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August 29, 2006
"They should be nice to us"
Standing in line at Immigration when I arrived in Beijing on Saturday night, I heard a group of Americans talking. One fellow said, "They should be nice to us." Emphasis on "should." I didn't hear the rest of the conversation, so I don't know what he was referring to: the immigration officials, the Chinese, colleagues, the rest of his Ultimate team. But I realized I'd heard this phrase before, from Americans in Europe. "They should be nice to us," because we saved them during World War II or we come here and throw our money around or we've sent them plenty of aid or loans or whatever it might be. . . .
A charming attitude, isn't it? But one that is surprising common, and needs some examination. It's true that Americans came through in World War II, and older Europeans are extremely appreciative of that. But they also remember that we let the Nazis come very close to taking England, and didn't enter the war for over two years after Hitler invaded Poland.
I'm writing about global attitudes at our main blog, so do check there for further comments from China. And I'll be writing here later today about some of the challenges in running a site like this (www.LoveUsHateUS.com is our main site, not this blog, in case you've landed here direct from Google), and asking for feedback on how best to organize it and to keep a productive dialogue going.
Posted by Karen Christensen at August 29, 2006 9:10 PM