21:06 GMT +00:00
Looting China: propaganda then and now
Posted by: Charlemagne
Categories: Europe and China
要旨：英法聯軍只是為了打開中國市場，但中方軍隊卻綁架泰晤士報記者等洋人。英法軍有所行動，人質即被殺害。聯軍只是為了報復才火燒圓明園。本來還要燒紫禁城，但是算了。
而且現場參與搶奪財寶的也有中國土匪，又不是只有英法軍人？無數中方財寶在拳亂、文革中被毀，中國歷屆政府從不反省，卻利用「掠奪圓明園」的假故事強化中國愛國教條。
IT IS striking how some grudges can survive 149 years. A Chinese art expert has become a patriotic hero in his native land for sabotaging the sale in Paris of two (to my mind rather ordinary) bronze animal heads which were looted by French and British troops from the Yuanmingyuan, or imperial summer palace in Beijing, way back in 1860, and which later found their way into the art collection of Yves Saint Laurent, the clothes designer. In a report of the tale today, the Times newspaper makes the point that the summer palace was ordered burned to the ground by the British commander, Lord Elgin, not as an act of vandalism, but as an act of calculated retribution, after Chinese imperial officers kidnapped, tortured and killed 12 members of a European diplomatic delegation, among them a correspondent for the Times, Thomas Bowlby.
Now this detail is worth mentioning. Chinese schoolchildren are taught about the sack of the summer palace as a proof of western perfidy and the weakness of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, which was unable to prevent foreign barbarians from wreaking terrible humiliations on the Middle Kingdom. As a newspaper correspondent posted to Beijing from 1998 to 2002, Charlemagne remembers seeing solemn Chinese youths being taken round the ruins of the summer palace, as a key part of their patriotic education.
There is something admirable about the Times still standing up for its poor, murdered correspondent, nearly a century and a half on.
But the uncomfortable truth is also that neither the British, the French nor the Chinese should feel that good about the ruins of the summer palace. The attack on the Yuanmingyuan began before it was known for sure that the foreign hostages were killed, as part of a messy power-play in the closing stages of the second opium war, an unedifying episode that was essentially about the outside world demanding access to the closed Chinese kingdom at a moment of Chinese weakness. A couple of days after the first assault on the palace, the foreign hostages' deaths were announced, at which point the burning of the summer palace was ordered in retribution. The destruction was dressed up as an act of rough justice, but an awful lot of soldiers and officers simply helped themselves to the astonishing treasures that lay before them. A Pekinese dog was among the haul: presented later to Queen Victoria, it was re-named "Looty", in honour of the manner in which it reached British shores.
Even then, eyewitness accounts record that at least officers and eye-witnesses felt ashamed of the destruction. It is said that the western forces briefly pondered burning the Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing, but decided against, judging that the loss of that palace would be a humiliation that would bring down the imperial dynasty, in a messy fashion that would not suit western interests.
But Chinese history books, in their haste to draw neat lessons that favour the Communist Party as creators of a new, strong China, downplay persuasive evidence that local Chinese also joined in the looting, and that further destruction awaited the palace, at the hands of the fanatical Boxer sect during their 1900 uprising, and then again during the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Chairman Mao.
Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late Mr Saint Laurent, has been accused of playing politics, when he offered to give the bronze animal heads to China, just as soon as Tibetans gained greater freedom and autonomy. Yet these sculptures were always more political than artistic. They were created, after all, by Jesuit missionaries sent to China to impress the emperor with the west's sophistication, in the hope that this would win acceptance for Christianity. They were then looted in very murky circumstances, and have now been elevated to patriotic talking points by a modern-day state propaganda machine. Other heads from an original collection of 12 have over the years been bought by Chinese businesses linked to the People's Liberation Army, and a casino owner from Macau, for presentation to the Chinese people as patriotic gifts.
I recommend as background reading a blog posting by a former colleague and friend, Richard Spencer, who is the Daily Telegraph's Beijing correspondent.
(經濟學人寫出這種東西，真是可悲。同理，巴格達亞述博物館被劫，因為也有當地土匪參加，所以美英又沒有責任了。何況海珊與當地激進派殺害許多西方媒體人質，所以炸毀文物與清真寺設施也不必追究了。)
西方soft power衰落，不是沒有道理的。
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