Sunday, August 26, 2012

Some people get it, some don't

Hibiscus Flower, up close.

Weekly Standard book review... some people get it:
In a brilliant article in March’s China Heritage Quarterly, the Australian sinologue Geremie Barmé traces the history of written and spoken Chinese since the late 19th century and its submergence, since 1949, into the PRC’s officially sanctioned way of speaking and writing:

New China Newspeak was and is used by the Party, its propaganda organs, the media and educators to shape (and circumscribe) the way people express themselves in the public (and eventually private) sphere, and to enable the party-state apparatus to inculcate its ideology by means of relentless verbal/written imposition and repetition. .  .  . [I]t is also commonly employed in creating what I call “translated China,” that is the English-language Party langue that has evolved over many decades to present China to the outside world.
Barmé goes on to describe how, in the best Orwellian fashion, Beijing seeks to control not only what Chinese think and say about China, but what everyone else does, too.

Accordingly, we need to guard against what the late Fred Iklé called “semantic infiltration,” which starts with using the language of enemies and adversaries to define reality, and ends with accepting their definitions. America’s discussion of Taiwan—indeed, almost all the world’s discussion of it, not least that of the government of Taiwan itself—has been thoroughly infiltrated by New China Newspeak. For example, there is the term “reunification”—except that Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China, not even for an hour. There is the notion that, historically, Taiwan has been part of “China,” even though there was no political entity with the word “China” in it until 1912. (Before then, what we think of as “China,” and what we now call Taiwan, were both parts of the Qing Empire.) In fact, Taiwan was a part of the Japanese empire from 1895 until the end of World War II.
...and some just replicate Beijing's propaganda. From Foreign Affairs, where a hamster could get published provided it was sufficiently pro-Beijing, comes 'How China Sees America':
But widespread perceptions of China as an aggressive, expansionist power are off base. Although China's relative power has grown significantly in recent decades, the main tasks of Chinese foreign policy are defensive and have not changed much since the Cold War era: to blunt destabilizing influences from abroad, to avoid territorial losses, to reduce its neighbors' suspicions, and to sustain economic growth. What has changed in the past two decades is that China is now so deeply integrated into the world economic system that its internal and regional priorities have become part of a larger quest: to define a global role that serves Chinese interests but also wins acceptance from other powers.
"The main tasks of Chinese foreign policy are defensive". How could any thinking human write such tripe!?
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6 comments:

Tim Maddog said...

This is exactly why I keep asking you to stop using "the island" to describe Taiwan; it's half of the "island-mainland" dichotomy that is used to try to make people believe it's part of China.

Tim Maddog

MJ Klein said...

"The main tasks of Chinese foreign policy are defensive". How could any thinking human write such tripe!?

because the check cleared?

Anonymous said...

>>This is exactly why I keep asking you to stop using "the island" to describe Taiwan.


I concur.

A lot of time, Michael uses "the island" to refer to Taiwan; it reads very odd.

For one thing, as you said, "the island" plants the expectation in reader's mind to read something counter-parting "the island" (such as "the mainland") further down in the text.

For another, Taiwan as a country consists of more than one island, including the Pescadores, the orchid islands, the green island, etc. (I am leaving Kinmen and Matsu out because, historically, they belonged to China.) So, reading "the island" always made me wonder why not "the islands".

Don't know why Michael chooses to do it; and so frequently indeed. It's almost like Michael cannot bring himself to refer to Taiwan as "the country".

Michael Turton said...

Don't know why Michael chooses to do it; and so frequently indeed. It's almost like Michael cannot bring himself to refer to Taiwan as "the country".

It's almost as if certain commenters cannot bring themselves to even read the blog.

It should be obvious why I refer to "the island", as I have explained to Tim in private.

Michael

Anonymous said...

"Taiwan itself—has been thoroughly infiltrated by New China Newspeak. For example, there is the term “reunification”—"

First of all, the Chinese term is unification, not reunification as used by foreigners. I would be skeptical of the author's depth of research given his obvious lack of even rudimentary Chinese language skills. If the author had actually communicated with any actual representatives of Taiwan's government, he would know that Taiwan's use of the term unification refers to unifying mainland China with the ROC, not unifying Taiwan with the PRC.

Tim Maddog said...

8:51 AM anonymous deceptively edited this [emphasis mine]:
- - -
America’s discussion of Taiwan—indeed, almost all the world’s discussion of it, not least that of the government of Taiwan itself—has been thoroughly infiltrated by New China Newspeak. For example, there is the term “reunification”
- - -

See the difference?

Tim Maddog