To Rouse a Dragon

The “Wisdom” of the Protesters

This is a repost of an article I originally posted in the notes section of Facebook.

One of the reasons I’m usually quite disdainful and hostile towards most grassroots protesters is they have a nasty tendency to make whatever they are trying to protest against worse rather than better. Movements with a leader and an overarching strategy, like those led by Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, that’s one thing. The recent Beijing protests are an example of another.

I’ve seen an outpouring of utter ignorance by ideologues who have no idea what they are doing or what they are talking about. Take the head of Darfur Now! who wrote an opinion piece for CNN—she was wondering why there wasn’t a global “raising of voices” against China for all of its sins. Though she sounded somewhat dismissive of the Chinese people themselves (in a patronizing, dare I say, racist way?) I still think she was mainly referring to the Chinese people themselves. Ironically, in the same article, she was praising the attempt of protesters to storm a little disabled Chinese girl in a wheelchair and douse the Olympic torch she was carrying at the time.

Perhaps I might suggest that this particular event might be part of why there isn’t more outrage in China? It’s just like the protests against the Japanese embassies before—the Chinese government attempts to stir the population into a response, but the population was already willing and, in fact, wanting to respond—and thus, ultimately, react far more violently than the Communist Party itself intended for them to react. Just like I predicted, as some of you who I’ve talked to personally know, these protests against the Olympics and calls to boycott it have had the exact opposite effect that the protesters were hoping for.

The Fury of the Crowds

The Communist Party, with all of its failings, corruption, and plain incompetence, has never had so much grassroots support behind them than now. The Chinese people themselves, fascinated by Western goodies, have never had such a nationalistic pride and belief in the conflict between “Chinese vs. the imperialist West.” The internet chatrooms and blogosphere in China is abuzz (far surpassing the state-controlled media) with anger and pure righteous outrage at the “western media bias” against China that has become the new catchphrase of the youth of China.

That “new generation” that was supposed to demand democracy, rights, and overthrow the government? It’s being driven into the government’s arms and has become one of its strongest pillars. That little girl in the wheelchair? That’s for all the rest of the Chinese. It really isn’t terribly difficult to have a little disabled girl being attacked (or attempted to be attacked) by a mob of angry, violent protesters suddenly deify the girl and demonize the Western protesters.

This isn’t helping matters for their grand cause. The leaders of the world know this. They have firmly said that they will still attend the Olympics, the exception being France’s Sarkozy, who is more image than realpolitik to begin with anyhow.

The Fragile Superpower

China’s history as a colonized and, in its own eyes, exploited nation does contribute to how it perceives the world reacting to it now. These do-gooders utterly fail to grasp this, and ignorantly plod on with types of protests that they use against the former colonial great powers and America. A hurt and wary nation does not act the same way as a waning or current world power. There was an article in TIME magazine once that mentioned that Americans were often skeptical about the “fragile” part of the name often given to China—fragile superpower. The Chinese were usually skeptical about the “superpower” part.

If the protesters want to see some effects on Darfur, Burma, and Tibet, this is not the way to do it. The Communist government wants to endear itself to the west and make concessions on these—it just is waiting for the best time and political scenario to do so. The true dragon that the west should fear now, with the foolish and destructive actions of these protesters, is the Chinese people. As the protests against Japanese refusal to acknowledge WWII war crimes, and the accidental U.S. bombing of a Chinese embassy show us, time and time again, it certainly isn’t the government that’s the party that’s unwilling to compromise and cut the west some slack: it’s the furious, angry, and previously colonized people themselves.

In those cases, the government has no choice but to be swept along in the tide of hatred and anger, or risk being turned upon and destroyed by the “oppressed” people who think that it isn’t doing enough against the West. In that case, I think the rest of the world will vastly prefer the Communist government over a true democracy of the people—who, especially at this particular moment in time, believe that the West’s only interest in China is to destroy it.

Originally posted April 9, 2008