Fri, Sep 09, 2011 page8

• Choosing the right path for China

  • By Troy Parfitt
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  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.
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