China-bash of the week

Here's a post from WaPo blogger James Pomfret about how China's image, carefully polished for the last decade, is slipping away to reveal the face behind the mask:

Move over ugly American, make room for the ugly Chinese.

In Seoul on Sunday, groups of Chinese students accosted protesters demonstrating against China's treatment of North Korean refugees and Beijing's policies in Tibet...The South Korean government was justifiably angry...China's angry youth - called "fen qing" in Chinese - are ruining their country's reputation around the world and spelling the end of a decade-long honeymoon that the world has had with China.

The flare-up was the latest deeply troubling and profoundly weird event to mar the globe-trotting journey of the torch, which the Beijing government has dubbed "the sacred flame." (Remember, these dudes are officially atheists.) Before Seoul, we had Chinese cops in blue and white tracksuits manhandling demonstrators in Paris and London; we had a Chinese woman in the United States who participated in a pro-Tibet protest being identified on a listserv run by Chinese students; now her parents are on the run in China and her high school in Qingdao has revoked her diploma; and we've witnessed the incessant hounding of Tibetan and other speakers on US campuses by Chinese students. In cities around the world, the Chinese embassy has fanned the passions of the "angry youth" by encouraging them to demonstrate, handing out T-shirts and flags.

[T]he only thing these "angry youth" are accomplishing is turning the world away from China...

For a few years there, the tone adopted by spokespeople of China's government was downright suave...But these days, it seems like someone has disinterred Cultural Revolution propagandist and Gang of Four member Zhang Chunqiao and put him at the helm.

After the March riots in Tibet, the Tibetan government proclaimed a "people's war" against "splittism" (somebody should really tell them to lose that word) and the party boss there called the Dalai Lama "a jackal clothed in a monk's robes, and a vicious devil who is a beast in human form." A few days later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "disgusting." And the amazing thing was the Chinese expected to be taken seriously.

Finally, there's China's "ship of shame" - packed with arms for the government of Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe - on its own troubled journey to first South Africa and now Angola. In both places, dock workers refused to unload the weapons. It's a coincidence but also a bad one because China has been focusing a lot of diplomatic capital on improving its ties to Africa and the rest of the Third World.

What does this all mean for China? To me, it means the end of an era of China's "soft power."

For the past decade, China's "soft power" has helped fuel Beijing's rise by attempting to assuage fears of an expansionist China. Whether it be the establishment overseas of hundreds of language-teaching Confucian Institutes (there are more than a dozen in the US), the pay-out of millions of dollars to favored academics, preferential trade deals, or smart financial and foreign policy, China's "soft power" has been a key cog in the wheels of Chinese diplomacy. Josh Kurlantzick published a book on it last year. In 2003, Jane Perlez of the New York Times wrote a series of pieces about the issue - her general thesis being that the Chinese were beating America at its own game. Public opinion polls among Southeast Asian nations earlier this year put China ahead of the Japan and the United States as the country currently considered the region's most important partner.

But now across the globe China is dropping in the polls. And it's not due to lack of contact with the Chinese, people who are polled say, it's because we're getting to know them better. Even before the latest developments, a fear of China was rising in the West. Polls taken before the events in Tibet showed that 1) in Europe, China has overtaken the U.S. as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans and 2) in the United States, China has replaced North Korea as one of the top three U.S. enemies - after Iran and Iraq.

I'm mostly just posting this because it agrees with the foreboding feelings I've had about China's true colors for the past few years now. Something about China's attitude - if a country can even be said to have an attitude - nagged at me. The way they never apologized for anything or acknowledged any past mistakes (remind you of anyone we know?). The way the government seemed to get "angry" about something every other day. The pointless secrecy of the defense buildup. The rumors of networks of spies (!) flooding the U.S. The massive waves of hacker attacks on the government agencies of us and our allies. The blatant and probably pointless mercantilism of their currency policy. The "alternative internet." The bizarre scenes with Google and other companies appearing before Congress to explain their collusion with Chinese secret police. As soon as I started paying attention, I could tell that China was not a friendly nation. Why couldn't other people tell?

I grew up in a small Texas town with a lot of bullies. Over the years I developed what I called a "bully sense" - I could feel it all across the room when a bully was getting ready to vent some aggression. I knew when he was going to beat up a kid, or just intimidate someone into acknowledging his dominance. The air seemed to crackle and hum with a kind of negative energy. And I feel the same crackling hum from China now, only much bigger. Worse is coming.