By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-04-17 07:22

The word "democracy" keeps haunting me these days as I read the Western media's reports about the recent riots in Lhasa and Tibetan-populated areas in neighboring provinces. They have gone to the extent of even condoning the ones who killed innocent people and looted and set fire to stores and other properties.

Their bombardment reminds me, ironically, of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) years, when I first learned the phrase da minzhu in Chinese, or "great democracy" in English.

As a teenager, I initially believed da minzhu gave the majority of the people the right to express their opinions. Indeed, most people talked or penned posters, or went out on the streets for demonstrations.

But soon I had to question this type of "democracy", as opinions concerning the country's development were suppressed and the people who tried to set the country onto the track of social and economic growth were persecuted.

These days, the Western media are condemning China also in the name of "democracy" as well as "freedom of the press".

However, they have torn down even the facade of objective and fair reporting.

While there are ample quotes about "repression" or "cultural genocide", the Western media do not even bother to check facts about life in today's Tibet. There were only about 2,600 students in Tibet's schools in 1958, out of a population of 1.2 million. To these Westerners, the more than 400,000 Tibetan teenagers and over 20,000 young Tibetans in the full-fledged modern education system from first-grade to post-doctorate programs today seem irrelevant to the flourishing of the Tibetan culture.

When they talk about human rights, they do not take the trouble to listen to the 95 percent of the elderly Tibetans about their former life as serfs or slaves and their new life as free human beings pursuing their new professions and careers. Nor do they care to double-check the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

They should be reminded of the declaration in which Article 3 stipulates that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". Better still, they should be reminded of Article 4 which says, "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms".

Western economic models measure a society's development with such indexes as life expectancy and child mortality rate, but the Western media have not even tried to compare such indexes for Tibet 50 years ago with those of today.

To me, the Western media's deliberate misinformation and indulgence in China-bashing are a lot like the "cultural revolution" posters that were plastered everywhere, including the walls of the hutong leading to the door to my husband's former courtyard home.

"You could imagine how I felt in those days when all the posters condemned my father as a capitalist roader or an American spy," he once said.

We have not forgotten the "cultural revolution" as some Westerners suggest; but no one would associate that period of modern Chinese history with "democracy".

Similarly, no member of the multi-ethnic Chinese society can accept the Western media's China-bashing as their testimony to "democracy" and "freedom of the press".

A Western journalist has even lamented in the New York Times that the younger Chinese have come out in defense of a multi-ethnic China because they have been taught too much about the humiliation and oppression the Chinese nation went through for more than 100 years.

That journalist really has a short memory. It was the Western gunboats and opium that forced Old China to open its doors and forced many Chinese to go to those countries to start learning about democracy, freedom and human rights.

And most of the times, these days included, the Western countries, their media included, have proved they are not the role models we can or should follow.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/17/2008 page8)