Chinese Nationalism Begets Chinese Racism

(From RealClearWorld)

Call it ethnic cleansing, with Chinese characteristics.

For the past two decades, China’s communist mandarins have sought the use of nationalism to offset their dubious legitimacy. In turning every Chinese misstep into a foreign affront, the regime has successfully created a sense of “China Uber Alles,” to borrow a phrase from a long-departed regime.

The side effect of the newly fashioned Chinese nationalism is a virulent strand of Chinese racism. To be more exact, the Han Chinese racism.

The Han race dominates the Chinese world in every way imaginable. They may be rich or poor. They may speak Cantonese or Mandarin. They may hail from Shanghai or Taipei or Los Angeles. But they draw their blood from the same ancestral source.

Because China proper has a mostly homogeneous population, the issue of race or ethnicity has rarely been a topic worthy of discussion. The Han race last galvanized itself in the 19th century to drive the ruling Manchus out of China. Once the Qing Dynasty was vanquished in 1911, the book on race relations in China was closed.

Until now.

After winning the Civil War in 1949, the Chinese Communists have strived to maintain China’s territorial integrity, especially after numerous border clashes with the Soviet Union, India and Vietnam. To secure those border hinterlands in the People’s Republic’s vast western territories, the government invested in a policy to place more reliable elements into those potentially troublesome regions.

It’s a settlement regimen that makes Israel’s look like child’s play.

Han Chinese flooded into Tibet and Xinjiang (literally meaning “New Territories") in the years after the People’s Liberation Army marched in to take control. The government enticed the Han Chinese to move thousands of miles away from the country's heartland with promises of jobs, status and a bright future. Tired of the crowded rat race in cities like Beijing, Guangzhou and Wuhan, many took the offer to head west.

The result is one of the world’s biggest population shifts since Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. In 1949, Han Chinese accounted for just 5% of Xinjiang’s population. Today, they are up to 41%, soon to eclipse the native Uighur Muslims’ 45%. Urumqi, the modern capital city dotted by skyscrapers, is dominated by the Han Chinese, who comprise over 75% of the 2.5 million population.

The successful settlement of Han population in Xinjiang underscores the importance of the region to the regime. While Tibet gets more attention from abroad, Xinjiang is more critical to China.

More than twice the size of Texas, Xinjiang sits on the old Silk Road, a land rich with resources such as natural gas and oil. It houses China’s nuclear weapons facilities. Its frontier is guarded by the towering Tian Shan mountain range, shielding China from its unstable Central Asian neighbors.

As with Tibet, Xinjiang is nominally an “autonomous region,” but that designation is as miscast as “People’s Republic.” The native Uighurs are kept away from the levers of power, which of course are supervised by Beijing. In fact, despite being as far as 3,000 miles away, all of Xinjiang (and all of China) is on Beijing time.

Beyond moving in Han Chinese to insure a loyal populace, the other part of the “ethnic cleansing” involves moving the Uighurs out of Xinjiang. Thousands of native Uighurs (many of them women) have been shipped out of their native land to take jobs in China proper. Ostensibly, it was to provide them with better pay and future, exactly what’s promised the Han Chinese in Xinjiang.

This week’s troubles started not in Xinjiang, but in Guangdong, where the displaced Uighur factory workers were involved in a brawl with the local Han Chinese population. When the Uighurs organized to protest in Urumqi, they were met with angry Han Chinese mobs, who outnumber them, 5-1, in the capital of the ironically named “Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.”

It’s abundantly clear, from last year’s riots in Lhasa to this week’s in Urumqi, that many Han Chinese have developed a keen sense of their own racial superiority.

The one phrase frequently heard from the average Chinese man on the street is “ungrateful." Put another way: Those backward minorities ought to appreciate all the modern infrastructure and improved living standards bestowed them by the Han Chinese, instead of making trouble.

There was a time when racial harmony was a highly cherished concept in the People’s Republic. Mao Zedong promoted class struggle, but demanded benevolence (at least in name) toward the minorities. China’s Reminbi currency made a point to feature all sorts of racial minorities in their various native costumes.

But that was when everybody was being repressed and oppressed in China. Now that China is bigger, stronger, and richer than ever, taking care of these minorities’ grievances isn’t much of a priority.

In fact, these grievances are met not with shrugs, but fists, sticks and guns – and not just from the cops and soldiers. Call it racism with Chinese characteristics.

China's Other Powder Keg Erupts

(From RealClearWorld)

The ethnic riots in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region has so far claimed 140 lives with 800-plus injured, according to official figures. In reality, those numbers could be much higher.

The majority Uighurs in the Xinjiang region, in China's far-flung northwest corner, have resented the hardline rule of the Chinese Communists and the growing influx of ethnic Han Chinese since the People's Liberation Army entered the area in 1949. The latest incident began as a group of Uighur students protested Chinese discrimination against ethnic minorities.

According to the South China Morning Post, the leading English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, the origins of the events that led to the protest may have been fanned by an internet hoax:

Provincial police yesterday detained a man accused of spreading false rumours of rape over the internet that sparked a deadly ethnic brawl at a Hong Kong-owned toy factory in the northern Guangdong city of Shaoguan at the weekend.

Xinhua reported that the former worker posted a message on a local website claiming, "Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent girls" at the factory, which is owned by Early Light International (Holdings).

Police said the unfounded claim was behind the massive brawl on Friday night between a group of Han and Uygur workers from the northwestern Xinjiang region who had been recruited to the factory. Some 800 migrant workers were employed from Shufu county, under the jurisdiction of Kashgar.

The Xinjiang region may be even more volatile than Tibet, which has given authorities fits intermittently since Communist Chinese occupation began in 1951. But Chinese leadership won't hesitate to unleash a harsh reprisal in Xinjiang, as there is little international support for the Uighurs' plight. A number of central Asian nations, and Russia, view the Uighur Muslims as potential troublemakers in the region and an Islamic terrorist threat.

Recently, when the Obama administration released a handful of Uighur detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, it had a difficult time placing them because repatriating them back to China would have resulted in harsh treatment (if not death) for these individuals, considered separatist terrorists by Beijing.

The riot in Xinjiang may be short-lived, as Chinese authorities will have no qualms about shutting down media access and springing a bloody crackdown. Alim Seytoff, head of the Uighur American Association, told the Chinese-language World Journal that the authorities responded with 1,000-plus riot police as soon as the protest emerged and "we've been told, they began randomly shooting into the crowd. ... We don't know how many people actually died, but at least hundreds were injured."

He went on to refute the Chinese government's assertion that the riot was premeditated by expatriate Uighur organizations, calling it a "smokescreen."

Deng Xiaoping's Bloody Power Play

(From RealClearWorld)

On the fateful days leading up to June 4, 1989, Zhao Ziyang frantically tried to halt a looming bloody crackdown. He sought an audience with one man, in whose hands the future of China’s liberalization teetered.

But Deng Xiaoping wasn’t listening.

He might’ve been nearly deaf, but at the age of 84, Deng understood how to keep the reins of power perfectly. Zhao, in his just-published posthumous memoir - Prisoner of the State – made it clear that the events on June 4 and beyond were conducted according to the exact wishes of the most powerful man in China.

In order to understand the bloody crackdown and all its consequences, it is first necessary to understand Deng Xiaoping the man. Deng had a decision to make, and it was nearly his alone. In this critical hour, Deng proved that he was unable to overcome his own personal history and obsession with power.

The student protests began on April 15, 1989, initially as a gathering to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, and to voice their displeasure at the government’s corruption. Hu was Zhao’s predecessor as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the leading reformer of his time. He had been purged by Deng and the reactionary faction in the CCP because, as a true reformer, Hu wanted China’s liberalization to go beyond just economic transformation.

China had opened its doors to the outside world for a decade at this point, but politically, it was nearly as repressive as it had been under Mao. Rampant corruption plagued the CCP at all levels, and public discontent was growing fiercer.

The students extended their protest for over a month, both during and after the visit in May by Mikhail Gorbachev -- a reformer himself and the architect of Glasnost. The protest now featured a hunger strike and a demand for direct dialogue with party officials. Over 100,000 students and workers occupied Tiananmen Square, despite repeated orders to disperse.

The scenes of students in a state of near anarchy haunted Deng.

In 1968, at the height of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, it was Deng himself who had been purged and banished to work in a factory in Jiangxi Province. His children were rounded up by Peking University students and forced to denounce their father and “expose his crimes.”

As detailed in Mao – The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Deng’s 24-year-old son Pufang tried to commit suicide by throwing himself out of a window, only to survive and was paralyzed from the waist down. Deng and his wife were not even told of his condition until a year later and not allowed to see Pufang until 1971. It was the single-most traumatic event in Deng’s turbulent personal and political life.

Now, seeing the same Peking University students nearing yet another riot, Deng was not going to heed Zhao’s pleas to go soft and slow. In his mind, he had come too far to allow his grip on power to be loosened by the same kind of radicals.

Deng had regained his political footing in the waning days of Mao’s life. With a country nearly shattered by the Cultural Revolution, Mao needed someone competent to restore order, so he freed Deng from his house arrest and political exile of nearly a decade. After Mao’s death, Deng outmaneuvered Mao’s widow and her “Gang of Four” to become the party chairman and the ruler of China.

Though Deng – an economist by trade - favored economic liberalization, he was hesitant to bring about rapid political reforms. He had allowed reformers such as Hu and Zhao to become party chiefs, but in the face of hardline opposition, he always backed down rather swiftly.

Deng purged Hu following a massive student demonstration in late 1986. The same fate befell Zhao, who was ousted days before the crackdown, and lived under house arrest until his death in 2005.

On June 4, 1989, the nascent movement toward political accountability was ruthlessly crushed by guns and tanks. But the bloodshed didn’t stop in Tiananmen Square and its immediate vicinity, as executions, prison sentences and purges were carried out throughout China. There has not been any political mass protest in China since.

After Tiananmen, Deng consolidated his power and remained the “paramount leader” of China for the remainder of his life. No doubt he gained certain satisfaction at the outcome of the crackdown. Merely five months later, the Berlin Wall fell and the communist stranglehold on Eastern Europe collapsed. Yet 20 years later, the Chinese Communists’ grip on China in all facets of life is as firm as ever.

Most of China’s young today know little to nothing about the Tiananmen Massacre. June 4 will come and go as any other day on the calendar. But just to be sure that absolutely no one will be talking about the incident, the Chinese government has taken care to shut down Twitter, Flickr and other social networking sites for the moment.

Today’s Chinese leaders are thus true disciples of the CCP. Just like Mao and Deng before them, these kindred spirits can agree on one thing: Power grows from the barrel of the gun.

Ninety Years of Chinese Nationalism

(From RealClearWorld)

The anniversary of June 4 will be closely observed by China watchers from around the world while it won’t be observed at all in China. But an event that's had far more lasting impact on modern China took place 90 years ago today, and it is this anniversary that should not escape unnoticed.

On May 4, 1919, thousands of university students gathered in Peking in an angry protest over China’s treatment in the Versailles Conference following the aftermath of World War I. If Weimar Germany got the shaft, then China was handed the short end of the stick.

Despite being on the winning side of the war, China, which sent 140,000 laborers to the western front digging ditches, ferrying ambulances and performing otherwise dangerous and menial tasks, got none of the victors’ spoils. Worse, it was betrayed by its western "allies" in every way. Not only did China not regain its sovereign soil held by the British and French, it watched helplessly as Japan took possession of the former German concessions.

The humiliation at Versailles illustrated the utter impotence of China’s nascent republic. But at this moment, when the "new" China hit the nadir in terms of international prestige, a fervent Chinese nationalism was born. And in many ways, this brand of Chinese nationalism is still ongoing.

The May Fourth Movement is commonly thought to be the catalyst, or birthplace, of the Chinese Communist Party. While it's true that a good number of the May Fourth intellectuals eventually came under communist influence, the CCP likely would've risen to prominence anyway, especially with the emergence of the new-born Soviet Union. But the real achievement of the movement was that it galvanized China to truly become a modern-day nation.

During centuries of imperial rule, the idea of "China" as one nation only existed in the minds of those at the highest levels of power. Because of China's isolation, it never really needed to contend with powerful foreign entities, save for the "barbarians" who lived outside of the Great Wall. But even when the barbarians conquered China, as the Mongols did in the 13th century and the Manchus in the 17th, they were quickly engulfed by the superior Chinese culture.

It wasn't until the 19th century when China had to deal with a truly foreign menace. First, it was the British. Then the French, Russians, Germans, and worst of all, the Japanese. A sense of nationhood initially was stoked during the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, but they were put down with the help of foreigners. The Qing Dynasty was finally overthrown in 1911, but the Republic of China, during its infancy, was more an idea than reality as the country was divvied up amongst various warlords and republican factions.

World War I was thought to be China's maiden voyage onto the international stage. But for all their efforts, the Chinese were rudely reminded of their inconsequence at the Versailles Conference. For the young generation of Chinese intellectuals who were educated in western-style liberalism, Versailles represented a devastating betrayal. For the first time, they understood that power politics trumps any lofty ideals. And with them leading the way, the movement built momentum throughout China that created a coherence and unity among the ordinary Chinese.

The Chinese were angry at their own weakness. They were angry at their own government and the foreign powers, especially Japan. The Chinese representatives in Versailles, in a symbolic gesture, refused to sign the final peace treaty. (China in fact signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in 1921.)

Fast forward to today. Ninety years later, Chinese nationalism is alive and well, and now with plenty of teeth. Backed by the world's third-largest economy and perhaps the second most powerful military, China is no longer the sick man of Asia. But nationalism is like a powder keg. For the CCP, management of this nationalism is a very delicate issue.

In recent years, the CCP has sought to use Chinese nationalism to deflect attention away from its continued one-party dictatorship. For the most part, it has achieved the desired effect. In crisis after crisis, whether it's on the question of Tibet or confrontations with the United States, the CCP counted on the application of nationalism to turn its own misdeeds into grievances.

But the days of the CCP playing the nationalism card so deftly may be numbered. China is the only country among the top 20 world producers that does not allow free elections (Russia might be another one, but we digress). Its superpower-in-waiting status is unquestioned. Sooner or later, the Chinese citizenry will figure out that to cure whatever ails China nowadays, they'd better start to look from within.

That's why the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement - known as "Youth Day" in China - will only get a glancing acknowledgment from the country's leadership . At its very heart, May Fourth represented an awakening. It was a revolt, and it was anti-government. The CCP wants none of that.

Most Disastrous Rescues

(From RealClearWorld)

Last week -- in honor of Captain Richard Phillips' courageous naval rescue from Somali pirates -- the editorial staff of RealClearWorld featured the world's top five most daring hostage rescues. From the clever, bloodless rescue of FARC hostages in Colombia, to the daring Israeli raid of Entebbe, our staff's selections highlighted the kind of bravery and ingenuity often demonstrated by soldiers and civilians all over the globe.

However, for every mission deemed a success, many more often fail. The calculated risk and planning that goes into a hostage rescue is often immense; the consequences for failing dire. When successful, these acts of heroism deserve their share of praise. But the dangers involved often render such missions futile, leaving leaders embarrassed and perpetrators emboldened.

Some of these attempts -- such as the 2002 Nord-Ost Siege in Moscow -- end with mixed and controversial results, often calling into question the tactics and planning invested into the mission.

It's our hope in compiling this list that we can show the other side to these calculated gambits, and hopefully, accentuate those rare and remarkable rescues that actually succeed.

No. 5 Waco (1993)

Most Daring Hostage Rescues

(From RealClearWorld)

When U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed three Somali pirates and rescued Captain Richard Phillips on April 12, it was hailed as a great hostage recovery mission. It had all the elements of cunning, surprise and precision that such operations demand to be carried out successfully.

Over the last half century, as terrorism has become a global plague, major governments have set up special forces to deal with just these kinds of crises. Highly-skilled and vigorously trained commandos have rescued hostages from hijacked planes, buildings to mountain-side camps and the high seas. These missions can sometimes turn deadly and become complete failures, with lasting political consequences.

The editors at RealClearWorld have reviewed more than a dozen famed hostage-rescue missions and based on the circumstances, the degree of success and locations of these rescues, the following five come out at the top of our list:

No. 5 Operation Isotope (1972)

World's Most Dangerous Cities

(From RealClearWorld)

If last week's violent attacks in Northern Ireland reminded us of anything, it's that every corner of the world - whether it be in Baghdad, Iraq or Belfast, Northern Ireland - holds its own elements of danger and instability. The world has been consumed for several years by two wars, as well as recent violence in the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

In determining the World's Most Dangerous Cities, the editorial staff at RealClearWorld instead decided to highlight some of the places around the world that have been overshadowed by the higher profile violence in other parts of the globe.

Cities like Kabul and Gaza City sadly find themselves the frequent source for headlines and news copy in world affairs pages and journals. But places may be dangerous for more reasons than just bullets and bombs. In our latest list, RCW dug deeper to present you with the cities often forgotten by the editors, reporters and pundits.

No. 10 London