Article 5: Young Chinese abroad launch Internet attacks against Western press over Tibet unrestThe Associated Press. March 30, 2008
BEIJING: Armed with nationalism and the Internet, young Chinese abroad have launched a wave of attacks accusing Western media of bias in reporting on unrest in Tibet and defending Beijing's crackdown. The outpouring of emotion is unprecedented in scale and force. China's rising international status and Beijing's success in portraying the violence as being motivated by Tibetan separatists has emboldened students and others to express views that are unpopular in their host countries, experts said. From YouTube videos to Facebook to Web sites created to criticize news reporting, the message is emphatic: Western media are irresponsible and Tibet will never be independent. "To all you bandwagon jumpers who know nothing about chinese history and to all you bashers, let me give you some solid FACTS why Tibet was, is and always will be a part of China," says the opening statement of a video on YouTube that the site says was viewed nearly 2 million times by Saturday. The protests, led by monks, began peacefully on March 10, the anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. They erupted in violence on March 14. The Chinese government says 22 people have died, while Tibetans abroad put the death toll at 140. The unrest has cast a harsh light on China just as it prepares for the Beijing Olympics. Foreign governments have called for restraint and for independent monitors to ensure human rights are respected. "Imagine everyday you open the news and it's all saying bad and biased words towards your motherland: crackdown, killing, burning," Liu Yang, a graduate student in biology at the University of Chicago, said in an e-mail. "I don't understand, they struggle for press freedom and fairness, but why would they lose their conscience now?" she wrote. "Isn't the media independent, instead of being a mouthpiece?" College professors and several students agreed the sentiment wasn't confined to just a few fervent patriots. "Most of my friends here hold similar views," said Kevin He, a doctoral candidate who is president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at UCLA. "I have been talking about this issue with people from other organizations across the North America. They pretty much share the same opinions." In China, the news has raised less fuss, due in part to media controls that keep most Chinese from seeing reports aside from the entirely state-controlled press. The fact that Chinese students in the West are unsympathetic to Tibetans should be no surprise, said Barry Sautman, a social scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "The fact that they're living and studying and maybe working in the U.S. or any other part of the West doesn't make them feel they should adopt the prevailing viewpoint, because it doesn't necessarily correspond with what they know about China and the Chinese," he said. One student involved with a pro-Beijing Facebook group said he has struggled to battle misconceptions about his native country. "I do believe I should represent China whenever I can and defend my country ... but it is disheartening sometimes because many people simply do not listen," said Chris Yao, who administers a group called "Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China," inspired by
the YouTube video. "Ever got angry from CNN news reports over the Tibet issue?" says a note on the page. "Well, let me tell you, you are not the only one!" The students and Chinese media have offered a handful of examples of what they say is bias among Western journalists. One Web site, http://www.anti-cnn.com, complained that several news outlets showed photos of police in Nepal scuffling with protesters and misidentified the security forces as Chinese. It accused U.S.-based CNN of improperly cropping a photo of Chinese military vehicles on its Web site to remove Tibetan rioters who were pelting the trucks with rocks. CNN insisted it has reported impartially. "CNN refutes all allegations by bloggers that it distorts its coverage of the events in Tibet to portray either side in a more favourable light," the network said in a statement. The photo of military vehicles "was used wholly appropriately," the statement said. It said there should be no confusion because the image was captioned, "Tibetans throw stones at army vehicles on a street in the capital Lhasa."Yao, 22, is a Chinese-born computer engineering student at Canada's Simon Fraser University. He has lived in the United States and Canada since age 10 but says his loyalties lie with China. He plans to return after graduation.
Chay Teng's Commentary: This article is more about the Western media's/the West's portrayal of China, rather than the Tibet issue. Many times, the West have slammed China on some of its policies. While I may not necessarily agree with China's policies, I have to say that the West may be overly critical and sometimes, even hypocritical. The fact is that culturally and socially, East and West have grown to be quite different. So whatever the West make of China, they should perhaps step back and think about the situations, influences and circumstances that make the government react the way they do and not criticise just because what the Chinese government does does not correspond with what they think is right. After all, just because one party is right does not mean that the other party is wrong. There is more than one way to deal with any issue. Labels: international relations, posted by chay teng, Social, transnational issues
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TIMES Article: China in Italy: Kick StartLink:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1651236,00.htmlOn a recent afternoon in this east-coast Italian city, you could hear the first snippets of dialogue from the next act of the global economy's evolving plotline. "Wo jiao Francesco," says a young Italian man, at the start of a Mandarin lesson in an office conference room. With a quick "Bravo," for Francesco, Alessandra Brezzi, a moonlighting professor of Chinese from the nearby University of Urbino, begins drilling her seven students on useful workplace vocabulary (ziliao/raw material; caiwuchu/accounting department) and proper Chinese etiquette (introduce yourself with a business card ready; never open a gift right away). Of course, these lessons are by now standard for anyone in the West looking to drum up business prospects in Beijing or Xiamen. But the group in Pesaro are not M.B.A. students or venture capitalists. They are clock-punching engineers, mechanics and secretaries — and they're learning Chinese because that's what the boss speaks.
For this Mandarin lesson is taking place at the headquarters of Benelli motorcycles. Once one of Europe's most revered bikemakers, it was also the first Italian firm to be bought outright by a Chinese company when, in October 2005, the Qianjiang Group, China's third-largest scootermaker, purchased Benelli for $24 million. At the time of the bid, Qianjiang's purchase of the storied brand from its last Italian owner was seen as another sign of the country's industrial decline, with local newspapers deriding the sale as a "disaster" and an "ugly story." Indeed Italy's manufacturing model — built largely on small and midsize companies that turn out easily replicable products from light fixtures and heavy tools to sofas and office chairs — has proved particularly vulnerable to Chinese competition, though Italians hope that their luxury consumer brands, valued for their European cachet and design, can attract China's burgeoning shopping class, and help stave off a looming trade-imbalance crisis.
But the fate of Benelli doesn't fit neatly into conventional accounts of Italy vs. China. For starters, the motomaker had already suffered the consequences of a very different era of Asian competition. In the 1970s, it took a hit from top-performing Japanese bikes. What was once a company of 1,000 employees largely responsible for Pesaro's post-1945 growth had halted new production twice in the past two decades. By 1995, it had laid off all but the shell of a staff; those who were left merely produced replacement parts for existing bikes. Mauro Righi, who has worked 33 years at his hometown company, has survived repeated rounds of layoffs. Currently responsible for emission systems, Righi is the only employee left who worked when the Benelli family (which sold out in the early 1970s) was still in charge, and he recalls the days when, "We were once considered the avant garde."
The company's most recent owner, Italian appliance giant Merloni, invested heavily but never managed to turn a profit, and announced in early 2005 that a buyer had to be found if the 94-year-old company was to survive. With no Italian bidders, offers came from Russia and Britain, though they were focused merely on acquiring the brand. Qianjiang, instead, which turns out 1.2 million scooters a year in China, saw value in buying — and relaunching — Benelli's design and production. That would give them a foothold in the European market, and the move had an industrial logic: unlike Japan three decades earlier, China still lags well behind the Western motor industry in know-how and design, which means the Chinese saw the small Italian firm as a vehicle for the improvement of Qianjiang's own products back in China. Dai Wei, Benelli's export manager, and one of just two Chinese employees on-site in Pesaro, spends time chaperoning colleagues from China. "Here they know how to make motorcycles better and faster," says Dai. "We consider this our European research and development center."
One of Qianjiang's first moves was to give Benelli's technical director, Pierluigi Marconi, the same title for the Chinese company, too. Though he confesses that he'd "never even eaten an egg roll" before meeting his new employers, Marconi is now in constant contact with his Chinese counterparts, and often visits headquarters in the southeast China city of Wenling. "They understand that we have the history in this sector," he says, "which is not something you can just buy or invent from scratch."
The main responsibility for Yan "Klara" Haimei, Qianjiang's chief in Pesaro, is to watch Benelli's balance sheet, leaving design and production in the hands of the Italians. Both the Chinese and Italian managers emphasize that the aim is to boost the Italian brand while improving the performance of the smaller and simpler Chinese scooters. It's a question of knowing your markets. The 500cc motorcycles popular with European and American riders are not even permitted on Chinese roads. Says Marconi: "In China they've produced the same scooter for the past 20 years." Marconi says the equation is not mysterious: Italy has the know-how and style and China has low labor costs — and, increasingly, ready capital. "This is the reality. If we don't produce with the Chinese, we'll eventually lose the technology too."
Downstairs on the shop floor, where 18 motorcycles are produced a day, there is not a single visible sign that Benelli is Chinese-owned. With his handlebar moustache and thick sideburns, veteran worker Righi believes Qianjiang has brought a real change for the better. "We've seen more investment and new projects in the past 18 months than we'd seen in the past decade," he says. On the local level, this might be the most meaningful effect of the Benelli-Qianjiang model: the hundred or so Italian employees at the plant see the Chinese parent as the savior, not the usurper, of their jobs. "We would have closed down without them. They were the only ones with a serious plan," says Stefano Michelotti, a Benelli engineer. "We have to begin to think globally — Italian companies have had a tendency to fossilize."
Cash-rich Chinese enterprises have garnered attention for their mega-investments in Africa and other parts of the developing world. In Italy, Chinese investment has been most noteworthy in the textile business and in the purchase of bars and restaurants in northern Italian cities. Increasingly, Chinese investors are looking at all sectors of the European economy, including high-tech and heavy manufacturing. Thomas Rosenthal of the Italy-China Foundation says there are now 27 Chinese companies doing business in Italy, and that China has jumped from the 33rd largest foreign investor in Italy in 2004 to 10th in 2006.
The China-Italy storyline, though, is not just happy economics. Social integration, for example, has not always gone smoothly. In April, street violence erupted among Chinese immigrants in Milan complaining that they were singled out for parking tickets. The clashes left a dozen police officers and several Chinese residents injured. According to the latest figures from the National Statistics Institute, the number of Chinese residents in Italy jumped from 47,000 in 2001 to 112,000 in 2005. Claudio Morganti, who heads a local branch of the right-wing Northern League party, wrote on a blog: "The reality of Chinese immigration, with its apparently tranquil and quiet exterior and cover of legal business, hides a world of mafia, racketeering, prostitution and black markets."
Giuseppe Berta, a professor of economic history at Milan's Bocconi University, does not endorse such views. Nevertheless, he says that the clashes in Milan were a reminder that the growing economic role of an immigrant group almost inevitably brings disruptions. Even so, these disruptions have been relatively minor since Chinese investment in Italy has, so far at least, focused on small, decentralized industries. "The Chinese presence is growing, but it's a penetration from below," says Berta.
Not all international investment works immediately, of course, regardless of where it originates. Italian automaker Fiat, for example, failed in its initial attempts to build cars in India because of India's protectionist policies and its own ignorance of the market. Now, however, Fiat has a partnership with Tata Motors that will turn out cars geared to local Indian needs. "There are great opportunities in both directions," says Berta, "but the way in must be soft. Europeans can't be aggressive in Asia. And Asians can't be aggressive in Europe."
One thing is clear: learning your partner's language always helps. Qianjiang boss Yan can now get by in Italian and engineer Michelotti often throws a few Mandarin phrases into conversation with his colleagues in Wenling. He's also begun to pick up certain words they keep repeating. Chinese Professor Brezzi explains the difference between "we should" (yinggai) and "we must" (yao). "I always hear 'yao,'" says Michelotti. That's a reminder of who's in charge.
Picked out by: Shi Rong (07A102)
Labels: international relations, Shi Rong (07A102), Western-Sino Relations
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