"Death of the great architect", say all of our newspapers, who are probably hoping to make us forget about Tien Anmen.
Well, there really is a justice in this world: the worst scumbags always end up where they sent their victims. Old Deng had been dying for so long that it was nearly moving.
And haven’t you remarked something? The media in France are moved. Magazines are running some kind of contest on which one will come up with the most lyrical front cover, and trying to be different from each other although they’re all using the same extravagant formula: "The great architect has passed away". Some modify the formula with a great deal of imagination: "Death of the great architect", when they don’t resort to sheer impertinence by saying things such as "The last emperor".
But, great architect of what? Our "great" president, Chirac, gave the answer to that question in his funeral eulogy: Deng was the architect of economic opening. Not the great sage, not the little father, no... not that great step forward, not the cultural revolution, no... the great architect (I can’t help repeating it, for I’ve read it so many times in the last few days).
We then have to read on (because it’s not mentioned on the front covers) to discover that Xiaoping was a true criminal, the one behind the many deportations, the man behind Tien Anmen. The altercations with Tibet, the permanent (and military) pressure applied on the "other" Chinas... that’s his work! One of the great murderers of this century, indeed. The kind of person whose death you can not possibly regret, even if you try forcing yourself (even in China, and although they were forced to mourn, it didn’t amount to much).
So why do our weekly magazines seem to mourn him? I know, it’s easy: it’s because half of the French press is owned by CGE-Havas, the other half belonging to Lagardere. They’re not going to risk engineering a dispute with their excellent clients from totalitarian China over something as puny as the independence of the press!
Although, a nice picture of a Chinese student ran over by a tank, or the execution of an opponent of the regime would have been better summaries of the great architect’s career (and by buying the newspaper, you would help the family of the victim to repay the bullet of the execution: let’s call it the "one magazine, one execution" operation).
But, we must concede it, Deng truly was the great architect... the great architect of the most promising utopia of the next century: economic liberalism without democracy.
The OCDE tried it in Korea, but people have been voicing their disapproval with violence for a few months over there (what an eerie scene for us to see, too, since we always thought that Asians’ way of showing their disapproval was to wear a back arm-band to work!). In Hong Kong, the thought of being definitely deprived of freedom in the respect of the market’s laws, sent stock market higher than it ever went. Even here, CEOs buy themselves ads to contest the right to go on strike (indeed, there was one in "Liberation" - a kindda left-wing french newspaper - last Saturday). China is really something: at least a billion starving people yielding themselves to one man’s authority (as our politicians and businessmen not ashamed to repeat: "except for Japanese, Asians are docile good workers, they don’t care about human rights. They’re much happier working since their young age on sneakers, and boy do they enjoy it, just look at them, they smile all the time...")
It’s pretty much the story our president Chirac wanted us to swallow, as he came back from his trip to China: people don’t have the same values other there, they don’t have the same views on freedom. Business is what matters to them, because democracy brings only troubles, especially when the population reaches over a billion.
They sure do some good work other there. One proof is that Chinese tanks are really robust.
