China Real Time ReportToday, 16:02
An effort in the U.S. Congress to rename the street outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington after a jailed dissident has drawn a sharp rebuke from China’s state-run media.
But it wasn’t too long ago that China’s newspapers were vocal fans of making political points through the bestowing of new names — not only on streets outside embassies, but also on entire cities.
In a Valentine’s Day editorial, the Global Times–a nationalistic tabloid run by the People’s Daily newspaper, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece–spurned a congressional proposal to rename the street outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington “Liu Xiaobo Plaza” after the imprisoned pro-democracy activist and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner. The street is currently called International Place NW.
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“The apparently provocative move intends to outrage and unsettle China,” the Global Times wrote on Sunday. “But this is no big deal. In addition to anger, it will enable us to learn more about the U.S. from another perspective: The U.S. has big problems in abiding by the rules and keeping self-respect and its Congress acts so rashly.”
A White House spokesman has said President Obama’s advisers would urge him to veto the measure, which was introduced by Ted Cruz, the Republican senator and presidential contender,and approved by the Senate on Friday. The House Appropriations Committeeearlier included its own version of the measure in a State Department funding bill.
The Global Times lashed out at the move as “petty” in both its English and Chinese versions. But the Chinese-language editorial contained an extra bit of history that for some reason didn’t appear in its English-language counterpart.
“During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards in Beijing changed the name of the street in front of the Soviet Embassy to ‘Oppose Revisionism Street,’” the Chinese-language version states, referring to the period of political tumult led by Mao Zedong from 1966 to 1976. “After the Cultural Revolution, the government changed it back.”
As the Christian Science Monitor detailed in a report at the time, Oppose Revisionism Street’s name was unceremoniously revised back by the Chinese government in 1980, years after the violent movement against all things deemed “imperialist” or “antirevolutionary” had died down. The Russian Embassy now stands at No. 4 Dongzhimen Beizhongjie, just a short stroll up the street from The Wall Street Journal’s Beijing office.
The Soviet Embassy was far from the only building to suddenly find itself with a creative new mailing address courtesy of the Red Guards. One road in the foreign legation quarter not far from Tiananmen Square was renamed “Anti-Imperialist Street.”
The People’s Daily and other state-run media hailed such moves, as China scholars Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals document in their book “Mao’s Last Revolution.”China’s official Xinhua News Agency even went so far as to proclaim victory after Hong Kong’s colonial spokesman reportedly declared that postal authorities would deliver any mail addressed to “Expel-the-Imperialists-City,” the new name conferred on the then-British colony by Red Guards in Guangdong province, they write.
Despite the efforts of some members of Congress, the chances of “Liu Xiaobo Plaza” seeing the light of day remain distant. But China’s not-too-distant history is a reminder that Beijing always has options. Who knows? A U.S. Embassy on “Expel the Americans Street” could end up catching on.
–Felicia Sonmez. Follow her on Twitter@feliciasonmez.
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/02/15/meet-you-at-the-corner-of-liu-xiaobo-plaza-and-oppose-revisionism-street/?mod=WSJBlog
