When you stare into the abyss, the abyss says "hey, hold on there..."

There has been a smattering of reporting on how the average Chinese sees the Western portrayal of their country, but China is big, strong and proud, so it should be of no surprise to anyone that they are not impressed with us.

An official Chinese Communist Party newspaper urged China's citizens to express patriotism in a rational way as anti-Western protests spread.

Of course I won't go into the likelihood that the Chinese government in some concealed way is sending a message by allowing Carrefour to be picketed. Not a lot of high-profile stuff happens by accident in a place like China...

As may be evident by now, I'm not about to hop on the "Human Rights" bandwagon at China's expense. They still have their problems, but the system is evolving, and in any event you can't keep a place the size and heterogeneity of China together with rainbows and happy thoughts. As for Tibet, anyone who remembers Tianamen Square in 1989 will notice that there was not a tank to be seen in the recent protests.

Yes, I'll say it; the authorities in Tibet exercised (after extreme provocation) great restraint in suppressing the violent protests. Whichever side of the Tibet fence you're on (I'm on the "it's none of my business" one) it has to be recognized that the protests had turned into an anti-Han pogrom by the Tibetans.

Now, you may say "good for them, it's about time" (or not) but if the same sort of disturbances broke out in any other country, Canada included, the reaction would have been the same. There were riot police and paramilitary forces in reserve, but no tanks or carpet bombing, so in all a measured and largely appropriate use of force.

Back to the point, however. China is an increasingly BIG DEAL on the world stage, and that's something that a lot of the West seems slow to grasp. Despite the censorship, there are a lot of Chinese who have web and satellite access, and don't take kindly to us decadent hairy barbarians telling them their business. There have even been protests in Ottawa and a few other places in Canada with a significant Chinese population to protest media treatment of the motherland.

Putting the Olympics in Beijing was never a good idea, but it's done now. Hopefully their anti-smog measures will be adequate to make it at least non-injurious to the participants, but in the end this whole episode has the potential to make both sides more aware of how the other sees them. After that it just remains to see if that's a good thing...