Un articol care iti provoaca "goose bumps", scris de un academic curajos, din care prezint aici doar ultima parte, ... Intreg articolul expune aspectele arhicunoscute de propaganda paralizanta, pe care lumea occidentala alege AZI, sa le treaca cu vederea ...
"[...] Party propaganda has found its way deeply into our thinking. The importance of “social stability” and nowadays a “harmonious society” are accepted unconditionally as important for China. But is a country with more than 200 incidents of social unrest every day really socially stable, and its society harmonious? Or does “socially stable” mean no more than acceptance of the rule of the mafia? “Local government bad, central government good” is another propaganda truism that is accepted unquestioningly in the foreign research community, informing and shaping research questions. Yet, viewing the Party as a mafia, there is no room for such niceties, and reporting outside academia indeed suggests that the center hides a rather hideous second face, and inevitably does so for a purpose.
We see the “ends”—successful reform—and don’t question the “means.” The Party’s growth mantra is faithfully accepted as the overarching objective for the country and the one measure of successful reform. Nobody lingers on the political mechanisms through which growth is achieved. The mafia runs China rather efficiently, so why worry about how it is done, and what the “side effects” are?
We obviously know of the labor camps into which people disappear without judiciary review, of torture inflicted by the personnel of state “security” organs, and of the treatment of Falun Gong, but choose to move on with our sterilized research and teaching. We ignore that China’s political system is responsible for 30 million dead from starvation in the Great Leap Forward, and 750,000 to 1.5 million murders during the Cultural Revolution. What can make Western academics stop and think twice about who they have bedded down with?
If academics don’t, who will?
The World Bank and other international organizations won’t because they profit from dealing with China. Their banking relationship depends on amicable cooperation with the Party, and a de facto requirement of their research collaboration is that the final report and the public statements are acceptable to Party censors. The research departments of Western investment banks won’t because the banks’ other arms likely depend on business with China.
Does this all matter? Does it matter if China researchers ignore the political context in which they operate and the political constraints that shape their work? Does it matter if we present China to the West the way the Party leadership must like us to present China, providing narrow answers to our self-censored research questions and offering a sanitized picture of China’s political system?
The size of China’s economy will exceed that of the U.S., in purchasing power terms, by 2008 or 2009. China is a country with which Western economies are increasingly intertwined: A quarter of Chinese industry is foreign-owned and we depend on Chinese industry for cheap consumer goods. Ultimately, our pensions, invested in multinationals that increasingly produce in China, depend on the continued economic rise of China.
But does the West understand that country and its rulers? At what point, and through what channels, will the Party leadership with its different views of human rights and the citizens’ rights affect our choices of political organization and political freedoms in the West (as it has affected academic research and teaching)?
And to what extent are China researchers guilty of putting their own rice bowl before honest thinking and teaching?" (intreg articolul ... aici)
Mr. Carsten A. Holz is an economist and professor in the social science division of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

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