At the center of the traditional Chinese view of the universe are the concepts of yin and yang, the negative and positive principles intrinsic to all physical matter and controlling all events.
Their myriad manifestations — which include darkness and light, weakness and strength, liquid and solid — coexist but are all relative, indistinguishable and indefinable, blending and blurring into one another in a never-ending, paradoxical process.
It’s a compelling, almost instinctive view of the fundamental aspects of our existence. Black is white and white is black; “no” means “yes” and “yes” means “no.” Transformation, relativity, paradox and flux are the only constants. They always have been and always will be — in economics, international relations and politics, as in everything else.
Our dismal global recession started when the world economy descended from boom to bust before financial pundits could tell us to “sell.” On the diplomatic front, hope emerged of harmony among fractious Western allies when the president of France — traditionally home to anti-Anglo chauvinism but also the source of “the more things change, the more they remain the same” — cozied up to the US and the UK. Elsewhere, in a world troubled by both terror and the War on Terror, democratically elected governments have remained in place for years amid violence and chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan. And after eight years under George W. Bush, the US elected a president who could actually string a sentence together, and who happens to be black and white.
In Taiwan, a former defendant in criminal proceedings is president and the former president is a defendant in criminal proceedings. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — distinguished for bringing us corruption, despotism and the White Terror era — is in, and the Democratic Progressive Party — distinguished for bringing us enlightenment, democracy and Taiwanese nationalism — is out. The so-called “1992 consensus” has morphed from “consensus” to “non-consensus” and back again. Tourists from the People’s Republic of China are pouring into the Republic of China. There are now 108 direct charter flights a week flying between the two, and it has been agreed that there will soon be 270 regular, scheduled flights per week. And the floodgates of two-way investment look destined to disintegrate underneath the frothing, bubbling rapids of economic activity they seem set to unleash.
Meanwhile, the number of Chinese missiles directed at Taiwan has increased to such an extent that, as the CNN has reported, the Pentagon’s annual briefing to Congress, Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, stated that they were “shifting the balance of power in the region” and were intended “to pressure Taiwan into settling the cross-strait dispute in favor of China, though tensions between the two countries have receded over the past year.”
Against this twisting, turning, churning, fermenting backdrop, with the approach of last Thursday’s 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, we remembered that student movements have been at the heart of efforts to transform China, and that late chairman Mao Zedong (毛澤東) himself used them to pursue his own Utopian vision.
Mao’s most illustrious successor, former Chinese president Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), famously said that: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
In Taiwan, opponents of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) feared he was propelling the nation down a slippery slope toward Taiwanese independence, with fearsome, catastrophic consequences.
Now, opponents of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) fear he is propelling the nation down a slippery slope toward unification with China, with fearsome, catastrophic consequences.
“Floodgates” and “slippery slopes”: The thin ends of the proverbial wedge; the menacing-sounding media through which fear transforms one person’s strategy into another’s worst-case scenario.
And what explains all this? Yin and yang, obviously — as they explain everything.
Mark Rawson is a writer, translator and editor.
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