Chinabounder left a comment on my blog

I was a little surprised when I saw that the formerly 'infamous' ChinaBounder left a comment on my blog. It was on my post about Jackie Chan's remarks that 'Chinese maybe had to be controlled and that Taiwan was chaotic'. In that article I also quoted his post that tackles the same topic as well: His thoughts on Taiwan and it's democracy. I really liked his post. Here's his comment on my blog:

ChinaBounder said...

"It’s a disgraceful comment. Chan, like so many governments around the world, is obviously prepared to betray democracy and the ideals of freedom to keep Beijing happy. When there’s money to be made, few people stand up for truth.

Taiwan is a fine example to China, and should be honored by the world for its achievements; but it gets almost no respect."

So after I saw this, I checked the link of his comment and it lead me to the real ChinaBounder's blog (Sex in Shanghai / 欲望上海). It was indeed him. I just wondered how he found me. I remember leaving few comments on his blog some while ago, but he has so many comments on each post that I wasn't sure if he really reads them. Since his last post was from October 2008, I thought he wasn't active. I guess I was wrong.
In the past, I already thought of writing something about this 'ChinaBounder scandal'. And his comment initiated me to do so today.
So many people asked who was Chinabounder. Well, that was never my question. I always asked myself what is wrong with the Chinese netizens to react the way they did. First of all, I will always defend freedom of speech! You just can't attack freedom of speech. Period. Second, you can agree with Chinabounder or not, you can believe everything he writes or not. But what some of the 'offended' people were doing, was really crazy. I remember the Chinese professor who in his nationalistic tirade basically called for a witch hunt and public lynching of the author behind ChinaBounder. That was scary. Various blogs showed up with the purpouse of finding ChinaBounder. They analized all his words, all the information found in his posts, just to find him. One of them is this one. I imagine how a bunch of angry Chinese teenagers and twenty-somethings wander around Shanghai and try to find him. They were probably angry at every Westerner they saw. That's scary. But they made a huge mistake. ChinaBounder wrote a lot about the Chinese male and female, about the system and about the Chinese society in general. I didn't agree on everything that he wrote on his blog, but there was a lot of truth in his posts. And that's the point. The reaction of Chinese totally confirmed what he was saying. I was thinking what if a supposed Chinese expat would write about his sexcapades in Europe, let's say in Britain. Nobody would care! Nobody would translate the whole blog in English, there wouldn't be online forums and groups trying to find this guy, to unmask and expell (and possibly lynch) him. Even if he wrote how bad is our society here in Europe, if he wrote about the European male being this and that... Nobody would care. And I'm sure same would go for America. That's the difference between a dictatorship and democracy, between people who can develop their own independent critical minds and people who are used to follow orders from above, people who get their thoughts and behavior imposed by the government. So it really doesn't matter wheather ChinaBounder is David Marriot, a former British graduate or if it's a group of more authors or if it's someone else.
This online outrage taught me a lot. It made me realize that one should not take freedom of speech online (and offline) for granted. Freedom, democracy, free press, being able to protest the government should never be taken for granted. We have to be aware of that. The powerful need to know their power's boundaries. They can't be above the law, they can't step on our constitution.
And finally, my thoughts on ChinaBounder's sex stories. I found them amusing. When I read them, I read them as novels. I didn't imagine it was all true and exact as it was said. The sex was displayed pretty graphic, but it wasn't the main point. I liked how he described these women and their mindset. I liked the issues that come with a love triangle, with cheating and having a lover. That's classical and it's not unique to any culture. If you have a husband, who doesn't show interest in you and you find a lover, it's not something new. It happens in the West all the time. The difference in ChinaBounder's stories is that he combined this fact with the whole Chinese society and with the government and it's restrictions on freedom, that has it's effects on the whole society. It made me think about how their government measures sucess: in growth of economy. How about the growth of ideals, values and freedoms?
And my final thought: I'm positive that there were (and still are) many young Chinese who disagreed with the professor's call for ChinaBounder's exile and couldn't identify themselves with the whole reaction to ChinaBounder's blog. People who may have been abroad and seen the difference. People who don't fall for cheap nationalism and don't get upset by few posts on a blog. I just hope there's enough of them to change China's political system one day.