It was "China Week" a while ago on BBC World and I, as a fully paid-up Sino-phile, was looking forward to seven days of special programming on the Middle Kingdom. But I'm afraid to say that the Beeb's efforts were largely disappointing. There were some interesting reports, especially about the Muslim population of the far west, but too much of the coverage was of the highly cliched variety "Look! Some people in China are rich these days!" etc.
The one programme that really rankled was the Question Time special from Shanghai, one of my favourite places on Earth. I had been intrigued to see how this British panel discussion show could work in a non-democratic country. What would happen if an audience member put their hand up and said that they supported Tibetan independence? Would they be dragged from the studio by secret police for a little "political re-education"?
In the end, there was no such controversy and the programme passed largely without rancour, as the westerners on the panel soft-soaped their criticism of the party flunkies sitting next to them. In fact, the foreign guests were keen to share the same language as the apparatchiks when it came to discussing Taiwan. The pan-green was routinely described by Chinese and foreigner alike as "a tiny minority", when in fact public opinion in Taiwan is split right down the middle. What annoyed me even more than this inaccuracy, was the fact that the panel also described the pro-independence "minority" of being "extremists".
To hear this, I felt as though I was living in some sort of Alice In Wonderland world, where black is white and the sun rises in the west. How exactly can the pan-green be described as "extremists"? Because they want their country to be free? Because they believe in democracy? Because they desire to live in peace? Is this "extremism" these days?
And what of the regime in Beijing, who are presumably the "moderates" in this equation? What do they do? They point missiles, they issue threats, they bully; and now, they pass laws saying they will attack Taiwan if the island's democratically elected leader takes steps towards de jure independence. Yes, these are the "reasonable" people, the people whom the westerners on the panel were keen to assure us, had "world opinion" on their side. Too bad they don't have right on their side.
The controversy stirred by China's Orwellian "anti-secession" law has performed a valuable function by exposing the difference between "democracy" on each side of the Taiwan Strait. In Beijing, "democracy" means "votes" which pass by two thousand to zero. In Taipei, it means hundreds of thousands of people choosing, of their own free will, to march for peace and freedom.
This for me, is what the China/Taiwan conflct is all about - democracy. It is monstrous to see a dictatorship of 1.3 billion people trying to intimidate Asia's most democratic society, an island with a population of only 23 million. But it is wonderful, truly wonderful, to know that last week, the streets of Taipei rumbled with the sound of marching feet. It is a cause of profound joy to see Taiwnese democracy, the first in China's long history, in action.
For make no mistake, while many Taiwanese do not want to be ruled from Beijing, this does not mean that they are not Chinese, ethnically, linguistically and culturally. These are people who, some would have you believe, are naturally inclined to dictatorial rule, who have an "emperor complex". Yet in the past few decades, these same people have fashioned the strongest democratic society east of Germany.
And if that makes them extremists, then long live extremism!