French knows how to save face

I haven’t found any urge of writing recently until I stopped by the following news: “France seeks explanation from China over alleged travel boycott” a few days ago. Apparently there is a travel boycott in Beijing, and the France was seeking explanation, as if there were any need of it.

It caught my attention for the way the French foreign ministry behaved. His words “we must absoultely get some explanation” revealed his intelligence level, which is, of course, very low. Is there really any need of “more explanation”, Mister? As if you were not a living person just a few months ago, when tens of thousands of French people gathered in Paris so happily humiliating China? Didn’t you guys hail it as a “victory for human rights and democracy”? How can you forget your golrourious victory so easily? Well, the Chinese don’t. It’s just amazing that, these days in the west, leaders of a country are well tolerated by the public to behave as a moron, as long as they hail the “principle value”. Ignorance becomes the virtue of politicians. Take that Merkel said the recent food price surge was due to Chinese drinking too much milk for another example.

Besides, the French logic seemed twisted as well. Since they all hate Chinese so much, I thought it would only make them happier that fewer Chinese were showing up at their places of pride. Why not just invite more Tibetans-in-exile instead? After all, they just offered Dalai the honorary citizenship of Paris. There are roughly 80,000 more “Tibetans” in India. Invite them all, and that should be about enough to fill in the gap created by the missing Chinese tourists. “Tibetans” are much “better” people, aren’t they? They are very “spiritual”. Welcome them all to Paris, and more, let them all settle there and have their own spiritual wonderland state in France. That would be a happy end for everyone, I suppose, except if “spirit” isn’t what French desire the most and what they really care for is something else that we all know what it is.

And then, something even funnier emerged today, it is said that: “Chinese foreign minister will look into French request to end a boycott“, as if I am seeing some French diplomatic power here. Let’s take a more careful look, shall we?

“The (Chinese) minister showed me his willingness to accept our request,” said Alain Joyandet, junior minister in the French foreign ministry. Interesting, and exactly how the Chinese minister Yang Jiechi showed his willingness? Joyandet said that during the meeting with Yang he asked the Chinese minister to “lift the dispositions of the mayor of Beijing which are a violation of the intergovernmental agreement between China and the EU”, and the response was: “He (Yang) said that our ambassador (to Beijing Herve Ladsous) had met the head of the office for tourism in Beijing and they had a frank, very important discussion and that he would continue on the same path.”

So that was interpreted by he French as the Chinese “showing willingness to reconsider”. You know, in the past, I was often sickened by the communist face-saving propaganda, reinterpreting any western criticism into something “positive”. That was really stupid. But now I know it’s hardly communists’ invention and something smells quite similar here. Obviously, someone is so desperately looking for a step down.

I have yet to find out what’s been said in the “frank and very important discussion” between the Chinese official and the French ambassador. But we do know that “an official from the Beijing tourism agency told AFP that no such order (boycotting) had been given and that it had ‘simply reminded Chinese tourists to be careful about their security.'”

After seeing the woman in the wheel chair being attacked publicly in Paris, city council members surrounded by fanatic mobs crying out “shame on China”, and the impotent French police being hardly capable of controlling anything, I find such a warning very well justified. Who would want to travel to a place where the concept of civil order or even civilization is so vague? What kind of an irresponsible government is that if such a must-have warning is not given to its people?

In any case, the truth is what the French foreign ministry fears the most, which they are deadly determined to ignore. The call for boycotting the French tour had been spreading over the internet for a long time and was well supported by the large majority of Chinese netizens. If there was indeed an order made by the government, the government was simply answering the call from the people. Those who so loved to improve the human rights in China should have joyed in such a movement because what we have seen here is precisely a great “victory for democracy”!