How many civil wars and massacres in Chinese history would you like to know about? They have a kind of tradition of killing each other in large numbers every 50 years or so (roughly), for no particular reason other than because they don’t get along with each other and they’ve never learned to share (China currently holds the all time record, under both Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung). And I think sometimes they just seem to get the urge to have a good old massacre. Their much touted 5,000 years of history was once memorably referred to by a Chinese historian as the same 100 years of history, repeated 50 times (and bloody violence seems to be a key element).
I wasn’t aware of that. If this is true, I’ll gladly change my mind. Where could I look this up? Statistical Yearbook of the ROC?
However, I don’t quite agree with massacres being cited as examples for the general populace’s proclivity for violence: massacres are committed by the ruling class or political factions for political reasons. But so far, we’ve been discussing the violence committed by Joe Schmo on the street and at home. Examples of political violence don’t cover that.
But it’s a moot point: if MuchaMan’s statistics are correct, I’ll call back my troops and admit defeat.
I wasn’t talking about massacres of civilians by the government using the army, or ‘committed by the ruling classes’. I was talking about massacres of civilians by civilians. Historically China is a bit like many African countries. You just need a guy with a big mouth to get up and say ‘Hey guys, how about all of you with small eyes get a knife, and stick it into the face of all the people with big eyes?’, and you’ll get thousands of Chinese saying ‘Yeah, great idea, let’s get into it!’. Just as in many African countries there’s a sort of tradition involving a small handful of people (or even just one person), getting up and saying ‘How about we chop off the arms and legs of people we don’t like?’, and thousands of people say ‘Yeah, let’s do it’.
You can’t do that except in a country in which violence is a deeply embedded and historically accepted means of getting what you want. In China, as in many African countries, you can incite ordinary citizens to slaughter their neighbours just by shouting loudly enough. It just seems to come naturally to them.
Of course I’m generalizing, but there’s plenty of history to prove the point. You may or may not have heard of a man called ‘Mao Tse Tung’, and a little thing called the ‘Cultural Revolution’.
All Mao had to do was tell people (typically students), to go and beat their parents, murder their teachers, close down the schools, destroy thousands of historic cultural artefacts, and pretty much anything else he thought of as it came to him, and they all dutifully went off and did it.
It’s amazing what you can get away with in a country of sheeple to whom violence comes naturally.
I wasn’t aware of that. If this is true, I’ll gladly change my mind. Where could I look this up? Statistical Yearbook of the ROC?[/quote]
The Ministry of the Interior issues National Indicators. These include figures for “Murder by Selected Countries – Tentative Attempt Crime Rate.” As given, Taiwan’s rates are substantially lower rates than in the U.S., and lower than in Canada, too. But exactly what is being defined is a bit unclear, with the Chinglish explanation at the bottom of the chart being part of the problem.
I wasn’t aware of that. If this is true, I’ll gladly change my mind. Where could I look this up? Statistical Yearbook of the ROC?
However, I don’t quite agree with massacres being cited as examples for the general populace’s proclivity for violence: massacres are committed by the ruling class or political factions for political reasons. But so far, we’ve been discussing the violence committed by Joe Schmo on the street and at home. Examples of political violence don’t cover that.
But it’s a moot point: if MuchaMan’s statistics are correct, I’ll call back my troops and admit defeat.
Maybe I should get cable after all.[/quote]
Get cable and you’ll never go outside: too busy watching Tv and too scared by what they show.
But seriously, I’ll try to dig up the stats, but I recal being extremely surprised (as you now are) when they were first revealed to me. The source was credible though so I have no reason to question them.
Fcom’s own Almas John wrote a good book on Taiwan that covers a lot of the early history. It was a pretty wild and violent place.
In many ways there are two Taiwans. The one where you can tell off a group of 20 year old guys for acting like idiots and not risk even a scratch (as they are incorrigible sissies) and the other where you can get baseball batted for flipping a driver off, or chatting with his girlfriend.
Then again, most countries I have been in are like this. Taiwan seems a little different mostly in that the reprisal, when it comes, if usually grossly out of proportion to the offense. You are right that most taiwanese avoid violence and take many measures to keep it out of their life, But once they decide to utilize it, there’s no restraint or sanity.
I wasn’t aware of that. If this is true, I’ll gladly change my mind. Where could I look this up? Statistical Yearbook of the ROC?[/quote]
The Ministry of the Interior issues National Indicators. These include figures for “Murder by Selected Countries – Tentative Attempt Crime Rate.” As given, Taiwan’s rates are substantially lower rates than in the U.S., and lower than in Canada, too. But exactly what is being defined is a bit unclear, with the Chinglish explanation at the bottom of the chart being part of the problem.[/quote]
One example is statistically unfit to prove your point, which is [quote]a country of sheeple to whom violence comes naturally.[/quote] That’s like saying all Germans and Japanese all have an innate knack for genocide and fascist thinking, because the way they behaved during the first half of the 20th century.
So, more examples, please! As you say, [quote]there’s plenty of history to prove the point.[/quote]
Cranky Laowai and MuchaMan:
AFAIK, the clearance rate is the rate of solved crimes.
The link to the General Crime offenses indeed states that Taiwan has a lower crime rate than most of the rest. (According to these stats, China has less than 10% the crime rate of the ROC, which I can’t believe. I’m guessing this is due to extensive media control in China.) But Muchaman speaks of a crime rate higher than that of the US. So, are these fake data? Are there other sets of data about this, preferably from non-Taiwanes sources?
One example is statistically unfit to prove your point…[/quote]
Yes, I’ve only given two examples so far (did you note the reference to the Chiang Kai Shek era?). I could include the Boxer Rebellion, the many atrocities under Qin Shi Huang, the many slaughters under the Sui dynasty, and the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, with its associated slaughter and counter-slaughter, the ever popular fantastic little era of the Three Kingdoms (one of China’s best civil wars ever, they really had to try hard to beat this one later), characterized by thousands of people killing thousands of other people, all based on who was shouting the loudest.
There’s the unspeakably bloody An Shi Rebellion (again involving hundreds of thousands of people dutifully following a single loudmouth and resulting in some 36 million deaths), and of course there’s the Communist Revolution (an absolute wreck of spittle-flecked madness inspired and upheld by a shrieking maniac who has been described favourably on this forum as an excellent politician).
Interestingly Mao Tse Tung identified Qin Shi Huang as a historical forerunner of himself (‘He buried 460 scholars alive; we have buried forty-six thousand scholars alive… You revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold’).
There’s nothing new in Chinese history, they’ve been doing exactly the same things over and over and over again, for thousands of years - oppressive dictator, bloody revolution, even more bloody civil war, oppressive dictator, bloody revolution, even more bloody civil war, oppressive dictator, bloody revolution, even more bloody civil war, wash, rinse, repeat, and you’ll always find one or more charismatic leader in the forefront, shouting loudly and encouraging the slaughter. They seem to need to have a good and bloody civil war now and then, for whatever reason. It’s a pity they never really dedicated themselves to a more constructive pattern of behaviour.
Whatever the crime rate is here in Taiwan, at least I feel safe.
I can’t think of a neighborhood I wouldn’t want to go in fear of getting killed. I don’t think I am in real danger to get killed because I am a foreigner. Racially motivated violence is really rare, even if you count in violence against house keepers from the Philippines or construction workers from Thailand. A disturbing trend, however, are those robberies in broad daylight. It seems that criminals, especially those addicted to drugs, are not fearing the police as much as they should.
[quote=“hannes”]Whatever the crime rate is here in Taiwan, at least I feel safe.
I can’t think of a neighborhood I wouldn’t want to go in fear of getting killed. I don’t think I am in real danger to get killed because I am a foreigner.[/quote]
Same here. I feel safe walking around Taipei at 2am. There’s no way I would have done that in Melbourne.
One thing that has always seemed quite remarkable to me is that, despite the divisions that run so deeply through this society and arouse such strong emotions in the political sphere, there has not been even one major eruption of communal violence in the more than two decades I’ve lived here. There have often been circumstances that would surely have resulted in massive bloodletting in most other parts of the world, but restraint has always prevailed here.
Moreover, on a street crime against individuals level, I certainly feel a great deal safer here than in London or any other European city I have ever visited.
And Fortigurn, the litany of violent episodes that you list from past history in China has little relevance to the state of things in contemporary Taiwan. For a start, Taiwan is not China. And regardless of that, and of examples of mass murder you may be able to cite from Taiwan’s past, that does not in any way mark these countries out from any other country or region anywhere in the world. Mankind’s past is full of mass killing and brutality, in all parts of the world, with Western countries being as bad as any others anywhere.
I agree. I didn’t say it did. If you read my posts, you’ll see that on the contrary I have argued that Taiwan is a very safe place, certainly safer than where I lived in Australia. I have not been arguing that China’s history of cyclic social violence is anything to do with contemporary Taiwan. I have been arguing that China’s history of cyclic social violence has a lot to do with China (both past and contemporary).
I didn’t actually cite any examples of mass murder from Taiwan’s past. I was talking about China. And yes, certain patterns of behaviour do mark out certain countries as distinct from other countries or regions. We could be all Canadian and pretend it isn’t true, but it is.
Whilst this is true, it isn’t realistic to ignore the fact that mass killing and brutality is far more prevalent (even common), in certain parts of the world than in others. And in those parts of the world it isn’t in the past, it’s still happening today. As for which countries are as bad or worse than others, I think it’s also true to say that there have been countries which have not been marred by the same kind of violence which has traditionally been part of life in certain African countries for centuries.
You’re welcome. Feel free to disagree with my personal interpretation of the history, by all means. I won’t break your arm over it, and I’m certainly no academic. That’s just the way it looks to me.
Isn’t it interesting that the An Shi Rebellion isn’t well known, given that it cost the lives of some 36 million people? I suppose after Mao’s little efforts, everything else just looks like a minor blip on the radar.
Depends on individual interests, I guess. I’ve always been more interested in modern (post-18th century) Chinese history. Where did you hear about the ASR?
I actually read about it (on Wikipedia, which has an astonishingly well referenced series of articles on Chinese history, though some of them seem to have felt the gentle caress of the Party hand), during one of my feel-the-urge-to-know-more-about-Chinese-history kicks.
I was also interested in an exercise in comparative history (Ancient Near East with ancient China), and the reliability of the records in the two areas. I was intrigued to find that the earliest accepted date in Chinese history (841 BC), is very close to the earliest accepted date in Hebrew history (about 960 BC), and that typical reconstructions of the two pre-histories follow similar methodological processes and treat the pre-historical texts in similar ways. It seems we can’t go back much further than the 10th century for any reliable comprehensive historical accounts (though I’m happy to be proved wrong).
Was this exercise part of some sort of organized studies, or something you suddenly wanted to explore?
Boy, you scary. Whatchy’all goan’ do with all that mental ballast? But I guess nobody’s really free from these occasional and utterly irrational learning bouts. Recently, I’ve been spending much more money than I should on obscure antique books on the history of the Chinese in Northern Borneo…
Oops, far away from topic now, I realize. Are off-topic ramblings tolerated on F.com, or are the moderators rather strict? (For a definition of “strict moderation”, visit any nature-related German-language Web forum)
But I guess nobody’s really free from these occasional and utterly irrational learning bouts. Recently, I’ve been spending much more money than I should on obscure antique books on the history of the Chinese in Northern Borneo…