Well, I can’t say that I have empirical evidence but it was reported on CNN, BBC and countless newspapers around the world. [color=red]Do they ALL have it wrong? doubtful.[/color]
And BTW, why hasn’t the world heard more about what China is doing about this obvious shoddy construction? “We are investigating” Great! Now do something about it! Problem is, the issues rise higher than the investigators.[/quote]
Well, between 1900 - 1910 (and afterwards for the better part of a century), they all had it wrong wrt Tzu Hsi (The Dowager Empress), the Imperial family, the inner circle of the government, the Boxer Rebellion and the Western Powers’ rape of China in the 1840’s, 1860’s and 1899-1901.
Go back and read it again. They didn’t have it wrong. It was simply more propoganda coming from a different corrupt ruling party. The so called emperor dowager was probaably one of the most corrupt. But she sure as hell wasn’t alone - and still isn’t.
so which country does the PRC represent? Mongolia? Upper Volta?
of course the PRC equals China, the same way that The United States of America equals the country known as America (notice i did not include Canadia or Mexico in that), or Germany equals the country known more formally as The Federal Republic of Germany. you’re not including Taiwan in China now are you, or all the little Chinatowns around the world?
so what if the PRC are slightly better than India at things like raising the standard of living? it’s the equivalent of saying that Mussolini made the trains run on time, Mr Mawvellous. disingenious at best, completely missing the point at worst. it does not change my opinion of their dismal policies one jot, and nor does it change the personal attitudes of the arrogant selfish middle class, the group that should be the source of more and more criticism of the CCP’s policies, but instead are doing all they can to simply buy more LV handbags and ignore the stench from the ‘great unwashed’ in the countryside… and joining the nationalist bandwagon when they can.
there are just as many peasants living in dismal conditions in China than in India. and sure, they have perhaps less ability to change their position than the Chinese peasantry does, due to Hindu class structure. but this isn’t an argument about which of China or India is better, this is a discussion of why people are biased against China. hell, I’m a cranky old shit so I’m biased against everyone. get used to it.[/quote]
My apologies for not expressing myself clearly, everyone (except for a few KMT diehards maybe) knows that the PRC of course represents China. My point was that a nation as huge and diverse as China cannot only be defined in terms of its government. Just like I am sure many Americans would not want their country defined by the Bush regime.
My comparison with India is also valid. Most of the middle class Indians I have met have great disdain for the toiling peasant masses, and often blame them for their own fate. In fact wherever you go in the developing world you will find this kind of attitude -the newly rich look down on the still poor. Just look at the opinion many Taiwanese have of South-East Asians. I also raised the example of India to show that ‘democracy’ does not always mean ‘progress’ (of course many other chronically backward democracies could be added to the list)-and that it is important not to put all the emphasis on abstract concepts of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ well ignoring the material well-being of the people.
As for the CCP’s policies…the results in raising the standard of living both for the new middle class but also in the countryside, improving literacy (compare India and China), food supply (look at continuing problems of rural malnutrition in India) cannot be ignored. Of course there are many bad things about the CCP -for example corruption (especially at the local level), lack of openness and accountability, pollution etc. etc. (all frequently raised in the Western press). Yet it is difficult to see any alternative. The Tiananmen Square protesters were also very much middle class, I recall one student representative recoiling in horror when it was suggested to him that democracy would mean the great peasant masses having a vote. How would democratisation proceed in China? Is it possible that China could end up with some Russian style autocracy and the nation’s wealth siphoned off my a few well connected businesspeople? Would China even hold together without strong state sponsored nationalism? What would the dangers of disintegration be- another Yugoslavia?
Of course it is easy to say how China should be, but how can it get there?
well then you should have said the CCP, not the PRC. not that there is that much distinction between them, but i do acknowledge that the CCP is not at all representative of the vast majority of the populace…
i do not have the foggiest of how they will get better, but working with the rest of the world as another member of the world community rather than focusing on a strong China at the expense of others, is perhaps one possibility . we are all screwed if they continue to refuse to cooperate on things like resource and water sharing, the development of clean energy supply, and the stamping out of corruption and endemic racism/nationalism. bu then none of that fits their agenda, so we’re back to square one. any voice that tries to raise the issue is ‘reeducated’ or simply ‘disappeared’. that’s the thing that makes me angry with, and a little scared of, them.
This is a question oft debated on an Australian forum of which I’m a member. Various supporters of the PRC government (some of whom are ethnic Chinese, some of whom are not), usually present the following arguments in favour of their case that democracy cannot work in China:
Democracy is a uniquely Western idea which the Chinese people don’t understand
Democracy is counter-cultural and goes against Chinese thinking
When you have more than 1 billion people, democracy ceases to function
China’s government is forced by circumstances (a large population and geographical area), to enforce social order by repressive means, and if they didn’t do so then the country would descend into total anarchy
Democracies are corrupt just like other political systems, they solve nothing
Of course ‘China’ only emerged in response to imperialism and encroachment. Although English has the word ‘China’, the Chinese had no word to refer to their own country-the term ‘zhongguo’ did not reflect a nation, but the position of the emperor at the centre of the world. Even after the nationalist revolution, many people in China were unaware that they were ‘Chinese’, this only disappeared with Japanese invasion.
It is hardly surprising that both the KMT and CCP have been very keen to promote nationalism. They both regarded themselves as the embodiment of the Chinese nation-indeed Sun Yat-Sen is still known as “guofu”, the “father of the nation”. Both the CCP and KMT claim legitimacy as Sun’s ‘legitimate heirs’. With the KMT already out of the picture, without the CCP there is no Chinese nation (only some vague Chinese cultural identity).
It should be remembered that this Chinese nationalism only emerged due to outside pressure.
It would be good if more discussion on China tried to focus more on the complexities of the situation and avoid both the Western anti-China approach of simply attacking a stereotyped “antidemocratic, fascist, evil” government and a “dirty, selfish, greedy, rude” people, but also the nationalism of the pro-China people.
[quote]It should be remembered that this Chinese nationalism only emerged due to outside pressure.
It would be good if more discussion on China tried to focus more on the complexities of the situation and avoid both the Western anti-China approach of simply attacking a stereotyped “antidemocratic, fascist, evil” government and a “dirty, selfish, greedy, rude” people, but also the nationalism of the pro-China people.[/quote]
[quote=“Mawvellous”]Of course ‘China’ only emerged in response to imperialism and encroachment. Although English has the word ‘China’, the Chinese had no word to refer to their own country-the term ‘zhongguo’ did not reflect a nation, but the position of the emperor at the centre of the world. Even after the nationalist revolution, many people in China were unaware that they were ‘Chinese’, this only disappeared with Japanese invasion.
It is hardly surprising that both the KMT and CCP have been very keen to promote nationalism. They both regarded themselves as the embodiment of the Chinese nation-indeed Sun Yat-Sen is still known as “guofu”, the “father of the nation”. Both the CCP and KMT claim legitimacy as Sun’s ‘legitimate heirs’. With the KMT already out of the picture, without the CCP there is no Chinese nation (only some vague Chinese cultural identity).
It should be remembered that this Chinese nationalism only emerged due to outside pressure.
It would be good if more discussion on China tried to focus more on the complexities of the situation and avoid both the Western anti-China approach of simply attacking a stereotyped “antidemocratic, fascist, evil” government and a “dirty, selfish, greedy, rude” people, but also the nationalism of the pro-China people.[/quote]
I’ve written lots of nuanced posts about the issue, as has HGC. Doesn’t matter a whit to the pro-Beijing crowd.
Oh, and what is stereotyped about calling China undemocratic? It is. It also exhibits plenty of fascist tendencies too. And yes, a country that would consider it legal to kill me, my wife, our friends and their families simply on a declaration of reality is fucking evil.
Not sure where you live, but I live in Taiwan and have 1400 missiles pointed at my head by the Chinese. Evil? Fucking right.
[quote=“Rabidpie”]I didn’t really have anything, or at least that much against China…[quote]
To be (unfairly) biased against China, and to have something (a legitimate gripe) against China are two different things. Which is the OP asking? There are PLENTY of reasons to have legitimate gripes against repressive totalitarian states such as China which have aggressive claims on the locale in which one lives, and I would hardly call the result a ‘bias’. China (and China apologists) can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned.
Nationalism is often propagated by the fascist propaganda machine in order to overcome a lack of internal legitimacy, and the ‘outside pressure’ is often a convenient fiction created by the fascist machine to this end.
Qin Shi Huang is most certainly cited as the emperor who “united” China. However this did not mark the birth of Chinese nationalism, rather is used my modern Chinese nationalism as part of the building of the myth of the Chinese nation. Modern nationalism only emerged with the revolution in communication and industrialisation–which was bought to China by the West. Ironically, you are actually making the CCP’s point for them–the myth that China’s has a long history as a unified nation that stretches back to the Yellow Emperor.
Yes that is partly true, the CCP bases its claim to legitimacy on nationalism. However when I refereed to “outside pressure” I was talking about the transmission of nationalist ideas to China during the 19th century, which directly let to the overthrow of the Qing in the Xinhai revolution and the establishment of the modern, Chinese nation state.
However calling the CCP “fascist” is lazy… a meaningless epithet to throw at any regime you disapprove of.
I may have been lazy in giving only fascists as an example of a type of leadership which uses nationalism, rather than referring more precisely to the more relevant term ‘totalitarian’, but there is nothing meaningless about the terms; both involve oppressive levels of centralization of authority, suppression of the opposition through censorship and often terror and murder. Fascism may be more precisely dictatorial, whereas totalitarianism may extend beyond the leadership of one individual, but the gist is similar – oppression of dissent and of human rights by a central power. This is clearly the nature of the Chinese state, and it is one of the embodiments of evil in our world. Hardly a ‘meaningless epithet’, although it’s no surprise that the board’s CCP apologists will rush to term it such.
