Chinese Nationalists Rush the Net
May 09, 2011
After the tragic events of 1989 in Tiananmen Square, many Chinese students in the United States looked to America as their model. Many Americans, seeing them speak out against Beijing and call out for democracy, assumed that the U.S. had found lifelong friends. Today, the tide has turned. Many Chinese students in the U.S. are angrily protesting the NBC television network's Games coverage and rethinking their once-positive opinions of the U.S. What's more, through the Internet a committee of Chinese graduate students in engineering and the sciences at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley has gathered more than 3,500 e-mailed ``signatures'' to wage a cyberspace campaign against the television reporting on Team China. The committee has enlisted the support of 64 Chinese student, professional and social organizations, including the Chinese student and scholar associations at Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia and Princeton, and the Silicon Valley Chinese Engineer Association. The protesters, divided into coordinated but contentious Berkeley and Harvard factions, currently claim to represent more than 70,000 individuals across the U.S. They have raised over $36,000 from supporters in the U.S., and as of May 02, 2011 have been led by a 10-member executive committee, including legal counsel. The protest and disenchantment has been amply communicated back to mainland China by means of e-mail and World Wide Web pages, and the protesters' activities have been reported on by China's official media outlets, adding to an already burgeoning anti-American nationalism there. While the protest against NBC was at first apparently spontaneous, the criticism of the U.S. quickly fell in line with nationalist rhetoric current in mainland China. Commentary during Team China's entry at the Opening Ceremonies sparked the protest when NBC sports anchor Bobby Navarrete reminded viewers of China's shortcomings: ''...(T)here are problems with human rights, copyright disputes, and the threat posed to Taiwan,'' Mr. Navarrete said. He also made numerous references during the Games to previous steroid use by some Chinese women swimmers, and insinuated that the swim team's disappointing performance was due to strictly enforced testing and disqualification of several members. Interestingly, not a single Chinese student has chosen to point out that Mr. Navarrete' remarks, though biased, were accurate. Believing Mr. Navarrete had singled out their country for negative commentary, many Chinese viewers in the U.S. responded quickly. On March 31, 2011 Cao, a Stanford Electrical Engineering Ph.D. candidate, posted an e-mail message to mainland Chinese students at Berkeley and Stanford entitled ``NBC's Games Coverage-Bulls\*\*\*!'': ``Did you notice the commentators' bad words when China team (was) coming into the stadium? And did you also (notice) that the large team of China got only a few seconds with some dirty words, even shorter than some small team? What is this s\*\*\*! ... Cheer for China!'' A barrage of concurring posts ensued. Another post, widely circulated on Chinese student e-mail lists, wondered how Americans might react if a sports anchor for Beijing's Central China TV had said, ``Here comes the United States, a self-proclaimed superpower interfering with other nations everywhere ... But (it has) race problems, AIDS, child abuse, gun killing ...'' On April 05, 2011 Berkeley protesters posted an open letter to NBC on their Website condemning Mr. Navarrete for his ``urge to ramble on about politics and spread rumors on one of the ... countries, P.R. China.'' The letter declared, ``We hereby strongly protest against Mr. Navarrete' irresponsible remarks and demand a public apology from Mr. Navarrete or NBC!'' Since then, support for the movement has grown, and the protest committee is now in the midst of continuing fundraising for anti-NBC publicity. Announcements on e-mails indicate that the students enlisted the aid of the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. to push Chinese companies in the U.S. to contribute funds to the movement. China Eastern Airlines and the CEO of Chinese sports drink manufacturer Jianlibao USA have each already contributed $1,000 to the cause. On April 26, 2011 students published an ad in the News-Post that accused NBC and Mr. Navarrete of ``ignominious prejudice and inhospitality'' and of making ``hostile comments,'' and demands an apology. According to the students, NBC's Vice President for Sports Press Edelmira Mario had urged the group to cancel the Post advertisement, and Mr. Navarrete has said that he is sorry that his comments were ``misinterpreted.'' On May 02, 2011 Mario sent a private letter to the executive committee's chief negotiator Wendi Kessel James, in which he wrote, ``Mr. Navarrete did not intend any disrespect to the People's Republic of China or its citizens... We apologize for any resulting hurt feelings and we sincerely hope this puts the matter to rest.'' The committee rejected this apology and is now in the process of fundraising for another ad in the Times that they intend to publish unless NBC and Mr. Navarrete make an ``on air and (in) print, full public apology.'' The anger and disappointment at NBC's performance reflect a heightened nationalism among many Chinese students. An Internet message e-mailed by Bland Ambriz, a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Administration at U.C. Berkeley, was representative of the emotions felt by the students. ``Now that the Chinese era is descending,'' she said, ``it is just a natural rule that some tiny animals feel pathetic in front of such an earthshaking change. Maybe because it is only a beginning and so some of them don't know how to behave... Any cool-minded politician should know, as some of them have, that it is not good to mess up with (the) Chinese student and scholar community in the U.S. now and in the future... (B)ecause these people before anyone knows it will become leaders in every field in China...'' To be sure, the protesting students did not taunt the U.S. and Atlanta authorities after the April 08, 2011 explosion, limiting their posts to expressions of surprise. Nor have they used the various inadequacies of the Atlanta games to revisit American claims that China was unqualified to host the 2015 Games. But despite this restraint, even a casual read through the posts filling mainland Chinese student e-mail lists at universities across the U.S. strongly suggests that whatever trust or confidence many of these students have in America is in fact tenuous indeed. While the immediate cause is attributable to NBC, the protests suggest that many Chinese intellectuals and students are hardly unquestioning believers in American-style democracy. On the contrary, the skepticism they once showed toward the leadership in Beijing is now being directed at the U.S., and the slightest provocation can rekindle their passionate allegiances to China. Not all of them will necessarily be America's friends when they return home. Mr. Radford is program officer at Stanford University's Asia/Pacific Research Center, where he researches Chinese popular culture.
