The Curtain of Words

This is an article that I wrote at the height of events surrounding the recent Beijing Olympics Torch Relay. As I have not engaged in political commentation before ( I only occasionally post things in the Photography Forum) , I have deliberatedly allowed some time before putting it online as I would like to cool passions and to see if the article would stand up to scrutiny. I am satisfied that I still stand by the thoughts in the article after two weeks.

-The Author（多見不怪）。



本文特地用英文寫就，因為話是針對西方的。比較長，看起來可能費勁些。

The Curtain of Words

 ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them…’

In his 1946 speech, Winston Churchill famously coined the term Iron Curtain to characterise a key turning point in modern history, marking the start of an era of ideological and geopolitical battles between two camps that was to be called the ‘Cold War’ in which the Iron Curtain had been a defining feature through which nearly nothing – human, material, money, or information - crossed.

This was a time that the population in the west was sickened to the bottom of their stomach by the two savage wars, and looking for something fresh to replace the disastrous wrestling for imperial supremacy between European powers. Communism, with its promise for proletariat mastery of the society and the associated welfare to the ordinary worker, sounded and seemed a good idea, as much as that, in countries such as France and Italy, the Communist Party were almost elected to government. Alter all, the Soviet Union was a vital ally and seen by many as a role model who first bravely resisted and then comprehensively demolished Nazi Germany, in stark contrast to, say, Vichy France.

The Iron Curtain, drawn by Stalin and maintained by his successors, was to demarcate the gains of the new Soviet Empire now dominating a vast expanse of the Euro-Asia continent, with a diaspora farther beyond – the USSR was, ideologically and geopolitically, on the front foot. As to why Stalin chose to abandon the momentum by taking such a defensive move at a time when the wind was on his back, the consistent answer may be found both in the history of the Big Game and the actions of the Soviet Empire afterwards: To liberate mankind by socialism was never Stalin’s game and the USSR was simply continuing the century old game in order to realise a Russian imperial dream started from Peter the Great.

However, drawing the iron curtain played very much into the hands of the West by providing a both highly symbolic and practical ideological and geopolitical battle line, allowing the West to regroup ideologically at a time when it was struggling for survival in the physical and mental ruins of the war, to rebuild its economy, and finally to regain the initiative by portraying itself as the liberator who was desperately trying to reach out and save the poor souls ‘on the other side’ from tyranny.

Farther down the line, the iron curtain would come to symbolise the isolation of the former Soviet block population not only from the supposed liberty and freedom of expression, but also from the goodies of material prosperity that were to characterised the Western world, The greener pastures on the western side of the curtain were to become a major attraction in the eyes of the poor sheep grazing the barren communist land. The very embodiment of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, was to fall 43 years later, in no small part due to such portrayal of the world ‘this’ side of the Iron Curtain. This was fundamentally and particularly enabled by the social, political, and foreign policies pursued by Stalin’s successors that eventually led to the long term stagnation and decline of Soviet economic and moral power. It would seem that, Stalin, knowing that Russia never had the sophistication to lead the world, resorted to hiding behind the iron curtain in the hope that, combined with military might, this would give his empire the lasting security it needed. The Iron Curtain, as any defence barrier, was drawn out of fear and an acute sense of insecurity.

Fast forward 18 years beyond the ‘End of History’ as Fukuyama would put it, another curtain is being drawn, this time attempting to separate the West from a country whose role in the old Cold War game was fairly dubious and has been largely forgotten by the Atlantic-centric analysts so much so that these days people only vaguely remember that China was as much a foe to the West for fighting much of the not very cold part of the Cold War against the West across the ‘bamboo curtain’. Little do they remember that China was also as much an ally to the West in bringing down the Soviet Empire, and before that, in defeating Japan in WWII.

18 years later, it seems, this remote, little known, and largely un-noteworthy country is suddenly on the door steps, in the homes, and literally on the persons and minds of every European and American, much more than Russia was 60 years ago. With an allegedly severely undervalued currency, its economy is already bigger than Britain or France, and will certainly overtake Germany next year unless miracle happens, and quickly catching up on Japan. Investment goes its way, manufacturing lines together with jobs move its way, while incredibly cheap and generally good quality consumer goods come flooding in. What is more frightful is that, there seems no stopping to this juggernaut as all economical theories, whether those decorated by Nobel prizes or those little more than glorified fortune-telling, seem to evaporate in its path as various predictions undershot its progress.

This is to be feared with utmost seriousness! For the Western public there is anxiety of God knows where this will all lead to their jobs and good life? For the more learnt class they’d ask the searching questions about an unfamiliar superpower, with a set of values and rules that are written in an impossible-to-learn language, unfamiliar at the best, and barbarian at the worst, being imposed upon good old civilised Western world. For those few who are in the know of the history of how the West spread their good civilised values around the world by means of gunpowder (which happen to be invented by the country concerned for the mere purpose of driving away evil sprits with a ‘Bang’) and the Bible, there is the secret fear of what China will do with that sort of power - are the Chinese going to treat us as we treated them 150 years ago? – with that ancient invention of theirs and some Confucian or Communist Bible to be converted to?

Out of such fear and anxiety – some of it very much understandable and natural - up springs the familiar isolationist mentality. Such mentality is only a human reaction to things unfamiliar, and could have been allayed by increased exchange of ideas and mutual understanding, although there will be a good amount of inevitable adjustments in each other’s psychology, economy, and international position. Some of these adjustments can be painful, but not so much if one is not obsessed of world domination.

Yet the standard bearers of the old cold war, who in the intermediate duration have been passing time by turkey-shooting in Iraq and grasping for a purpose in life, spring into action. Drawing the battle line is of course the first thing you’d do in a new cold war, and nothing does it better than drawing a curtain of some sorts. Same as the Iron Curtain, this will not only demarcate the geopolitical territories of the two sides, it will also create the necessary information fortification that allows the ideological and psychological mobilisation of public pinion, using everything from civilisation conflict theory to cheesy 007-style propaganda. If a few less busy Hollywood past-sold-bys volunteer themselves for drama effects and star attraction, it’s all the better.

Ideology is utmost important as the experience of the old Cold War demonstrated, and it was easy last time, first to define the Iron Curtain then the Empire of Evil, as the Soviets very much volunteered both. However, the targeted enemy this time round turns out to be very different, neither riding on the house back (as the previous Yellow Peril did) nor armed with war planes, artillery, tanks or battleships as the USSR was. China has in its hands some of the very things that the West prided in its arsenal – free market, mass manufacturing, free trade, competition and to add to these, globalisation and the Internet. It no longer restricts the flow of people, money or material across it border – rather to the opposite, it calls for barriers against such flows to be lifted. Although there is still a degree of information flow control, but one would find whatever being talked about in the business, fashion, art, even philosophy circles in New York, London or Paris to be disseminated and reinvigorated in Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen the following week. Whatever science being researched in a Western laboratory would be followed up soon, and technologies developed anywhere in the world are being applied in a grand scale across the land. And there have been talks of a ‘Beijing Consensus’ amongst developing nations, as the models prescribed by the West seem to be losing attraction.

For the cold war warriors, things are a little tricky as it seems that it is not easy to pin down ‘the enemy’ because this time around large swaths of the world population, including the Western public itself – those very ones whose anxiety and fear they are playing upon - are benefiting from the rise of the ‘sleeping dragon’, so much so that the ranks are divided into ‘dragon slayers’ and ‘panda embracers’. Very much to the annoyance of the former, the latter don’t seem to get it! In their eyes there is no enemy but a friendly, cuddly giant who is doing very much the same business as everyone is, and supplying the comfortable lives of the Western public with endless cheap goods.

Something must be done, and the opportunity is now before any more of the short-sited, profit-chasing types spread this friendly image of the menace any further. Looking into the old cold war tool box, there are but a few ideological axes left: freedom, human rights and high morality, as the enemy this time would not engage in a game of hardware arms race and nor would it disengage from commerce. The problem of wielding these axes is that, people have to believe in their applicability.

Hence a curtain of words is in the order. First the public perception must be corrected: There is no such thing as freedom in the country concerned. There is no human right in that horrible place and there is no morality either. The lack of freedom and human right is self-explanatory, isn’t it? The country is ruled by a body called the communist party and that says it all, Q.E.D. If any doubt, refer to literature generated in the last Cold War. The morality issue is also plainly obvious – otherwise how can you explain the low cost at which they sell their products? The explanations can only be sweat shops, intentional dumping, currency manipulation and carelessness for dear Mother Earth. As for the raw materials and energy needed for making these products, they must either come from re-colonialisation of Africa which last saw off ruler from another continent only 2 or 3 decades ago, or from some dodge Gulf or –stan states somewhere on Earth where the same dark practices are being applied.

The anxious but naive public must first derive comfort from these images that are projected onto your newspaper front pages, TV screens and Internet websites. After all it is the media’s social responsibility that the general public is content with life. Look at what’s going in those terrible parts of world and you should really congratulate yourself for living in a place where everything is in order, where you have divine rights to everything from education, jobs, housing, to fuel in your tank, where you can occasionally (or not so occasionally in some beacons of Liberty such as France) cause a bit of trouble to the traffic on the roads.

And the afterthoughts of all these must be utmost indignation directed at the appalling situations on the other side of the curtain, where people have to work in order to eat and have to study in order to learn, where they cannot dine over philosophy washed down by wine in the evening and go on strike during the day. So don’t believe that European society is in the decline as it isn’t – it has standards and those standards are what you need to live on. On the other hand, do believe and protest against the horrible oppression other unfortunate peoples suffers from the hands of tyrants, particularly so for the freedom-loving exile Tibetans who had their slavery Shangri-la taken away oh so brutally by the Chinese, or if that is at a moral and geological height you cannot scale, for the poor Christians in Dafur being killed by the Sudanese (em, they are Muslims by the way), supported by no other than China. After all, what is more effective than stirring up ethnic tensions for breaking up a nation – fully tested in the USSR, Yugoslavia, and perhaps unintentionally, Iraq. Do believe and protest that China’s economical development is in every cost of the things we care – the environment is being choked by the sheer amount of CO₂ it generates and your unemployment is because they are taking your jobs away. Your life is being made ever so difficult by rising oil and food price because everything is being swallowed by the monstrous appetite of this un-ashamed country. Therefore your disillusion and anger together with the money and time you nicely volunteer would be best targeted to the good cause of the new Cold War that is surely to put the end to the end of history.

One can now take an opinion poll, which will show that ‘the public’ now clear regard the country concerned as the top threat to everything from their livelihood to global security. The democratically elected Parliaments, Congresses or Senates must now make statements to condemn various violations by the said country of the values and standards upheld by civilised Western society. Politicians must now make the fashionable denunciation statements to gain political popularity.

As for those principles that used to be claimed by the West but now appear in favour of ‘the enemy’, let’s do away with them as the rules of engagement was drawn by us anyway. So instead of free trade let’s build barriers. Instead of fair competition let’s have Congressional hearings and anti-dumping investigations. Instead of open market let’s set quotas, or better still, close ours but open others’. Instead of improving competitiveness let’s stifle competition. Instead of reforming the economy let’s spend our way out of trouble. Instead of reforming welfare let’s use the money to fight wars. Instead of improving healthcare let’s recruit nurses from the poorest of African countries. Instead of paying foreign debt let’s devalue our currency – or pressurise others to appreciate theirs. Instead credit checks let’s lend sub-prime mortgages to everyone and sell the bad debt onwards. Instead of improving education by motivation and upholding standards let’s get the 50% with three E’s into universities converted from poly-techs to do media study degrees, and let them graduate with a mark of 40%.

Instead of resolving international conflicts by negotiation at UN let’s shock and awe, kick ass, and bomb the hell out of them. Instead of upholding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states - enshrined by the very international law system the West helped put in place - let’s dismember them, that is, when the state in question is no longer our ally and happen to be in our way of expansion. Instead of upholding international institutions let’s go it alone. Instead of defending against a real threat in eastern Europe let’s expand NATO so that Atlantic is the name of all oceans on Earth. Instead of helping third world countries to be self-sufficient let’s subsidise our agricultural products and sell them GM crop seeds that won’t germinate next year. And when crops fail we use grains to make bio-fuel and leave those whose agriculture has been ruined to starvation.

If there is a problem regarding the loss of moral high ground or even basic logical argument that inevitably associates with such acts, let’s use The Curtain. Instead of objectiveness and neutrality, let’s report only one side’s story and muzzle the other side as they have already been assumed evil and guilty, and if necessary reporter can take up the role of sermon preachers or use high verbal skills such as name–calling with terminology such as ‘goons and thugs’, nothing strange if they all have that kind of media studies degrees in the first place. Rest assured - this is all for the general good of not only the Western society, it is for the good of global civilisation.

So there descends this curtain made of seemingly impenetrable words, a self-seeding, self-proving, self-feeding monster that would conjure political correctness out of even the most independent minded person who would otherwise claim to have no fear in speaking the truth, for no truth is fed to their minds. This curtain that shields the wind of global progress from the West’s shores and its many fine and great cities, this curtain with the sole purpose of creating a new confrontation out of none by first evacuating and then indoctrinating the minds of the public against an enemy that is none, is being drawn by a strange alliance between the neo-cons of America on the right and the ultra-liberals in Europe on the left, who have not been known to see eye to eye, for one common reason – fear. For the neo-con eaglets, the fear is about losing a world order based on a theory of racial and religious supremacy and putting a particular country, or group of countries, on the top of the pyramid, in a position to rule, bully, and exploit the vast majority of peoples and countries in the world. For the left-wing Liberals, the fear is about losing comfortable welfare states, albeit built on debt and deficit, which would force them to stop day dreaming and to do some hard useful work instead of debating about fox-hunting and cannabis declassification. For both the fear can be summed up in one phrase – ‘guarding our way of life’.

In the eyes of one who’s lucky to have lived on both side of The Curtain old and new, this is an extremely irresponsible and dangerous game with no winner in sight, with no less than the very future of Mankind at stake.

The Western civilisation, despite its many past and present wrong doings – some of which, such as world wars, slavery, colonialism and genocides, are on epic scales and at incalculable costs to Humanity – still represent the highest achievements by Man in great many if not all aspects of humanity, be it philosophy, science, technology, arts, social principles, legal frameworks, civil institutions, effective government, international institutions, etc, etc. As such, it still commands great respect and provides abundant inspirations even amongst those nations who have been on the receiving end of some of the worst wrong doings. China is one particular valid example. This is a nation that transcend its own sufferings in the past at the hands of both external intruders (whom China has forgiven with unprecedented charity yet who now have the cheek to turn back and lecture about nationalism) and well as its own failures. This is also a nation that is fortunate to have the intelligent ability to learn from its own ancient and rich, uninterrupted civilisation as well as to learn from the great Western civilisation – experiences from their achievements as well as lessons from their wrong doings including expansionism and empire-building.

Albeit still in a relatively early stage, this reform process is starting to bear fruits, not least in lifting hundreds of millions of people – more than the entire population of Europe or America - out of absolute poverty. If the success of the reform of this ancient civilisation brings prosperity and welfare to one fifth of humanity who share it with the rest of the world, what else could one ask for a better outcome for Mankind as a whole? If at an advanced stage, there evolves an global civilisation that enjoys the advantages and progressive values of both the Eastern and Western civilisations, one that abandons the malaises of both – such as the traditional totalitarianism of the East and the aggressiveness and missionary zeal of the West - would that not be a new height for Mankind as a whole?

Yes there are various problems, many serious, some very serious, quite a few mountainous, associated with this country. Who hasn’t its own share of problems? Then who have ever had to manage a mammoth society with 1.3 billion souls instead of one with just a few hundred varieties of cheeses (have the latter quite sorted themselves out yet?). Yet one must recognise a key feature – that China is changing consciously and intentionally for the good of its own people and the world. It is all very easy to play the blame game and do finger pointing than to provide something in the way of constructive criticism that will be appreciated certainly the vast majority of if not all the people of that country. In practice, one cannot see what, if any, Europe has to say to a vast land where 1.3 billion from 56 ethnic groups can adhere together as one nation when one-third of the number in Europe cannot bring themselves to agreement in a loose union. Perhaps that is another source of fear and anxiety?

So for the West, it would do itself and the world great deal of good by abandoning the old zero-sum geopolitical game, for that is not the solution to the global problems that face Mankind. If Churchill’s speech and the ensuing history told us something, it is that burying one’s head in the sand (or behind a curtain) is not a good idea, for instead of coming to an end, the momentum of history will not wait for you. The West better have a good look of itself in terms of both its international and domestic policies, so that it can rise up to the challenges posed by the rapid progress of others, and compete – benignly and constructively – for a better future for all in a new, better world order.

If Churchill’s speech told us something else, it is not to repeat Versailles and to preach the self-fulfilled prophecy of enemy making. It is a fortunate fact that China has learnt the lesson of self-isolation through its own history of wall-building to no avail, and hopefully also learnt not to knee-jerk to Versailles-type stimulants, such as the recent ugly events in the street of Paris and London.

It is now the responsibility of those who participated in the media feeding frenzy and political grand standing either by sub-cerebral reaction or with the intent of cheap domestic and international political scoring to reflect on their role in the unintentional or intentional collaboration of a sinister plot to start a new cold war which will not benefit anyone but has every potential of destroying the world as a whole. Reflect on what damage you have helped in doing to the reputation and honour of a great international institution, The Olympic Games, that over the ages has provided inspiration of peace and hope above conflict and gloom. Reflect on the persistent refusal to report actual facts when all independent accounts are pointing to a nasty, violent, criminal riot, and when the facts become irrefutable, refusal to condemn such acts. Reflect on the one-sided, brainless association with the Dalai Lama, someone who appears to broadly preach peace lately, but persistently refuses to denounce violent acts by his disciples; someone whose past incarnations (if there is such a thing) and whose very title essentially represents the diagonal opposite of some of the fundamental principles of progressive civilisation – violence as opposed to peace, theocracy as opposed to secular government, slavery and serfdom as opposed to equality and basic civil society, superstition as opposed to science. Reflect on what would such an association, together with all the aforementioned violations of the fine values established in the post-war year, do to the moral high ground that the West is trying to claim. Reflect on what benefit would be brought to the West, in particular some stagnant European societies, if they were shrouded in such a Curtain, were either blind and dumb or hysteric to the epic changes for the better that is taking place over the other side of the world.

For the moderate if slightly bewildered public, it is fortunate that we are in an Internet age, in which information cannot be monopolised by the mass media whose main concern is circulation and viewing ratings, who is known to represent factional interests and political colours, and who in particular has no international accountability and who are very happy to be spoon fed and in turn to spoon feed us in international affairs. The Curtain of Words created by such media, for wanting of a better phrase, is porous and futile in front of the power of independent, unbiased, factual, logical and rational evidence gathering and mind searching, the very spirits that brought about Renaissance and Enlightenment to a medieval, feudal Europe and put an end to the Inquisition and witch hunting. To loosely quote some words I read recently, truth is to be found in history, not in the media, and I shall add, not known to be found in the minds of Hollywood stars, too.

 

All rights reserved(c)多見不怪. April 2008.