A typical Chinese-American opinion of how the West is currently paralyzed by fear created by the news media

By China Watcher

This is an account of a Chinese-American who had spend an immeasurable time period in both China and the US and I believe his opinions represented the majority of what the Chinese conceived is the perception of the West, especially the Caucasians whites, towards the Chinese people and their rise economically in the world.

He does not think that the Chinese viewers are indoctrinated and blinded by sheer nationalism, when they made their comments on issues surrounding Tibet, the Olympics, the environmental issues, the Chinese currency and the African partnership. He believes that the West is wrong in making such presumptions.

Here is his comment:

The West has for the past 200 years enjoyed almost total domination over most of the world. Intervention and self-righteousness characterizes the western mentality, westerners think they are always right and everyone way is wrong.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have in recent years begun to recover their historic position as the defining great power of this world. People in the West fears this, and as the western media tends to play on people's fears, and fear sells (in New York city, where I lived for 3 years, the nightly news begins with "it's 10 PM, do YOU know where your children are?"), they choose to demonize and instill fear, it is no one's fault, just simple economics. What the people in the west do not understand is that China has traditionally considered itself the center of the world, and that the rest of the world is not better than them. This means two things, first the Chinese only want to be left alone to develop and prosper, and have no desires to throw its weight around. Second, Chinese people in general see the West as a friendly place, and want to have cordial relations (this is partly because the Chinese state controlled media's goal is to maintain stability, and it does not promote fear, ethnic tensions are played down and they try to portray the Han people to be friendly to the minorities).

Soon enough, China will be one of the greatest power on earth, and it is painful to note that the people in the West have let their jealousy and collective insecurities get the better of them, and allowed their fears to drive opinion and blind frank discussion in the media. Fear mongering creates a culture of conflict. 2008 has seen this tendency play out, China's people have in this year finally seen the level of paranoia in the West directed at China, and their opinions are starting to be turned, irrespective of the Chinese government attempts to maintain the image of an orderly house, the Chinese people are becoming very, very angry with the kind of misrepresentation in the West about a country they love and have spent the past 100 years rebuilding from the ashes of conflict sewn by the west. This is unfortunate, because the Chinese body politic is a much more direct representation of its population's moods precisely because it is not a elective democracy, the government is forced to be much more responsive to collective demands than in the west, and if the west continues down this road of paranoia, fear mongering, and accusation without objective information, then the results could only be unfortunate for everyone.

The people of the west think they know everything that's wrong with every place, well they are wrong because no one does, NO ONE should be intervening in anyone else's affairs as if they knew better, this only causes chaos and death. Examples of these failed ventures are Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chinese people want the critics to go to China and talk to them. A rail road anywhere else on earth is a good thing, but in Tibet it is depicted as a transportation that kills wild-life and threatens indigenous culture. Rail roads built by the Chinese in Africa somehow "establishes" some kind of nefarious Chinese influence in a continent in which the Europeans destroyed and it was left to rot in the filth of ethnic strife and disease. What have the Europeans ever done for Africa? I watch the BBC or CNN everyday, and whenever a Chinese person appears on screen, it is somehow always someone nearly incapable of expressing themselves or saying something obviously designed to make them sound ridiculous. Now I assure you there are many Chinese who speak English quite well, they're just not being interviewed.

People in the west are jealous of China growth and development and they think that their historical glory has been taken away. 200 years of world domination seems to have given them the ridiculous notion that they will always rule the world.

Most Chinese believed in the age-old saying, “what goes up, it must come down one day”, and it is time for the West to accept that China will soon be on top of them, and bear in mind, the Chinese do not want world domination, they just want to live in peace.

Before America's economic and political dominance, the European Industrialization Age and the colonization period, China was the middle kingdom even the West has sent explorers to learn from them.

China had 2000 years of history and it genuinely know the meaning of insubordination and respect and they know that power is not an easy thing to possess or to be taken for granted and thus I believe that they are much better in managing it than the immature Americans and Europeans.