| @ Peter, you wrote: My question for you is how can people in the United States best support positive change in China? Don't you find this question just a little bit arrogant, especially given the United States' role in world affairs in the past few years? I'm an American living in China, and I believe that you are thinking and acting from a good position, and I can say that I essentially completely agree with your views. But I guarantee you, the reaction to your well-meaning question from almost any Chinese person will be "How does any American think they have standing to advise China how to act?" The fact that you personally may be opposed to the current administration's actions does not come through when you stand as a protester during a torch relay. So my advice to you before you get involved in such a protest would be to listen first, start a dialogue (as we are doing now through this excellent blog), then maybe you have standing to start giving advice. Chinese people right now tend to be pretty sensitive about criticism, and protests such as the ones in SF and especially Paris tend to REINFORCE that tendency, rather than easing it. By reinforcing anti-foreign sentiment in China, you are directly supporting the government in power, which has reaped a big public relations victory domestically (which is what they care about) through all the torch protests. Finally, I hope you are not one of those who favor the attacks on the torch in Paris. I hope that it doesn't matter what one's views on Tibet are, to see anyone physically attacking (rather than peacefully protesting) an Olympic torch-bearer (especially a handicapped one!) is pretty shocking and should not be tolerated by those of any political side. Thanks for posting and thanks to Jianshuo for hosting, we have to keep the conversation going. |
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