Since the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2017, the CCP began suppressing Western religious holidays, forbidding people from celebrating Christmas and trying to push Western religion out.
Over the past several years, many elementary schools in China in December start announcing slogans such as “Don’t forget the national humiliation at the hands of the Eight-Nation Alliance” and “Say ‘no’ to Western holidays, spread civilization from China, celebrate Chinese holidays,” calling on students to “celebrate Mao’s birthday, not Christ’s.”
Mao Zedong (毛澤東) was born on Dec. 26, the day after Christmas. The Chinese still celebrate the birthday of a man responsible for the deaths of millions of people, even after many years have elapsed since his demise.
Former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) is also regarded as having blood on his hands, albeit far less than Mao, and yet, with the exception of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), few people in Taiwan give Chiang’s birthday a second’s thought.
That Mao is still so revered today has much to do with the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who has set himself up as emperor, sees himself as Mao’s heir. This works on the Chinese, who have been brought up under a totalitarian system, but it would be seen as a joke by Taiwanese, who live in a democracy. Not even members of the KMT would dare brag about Chiang’s achievements.
The CCP is not only forbidding the celebration of “foreign holidays,” it is also prohibiting teachers in the classroom from elucidating the Western “pernicious doctrine” of the separation of powers.
The CCP seems to think that democratic politics are a necessary aspect of the West; apparently, it is unaware that there is a long tradition of advocates of authoritarian power in the West, with Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece and German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel closer to the present day. Karl Marx wrote of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and he was Western, as were Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, virtual bywords for totalitarian dictatorship. Communist thought itself originated in the West.
The CCP is so opposed to Western democracy, yet it is quite happy to adopt Western authoritarianism and communism.
The reason given for the arrest of Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) was that he threatened national security by colluding with foreign powers. Come on. The CCP is a past master at colluding with foreign powers. Had it not been for colluding with the Soviet Union it would never have come to power.
And who was at the head of the party when all this collusion was going on? None other than Uncle Mao, whose birthday the communists want little Chinese children to celebrate.
If Lai is guilty of treason, then so is the entire CCP.
Of course, the CCP’s opposition to Western education and Western democracy is based on its own avid interest in pushing Chinese nationalism.
How strange it is, then, that just as China is touting Chinese nationalism in all the hours that God sends, it will not allow Taiwan to have its own nation, and its own people are always trying to get out of the country and set themselves up in foreign countries. China is within the top three emigrating countries. Chinese say how much they love the motherland, but they are voting with their feet, moving to the US, Japan and Canada. They cannot wait to get out of Xi’s China.
Xi should first convince all of those Chinese compatriots to return from foreign climes before he talks about preventing Taiwanese from choosing their own independence.
Lee Hsiao-feng is a professor at National Taipei University of Education.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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