Optimism moves east

[imomus]

The story so far: As Angrael turns into a paranoid alliance of embattled security states lashing out with ever-increasing violence against the very people who control their energy resources, dragging the West ever deeper into a vicious circle of hatred, reprisals against civilians, and the erosion of all legitimacy, any tender-minded and optimistic view of our future slips away into a bloody sunset.

Is it really just ten years ago that we were talking about long booms rather than mid-flight explosions? Our prosperity was going to continue and increase, and we were going to use our wealth to help the poor. Everybody was going to love us. Our children would grow up in a world that was getting better.



This diffuse, warm sense of well-being wasn't just a side-effect of the MDMA tablets everyone was taking back in the 90s. It was related to a sense that world trade talks (the same ones that have just collapsed at Doha) might bring global justice, that information technology was going to raise educational standards and democratize knowledge, that a new post-industrial economy was going to complement bricks and mortar business, and that the 21st century, just on the threshold, would be a wonderland where lifespan would increase and diseases be defeated thanks to gen-tech.



The images on this page show some short-lived kids' bookstore in groovy, optimistic 1990s London, Paris, Berlin, New York or Tokyo, don't they? It went out of business in 2001, didn't it, replaced by a store selling black, beige and cream clothes and fallout shelters? Actually, no. This "haven for little imaginations" is Kids Republic, a childrens' bookstore in Beijing, China. It's just opened.

The optimism, tender-mindedness and benign curiosity apparent in this store (something about its spirit and design reminds me of Oto Kinoko, the sound store in Kyoto I blogged about excitedly earlier this year, only to find it had already closed down) represent everything we in the West have lost in the last ten years; lost because of our clumsy response to 9/11 and Angraeli realpolitik. Who, in the West, would have children now? But it's nice to know that, somewhere, optimism about the future is still intact.

In 30 or 40 years, the Chinese kids in this photo will be running the world. It's hard to imagine them making a worse job of it than we've done.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's from The Cool Hunter, via cityramica.

I am going to get this tattooed on my forehead: being against the current behaviour of Israel and its accomplices is not anti-semitic. In fact, the very people who are against this are the people who would have been against the Nazis. There is no racial monopoly on virtue -- or vice.

I'm afraid China has been outstripped in its role as the world's human rights pantomime villain. By ourselves.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about that. As far as I know, no part of "Angrael" currently routinely harvests dissidents for their organs, as China does. (A few months ago, I read an account by a doctor who had worked in a prison hospital processing Falun Gong prisoners. The prison, located in a remote part of China had prisoners arriving and not leaving; according to him, they were vivisected for their organs, and then cremated whilst still (barely) alive.) That's the sort of thing that doesn't happen in Gitmo or the Occupied Territories or wherever. And then there is the mass displacement of a million people from the Three Gorges, the cultural assimilation of Tibet, and so on.

And then there is the routine censorship and repression of dissent in China, which is orders of magnitude more severe than anything in the west. For example, I doubt that Click Opera would be tolerated by the Chinese authorities for very long there in its present form.

Thibet

[fascicle.livejournal.com]

Not just cultural assimilation of Thibet. Having dammed the Yellow River
and done for the river dolphins, China
is planning another Huge Engineering
Project to ferry water out of Thibetan
mountain ranges to the thirsty citizens.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Actually, the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom combined have executed perhaps a tenth of the individuals the PRC executes in a year. And very few of our executions are for political dissidents.

Face it, Nick, we're willing to accept you being Pollyannaish about lots of things, but not China.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And China's Palestine is where? China's Iraq? China's Afghanistan?

As for "China's Africa", did you read the article I linked to in the first comment, that said that there's more chance China and India will save Africa than that the West will?

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

China's Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all within its own borders. Are you simply ignoring Tibet, Xinjiang, and the millions of intellectuals like you being imprisoned and, well, vivisected, or have you conveniently forgotten?

As for China's Africa, it's in the Sudan, where it supplies money to the government that funds the militias perpetuating the Darfur genocide in exchange for oil.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Hard luck Nick, you've been hit with the neo-liberal's favourite diversionary tactic - 'The Left's Silence On China'. You see, the human rights abuses carried out by the Chinese Superpower (which claims to be Communist), within its own borders, mean that no one on the Left is allowed to bring up human rights abuses in either the West, in Israel, a state set-up and subsidised by The West, or in any state the West or Israel decides to invade.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

Sorry, that should be 'second favourite diversionary tactic' - the inevitable vague accusation of anti-semitism has already appeared further up the thread.

I agree totally with you that: "the very people who are against this are the people who would have been against the Nazis. There is no racial monopoly on virtue -- or vice."

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I never brought up Israel. Glorifying China is kind of the opposite of being silent on it - it's lying, or at least being very intellectually dishonest, about it.

Being anti-brutality doesn't mean that I'm pro-brutality. Please stop presuming that I support this crap wherever it happens.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> Glorifying China is kind of the opposite of being silent on it
To be fair, Momus wasn't glorifying their human rights record. He was being silent on it.

[loverboy82.livejournal.com]

you playing dumb ???

the title of the article you linked was "China May Be Africa's Savior or Its Curse"

Savior or Its Curse!! learn to fucking read, retard.

As for China's imperialism that has been pointed out by others. you should really try to educate yourself before making an utter ass of yourself. you do seem to enjoy it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

the title of the article you linked was "China May Be Africa's Savior or Its Curse". Savior or Its Curse!! learn to fucking read, retard.

First, I'll ban you if you don't learn to be a bit more polite in your comments.

Second, did you read the article? The "curse" part is Pesek's belief that China's willingness to accept Africa "as is" will make them complacent, and stop them restructuring. Behind that lurks the idea that you need to do what Western nations usually do: come in with a shopping list of 30 unfulfillable requirements before helping with trade or aid. The article is quite clear: this behaviour has not helped Africa. China's "as is" attitude may.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< Face it, Nick, we're willing to accept you being Pollyannaish about lots of things, but not China. >>

The technology surrounding the stem cell explosion burgeoning in China will change the state's cultural perspective. The state will become less barbaric. I am also pollyannish about China and agree those kids will be in charge, maybe sooner than forty years.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

There aren't a lot of those kids, I worry.

panto

[fascicle.livejournal.com]

(for some reason, the text of the badges was stripped out when I posted
my comment - reposting)

tefillin & The Book of Judges



Y'know, some of those dudes with prayers in boxes strapped to forehead
and arm are also currently wearing
badges saying Judaism against Zionism and marching through London against the mess in Lebanon caused by Israel.

These are the sort of people who
reckon that if the Third Temple is
going to get built at all, they'd
better have a Gideon's Army approach
to it. Send the 10,000 troops home and
pick only a few hundred elect capable
of discrimination and proper behaviour
- because God almost certainly won't
want "credit" for laying waste to land. Once it was the Mid'ianites destroying seeded crops as far as Gaza, y'see (back in the Biblical Book
of Judges). Modern Israel stopping
relief supplies by bombing out the road
just ahead of them, saying they'll hit
anything that moves in another nation's
territory? Sending in 10-15,000 troops from a standing army maintained by
obligatory periods of military service?

Not the same righteous action, and not anything this Thurro-Taoist could *possibly* count as Right Action. "we"
is pretty broad - some of us vociferously object to our leaders' policies and are not silenced.