THE GREAT WAIL OF CHINA

China has always been a mystery to the West. Ever since Marco Polo introduced Europeans to its charms in the 14th Century the West has been both captivated and horrified in equal measure. Whether by its isolation, perceived cruelties, its unChristianity, its sheer size, its Dynasties, its culture, foot-binding, use of opium, or just its inscrutable ways, China was, and remains, inscrutable.

Over time, the West has sought to conquer, then influence, then constrain, then trade, then exploit and now, it seems, coerce and cajole China to change its ways. To be, in essence, more Western, for China to be more like us and to be, in effect, less Chinese. Christian missionaries tried, governments tried, by force and by trade, individuals fell in love with China, Hollywood, artists and writers added to its mystique. The world too, from time to time, marveled at its past achievements like the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army, or gasped at the staggering statistics of China’s population, currently 1.3 billion people or 20% of our planet’s total, or more recently perhaps thought nervously of China’s growing strength, both militarily and economically, and tried to understand the unique hybrid form of totalitarian capitalistic communism that is driving it. And failed.

For China is not Western or a foreign country that has become Westernized, it is China, a great concoction of contradictions and anomalies that have built up over thousands of years to create one of the greatest countries on earth. An empire, in fact, that developed for the most part in total isolation from the rest of the world and which has gone from a feudalistic Dynasty, to gangsterism and warlords, to nationalism, near anarchy, brutal subjugation under the Japanese, civil war, revolution, and communist revolution in its purist and most radical form. A revolution that took in the cult of leadership, Stalinist style economic plans, genocide and a cultural-revolutionary revolution that would see China destroy utterly much of its non revolutionary past including its art, its literature and where possible many of its people and yet emerge with its communist ideology intact.

China’s communist revolution in fact grew out of foreign interference, for China had been sliced and diced by the British, the French, the Americans, the Russians, the Germans, and most noticeably the Japanese who in the 1930s decided to show how big and tough they were by attacking what was then a weak and virtually defenseless country. China was a mess, a 20th Century basket case, with foreign powers claiming chunks of it for their own and generally riding roughshod over the impotent Chinese government. Moreover, much of the land was controlled by feuding warlords, nationalists and communists, all of whom fought each other, the government, and who totally exploited any people not on their side.

By 1949 things were so bad that most foreign powers had packed their loot-filled bags and left while the nationalists, led by Chang Kai-shek, and the communists, led by Mao Zedong, fought it out. The communists won and Chanh Kai-shek fled with as many of his troops as could follow and set up camp in Taiwan, with US protection of course. Since then Chinese communism has followed its own unique path to nirvana in its own way and on its own terms, give or take the odd Soviet missile and the occasional copyright infringement.

Under Mao, China may have looked organised but it was an economic disaster. It had state-owned collectives and Soviet style state run industries none of which were remotely profitable. Mao instigated a plan for a Great Leap Forwards though it would have been better called A Great Step Backwards. It was a disaster, millions of people died from starvation, nothing worked and economic failures were hidden by political crusades and slogans. Everyone may have had a little red book but they didn’t taste good and when Mao went to the great politburo in the sky in the late seventies Mao’s successors set about not dismantling communism but by making it work, Chinese style.

The much-underrated Deng Xiaping got rid of a lot of the Soviet style collectives and introduced private ownership, and allowed private enterprise and new businesses to operate outside of government control. Further he created new Special Economic Zones in areas like Shanghai, which, free of much regulation and state interference, brought in foreign investment and business. Now, nearly thirty years later, China’s economy is booming and is second only to the US as a world power.

This is the new Chinese revolution; it's a revolution that is uniquely Chinese and the West doesn’t like it and, in particular, the liberal, human rights obsessed, Obama-riven, hand wringing West. Why? Because Chinese communism didn’t collapse in 1989 the way Russia communism did. In fact, when the pro-democracy brigade in China decided to get all happy-clappy and start banging their drums in Tiananmen Square and building papier-mâché statues to the Goddess of Democracy, the Chinese government showed exactly what they thought of free speech and human rights. They sent in the army, killed several hundred protestors, and drove a tank straight at the Goddess of Democracy and flattened her right in front of the worlds press.

Now, twenty years later, as China’s economic might by necessity makes her a big player on the world stage, so über democrats like Hilary Clinton feel that they can lecture China on Human Rights as if they were ticking off a cheeky coolie. Equally, trendy and crucially important companies like Google can threaten a nation state with the removal of its product if the State doesn’t change its behaviour in a way that suits that particular company’s business and, suddenly, it's 1899 all over again. Even the UK is getting in on the old imperialism act with the country’s entire liberal media backed up by our main political parties all lecturing and whining hysterically to China when China sentenced a UK citizen to death for attempting to smuggle four kilograms of heroin into the country. No doubt Gordon Brown sees the chance for an election boost here and will restart the Opium Wars with himself in the role of ‘Chinese Gordon’.

Chinese occupied Tibet now has more Human Rights activists in it than Buddhists and has to operate while being lectured to constantly by uptight angst ridden college graduates on how to run their country. China, it seems, is the New World Order’s yellow-faced bogeyman du jour, only now Fu Manchu has cut off his pigtail, shaved off his long moustache and wears a suit rather than silk robes. But to the West he’s still evidence that a leopard can’t change its spots. Once an evil Chinese bastard, always an evil Chinese bastard as they say in liberal, caring circles everywhere.

Yet do the Chinese care? If we believe the Human Rights brigade there are 1.2 and a half billion Chinese, all desperate for their right to send emails to other Human Rights activists in Palestine or wherever. The reality is that most Chinese are too busy making money, getting kitted out in the latest Gucci and Chanel uniforms and flogging Mao Zedong kitsch to tourists to care about their human rights.

This is China, not Tooting, a country that has never known democracy, that saw five million of its people starved to death as policy under Mao and watched the Japanese in 1937 rape, torture, mutilate and murder hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in their then capital Nanking and the West did nothing and said nothing. Even now, Japan denies it ever happened. Sorry, it seems for Japan, is the hardest word. The key Western powers were no better as virtually every possible item of value or cultural significance that they could get hold of was looted, stolen or smashed during their occupancy and China’s indigenous religions were mocked and decried as heathen and their followers dismissed as savages. Now as we start the 21st Century we’re at it again and still telling China what to do.

New ‘capitalist’ China, it seems, is where the East meets West and the West doesn’t like it. We don’t send gunboats any more, or send in troops to loot and destroy or grab territories like Hong Kong. No, now we whine and wail and political opportunists like Gordon Brown and Hilary Clinton have hissy fits and newspapers and commentators, who would normally bend over backwards to use the most gushing politically correct euphemism when describing someone’s race or ethnicity, feel it perfectly acceptable to describe the Chinese as barbarians and lampoon their culture and government.

China has no reason to listen. Its people will choose their own destiny, which may well be democratic or most likely a uniquely Chinese variation on it. Whatever they choose though, they should choose it because it is their choice and not the choice of self-aggrandizing Western politicians and egoistical human rights activists whose arrogance and hectoring of the Chinese is on a direct par with the Christian missionaries who so plagued China in the 19h Century, they were wrong then and the activists are wrong now.

Confucius say he who buys US treasuries will eventually own the seller.

THY SHALT NOT OFFEND, EVER!

Twenty years ago I made a short film, Visions of Ecstasy, which was refused a certificate for release on the grounds that it was potentially blasphemous, effectively banning the film and stopping it from ever being shown. In the summing up I was deemed to have ‘outraged the divinity of Christ’ and it was feared that the public broadcasting or distribution of my film was a threat to public order and since then, for better or worse, ‘visions’ has sat on my shelf gathering dust. Preserving God’s divinity and saving the country’s streets from riots and baying mobs seeking divine retribution. As a result of this I have had, aside from a loathing of State censorship, an equally strong dislike of religion, particularly when followers of a religion seek to use the State to enforce their values. So it was with some surprise this week that I found myself not only siding with some Christians but actually getting angry on their behalf as the zealots of political correctness, appeasement and ‘cultural diversity’ sought to further the advancement of their new PC Jerusalem by censoring personal beliefs and the dress of Christians.

In the first of three separate incidents, a Christian couple, Ben and Vogelenzang, were charged with breaching Section 5 of the Public Order Act, which apparently covers causing harassment, alarm or distress, because they allegedly insulted a Muslim woman. The Muslim in question was staying at the Bounty House Hotel in Liverpool, which is run by the Vogelenzangs, when a conversation arose about her faith. During the chat one of the topics discussed was whether Jesus was a minor prophet as Islam teaches or whether he was the son of God as Christianity teaches.

It was further stated by the fun-loving intellectual Mr Vogelenzang, that Mohammed was a warlord, while the equally philosophical Mrs Vogelenzang stated that she thought the burka was a form of bondage for women. Apparently this line of conversation so outraged the woman that she felt compelled to rush to the nearest policeman who, instead of telling her to grow up and get a life, questioned the Christian couple and charged them with a ‘religiously-aggravated public order offense’. They are now awaiting trial.

Now, to my mind, having a chat or an argument about politics or religion or whatever is what makes the world go round, and a religiously-aggravated assault would have meant that the Christians had donned Mahamoud Ahmadi-Nejad face masks and fist-fucked Ms sanctimonious up the arse while reciting the ten commandments and telling her to convert, as opposed to having a quiet tete-á-tete about the pros and cons of shrink-to-fit burkas. Still, I’m sure that the police know best and rounding up Christian law-breakers is really going to make us all feel safe out on the streets.

The UK’s next ‘feed them to the lions’ moment came when Exeter NHS nurse, Shirley Chaplin (no relation to Charlie, though he probably scripted her case), refused to remove her crucifix neckless and now faces the sack. Chaplin is the second nurse this year to suffer this fate as NHS nurse Caroline Petrie was suspended in February for the same ‘offense’. Chaplin has apparently worn her crucifix for 38 years without hordes of non Christians running out of Exeter’s NHS hospitals in shock and horror that a ‘christian’ was openly walking the wards.

It would have been interesting had Exeter’s wannabe twat-boy suicide bomber, Muslim convert Nicky Reilly, not failed in his attempt to blow up a café to see whether the local NHS authorities would have rushed around getting Muslim nurses to remove their ‘approved’ headscarves in case they gave offense to non-muslim infidels who had just had their limbs blown off? I doubt it.

The UK’s third Christian pogrom has, surprise, surprise, come from the Government, where so much nonsense comes from these days, and is contained in the hysteria-driven new legislation called ‘lets protect little children from everything and wrap them in cotton wool until they are 18’, or the ‘Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA)’, as it's more popularly known.

Under this new legislation, anyone coming within two miles of children has to be vetted by the ISA to see if they are a crazed sexual predator, murderer or a Scout master whose idea of getting ‘hands-on’ experience is to turn the local camp into a nonce nirvana. Christians, who are well known for their happy-clappy-touchy-feely tendencies, are of course worried that the authorities have singled out the ‘touchy-feely’ part of the bible for special attention, and they have.

From summer 2010, everyone from School governors to dentists and nurses (though not crucifix-wearing ones as they will have all been sacked) must have their backgrounds checked by the ISA, as must authors who visit schools and parents who organise lifts to sports matches and so on. Christians fear that, because of their beliefs on homosexuality, marriage and of course shrink-to-fit burkas, they could be unfairly targeted by this legislation and have their careers ruined as a result, which, given current trends, is quite likely. So now the UK's Christians, the people that for years who were seen as the guiding moral force in the land, the people who used to pack our churches on a Sunday morning and whose quaintness was, like rain on bank holidays, robins and Rupert annuals, forever England, are now being persecuted by the forces of multiculturalism, mediocrity and modernity.

Normally, the trials of tribulations of a few Christians would, like the idle wind, pass me by, but such is the speed and unceasing advance of political correctness, appeasement and abasement by the authorities to all things Islamic that I felt genuinely aggrieved by their plight. In particular because petty officialdom mixed with an almost fawning desire to please and carry favour with all things Sharia (note the Home Office announcement to its employees not to eat food in front of their Muslim co-workers during Ramadan as it might make them feel hungry or Councils desire to rename Christmas as a ‘holiday’ and to remove Christmas trees) is destroying our pagan/Christian roots and the moral basis on which we live.

The religious base of this country is pagan and then Christian and, whether we like Christianity or loathe it, its key commandments form the moral code which holds us together. We know that it is wrong to kill, to steal and to fuck our friends' partners and get jealous when someone has more than us and these rules and a few others have for centuries made us what we are. As we have have become less religious so the laws have been weakened and amended, we no longer lock homosexual men up or burn witches, but generally the Christian moral code still holds sway, or rather it did.

With the demise of Christianity will fall our values, not all at once of course and not immediately, but they will fall. Every assault on Christianity is an assault on our wider freedoms, on women’s freedoms, on sexual freedom, on, ironically, religious freedom and the freedom of speech and into the gap will step another religion. A religion whose moral code allows for no dissent, no sexual freedom, no individual rights and which will enforce its laws totally. It is a religion that would, were it in control, certainly not allow a member of another religion to discuss and comment on its shortfalls and allow complaints against it to be made in law. In fact one of its first acts, should it become the leading religion in the UK, will almost certainly be to abolish Section 5 of the Public Order Act and its ubiquitous religiously-aggravated public order offense. We should abolish it first, reclaim the moral high ground, celebrate our culture and protect the Christians in our midst, for without them the country will move another step closer to the abyss.

Hallelujah