For and against: Chinese intellectuals on Iraq

Even before images of the first cruise missile strikes on Baghdad reached TV screens on the mainland, the country's intellectuals were debating the US-led war against Iraq and the government's response. Commentaries in leading newspapers and online journals demonstrated a diversity of opinion seldom seen in the country's state-controlled media, and precipitated wider discussion in people's living rooms.

......surprising to see pro-war sentiments expressed publicly, such as the petition that appeared in the Guangzhou-based weekly newspaper 21st Century World Herald. That petition voiced a taboo viewpoint: that "human rights are of greater value than national sovereignty".

......Others scoffed at the idea. Han Deqiang, of Beijing's Aviation and Aerospace University, wrote an anti-war commentary accompanying Yu's essay that called pro-war Chinese intellectuals hopelessly naïve and overly "immersed in the American dream".

......Although on the surface this debate is about America and Iraq, the subtext, as always, concerns China. The debate revealed political fault lines among Chinese intellectuals that could never be openly exposed over domestic policy. Ultimately, the two main camps of China's intelligentsia - the neo-leftists (xin zuo) and the old liberals (lao you) - ask the question that has divided Chinese intellectuals for a century: What does it mean to be Chinese and also to be modern? Does it mean following the west (as liberals advocate) or, as the neo-leftists suggest, is there some third way between communism and western-style democratic capitalism? Most fundamentally, can the scope of economic disaster that followed the Soviet Union's collapse be avoided?

......Unlike in western countries, where intellectuals often engage in head-on public confrontations, most intellectuals on the mainland speak obliquely. The invasion of Iraq presented them with a relatively safe topic with which to discuss issues that are normally off limits, such as human rights.

......As the war progressed, pro-war voices increasingly fell silent. Some media critics ascribed this to a combination of official censorship and the effect of the scenes of Iraqi civilian deaths played (and replayed) on China's new 24-hour news channel, created especially to cover the war in Iraq.

......In any case, speaking out carries a price. The relatively independent Nanfang Daily Group, whose members include 21st Century World Herald, was closed by the government for "redesign". It may be allowed to publish again, but no one knows when.......