I sent the following letter to Dan Wetzel after reading his inflammatory article about the Beijing Olympics. The link to his article is here. Honestly, both Mike Chiu and I believe that Jerry Yang of Yahoo! should do something about this given the egregious nature of the unsubstantiated and unresearched rhetoric. I would say that some of the statements are racist and very much ignorant of what China really is. Anyone who wishes to write to him, his box is here.

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Dan Wetzel,

Your column about the Olympics and China is exactly what is wrong with American media. As a Chinese-American I am deeply disturbed by your abuse of freedom of speech as you feel it is your prerogative to post an un-fact checked nonsensical diatribe about a country and a culture that you’ve proven to know nothing about.

“Merely a redo of the 1936 Berlin Games.”

This is by far your most egregious statement. To claim that the Chinese Communist Party is anything like Nazi Germany demonstrates your absolute ignorance of political history and economic development in the 20th century. Nazi Germany was a fascist regime arisen from the madness caused by a Depression-plagued economy. The Chinese Communist Party has been a steadily changing government looking in the best interests of economic development to improve the standard of living of the populace. Before you make this caustic analogy, perhaps you ought to see what Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are like. I do believe you would be greatly surprised that the shift to capitalism is working rather well and China has in fact become the bustling financial center of all of Asia.

I am not one to say that China has a good human rights record. Rather, it is something that must be worked on and improved, but cannot be changed overnight. Keeping a nation of over a billion people in check is not an easy feat, especially as capitalist economic development results in an increased income gap. Yet, to claim that this will be like the Berlin Games is to accuse China of the most terrible of crimes, genocide. China is guilty of meeting a violent riot with a violent response. This is certainly not the best way to diffuse a violent situation, but what country, when threatened, has not been guilty of this? Certainly not the one that you and I are sitting in right now (i.e. LA riots, Waco Texas). But I must stress that this is not a genocide, China is a land of many different peoples, including Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan, and they collectively reflect the identity of China as much as the Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians represent America. Please I would urge you to read some Chinese history and realize that a “genocide” of the Tibetan people is antithetical to the principles of the development of China as a nation.

“Tibet is ground zero, an impoverished, mountainous region that has battled with China for its independence since the Yuan dynasty (we’re talking 1300s). In 1959, China again seized control. Tibet and its exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, have been begging the world to care ever since. Few have.”

Indeed it is an impoverished region and it was in fact more so before the 1950s. Actually, most of China is still impoverished but a lot of it is getting better, since the 1950s. Again I urge you to read about some Chinese and Tibetan history and make your own conclusions. Recognize that China proper, including Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, was united for a long time (we’re talking 1300s). To claim that they’ve been fighting for their independence since then is to completely neglect the fact that since the times of the Qin dynasty (now we’re talking B.C.) the Chinese people take pride in the unification of the people of all ethnicities under a common written language and a common rule. Perhaps the most glaringly omitted piece of history by Western media outlets is that during the Dalai Lama’s rule, Tibet became a stagnant society with enslavement of a lower caste of people. The Lamas lived a life of luxury and excess and Tibet possessed no economic leverage. But since 1959, the Chinese government has developed the economy in Tibet and made long strides to integrate the Tibetan and Han people. In fact maybe you should see what Lhasa looks like. It’s a bustling metropolis full of all kinds of Chinese ethnicities, not monks in pagodas.

“In less draconian concerns, the pollution is said to be horrific, the food untrustworthy and just recently the Chinese began installing that cutting-edge technology known as the “sit toilet” at some venues after discovering that the rest of the world isn’t too keen on squatting over a hole in the ground to do their business.”

Finally, I must comment on what is simply an ignorant, unnecessary, and racist statement. This is terrible and that you can say this under the nose of your Chinese boss Jerry Yang is beyond me. You are stereotyping an entire nation of people as backwards and ignorant. Most of China does not have the “porcelain throne” that we hold so dear not because of governmental neglect, but because China is still a developing country and a lot of it is still poor. There’s over a billion people! The whole point of these Olympics is to help China enter the limelight and to display the progress which has happened over the past fifty years. With Western media journalists like yourself focusing on the faults and not paying any attention to where China has come from since the end of World War II how is China ever supposed to continue it’s forward progression? To claim that it is a backwards place with shades of the Nazi Germany regime is to completely throw out the hard work that billions of Chinese people have put into the development of the nation in this past half-century. China cannot be changed in a day and China cannot become like the United States, or France, or England. China possesses it’s own rich history and will develop into it’s own unique being over the course of time. Just like how the USA took about a hundred and fifty years before becoming a dominant force in world politics, China requires time to improve. I ask you to open your eyes and observe how far it’s come and how it’s improving before you take a baseball bat and try to take out China’s knees. If you can’t even do that much, then please, stick to posting your mock fantasy football drafts for the upcoming season and stay out of writing about political and historical issues that you have no clue about.

Jerry M. Chow

Ph. D Candidate
Yale University
Department of Physics
jmchow@gmail.com