China and change
Allow me to comment on Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) insightful opinion piece (“Think sanctions hurt China? Then you are stuck in politics,” April 8, page 9).
China appears to have been in Friedrich Hegel’s mind when he was saying that quantity changes quality. China is a massive human quantity, a tiny proportion of which is elite. The elite, if it gains power, can transform the whole. No matter how many ideological slogans the West may shout out to China, even with sanctions, China, with its quantity, need not budge much.
In his article, Ai does not expect the Chinese regime to collapse because of some doings by external forces. However, a regime change might occur in China because of an implosion.
According to famous Chinese novelist Jiang Rong (姜戎) the fate of a nation hangs on its culture, not its politics or economics.
China’s history seems to indicate that it can change only after it experiences trauma. Once a change is forced, China reverts to uniformity and rigidity and corruption among the powerful elite, which builds up resentment toward another implosion.
One can find the explanation in the Chinese character itself nurtured by its culture. If one uses colorful language, China is a colossal solipsist. It does not really care about what lies outside its borders as long as it is left alone.
There is a glaring contrast between China and the US. The latter must keep telling the world that it is No. 1 to believe in its raison d’etre, while the former is happy if it does not even have to address the world. The ideology/religion/moral agenda of China seems to be that of China’s absolute being.
A challenging question for contemporary China and the world is how to transform mainland China into a country where diverse cultural, ideological and political forces can vie peacefully to accommodate a governance structure that serves the whole, with a mandate from and responsibility for it.
Democracy is multivocal. Proof of democracy is the presence of a flexible structure that allows and appropriates diversity as exemplified by Taiwan’s experiences.
One could dare say that mainland China will have changed when it stops threatening Taiwan, releases Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang, frees all political prisoners and sheds its illusion that it has suzerainty over its small neighbors.
Throughout its long history, China produced remarkable humanitarian thought systems such as Taoism, Confucianism, and (Ch’an) Buddhism. It is sad to note that today’s mainland China seems to have thrown away its cultural legacy in the endorsement of mammonism, the cold interests of state power over and against human dignity and freedom, and the cultural and demographic genocide of Uighurs and other minority ethnic groups.
Yeomin Yoon, Professor, Seton Hall University
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