In print | Published April 2, 2009

To the People’s Republic of China:

Recently, the P.R.C. has been embroiled in more dictatorial, freedom-squelching controversies, at least according to the Western media. Two of these controversies have occurred in the last month, both having to do with the ever-troublesome region of Tibet.

First, YouTube.com access was blocked within China for the umpteenth time after some jokers in the Tibetan government in exile decided to compile fabricated video of Chinese police brutalizing Tibetan rioters last year. While this blocking of YouTube was hilarious to me, mostly because of the frustration that my friends still living in Beijing must be feeling, the second controversy the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) got involved in has me questioning whether the government had to resort to the measures it did.

The second controversy occurred last week, when the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile insinuated that the CCP had hacked into its server and accessed classified documents. In fact, an electronic network that researchers dubbed “GhostNet” had targeted over 103 countries. The internet researchers pointed out that there was “no conclusive evidence” that the hacking was in fact the work of the Chinese government, but there was enough hinting from Tibet and the Western media that the CCP felt compelled to deny involvement in the spying.

I am sure, however, that there are plenty of people who are prepared to believe that the Chinese government was in fact hacking the Dalai Lama’s computer (it sounds like a bad Keanu Reeves movie to me too), and I don’t blame them. When has the P.R.C. shown any qualms about violating privacies?

If Fox News decided to say tomorrow that China had quarantined every ex-pat in Beijing for background checks, I am willing to bet that most of the Western world would believe the allegation’s credibility without pausing to wonder about the ridiculousness of such a measure. And that, I think, is the whole problem: the measures taken by the Chinese government, now and in the past, have been such prime targets for accusations of totalitarianism and undemocratic processes that almost anything can be expected from them. So I looked at those two controversies again and I thought, there are many more — and often better — options available to China than the ones that tamper with citizen rights.

For example, when those clowns in the exiled Tibetan government decided to libel the world’s newest superpower, it probably wasn’t necessary to deny YouTube access from the world’s largest amount of Internet users. Instead, how about issuing a disapproving statement directed at the felonious Tibetan government? (While we’re at it, how about issuing a statement expressing disappointment with the Western media, which somehow overlooked the fact that one government had made up complete lies about another one, and instead chose to wet its pants over the YouTube “scandal?) There’s no need to reinforce the world’s negative perception of China.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have a problem with the blocking of YouTube itself, at least not at this juncture. After all, the P.R.C. is still developing both economically and politically. As our very own Yu Hua, author of the internationally acclaimed novel “To Live,” noted last week at Swarthmore College, China is a country that has in three decades developed to a point that took Western civilization 300 years to get to.

But at the same time, it’s undeniable that China manages to find some way to shoot itself in the foot even in a good situation. A few months ago, The Economist ran a revealing piece about China’s relaxing of Internet censorship for foreign journalists during the Olympics, which went south once the journalists logged onto other computers and found many sites blocked that were not barred from their own computers. It’s these types of public relations blunders that allow China to be so easily condemned. The maddening thing is that they are so easily avoidable.

It hasn’t been the greatest few months for the P.R.C. Between the poisoned milk and the toy scandal, not to mention the latest Tibet-related fiascos, it is getting hard to justify China’s actions even to myself. And after watching Michigan State and Missouri completely eviscerate my March Madness bracket, I could definitely use some good news. So do me proud, China. One well-thought-out step at a time.

James is a first-year. You can reach him at jmao4@swarthmore.edu.