Kevin McGeary

    TWO recent news stories raise questions about Western criticisms of China.

    The first is the discrediting of Mike Daisey, a theater monologist whose performance about Apple, Steve Jobs and working conditions at Foxconn factories was portrayed on an American public radio show, “This American Life,” as a piece of journalism. When a China-based reporter discovered many of Daisey’s statements were lies, the radio show retracted Daisey’s segment and brought him on the air to explain himself in an awkward, cringe-worthy interview.

    The news that Daisey lied gives credence to the idea that Western media outlets are habitually biased against China.

    The second recent story is the arrest of a man who wrote an offensive tweet about black footballer Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed on the pitch during a recent match and is recovering from serious heart ailments. Police are not disclosing the content of the tweet, made by Liam Stacey, 21. Stacey was arrested under Section 18 of the United Kingdom’s Public Order Act, which criminalizes all forms of racial abuse. Former footballer Stan Collymore urged microbloggers to report all racist comments about Muamba to police.

    But is there ever a good reason for suppressing freedom of speech?

    America, which prides itself on being the home of free speech, is also home to one of the world’s most hateful organizations: the Westboro Baptist Church. The church, headed by Reverend Fred Phelps, sends representatives to the funerals of soldiers, celebrities and prominent homosexuals to shout abusive slogans. But Phelps happens to have many lawyers in his family and his followers have never been arrested for picketing a funeral because the law protects their freedom of speech.

    One netizen who was lucky not to run into trouble for what he wrote online was an English teacher who used his blog to gloat about his sexual conquests of Chinese girls. The blog, “Sex and Shanghai,” was noticed in 2006 by professor Zhang Jiehai of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Zhang publicly demanded that the blogger be found and kicked out of China.

    As a professor of psychology, Zhang’s reaction should not have been outrage but curiosity. This blogger, who came from a country (Britain) that has long-since ceased to become a superpower, was trying to belittle China, a country set to become a superpower, by including on his blog a serial “50 Reasons Why China May Never Be Great.”

    The fact that the blogger behaved in such a way illustrates that he was a deeply pathetic person. Psychology professor Gregory Mavrides supported Zhang, but if Mavrides had bothered to look at Zhang’s own personal blog, he would have seen that Zhang’s writing was full of anti-miscegenation, anxiety and a territorial attitude toward women long before “Sex and Shanghai” existed.

    Hearing offensive things being said by reprehensible people is part of life. Stacey, Zhang and the blogger may have said cretinous things, but, to paraphrase Evelyn Beatrice Hall, I defend to the death their right to say cretinous things. And the fact that they have nothing better to do than write these things is punishment enough. As philosopher AC Grayling said: “Without freedom of speech, one would be in a prison made of enforced silence and averted thought on important matters.”

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)