Tag: Asia

China’s Chance to Join Humanity?

Well, whom the Gods wish to destroy ……

Kim Jung-Il

But is Kim-Jong Il (leader of North Korea) insane or just clever?

Or of course both?

There is after all no rationale or logic to the NK gulag, merely the survival of its gruesome regime.

For this the brainwashed people’s attention needs to be constantly diverted away from the utterly-bleak moral, intellectual,  spiritual and physical deprivation of their lives to some external enemy. And of course if no such enemy exists, then it is necessary to invent or – in this case – provoke one.

I would not be surprised if some sort of hostilities broke out, if not from calculation then from miscalculation, as NK is playing a dangerous game.

Could this at last be the turning point we who identify with the NK prisoners have long waited for? The sanctions will definitely  hurt an already tottering NK economy (if you can call it that).  Even the North Koreans, past-masters at brinkmanship, had one day to overplay their hand, as there are hints that they may have now done.

And should hostilities occur, while no doubt they could initially do a great deal of damage to Seoul I wonder if – like all such shoddy regimes – it could all fall apart like a pack of cards?

It is not only the NK people who are habitually starved – NK soldiers are also reported to be  undernourished and low on morale. And what have the people to fight for? Merely to support the regime’s continued existence on a diet of fine foods, fast cars and other imported luxuries while they starve?   

But as ever, all depends on China, which materially and politically supports NK, which is in effect no more than a vast prison camp led by a bloody, murderous gang of utter scum who must surely one day have their Nuremberg (or perhaps Mussolini/Ceausescu) moment.

This alone begs the question of why the free world so constantly sucks up to China and more importantly sustains its economy by buying its artificially-cheap products.

Yes, the land of the free and home of the brave is the major trading partner of a dictatorship that could put an end to the North Korean people’s suffering, but chooses not to. Not only that, any poor soul managing to escape from their NK prison is sent back by the Chinese. You couldn’t make it up …..

The total triumph of greed for cheaper washing-machines and thousands of tons of shoddy plastic artefacts versus support for an entire and utterly oppressed people?

As for the Chinese, one can imagine them inwardly seething at its ally’s (Christ, what a shameful fact) lunacy. For China can in this case no longer sit on the fence. The unprovoked murder of 46 innocent South Koreans has put them on the spot. Ban Ki Moon himself is making angry noises.

Can China REALLY afford a situation where it is NK & China against the entire rest of the world? The next few days will tell, but if – as one fears – China as usual delays and obfuscates, then where will Obama and Clinton sit? The fence is exceedingly uncomfortable, after all.

Some final points. It is often said (principally I believe by China itself) that it fears an NK collapse and mass immigration into China by its people. Surely this is silly? There might WELL be a big exodus in the case of all-out fighting, but I believe this would be brief and, of course, after it is all over the South would take over and – as in Germany – do whatever was necessary to reunite and help all the people. And the idea that NK refugees would feel they had better prospects in China rather than a reunified and free Korea is bizarre.

No, China is still trapped by its post-revolutionary insanity and inhumanity. Oh God, please free them from the chains of their past and from their obsession with not losing face ……

An optimist (are there any left?) might see these latest events as the death throes of the world’s most horrible regime. A pessimist will consider the latest posturings as just another scene in the longest-running political tragedy of our generation. I am in this case an optimist, but of course one who has usually been disappointed.

POSTSCRIPT: I notice that a NK football team just drew 2-2 in an international “friendly” with  Greece. Can anyone explain why the West banned sport with South Africa over apartheid but seems to rejoice in allowing sport with North Korea?

The apartheid regime was nasty; no problems with the boycott for me. But there is no comparison in the awfulness of NK with the old SA regime, nasty though it was. Do the Greek footballers have ANY idea of the barbarity of the NK regime? How can Greece – home of democracy – PLAY with representatives of mass-murderers? A serious reality check is in order here.

By Chris Snuggs

This Month’s PAFF Award

Bob Dylan  a serious threat to ….. only China knows!

Congratulations China. You win this month’s Paranoid Fascist Fatuosity award by refusing to allow an ageing Bob Dylan to perform in Beijing and Shanghai.

It seems you are concerned that he might inspire people, and no doubt mostly your youth, to revolt. And (apart from political freedom of course) revolution is the last thing on your mind, even though a revolution spawned you 60 years ago.

So Dylan will live on for Asians only on CD, but thank goodness for that! Michael Jackson may have been the self-styled “King of Rock”, but Dylan was astonishingly and iconically original and unique.

I say “was” of course not out of disrespect to today’s version, but with those amazing years of the 60s in mind when protest was in our very soul and played its part in the revolutions of 1968 and later the big one, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.

On second thoughts, perhaps the Chinese Communist Party is not so paranoid after all. As my psychiatrist once said to me: “No Mr Snuggs, you’re not paranoid; they really are out to get you.”

Still, what a pity. What a sad reflection on the so far failure of “globalisation” to penetrate far into CPP mindset. Where is the Chinese “Glasnost”? Where lurks the Chinese Gorbachev?

Just in case you’d forgotten, here are some of the words that apparently strike such fear into the Forbidden City. Just as in the British civil service, “change” is not something welcomed with open arms:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don’t criticise what you can’t understand.
Your sons and daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly aging.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand,
For the times, they are a-changing.

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast,
As the present now will later be past.
The order is rapidly fading,
And the first one now will later be last,
For the times, they are a-changing.

PS Most “serious” western newspapers did in fact report that the tour was cancelled because permission was refused by the authorities. However, just because the CPP is fascist – and of course all fascists maintain strong censorship – it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ALWAYS guilty. “The truth” is sometimes an elusive quantity. Well, re the Dylan tour, here is an alternative version of what happened …. perhaps the last page has not been told.

Bob Dylan

By Chris Snuggs

“FACE” and the Human Spirit

Putting on a face with deadly consequences!

I worked for 10 years at ISUGA, a school in Quimper, France dedicated to multi-cultural understanding and international co-operation in business. This was an extremely rich experience at a school where the majority of the foreign students were Chinese.

The campus at ISUGA, Quimper, France

It is also, incidentally, the place where I had to good fortune to meet Jon Lavin and Paul Handover, fellow authors on Learning from Dogs.

I like to think that I have always been sensitive to the cultural differences between different nationalities. Having lived abroad for long periods in both France and Germany, the idea of living in a sort of English enclave somewhere, jealously guarding such cultural practices as endless burgers and fish and chips, is totally anathema to me.

I am human first and English second and if I live in Germany, France or anywhere else I want to live like the natives as far as possible …

This also means making an effort to understand and accept their “culture”. Now this normally poses no problem, but with my Asian friends there is one aspect of their culture that I could not accept. And of course, if one DOES put one’s humanity first, then there is always the risk that the culture of one’s hosts – in some respect – may have to take second place. The “culture ” of Germany in the 1930s was fascist, and I certainly could not have lived with that.

No, what causes me problems with Asians (and particularly Chinese) is this question of “FACE”. One is supposed – and one learns this on “cultural-understanding” courses for businessmen (which of course I organised at my school!!) – to so arrange things that EVEN IF the Asian negotiating counterpart is a complete fool and/or makes the most idiotic errors one must ALWAYS find a way to avoid humiliating them in any way.

Well, “humiliating” is too strong a word in fact … one is supposed to arrange things that they never seem to be in an “inferior” position in any way.

My problem with this is that it is in fact the antithesis of everything this site stands for, which is integrity, truth and honesty. Now if a negotiating partner does in fact make some sort of mistake then to pretend otherwise just to preserve their “face” is dishonest, isn’t it?  And what are we in fact preserving? An IMAGE and not the reality.

Claudia S

It is, in fact, totally AGAINST the Human Spirit. We are all fallible. I know of no perfect men or women (though Claudia Schiffer comes close 😉 ). It is simply DISHONEST to deny this to preserve “FACE”.

The current British government could have done with learning this lesson. For YEARS there was never ANY acceptance that, yes – perhaps – they might have got some things wrong. Funnily enough, this is coming now in short bursts, but not enough to be convincing – shame!

“FACE” is of course a FACADE.  I no longer am interest in facades, but the truth. But the worse aspect of this Asian FACE thing is that it is so totally accepted by them (and by us, but that’s our fault) as being “normal” and acceptable. No, it is NOT acceptable.

The stimulus for this post came from the recent execution of a British drug-smuggler in China. Now it is quite clear from what has been revealed that this guy was A) not fully compos mentis and B) was set up as a mule by a handler. He was caught, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Chinese. No, I have no sympathy for drug-smugglers, but Mr “Big” he was not.

What muddied the waters even more was that the British Prime Minister made a special plea for clemency, which might very well in normal cases have been granted. But these were not normal circumstances. Just before this incident the British had severely criticized the Chinese for their stance on Global Warming at the Copenhagen Conference. Now, ANY criticism of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) is likely to be taken as a “loss of face”. One suspects – but there is no way to know – that the Chinese refusal to listen to Prime Minister Brown’s very strong plea for clemency was the CPP’s way of putting the British government in its place and restoring its “face”.

The point is, BEING WRONG is HUMAN. Pretending to be RIGHT all the time is NOT HUMAN. It is IMPOSSIBLE. We should accept this and learn humility. Sadly, the words “humility” and “Chinese Communist Party” are unlikely bedfellows.

By Chris Snuggs

[When Chris wrote this Post, he was unaware of one that I had written that was published on the 28th.  Interesting parallels! Ed.]