journalist and linguist who has lived and worked in China from 1944 to 1979,
during which he had worked closed with Mao/Zhu/Zhou and the subsequent the top Chinese leaders.
With his incredible experience and deep understanding about
both East and West, he talked about several topics that have been the center of
discussion among generations of Chinese.
First, the culture difference between East/China and
West/US. He pointed out that it is a WE culture for Chinese. When latest Chinese
party leader Xi Jinping coin phrased Chinese dream, it is a WE dream: the raise
of the Chinese nation and the Chinese people. But for West, it is a ME culture,
which is represented by the emphasis of basic human rights including freedom of
speech for each individual. The type of cultures are very different.
Second, what democracy really means and why it didn’t work
for Chinese. Every Chinese understands democracy means majority rule. What
Chinese didn’t understand is what to do with the minority. In fact, people
around the world who are new to western democracy all made the same mistakes:
the minority were oppressed or even prosecuted, when they should be protected.
What Chinese didn’t understand is that, there is no democracy if the minority’s
rights are not protected. Noam Chomsky once famously said: if we don’t believe
in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all“.
If we can’t protect everyone’s rights, then we can’t protect anyone’s rights.
It could be yours today and get taken away from you tomorrow.”
Third, the direction for China’s political reform. He
believes having multiple political parties will not help. Instead, the Chinese
communist party needs to reform itself if it wants to continue the country’s economy
reform. He commented that it is not democratic within Chinese communist party
itself. The party members are not allowed to speak of their mind. And there is
no way you can run free market economy with a despotic regime. At the end, he
added, if the party doesn’t reform itself, the people will reform it for them.
He also discussed about the some of the current events.
When asked about the trial of Bo Xilia and how he thought
about Bo. He replied that Bo has always been a bad egg. The interesting question
should be how someone like him could get so much power. In cultural revolution,
Bo was a member of the most brutal Red Guards Gang in Beijing, that were led by
the children of the many high ranking
party leaders who were oppressed at the time. Out there to revenge for their fathers,
they routinely capture, torture and even murder many people including children.
The truck they drove around had a big label that read: red terror. Bo was put
in jail for 4 years for his brutality. As for the trial early this year, he
commented that the majority of his crimes were not even mentioned. Take
corruption charge as an example, the figure they used, 20M Chinese Yuan, was a
joke. Each and every one of the 9
standing committee members have family fortune more than 100 Million US
dollars. During the trial, Bo talked but he kept his side of bargain and didn’t
mention anything he is not supposed to talk about.
When asked about the current event, “kill everyone in
China”. He replied Jimmy Kimmle is just a
comedian who is not skilled in
dealing with issues like this. His comment over the 6-year old’ words, which
couldn’t be approved by the parents, is inappropriate and offensive. But he is
not a racist. He should apologize, and he did. That should be the end of it.
he replied “Be yourself, because you can’t pretend to be something you are not
and be authentic. It is human nature
that people want to blend in. In china there are foreigners that behave more
Chinese than the Chinese, and in US there are foreigners that are more American
than the Americans“. He suggested that we should keep our roots while keep our
heart open to learn the new ideas and new cultures. Using his own marriage as
example, he told us that for 57 years, he and his Chinese wife, Yulin, never
had any problem in learning from each other. During the Cultural Revolution, he
was imprisoned for 10 years on charges of being an American spy. During that
time, many Chinese including many high rank party leaders, were selling out
their friends, colleagues and family members to protect themselves. But not his
wife. For 10 years, she had to raise their 4 children by herself. For 10 years,
she was labeled a traitor, sent to a labor camp, beaten up, and forced to
perform the hardest labor. For 10 years, she never yield to the pressure.
I found his talk is very inspirational and very insightful
although I disagree with him about the difference between WE culture and ME
culture. I don’t think they are just
different. The WE culture is fundamentally flawed, as just Chinese culture is
fundamentally flawed.
The core belief of the WE society favors group over
individual. What it doesn’t take into account is that a group is made up of
each individual. Without each ME, there is no WE. The very purpose of forming a
group is to help and protect each member, particularly the weak and the vulnerable.
It is why we are human. At the end of the day, we can’t protect everyone’s
basic human rights, we can’t protect anyone’s, because you can have it one day
and get it taken away from you the next.
Looking from the outside, Chinese society is a WE society
that values group over individual, and demands each individual to sacrifice
him/herself for the common good of WE. This “all for one and one for all” idea sounds very noble. But when it
comes to decide who should be one be sacrificed for “all”, it becomes a real
life Hunger Games. It is the weak and the poor become the victims of the game
of survival. It became particularly
obvious with the CCP’s way of running China, which gives the top party leaders
unlimited power to do anything for their personal gain all in the name of the
common good of WE. A society like China
is the really the ultimate ME society except the ME is reserved for the
powerful few. This pretentious WE is
nothing more than the camouflage used by the tyrannical dictators to hide their
own agenda. This lopsided WE directly lead to the biggest flaw of Chinese
civilization: it is a culture that has no holding power to its members
including the rulers. It is a culture that produces the most traitors. It is the very reason China could not make
forward progress for 2000 years. Without a major change, I don’t see China has
any chance to live up to its full potential.
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