I am not a flag-waving patriot, but I do feel a certain amount of sentiment for my adopted home country. Statements like the ones above annoy me, but I have long since stopped attempting to justify America’s actions to my family. In truth, they’re right: The United States, through the Bush administration’s policy of unilateralism and a one-track focus on terrorism, has made many enemies throughout the world, and alienated many of its friends. What sets my nerves on edge, however, is the sense that the People’s Republic will never face the same problems.

A year ago, I saw a newspaper headline about a raid on an oil field in Ethiopia where 74 people were killed and the oil field was destroyed. Seven foreigners were also kidnapped. What made this headline particularly noteworthy was that the oil field was Chinese, and the kidnapped foreigners were Chinese nationals.  More recently, 5 Chinese hostages were killed in an incident in Sudan.

Before Nixon’s historic 1972 visit, China had no interests overseas. It maintained diplomatic relations with only a few countries and was focused entirely on itself. China was self-sufficient but hopelessly backwards. With Deng’s reforms and the opening of the market came an increase in the amount of international trade and the rise of consumerism. China has gone from having no possessions abroad to holding over $1.9 trillion in foreign currency, much of which is starting to be invested back overseas. China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 integrated it into the world economy, making it vulnerable to many of the problems of globalization, not the least of which is a strong dependence on foreign resources. While the PRC is the largest country in the world in terms of population, it is poor in terms of resources. The standard of living has increased dramatically and with it the demand for resources, all of which have to be obtained from overseas. It is estimated that if China reaches first-world standards of living, it will approximately double global resource consumption and pollution. 1.3 billion people require a lot of resources and produce a lot of trash. Most people in the West see China as an immense opportunity, a huge untapped market of possibilities. What I see, however, is a mass of people hungry for resources who feel that they deserve to consume.

As China grows increasingly dependent on foreign sources for critical resources, it will increasingly invest in the global market. Already Chinese companies have made many moves to achieve better supply security, especially in oil. But as can be seen from the case of Ethiopia and Sudan, Chinese investment means Chinese nationals abroad. China is investing heavily in third world countries, competing with Western nations in order to be the first to exploit those resources. China’s lack of an imperialist history and its status as the world’s largest developing nation gives it a lot of influence with these countries. One of the cornerstones of Chinese foreign policy is the idea of noninterference, and Chinese aid comes with none of the demands for transparency, accountability, and political reform that Western aid comes with. For the moment, China truly is making a great number of friends in the third world.

This trend, however, cannot last forever. Already there is some degree of disenchantment with the way the Chinese do business—it is usually Chinese companies that benefit directly from Chinese aid; local companies are often left in the lurch. China’s low cost of labor often directly competes with developing economies in third-world nations, causing factories to shut down. As China develops, it falls into the classic pattern of developed nations—importing raw materials from underdeveloped nations, exporting the finished products back to them, and pocketing the difference. Chinese overseers are often very poor with following through on promises of development—companies will often promise to build infrastructure and pay for clean-up but renege on benefits, insist on long hours and low pay, and leave the cleaning up to someone else. As Chinese companies frequently do this domestically, it’s no surprise that their track record is similar overseas. Where Chinese interests are concerned, China comes first. For example, China is building a series of dams upriver that could dramatically impact the Mekong river delta, causing unimaginable environmental and economic changes downstream in countries like Vietnam. Despite protests from environmentalists and local officials, China continues to build its dams. While situations like this are admittedly uncommon and there are many exemplary Chinese companies, it only takes one mistake to give an entire country a bad reputation.

The developing world is an unsafe place. The Chinese promise noninterference, but as its assets in the developing world increase, so does the risk of losing them. China has shown itself to be committed to regional stability, preferring multilateral talks to action. However, if war breaks out, it will have to choose between protecting its citizens and investments or losing both.

Many of the problems that the U.S. has internationally can be seen as a legacy of the Cold War, where it propped up certain regimes in order to contain Communism and protect its own interests. Vietnam, Korea, Panama, and Nicaragua are all examples of this. The U.S. often deliberately supported unsavory regimes in order to try and maintain stability. When regime change came eventually, it was accompanied by a backlash of anti-American sentiment. China’s avowed statement of noninterference can be a bit selective when it comes to its own interests. They insist that the matter of Taiwan is a domestic issue. They support the U.S. war on terror, in part to help contain their own problems with transnational terrorism, especially separatists in Xinjiang. It notably has avoided using its veto on the UN Security Council, preferring to abstain. One notable exception is the case of Darfur. Ethnic violence on the scale of genocide has been occurring for several years, and the UN has done nothing even to censure the Sudanese government for its actions because China has made it clear that it will use its veto to shoot down any “interference” with Sudanese domestic policies. The reason for this is the heavy Chinese reliance on Sudanese oil fields, a partnership significant enough to warrant visits from President Jiang Zemin in the past and President Hu Jintao recently. While this kind of covert support wins them friends now, in the future, it will perhaps make them just as many enemies.

On the other hand, however, China has done many positive things to improve its soft power. While Chinese foreign aid does not even begin to approach the scale of Western foreign aid, it is usually better publicized. China has also begun to show a very adaptable and practical foreign policy when it comes to regime change, preferring to sit on the sidelines rather than referee. It signs bilateral goodwill agreements and promises aid. While cheap Chinese labor does directly compete with local industries in many third-world countries, it also makes certain items, such as TVs, computers, cars, and other high-end goods much more affordable to the people in those countries.

It would be naive of China to feel that its place as the champion of the developing world is secure. A more conciliatory and cooperative American foreign policy could greatly undermine its advances, especially if China continues its track record of promising big but delivering small. It would be a good idea for Chinese citizens to not be complacent in the knowledge that a Chinese passport makes one a low-profile target in most countries, but to realize that it will take careful maneuvering by the government and China’s companies in order to maintain the current status quo.

Xifang is a potpourri of ideas and concepts, constantly shifting and changing. Every person you ask will give you a slightly different answer.  It’s a personalized concept but there are some commonalities of thought—xifang stands for kaifang (open, especially in regards to new ideas), xianjin (advanced, modern), qiangda (strong), and wenming (civilized). Xifang represents a new way of looking at things and doing things: new management styles, business plans, and social etiquette. It is a view of the West amalgamated from fragmentary news stories, gossip, and too much Hollywood. It paints a picture that lacks subtlety and nuance.

This uniform view of the West may be one of the leading causes of tensions that erupt when young Chinese bloggers meet unfiltered Western culture—they lack a well-grounded context to understand what they see and hear.

For some people, kaifang is a pejorative, conjuring up images of epicurean playboys with too much money and debauched women with too few clothes. It has the connotation of dubious moral and sexual practices, people who have abandoned familial obligation in the pursuit of self-gratification, people who have traded in morality for a decadent, Western lifestyle, whatever that means. For many, it is the reason behind the skyrocketing divorce rate and the perceived increase in teenage pregnancies in China. Certainly, in my time in Beijing, I’ve seen many hotels that make good money renting out rooms by the hour, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

For others, kaifang is a point of pride, a deliberate casting-off of traditional (read: backwards and outdated) attitudes. Chinese culture is traditionally “superstitious”—offerings for luck, burning money for the deceased, homophones for other words (the character for fortune, fu, displayed upside down as a pun for “fortune has arrived”). A kaifang person doesn’t believe in any of that. It also means being more open toward strangers—Chinese families are traditionally distrusting of strangers and nepotism is considered a virtue. People who pass over talentless relatives for talented strangers are considered more kaifang. It is the transcendence of local, parochial ties for an identification with China as a whole, rather than with your town or province or family. It means someone who is not offended by the violation of traditional etiquette.  Splitting the bill, (in Chinese, “going A-A”) is kaifang.

For women, especially, kaifang is the equivalent of feminist liberation in the West. A kaifang woman is one who eschews the traditional, subservient role of women as the keepers of the household.  While the old Mao quotation, “Women hold up half the sky,” is often quoted, the reality has always been that women hold a more subservient or dependent position within Chinese society. A kaifang woman has her own job and doesn’t need a husband or a man to complete her identity. She may live on her own if she chooses. The rising number of single mothers and women who raise children out of wedlock is associated with new, kaifang morals.

China is a country in the middle of profound social change, to go along with its economic revolution. It is struggling to maintain its own cultural identity in the face of what is perhaps the largest generation gap in history—parents who toiled in the fields and children who surf the Internet. The cultural clash between China and the West is not just in ways of doing business, but between generations as well. It is therefore important to remember that the way we perceive ourselves is different from the way others perceive us, which is still different from the way we perceive others perceive us.

The Myth of the West is a four-part series by Yulin Zhuang.

The source of Chinese nationalism stems from pride in the amazing things that China has been able to accomplish—and equally from a need to defend China’s reputation from attack.The key to understanding China’s complex nationalism is to understand that, on many occasions, the government is a victim of its own success. Early education stresses many of the abuses that China has undergone at the hands of foreign countries and the importance of becoming a strong and independent nation. Chinese history education stresses the fragmentation of China by foreign powers—the loss of Taiwan to Japan, the opening of treaty ports such as Shanghai, the “lease” of Hong Kong and Macau, and the independence of Tibet. These lessons are accompanied by a strong connotation of “never again!”

There are several flashpoints for Chinese nationalism. Topics guaranteed to cause sparks include Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan. To Han Chinese, these countries are historically a part of China, and remain so to this day (never mind the details of actual history). To grant Tibet independence would be tantamount to allowing California to secede. The very first question that springs to the mind of Chinese would be “Why would they want to?”, not “Should they be allowed to?” After China has sunk billions of dollars into improving Tibet’s infrastructure and sent so many Han Chinese laborers and teachers there, it seems incomprehensible that Tibetans would be ungrateful and refuse to acknowledge that they’ve benefited from being a part of the People’s Republic. Ivory tower intellectuals are usually a bastion of liberal ideas, but in China, the educated elite are incredibly conservative when it comes to the question of Taiwanese independence. China continues to maintain that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is merely a rogue province.

In many cases, the hands of the Chinese government are tied when it comes to action involving Tibet and Taiwan. The government cannot afford to be seen as being “soft” on these issues because it would spark a great deal of popular unrest. A recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies remarked that the two foundations for the legitimacy of the Beijing government are economic prosperity and being hard on Taiwan.

But China’s hard stance on Taiwan can sometimes cost China. Chinese delegations to the APEC Women Leader’s conference in Cairns, Australia last year boycotted the conference, due to Taiwan sending an official that outranked (and therefore would take precedence over) the Chinese delegation. It’s an all-or-nothing affair, and China is more than willing to take nothing, because it cannot afford to be seen as going for less than all.

Another source of contention is a feeling of being overly criticized. Recently, China Daily ran a front-page article about a web-based petition protesting Western media bias against China. Among Chinese nationalists, there is an increasing sense of unfairness in Western media portrayals of China. They feel that there is a great deal of misrepresentation, and that the news accentuates the negatives about China and never the positive. To a large degree, this is true—bad news is more interesting than good news, and the root of critical thinking is criticism.

What many Westerners don’t understand is the feeling of anger that criticism engenders. The Chinese are well aware that they still lag behind the first world in many critical areas, and they are cognizant of China’s failings in education, politics, and environmental issues. However, they take enormous pride in what they’ve accomplished so far. When one reads accounts of what China was like prior to the Communist liberation—slave labor, feudal exploitation, lack of basic human rights (yes, the Communist Party was a champion of human rights)—one understands the unbelievable amount of progress that China has made thus far. In the space of less than 20 years, it transformed a hellish slum on the east side of the Pudong River in Shanghai into a glittering jewel of modern skyscrapers. It has lifted 400 million people out of poverty in the space of a generation. Beijing has transformed from a city of narrow alleyways and single-story courtyard houses into a modern metropolis with wide avenues, highways, and a new ultramodern subway system. Literacy is at a record high, as is access to health care. Running water and electricity have reached almost everywhere in China, car ownership has increased exponentially, and the standard of living has simply skyrocketed. The Chinese are justifiably proud of what they have achieved. Yet when they see what the West says about China, they encounter only criticism.

Many young Chinese, flush with excitement and pride about China’s achievements and with high hopes for China’s future look abroad for guidance and inspiration. What they find, however, greatly disillusions them. Many pundits have argued that the Internet would ultimately be the great leveler, expose the Chinese to ideas of political freedom and equality, and eventually cause a popular upwelling of pro-democracy movements. They could not be more wrong in this case. It has, instead, inspired fierce nationalism, sometimes contrary to the interests of the Chinese government. A recent article in The New Republic talked about a backlash against foreigners in Shanghai due to the blog of a particular offensive and promiscuous expat, who wrote demeaningly of his sexual experiences with Chinese women. It sparked a furor against Westerners and calls for a manhunt to track down this anonymous blogger; calls that attracted tens of thousands of participants.

Especially with the Olympics coming, it is strongly in the interests of the Chinese government to have the Chinese people remain pro-foreigner. In the majority of cases, they remain so. Chinese national pride, however, is a force that the government does not exercise full control over. Western journalists and pundits should take this into account when considering China.

While the charge of Western media bias may be a bit exaggerated, the basis behind the complaint is true-too often, the press has a very negative view of China, and picks the worst examples to expose. Instead of looking at how China has improved Tibetan infrastructure, the West focuses on crackdowns, never mind the fact that the recent riots were started by Tibetans and the crackdowns were reactionary. Instead of looking at the engineering marvel that is the Three Gorges Dam, the media forecasts an environmental disaster of epic proportions. Rather than looking at how fast China has been able to expand its power supply to keep up with exponential growth in consumption, news reports lambaste the Chinese for lack of emissions control. The source of Chinese nationalism stems from pride in the amazing things that China has been able to accomplish—and equally from a need to defend China’s reputation from attack. A more balanced view of China—reporting not just the negative, but also the positive—would go a long way toward defusing a potential crisis in the future and improve the relationship that China has with the West.

The province north of Tibet is Xinjiang. This vast and arid land is the traditional homeland of a nomadic tribe called the Uighurs, who are Turkic and Muslim. On January 27, the Chinese police raided an apartment in Urumqi and killed two Uighurs during the subsequent shoot-out. Fifteen Uighurs were arrested and, according to the official report, five police officers were injured. State and Western media asserted that this sting operation had obviated a terrorist attack. Months after the raid and without disclosing any evidence, Chinese authorities claimed that the would-be attackers planned to target the Olympic Games. The sting was hailed as an example of how good police work and intelligence can make the world safer.

There are several similarities between Uighurs and Tibetans. Both are minority groups in western China that have experienced periods of independence and periods under Chinese control in the past. Both Xinjiang and Tibet are massive and resource rich. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to both areas and is actively working to modernize the infrastructure of both provinces. The religious and cultural practices of both groups are being smothered.

My purpose here is not to make a moral argument regarding the relative merits of the media portrayal of Uighur, Tibetans or Chinese policies towards these regions. Such a study should be left to those who are more knowledgeable about the region. What I am interested in is why Western views about Uighurs and Tibetans are so radically different. To understand why this is so, I think that it is vital to look at the framing of issues and the leadership of the two groups.

Many Westerners have never heard of the Uighurs. Those who have tend to associate the group with terrorism. Indeed, the most prominent Uighur group agitating for independence, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was categorized by the US as a terrorist organization in 2002. Several Uighurs are currently awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay. Not surprisingly, any discussion of Uighurs in the Western media starts from terrorism and expands outward. This starting point inevitably leads Uighur issues to be framed in negative terms related to the War on Terror and Islam. Uighurs have become a small part of a supposedly interrelated worldwide assault by Islamofascism (a nonsensical and meaningless term) on the West. The recent raid in Xinjaing was hailed as a blow against extremism in the War on Terror. The Uighurs are not victims—they are dangerous, violent extremists that need to be put under surveillance.

Free Tibet bumper stickers, concerts and advocates can be found in every corner of America. This is because Tibetans are thought to be a religious and peace-loving people. Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama and the Himalayas are some of the most idealized and romanticized images in the West. As such, the uprising in Tibet was viewed through sympathetic eyes. The protests were justified—even if property was destroyed and lives were lost. The death of Tibetan monks was viewed as a tragedy. The world was outraged at the forceful Chinese response to the rioting. International opinion and sympathy lie squarely with the Tibetans and their plight.

Uighurs lack an effective advocate. I do not know the internal structure of Uighur Islam, but I do know that none of the religious leaders in Xinjiang is viewed internationally as messengers of peace and human compassion. The most prominent Uighur organization is the ETIM, yet the majority of Uighurs do not support the ETIM and its goal of establishing an Islamic State in Xinjiang. The lack of an effective advocate and leader with international clout means that elite Uighur opinion is generally excluded from news. When something happens in Xinjiang, it is reported through the eyes of the West and Chinese and in reference to Islam and Terrorism, not in reference to Uighur cultural values and societal opinions.

The Dalai Lama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is viewed as a champion of human rights and religious freedom. He meets with heads of state and gives a peaceful, human face to the plight of the Tibetan people. He is an advocate for the Tibetan people, and a very effective one.

Framing and leadership help determine how issues are perceived, interpreted and understood. Frames are necessary, to be sure, but one should think about how issues are presented before accepting any one perspective as trustworthy and complete. My discussion has been more sympathetic to the Uighurs than it has been to the Tibetans and will leave it to the reader to determine why this is so. But I must note that not all Tibetans are noble, nor are all Uighurs terrorists. Moreover, Uighurs and Tibetans should not always be viewed in a completely positive light vis-a-vis the Chinese, although it is tempting for many to do so. No group—Tibetan, Uighur, Chinese, American—is monolithic. Resisting Manichean impulses and understanding how an issue is framed are key steps that need to be taken if one wants to arrive at an independent conclusion.