15 Chinese Men In Tracksuits Make The End Of It All

Brendan O’Neill on Tibet and the Flame Keepers:

In much of the coverage of the torch relay, commentators have talked about the ‘supine’ British government and the ‘cowardly’ Bush administration which are failing to stand up against the brutes from the East, while cheering the French protesters and the Australian government for taking the Chinese on.

As in the past, the driving force behind this outbreak of China-bashing is a perception that the West is in political and social decline, and the East might take its opportunity to snuff out ‘our’ civilisation once and for all. That 15 men in tracksuits could give rise to such an hysterical, out-of-control, fin-de-siècle, prejudicial debate reveals so very much more about contemporary Western fear and irrationalism than it does about Chinese wickedness.

Not one of the 15 defected. They flew and jogged around the world and not one of them wanted to stay in the West and legged it…

Anorak

Posted: 10th, April 2008 | In: Twitterings, War On Terror Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink