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China: Humiliation & the Olympics - The New York Review of Books
Schell reviews the movie Dark Matter and places it into perspective of the complex relationships of China and the West
Tags: china, olympics on 2008-08-03 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About
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But what gives Dark Matter wider significance is the filmmakers' use of the Iowa incident to explore—indirectly—some important psychological dynamics between China and the West:
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China's deeply felt sense of historic injury by foreign nations, and the ways its often thwarted efforts to gain acceptance among leading world powers have exacerbated such sentiments.
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But as the director, China-born Chen Shi-Zheng, explained to me recently, he does see the film's protagonist as expressing, in extreme form, "the complexity of the modern-day relationship of Chinese to the outside world."
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He feels superior, because of the length and depth of the Chinese civilization from which he comes.
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China still lags behind America, he personalizes this reality and feels insecure.
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larger question of China's sensitivity to foreign dominance and criticism. Here the film is masterful in illuminating how any suggestion of foreign superiority, or even condescension, toward Chinese may intersect with their own sense of historical victimization and insecurity to create a volatile chemistry.
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Lu Xun, almost seventy-five years ago. "We either look up to them as gods or down on them as wild animals."
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a new historical narrative to match, arose around the idea of bainian guochi, "100 years of national humiliation."
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Treaty of Versailles in 1919, by which the West cravenly gave Germany's concessions in China to Japan, an expression, wuwang guochi, "Never forget our national humiliation," became a common slogan in China.
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ideological overseers have never ceased to mine China's putative past sufferings "to serve the political, ideological, rhetorical, and/or emotional needs of the present," as the historian Paul Cohen has put it.
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The idea that a nation might restore itself to greatness by emphasizing, even "celebrating," weakness may seem counterintuitive.
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In 2001, the National People's Congress even passed a law proclaiming an official "National Humiliation Day."
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one of the leading candidates is now September 18, the day in 1931
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China's restless search for a more self-confident, less-aggrieved persona has paradoxically been made more complicated by other wounds not directly related to foreign attacks: for much of the past hundred years Chinese themselves have also been engaged in a series of assaults on their own culture and history.
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It is therefore perhaps understandable that a more robust sense of cultural and political self-confidence has remained elusive.
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But, perhaps because they, too, were products of the Party's propaganda, many of them have turned out every bit as nationalistic, perhaps even more so, than their elders.[*
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Xu Guoqi, author of the timely new book Olympic Dreams: China And Sports, 1895–2008, has noted, "Through their coverage and handling of the Beijing torch relay, the West seemed to remind the Chinese they were still not equal and they were still not good enough."
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Now, one is everywhere overwhelmed by new "development," or fazhan, a word that has attained almost sacerdotal overtones in this new China whose leaders have, indeed, sponsored an economic revolution that has transformed their country.
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So, like Liu Xing's Ph.D. orals, the games had come to be anticipated as the cathartic act in a long agonizing historical drama in which China would finally fulfill its almost mythic destiny: its quest for fuqiang, "wealth and power."
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A nation that obsesses over gold medals is not a self-assured nation.
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the political system that the Communist Party has tried to legitimize through sports and other means cannot produce a healthy and strong nation when its citizens have been forced to give up their independence and even personal dignity.
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as we foreigners interact with China, we should become more mindful that much dark matter generated by this history still floats around our common universe.
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Foreign Affairs - China's Olympic Nightmare - Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal
Overview of China and its build-up for the Olympics highlights it achievements and its shortcomings
Tags: china, olympics on 2008-06-22 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Official government spending for the construction bonanza is nearing $40 billion.
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Chinese government excels when it comes to infrastructure projects, its record is poor when it comes to transparency, official accountability, and the rule of law.
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it has now become impossible to separate the competing narratives of China's awe-inspiring development and its poor record on human rights and the environment
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"By allowing Beijing to host the Games, you will help the development of human rights." François Carrard, director general of the International Olympic Committee, warily supported such a sentiment: acknowledging the seriousness of China's human rights violations, he nonetheless explained, "We are taking the bet that seven years from now ... we shall see many changes."
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has responded with a traditional mix of intimidation, imprisonment, and violent repression.
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A poor outcome for the Games could engender another round of nationalist outbursts and Chinese citizens decrying what they see as racism, anti-Chinese bias, and a misguided sense of Western superiority.
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