Misplaced Loyalty

Transcribed below is one of the most telling newspaper editorials I have read in a long time.

I salute Sin Chiew Daily's editor, Tay Tian Yan, for his forthrightness (and thank you too to Shamsul Akmar of Marahku for highlighting it).

Sin Chew: Many Chinese here more loyal to China than Malaysia


By TAY TIAN YAN
(Translated by Dominic Loh)

Chinese Malaysians are funny.

If you criticise the Malaysian government, everyone will be elated, saying that you are right, just and courageous.

But if you criticise the Chinese government, you will be slammed as wrongful, ignorant and jeopardising.

I made the above conclusion from my own experiences.

For instance, after I wrote A Nobel Prize China Is Not Proud Of, I received plenty of e-mails and faxes from the readers.

They lashed out at Liu Xiabo as a criminal and said I was anti-China. As if that was not enough, they didn't even spare Norway and Western "imperialism."

A reader wrote in: "This article goes particularly well with Mr Tay's pro-Western democracy stance, ... human rights, democracy, freedom etc advocated by the West... He is not able to liberate himself from the confines of all these, and has been writing things that do not make sense yet still excessively conceited. I think he needs a brain swap."

What a lovely reader, with a string of well-conceived adjectives!

I think it is good that some readers would seriously and diligently defend what they believe, or imagine.

But why do they always separate things into Oriental and Western when it comes to issues about China? China is unique in its own ways and does not need to emulate the West.

And when it comes to issues about Malaysia, they will invariably base their arguments on Western standards and specifications. Anything that deviates from Western values are unacceptable.

It appears to me that only China deserves to have its own ways, not Malaysia or any other nation on Earth.

Take for example, to China, human rights, democracy and freedom are all things belonging to the West, which are not only unsuitable for China, but are potentially detrimental.

But when it comes to Malaysia, human rights, democracy and freedom are all cherished as acceptable and essential, as these attributes have been successfully proven in the West.

Confucius said this was "own wish" meaning a person can hold double standards towards the same thing.

It is called hypocrisy in the West; you think you have your own set of values but in actual fact you don't, as you decide based on nothing but your personal liking.

As Liu Xiabo is a convict, he does not deserve the Peace Prize. But how about Alexander Solzhenitsyn during the Soviet era, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in prison and was lauded by the world as the Conscience of Russia?

Liu Xiaobo's Charter 08 was said to jeopardise stability in China, but the Charter 77 of Czech Peace Laureate Václav Havel, who was later elected the Czech president, was hailed as the Voice of Civilisation.

Right, those people only have one standard answer: China needs 'stability'. Why is it that only China needs stability? Doesn't Malaysia or the United States need that same stability too?

In the name of 'stability', anything ranging from autocracy, corruption, persecution, human rights violation, income gap, etc. will become rationalised, acceptable and tolerable.

Perhaps these people should team up to form an alliance and openly call for single-party politics in Malaysia by abolishing the electoral system, suppressing freedom of speech and advocating unlawful detention, all in the name of 'stability'.

Sin Chew Daily

MySinchew 2010.10.14