New York’s Empire State Building is often bathed in colors representing important US and global holidays. Red white and blue for July 4th or Memorial Day. Yellow and white for Easter. Purple for Gay Pride. And a host of colors representing the flags of countries around the world to mark their national days. So when the owners of the Empire State Building announce they are going to light up this American icon in the colors of the Chinese flag to mark China’s National Day, should we be surprised? After all, China is one of the world’s great nations.
I suggest we shouldn’t just be surprised, but furious.
It is one thing to celebrate thousands of years of Chinese culture and history. Chinese civilization is one of the great symbols of human achievement. But China’s current National Day (and in this case its 60th National Day) has nothing to do with Chinese civilization but with Chinese communism. This is the day that the Chinese Communist Party celebrates the imposition of its one party rule – and all the horrors that it has wrought, from the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution (killing millions), Tiananmen Square, suppression in Tibet and now a massive military build up to counter the US in the Pacific.
Lets me put this symbolism in some context. New York is building what will be its tallest sky scraper to replace the fallen World Trade Center. It plans on calling it the Freedom Tower – a name that I may find unimaginative but at the same time is certainly representative of the American ideal. It therefore strikes me as highly ironic and totally inappropriate that the city’s current tallest building should be celebrating the exact opposite of freedom.
Who makes these decisions? This is insane.
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