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United Kingdom, France, and USA have no
moral right to boycott 2008 Olympic Games in China.
By Charles.S.Perera
Shanghai by Night-Photo by LankaWeb 16/03/08
China is today one of the fast developing economies in the world, having
gone through many trials, and humiliation by the British; first by its
shameless trade in opium that made millions of Chinese at all levels
drug addicts. The Chinese army which was weakened by drug addiction,
and equipped with outmoded arms , was no match to the well equipped
British army, and was defeated in the opium wars. Thereafter, the British
profited to further its humiliation of China by entering into unequal
treaties with most favoured Nation clause.
China a self sufficient country traded in tea and silk, leaving a trade
deficit to the British, which they shamelessly converted to a surplus
by sale of opium. China was weakened and poor. We read in Pearl S Buck's,
Good Earth, how the Chinese were living in utter poverty. When the production
of tea and silk was low, China paid the foreign traders in silver. Shiploads
of Chinese taken away to USA, worked as labourers building railway tracks
and cities ,living in most inhuman conditions. Missionaries were brought
into China to convert the Chinese to Christianity, thus pushing China
from economic poverty, to a cultural poverty by forcing on them a foreign
belief system.
It is this nation that was humiliated and pauperized by the West, that
has risen to be a power block ready to compete with the West. China
had no one to help her to be whatshe is today. Russia which helped it
at the beginning to build its machinery and factories left without completing
their work. The British occupied Hong Kong, bringing it under its administration.
The West not withstanding the utter humiliation it caused to China,
despite its population of more than one billion people, denied it a
seat in the UNO, recognising the American puppet regime of Taiwan, as
representative of the Chinese people and the mainland China. It was
only in 1972, that it was accepted as a full member of the UNO and elected
to a seat in the Security Council
This is a reminder that the Western political tactics have not changed
from what they were in the past. Recognising a portion carved out of
Serbia, and making Kosovo an independent state is similar to the humiliations
the ancestors of Western countries enforced upon the poor countries
in the past. Or accusing Sri Lanka of violation of human rights and
calling the government to negotiate with the terrorists, while at the
same time asking Pakistan not to negotiate with the terrorist, is typical
of the old Western practices..
Nevertheless, China thanks to the Communist revolution, was eventually
proclaimed a Republic. Left to its own, with its undaunted determination,
even making iron in back yard kilns, China developed its machines and
technology. The Chinese people lived a simple life and every one of
them putting in maximum effort, made China what it is today, different
from what it was, not poor any more and not addicted taking opium.
The West lost no occasion to draw the carpet under the developing China.
The student uprising in Tiananmen in 1989 was capitalised by the West
to create dissention in the country, but despite the Western efforts,
the government of China was able to bring the manifestations under control.
If the uprising was not curbed and the West was allowed to pour more
oil into the troubled waters, situation in China would not have been
what it is today. It is good that China is keeping a close watch at
changes and not giving in to calls for more freedom, lest there would
be a repetition of what went on in USSR, before its break up.
The West has a duty to stand by China now, at least to mitigate the
humiliation caused by their fore fathers, and to welcome China as it
is, settling political differences in cordial dialogue, not resorting
to aggressive political thuggery.
China does not need the Western accolade, but on the other hand the
West has a moral duty to bow before China as a great nation, for its
fulgurous ascension to the present height. The so called violation of
human rights in Tibet is nothing in comparison to what the British and
its allies had inflicted on China, with its illegal commerce, and coerced
treaties.
If the West is comprised of cultivated, democratic, and honest Nations
, they should participate in Olympic Games in China, at least to make
it forget the humiliation caused to it in the past.
Tibet is an excuse for the West to interfere into internal affairs
of China and to break it up and stop its further development. Tibet
has been modernised by China, and if left to it self, China will settle
the present problem with Tibet, in its own way, at its own time.. Human
rights is not something invented by the West, on the other hand there
is much evidence to accuse the West of violation of human rights through
out its history..
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