Talking heads spar over Carrefour boycott

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Tan Fei argues with Wang Xiaodong while Zhang Huajie and Lao Ma look on

There’s nothing wrong with opposing the boycott against Carrefour, but you need to be more sophisticated in your techniques.

So said Wang Xiaodong, a well-known nationalist academic and essayist who defended the Carrefour boycotts during a televised discussion last week that erupted into a heated argument.

Wang’s admonition is eye-catching because we’ve mostly seen the warnings going in the other direction over the past few weeks, from blogger-celebrities like Han Han warning readers against extreme displays of patriotism, to public figures interviewed by the liberal press speaking in measured tones about the need for cool heads.

Black and White Cat translated a Southern Weekly interview with Wu Jianmin, former ambassador to France, who disapproved of the boycott:

Some self-styled “patriotic” actions have damaged the interests of these staff, damaged the interests of China and damaged China’s image. If there are many excessive actions people don’t know what you might do next. They can’t be sure about you and their misgivings and anxiety about you will increase. Patriotism is a good thing, but it must be guided by reason. Patriotism must be in line with core national interests.

Southern Weekly also interviewed TV host Bai Yansong, who was an early opponent of the proposed boycott. From ESWN’s translation:

One must be restrained by rationality when one expresses one’s voices. One must observe the legal and moral bottom lines. When passions coalesce, it is easy to step past the line with bad consequences. Since the law does not hold bar these expressions, people seldom reflect and discipline themselves and they will repeat the same thing the next time. The attraction of democracy is rationality. A democracy not supported by rationality is destructive as opposed to constructive.

The Inner Mongolia TV panel show On the Scene (现场), hosted by Zhao Chuan, formerly of Beijing TV’s Who’s Talking? (谁在说), pitted Wang Xiaodong, whom Sina identifies as an “exponent of nationalism,” against several individuals opposed to the boycott. Wang felt that the panel seemed specially chosen to marginalize patriotic support for the boycott, and when he returned from the taping, he wrote up a blog post elaborating on arguments he attempted to make during the session:

Patriots are the majority, so is patriotism a disgrace for intellectuals?

by Wang Xiaodong

Today (23 April, 2008) at 6 pm, I went to a TV station (so as not to cause trouble for the station employee who invited me, I have to hide its name) to do a program about the Carrefour boycott. This program was hosted by a famous TV host (so as not to cause trouble for the station employee who invited me, I have to hide the host’s name).

The station invited the person who opposed the Carrefour boycott in Kunming and was struck by a water bottle, as well as a young person who had held a sign at the Zhongguancun Carrefour in Beijing. Later, the person who had started putting hearts on MSN came out, too. When they started their discussion, I was in the control room watching on the screen. Apart from me, there were also three so-called “intellectuals” in the control room. They seemed to know each other, and they discussed the Carrefour boycott in extremely dismissive tones. One of them, a college professor, had been assigned to the side supporting the Carrefour boycott, but he wasn’t too thrilled. I didn’t know them, but I sat watching the television as I listened to them berate the boycotters.

After about 50 minutes, the first segment of the program had finished recording. The host called us up, so we went up. I found that next to me was a very pretty young woman whom I later learned was a singer, so for a time I felt slightly less alone (the professor was merely assigned with us, but he was obviously on their side: bluntly speaking, he was nothing more than an agent provocateur. Of course, so long as it was a fair debate, then it didn’t matter if they were three or thirty together—they weren’t more than I could handle. But you never want to be lonely, so having this pretty young woman next to me made me feel a little better). The host was quite polite toward me and told me to speak after the pretty young woman had finished talking. During the first segment, I had already thought out what I was going to say. I had noticed that the youngster who had held up the sign boycotting the Zhongguancun Carrefour was kind of naive and was unable to combat some of the more obvious distorted arguments, so I had felt anxious for him. Now that I had the chance to speak, I first wanted to help him clear up some of the specious arguments against the boycott. I started by saying, there’s nothing wrong with opposing the boycott against Carrefour, but you need to be more sophisticated in your techniques. Then I went on to present rebuttals to the more common specious arguments against the boycott.

Here, let me inform you that you’ll never see my rebuttals on the TV screen. But I can write them out here. None is my own invention: I saw some online, while others I learned from listening to experts at conferences, like the lectures of professor Cheng Xiaoxia of the China University of Political Science and Law.

(1) Refuting “Carrefour is innocent and French goods are innocent, so they shouldn’t be boycotted.” I said that regardless of whether Carrefour had done anything wrong, regardless of whether French goods had done anything wrong, boycotting Carrefour and French goods is permisible. The objective of the boycott is to (a) express an opinion that can easily reach people’s ears, and (b) put pressure on France. In answer to the challenge, “if you’ve got the guts, why not go demonstrate in front of the French embassy?” I said, for the purposes of the two objectives mentioned above, I am completely entitled to choose a convenient boycott target. When group A in some country offends us, we may not have the wherewithal to counter A, but we are entirely able to choose to retaliate against group B in order to exert pressure against that country. This is the principle of “cross-retaliation” in international law. The WTO clearly recognizes the use of this principle in international trade, so there’s nothing wrong with using it in other international conflicts. If you say that cross-retaliation isn’t easy to understand, then I’ll use a more obvious example. I asked the host, does the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay have anything to do with China’s policies in Tibet? The host said, no it doesn’t. Then I asked, is Jin Jing able to decide China’s policy in Tibet? The host said, no she can’t. Then, I said, why did they try to disrupt the torch relay and attack Jin Jing in order to protest China’s policies in Tibet? It’s obvious that this is common international practice. You’re always for pushing for “adherence to international standards,” so why can’t you accept this standard? In answer to my statement, the guy who got hit with the water bottle in Kunming seized the opportunity and said, if it’s like you say, then everyone can boycott Carrefour, except for you, Mr. Wang, because you’re just like those people who wrecked the torch relay in France. Of course, this is more specious reasoning that people who’ve been brainwashed by so-called gentleness and cultivation over the past few years can’t easily see through. I refuted this in (2).

(2) Refuting “because the French were wrong in boycotting the torch relay, we shouldn’t be like them, so we shouldn’t boycott anything French.” I said, your argument’s nonsense. For example, when someone hits you out of the blue, of course he’s wrong, then if I say you can in no way hit him, then aren’t you’re also in the wrong if you hit him? But in that case, I’ve stripped away your right to self-defense; you can’t say anything even if you’re beaten to death, because a great deal of self-defense involves hitting people! The guy from Kunming said, but Carrefour wasn’t the one who attacked Jin Jing. I said, that’s more specious reasoning. The guy who’s boycotting Carrefour just put it like this: the issue now is not between someone in China and someone in France—fundamentally, it’s an issue between the countries of China and France.

(3) Refuting “90% of Carrefour’s products are from China and 90% of Carrefour employees are Chinese, so by boycotting Carrefour you’re hurting Chinese suppliers and employees.” I said, first, the goal of the majority of Carrefour boycotters is just to express their opinions, or to put pressure on the French government. They don’t want to ruin Carrefour, so “hurting Chinese suppliers and employees” is an untenable argument. In addition, as lots of online posts have pointed out, even if Carrefour is ruined, China has other major chain supermarkets, so Chinese suppliers can go there to sell their goods, and Chinese employees can go there to find work.

If I could continue speaking along these lines, and my opponents could continue to rebut me in the same way, everything would be good—everyone could expect to see a great debate. However, I didn’t get a chance to speak two words when the guy opposite me, looking really fierce with his shaven head (I recall that he was called “Huajie” [Zhang Huajie], by the host and others; he seemed to be a filmmaker and was quite well-acquainted with the TV station people), started to berate me: You’re just sucking up to the government! You’re bold enough to boycott Carrefour, but do you dare boycott anything else? The best line from the fierce guy with the bald head was this: Now that the majority of people are showing patriotism, patriotism is powerful. As an intellectual, standing on the side of power, your patriotism is your shame! He continued to repeat that sentence and I started and stopped a number of times. I looked at the host—this extremely well-known TV host had no reaction whatsoever. I finally understood: the arguments I wanted to present were understandable to legal experts and to politically-concerned netizens, but much of the TV audience may not have understood. And they were afraid, they were very afraid that the audience in front of their TV screens would understand my arguments. So they stirred things up so that they basically didn’t broadcast any scenes of me presenting my arguments. Even so, I didn’t hold back—what I could do today was to let the twenty-some members of the studio audience know that those so-called “liberal” rascals weren’t at all reasonable. I couldn’t be cultivated, because if I were, then the studio audience would have only heard that boycotting Carrefour was sucking up to the government, that intellectuals who supported the boycott were not only sucking up to the government but pandering as well, that patriotism was intellectuals’ shame. So I talked back loudly.

I’ve been a guest on countless TV stations in China and in other countries in the world—many countries in Europe, the Middle East, the US, and Australia. I’ve done many segments of TV discussion programs and have been gotten good reviews countless times. The other night I did an interview at my home with a Spanish TV station that was on the same topic as today’s program. When I work with TV stations, a basic principle I use is that while I am expressing my independent opinions, I try as hard as possible to cooperate with the TV station employees and not do anything to mess them up. Because I know that doing a TV program is like when I write an essay: it draws together the efforts of lots of people, so I can’t destroy their labors simply for a brief thrill. However, this time, when I saw that the host and the other program people weren’t at all concerned when the bald guy with the fierce expression started wrecking the program, I felt that there was no reason for me to worry about protecting it. Indeed, I was angry; I saw that those people who claimed to be “liberal” were actually a group of dark-hearted people, scum who were up to tricks and schemes. They’re afraid of the truth so they won’t let you speak the truth, they won’t permit the public, whom they’ve hoodwinked, to learn that there is another truth in the world. Liberalism is the last refuge of hucksters and scoundrels—that’s how the line should really go.

(4) Refuting “Now that the majority of people are showing patriotism, patriotism is powerful. As an intellectual, standing on the side of power, your patriotism is your shame!” In the studio, I couldn’t rebut this in calm tones. I could only shout. Here, I can calmly write out what I shouted at the time: Aren’t you all about democracy? Isn’t democracy decided by the majority? By that reasoning, aren’t democratic policies simply mistresses to money, and isn’t that a disgrace? Who’d have thought you could come up with this kind of shameful logic! This is the stupid, shameful, and gangster logic of the so-called “liberals.”

(5) Refuting “It’s no use to boycott Carrefour. The French president may apologize, but what’s important is that 20 billion euros.” This wasn’t spoken by that bald liberal scoundrel; it was said by someone on his side who was relatively courteous. He said to me, “Boycotting Carrefour gave the expected pressure to the French government. Didn’t the French president write a letter of apology to Jin Jing, which was personally delivered by the president of the senate?” In answer to this question, I said, there was that 20-billion euro order, but that wasn’t able to prevent them, including their government, from supporting Tibetan independence and disrupting the torch relay, was it? And the French president’s letter of apology came late, too, after the mass boycotts against Carrefour all over China. The New York Times commented: the French president “appeared to be kowtowing more to French commercial interests than to Beijing.” Without the boycott by the Chinese public, would those businessmen have put pressure on their own government?

I’ve finished discussing the issues I wanted to clear up. Finally, let me speak of some other impressions about the process. I think that the young man who held up the sign boycotting the Zhongguancun Carrefour was pretty indecisive. He didn’t utter a word, perhaps because of stage-fright, or perhaps he was grumbling to himself that I was a “Boxer” who had disgraced him (that bald liberal scoundrel was shouting: You’re a disgrace to nationalism! I answered: You’re a disgrace to the human race! Those scoundrel liberals are so low that calling them amoebas would be praising them—and insulting amoebas). I wanted to tell that young man, if you think that, you’re wrong, you’ve fallen in their trap. They’re telling you that “Boxers” and “angry youth” are boycotting Carrefour, so you’re really afraid that other people will see you as one of them. You really want to appear genteel, so you’ve bound up your hands and feet. But they can act as hooliganish as they please—that’s what they want. Let me tell you: you don’t need to feel so inferior: the “Boxers” and “angry youth” of today’s China for the most part come out of big-name universities in China and the west. The scoundrel liberals don’t have any reason to feel superior in learning, intelligence, ethics, or even cultural sophistication. They can still hold that stance because they still control the dialogue. But this control was given to them by the same government that they criticize and pretend not to know. We have no reason to feel inferior in learning, intelligence, ethics, or even cultural sophistication.

I haven’t forgotten that pretty young singer, although I don’t remember her name. Of course, she was no match for an old warrior like me in the argument department, but her pretty face, should the program be broadcast, would certainly make her words more convincing. But the important thing wasn’t her pretty face, but rather, in an environment that cut down Chinese who boycotted Carrefour (actually, I was quite aware in the control room, during the first segment when we so-called “intellectuals” and that singer had not yet gone on, that the atmosphere of this program had already been set), she bravely explained her opinion in support of the Carrefour boycott. Don’t be misled that under today’s “patriotic power” conditions that everything is easy. This is not an easy thing to do, because even today, it’s hard to say whether there is “patriotic power,” and in that small group in that atmosphere, patriotism was disadvantaged, and was even condemned as a “shame” by that bald liberal scoundrel. Look at the young man who had bravely held up a sign outside of the Zhongguancun Carrefour—during the second segment he dare stand up and say anything. This shows us even more the singer’s courage. In the past, I’ve been really put off by the idea of “women rising and men declining” (阴盛阳衰), but recently, in the series of discussions I’ve had with traitors (that word does not in any way mistreat those liberal scoundrels), I’ve repeatedly seen women who are resolute and courageous, while men are cautious and indecisive. Chinese young men, you can’t just let us old men charge the enemy lines with young women while you hide in back! You’ve got to stand up!

However, this old warrior isn’t dead yet. Old warriors never die; they just pass on.


Sina’s report on the program illustrated just how heated the argument became:

Tang Fei and Zhang Huajie said, “This saber-rattling attitude toward a boycott is cheap, hypocritical, and a way to suck up to the government.” “Nationalism exponent” Wang Xiaodong reacted immediately and stood up on stage, pointing at Tang and Zhang: “You’re the running dogs, yet you criticize me! You’re a disgrace to everyone on earth!”

Host Zhao Chuan was eventually able to get everyone to return to their seats, but to everyone’s surprise things started up again. This time Tan Fei jumped up too, and the two faced each other center-stage, arguing heatedly. Zhao had to use his powers as host to take over and force the end of the debate. When recording had finished, Zhang Huajie got up and extended his hand to Wang in a gesture of peace, but Wang walked off stage without looking back.

Afterward, Zhao Chuan said in an interview that the Carrefour boycott topic could easily get people riled up. Although the guests each came with their own opinions, and although there were heated debates and arguments on-stage, they were all expressing their patriotic feelings. If the broadcast on the 27th can resonate with TV viewers, then the program will have achieved its objectives.

Zhang Huajie has taken issue with Wang’s characterization of his attitude, in particular the line about “intellectuals’ shame,” which he says he never uttered. He’s offering 300,000 yuan for a recording of the entire session and has threatened to take Wang to court

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