Nieuws - 4 december 2008

CHINESE FLAG III

Thank you very much for your explanation of puting a Chinese flag besides a title about abused human rights. However, I think you misunderstood my previous letter, due to culture difference. I didn't mean that China has no problem with human rights. If you put China as one of the examples of countries that have problem with human right in the article, I totally agree with you. But the main problem here is the flag.
My Dutch colleague explained to me that national flag for Dutch people is not as important as for Chinese people. For Chinese people, the flag represents our country (but not our government). In our schools in China, we have a flag-raising ceremony every week. During the flag-raising, everybody stands still, because we love our country. The flag represents our country, and we want to show respect to our country.
Maybe you can't understand why the national flag is so important for us. In the Netherlands, I saw Dutch flags everywhere on the ground after Queens day in Amsterdam. So that's the culture difference.
You're free to say anything about human rights in China, but next time, before using our national flag, please take the culture difference into consideration.