The gauntlet has been thrown first by Google from Mountain View, California last week-- followed by yesterday's high-profile public excoriation by the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton against Chinese officials on the issue of internet access and freedoms, and allegations of cyberhacking traced to China.
The biased Western news media such as the New York Times has spun and orchestrated a torrent of "bad-mouthing," China-bashing, Chinese demonization,and disinformation alleging that China has censored, and put up a firewall to suppress dissident views in the internet piped in through Google.cn and its search engine.
Coupled with this attack, the biased Western news media has spun an unsubstantiated story, without clear and convincing proof, or even by a preponderance of evidence, or the higher criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, that cyberhackers, at control, and direction of the Chinese government, has engaged in cyberattacks and pilfered intellectual property and source codes which are proprietary to Google.
What kind of poppycock is this ? And why is this rhetoric and saber-rattling being orchestrated now, at this time, and at this moment ?
For all global Chinese (Huarens) who have been observing Sino-U.S.-West relations, the writings on the wall, and the signals being calibrated to poison and destabilize China and China's colossal growth by the West and especially by America and Western Europe cannot be clearer.
The Google attack is pretextual. It is a conspiracy which has been hatched, scripted, staged and directed from the West, designed by the China bashers and demonizers to destabilize China and Chinese society, and a sinister attempt to foment "luan" among the naive, growing segment of Chinese netizens who are quickly and exponentially surfing the world wide web and taken on the information highly with must gusto, much enthusiasm, albeit also with much naivite.
Since over a decade ago, from my "third space" perch, then at Huaran.org, I have written about the megatrend of globalization and the consolidation of media and information behemoths in the new frontiers of the internet and the information highway.
In and of itself, the internet is a tool which can do much good, and at the same time do much evil. It is the content and control of content which have become critical. As I predicted, content and software is the name of the game.
Whoever control and dominate the content in the internet and can shape and dominate content can control and shape the minds, and in shaping the minds, they can become the masters over the slaves who are being bombarded and "brain-washed" by this content.
Without a doubt, those of us who are ethnic Chinese living overseas in the Chinese Diaspora know and experience the West and especially America in its rawest, most banal, most perverse side. The picture does not look very good.
We have seen the "armpit" side of the West and especially in London, in San Francisco, in New York City, in Vancouver, in Toronto, in Sydney, in Paris, all across many inner cities in the West and especially in America.
Alcohol and drugs..... moral degradation, predatory behavior, sociopathic and nefarious activities are skyrocketing and running out of control. In short, the West is crumbling from within, not by what the non-West is doing to it, but by what Westerners are doing within and to themselves and to each other in a morally degenerating, puerile, and vulgar environment.
China and all Chinese, whether inside or outside China, must learn from the mistakes of the West.
China's economic growth has been stellar; but at this time, there are storm clouds in the horizon. Aside from robust economic growth demonstrated by statistics and numbers, China and all Chinese must watch out for the real honest-to-goodness growth of its civil society, its moral and social underpinnings. China and all Chinese cannot ape the West and absorb hook, line, and sinker any Western and smells chic Hollywood.
I know. I have lived in the West for the greater part of my life.
Believe me.... "The Western Moon is Not Rounder." "The Westerner's Fart does not Smell fragrant."
Sad to say, Western-European imperialism and colonialism may have left China; but the "Western colonial mentality" and blind worship of the Western Moon and the Western fart have not left China and in the minds of many of its people, and especially in today's post-Mao Zedong era, and post-Deng Xiao Ping youth.
In my opinion, China's most formidable challenge is CULTURAL POLLUTION, and the POISONING OF THE MINDS from the toxic content being spewed from the WEST, not just through the internet, but through social-cultural seepage and contamination resulting from a more open society, more open borders, and more travel by "lao wai" visitors from abroad.
The good side of it is more exchanges and interfaces with "lao wai" brings about more understanding and knowledge. The bad side of it is, if not mindful of the toxins, China and its youths, naive and ignorant as many are, because many have not been exposed to the West, may end up becoming "yellow monkeys," apes of Western depraved values of hyper-selfishness, self-indulgence, hypermaterialism, aggressiveness, lack of "li," and downright vulgarity and perversity.
Already, drugs and pornography have reared their ugly heads in China's cities, towns and villages.
Even in prestigeous Peking University, China's elite university, there are anecdotal stories of marijuana use among students, and most of these "bong parties" and bongheads are Westerners who have brought in the passion, obsession, and binges vis a vis pot use, drug use, and alcohol use and abuse.
China's firewalls, we all know, can be circumvented. Like the Great Wall built by Emperor Qin, designed to blockade the intrusions from foreign invaders, it was not an effective wall nor could successful stop invasion, but nonetheless a symbol.
It is symbolic of Chinese civilization and its sense of itself, and speaks to the Chinese people's awareness that we must be ourselves, cannot be other than ourselves, with a historic civilization rooted in our people's consciousness, and that we must vigilant to do the right thing for our society, our civilization, and our culture, not by Westeners' rules or their standards.
If modernization is equated as westernization; if the West insist on their perverted, warped, "Europeanized" notion of democracy, or human rights, or internet freedoms, of drug use, of "one man, one vote," of "freedom to cavort, get drunk, get sex, get high,"...... all Chinese must resist and refuse to accept.
Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred ideas contend.
But for China and all Chinese' sake, don't let Google or the West dictate, control, or dominate content and the information highway, unconditionally, or according to what the West and the Googlers want, by their whims, and on their own terms.
China and all Chinese must fight. We should fight back. We should stand firm on Tibet, Xinjiang, and resist the "compradores" and those among us who still naively believe that "The Western Moon is Rounder" and that "The Western Fart is More Fragrant."
En Garde. En Garde.
The gauntlet has been thrown. And let the line on the sands be drawn.
As Mao Zedong declared on Oct. 1, 1949, "The Chinese People has risen."
The Dragon awakes.
