Chinese Students in U.S. Fight View of Their Home
LOS ANGELES —When the time came for the smiling Tibetan monk at the front of the University of Southern Californialecture hall to answer questions, the Chinese students who packed theaudience for the talk last Tuesday had plenty to lob at their guest:
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Ben Huang challenging a Tibetan monk last Tuesday.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Min Zhu, center, was removed from an event with a monk at the University of Southern California after a bottle was thrown.
If Tibetwas not part of China, why had the Chinese emperor been the one to give the Dalai Lamahis title? How did the tenets of Buddhism jibe with the “slaverysystem” in Tibet before China’s modernization efforts? What about theDalai Lama’s connection to Hitler?
Asthe monk tried to rebut the students, they grew more hostile. Theybrandished photographs and statistics to support their claims. “Stoplying! Stop lying!” one young man said. A plastic bottle of water hitthe wall behind the monk, and campus police officers hustled the personwho threw it out of the room.
Scenes like this, ranging fromcivil to aggressive, have played out at colleges across the countryover the past month, as Chinese students in the United States have beenforced to confront an image of their homeland that they neitherrecognize nor appreciate. Since the riots last month in Tibet, thedisrupted Olympic torchrelays and calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Games inBeijing, Chinese students, traditionally silent on political issues,have begun to lash out at what they perceive as a pervasiveanti-Chinese bias.
Last year, there were more than 42,000students from mainland China studying in the United States, an increasefrom fewer than 20,000 in 2003, according to the State Department.
Campuses including Cornell, the University of Washingtonin Seattle and the University of California, Irvine, have seen a waveof counterdemonstrations using tactics that seem jarring in theAmerican academic context. At the University of Washington, studentsfought to limit the Dalai Lama’s address to nonpolitical topics. AtDuke, pro-China students surrounded and drowned out a pro-Tibet vigil;a Chinese freshman who tried to mediate received death threats, and herfamily was forced into hiding.
And last Saturday, students fromas far as Florida and Tennessee traveled to Atlanta to picket CNN aftera commentator, Jack Cafferty, referred to the Chinese as “goons andthugs.” (CNN said he was referring to the government, not the people.)
Thestudent anger, stoked through e-mail messages sent to large campusmailing lists, stems not so much from satisfaction with the Chinesegovernment but from shock at the portrayal of its actions, as well asfrustration over the West’s long-standing love affair with Tibet — alove these students see as willfully blind.
By and large, theydo not acknowledge the cultural and religious crackdown in Tibet,insisting that ordinary Tibetans have prospered under China’s economicdevelopment, and that only a small minority are unhappy.
“BeforeI came here, I’m very liberal,” said Minna Jia, a graduate student inpolitical science at U.S.C. who encouraged fellow students to attendthe monk’s lecture. “But after I come here, my professor told me thatI’m nationalist.”
“I believe in democracy,” Ms. Jia added, “butI can’t stand for someone to criticize my country using biased ways.You are wearing Chinese clothes and you are using Chinese goods.”
Studentsinterviewed for this article deplored the more extreme expressions ofanger, like death threats against the Duke freshman and the tossing ofthe water bottle, and pointed out that Chinese students had littleexperience in the art of protest. But, they said, they could alsounderstand them.
“We’ve been smothered for too long time,” said Jasmine Dong, another graduate student who attended the U.S.C. lecture.
Bythat, Ms. Dong did not mean that Chinese students had been repressed orcensored by their own government. She meant that the Western news mediahad not acknowledged the strides China had made or the voices ofoverseas Chinese. “We are still neglected or misunderstood as eitherbrainwashed or manipulated by the government,” she said.
Nomatter what China does, these students say, it cannot win in the arenaof world opinion. “When we have a billion people, you said we weredestroying the planet./ When we tried limiting our numbers, you said itis human rights abuse,” reads a poem posted on the Internet by “asilent, silent Chinese” and cited by some students as an accurateexpression of their feelings. “When we were poor, you thought we weredogs./ When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts./ When webuild our industries, you called us polluters./ When we sell you goods,you blame us for global warming.”
Ratherthan blend in to the prevailing campus ethos of free debate, the morestrident Chinese students seem to replicate the authoritarian frameworkof their homeland, photographing demonstration participants andsometimes drowning out dissent.
A Tibetan student who declinedto be identified for fear of harassment said he decided not to attend avigil for Tibet on his campus, which he also did not want identifiedbecause there are so few Tibetans there. “It’s not that I didn’t wantto, I really did want to go — it’s our cause,” he said. “At the sametime, I have to consider that my family’s back there, and I’m goingback there in May.”
Another factor fueling the zeal of manyChinese demonstrators could be that they, too, intend to return home;the Chinese government is widely believed to be monitoring large e-maillists.
Universities have often tried to accommodate the anger of theirChinese students. Before the Dalai Lama’s visit to the University ofWashington, the campus Chinese Students and Scholars Association wroteto the university president expressing hopes that the visit would focusonly on nonpolitical issues and not arouse anti-China sentiments.According to a posting on the group’s Web site, the universitypresident, Mark A. Emmert, told them in a meeting that no politicalquestions would be raised at the Dalai Lama’s speech. A spokesman saidthe university, which opened an office in Beijing last fall, hadprescreened student questions before the Chinese students voiced theirconcerns.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
A lecture by a Tibetan monk at U.S.C.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
The lecture drew Chinese students who angrily questioned him and handed out fliers opposing the Dalai Lama.
Some experts say thatcolleges feel constrained from reining in the more extreme proteststhrough a combination of concerns about cultural sensitivity and adesire to expand their own ties with China.
“I think there tendsto be a great deal of self-censorship,” said Peter Gries, director ofthe Institute for U.S.-China Issues at the University of Oklahoma,“and not just among American China scholars but among the whole web ofpeople who do business with China, including school administrators.”
Atthe U.S.C. lecture, the Chinese students arrived early to distributehandouts on Tibet and China that contained a jumble of abbreviatedhistory, slogans and maps with little context. A chart showing thatinfant mortality in Tibet had plummeted since 1951, when the CommunistChinese government asserted control, did not provide any means forcomparison with mortality rates in China or other countries.
Onephotograph showed the Dalai Lama with Heinrich Harrer, author of “SevenYears in Tibet” and a one-time member of the Nazi Party — hence thequestion about the Dalai Lama’s connection to Hitler, who died when theDalai Lama was nine. The question about slavery referred to the feudalsystem in place in Tibet until the mid-20th century. Another photographpurported to show a Tibetan drum that, according to the caption, wascovered with “a virgin girl’s skin.”
The students said theywere frustrated by a sense that many accounts of the recent riots didnot reflect the violence and destruction by the Tibetan protesters, whovandalized shops owned by Han Chinese (the ethnic majority in China).According to official Chinese news sources, 22 died in the rioting.
Muchof the anger has the tenor of disillusionment. During the TiananmenSquare protests in 1989, the Western news media was seen as a source ofotherwise elusive truth.
“We thought Western media is veryobjective,” said Chou Wu, a 28-year-old working on his doctorate inmaterial science, “and what it turned out is that Western media is evenmore biased than Chinese media. They’re no better, and even more,they’re against us.”
Students argue that China has spent billionson Tibet, building schools, roads and other infrastructure. Asked ifthe Tibetans wanted such development, they looked blankly incredulous.“They don’t ask that question,” said Lionel Jensen, a China scholar atNotre Dame. “They’ve accepted the basic premise of aggressivemodernization.”
That may be, some experts suggest, because thestudents whose families can afford to send them abroad are the ones whohave benefited the most from China’s economic liberalization.
SpringZheng, 27, another graduate student at U.S.C., dismissed the notionthat her patriotism stemmed from the government’s efforts to use theschools to instill national pride, particularly after Tiananmen Square.
Rather, Ms. Zheng said, “We have witnessed with our own eyesabout the rapid change of China. China is developing fast, and Chinesepeople’s lives” are “becoming better and better, fast.”
As theU.S.C. session wound to a close, the organizer, Lisa Leeman, adocumentary film instructor, pleaded for a change in tone. “My hope forthis event, which I don’t totally see happening here, is for people onboth, quote, sides to really hear each other and maybe learn from eachother,” Ms. Leeman said. “Are there any genuine questions that don’tstem from a political point of view, that are really not here to be ona soap box?”
At that moment, the bottle hit the wall.
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Olympic Torch Protesters Attacked in South Korea
SEOUL, South Korea— Thousands of young Chinese who assembled to defend their country’s troubled Olympic torchrelay pushed through police lines here on Sunday, some of them hurlingrocks, bottled water and plastic and steel pipes at protesters who weredemanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.
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Lee Jin-man/Associated Press
Chinese students were blocked by the police during a demonstration in Seoul.
Pool photo by Seo Jae-hoon
Two North Korean defectors were prevented from setting themselves on fire during the protest.
Two North Korean defectorsliving in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried toset themselves on fire to protest what they condemned as Beijing’sinhumane crackdown on North Korean refugees, but the police stoppedthem, according to witnesses and officials.
The South Koreanpolice and Chinese students also overpowered at least two otherprotesters who tried to impede the run along a 15-mile route throughSeoul. The route was kept secret until the last minute and was guardedby more than 8,300 police officers.
The globe-trotting relayof the torch leading to the Beijing Games in August has spurredprotests in some cities against China’s crackdown on protests forindependence in Tibet.However, in South Korea, one of the torch’s final stops before enteringthe safety of China, demonstrators focused on human rights for NorthKoreans who live in hiding in China after fleeing hunger in theirhomeland.
According to Chinese state media, the torch arrivedlate on Sunday in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, one place wherethe Chinese authorities can be sure there will be no protests. North Korea,an ally of China, said it was preparing an “amazing” welcome,indicating that the totalitarian government would mobilize hundreds ofthousands of flower-waving people.
Hours before the torch runbegan in Seoul, which hosted the 1988 Summer Games, several thousandChinese, mostly students studying in South Korea, converged on theOlympic Park, singing, chanting and waving signs that read, “We loveChina,” or, “Go, Go China.” With groups of Chinese marching withChinese flags wrapped around them, the park looked like a sea of red.
When a few protesters demanded that China stop repatriating NorthKorean refugees, they were quickly surrounded by jeering Chinese. Nearthe park, Chinese students surrounded and beat a small group ofprotesters, news reports said.
In another scuffle, at the citycenter where the five-hour torch run ended, Chinese surrounded severalTibetans and South Korean supporters who unfurled pro-Tibet banners,and kicked and punched them, witnesses said.
The largestscuffle erupted shortly after the first torch-bearer left the OlympicPark, surrounded by dozens of police officers on foot or on bicyclesand hundreds more in buses and trailed by a water cannon, ambulancesand helicopters overhead.
Many of the Chinese who had gatheredat the park surged toward about 150 protesters, mostly old SouthKoreans and North Korean defectors, who were shouting, “No humanrights, no Olympics,” from across a boulevard. Armed with plasticshields, the police scuffled with the Chinese as they tried to separatethe two groups who were hurling objects at each other. At least oneChinese student was hauled away by the police for throwing a rock. ASouth Korean newspaper photographer was taken to the hospital with acut on his head.
The torch arrived in Seoul from Nagano,Japan, where protesters hurled garbage and flares during its run onSaturday and brawled with Chinese government supporters, who accusedthe West of vilifying Beijing. There, too, Chinese supporters had faroutnumbered those protesting the run.
In Seoul, several Chinesestudents, speaking in Korean, said in interviews that they were angeredby efforts to politicize the Games and that they gathered to “show ourdefense” of them.
“I am so happy that we host the Olympics, soproud that I am a Chinese,” said Yu Liping, a Chinese student who tookan early morning train from his provincial college to Seoul. “I hatethose who try to throw cold water on our celebration.”
Gao Yu, a student from Inner Mongolia, accused CNN and other news outlets in the West of “spreading lies.”
“We want to show to the world that China is one,” he said.
Although the torch run stirred little interest among South Koreans ingeneral, thousands of North Korean defectors in the South and theirsupporters saw it as an opportunity to press Beijing to better protectNorth Korean refugees in China.
In recent years, thousands ofNorth Koreans have fled across the loosely controlled Chinese border.China sends back North Koreans it catches as illegal economic migrants,a policy condemned by rights groups. Once repatriated, the NorthKoreans face life-threatening punishment in labor camps, say rightsgroups.
“Even as it is preparing for the Olympics, China isarresting North Korean refugees and sending them to the valley ofdeath,” said Han Chang-kwon, a leader of North Korean defectors. “Isthat an Olympic spirit?”
Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor andadvocate for North Korean refugees, found himself surrounded by jeeringChinese students on Sunday.
“This torch run reminds me of Hitler,who first invented it in 1936 to divert world attention from humanrights problems in Germany under the disguise of ‘world harmony,’ ” hesaid. “You will see a scary Nazi-like scene tomorrow when the torchruns through Pyongyang and all those people are mobilized for theevent.”
Several Western countries, including the United States, have urged China to resume talks with aides of the Dalai Lama,the exiled Tibetan leader, whom Beijing has accused of mastermindingrecent unrest in Tibet. China’s official news agency had indicated onFriday that Chinese officials were willing to meet with envoys of theDalai Lama, but on Sunday the Chinese Communist Party’s leadingnewspaper, The People’s Daily, continued to criticize him and praisedprotesters against Tibetan self-rule as patriotic heroes, Reutersreported.
Many placards that the Chinese waved Sunday in Seoul criticized the Dalai Lama or addressed the problems in his homeland.
“Tibet is part of China forever,” one sign said.
InBeijing, Vice President Xi Jinping said Sunday that France needed totake “concrete actions and work with China” to improve relations afterthe chaotic protests of the Olympic torch relay in Paris on April 7,The Associated Press reported. Mr. Xi met Sunday with Jean-DavidLevitte, the top diplomatic envoy of President Nicolas Sarkozyof France.
왜 정확한 국사를 배우는것이 중요한지 이 기사가 아주 잘 보여 주고 있다. 무조건 자신이 배운 역사가 진짜라고 우기기 전에 여러가지 관련된 책을 읽어 보고, 다른 나라의 역사관까지 알아 본뒤 뭐라고 비판을 하던지 해야지, 무조권 자기 나라에서 배운것이 진리라 믿는 사람들... (우리 나라를 포함해서 아시아 쪽에 이런 사람들이 좀 많다.) 참 기본이 안되어 있다. 토론으로 시작해서 결국 몸싸움으로 끝내는것도 비슷비슷.. -_-;
이 기시를 읽으면 왜 우리가 동북공정에 맞서서 싸워야 하는지 티벹이란 불쌍한 나라를 예로 들어서 알수 있게 해준다. 힘이 없어서 영토를 "중국"에게 잃으면 몇백년도 아니라 몇 십년안에 이 낮짝 두꺼운 민족의 주장에 우리 한민족은 중국의 소수민족중의 하나로 남게 될것이다. 이런 상황에서 우리가 살아남으려면, 우린 미래를 이끌어갈 어린아이들에게 영어를 배우라고 강요하기보다는 올바른 자국의 역사를 교육시켜야 한다. 환단고기 아니면 뉴라이트 같은 판타지 말고... 아이들이 스스로 판단할수 있게 중립된 역사관을 잡아 주어야 한다.
그리고 마지막으로 ... 나라를 무슨 회사처럼 운영하는 우리의 2MB 대통령님은 제발 국방예산을, 올리는것은 기대도 안한다, 깎지나 않았으면 ... 나중에 중국이랑 전쟁나면...(전쟁안나기를 기도 하지만 중국이 하는짓으로 보면 조만간에 날듯하기도..;;;) 무엇으로 싸울것인지 국방예산을 삭감하기 전에 생각좀 해봤으면 하는 바램이다.
서울서 벌어진 중국 유학생들의 폭력적인 데모 사건을 읽고 열받고 기가 차서 정신없이 주절주절...;;;;
