Wu Guangqiang

    jw368@163.com

    “WHAT a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” ― Albert Einstein

    Despite its tremendous achievements in social and economic development, China has not passed a single day since 1949 without being nitpicked and criticized by Western politicians and news media.

    I don’t have a strong aversion to criticism or scrutiny. Western media argue that it is their duty to tell the world the truth and oversee governments and I can’t argue with that. What I’m disgusted with is the ingrained prejudice and bigotry among some self-righteous Westerners.

    One of their ridiculous ideas is that anything China does is wrong even though they are doing the same things. Implicit in this folly is their assumption that China is an autocratic nation because of its political system different from the Western one. They just can’t admit that an “autocratic country” can do as well as, if not better than, they do.

    We have seen two new additions to this story of “pride and prejudice.”

    One is the West’s knee-jerk reaction to China’s passage of its anti-terrorism law on Dec. 27, with nearly all Western media calling the law “controversial.”

    To show his “political correctness,” U.S. President Barack Obama, as the “world leader,” wasted no time expressing his “concerns.”

    Western critics’ “worries” are nothing new but such lousy clichés as the law’s possible “violation of human rights,” and “suppression of freedom of speech.”

    The other is some Western media’s dissatisfaction over China’s refusal to renew the press credentials for French journalist Ursula Gauthier. Gauthier herself and her supporters saw the move as China’s retaliation against her effort to “tell the truth.”

    As a journalist, Gauthier should have covered events rationally, objectively in context of times, but her prejudice against China led her to write subjective, biased and worst of all, false stories about China’s anti-terrorist efforts.

    Logically, as a spokesperson with the Chinese Foreign Ministry put it, “It is no longer appropriate for her to continue working in China.”

    In my view, Gauthier is a representative of Westerners who suffer from paranoia and intolerance with China, sometimes behaving like unreasonable and rude yokels.

    She questioned China’s “ulterior motives” in standing in solidarity with France after the November Paris attacks, and criticized China’s handling of its Uyghur minority. She claimed that China had no basis in drawing parallels between the international pledge to fight against terrorism and its own version, which she calls “the merciless crushing of the Muslim Uyghur minority.”

    Yes, these are what they call universal values: the killing of Westerners is terrorism, but that of Chinese or Russians is ethical clashes; the improvement of people’s livelihood in the West is democratic success and respect for human rights, but the same achievements in China is at best “positive changes;” the governmental monitoring of the public in the West is an anti-terror effort, but China’s management of the Internet or media is violation of human rights.

    Western hypocrisy is thoroughly exposed in Gauthier and her like’s reasoning method: killings of innocent people including Han and Uyghur people is not terrorist act because of Han people’s massive migration into Xinjiang, and in her words, a small group of Uyghurs acted “probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation.”

    And the wildest evidence some Westerners favored was that attackers used guns and explosives in terrorist activities in the West while Xinjiang attackers used only hacking knives.

    Well, by the same reasoning method, Gauthier should reach the conclusion that carnage in Paris was not a terrorist attack either, as the attackers were forced to fight against the merciless oppression of Western capitalists who colonized their home countries, plundered their natural resources, deprived them of their ability to develop and forced their culture and values on the colonized countries.

    An opinion in the absence of evidence or/and logic is prejudice and the adherence to prejudice is bigotry.

    (The author is an English tutor and freelance writer.)