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Fried or Braised?
This post is from Ross Bloom, an summer intern in the Time Beijing bureau. Ross, who is an undergraduate at Harvard studying Chinese among other things, was doing some research on the tiger parts trade:
China’s 5000 strong captive tiger population has gotten quite a bit of press this week. First came news of a global trade convention on endangered animals in which China was urged to maintain its ban on the trade of tiger products. The there was yesterday’s report that a Chinese official has said his country would end its 14 year ban and allow tiger products back on the market. Conservationists worldwide worry that the legal sale of farmed tiger products will spur poaching in the wild. As an article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper puts it, “Any shift in China’s stance would prompt international outrage.”
It seems to me that this story is an old one, just with different characteristics. It usually goes something like this: developing China doesn’t have the same values as other countries and puts its monstrous hunger for natural resources before any moral calling. The Darfur-Petrochina controversy is a good example. Every day, it seems, the world gives China lessons in morality.
But China has only been developing via a market economy for 30 years. If history had allowed China to develop like this a hundred years ago, no one have blinked an eye about Sudan or the Siberian tiger because that’s exactly what Europe was doing in Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. Back then, tigers existed in large numbers before Western tastes and encroachment reduced them to their current parlous state. Can the West really blame China for decisions that are often the same as those made in the early days of western economic development? We might also pause to remember that much of the turmoil that prevented China from market development earlier was caused by Western colonialism.
Given the world’s hugely improved communication and trade infrastructure, it is probable that China will be able to get through the “bad development” stages much faster than the West did and see the light for itself. And, as hard as it is for a Westerner to say this, I don’t believe we can blame China for not following Western moral standards. If the 21st century is truly China’s century, perhaps it is also time to reconsider the role of Western morality, which has had dominion over world affairs since Portuguese ships first set sail for Africa.