Absurdity, Allegory and China

Here is one that just came to me through Twitter (h/t niubi): China snubs U of C over Dalai Lama: Accreditation lost after honour for spiritual leader

The Chinese government has removed the University of Calgary from its list of accredited institutions — a move school officials fear is linked to the Dalai Lama’s visit last fall. The university hosted the Tibetan spiritual leader and awarded him an honorary degree when he visited the city last September. In December, university officials learned that China’s education ministry had removed the school from its website. Now the university is trying to determine what impact that decision will have on Chinese nationals who have obtained a degree or are working toward one from the institution.

Last Sunday, January 31, 2010, John Pomfret in the Washington Post published his analysis China’s strident tone raises concerns among Western governments, analysts, which includes a brief listing of China’s latest international effronteries causing concern throughout the international community.

In a case in point, one senior U.S. official termed as unusual China’s behavior at the December climate conference, during which China publicly reprimanded White House envoy Todd Stern, dispatched a Foreign Ministry functionary to an event for state leaders and fought strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developed world.

Another issue is Internet freedom and cyber security, highlighted by Google’s recent threat to leave China unless the country stops its Web censorship. At China’s request, that topic was left off the table at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank and co-chairman of the event, told Bloomberg News.

Analysts say a combination of hubris and insecurity appears to be driving China’s mood. On one hand, Beijing thinks that the relative ease with which it skated over the global financial crisis underscores the superiority of its system and that China is not only rising but has arrived on the global stage — much faster than anyone could have predicted. On the other, recent uprisings in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang have fed Chinese leaders’ insecurity about their one-party state. As such, any perceived threat to their power is met with a backlash.

Yesterday, UK’s Telegraph ran the following story: China censors Oscar nominations. Official Chinese wrath is focused on the HBO documentary, China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, which deals uncompromisingly with the well-documented “tofu construction” of schools in earthquake ravaged Sichuan province that collapsed in a few seconds killing as many as 10,000 children and has yet to be adequately addressed by the Chinese government at any level. The obvious corruption in the schools’ construction processes has been widely reported, though it has been dismissed by official China. Several activists have been beaten and jailed for trying to reveal the truth. The film has been nominated for an Oscar in the best short documentary category. This is just the latest official action regarding Chinese films. In July 2009 the Melbourne International Film Festival was vigorously hacked for the screening of a documentary about a leader of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, and most recently at the Palm Springs International Film Festival two Chinese films were withdrawn from its program in protest of the scheduled screening of a documentary about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

The loss of accreditation by the University of Calgary presents an opportunity for university students and institutions throughout the world to use their educational push and bully pulpits to confront China, much as was done in the late 80s and early 90s to confront South African apartheid. If the world’s best universities – much sought after by China’s best and brightest, and which have been built upon the notion of open information – were more proactive in bringing in speakers and screening films that deal with Chinese problems honestly and forthrightly in ways that so obviously frighten the Chinese government, they could meet this growing censorship problem head-on, at this time when China, seemingly flush with money and world power, is so aggressively extending its authoritarian reach across borders.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gift wrapped and delivered the most unifying campus cause that has come along in decades. How worldwide institutions respond to the University of Calgary’s loss of accreditation and their new pariah status within the official fold will be curious to watch. Will schools that have large Chinese enrollments allow themselves to be bullied into step by the CCP censors, or will students throughout the world pick up the banners and push back? Imagine if Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and MIT, to name just a few of the most desired destinations for Chinese graduate school candidates, were to be more proactive in supporting freedom of speech in regard to China’s most recent shove? But students can’t wait for the administrations of these institutions to come forward and suggest a policy of confrontation. This will be something that will have to come from the student/faculty grassroots. The long arm of Chinese censorship may soon be coming to a campus near you. Time to speak up for the Chinese people, for the 10,000 dead children in Sichuan who are still waiting to have someone help them and their muzzled families find their voices. If it is left to official China, there will be nothing but more threatening, pervasive silence. The CCP’s actions are not the the actions of a responsible superpower. This is insecurity and fear, pure and simple, the muscled overlords afraid of their people. And they want to bring that fear to you. What are you going to do about that?