Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Many (Chinese) arrive with hierarchical views of culture and race that tend to place Africans at the bottom, said Howard French, a former New York Times correspondent who wrote the 2014 book China's Second Continent, which chronicles the lives of Chinese settlers in Africa.
Accusations of discrimination have even emerged on a major state-sponsored project: a 482-km Chinese-built railroad between Nairobi and Mombasa. The train has become a national symbol of both progress and Chinese-Kenyan cooperation, though positive reviews have at times been overshadowed by concern over its $US4 billion price tag.
But in July, The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper, published a report describing an atmosphere of "neo-colonialism" for Kenyan railway workers under Chinese management. Some have been subjected to demeaning punishment, it said, while Kenyan engineers have been prevented from driving the train, except when journalists are present.
When asked about the controversy, China's foreign ministry spokesman suggested that Western news organisations had blown the matter out of proportion in an effort to "sow discord in China's relations with African countries."
French, the author of China's Second Continent, said that when it comes to Africa, China has had a tendency to dismiss criticism of its conduct by noting that the West, not China, fuelled the slave trade and colonised the continent.
But that misses the point, French said, by ignoring the treatment of Africans today.
"Their experience is that they are being treated in flagrantly disgusting, racialised ways," French said.
(French) said that during a speech at Columbia University, some Chinese students said his account of the situation contradicts their understanding of Chinese history, which does not consider China as a colonial power.
In reality, French said, China constantly used its sheer size to force nearby nations into accepting Chinese superiority through the tributary system. He believes that this way of dealing with peripheral countries in Northeast Asia is the deeply embedded default in Chinese culture.
“China was in this business two thousand years ago, and has been in this business with notable interruptions in the last couple hundred years,” he said.
The world best keep its eyes on China, said French, who believes that China’s imperialist history will lead it to push for global power.
“I think the strangest thing of all would be for a country as big as China not to have ambitions about reshaping the world in its own terms,” he added.
French pointed out that there is already “no country in Southeast Asia that is not heavily dependent on trade with China and is not deeply in sync with [it] in terms of politics, except Japan.”
He also predicted that the high anxiety between Japan and China will erupt in the future as China gains momentum in its aim for global power.
In the near future, China will continue to gain strength and expand its desired international system. “It won’t be stopped unless something catastrophic happens to China’s economy,” French warned.
Celebrity author Zhang Lijia is annoyed by the British colonial attitude towards China, as urban myths on dog meat, donkey penises and other 'weird' food get the major focus the British, ignoring the country's great cuisine, she writes in The Guardian.
The Guardian:
China has a fabulous and sophisticated cuisine, but westerners always focus on the tiny percentage of what we eat that is weird. And the very good reasons that the weird stuff made it into Chinese kitchens is never mentioned: Chinese cuisine is very much a famine cuisine; historically, Chinese people have had to make use every bit of available resources.
A few years ago, when the comedian Paul Merton came to China to make a travel documentary, I was invited to take part...
Merton was genuinely interested in learning more about China, but the director whisked us away to the restaurant where all sorts of animal's male organs were served. Eating animal's penis is thought by some to improve a man's performance in bed. But this is not something that runs deep in Chinese culture – there are only two penis restaurants in China, and both belong to the same owner. The crew spent hours tirelessly filming us eating stir-fried bull's penis, snake's penis in a soup and a large boiled donkey's penis. Poor Merton struggled and even threw up at one point.
In the final film, the donkey's penis dominates the scene. Our serious discussion was edited out.
