia, Africa, the original culture and people just suffered, even wiped out.

Only histroy can tell, and history is not speaking in the term of hundred years.
Looking to Gaza... and America 2:06pm on 22 Jan 2009 I think what Chinese media did was actually showing they would prefer a friendly link with the new American gover. If the speech was fully translated, it just may angry the mass of Chinese people, and require the government to take some action, that would put Chinese gove into an awkward position.

and really, who is judge who is at the wrong side of history. just look what western civlization did, it was such an aggressive civlization, no matter where they went , America, Australia, Africa, the original culture and people just suffered, even wiped out.

Only histroy can tell, and history is not speaking in the term of hundred years.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

zhangchi36