Olympic Cartoon

6 Responses to “Olympic Cartoon”

1. johnmortell on April 16th, 2008 9:16 am

   that’s brilliant - where did you find it?

2. Cian on April 16th, 2008 6:34 pm

   I can’t remember. Possibly 4chan. There’s a watermark on it too…

3. Liam on April 16th, 2008 9:35 pm

   Why is everyone joining the “It’s just like another Berlin ‘36″ brigade?

   Stop it. The Chinese don’t execute people by firing squad ffs. This is only more cheap garbage against the beijing olympics which I suspect is from the ‘free tibet’ hippie camp.

   There are plenty of people living in Tibet who identify themselves as Chinese. I expected better from you Cian, if only as Politics and Philosophy student.

4. Cian on April 17th, 2008 3:20 pm

   Because there are numerous parallels. China is a rising, undemocratic power with a terrible human rights record hosting the Olympics and using it for propaganda purposes, and Nazi Germany was a rising, undemocratic power with a terrible human rights record hosting the Olympics and using it for propaganda purposes.

   According to the Wikipedia article on capital punishment in China: “The most common is execution by firearms, which uses an assault rifle to fire a single shot of a hollow point bullet designed to expand upon impact, resulting in the disintegration of the upper portion of the brain.” Granted, that’s not exactly the same thing as a firing squad, but it’s close.

   The ‘free Tibet’ campaign isn’t solely comprised of hippies, unless you consider everybody who cares about human rights, democracy and self-determination to be a hippie.

   Yes, there are “plenty of people living in Tibet who identify themselves as Chinese.” These are the ethnically Han-Chinese that have emigrated to the region in recent years (with government encouragement) from elsewhere in China. It is this group that has disproportionately benefited from Chinese government largesse in the region, while ethnic Tibetans have not witnessed any substantial improvement in their living conditions, and certainly nothing commensurate with the level of cultural repression that the Chinese government has established (e.g., ‘patriotic education’ that involves condemning the Dalai Lama). For more on this subject check out this briefing on Chinese investment in Tibet from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11021130

5. Liam on April 18th, 2008 1:53 am

   The contrasts between Nazi Germany and China are also abundant. China is not a dictatorship. Economic mire is not driving the people to desperation, and China is ethnically uniform so the sort of ethnic resentfulness of Nazi Germany isn’t present. A minority are resentful of the majority in Tibet but this is infact the opposite case as Nazi Germany. China is not suffering economically. Beijing ‘08 is not a circus designed to demonstrate race superiority etc. etc…

   Hard idealists can be usually slandered as hippies, particularly those who are so with regards to politics. For example, how is democracy even imaginable in a country of 1.3bn people? Say they had a representative democracy with a parliament consisting of 1000 representatives (which would be huge). That’s over a million people per representative. Marginalisation of minorities is a weakness of a democratic system anyway, and it becomes even bolder when we talk about a country of this many people. That said, democratic values do exist within the CPC, the world’s largest political party which consists of over 60m people, and the process of ascension is highly intricate. Tibetans have a say in the governance of their region. Their governor is Qiangba Puncog, and ethnic tibetan (which is policy). See Wikipedia, etc.

   Regarding cultural suppresion, I agree that the whole story with the Dalai Lama is not to be admired. There are however a few points that I would like to make. Firstly, China has a very good record in the preservation of it’s cultural identity. The guy in the cartoon is possibly being executed because he damaged or destroyed a cultural relic, or indeed killed a panda, which is also a capital crime. It’s no secret that identity and cultural significance is paramount in the minds of Chinese government. This is perhaps the real reason why the olympics are being used to advertise China to the world. This doesn’t amount to propaganda, at least not in my mind. The preservation of cultural identity extends to the autonomous region of tibet. Tibetan is a recognised language of the region, and over 90% of the people are ethnic Tibetans. Neither ethnic cleansing nor the kind of plantation of Han Chinese you allude to have occurred in the 50 years of Chinese rule.

   The second point ties in with this, and the absence of cultural dousing that some people say is occurring in Tibet. It’s from a passage in the econimist article you cited, and regards the notion that Chinese investment in Tibet (which is heavily subsidised with far more input than output) is only going to the Han Chinese, and not he ethnic Tibetans:

   “As a result (of lack of investment in education), 45% of the Tibetan population were illiterate in 2005 and unable to benefit from the available economic opportunities, which inevitably require the knowledge of Mandarin Chinese.”

   Ironically, to say that the Chinese are both stamping out Tibetan culture, and selectively providing disproportionate investment statement is based on “skewed” logic.

6. Cian on April 18th, 2008 1:35 pm

   “China is not a dictatorship.” It’s a totalitarian state, which is almost as bad. The vast majority of the people have no say in who rules them and how they are ruled.

   “China is not suffering economically.” Germany was doing pretty well economically too by the time of the Olympics in 1936.

   “For example, how is democracy even imaginable in a country of 1.3bn people?” Well it works in India, where the population is almost as big…

   The governor may be Tibetan, but the powerful party chief in the region is a Han, Zhang Qingli.

   “China has a very good record in the preservation of it’s cultural identity.” The issue is not Chinese cultural identity, but Tibetan cultural identity. The Chinese government recently passed a law claiming that all re-incarnations of important Tibetan Buddhist figures must be officially sanctioned in Beijing. How’s that for preserving Tibetan culture?

   “Neither ethnic cleansing nor the kind of plantation of Han Chinese you allude to have occurred in the 50 years of Chinese rule.” No one’s claiming that ethnic cleansing is being carried out. There has, however, been considerable migration of Han Chinese to the region in recent years, made possible by the recent opening of railway line.

   “Ironically, to say that the Chinese are both stamping out Tibetan culture, and selectively providing disproportionate investment statement is based on “skewed” logic.” I take the point, but teaching Tibetans Mandarin does not necessitate undermining their culture.

Leave a Reply