Biden at Penn: did the Vice President insult the Chinese nation?

The Tea Leaf Nation online magazine posted this article on May 19, 2013:  "VP Biden’s Penn Commencement Speech Inspires Viral Rant by ‘Disappointed’ Chinese Student."  The article, by Xiaoying Zhou, offers an excellent account of this tempest in a teapot (as it were), and the comments that follow it are also germane.

Still, a closer look at what the angry student, Zhang Tianpu, actually wrote will help us put the controversy in a clearer perspective. Zhang's accusation against the Vice President appeared in an entry he posted on his renren.com (Facebook clone in China) account.  The entry is entitled "Bàidēng Bīndà bìyèshì yǎnjiǎng bùhéshíyí de yǒuguān Zhōngguó bùfèn" 拜登宾大毕业式演讲不合时宜的有关中国部分 (Outmoded portion about China in Biden's graduation speech at Penn).

Here are the two portions of Biden's speech about China to which Zhang took exception:

I love to hear people tell me how to use the vernacular "China is going to eat our lunch."

China is a great nation, and we should hope for the continued expansion. But ladies and gentlemen, their problems are immense, and they lack much of what we have. We have the best universities in the world. We have a legal system that is open and fair. We have the most agile venture capital system in the world. We lead the world in innovation and technology, all for a simple basic reason. Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford was asked by a young man "how can I be more like you, how I can become like you?" And Job famously answered: think different.

You CANNOT think different in a nation where you cannot breath free. You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy, because change only comes from challenging orthodoxy.

…

I spent 10 days with President Xi at the request of former president Hu and President obama…I listened to his questions and the interests he had and he asked me how I felt after the 5 days in the U.S. and 5 days in China. And I said he's a strong bright man, but he has the look of a man who is about to take on a job he's not at all sure is going to end well. I mean that seriously.

These sections appear at 11:05 and 17:41 of Biden's speech as recorded on this YouTube video.  Although there are a few minor errors, I won't quibble with Zhang's transcription of the VP's speech, but should point out that the very first sentence makes a lot more sense if "to use the vernacular" is set off with commas or dashes.

What is remarkable about Zhang's criticism of Biden's remarks is that he focuses so heavily on the VP's use of the word "nation" to refer to China:

Bàidēng zài “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” zhè jù huà li yòng de shì nation zhège cí. Zhè yīdiǎn shì zuì ràng wǒ qìfèn de, yīnwèi Yīngyǔ zhòng nation zhǐ de “mínzú” de yìsi, hé country, state shì yǒu qūbié de. Country, state kěnéng gèng qiángdiào de shì yīgè guójiā zhěngtǐ de gàiniàn, shènzhì dài yǒu zhǐ zhèngfǔ de yìsi; huàn jù huà shuō, rúguǒ tā zhè jù huà li miàn yòng de shì country zhège cí, nàme jiù kěyǐ lǐjiě wèi kěnéng yóuyú zhǒngzhǒng wàibù yīnsù de zhìyuē, wǒmen mínzú de qiánlì méiyǒu 100% de fāhuī chūlái.

拜登在 “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” 这句话里用的是nation这个词。这一点是最让我气愤的，因为英语中nation指的“民族”的意思，和country，state是有区别的。 country, state可能更强调的是一个国家整体的概念，甚至带有指政府的意思；换句话说，如果他这句话里面用的是country这个词，那么就可以理解为可能由于 种种外部因素的制约，我们民族的潜力没有100%地发挥出来。

In this sentence, “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy”, he used the word "nation".  This is what really infuriated me, because in English "nation" indicates "race, ethnicity", which is different from "country, state".  "Country, state" perhaps places more emphasis on the notion of the entirety of the country, even to the point of referring to the idea of government.  In other words, if he had used the word "country" in this sentence, then perhaps one could understand that, due to various external constraints, our people's potential has still not been brought to bear 100%.

N.B.:  Underlining indicates words in Zhang's text that are originally in English.

Note that, in the last sentence quoted, Zhang uses mínzú 民族 in a positive light (I have translated it as "people" here), whereas above he uses the same expression in the probable sense of "race, ethnicity".

The weakness in Zhang's reasoning lies mainly in his confusion over the multiple meanings of the word mínzú 民族.  As pointed out on Language Log just a few days ago in "Racist Park", mínzú 民族 can mean "ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation".  Coming from the English side, we must keep in mind that "nation" can be translated into Chinese as guó 国 ("country"), guójiā 国家 ("country"), guódù 国度 ("country; state"), bāng 邦 ("state"), and, yes, mínzú 民族 ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation").

It is clear that, when Biden said "China is a great nation", he was respectfully referring to the country as a whole.  Yet the sensitivity to questions of ethnicity in China, especially with regard to the shǎoshù mínzú 少数民族 ("ethnic / national minorities"), e.g., Uyghurs, Tibetans, and scores of others, caused Zhang to take umbrage over something that the Vice President never intended.

Finally, I should point out that mínzú 民族 is a neologism coined specifically for conveying the meaning of "nation".  It is but one of a host of new terms designed to convey Western intellectual, political, and scientific concepts that entered the Chinese lexicon around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many of them coined or calqued in Japan.  Consequently, one would do well to avoid becoming overly testy and proprietary when using and defining polysemous terms such as mínzú 民族 ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation").  Rather, one needs to be sensitive to their diverse meanings in various contexts and not insist upon a single interpretation for all situations.

Speaking of which, I'd be very curious to know how the folks over at Tea Leaf Nation render their name into Chinese.  I'd be surprised if it were cháyè mínzú 茶叶民族.

[h/t to Neil Schmid]