NEW YORK – It must be galling for the Chinese government to keep seeing Nobel Prizes go to the wrong Chinese.
The first wrong Chinese was Gao Xingjian, a critical playwright, artist, and novelist, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000, while living in exile in Paris. The latest is Liu Xiaobo, a literary critic and political writer, who was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Peace while serving a prison sentence for “subversion” of the Communist regime. Since the Dalai Lama is not a Chinese citizen, I will leave out his Nobel Peace Prize, though to China’s rulers it was perhaps the most irritating of all.
Yet the Chinese government’s response to Liu’s Nobel Prize has been extraordinary. Instead of a show of lofty disdain, or official silence, it made a colossal fuss, protesting fiercely about plots to undermine China, and putting dozens of prominent Chinese intellectuals, including Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest. As a result, the utterly powerless, hitherto quite obscure Liu Xiaobo, has become not only world famous, but much better known inside China, too.
Combine this with China’s bullying of Japan, by blocking the export of rare-earth metals vital for Japanese industry, over a few uninhabited islands between Taiwan and Okinawa, and its refusal to let the renminbi appreciate, and one must wonder why China is being so heavy-handed in its foreign relations. These strong-arm tactics stand out even more against the deftness of Chinese diplomacy over the last few decades. Japan, the old wartime enemy, has been outmaneuvered repeatedly, and a soft touch made South Koreans and Southeast Asians feel relatively comfortable with China’s increasing power.
But China’s recent thuggish behavior is changing Asian opinions. As the warm welcome given to Hillary Clinton on her recent swing through Asia – even in communist Vietnam – appears to show, Southeast Asians are more than happy to hang on to Pax Americana for a bit longer, out of fear of China. Other Asian countries might even be drawn closer to Japan, the only alternative to the US as a counterbalance to the Middle Kingdom. This cannot be what China wants.
So why is China being so severe? One possible explanation is that China is a little drunk on its new great-power status. For the first time in almost 200 years, China can really throw its weight around, and it will do what it wants, regardless of what other countries may think. A few decades ago, it was Japan that thought it was going to be Number One, and its businessmen, politicians, and bureaucrats were not shy about letting the rest of the world know. Call China’s recent actions revenge for a century of humiliation by stronger powers.
But this may not be the best explanation for China’s behavior. In fact, the reason may be just the opposite: a sense among China’s rulers of weakness at home. At least since 1989, the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly on power has been fragile. Communist ideology is a spent force. Using the People’s Liberation Army to murder civilian protesters, not only in Beijing, but all over China in June 1989, further undermined the one-party system’s legitimacy.
The way to regain the support of the burgeoning Chinese middle class was to promise a quick leap to greater prosperity through high-speed economic growth. The ideological vacuum left by the death of Marxist orthodoxy was filled with nationalism. And nationalism in China, promoted through schools, mass media, and “patriotic” monuments and museums, means one thing: only the firm rule of the CCP will prevent foreigners, especially Westerners and the Japanese, from humiliating Chinese ever again.
This is why anyone, even a relatively unknown intellectual like Liu Xiaobo, who challenges the legitimacy of Communist Party rule by demanding multi-party elections, must be crushed. It is why the government does not dare to let the renminbi appreciate too fast, lest economic growth slow, causing the Party loses face and legitimacy. And it is why bullying Japan is always a good option: China’s rulers do not necessarily hate Japan, but they are afraid to look weak in the eyes of their citizens, who are taught from kindergarten that foreign powers want to humiliate China.
This suggests that if Liu Xiaobo and like-minded dissidents ever got their wish, and democracy came to China, the problem of Chinese nationalism would not go away. After all, if the people feel persecuted by Japan or the United States, then the people will demand chauvinistic policies. Democracy has not tempered South Korean chauvinism much, either, since the demise of the military dictatorship in the 1980’s.
But nationalism may not be a political constant. Nationalism is often fed by a sense of impotence. When citizens feel disempowered by an authoritarian government, the next best thing is to feel empowered by national prowess.
In a multi-party democracy, on the other hand, citizens are concerned with other interests, material, social, even cultural ones, and thus less likely to be drawn into aggressive chauvinism. Or so we must hope. The state of many democracies today is not the best advertisement for political freedom. But the Chinese should have the right to decide about that themselves. And Liu Xiaobo should be honored for saying so.
Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy and Human Rights at Bard College. His latest book is Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
| Ming Pao Daily News A28 | 教育 | 2010-10-28
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【明報專訊】香港浸會大學公布十年發展計劃，準備籌募8 億元興建本港首所中醫教學醫院，以中西配合診療模式運作，預計可提供200 張病牀和門診服務，為學生提供臨牀實習機會。校方正向政府申請撥出鄰近校園的專業教育學院李惠利分校地皮作發展，並獲政府答應日後透過買位資助醫院營運。 樓面18 萬呎200 張病牀 浸大校長陳新滋介紹發展大計時表示，本港沒有中醫醫院，只有中醫門診服務，中醫課程學生只能返回內地實習。「內地中醫可以開刀做手術，但香港一定不能，學生實習後未必能配合本港要求。」浸大將在未來10 年內斥資8 億元，興建一所中醫教學醫院，構思中的醫院樓面面積18 萬平方呎，參照現時浸大設於伊利沙伯醫院的中醫門診運作模式，以中西醫配合診療醫治病人。 陳新滋指出，現時浸大設有11 所中醫門診，待醫院建成後，便可轉介病人到醫院接受診治。浸大亦計劃日後與港大和中大合作，供兩所大學的中醫學生到教學醫院實習。 申請鄰近校園土地興建 陳新滋又說，浸大已設計醫院建築圖則，正向政府申請鄰近校園的專業教育學院李惠利分校土地，使教授可在中醫藥大樓上課，然後到毗鄰教學醫院看症。他強調，浸大必定會興建教學醫院， 「萬事俱備、只欠土地」，若最終申請被拒，校方會競投政府早前推出的黃竹坑和大埔私家醫院土地。 收費方面，中醫教學醫院將以非牟利私家醫院形式運作，收入將作醫院日常營運和研究用途，收費料介乎私家醫院和政府醫院之間。 政府允買位提供資助 浸大預計，連同初期營運開支在內，整項工程費用高達8 億，但陳新滋透露，已有一批善長仁翁表態有意捐款，校方亦已獲食物及衛生局長周一嶽口頭支持，政府日後會透過買位提供資助，屆時市民有機會以政府醫院收費入住中醫教學醫院。 | ||||||
| South China Morning Post EDT2 | EDT | By Elaine Yau | 2010-10-28
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Baptist U seeks land for teaching facility Baptist University plans to build a Chinese medicine teaching hospital providing the first inpatient treatment in this field in the city. The plan to build the HK$800 million hospital with 200 beds was unveiled by the university's president, Albert Chan Sun-chi, yesterday. Chan, a Chinese medicine expert, said the private non-profit hospital would be a boon for chronically ill patients. "There are just outpatient Chinese medicine services now," he said. "For chronically ill patients - like those suffering from cancer who need to be under doctors' observation for several days - there's nowhere to turn to now." Under the plan, the hospital will specialise in clinical research and Chinese medicine services including hospice care. A dual approach combining Chinese and Western medicine will be adopted. "There will be Western doctors there. A diagnosis made by both Western and Chinese doctors is better for patients. We can use [Western methods such as] blood-testing and MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] to identify the illness {hellip} but the medicine will be Chinese [herbal]." Chan said the government had expressed support for the plan. "As a doctor himself, York Chow Yat-ngok, the secretary for food and health, has shown big support for the idea. The government guaranteed that they would buy a certain number of beds so as to subsidise the treatment of [needy] patients." Baptist University has applied to use the land, which was formerly occupied by the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Lee Wai Lee) and is located next to the university in Kowloon Tong. Chan said if the university was granted use of the land, work on the 16,500 square metre hospital could begin immediately and would take one to two years. But the vice-president of administration, Andy Lee Shiu-chuen, said that if the land was not granted, the university would submit tenders for two of the four pieces of land earmarked by the government for private hospitals. The four sites offered by the administration are in Wong Chuk Hang, Tung Chung, Tai Po and Tseung Kwan O. "We are interested in Wong Chuk Hang and Tai Po," he said. Three universities - Baptist University, the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong - offer Chinese medicine training. But without a Chinese medicine hospital, students have to go across the border for placements. Chan said the current practice was untenable. "Hong Kong and the mainland medical regulations are different {hellip} In mainland hospitals, Chinese medicine [doctors] can slice open [the chests of] patients in heart bypass [surgery]. But it's not allowed in Hong Kong." With patients at Baptist University's 11 outpatient Chinese medicine clinics having to wait more than a month for appointments, Chan said there was a big demand for Chinese medicine services in the city. "Many mainland hospitals have approached us with the idea of a joint hospital," Chan said. "But we want to build it in Hong Kong. With its strict medical laws, there are good oversight and quality assurance systems here. We want the hospital to operate according to local laws." | ||||||
