China Insults America Again--the MLK Monument

Communist China has taken a dump on American ideals and values again.

This time it is on the National Mall in a sculpture that presumes to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Judging from photographs online, the statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixing, looks like typical Communist propaganda: determined stance, crossed arms, severe and glowering visage, everted lips evocative not of Sub-Saharan heritage, but of surliness. Indeed, MLK has been made to look like Mao Zedong or Lei Feng with short, tightly curled hair. MLK appears not as someone with a dream about people being judged by the content of their characters rather than the color of their skin, but ready to deliver a kick to the gonads.

Most other official portraits of MLK capture an intense, yet thoughtful and hopeful person. This was a man who cast a giant shadow not by calling for the destruction of cities or the political murder of others, but by using the very Evangelical idiom honored by his enemies to shame them into repentence. Lei Yixing's sculpture captures none of this, but oozes the unrepentant Stalinism of the Beijing government from every surface, curve, and angle.

Surely the United States of America has enough gifted sculptors out there who might have done a better sculpture.

Indeed, that the monument is made of Chinese granite by a Chinese sculptor who, to my knowledge, is not a naturalized citizen or even a lawful permanent resident, is a further travesty. It insults worldwide struggles for human rights and dignity, and supports a nation whose record on minorities stinks. Had MLK confronted the kind of Han Chinese chauvinism which, despite five Autonomous regions and numerous autonomous prefectures and counties scattered around China's periphery, he would have been treated no better than the Tibetans or Uighur. Had he spoken his Christian conscience to the China of the Mao he has been made to resemble, he would have been executed as surely as Wang Zhiming, the ethnic Miao pastor from Yunnan executed in 1973 for refusal to participate in denunciatory meetings organized by the Red Guard. Worst of all, the government would have told the people for whom a Chinese MLK might have spoken that they ought to be grateful that their Han "elder brothers" had liberated them from their backwards superstitions in the name of Karl Marx's Historical Necessity, and were sending their best young people to populate their farmlands and pastures and take the best jobs in their localities.

Washington D.C. has numerous monuments to famous Americans and foreigners, some warriors, some peacemakers, some statesmen, some poets, some spiritual, some materialist. Numerous sculptors American and foreign have captured their subjects sensitively and skillfully, beautifying the nation's capital. French's Lincoln that overlooked the spot from which King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech exudes meditation, sorrow, compassion, and depth. But this work is not alone in capturing the better side of the American spirit. Lei's Martin Luther King is simple as a carelessly placed hammer dropping on the floor.

US Government, shame on you for commissioning a sculptor steeped in an alien political culture to commemorate a great American. Lei Yixing, go home and take your disgusting Stalinist idol with you. Martin Luther King Jr. deserves a better statue.

China Sets a Trap [?]

The British periodical _Guardian_ reports that Wikileaks reveals that China is privately ready to abandon North Korea, and may be open to Korean re-unification under Seoul. This sounds very suspicious. It is more likely that Chinese officials are planting misinformation with their American counterparts, possibly setting a military trap.

It is more than conceivable that pretending a willingness to abandon the Kim dynasty of Pyongyang is a way to make America over-confident should Pyongyang re-open the Korean War. A renewed Korean War in which America remains unprepared for massive Chinese Communist support for the North Korean state provides Beijing with a golden opportunity to trap US forces, move on Taiwan, isolate Japan, and possibly remove the American presence from the Western Pacific for good. It would allow Beijing, in a single dramatic conflict, to fulfill a large part of the what the regime sees as its historic mission, namely, to end the legacy of Western imperialism in the Far East. Beijing's official organs never broach the possibility that Taiwan's continuing wariness about reunification, despite its clear lack of international support and a government headed by the pan-Blues, may just have to do with differing indigenous political evolutions on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait; but insist that the existence of a "China Irredentia" can only be because of the nefarious plots of first Tokyo, then Washington. Similarly, the performance of the Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950-53 remains a large part of China's self-image as a rising power. Should a Beijing-Pyongyang alliance win a second Korean War, with Communist absorption of Taiwan as a further benefit to Beijing, China would be in an excellent position to completely eclipse Japan as a power in the Far East.

Naked Chinese pressure on a number of neighboring governments to boycott the Nobel ceremony that honored Liu Xiaobo is a reminder that Beijing remains the last, best hope of 20th century totalitarianism. It is certain that China feels that its rising power permits it to censor critical voices not only at home, but abroad as well. It is therefore inconceivable that a Korea reunified under a multiparty government allied to the United States (and, with reunification, possibly confident enough to undertake a final reconciliation with Japan) could be truly welcome to Beijing's rulers. The Korean minority in China's northeast is already a vector for underground Christian propaganda; and the possibility of their becoming a vector for political dissidence would only be strengthened by Korean reunification on Seoul's terms.

As students of Sunzi, China's leaders know that one of America's great weaknesses is a deep desire to believe that the Chinese Communist regime is fundamentally benign, internationally responsible, and not really represented by the continuing anti-American message found in China's government-controlled media. This is something they know they can use for political and military leverage, just as they have used it to gain international economic respectability in the face of such practices as using prison and child labor.

Hence, the US Government should take such feelers from Beijing with a large grain of salt.