Q: Why didn't you realize the nuclear misinterpretation of your blog Summer Hibernation right after Bush administration's release of the media nuclear bomb, especially since you regarded the release as prompted by your blog?
A: That's a valid question and I wish somebody had raised that question earlier. Although I have not answered the question specifically, I nevertheless furnished quite an extensive collection of relevant information in my previous blogs. So please bear with me if there is too much repetition in this summary.
As I wrote in my March 14 blog, when I first read the news report on General Zhu's nuclear comments in mid-July, my thought was: "Oh, this is one of those weird news and this guy must be crazy." I thought about voicing my opinion but I could not find an appropriate platform.
General Zhu's comments "made sense" to me after I saw the Globe cartoon on August 22, 2005. My understanding then was that General Zhu was allowed by the Chinese government to make those "crazy" comments so that I could criticize him to gain goodwill from the Americans. (Of course, I now know, or knew back in late April or early May, that his comments were not so crazy and there was in fact a purpose in his comments, e.g., to deter a potential U.S. armed interference in Taiwan so that China could strive for an eventual peaceful unification of the whole country.) Other realizations included:
(1)“李扬”的文章(至少是那些在我回温哥华之后能看到的)可能是中国政府写给我看的；(2)朱成虎核战言论的出台至少在时机上是为我提供批判材料，使我有机会博得美国人的好感；(3)布什政府早就知道前面两点(美加两地很多媒体人士至少到几个月以后的加拿大大选时也都知道了)，这幅漫画是对我的沉默的一个攻击；(4)如果布什政府在“挺”黎彦修的话，中国政府可能希望我能回国效力。
But I did not feel good with those realizations:
Indeed, with respect to my task of criticizing Zhu for his nuclear comments to gain goodwill from the Americans, my feeling was like having a fly in my stomach. And I lamented about the apparent complication of my situation:But I did not feel good. My mood was reflected in the first entry on my new blog Chinese, eh? �C As a Canadian immigrant, I felt I was in a dilemma and that there was not much I could or would do. Indeed, I thought what Chinese and US governments did to each other was quite "pathetic". And I certainly did not want to be any part of it.
As I said many times before, I had always thought myself as a Canadian immigrant trying to right a wrong. Fighting justice for Cecilia Zhang, and to a lesser extent, trying to get my life back, was my primary objective.�从个人的角度来说，我觉得我似乎陷于了一个更深的困境。本来在我为张东岳讨还公道的过程中，我的中国背景就已经成了马田政府和某些媒体人士的攻击目标(比如说，硬将我跟美加合作的导弹防御计划扯上关系)；现在好了，中国政府很可能确实在“挺”我了。试想一下，我是中国人，当然是希望中国好的；我在加拿大住了十多年，也早就喜欢上了这个国家；而我的最大愿望是能有一天去美国为WarrenBuffett工作，我不希望跟美国的关系搞僵。作为一个移民，我是衷心希望中美加三国都保持良好的关系，这样我的日子也好过一些。
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To accomplish my objective, I needed to get on the news. At that time, I had pretty much given up my hope of being reported by Canadian media after more than a year of fruitless protesting and fasting, mostly in Ottawa. My opportunity, as I saw it, lay in the grassroots organizations and in the U.S. media. That's why, after some much-needed rest, I started writing letters and emails in mid-August 2005, including letters to the relevant parties in the Min Chen trial.
For the U.S. media, my rationale in persuading them to report on my story was my suspicion that the Bush administration was part of the conspiracy to cover up the truth about Cecilia Zhang murder. Frankly, I did not feel I had a strong enough set of circumstantial evidence about Bush administration's involvement in the cover-up until I sensed that Bush administration tried to parachute Matthew Li into Beijing in late July.
The first time I contacted U.S. media about my story was on August 20 and it was done through email. Because of the connection to David Letterman's show - a U.S. show - in the Globe cartoon two days later, I regarded the cartoon as a push-back and bullying effort by the Bush administration to stop me from seeking justice for Cecilia and, as I said in my second report, to demonize me. (Canadian elites joined in the orchestrated effort. For example, Margaret Wente essentially said in her August 23 column that "you American journalists would be very dumb if you report his story".) To be fair, I thought that this bullying effort through the publication of the cartoon had a little rationale in it because of my silence on General Zhu's nuclear comments. Of course, I did not realize Zhu's comments had a connection to my situation until I saw the cartoon.
As I said before, I started a separate blog to deal with the issue of General Zhu's comments as soon as I got the messages in the cartoon because I wanted to separate it from my main and single issue of seeking justice for Cecilia Zhang. However, because of my self-consciousness, I did not criticize Zhu right away.
It was almost the end of August and I felt I needed to "activate" my main blog. That's why I wrote the blog Summer Hibernation. (For the complete come-about of the blog, please refer to my March 29 blog to avoid repetition. -- I just wanted to add that I had made fun of myself about my sleep problem before. Please check on that yourself, please.)
I was exhausted both physically and mentally after coming back from Ottawa in mid-June 2005. (Did I mention before that I believed that I was harassed by Ottawa Public Health?) So I took a lot of rest for the following two months.
Some pundits were extremely critical of my failure to bring down the Martin government. Naturally, I did a lot of thinking. My conclusion was that in order to defeat the Liberals, the Left and the Right needed to be united. (Another no-brainer.) �C I had indeed written to both parties in the fall to offer similar advice.
My habit was to try to maintain some continuity in my blog if there was a big time gap. For example, see this one, and this one. And humor was my way to inform the world that although I was down, I was not out.
When I tried to "activate" my blog last summer, the first word came into my mind was "hibernate", not only because I had opportunity to use a newer version of MS Windows program after I came back (Did I mention that I only had an old laptop with one gigebyte hard drive when I was in Ottawa?), but also because I had some opportunity to catch up with some sleep. Then I realized it was summer time. Therefore, a blog entry came about that served as a sorta political principle for the next few months.
Because of the timing of the media nuclear bomb, it caught me eye right away. Similar to the Globe cartoon, which I thought was prompted by my email to U.S. media organizations, the media nuke appeared to be another bullying and demonizing effort by the Bush administration based on the little rationale of my silence on Zhu's comments. Of course, I assumed - correctly, I might add - that the Bush administration knew the real meaning of my blog was political, i.e., to unite the left and the right to defeat the Martin Liberals. Since that was what I meant, I naturally thought along that line. And the media nuke made enormous sense. The message was that the U.S. took its interest in Canadian politics seriously as I was perceived to be doing Chinese government's bidding. (That was not my motive, as I said before. My motive was to help defeat the Martin Liberals in order to seek justice for Cecilia Zhang.) -- I still remember a news report around that time describing the scene where the then new U.S. ambassador David Wilkins met a certain newspaper board. The ambassador had his shoes off - presumably under the table - but his whole upper body "was all business". Although nobody mentioned my name during his tour of media organizations, I believed that everybody knew the ambassador was urging the media take a hard line against me. -- In other words, the media nuke was - to use a catch phrase of the time - part of a "phony war" and a warning to me that there might be serious consequence if I continued my participation in Canadian politics. As I wrote in Part 2 of my Canadian Election 2006 series (posted April 15):
That's why I did not examine my own blog to find it as the possible source of the false interpretation. (I still think that the release of the media nuke was an over-reaction by the Bush administration.)Of course, I was aware that both United States and Chinese governments had fought at the background of my story in the summer, but I was not too concerned about it. Even for their throwing nuclear bombs at each other over my head �C figuratively speaking - I had always thought, despite my initial surprise, that it was just a "phony war", to use a catch phrase of the time.
Finally, I would like to stress a couple of points about my erroneous thinking at the time:
- I thought General Zhu was crazy. Because of my silence on his comments, I thought the Bush administration used this rare opportunity to demonize me repeatedly as nuke-crazy because most of the other names I had been called did not make much sense.
- I had no concepts of various forms of nuclear balance or mutually assured destruction (MAD). I though General Zhu represented the belligerent element of Chinese military. I thought Chinese government wanted to embed in my explosive story the theatre in which I would play the good guy - as suggested by Li Yang in his July 20 article - and Zhu played the bad guy who threatened U.S. with nuclear bombs. That's why I said "I certainly did not want to be any part of it". -- I am fundamentally opposed to using violence to resolve conflict. That's why one of the points I made on February 27 was that: "My approach to dealing with conflict was laid out in this blog entry a long time ago and consistent with Cecilia Zhang's wishes."
- I thought that Chinese government's plan was that if I criticized Zhu and Zhu was subsequently reined in, it would demonstrate that I would be a future Chinese leader whom the U.S. could count on to develop friendly relationships with so that Bush administration would not have to feel too sorry about Chinese government's rejection of their choice of Matthew Li.
Update 20061230:
My current understanding about Zhu's comments vis-a-vis my previous thinking:
- My initial impression that General Zhu represented the belligerent elements of Chinese military came from reading the prevailing commentaries at the time. I dismissed the less popular commentaries, such as the one I mentioned in my blog Rein Zhu In, which justified Zhu’s comments. Looking back, I can see that the first type of commentaries was mostly driven by ideology, while the second based on rational - if a bit technical - analysis. Both types of commentaries - mostly written in Chinese, I might add - originated from outside of China as General Zhu’s remarks were not reported by the official Chinese media. My wrong impression about Zhu therefore illustrates that ideology-driven reporting in western media - a problem I mentioned before - including those written in Chinese, can and does have an influence on unsuspecting or skimpy readers.
- While Chinese government did suggest, through Li Yang’s article, that I seize the opportunity to criticize General Zhu to gain goodwill from the Americans, I now believe that the real purpose of General Zhu’s comments was to deter a potential U.S. armed interference in Taiwan so that China could strive for an eventual peaceful unification of the whole country. General Zhu was the Dean of the Institute of Defense at China's National Defense University and a widely-recognized, reputable and credible military expert, as Dr. Bruce Blair, Director of World Security Institute in Washington, D.C., said about him:“朱将军对军事战略理论见解深刻，也是对新军事革命（RMA)非常博学的专家". Zhu was therefore the right person to deliver the deterrence message in the form of a “personal opinion”. -- If the Chinese leadership themselves had spoken out the truth about Sino-U.S. nuclear relationships, it would not have been conducive to maintaining the overall good Sino-U.S. relationships, which they attach great importance to, as can be seen from reading Li Yang’s articles.
- Friends and foes alike have criticized me for being immature, too nice, lack of political judgment etc. Those are all fair criticisms confirming my own verdict about myself. My previous amateurish thinking about General Zhu’s comments was just an example of my political inexperience. That’s why I say I am not ready to be a politician.
