Demonising China

 

 

In his bestselling book The Post American World, Fareed Zakaria gushes about the ‘rise of the rest’ and points out three world changing paradigms in the last 500 years or so. The first was the rise of the West. The second, rise of the United States. And the third, that of the rest. Zakaria claims that the US and West must embrace the third as best for the world's future. But if you see the manner in which Western governments and media have poured scorn and calumny on Beijing during Olympics, it is evident that the West finds it difficult to stomach the rise of China.

China has been condemned for its human rights abuses; compared with pre-World War II Nazi regime in Germany; excoriated for displacing millions arbitrarily; and ridiculed for letting a girl child mime a song during the opening ceremony. Even ‘Western’ analysts find this portrayal of China as unwarranted. Eric Sommer, a Beijing-based Canadian media analyst says, “Imagine a situation where only the Iraq-war, the US patriot act including the abuse of people's rights, the until-that-time clandestine CIA prisons and torture chambers in Europe, mishandling of Katrina and the large number of destitute and insolvent Americans are publicised. Will Americans bear that?”

There is no doubt that the Chinese regime is authoritarian. But so was South Korea during the Seoul Olympics in 1988. And yet, that Olympics saw hardly any coverage of the kind we see today of Beijing. In fact, this coverage and the targeting of China is symptomatic of how the western media targets ‘rising’ powers that don’t toe the American line. Japan was a target during the 1980s. China, India and Brazil are frequent targets now. This hardball tactics have more chances of backfiring than putting the Reds on the mat. Says Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring, “China is a complex game. Putting things out of context only complicates the situation. Superficial media coverage and annotations that come up with clear political predisposition allows the Communist party to whip up nationalist sentiments.” And China is no Panama or Guatamela that it can be simply rolled over.