Backtalk! Revering the Big Men

Backtalk! Revering the Big Men
April 03, 2004

From Kim Yongsan, regarding An American in China
April 03, 2004

As an Chinese in U.S. who have been fed up with the brainwashing of the mainstream media, I have been a devoted reader of your website. Your team bring a fresh breeze to the "media" and help people like me to make sense of the world we are living in. Justin's daily comment is a must read for me and Mr. Chu's pieces about Taiwan is super valuable for me.

However, I am disappointed and amazed by Sascha Matuszak's " An American in China" series. I am not offended by his critism of China, but my the shallowness of his pieces and the nasty attitude he displayed toward the people around him.

China is a big country, and all reasonable Chinese understand that we have our fair share of problems and we have our fair share of nasty people, too. Disclosing them to the public would do a good service to China and to the world.

However, knowing that there are plenty of decent foreigners in China, the kind of nasty freak like Sascha Matuszak is also a common sight in China. I personally have seen plenty of them, too. Just by reading his pieces, one could understand that he is treating the Chinese around him just like a biologist in a zoo. While manipulate the trusting Chinese around him by selling himself as a friend, he is making up stories about them, putting words into their mouthes and selling his trashes to the trusting public in the West who might not have the chance to visit China. He had done nothing to better the understanding of China to the Western public rather than repeating and reinforcing the cliches and prejudice about China.

This current piece about China " Revering the Big Men" is a laughable stock and do not worth refuting. Any sensable person with an reasonable of human complexity, one would understand that China is too complex to be reduced to his cartoonistic "laws" about China.

Reading such trashes about China in the main stream media would not surprise me anymore. But reading it as the only comment about China really disappointed and amazed me.

Bevin Chu replies:

Thank you for your generous praise. It is deeply appreciated.

I have been loath to openly criticize until now, but since you have thrown the ball to me, I must catch it by admitting I share your views. That is why I myself have not read the particular column you mentioned in quite some time.

I must confess you are not alone in your perceptions. I doubt that anyone has failed to detect the columnist's thinly-disguised contempt and hostility for China and the Chinese people. His animus against everything to do with China can hardly be missed, it is so obvious.

The central purpose of Antiwar.com is to promote peace for America by discouraging foreign intervention. Past articles by Antiwar.com columnists, particulary those by Justin Raimondo, have been eminently fair toward China. Most importantly, they have clearly discouraged foreign military intervention against China. I have openly praised them for that reason.

One has to wonder however, how are the views expressed by the particular columnist you mentioned discouraging foreign intervention? Are wild allegations that 1.3 billion Chinese feel some inordinate admiration for Hitler going to encourage Americans to oppose or demand "preemptive" or even "preventive" war against China? What's next? Demands that Americans avoid "appeasing China," and avoid "the mistake of Neville Chamberlain?"

That is the question every fair-minded individual must ask himself.

The other question that comes to mind is why? Life is short. If the columnist is so filled with animosity for a foreign peoples and their nation, why does he go out of his way to live and work there? Why not live and work at home, with people he doesn't despise? Why not adopt an "Americans will live how Americans live, and Chinese will live how Chinese live" attitude? Isn't that the Antiwar.com philosophy? But that of course that presumes the columnist does not have some other agenda altogether.