Xinjiang Riots

How distant my last post looks from today's Xinjiang. I've been watching the violence with fear -- both for the mainly innocent working class Han Chinese, who were also victimized in Tibet; and for the Uighurs who have been swept up in all of this.

It's probably way too early for analysis. But I do have a worry that the Chinese government is allowing foreign media access in such a way that diminishes the true impact of state repression in Xinjiang. The narrative, which originally was "the Uighurs are protesting in the same way as the Tibetans", has swiveled on a pivot and become "Uighurs perpetrate senseless violence against innocent Han Chinese". It seems the local government is permitting access to hospitals and Han Chinese victims, but there is much less reporting on the impact of the violence -- I won't call it senseless -- on Uighurs.

No Uighur in his right mind would talk to the foreign press about Han Chinese mobs, in front of the journalist's government minders. Nor would any sensible Uighur want to give his full name and location, or a detailed description of their plight, in case they should be tracked down by local agents of the PSB and harassed or jailed or executed.

Adam Minter over at Shanghai Scrap has already mentioned the discrepancies between the Tibetan "protest" coverage and that of the Muslim Uighur "riots", noting that the foreign media has less sympathy for the Uighurs, and a total love-on for the Tibetans. To me, this point seems rather banal -- of course they do, the love on for Tibet and the ignorance of Xinjiang has been utterly complete for years, even during the Olympics.

Because of this, the Chinese state's narrative about Uighurs continues unabated, while we would normally report the shit out of the Chinese government's silly attempts to vilify the "Dalai clique". Sigh.

Good luck Xinjiang. My heart goes out to you.

Xinjiang, August 08

At the end of August, and parts of early September, I took a trip out to Xinjiang, the northwestern-most province in China. It borders Russia in the north, Pakistan in the southwest, Afghanistan and a couple of post-Soviet 'stans to the west, and more or less sits directly north of Tibet. It is a place close to my heart; so close that people often make fun of me for it --- parroting my voice, of course, and elongating the latter syllable like neighbourhood kids used to do my name (Iain) when I was a boy in suburban Ontario.



Nevertheless, it has only became more important to me --- and the way I think about China and its problems --- over the years, despite some of the mundane, travel-related hardships I've occasionally faced there. Originally, when I applied to the School of Oriental and African Studies for my MSc in International Politics, I had proposed to examine how China was interacting, through Xinjiang, with the oil-rich and autocratic Central Asian states to China's west.

Eventually, I decided to extricate myself from that notion. It dawned on me, as any scholar of Xinjiang could tell you, that one needs to speak (and read) numerous languages to do work on the area --- at least Chinese and Russian; Uighur helps, Turkish helps, others help. The area is a confluence of historical civilizations and is hardly Chinese in any case. None of the documents are in English and the first, real academic/general-interest English-language history of Xinjiang was written only in 2007 (by James Millward; it's excellent -- also, Christian Tyler's Wild West China is good, if you're more interested in a more gripping, poetic treatment).

Since I realized I'm not a historian, and that I wouldn't be able to meaningfully advance the debate (as far as any grad student could hope to, anyway), I broadened my interest in I.P. and put forward the idea of a "Chinese cosmopolitanism," based on melding Chinese political history/philosophy and a critical cosmopolitan approach to international political theory (the very, very few who are interested can email me if they want a copy).



I was in Beijing in the summer of 08, staying with gracious friends while researching, conducting interviews, and writing my dissertation. I decided to take a trip out to Xinjiang; I missed the place. My daily dinners of laghman noodles up on Gui Jie food street just weren't cutting it. I managed to get to a few silk road cities, such as Gaochang, that I hadn't had a chance to see (or interest in seeing) the last time I went, when I knew practically nothing about the place.




I also got extremely close to Pakistan (roughly 144 km) on the Karakoram highway, referred to locally (very, very cynically) in CCP parlance as the China-Pakistan Friendship Highway. The views here were exceptionally beautiful: jagged peaks pierced up into the clouds from dry lake beds and there was a general transience about the route that moved me --- literally and emotionally. I want to go back there and cross into Pakistan that way; it's rather romantic, methinks. Also, the region is incredibly important and has stories that need to be told in a different way than we're used to.



That's it for now. I'll try and revamp this blog and keep it as a place of travel and ideas and photography, all as original as possible.

Sarah Palin

I say we nominate Charlie Gibson as John McCain's VP.

Kung Fu Restaurant

They presented our chopsticks like weapons. The food -- including Beggar's duck and steamed pumpkin -- was completely haphazard and made up, but was designed to make us more powerful. Theme songs from 80's Kung Fu TV shows played in the background. We ate beneath plastic weapons tied to the walls' wooden lattice work with red string. We drank beer from ceramic bowls.

Kung Fu restaurant! I love Beijing.

Beijing Opening Ceremonies

----Beijing, Ditan Gong Yuan, PRC.

A bunch of friends and myself sat in Ditan park last night and watched China toast itself into the night with hundreds of fiery explosions; 2,008 drummers in long, red-rimmed white robes; and perhaps most dramatic of all, a tiny, pig-tailed school girl singing in front of 91,000 people.

From where we sat in the park, in central Beijing, we could see the sky turn electric reds and greens above the two jumbotron-ish screens that depicted China's at-times ludicrous festivities.

I'm well aware of the political symbolism inherent in having world leaders show up at the National Stadium as if to pay ancient tribute to China's one-party government. It was a bit unsettling (as James Fallows notes) to have goose-stepping soldiers hoist the flags. (Though: who else; and "Man, did you see how they hoisted the Olympic flag?!") And the camera pans past China's grim-faced leaders (with the notable exception of sparkly-eyed "Grandpa Wen") were an omnipresent reminder of just who has power in China, and what that may mean for the future of all those in this country we love and hold dear.

I was overjoyed, though, to see China celebrate in such a monumental way. For anyone who knows anything about China -- its history, its politics, its heart-warmingly kind people -- and anything of the various diplomatic and military humiliations it has been forced to suffer or forced itself to suffer over the past 100 years, seeing the young Chinese in the park participate in displays of overt nationalism seemed somehow less hollow and jingoistic than I would usually accuse such things of being in the West.

It was amusing, though, to see all the terrible journalism it spawned (though not photojournalism, if you caught The New York Times photographers). Seeing writers try to cram "lavish" and "exuberant" and "extravagant" and "5,000 years of history" and "civilization" and "culture" in a lead sentence with "fireworks" and "despite widespread criticism" and "human rights" was too much for a writer to bear.

Including my second last paragraph, the Games have already birthed some long-winded and polemically subjective passages. Let the Games of overblown prose begin!

Free Globe Columnists

Canada's "national" newspaper has started offering its columnist content for free. Interesting.

I've never particularly enjoyed The Globe and Mail's columnists, finding them (on any average day) to be too right, too wrong, too pretentious, or too irrelevant for my tastes. I go elsewhere for wisdom.

First, though, I wonder why? As far as I'm aware, their commentary isn't parsed in the national consciousness the same way the columnists of some American nationals are; this is, however, probably more of a sad commentary on the tired hue of the national conversation than it is on the state of Globe opinion-mulling.

Second, I wonder/worry if online news-seeking will go the way it has on the New York Times website, where on any given day the "most read" articles are almost all opinion pieces. Opinion is easier to digest than news: its saucy, irreverent, analytical, opinionated, daring. It's also diluted information: it goes from the source through newspaper journalists to their columnists, who then inject it with sass to make it interesting and less factual.

Don't get me wrong. I like columnists (not personally: I don't really know any; they don't seem ever to be in the newsroom). I just don't like how news is devalued these days. "Alright everyone, we're relenting, we'll finally give you the good stuff, since you've suffered through all that boring trash." Etc.

"Grandpa" Wen

In tune with the past two posts, I just figured I'd post one more thing about media, particularly Chinese media. In the essay segment I posted yesterday, I was less clear on one of the overarching "responsibilities" of the Chinese press: to shore up the Party's hegemonic control of the state (one specific way to do this would be to defuse social instability through rooting out corruption).

With the Sichuan earthquake, however, the media have brought the people closer to the party simply by broadcasting and showing Premier Wen Jiabao as a paternalistic, caring leader.

From Sunday's New York Times

“He really loves the common people, and we can see this is not an act,” said Wang Liangen, 72, a retired math teacher from the devastated city of Dujiangyan, who watched last week as the prime minister climbed over the wreckage of a school where hundreds of children were buried. “He has brought the people closer together, and brought the people closer to the government.”

This would be impossible in Burma. It's not in China. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, especially since it must comfort (at least) some people in the earthquake zone (I hesitate to write "victims" here...).

Newspapers and the truth

From the Atlantic Monthly of January 1922, by Frederick Lewis Allen.

We talk a great deal about the right of of the individual to express his opinions, and somewhat less about the advantage to the community, or the nation, or the world, of determining its collective action after the freest discussion; but we are just beginning to see that it is still more vital that the individual shall be able to form his opinion upon the facts. If these facts are withheld from him or misrepresented to him, his opinion is as valueless as that of a judge who has heard incomplete or false evidence in a case. Though the individual may be at liberty to shout his ideas from the housetops, he is still a slave to illusion; and all the more completely a slave than if he were in bonds, because he fancies that he walks freely in the light.