On Jan. 18, Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) gave a lecture to college students at the Fourth Congressional Youth Experience Camp.
Asked who would be the most suitable Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate in the 2024 presidential election, Jaw, brimming with confidence, said: “Me, of course. In terms of education, ability, integrity, vision and manner, even if you put me next to [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平), I would be his equal.”
Jaw’s remarks reveal his ignorance of China, as well as his headstrong character.
Jaw said he is no less educated than Xi, who — according to Li Rui’s Oral History (李銳口述往事) by Li Rui (李銳), a personal secretary to Mao Zedong (毛澤東) — only has an elementary-school education.
Judging by his age, Xi might have graduated from junior-high school between 1966 and 1968 — the first three years of China’s Cultural Revolution.
Official documents say that Xi’s highest qualification is a doctorate in law from Tsinghua University in Beijing, but he belongs to the “worker-peasant-soldier student” generation.
During the Cultural Revolution, junior or senior-high school graduates were sent to the countryside, where they could no longer pursue their studies.
One of my Chinese friends, who went to junior-high school at the time, knew nothing about Pythagoras’ theorem, which is normally taught in junior-high school, let alone trigonometry.
When the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, China’s National College Entrance Examination was abolished. Not until 1970 did universities start enrolling students again, through a combination of recommendation by the masses, approval by leaders and review by the schools.
These students came to be known as worker-peasant-soldier students, based on their own status or that of their families. The system only considered students’ class and disregarded their level of education.
My Chinese friend’s parents were veteran revolutionaries, and she joined the military. She studied medicine at Third Army Medical University in Chongqing.
From our interactions, I doubted that she knew more than 30 words of English, but she was a physician in a well-known tertiary hospital in Beijing.
When she was preparing to retire, she needed to introduce herself in English to get promoted and receive a better pension, so I helped her by writing her script.
I do not mean to belittle this Chinese doctor — it was simply a tragic reality of those times and Chinese society.
Xi sadly represents this generation. He and his peers are wielding power in China, threatening world peace.
By comparing himself with Xi, Jaw showed how much he respects the Chinese leader.
With such a poor understanding of China, combined with his “fighting” spirit, if Jaw really becomes president, it would be a tragedy for Taiwan and the world.
Yu Gung is a Taiwanese entrepreneur working in China.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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