Jiang Editorial Overly Critical and Offensive

I agree with the idea that the Chinese government has some very negative aspects, and that it is in everyone's best interest for China to reform. However, the tone of your editorial Staff editorial, Oct. 14) on Chairman Jiang Zemin's visit here was far too critical and was offensive to some Chinese classmates of mine. Considering that The Crimson's editorial was the "pro" article in a set of disagreeing essays on Jiang's visit makes me wonder if you even conceived that the badly researched information you were presenting as factual could be contested. I was a student at a university in Beijing for five months last semester, and in fact made friends with a student who ran for his life at Tiananmen when the Chinese army cracked down. My experiences, strengthened by discussions with other Americans who have lived in China, lead me to support the engagement policy favored by some Americans and disagree with the containment policy The Crimson seems to advocate. The reason to engage China is to let things run their due course and expect that in a few decades China will both be more human rights-friendly and will be a strong ally to the U.S.

China suppresses individual human rights. So do a lot of other countries; for example, certain Islamic nations that forbid women from participating in society. In fact, the Tiananmen massacre was in the same vein as the United States' use of military force to violently suppress student uprisings during the Vietnam era. And prison labor is not unique to China; America uses prisoners to perform all sorts of tasks. In both of these cases, the Chinese model is more horrible than that of the U.S., but only by degree. As for religious freedom, many Islamic regions of China are given partial autonomy. The religion that is truly persecuted is Christianity, perhaps because it is often associated with the greatest humiliations of modern Chinese history: Western Imperialism, opium and broken treaties. China finally recovered the last pieces of territory taken from it by the West this July.

I am not justifying religious persecution or trying to make Western nations feel guilty for mercantilist policies; I am pointing out that there are deep historical reasons for China to be distrustful of Christianity. It is questionable whether the American view of individual human rights is fully compatible with highly collective Chinese culture. The philosophy behind Chinese law and society is "Rights for the group before rights for the individual." American law is based on the opposite idea but is not inherently any more justifiable. Intellectuals in China, who have some exposure to Western culture, often fight for individual human rights, but this crusade has yet to be embraced by the masses. The protesters at Tiananmen were elite university students, not common workers. Whether or not a cultural change towards individualism would be good for China is debatable, but such a change seems necessary for the rise of individual human rights. The areas of China that are most "free" are those that are most capitalistic and economically developed. Perhaps the Western influence which comes with capitalism leads to this change. So, it seems that engaging China and encouraging its economy to grow will lead to a rise in China's human rights awareness.

I get the sense that your editorial was based on a rather narrow view of morality and society, one based solely on our culture. I also did not get the sense that your editorial was well researched. Instead of relying on emotionally stirring words such as "evil," "chattel" and "murder," you might have presented a better argument. I am not trying to paint China as "good," and I certainly am not trying to make America look bad; I am simply asking that you be more realistic in the future.

As a final note, I think it important to understand that inviting someone to speak at Harvard does not imply that Harvard supports his or her ideals; what would we learn from inviting only those with whom we agree?