Who has the courage to stand up to China?
TIM BLAIR Courier Mail Monday 7th June 2021
Quote:LAST Friday, June 4, marked the 32nd anniversary of the Chinese communist dictatorship’s Tiananmen Square massacre.
Or to use the preferred phrase of the dictatorship’s mouthpiece, the Global Times, last Friday was the anniversary of “a historical incident that happened 32 years ago”.
Moreover, the Global Times asserted, that “historical incident” – in which thousands were slaughtered – “has inoculated the Chinese people with a political vaccine, helping us acquire immunity from being seriously misled”.
Tiananmen Square’s victims also acquired immunity from middle age, oxygen dependency and any number of things associated with remaining alive. Lucky them.
As for China’s surviving billions, “being seriously misled” is their default mode, especially when it comes to a certain incident in June 1989.
“China has largely succeeded in wiping the events of June 3-4, 1989, from the public consciousness,” the Voice of America network summarised two years ago.
“There are no memorials in China to Tiananmen. What happened there is not taught in school.”
It soon won’t be taught in our schools, either, if China or its cashblinded Western friends have any say.
“What we’re seeing is that China is not only repressing the media at home, which we’ve been seeing for many years, and they continue to find new ways to censor and to shut down information,” Sarah Repucci of the pro-democracy organisation Freedom House warned in 2019.
“Increasingly they are exporting their model of media repression to other countries. And they’re doing it in three main ways.
“They’re doing it by exporting their message and finding friendly outlets that will publish and broadcast that message.
“They’re doing it by putting pressure on journalists, but also diplomats and media owners in countries to censor, basically on Beijing’s behalf. And they’re also getting involved in the media markets of these countries.”
And sports markets. The hugely wealthy US NBA basketball league has become immensely wealthier still through its exposure to Chinese audiences.
Many players have endorsement deals with Chinese sportswear brands linked to forced labour camps.
A US congressional commission recently called on the league and its stars to sever ties with those brands: “The NBA and NBA players should not even implicitly be endorsing such horrific human rights abuses.”
The players will not only reject this plea, they’ll likely defend China into the bargain.
When then-general manager of the Houston Rockets Daryl Morey a couple of years ago tweeted “fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong”, he was slammed by NBA superstar LeBron James.
“I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand,” James said, absurdly. “And so many people could have been harmed, not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually.”
James and the NBA are woke as hell on Black Lives Matter and other issues. But wave a bunch of money at them and criticism of China’s brutal Hong Kong repression suddenly becomes a spiritual and emotional crisis.
Hollywood is equally hypocritical.
As long ago as 2013, the Los Angeles Times noted a developing willingness among movie studios to alter scripts and storylines to suit Beijing.
“The net effect (of Chinese influence) is a situation that movie-business veterans say is unprecedented,” the paper reported.
“The suppressive tendencies of a foreign nation are altering what is seen not just in one country but around the world.”
Fast and Furious actor John Cena last month apologised – in Mandarin, no less – for the terrible crime of describing Taiwan as a country, which upset Beijing’s goons.
“I love and respect Chinese people,” Cena said. ”I am very sorry for my mistake. I am so sorry, I apologise.”
Taiwan, by the way, is a country.
These literal apologists for tyranny might learn something from the fine example set by Budapest mayor Gergely Karacsony, who last week renamed several streets around a planned Chinese university at the Hungarian capital.
They’ll now be called Free Hong Kong Road, Uyghur Martyrs’ Road, Dalai Lama Road and Bishop Xie Shiguang Road, referring to a persecuted Chinese Catholic priest.
“We still hope the project won’t happen,” Karacsony told a press conference.
“But if it does, then it will have to put up with these names.”