I have lived in both China and Hong Kong, staying for 21 years in each place.
Although I haven't lived in Taiwan very long, I feel I have come to know the Taiwanese very well and I feel that the Taiwanese, like the people of Hong Kong, are a compassionate people.
Taiwanese tend to be kindhearted and personable. In contrast, one must be careful when dealing with Chinese, who have unfortunately been raised surrounded by state propaganda.
But Taiwan has changed in recent years. Politicians are ignoring the rules of democracy and fighting at all costs for election victory.
Just before I graduated from university in 1960, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a political movement criticizing human nature.
It claimed human nature could not supersede class, and that the difference between beauty and ugliness was a matter of class.
The bourgeoisie thought that manure stunk, but the workers thought it smelled wonderful because it could be used as fertilizer to produce grain.
This was called class feeling. This division of human nature by class reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao Zedong (
For many years the CCP's education and political movements to create a better society actually repressed the kindness in human nature and encouraged its malicious side.
The CCP's political movements during the early days of the "liberation" trumpeted forsaking family loyalty for politics.
In the end, this tore apart the affection for family inherent in human nature.
The commonly sung songs telling people that chairman Mao was more important than their families led children to attack their parents and spouses to accuse each another.
At first, it was specifically directed at land owners, the rich, reactionaries, bad elements and rightists.
During the Cultural Revolution, however, mistreatment was expanded to target all levels of society in an effort to wipe out all "bad elements."
Before doctors saw to patients, they checked the patient's class status before deciding whether to see them and what medicine to prescribe.
Because the CCP advocated a revolutionary humanity instead of a humanity unconcerned with class divisions, universal love was criticized as a bourgeoisie slogan.
The mistreatment during the Cultural Revolution was imaginative and cruel. Many people were forced to parade through the streets wearing dunce hats and with placards listing their "crimes" hanging around their necks.
Professors were ordered to crawl on all fours across the canteen floor and praise Mao before being allowed to eat.
The foundation for all this cruelty was provided by the "little red book," Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
Mao said there was reason behind all hate in the world.
He was right, the Red Guard were the cruelest to enemies.
Party politics in Taiwan is becoming vicious, too.
Much in the way that rules in China were compromised and the high ideals from the Constitution of the People's Republic of China were not followed in practice, Taiwan could end up ignoring its own noble ideals of democracy.
Taiwan is a functioning democracy and should be proud of its accomplishments, but the transfer of government power after the last elections -- part of any successful democracy -- is being treated as a process that can be manipulated.
Paul Lin is a political commentator in Taipei.
Translated by Marc Langer and Daniel Cheng
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