China is on the path to greatness, or so it is claimed by many. However, others are anxious about China’s rise and words like “great” are not wont to escape their lips. No matter the light in which people view China, the consensus — whether grudging or gushing — is that China appears to be on the right track, at least economically.
Lost among the statistics, the snapshots of glass-skinned towers and the occasional balancing report about China’s poor losing out in this new economy, is the fact that China’s present road — a blend of state capitalism and authoritarianism — is not the one outlined by a trio of revered Chinese thinkers: Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), Lu Xun (魯迅) and Bo Yang (柏楊).
Known to Chinese as the father of democracy and the father of nationalism, the US-educated Sun was installed as president of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1912, governing within his political philosophy, the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy and the people’s welfare or livelihood. The Three Principles of the People traces its roots to US Civil War-era president Abraham Lincoln’s belief in a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
However, Sun’s egalitarian dream proved to be just that. He died in 1925 and his Nationalists did not introduce universal suffrage until 1996 — in Taiwan.
Though considered a saint in China, Sun’s petition for a parliament has been rendered in Marxist terms. Today, at his pilgrimage-site mausoleum in Nanjing, you won’t find the word democracy on a single government placard. In 2006, the Communist Party declared that China would not be ready for democracy for another 100 years.
Sun’s chief criticism of Chinese society was that it was “built upon a foundation of sand,” meaning there was no rule of law, no checks and balances and citizens had no fundamental freedoms or bona fide legal recourse. In China, life remains that way.
Lu Xun is considered China’s finest modern-era writer and social critic, his works widely consumed by the public. As a young man, Lu was deeply affected by his father’s death and the fact that traditional Chinese medicine failed to help him. In 1902, he set off for Japan to study Western medicine, but returned believing what China needed most was a cure for the illness afflicting its collective soul, something he aimed to treat via his writing.
Lu’s most popular tale, The True Story of Ah-Q, is about an ignorant and hostile peasant who stumbles from one disaster to another convinced that each of his catastrophes is a conquest. Ah-Q embodies all that is wrong with Chinese society, Lu tells the reader. He “used to be better off.” He has “a very high opinion of himself and look(s) down on all (his fellow villagers).”
He views anything different as “ridiculous” and employs “cunning devices to get even with his enemies.” To gain credibility, Ah-Q joins the revolution, but is quickly caught and executed. The villagers are dissatisfied because Ah-Q is shot, and shooting is not as fine a spectacle as decapitation. Everyone agrees Ah-Q was guilty, however, for if he weren’t guilty, how could he have been shot?
Many years later writer Bo Yang took up Lu’s cause. In 1985, after serving nine years in prison in Taiwan for purportedly having been a Communist sympathizer, Bo wrote a book that would sell millions: The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis of Chinese Culture. The tract is a fascinating, if scathing, appraisal of the Chinese world’s shortcomings. Bo accuses his compatriots of suffering from an Ah-Q mentality. He argued that they must abandon traditional culture, education and practices, especially Confucian values. They must embrace unreservedly Western culture, education and practices, especially Enlightenment values.
However, Bo, who came to head Amnesty International’s Taiwan chapter, theorized that the genuine adoption of Western values was doubtless impossible; that China believes it is Westernizing when it stockpiles weapons and builds shopping plazas.
Unfortunately, many in the West believe this, too. However, becoming worthy of taking one’s rightful place as a nation among nations is about much more than cash flow and production. It hinges on mindset and the shift that this triumvirate of intellectuals advocated has never transpired.
The ideas espoused by Sun, Lu and Bo provide the blueprint to which China must adhere if it ever hopes to become a truly great nation. Its present transformation is totally unrelated.
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US