There is a considerable exaggeration in the press concerning China and the Olympic Games. Gideon Rachman's comments in the Financial Times this week about the Olympic threat to China comparing the German games in 1936 with those of China today is off base for a number of reasons, but typifies those elsewhere. Perhaps the most significant falsifications is that Germany was not under international criticism at the time for its internal politics. It had many admirers and was seen by many in the West as a bulwark against communism, especially Communist Russia. The international threat at that time (1936) was Japan and that was the fear of the "Yellow Peril."
Japan had been acting as had European powers in the years following the forced opening of her ports and defeated the Chinese in the war of 1894-5. But European powers blocked any Chinese concessions to Japan. In 1905 Japan crushed Russian armies and navy as Russia had acted as a European proxy to block Japanese actions following her part in the European suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. Many Asian historians as well as politicians considered WWI as a European civil war. The Japanese, as Ho Chi Minh noted, could have picked either side to join in WWI. After the war during the "peace negotiations" and leading up to the formation of the League of Nations, the Japanese proposed an equality declaration aimed at ending all colonies. The Japanese still feared being made one, and had acted as a European country in China and Taiwan creating colonies in hopes of "fitting in" to the European model of a colonizer. Their proposal was rejected. After the Russian Revolution the Japanese moved against various Russian forces in the East as Western Allies did in the West and then, when European powers attacked China after the death of Yuan Shih-K'ai so did Japan.
The Japanese "aggression" against China was only "aggression" to the Europeans because it was successful and challenged their own desires. As Calvocoressi & Pritchard, 1989, noted the new League of Nations demanded Japan reduce their naval forces or face immediate attack by a combined victorious Europe and America. Japan submitted. But in 1931 taking advantage of chaos in China, Japan invaded Manchuria in areas formerly under Russian control. As the Japanese argued at the time, why was it appropriate for Russia to seize the territory of an Asian nation, but not an Asian nation to do the same? That puts us in the period of the stage for American support of Chinese "Nationalists" who were really warlords. In fact Chiang Kai-Shek was so busy looting the country and avoiding the Japanese that he had to be kidnapped by warlord Zhang Xueliang and threatened with death before he would join Mao to fight the Japanese. See my article in Anthropological Quarterly v. 76, n. 3, Summer 2003:463-478. for references and details.
So equating China with Nazi Germany is simply wrong, but seeing present criticism in the context of past propaganda against Asian countries is an apt parallel. Those who have suffered most in recent riots in Tibet and Western China have been ethnic Han Chinese. What people in the West are doing is encouraging racist attacks that are incited if not organized, by the best information available, by the Lamaists. If we see these troubles in China in an international context we can assume that they are certainly embarrassing for China, but also they are threats that the West will support unrest in China at at time when the West is also pressuring China to revalue its currency, invest in reserves to save Western financial institutions and hold up the Western stock markets. It is, in that view, a real Western style "hold up." For those interested in a short culture history of Buddhism in China, Tibet and Burma see my post on my site in the Daily Kos.
Niccolo Caldararo, Ph.D.
Dept. of Anthropology
San Francisco State University