Alice in Wonderland…….

Or why Regina Ip needs a job in the Bush adminstration.

Who is Regina Ip you ask? She is the resident defender of the status quo in Hong Kong and probable love child of Tung “Tofu for brains” Chee Wa, former Chief executive of the SAR of Hong Kong.

Spike points us to a recent article taking us arrogant westerners to task for daring to criticize the Chinese government for being the worthless commie bastards that they are. The worst part is that she makes these statements with a straight face:

The SCMP published another essay by Regina Ip today. Some excerpts:

Why does the west find it so hard to stomach China’s Olympian ambition? A major source of the conflict must be China’s radically different government system.

Why “must” it be? If you’re waiting for her to offer proof or examples, don’t bother. Instead the rest of this is a defense for the continuation of government by tyranny.

Western liberal democracy, to use Yale political scientist Robert Dahl’s polyarchy concept, is marked by political participation, opposition and contestation, and buttressed by such political rights as universal suffrage and access to sources of information free of official bias. Against this benchmark, a communist oligarchy lacks legitimacy. By western standards, such a system is bound to be detested by its people. Yet, by historical Chinese standards, and viewed in the context of China’s traditional values, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the way its government is organised today.

But wait, there is more:

In Ms. Ip’s view, things like “universal sufferage” (which she deems a political right and not a human one) or “access to sources of information free of official bias” are Western concepts and not Chinese and so there is nothing wrong with dictatorship, censorship and all that go with them.

… from early days, the Chinese people had always accepted the emperor, “the son of heaven”, as the natural ruler. The business of government was left to the ruling elite of scholar-officials.

(Presumably Ms. Ip sees herself as one of the “ruling elite.”)

Embedded in the Taoist ideal is the notion of life free from meddling by, and knowledge of, government. Until the west started gatecrashing China in the 19th century, the masses had preferred “to live and let live” in blissful ignorance of state affairs, except when life became intolerable. The low rate of Chinese political participation in the west is an indication of this mentality.

Oh really? Commie bitch. Here is a handkerchief, there still some white liquid dripping from your chin. That kind of logic may make sense in the twisted world of Donald Tsang, or Hu Jin Tao , or even Lee Kwan Yeu; but it does not fly among those of us who actually had a liberal arts education.

The cliff notes version of this text is: “Just because China was fucked up in the past, means they have the right to be fucked up now”.

She offers proof of her thesis:

Another important distinction is the fact that western liberal democracy revolves around the rights of the individual, while China’s political system has, from early times, been built on the family as the basic unit. That is why modern political scientists never tire of talking about freedom as the first criterion of democratic quality, followed by others such as human rights, pluralism and transparency. In the case of China, Confucianism, with its heavy emphasis on family values, unity and social harmony, has been adopted as the state ideology since the time of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty (157-87BC). The Chinese have always accepted government by “guardians”, not dissimilar to Plato in ancient Athens, who are supposedly endowed with a superior art of government. Such a system might seem nightmarish to the west, but can you blame an apple for not being an orange?

This is the same kind of logic that gave us the Middle Ages. Besides the obvious historical errors, she misses the point that this particular kind of stereotyping has been disavowed by every major democracy in the world-not just within the United States. Furhtermore the track record of Mr Hu and his “guardians” is not exactly stellar-especially since the recent Tibet fracas and the Sichuan earthquake.

Idiot. It is ideas like that, which are why the Chinese deserve to get their asses kicked at the Olympics. Spike sums up the Chinese government attitude in a subsequent post pointing out that people are frustrated with the government. Which may be the only silver lining of the whole disaster-in that it will show how useless Mr Hu and his government is. Their attitude and the attitude of many Chinese businessmen? ” fuck everyone else as long as I get rich” – is clearly a by-product of an appointed government that doesn’t have to worry about keeping their jobs by standing for re-election.”

But hey we trade with them right? How bad can they be? Arabs we invade. Chinese we trade.

Go figure.