Hard News: Shihad are like the All Blacks, only more reliable
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... that should be diametrically opposed points of view!
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Rich, I think that's a good point that you make. Most of the mainland Chinese students in NZ are likely to be patriotic because they are relatively privileged.
But there is also a huge amount of arguably misplaced faith in the government within China as well. There have been many demonstrations in China objecting to a perceived bias in the international coverage of the Tibet issue and the torch relay.
I seem to have my contrarian hat permanently clamped on over this issue, but the criticism sometimes seems a bit glib to me.
The people I was with on Saturday were all immediately of the mind that "they couldn't do that in China". There was rather less interest in what the students thought and why they might think it. Might some of them been expressing pride rather than scary nationalism?
It also seems clear to me that, on the ground (and as Simon Grigg's thoughtful blog posts pointed out), China is not an unremitting chamber of horrors. The Good magazine feature on Shenzen that I linked to upthread is a nice example: it's good, bad and ugly rolled into one.
And, as you say, Charles, it might be useful for us to develop some sophisticated thinking about the next superpower.
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and every album since is maybe a little bit more disapointing than the last....but in the periods between world cups one can see the Shihad Blacks devastating all in their path at stadiums up and down the country.
Damn. My simile was better than I thought!
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Oh, and Trevor Mallard has emailed me to point out that anyone who had seen the TV clip of him and Pete Hodgson dancing would surely not wish for a repeat.
He has a point.
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Russell, you're completely right, Shihad as the all blacks and this (link) as the all blacks most recent performance:
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ha! technorogy....
[Fixed it. No HTML allowed in posts, but YouTube vids embed automatically. RB]
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Thanks Russell. I've only been to China once and its a big place - contradictory and complicated, amazing and awful. Kind of like going to Russia or the United States or Brazil. It's easy to make simplistic generalisations but they become rather silly on closer analysis.
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How are your views "contrarian" Russell?
The idea that China must be coddled and genuflected (if not kowtowed) to at all times is the policy of both Labour and National, which would make it a majority opinion, at least among mainstream politicians.
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Well, Rich. I think the main parties are doing it with this country's future in mind. It wouldn't exactly be regarded as a strategic masterstroke to piss off one of New Zealand's main economic lifelines.
That wouldn't make much sense as much as we would like to think of ourselves as a principled little South Seas battler, kicking against the pricks and all that. At some point, New Zealand has to get real - if we want to improve our standard of living and stem the flow of New Zealanders to Australia and beyond by becoming a high wage high skills economy.
To do that we need to arrest this country's economic decline and hitching a ride on the next superpower's wagon is one way to do it.
Mind you one Australian foreign policy academic did describe to me this current phenomenon of the world beating a path to China's door as the beginnings of a tributary system! Read into that what you want.
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"You could say," she said, "that they pay for things with their butts."
Accursed globalisation, they're paying with their bums!
If we adopt American butts we all lose. After all, butting is something that only goats and drunken louts do, while I'm sure we can all get behind a good bumming, can't we?
Butts my arse!
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Given that most Chinese can't watch CNN and BBC World,
From recent experience, and per the web links I posted elsewhere, this simply isn't true anymore. The data both in the hotels, and in the publicly available information is nowhere as censored as we in the west are led to believe.
It's easy to make simplistic generalisations but they become rather silly on closer analysis.
As above, the disinformation out there is astounding and much of it I've seen repeated here sadly.
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How are your views "contrarian" Russell?
Well, amongst most of my friends and most PA readers, I would think. An "evil China" rant seems to be the more socially acceptable line at the moment.
It's not "kowtowing" or "genuflecting" or being brainwashed (as you accused Simon of being). I'm just trying to avoid taking a monolithic view of things, as seems to be the current fashion. I found Tom's paranoid post upthread quite alarming.
I'm sure it's partly because I know people like Justin Zhang, who Charles mentioned earlier. He's a smart guy, not a nationalist robot, so I'm interested in what he might think as a person, rather than a political cypher.
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Imagine that NZ was a lot poorer, and run as a dictatorship by ACT. Imagine that maybe 0.1% of New Zealanders could afford to go off to overseas education in a richer country.
I dunno about the provinces further west but certainly in Guangdong, you'd have a problem calling NZ a richer country.
And I scratch my head and wonder who exactly all those travel agents pushing holidays overseas in Gunagzhou are aiming at if only .1% can afford them, and then couple that with the enormous growth in Chinese tourism that we in Asia are seeing right now. Those busloads in the jalans here (China has just replaced Australia as Indonesia's second third largest tourist market) must be coming from somewhere
China has become one of the world's most-watched and hottest outbound tourist markets. The world is on the cusp of a sustained Chinese outbound tourism boom. According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), China is projected to supply 100 million travelers by 2020, making it the number one supplier of outbound tourists. In terms of total outbound travel spend, China is currently ranked seventh and is expected to be the second-fastest growing in the world from 2006 to 2015, jumping into the number two slot for total travel spend by 2015.
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(China has just replaced Australia as Indonesia's second third largest tourist market)
it's third..after Japan and ROK just to clarify my typo
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Just on the last chapter of China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford, NPR's Beijing correspondent, published last year.
Russell's 'it's good, bad and ugly rolled into one' is put to the test on a road trip from Shanghai to the Kazakhstan border.
Really- really great read.Online - this report by two geographers puts the rise of capitalism in China
within the context of it's rise in the West. Not such a fun read. -
Bob, I'd also thoroughly recommend Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones which I'm finishing at the moment.
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Come to think of it, many of the Chinese students in New Zealand do have part time jobs in supermarkets and other businesses. If they were all so rich and privileged, they would surely not have to work to support their studies in New Zealand.
At the moment China is our fourth largest inbound tourism market with 122,000 visitors and that's expected to double in five years.
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ust on the last chapter of China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford, NPR's Beijing correspondent, published last year.
Russell's 'it's good, bad and ugly rolled into one' is put to the test on a road trip from Shanghai to the Kazakhstan border.
Really- really great read.Thanks! This summary did it for me too:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781400064670-1
The all-is-not-well-in-the-heartland implication makes me think that that's why the exiled Tibetan leadership is willing to play a long game. As Samdhong Rinpoche said in the Good interview: "The people will achieve autonomy sooner or later, because China is changing very rapidly and China cannot remain as it is today."
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I havent read it but James Kynge's China Shakes the World is very highly regarded. He was interviewed by Chris Laidlaw about three weeks ago. Very interesting.
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Thanks Simon. I'll get it and report in. I must confess to having a rapid education on China largely through the stimulus of this forum and from people like you.
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An "evil China" rant seems to be the more socially acceptable line at the moment.
Not sure I'd put myself in the "evil china" mix, but I did experience an odd mix of disquiet and disgust when watching the events in Aotea Square and seeing coverage of the Wellington march. I don't really know why - and I must admit to questioning my own reactions. Were they simply racially motivated? Based on ignorance? Arrogance?
I am concerned because after reading the Grace Wang articles, and stories from here in NZ I do wonder how much is orchestrated and how much is purely pride in one's own country. (And I'm not holding the linked story as gospel - rather I was interested in what took place). Nationalism can take on such an ugly nature - both here in Godzone and over where-ever-there-is.
My grandfather was Chinese and I have family there. I have traveled there - and was both impressed and deeply saddened by what I saw and experienced. I'm looking ahead and seeing a future that is indeed dominated by China. Not only in Asia, but around the planet.
That doesn't mean I can't hold Chinese policy/government to account and criticize what it is and has been. Much as I believe we need to constantly hold that same sort of mirror up to our own place and the people who represent us.
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in full agreement there Tim,
Charles Mabbett back a page said; "To do that we need to arrest this country's economic decline and hitching a ride on the next superpower's wagon is one way to do it." doesn't seem positive or nearly enough to see our grandkids right. We can't just hitch and hope for the best, I strongly feel we need to observe, disseminate and in certain cases adopt, (thinking mainly economic policies)... -
What a fascinating link, Tim.
As for hitching a ride with superpowers, I'm reminded of Oscar Hammerstein's take on international relations:
If allies are strong with powers to protect me
Might they not protect me out of all I own?Is indeed a puzzlement.
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Nice, As i once attempted to 'argue' on another forum years back, you're certainly gonna lose ground if your banks and markets have 52 less trading days per year than the competition, based loosely on something as arbitrary as religion.
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These are not rent-a-demos - they are heartfelt expressions of nationalism.
Yeah right. In that case keep it within your own borders.
I don't buy the "evil China" for reasons many have expressed here but "expressions of nationalism" have no place on other peoples' countries. I regard it as the same as colonial muscle flexing. It is threatening and unsavoury and in the past is the sort of thing that has been used as an excuse for starting wars.
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