OPINION> Commentary
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OPINION> Commentary
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Unhappy authors catering to customers
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-30 07:45
Some international critics are again magnifying events in China. By lumping China's counter-criticism of arguments claiming its high savings for the financial crisis and central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan's ideas about long-term international currency reform with the newly published book China is Unhappy, they seem to suggest that a rising tide of nationalism is urging a sell-off of US treasury bills, a walkout from the IMF, refusals to help troubled economies and military confrontations. A good China, as the image that may be reflected from their reports, is a country sitting docilely at the far end of the conference table, raising a quiet hand to any motion that the chairman wants to pass, never asking a question, always ready to sign a large check. Perhaps in reverse, for the authors, the image of a good China is having its chief delegate banging the conference table at the forthcoming G20 summit in London with a shoe, like the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did in the UN General Assembly before storming off and cursing angrily. What an anticlimax, for both sides of the game, if China does not act in either predicted "good way", but instead expresses itself peacefully while taking part in discussions and works with other members of the international community in a constructive way. What China is going to do is be seen and be heard. People were assured of this by Hu Xiaolian, central bank vice-governor, in an official press briefing session last week.
Her basic points were that it is an established (meaning not easily changeable) policy for China to invest in US treasuries; that China would be happy to find ways convenient both for it and the IMF to expand the latter's capital pool for coping with the crisis; and that China is demanding, like all other countries legitimately do nowadays, a healthier international financial system. But the G20 and things like it are serious business, too boring for those in the game of forecasting and depicting sensational changes in China. They will continue to have fun whatever China does. Scores of international observers can make a tidy living by forecasting impending doom from this country - an armageddon-like war with the West, a helpless collapse in social turmoil, or a gigantic economic failure. There are also domestic authors who can figure out precisely when and how their overseas game buddies need them to put out their show, to present an angrily nationalistic image of China, as if ready to act out the most dangerous Western predictions. The authors of China is Unhappy have never seemed happy since at least 1996, when their first book China Can Say No was published. But they would have been tough human beings to survive if in fact they have not had a happy day in the past 12 years. It is only because they know when and how to pretend to be happy. Both sides of the game may appear to despise each other deeply. But they make, in a twisted sense, the world's model of peaceful co-existence - in that they flourish by trading nasty words about each other, and by depending on each other for some fame and cheap money. In the end, one really has to admire China's "unhappy" authors' sense in supplying precisely the needed, albeit distorted, image of China for their overseas clients. That is an almost magical kind of customer intelligence that managers in other export industries can hardly compete with. E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 03/30/2009 page4) |
