China: a free country?

Other bloggers such as Spike have already criticised the Standard's absurd piece by one Mary Ma attacking plans for protests against the Hong Kong leg of the Olympic torch relay. Leaving aside the missing apostrophes throughout, starting with the heading, (which could be blamed on the paper being unable to afford a competent sub-editor), what does Ms Ma have to say?

In an article that could have (and possibly did) come straight out of the Chinese government's propaganda machine, Ms Ma come up with some classic lines:

"The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China ... is selfishly promoting its cause at the expense of an event treasured by everyone."

How selfish to put the rights of a billion people ahead of those of a few hundred people running and tosing balls around!

"Has anyone in the alliance stopped to consider other peoples [she really doesn't like apostrophes much, does she?] right to being treated with dignity?"

Like giving people sentenced to death the dignity of a fair trial first? Or giving 22 million people in Taiwan the dignity of being allowed to choose their own future without having missiles pointed at them by bullies who claim to be their own kin? Or giving Tibetan monks the dignity of being allowed to carry pictures of their respected religious leader without being arrested? Or giving journalists the dignity of being able to perform their job (as guaranteed by the Chinese constitution) without government interference or arrest? Or,going back a bit, giving unarmed protesters in 1989 the dignity of being able to demonstrate peacefully without being brutally attacked and killed by their own country's troops?

Yet perhaps it is too easy to snipe at China's numerous blatant human rights abuses (and no, I am not pretending that the West is perfect by comparison, as my past comments here on other matters show). Despite all this, the fact is that the majority of Chinese people today enjoy greater freedom than at any time in their country's history. China, after all, emerged from feudalism as recently as 1911, only to go through decades of warlordism, foreign invasion, civil war and Maoist dictatorship, culminating in the madness of the Cultural Revolution.

At the dawn of the 1980s, Chinese people had few choices in anything - perhaps they could choose to wear identical outfits in either grey or blue. They could not choose what to buy - there was almost nothing in the shops anyway. They could not even choose to marry without permission from their work unit (which they also did nnot choose).

Deng's Open Door policy changed all that. Today Chinese people are free to choose their own job, start a business, decide what to wear, what and where to study, travel or study overseas, marry whom and when they choose. They can make money and decide how to spend it. They can build or buy their own home. While not everyone has yet benefited from the changes, it is easy to forget how much things have been transformed in China in a single generation.

Chinese people still do not enjoy many of the freedoms taken for granted elsewhere: the right to plan their family; to practice their religion freely; free access to information. Yet there has truly been a quiet revolution in China over the past thirty years. The problem is how to ensure that this process continues on the right path. China saw hosting the Olympics as part of that path to modernity; facing criticism and protest also comes with the territory.