San Francisco Protest

On April 9th, 7,000 Anti-China protestors protested as the Olympic torch was being passed by. I was shocked to see the protest on the news. As a matter of fact, I was a little bit angry about this protest.

As a Chinese immigrant, I love Chinese people and I love Americans. I am proud of being Chinese. I deeply adore my culture and my people. The Chinese government has been struggling with issues in Tibet since the 1940s. Tibet, a part of China that is mainly isolated from the rest of the mainland, is fighting for its independency. It all comes down to the freedom of religion. The fact is, most Chinese people don’t have a religion. The Chinese government has allowed Tibet the freedom to worship its religion and most Chinese people think it is the right thing to do. Give Tibet its freedom of religion. We did. Apparently, it is not enough. Monks from Tibet are using the media attention to get the world to intervene in their issues. It created so much terrible publicity for China’s Olympic event. Freedom of religion doesn’t equal to claiming its independency.

Another aspect of the San Francisco protest that bothers me is that the people who are Anti-China, are mostly Chinese. A lot of those Chinese people were born and raised here in the United States. They have never been to China before. They learned about the Chinese government from their parents or grandparents, who left China decades ago. Things have changed so much. China is not like it was 50 years ago. I would tell those Anti-China Chinese people to go visit China and see it for their own eyes.

Now, the President has decided not to go to the Beijing Olympic Ceremony’s opening. What a bad move. The entire world is watching. China and America need to stay friends.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080410/ts_alt_afp/chinaunresttibetrightsoly2008bono_080410000129

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2003/03/20/protesters.DTL