Thousands of Chinese rallied over the weekend in Paris, London and Los Angeles, protesting some Western media organizations' distortion of facts in Tibet and their hostile attitudes to China's hosting of the Olympic Games. During the protests, many Chinese students, especially girls, wept.
They wept because they felt aggrieved. The hostile feelings about China they witnessed in those Western countries recently hurt their national pride. It hurt their love of their country, which is also the host country for the Games. They were too young to be indifferent to their emotions.
The Chinese youths went to the Western countries with the purpose of learning advanced science and technologies and with their admiration for Western culture.
These people in their 20s were born in the years after China began to open itself to the outside world. Since their childhood, they have grown a strong interest in everything Western - from KFC to Christmas tree, from Hollywood to Harry Potter. And they developed an admiration for such concepts as liberty, equality and universal fraternity that they believed originated in the West.
After they had lived there for a certain period of time, however, they began to realize that the "fraternity" is not universal. Because of various reasons, they often suffered from misunderstanding, which sometimes turned into discrimination. Though they were pampered children at home, they swallowed the misunderstandings and even the insults and tried to adapt themselves to the local culture.
When riots and violence erupted in Tibet last month, they learned the facts from their relatives back at home. But they were shocked at the biased reports about the event in the Western media. It was so obvious that it was the rioters who killed innocent people, burnt shops and destroyed public utilities; but the Western media subjectively alleged that the Chinese government "suppressed peaceful protests".
The Chinese youths in Western countries could not understand why the Western media distorted the facts so blatantly.
Then, when the British, French and US media merrily focused their cameras on Tibetan separatists' attempts to disrupt the Olympic torch relay, the Chinese youths were completely disappointed with what they once thought were fair and honest Western media. And the frequent calls from Western politicians for boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games convinced the Chinese youths that hostile elements in Western countries would never be happy about a China that is growing stronger and more influential.
These youths, and their peers back in China, are what is dubbed "post-1980s" in analyses on the generation gap. They were generally thought to be self-centered, afraid of hardships and uncaring about the fate of the nation. Their parents and teachers worried greatly about China's future,skeptical of these kids' sense of responsibility to the nation.
The strong patriotic feelings they demonstrated in their fight against Western biases and for the protection of the Olympic torch relay should put their parents' hearts at ease.
They are drawing lessons from what they have seen and experienced. What they learned in the past few weeks far exceeded what their teachers had taught them in many years. They are maturing in the face of setbacks and discriminations.
In this sense, we have reasons to be grateful to those Western media organizations for their "turn black into white" variety of journalism, to those Western politicians with their innate prejudices against China; and to those, like CNN's Jack Cafferty, who went to great lengths to vilify China.
E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 04/23/2008 page8)
