Originally uploaded by Life in Asia (aka Life in Nanning)
Seeing that i was blogging chinese citations, my father asked me to blog the sentence of the title. Knowing that he had to find it somewhere on the internet (i doubt he is able to type chinese characters). After googling it, i became upset…
Instead of talking about the sentence, i rather talk about why i’m upset…
Briefly put, the sentence says: the people are more important than (pass before?) the people. 沒意思？ I love english! Better would be: individuals are less important then the country. Obviously a blasphemy we righteous europeans/americans/westerners? would tremble upon hearing… And thus once again a cheepo critic on china was launched, and it was easy to agree…
Especially during the olympic times it became some (not yet olympic) sport to be aware of all gruesome chinese mischiefs. Now don’t get me wrong, I am aware that there are things that are just wrong in China. It’s just that in order to be believable one has to argue about facts, not just wave some random prefabricated slogan under my nose like a red cloth.
Like so often, one faction has become so idiotically sure it has the right (the truth, the morals whatever) with them that they don’t care anymore about arguing, since their position alone, let them win any argument by default. And me as a sceptic, and a moderate (on this issue) can only shrug and be put off by their arrogance, as much as i would like to agree with them.
So what, the individual may not have that much of an importance in china, is it truly better here? Is the patriot act the paradigm of a civilization that really put the individuals at it’s center? Germany and France aren’t better, there are enough example there too, starting by wiretapping, where individual rights have been flouted.
The only good thing about all this is that it made me think again about what i really think is important in a state. More on that in the next post.
pensées aléatoires 