【10.04.11 英国卫报】A timely opportunity to expose racism in Chinese societies

青蛙小王子

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/apr/11/letters-china-bbc-business

I am pleased that Martin Jacques's court case against the Hong Kong Hospital Authority had a positive outcome ("After 10 years, I have justice for the woman I love", News). Growing up in Hong Kong, racism wasn't part of the daily parlance. I only came to understand this since coming to live in England and being on the receiving end of racism. While I can debate the issues of racism among my British friends, I find it extremely difficult to develop meaningful discussions with Chinese friends.

The basic premise of Chinese racism is that anyone who is not Han Chinese, the predominant ethnic group in China, is racially or culturally inferior. A few Chinese I have spoken to denied they experienced any racism in Britain. At first, I found it difficult to understand how non-white people can fail to notice racism in Britain. Then it dawned on me that to admit being on the receiving end of racism is perhaps to a Chinese person to infer that s/he is inferior to the abuser.

It may be helpful to note that racism in Hong Kong is a variant of Chinese racism in general; it is not so much a backlash against British colonial rule. With the ascendance of China as an economic power, perhaps it's timely to further the debate on racism in Chinese societies.
Dr Suet Ying Ho
Centre for East Asian Studies
University of Bristol
Selfless young deserve praise

I really enjoyed the article by Amelia Hill ("Too much too young", Magazine). I hope it will dispatch some prejudice, help people reconsider bigoted attitudes and make life easier for these young people. What struck me most was their courage, determination and unselfishness. I wonder if the same can be said for those who carefully wait and plan it all out to achieve their material goals first?

Mora McIntyre
Hove, Sussex
Let the bosses take the risks

Will Hutton touches upon the main problem with capitalism when he states that CEOs reap huge rewards without any risk. ("Modern capitalism is at a moral dead end", Comment). By taking this view further, it would be realised that the concept of limited liability (forming a company and separate legal entity) is the main problem with capitalism.

Politicians like to suggest that entrepreneurs should benefit from the risks they take in the business world. However, by forming a company, they take no risks, yet reap all the benefits. When the company becomes so large that society can't allow it to fail then the whole system is flawed.
If someone wants to run a business, they should also have to take on the risk if it fails. That is really what capitalism should be about. Let's see how the banks run their business models then, rather than shifting the risk on to faceless shareholders and, ultimately, the taxpayer.
A Hunt
Chester
Plus ça change at the BBC
Victoria Coren's wonderfully appropriate comment on the antediluvian attitudes of the editor of the Today programme ("More like All Our Yesterdays", Comment) took me back 40 years. It was in prehistoric times, when one of Ceri Thomas's predecessors in the BBC hierarchy opined that "women were too emotional to master the reading of bad news... as they even got upset when they had a ladder in their stockings (sic)." It doesn't seem that, 40 years on (presumably when Ceri Thomas was in his perambulator or still in short pants), BBC male attitudes have matured much, despite the plethora of significantly bright managerial women in senior roles in the corporation.

Sandra Hepburn
Cliff End, Sussex
An insult to America

As an American, I take deep offence at Peter Beaumont's assertion that the battles in the Pacific against the Japanese are something that Americans prefer to forget because of undertones of racism and other guilt. ("Why America preferred to forget about the Pacific war", News). To pretend that Americans are ashamed of their actions in the Pacific is ludicrous and insulting.

The disrespect for history that Beaumont and many of his peers in the media display is infuriating. How dare they paint imperial Japan as the victim. Ask any of the nations that fell under the Japanese in their fanatical quest to control the Pacific. Ask any of the survivors of the Bataan death march about how much the Japanese honoured the Geneva conventions.
BA Clerkin
Glen Head, NewYork
This editor's word is final
This Much I Know: Piers Morgan (Magazine) – "I would rather shoot myself before I went to see a therapist." David Yelland interview: on his alcoholism and just before his admission to a rehab clinic – "Spoke to Dr Robert Lefever, the [clinic] founder and the man who saved my life." David Yelland knows through personal experience about the valuable work psychotherapists do to treat people in distress. They indeed save lives. Piers Morgan sees therapy as a sign of weakness. I know which ex-editor I would prefer to talk to.

Graham Findlay
Cardiff