Asian delicacies

Chives and minced pork steamed buns, Japanese utane sweet bread (a special baking technique makes it extra soft), Taiwanese aloe vera yogurt, two kinds of soju (rice liquor), one strong (from North Korea), the other smoother (from South Korea), amazing sockeye salmon sushi, warm sake, Japanese multi-layered milk cake, special octopus balls made with squid and kimchi (spicy Korean cabbage), veggie teriyaki pancakes, homemade Cantonese rice with chicken, baby bamboo shoots, crunchy pork ear, and the best black sesame ice-cream ever. All this food was enjoyed in the same weekend, and amounted to a delightful culinary trip to the four corners of the Far Eastern world. Eatable bliss.

Photo: Cantonese dishes, 2009 © Loudsoul

Destruction / redefinition

If there is nowadays a country on earth capable of totally redesigning itself, it is China. Its current process of physical ruination and swift recreation is not a simple one, since it seems to embody Schumpeter´s old principle of creative destruction, albeit particularly in the urban lanscape in the Chinese case.

“Dans New York, c’est bien quand on est jeune, mais c’est trop prévisible. Votre avenir est écrit. Tandis qu’en Chine, le développement urbain est tellement chaotique que rien n’est prévisible. Tout est possible”.

Zhang Ke*

“J’ai essayé de répondre à la question : quel est le message de l’architecture et de l’art contemporain chinois? C’est une énorme question qui se pose à nous. La plupart des gens ont encore en eux la culture traditionnelle chinoise, mais tout a changé. Il faut trouver le moyen de réunir ces deux cultures, Chine et modernité”.

Wang Hui*

[*] Young Chinese architects, in Le Monde, August 5, 2008.

Photo: ‘Misty’, Pudong District, Shanghai, 2006 © Matteroffact

Unaffected crackdown

Are Chinese authorities worried because the eyes of the world are on them now Olympics are approaching? Do they recently initiated conversations with the Tibetan leaders in exile really acknowledging the status quo in the region must change? Apparently, the answer to both questions is ‘No’. Though they claim to have realeased hundreds of prisoners in the last weeks, actually they keep more than one thousand Tibetan protesters in prison. According to Amnesty International, many of those detainees are kept in dire conditions, without enough food and frequently beaten, and some of them have been judged and ’sentenced after questionable trials”. Meanwhile, Chinese journalists continue working amidst the extreme censorship stablished around their job when the riots began, and foreign ones are simply blocked from entering Tibet.

Isn´t it high time we ceased to reward the Chinese dictatorship with international events -such as the Olympics- for free? Shouldn´t the international community be exerting a stronger pressure on the Chinese government on behalf of human rights and the rule of law?

Read Amnesty´s report here.

Photo: Police, Lhasa, Tibet, 2007 © culturalvisions

A double-edged Olympic sword

As a part of a diplomatic offensive this week, the Chinese government has criticized American human rights record, poverty and racial divides, after the American Department of State only mildly critiziced Chinese human rights abuses, and even erased the country from the list of the serious human rights abuses, to the outrage of international human rights NGO´s. China´s protest constitutes a shameful and hypocritical move, since China´s performance in these fields is among the worst in the planet. The offensive tries to counteract Western condemnation of Chinese human rights abuses just before the Olympic Games in Beijing. China has staked enormously in the gigantic public relations operation the Games amount to, whose aim is to show the world how far has China reached in its quest for development. However, the idea Chinese officials have in mind when thinking about development may have nothing to do with the image it conjures up for the Westerner, since the latter includes not only living conditions but also freedom and respect for individuals, whereas the former just points to a kind of competition to attain material and technological goals. In other words, it is all about national pride, a very Asian concept, by the way.

The Olympic Games should have never been granted to China, probably the most serious human rights violator in the world. Once the appropriate international bodies took the decision, the only action left for democratic governments and peoples is to actively boycott them. And for the boycott to be really effective, it should be a widespread Western decision, regardless the Chinese reaction to it. During the Cold War, the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games Western boycott did not lead us to the Third World War; if anything, it contributed to the Soviet regime´s collapse. Moreover, China needs Western markets desperatedly, so here we have a powerful tool to exert influence on the country. And to those claiming we should not mix sports with politics, let us note an event such as the Olympic Games is one of the best examples of global politics nowadays. Besides, the political nature of the Games is officially recorgnized by the Chinese government, which rightly weighted the huge opportunities to improve its international image the gathering offered. However, when betting on the Games, Chinese officials seemed oblivious to the fact that in our globalized world, they are a double-edged sword. Therefore, a big-scale fiasco would project a multiplied image of incompetence, corruption and, ultimately, backwardness. That would imply losing face, again, a very important concept in Asian cultures.

It is this multiplier effect we need to take advantage of to expose China´s abusive public policies towards its own citizens, raise awareness about its immoral international behaviour -i.e.: its role in the Darfur crisis-, and show our solidarity with Chinese dissidents and human rights activists. No one is denying China its right to economic and social development, but the Free World -a Cold War expression which is nevertheless relevant today, unfortunately- should send a clear message: if the Chinese government wants its country to be accepted as a major actor in the international community, it should respect life, freedom, and human rights.

Read on:

Human Rights Watch last report on China´s abuses on Beijing´s migrant construction workers.

On China´s disastrous environmental record.

On China´s international public relations setbacks as a consecuence of the Olympic Games exposure.

On Chinese officials defending China´s stand in Darfur and criticizing the Olympics tie-in.

Photo: Woman holding a dog, Beijing, 2007 © Nataliebehring

Fireworks

When I saw the Chinese team beat the Spanish one -Spain being a world power if we talk about fireworks-, though in my opinion the exhibition of the latter in the ‘Celebration of Light 2007′ at English Bay had a livelier rhythm, I thought China will achieve whichever technical goal it sets for itself in the future. Really, they can, and they will.

Photo: Fireworks in English Bay, Vancouver, Canada, 2007 © Loudsoul

A moral dilemma

Russia is not a democracy. The Gulf Monarchies are not democracies, nor are many African countries. Human rights are respected in none of these countries or regions. On the other hand, we have commercial relations with them. We import oil, natural gas and all sorts of raw materials from them. We know in most cases the money we pay for those goods does not reach the population of those countries. It usually only fattens the Swiss bank accounts of the tyrants ruling them. Therefore, we are backing autocracies with our commercial policies. Put in another way, our commercial policies often undermine our foreign policy -provided it actively endorses human rights abroad-. It can be argued we should make our trade relations contingent upon progress in basic freedoms, human rights, the rule of law and democracy. In fact, that was the way we dealt with the apartheid in South Africa -along with diplomatic sanctions-. But, is it realistic to think the United States will cut oil imports from the Middle East or that Europe will stop buying natural gas from Russia or the corrupt Central Asian republics? Our economies depend increasingly on those resources. But even if they did not and we were able to devise some kind of embargo to help advance the cause of the high moral principles cited above, there will always be less scrupulous governments in need of those goods. Thus, if we do not buy Russian gas, China will; if we stop importing Saudi Arabia´s oil -and that is really science fiction now-, again, China will. Those are among the hurddles we encounter when we try to tackle security and human rights issues in the international realm. We only need to think of the difficulties to agree on economic sanctions as a way to stop Iran´s nuclear ambitions, or the increasing presence of Chinese firms -in many cases substituting Western ones- in Africa. When dealing with corrupt governments, the chinese will not raise the subject of human rights, to begin with because their civil society back home will not press them to do so (the chinese government does not permit the emergence of an independent civil society), as it is the case with Western companies and agencies, no matter how much we may criticize their behaviour. So, what is to be done? We certainly should not continue bowing down before dictators like Vladimir Putin or Teodoro Obiang while we happily buy their oil, but neither can we shut the door on their faces. If we want to advance the cause of human rights and democracy, that approach is bound to fail. I believe a solution to this moral dilemma ought to combine trade with diplomatic pressure and help directed to democratic elements in those societies, in particular the ones who could trigger political changes. I will try to further develop my viewpoint next week, when I return from an international seminar on the subject organized by the Foreign Office in London, UK. Let us hear what world experts on these matters have to say.