Warning: the following text attempts to escape the dictatorship of the single subject which, since October 7, has flooded information and comments on international affairs.
It is true that the Israeli-Palestinian question has (provisionally?) regained its centrality over the past three weeks. Everyone pulls back the cover to set their analytical grid: the universal misdeeds of Zionism and colonialism, the strong return of anti-Semitism under the guise of progressivism, the new faces of radical Islam, the profits that Moscow derives from it , Beijing and Tehran.
Which does not prevent the world from continuing to turn elsewhere, with or without connection to the aforementioned major categories. An example: Mongolia, whose language and culture are being stifled under the tyrannical centralization of Beijing.
Gleaned from The Obs dated October 22: “How China tried to censor an exhibition on Genghis Khan in France”. The article recounts the adventures of an exhibition planned by the History Museum of Nantes, a city in western France, which was to be based in part on loans of artifacts from the regional government of Inner Mongolia, or Southern Mongolia, which is officially an “autonomous region” [sic] Chinese, unlike (Northern) Mongolia, an independent state.
We learn that at the end of the 2010s, an agreement was signed between the Nantes museum and the regional authorities of Hohhot (capital of the autonomous region) for the supply of material on the period of Genghis Khan, the great conqueror ( Mongolian and not Chinese) from the 13th century, remaining as the archetype of the “barbarian” destroying everything in his path… but who would also have left positive traces in terms of art, commerce and even botany (dixit an expert cited by The Obs). Brief.
Towards the end of 2020 a new version of the contract arrives in Nantes, stipulating that the title of the exhibition must not include the words “Genghis Khan”, “empire” and “mongol”… Otherwise, the promised deliveries will not arrive ! Beijing had vetoed the idea of transforming a cultural experience, an exhibition with a “big name” on the poster… into a Chinese propaganda operation!
The odyssey of Genghis Khan had to be reintegrated into the glorious history of the Middle Kingdom over 5,000 years… Genghis then becoming a secondary character, a retrospective stooge of Chinese greatness. The museum authorities courageously said no to these conditions.
Finally, the exhibition will open… three years later, this time with the assistance of the authorities of “the other” Mongolia, that of Ulaanbaatar, which for once defied its fear of Beijing to cooperate with the French without impose ideological conditions on them.
This type of incident is no longer an exception or an oddity, at a time when the Chinese authorities are crushing the autonomy of peripheral nations (Tibetans, Uighurs… but also, to a lesser extent, Mongols) and trying to intimidate their neighbors by expanding their maritime borders in defiance of international law.
See, for example, the most recent physical attacks in the South China Sea, in which Chinese coast guards literally “charged” small Philippine supply vessels whose pilots believed they were—and were in fact—in their recognized territorial waters. !
There are occupations and imperialisms which rightly mobilize opinions, whip up passions and give rise to major maneuvers. There are others which are practiced effectively, without provoking such great reactions. The Chinese authorities excel at this game.
In a speech in August 2013, as he established his power and began to assert muscular and uninhibited diplomacy, Xi Jinping declared: “We must methodically carry out the work of external propaganda […] in order to better tell China’s story and make China’s voice heard. »
This is what is done, with the increasingly long arm of China’s propaganda and diplomacy, which everywhere intends to control the interpretations of this country abroad.
François Brousseau is an international columnist at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected].