The yellow peril

Last week, as a hitherto-little-known flu virus manifested itself in Mexico and spread out to over 15 countries, it triggered fears of a global pandemic. At the height of the scare, as all eyes were locked on Mexico as the epidemic epicentre, a Mexican minister somewhat blithely claimed without substantiation that, in fact, the virus originated half a world away — in China!

At that point, there had been no reported instances of the flu in China (as against hundreds in Mexico), although in subsequent days, a Mexican man who flew in from Tijuana via Shanghai into Hong Kong was found to be infected with the H1N1 virus.
China has of course exported many things to countries around the world, but a flu virus comes as a somewhat unlikely addition to that list.

But perhaps the reason Mexico picked on China as the source-country, and the reason why that charge sounded even halfways plausible, is that China has, even in the recent past, been culpable of covering up a global epidemic that originated from its soil.
It happened in 2003, with the SARS epidemic, which China artlessly covered up in the initial stages, and which allowed the virus to spread farther and more virulently. That sordid episode extracted a heavy price in terms of China’s credibility when it engages with the world, which, in turn, has served as a magnet that draws blame to China whenever things go wrong anywhere.

Today, the temptation around the world to project China as a modern-day ‘yellow peril’ is evidently hard to overcome. A hacker attack anywhere immediately gets “traced” to China. Global warming and environmental degradation? It’s because of all those lawless Chinese factories that spew toxic waste, of course! Genocide in Darfur? Blame it on China again, for supporting the authoritarian regime in Sudan.

And when the global economy went into a tailspin after the US consumption bubble burst, no less a person than US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson blamed the crisis on “excessive Chinese savings”, which, he said, had served to keep US interest rates artificially low.

No bleeding-heart liberal cause is worthy of attention, it appears, unless you can peg it to China and assign it some blame. But is the ‘China threat’ overstated or does China in any way deserve the flak it gets? For a start, there is a curious dissonance between how China perceives itself, and how it’s seen by others. Last year, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, when the torch relay drew large protests in London and Paris, Chinese people, for whom the Olympics marked a moment of nationalist pride, responded with anger and incomprehension to what they saw as attempts to “slight” China.

Blinded by official media hyperbole about China’s “peaceful rise”, they couldn’t even remotely figure out why human rights activists might see China’s repression of Tibet and its actions in Sudan as fair game for criticism when China was looking to exercise “soft power” at the Olympics.

Likewise, Brand China is all-too-often associated with the words like ‘counterfeit’, ‘copycat’ and ‘piracy’. China of course dismisses such criticism as the rantings of manufacturers who cannot match the ‘China Price’ or its competitiveness. But it doesn’t make it any easier to defend China’s case when, as happened at the recent Shanghai auto show, Chinese carmaker Geely brazenly showcases a knock-off of the Rolls-Royce.

Perhaps nothing about China draws more unflattering attention than its heavy-handed crackdown on dissent and its censorship of the media and the Internet. No country that so wilfully and so extensively jails its own citizens for speaking out, and so clumsily attempts to filter information and resorts to artless propagandising, deserves the claim to being an emerging superpower. Yet, the tragedy is not just that China persists with these, but that it bristles with indignation at even the faintest criticism of its conduct on these counts.

Part of the problem with China’s projecting itself as an emerging power is that its actions, which may earlier have been off the radar, have become “visible” around the world, and it no longer gets the free ride it may have enjoyed earlier.

If China appears to get more than its fair share of flak or seems out of step with the world, it isn’t just because of an “image problem” or poor public relations or (as the Chinese sometimes see it) because the world picks on China.

It’s more because China has in the past failed to respect values that in the reckoning of many are considered “universal”, and even today acknowledges them almost reluctantly. Respect is best commanded, not demanded. Even some rudimentary introspection should lead China to conclude that if only it were to curb its repressive instincts, ease up on its control-freakdom and become a trifle more transparent, the ‘yellow peril’ taint will no longer stick.