China

Simonthepilgrim

This year, the BBC is treating us to their 60th annual Reith Lectures. All of us have, I think, been affected by the events around China this year: protests, Olympic Games, freak weather and earthquakes. The lectures themselves and the discussion afterwards are eye-opening: I am learning about a whole hidden history of the Chinese among us. They appear heroic, hard-working, ill-treated and despised. I knew about the horrors of the cockle-pickers on Morecambe Bay but I knew nothing of their work clearing the WW1 battlefields or their help in the North Atlantic convoys, nor of their forced repatriation after they had ceased to be 'useful'.

If anyone is interested in the dilemma we must feel when we confront our ignorance, preconceptions and prejudices, they may like to join me in reflecting on the question of Chinese Buddhists. Even at its lowest estimate, there are more Buddhists in China than in any other nation: what is their opinion, their voice on current political, social and natural events?

I know that it is my tendency, when I hear someone condemned or criticised, to look for what is good from their point of view ("There but for the grace of God.....") and I recognise that I have held an antagonistic opinion about China as an imperial and imperialist power. Professor Spence's lectures are enabling me to a different and, I hope, more open view of our neighbours.

Reith Lectures

srivijaya

I think it helps to distinguish between individual people of a particular nation and the politics of their government.
How many people in the UK were against our involvement in Iraq? I've hardly spoken to anyone who was in favour, yet as Brits we may be hated (or praised) by others because of it.

There are large historical communities of Chinese all over South East Asia. They seem to get a raw deal in Malaysia but I'm not sure how it is in Vietnam, Indonesia and so on.

Knitwitch

This is true - it is very important to distinguish between a nation and its government.

I am heartened to see that on commemoration plaques in France the wording has been changed from "Jacques Dupont, brulé vif par les Allemands" to "Jacques Dupont, brulé vif par les Nazis"

(Jack Bridges, burned alive by the Germans, changed to Jack Bridges burned alive by the Nazis)

You can argue that the German people voted Hitler in under a democratic system but once he was there, he was unassailable and many Germans who did stand up against him met the same fate as the Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, handicapped. Rather similar to the situation in Zimbabwe now.

Palzang

I completely agree. The history of the Chinese people has been anything but pleasant. The common people have been subjected to brutality after brutality for thousands of years. One can only have compassion for them. And the nation itself has suffered extreme exploitation and brutality at the hands of foreign powers, from the Mongols to the Japanese with a number of European powers and the US wedged in between. But as you all have pointed out, there is a difference between the people and the government. The common man has little to say about who is in power and can only bear the suffering that each regime inflicts upon him.

It is perhaps illuminating that when the Chinese shut down the huge encampment that assembled around Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok in Tibet, numbering some 10,000 monks, nuns and laypeople, many of the people there were Chinese who were attempting to study the Dharma. It was the Chinese who were the most brutally treated by the Chinese police. Khenpo Jigphun was arrested and died later in a Chinese military hospital. He was, by the way, the lama who ordained me 15 years ago next month.

Palzang

Knitwitch

May his memory be forever blessed.

ragyaba

What a wonderful world ....

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?video_id=rApn09pRZCk&rel=1&eurl=http%3A