A misunderstood legacy
Professor Herbert Hanreich is a typical example of the arrogant Western intellectual who only sees repression in Asian culture (“‘Asian values’ assist in repression,” Dec. 10, page 8). Confucianism, for instance, has been grossly misunderstood and twisted. It has been used by rulers to justify their authority and power. It has been used by intellectuals to justify their status in society.
But the essence of Confucianism and its cultural values lie among the grassroots and are deeply embedded in the mentality and spirit of ordinary Chinese people.
That is why no authoritarian ruler, including Mao Zedong (毛澤東), has succeeded in eliminating one of Asia’s greatest cultural legacies.
Meanwhile, we Asians have learned a lot about the so-called values of Western culture, especially in the wake of the recent global financial crisis triggered by the unlimited greed of Westerners.
DAVID AUW
Taipei
Bad intent at Copenhagen
This month 98 world leaders, 15,000 delegates and officials and 5,000 journalists are attending the 15th UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Because many participants are members of the government elite, they cannot resist the luxury to which they are accustomed: Denmark’s biggest limousine company is so overbooked that they need to have limousines driven in from Sweden and Germany, while only five hybrid and electric vehicles have been ordered for those genuinely concerned about the environment and climate change.
The Copenhagen airport also expects 140 private jets to arrive during the peak period of the two-week conference, which means the planes will need to be parked at regional airports or even in neighboring Sweden. As a result, people are beginning to wonder how concerned these decision makers really are about tackling climate change if they can’t even control their own emissions.
Meanwhile, e-mails have been leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit containing data provided to the Met Office, the British meteorological authority, showing a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The Met Office is a significant contributor to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their data is therefore intended to provide 188 countries with evidence proving that the Earth is getting hotter.
However, the e-mails showed that the data was manipulated to hide declines in temperatures. Moreover, scientists at the university admitted throwing away much of the original data and keeping only the revised data. While the Met Office has promised to reexamine the data, which could take three years, it still insists that the past decade has been the warmest on record, with this year being the fifth-hottest.
Elsewhere, a secret draft agreement concocted by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” has also been leaked.
This group is supposed to include the UK, the US and Denmark. The leaked draft is better known as the “Danish text”; it intends to hand more power to rich nations, while sidelining the UN’s negotiating role and abandoning the Kyoto Protocol.
According to the text, people in rich countries would be permitted to emit almost twice as much as those in poor countries.
The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank and would make poor countries dependent on that organization as it provides them with money to help them adapt to climate change.
As a result, the chief negotiator for 130 developing countries, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aiping, walked out in anger, while other leaders of developing countries also became furious.
Will Nobel Peace Prize recipient US President Barack Obama save the day when he arrives this week? Considering that the US is a member of “the circle of commitment,” one may have to agree with Di-Aiping that the conference will probably be wrecked by the bad intentions of certain people.
ALEX RAYMOND
Kaohsiung
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