It’s a question that every expat faces when visiting another country. Do you or do you not have a right to comment, complain, or question the politics of your host country?
There is no shortage of such commentary in the Chinese blogosphere, and many foreigners in China (and I’m by no means an exception) turn to posting their opinions of China’s short-comings on the internet.
There is also no shortage of readers who will tell all these writers to shut up or go home.
I sincerely admire the China veterans like John at Sinosplice, who as his site claims, manages to stay completely apolitical in his commentary. Or the guys over at China Law Blog, who remain professional and objective even though the subject matter they often cover would likely induce a person of lesser maturity to behave otherwise.
Quite often though, I just can’t muster that maturity. And some negativity does spill out, despite all efforts to water it down.
But recently, when faced with a certain Sino-clusterfuck of a situation, some Chinese friends (200 or so, who shared my plight) became very disappointed with my somewhat passive willingness to admit defeat. In a nutshell, we’d all bought into an apartment complex we shouldn’t have, and they were determined to fight for their rights to the bitter end. My and my girlfriend however, having been fed the “This is China, you can’t change anything” mantra since our arrival, had already written it off as a loss as soon as we’d heard the first bit of bad news.
Chalk one up to cultural experience, we said. As a guest in China, that’s the proper way to handle adversity, right?
But it seems here, the others had accepted us as comrades in arms. We’d all been fucked equally regardless of race or nationality, and therefore we all had a right obligation to bitch, complain and fight shoulder to shoulder. No exceptions.
So before some of you readers have your say in the comments and tell us to tone it down a little, or before you tell us to shut up and go home — just stop and think for a second.
We may not have been born here, but if we stay long enough and endure the hard knocks like other Chinese citizens, we just might have earned the right to speak our piece.
No! Your rights don’t mean shit here in China! Now shut up and go home! 😉
hmm… sorry, had to get that off my chest.
Seriously now, I think it’s perfectly understandable that some people, especially Chinese react fiercely to all these negative comments as would most people when having their own country criticized, justifiably or not.
On the other hand, the fact that you have even considered that an issue shows that you, consciously or not, agree that it is at least somewhat inappropriate to be making negative comments all the time. But that doesn’t matter ’cause people do have their rights to say whatever they want to, especially on the internet.
The only thing which i think is a bit unfair for most of the Chinese readers is that most of these blogs are written in English, which makes it difficult for them to understand and then to make a valid argument. I’d like to see more posters in this so-called China blogsphere(some have been in China for quite some time, mind you) start writing in Chinese and let’s see what you’ve got then.
I appreciate your statement about us, (taking maturity to be more of a reflection on state of mind and not my birthday last week) but I mildly disagree. We do always try to stay professional and when it comes to legal matters in China, we do always strive to stay objective. But, I will readily confess that on certain issues I do not even try to stay objective nor do I purport to be. In those situations, I simply try to state my bias. For example, I often find myself saying I am unabashedly capitalist and I am; I believe the market eventually can solve most problems.
I say you not worry about objectivity (which is impossible) and just focus on striving to remain honest and to encourage debate. Open debate trumps objectivity, don’t you think?
So you are fighting to the end on this one, right?
I’d like to mildly disagree as well. In my opinion, there’s entirely too many abstract comments about what people have the “right” to say and what they don’t have the “right” to say. In fact, you have the right to say any goddamn thing you please (with a few narrow exceptions, I’ll admit), and fuck anybody who says otherwise! Chinese people who tell you to get out are just as wrong and ignorant as those inbred hicks from Jesusland who bellow and rant about people bad-mouthing America.
I’m sure you know, it’s just a universal knee-jerk reaction of the ignorant — if they don’t like what somebody says, rather than argue the point, they resort to ad-hominem attacks.
So long as you don’t cross the wrong person in a position of power…
I know personally that there are things I write on my blog that I would never say to another Chinese person … maybe we should all just s*** the f*** up.
No, I still agree more with Chris above.
Well, screw all you guys. Maybe I should go home… 🙂
But seriously…
@Ji feng: I started out doing a Chinese site, but I only made about 10 posts or so. Haven’t done one in a while.
@China Law Blog
Happy Belated Birthday 🙂 Open debate does indeed trump all. Unless that person is debating with me, of course. In which case they are undoubtedly wrong.
@Chris
Welcome back man. We need to go for a beer soon.
Yes, people do indeed have the right to say whatever they want. And other people do have the right to tell them to shut up.
This post was, more or less, a pre-emptive strike at people who are a bit quick to say shut-up to China critics.
But in hindsight, maybe I’m too quick to jump on them.
@ Jeremy
Yes, maybe we should. 🙂
@Rick: Wrong Chris. 😉
I gave up long ago on trying to be impartial. I have my opinions for a reason, and a lot of them are hard-earned, so damned if I’m going to sacrifice that to play up the superficial nationalism some pissant feels – no matter the country.
And I agree with the logic that the amount of right you have to criticize a place is proportional to the amount you have invested in that place. I feel I have a helluva lot more right to criticize China than an overseas Chinese, who despite being born in rural Shaanxi, doesn’t live here and isn’t affected by the day to day happenings.
Right’s not really the “right” word… my opinions of freedom of speech are well stated… but you know what I mean.
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The question I have and maybe it is a bit off-topic and simplistic, but in a country where we often here brash generalizations and stereotypes about western life and culture, isn’t it all the same, don’t we have the same rights? The Chinese have a very thin skin and get offended very easy and I don’t think that is our problem.
People like to talk about other cultures and they like to complain about other cultures. For me though after almost seven years here I have decided it cannot be a Dashan-like lifetime experience.
I think that every foreigner has to ask themselves if the negatives cancel out the positives or is it the opposite. If the negatives start to out weigh the positives maybe it is time to pack it in.