By Qin Xiaoying (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-14 07:14

When I was reading the accounts written by Chinese students about what happened during the Beijing Olympic Games torch relay in Europe and the Americas, I felt heat radiating from those words. How so? Is it youthful passion or fiery rage?

We can live with the bias of some Western media, with their selective blindness and even with their unfair comments, but we cannot let them deceive the public with false evidence.

When they use fake photographs and video footage to slander a real ancient civilization, one cannot but wonder if that is what they call civilized behavior.

Some Western politicians, organizations with ulterior motives, and media entities went out of their way to denigrate and demonize the Olympic torch relay while encouraging and harboring separatist forces engaged in splitting China apart. They should have expected their devious acts would ignite the patriotic passion of numerous citizens of Chinese origin, Chinese expatriates and students in their countries.

In case some Westerners wonder why China does not accept certain Western views and ideas, my answer is this: It depends on what exactly those views and ideas are. For instance, we see no room for any outside opinion on matters of national sovereignty and unification, because we learned our lessons in blood and pain.

For more than 100 years since the mid-19th century, we Chinese learned from quite a few industrialized countries who we treated like our teachers.

In our "notebooks" from those times, there is Japan's way of striking rich and beefing up the armed forces, America's democratic and scientific ideas, Britain's business and law, France's theories on humanity and art, Germany's philosophical and military cultivations, and the quintessential experiences in state administration of some less powerful countries, such Belgium, Austria and Sweden.

However, most of them came bearing crates of opium, with guns blazing and no invitation. Those "lessons" came at a price so high that China almost lost its sovereignty and had to let the "teachers" slice off its territory piece by piece as concessions.

As the last big country brought to the door of industrialization, China at that time was at the mercy of the West's fast-expanding material civilization. For reasons all too clear none of the Western powers found it wrong to exploit, bully and humiliate this ancient nation they called China.

Yet it is exactly such heart-piercing humiliation that awoke the undying sense of dignity in the Chinese people. And in time this sense of dignity gave birth to a principle in China's domestic and foreign affairs: protecting the sovereignty and integrity of our country at all costs.

I dare say this principle is hard as steel and relentless as the burning sun. No political party or politician, be it the one with unrivaled clout in the country or even in the world, can decide against the popular will of this multi-ethnic nation.

That is why whenever some separatists, their supporters and behind-the-scenes masters target the sacred Olympic flame during its relay with one dirty trick or another, most of the local citizens of Chinese origin, Chinese expatriates and students see their true intent immediately.

On the day the Olympic torch relay proceeded in London, two "Tibet independence" advocates unfurled a flag bearing snow-covered mountains and a lion by the famous fountain in Trafalgar Square. A Chinese student in his 20s stepped into the fountain waving a blazing red flag with five bright stars in the upper-left corner - China's national flag - and shouted encouragement to the torch relay procession: Go, Beijing! Go, China! Tibet was, is and will always be part of China.

London received a lot of snow that day and the water in the fountain was bone-chilling cold, but that brave Chinese student paid no attention to it. I do not know who this admirable young man is, but I will never forget what he did that day in London.

An overseas Chinese student told me he slept under a national flag the first night abroad, because his Chinese roommate said it would give him sweet dreams of being back in the motherland.

The author is a researcher with China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies

(China Daily 04/14/2008 page4)