I generally have little time for the prevailing zeitgeist of Sinophobia; moaning about China is normally useless and tends to ignore the fact that China, for all its faults, is a vastly better place, for her own people and the rest of us, than it was a generation ago, or two generations ago, or frankly at any time since the 16th Century. Besides, are the Chinese in Africa doing anything as bad as what Europeans, North Americans, Arabs and Japanese have been doing there since decolonisation?

I’m also not generally a fan of Olympic boycotts, nor am I fan of Americans (who have little to brag about themselves in terms of imperialism or human rights) coming over all Sinophobic because they’re afraid of losing the planet’s pole position. I also don’t run around shouting Free Tibet, because I don’t know what the general Tibetan point of view on independence is, given China’s generally poor record on free speech and a free press, both of which would seem to be a necessary precondition for a free anything. Once every one in Tibet and elsewhere in the PRC enjoys these fundamental rights, then Tibetans and Chinese could have an honest debate on their future, the outcome of which is, frankly, none of my business.

However, I just got this nasty little e-mail via the Alliance Party website complaining about Anna Lo, and her pride in the fact that her son Conall was arrested at the Free Tibet demo in London on Sunday. The sender purports to be living in Tibet and has a serious nationalism issue, of the Chinese variety. As the sender was anonymous and I can’t send a reply, I’ll just put the reply here.

( reply below the jump )