Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China
I came across some very sad and troubling pictures by Chinese photographer Lu Guang (卢广) on the price for environmental damage in China. The environmental is not an abstract issue in China, it is poisoning and killing the Chinese people. It is an equal opportunity killer that does not discriminate between the powerful and the powerless - except its simply bad for everyone in an affluent area and disastrous for everyone in the poorer areas. Which is why things must and I am convinced it will change for the better. Why do I think so? The local Party Secretaries, county chiefs and bureaucrats themselves live there and they have children too (even if they can be shipped off to cleaner places or overseas). And here is something that even absolute-power can only go so far. Secondly, official inaction (on top of official abuse and corruption that created the mess to start with) simply creates a powderkeg of resentment and trouble. Thirdly, the Chinese government knows thats not what they want. No matter how profitable, this is now officially something to be ashamed of and not something to play victim or be defensive about. This is the big difference with India (right now) and China (from 5-10 years ago).
Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China
Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China
Monday, October 26, 2009
Key issues about the world according to Lee Kuan Yew
Lee Kuan Yew is a great man and one of my heroes since I was old enough to discuss news and current affairs with my late-father who held him in high regard as well. In fact, there is a family story that during my grandfather's funeral back in 1960, when the time came to place the headstone to his grave, my great-grandmother (a very pious and spiritual woman - but who did not read newspapers - and who died in 1970 age 80 ) told everyone to wait. Why they asked? She simply said she had a feeling that a great person would be passing by. Who? No idea. So everybody waited no knowing what would happen next. And then she gave the signal to go ahead to place the headstone. At that very moment, Lee Kuan Yew's motorcade drove past the cemetary. Then, he was only 37 years old and one year into being Chief Minister of Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew has his critics and yes, he has his flaws. But as Henry Kissenger once said, whatever one's view of him - good or bad - one has to listen to him because you always learn something from him. My own take is that he is a pragmatist so, in fact, as far as he is concerned much of the criticisms about him are irrelevant. He is not a romantic so he has no yearning for his ideas or his actions to be perfect. He is not a populist or revolutionary so he is not always looking for an opponent or strawman to knockdown. He is not after money otherwise he would be a failure on that count. He knows there is a price to pay for everything, so everything considered whatever he has achieved is more lasting and significant than the costs for achieving it. This is such a simple notion but one that is very hard to apply unless one has a clear understanding. He is obsessed above-all with delivering what he feels to be necessary for his passion - Singapore - so he has no qualms about his methods (unless he feels it was not working).
Which brings me to something else my father always tells me. He says everytime a new US President comes into office, not long after that he would see Lee Kuan Yew to get advise and learn about the world. So this week, Lee Kuan Yew is in town and looks like he will be meeting everyone there is to meet in the Obama Administration, including the President himself this coming Thursday.
So which is why last weekend, I get to watch him interviewed by Charlie Rose (one of the few smart and serious TV journlist left in American TV - but then, he is on PBS the high quality public TV channel). Even at age 86, I hear a towering intellect giving an astute reading of the world with the mind of a strategist. This is too good not to share.
His life-long experience of understanding politics and world statesmanship lent him a clear mind to discerne short-term noise and distractions from the fundamental strategic issues. Every one of his statements made a point; there was no political non-answers. He recalls his statistics carefully and not - as it is tempting for many public figures to do so - make them up to make a point. I appreciate listening to someone who observes the world in order to learn and not to "prove or disprove" some pre-conceived position.
Put simply, he is in a class of his own.
Please enjoy (this is part 1 out of 6).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNhcOwhpR1E
Lee Kuan Yew has his critics and yes, he has his flaws. But as Henry Kissenger once said, whatever one's view of him - good or bad - one has to listen to him because you always learn something from him. My own take is that he is a pragmatist so, in fact, as far as he is concerned much of the criticisms about him are irrelevant. He is not a romantic so he has no yearning for his ideas or his actions to be perfect. He is not a populist or revolutionary so he is not always looking for an opponent or strawman to knockdown. He is not after money otherwise he would be a failure on that count. He knows there is a price to pay for everything, so everything considered whatever he has achieved is more lasting and significant than the costs for achieving it. This is such a simple notion but one that is very hard to apply unless one has a clear understanding. He is obsessed above-all with delivering what he feels to be necessary for his passion - Singapore - so he has no qualms about his methods (unless he feels it was not working).
Which brings me to something else my father always tells me. He says everytime a new US President comes into office, not long after that he would see Lee Kuan Yew to get advise and learn about the world. So this week, Lee Kuan Yew is in town and looks like he will be meeting everyone there is to meet in the Obama Administration, including the President himself this coming Thursday.
So which is why last weekend, I get to watch him interviewed by Charlie Rose (one of the few smart and serious TV journlist left in American TV - but then, he is on PBS the high quality public TV channel). Even at age 86, I hear a towering intellect giving an astute reading of the world with the mind of a strategist. This is too good not to share.
His life-long experience of understanding politics and world statesmanship lent him a clear mind to discerne short-term noise and distractions from the fundamental strategic issues. Every one of his statements made a point; there was no political non-answers. He recalls his statistics carefully and not - as it is tempting for many public figures to do so - make them up to make a point. I appreciate listening to someone who observes the world in order to learn and not to "prove or disprove" some pre-conceived position.
Put simply, he is in a class of his own.
Please enjoy (this is part 1 out of 6).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNhcOwhpR1E
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
10 Forecasts for 10 Years Out
Let me start a new annual tradition to present 10 projections about 10 years in the future.
October 20, 2019.
1. The biggest source of anxiety in the whole world is bewilderment at how quickly the world is changing all around everyone. Bewilderment and feeling disconnected from the future of the world becomes the "mother-of-all-fears" that show itself in more extremist activities rooted in nationalism, religion and economic grievances.
2. Action against climate-change becomes a money-spinner, vote winner and source of national pride. The public came around to realise that those who pollute stays poor and governments also learnt that they always gets blamed for poor environment that leave their people sick. The biggest new boom industry is "Clear Industries" which involves scrubbing and filtering technology to produce clean water and clean air. And the winner in this turn-around game (so far) is ... China.
3. The world is in a new financial crisis driven by bursting of an economic bubble in China after 10 years of loans growth, real estate boom and unfettered investment. The economies of the US, Europe and Japan are not strong enough to compensate, while most of the rest of the developing world is, by now, wrapped in reliance on the Chinese economy. Chinese youths - reared on a diet of "China-never-makes-a-mistake", being unfamiliar with self-reflection and coping with disappointments - behaves in volatile and dangerous ways increasing regional tensions. China responds with policial reforms but finds it hard to manage expectations.
4. The biggest source of social and regional instability comes from environmental degradation especially lack of access to water. Tensions breakout into violence and wars in Africa, Middle-east, Indian-subcontinent, Central Asia and within China amongst people who are trapped by poverty or national borders from shifting life sustaining resources.
5. India promises but sputters as age old divisions (and sheer numbers of population growth) stayed ahead of growth. Intense dislocation and "bewilderment" within its massive, under-educated and traditionally conservative population creates a volatile domestic and international situation with politically motivated clashes with China. Indian politicians vie to become the new global spoilers as the standard bearer for the "have-nots" against the global economy which China and the US champions.
6. Iran - the ancient civiliation of Persia - flowers after reformist factions takes power after overthrowing the reactionary elements. The economy is in shambles but politically, together with Iraq, it tries to be a model of "The Shiite Way" of a modern Islamic nation that combines piety, traditions with modern progress. Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia slides towards anarchy as the state falters in botched political successions.
7. America gets to a point of reckoning if it will retain its pre-eminent military power which it can no longer afford, or reorientate to rebuild its economy to cope with an ageing population, global competition and gross inefficiencies (despite the best of efforts in 8 years of the Obama Presidency) in its healthcare, infrastructure, education and governance systems.
8. Thailand starts to remind people of the Philippines. Philippines begins to remind people of Zimbabwe. Malaysia becomes more like Thailand with a succession of weak governments, stronger civil society and resulting in a lost generation. Vietnam is the stunner which trumps them all with the most vibrant economy in Southeast Asia. Indonesia thrives on diversity and finally show its promise but also rearing its heads with regional ambition. Singapore roars ahead and settles into a comfort zone like Danmark. Brunei has trouble with over-population which nudges closer and closer to 1m. Sri Lanka becomes the economic dark horse and tries to join ASEAN.
9. Mass and conspicuous consumption becomes unfashionable as the average age of the "haves" in the world gets older (but the world's "have nots" gets younger). Shopping malls become a place associated with the lower classes. Instead, people spend more time and money on creative arts, health, experiences and investing in human relationships. The health, vacation and education industry keeps booming. The quest for authenticity in experiences of nature creates stress on world's cultural and natural heritage leading to persistent tension between the "haves" and "have-nots".
10. Brazil finally becomes the global power it always had the potential to be but never did. Vast new energy resources, unrivalled prowess in farming, prolonged political stability and (finally) social reforms and stronger rule of law creates a new force in the world equal to Japan and EU and below that of only US and China. The main driver for Brazil's rise came from Brazil's strategic economic partnership with China (also Australia) where Brazil is both a source of raw materials and a new 400m people market for China in Latin America.
October 20, 2019.
1. The biggest source of anxiety in the whole world is bewilderment at how quickly the world is changing all around everyone. Bewilderment and feeling disconnected from the future of the world becomes the "mother-of-all-fears" that show itself in more extremist activities rooted in nationalism, religion and economic grievances.
2. Action against climate-change becomes a money-spinner, vote winner and source of national pride. The public came around to realise that those who pollute stays poor and governments also learnt that they always gets blamed for poor environment that leave their people sick. The biggest new boom industry is "Clear Industries" which involves scrubbing and filtering technology to produce clean water and clean air. And the winner in this turn-around game (so far) is ... China.
3. The world is in a new financial crisis driven by bursting of an economic bubble in China after 10 years of loans growth, real estate boom and unfettered investment. The economies of the US, Europe and Japan are not strong enough to compensate, while most of the rest of the developing world is, by now, wrapped in reliance on the Chinese economy. Chinese youths - reared on a diet of "China-never-makes-a-mistake", being unfamiliar with self-reflection and coping with disappointments - behaves in volatile and dangerous ways increasing regional tensions. China responds with policial reforms but finds it hard to manage expectations.
4. The biggest source of social and regional instability comes from environmental degradation especially lack of access to water. Tensions breakout into violence and wars in Africa, Middle-east, Indian-subcontinent, Central Asia and within China amongst people who are trapped by poverty or national borders from shifting life sustaining resources.
5. India promises but sputters as age old divisions (and sheer numbers of population growth) stayed ahead of growth. Intense dislocation and "bewilderment" within its massive, under-educated and traditionally conservative population creates a volatile domestic and international situation with politically motivated clashes with China. Indian politicians vie to become the new global spoilers as the standard bearer for the "have-nots" against the global economy which China and the US champions.
6. Iran - the ancient civiliation of Persia - flowers after reformist factions takes power after overthrowing the reactionary elements. The economy is in shambles but politically, together with Iraq, it tries to be a model of "The Shiite Way" of a modern Islamic nation that combines piety, traditions with modern progress. Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia slides towards anarchy as the state falters in botched political successions.
7. America gets to a point of reckoning if it will retain its pre-eminent military power which it can no longer afford, or reorientate to rebuild its economy to cope with an ageing population, global competition and gross inefficiencies (despite the best of efforts in 8 years of the Obama Presidency) in its healthcare, infrastructure, education and governance systems.
8. Thailand starts to remind people of the Philippines. Philippines begins to remind people of Zimbabwe. Malaysia becomes more like Thailand with a succession of weak governments, stronger civil society and resulting in a lost generation. Vietnam is the stunner which trumps them all with the most vibrant economy in Southeast Asia. Indonesia thrives on diversity and finally show its promise but also rearing its heads with regional ambition. Singapore roars ahead and settles into a comfort zone like Danmark. Brunei has trouble with over-population which nudges closer and closer to 1m. Sri Lanka becomes the economic dark horse and tries to join ASEAN.
9. Mass and conspicuous consumption becomes unfashionable as the average age of the "haves" in the world gets older (but the world's "have nots" gets younger). Shopping malls become a place associated with the lower classes. Instead, people spend more time and money on creative arts, health, experiences and investing in human relationships. The health, vacation and education industry keeps booming. The quest for authenticity in experiences of nature creates stress on world's cultural and natural heritage leading to persistent tension between the "haves" and "have-nots".
10. Brazil finally becomes the global power it always had the potential to be but never did. Vast new energy resources, unrivalled prowess in farming, prolonged political stability and (finally) social reforms and stronger rule of law creates a new force in the world equal to Japan and EU and below that of only US and China. The main driver for Brazil's rise came from Brazil's strategic economic partnership with China (also Australia) where Brazil is both a source of raw materials and a new 400m people market for China in Latin America.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Chinese Renaissance Day
[Updated on 13 oct 2009]
Congratulations for celebrating the true spirit of Double-tenth at the Memorial to Dr. Sun Yet-sen. I remember visiting Dr Sun Yat-Sen and President Chiang Kai-Shek's memorials as a teenager. They both paid homage to the most tumultous era of Chinese history, but I do feel that Dr Sun's was way more authentic, truthful, less propagandistic but also (being older) more dated and shabby.
Seizing upon our recent discussions on important aniversaries in Chinese history.
I certainly hope for the day when the whole China can celebrate the Chinese revolution (with a small "r" and "Chinese" rather than "China") a non-political celebration of Chinese progress as a nation*, a people** and and a civilization***: one born of intense love for the country, idealism, modernisation and rejunevation - but also immense sacrifice, suffering, disappointment and injustice.
One should, in fact date the Chinese revolution at least from Emperor Guang Xu's 100-day Reforms in 1898. Or even before to the many modernisation-reform movements began on commercial, education, industry and military affairs for many decades before that often from sponteneous progressive personal initiatives. The 1911 revolution itself followed many repeated but unsuccessful attempts to establish the Republic. The new political order did not survive but the revolution continued from a hundred blooms: some patriotic, some democratic, some nationalistic, some regionalistic, some militaristic but mostly opportunitistic, autocratic, egoistic and kleptocratic.
Also, one should remember that the Chinese revolution is not one taking place solely within China. Especially in the earlier days, the Chinese overseas diaspora was a bastion of progressive politics and activism. They offered funding, freedom for political and intellectual debate and safe haven for intellectuals and officials under persecution.
In China, there were countless false starts and failed attempts at a national government in the years that followed, including many led by Dr. Sun himself who died a frustrated and disapppointed man.
Dr Sun died but the Chinese revolution continued. The KMT inheriting Dr. Sun's moral prestige but more importantly established a relatively-more-capable military force gradually consolidated a national government with power over China. Although even as it unified China it created new fractures; even as China came together it was undermined in other ways; it came to embody the best but also the worst about Chinese. But through it all, the national yearning for progress and unity grew.
Through the 8 years Anti-Japanese war, the Chinese revolution rode on patriotism and nationalism as a strong unifying force. But the upheaval also catalysed the CCP victory over KMT in the mainland in 1949. As for "New China": why 1949? Why not 1959 when Tibet was taken into the fold? Or perhaps it is still an unfinished business with Taiwan..hence there is not a complete "New China" yet?
[Digressing a bit: why was the Anti-Japanese War counted from 7-7-1937? Should we in fact count from 18-9-1931 in Manchuria? or to 1919 over Japanese moves Shantung and Manchuria? or 1895 from the Sino-Japanese War which led to losing Korea and Taiwan?].
Under my definition, the Chinese revolution in fact continued - and often tragically - after 1949. There were important progress to celebrate under CCP, cheifly with the 1978/79 opening up and reform policy - because it was a leapforward in Chinese economic progress. More problematic but no less significant perhaps were the land reforms in the early years of the PRC which was a revolution on China's age old feudal class system. On hindsight, the democratisation movement in Taiwan in the 1980s-90s and continuing today deserves credit and historical adulation. After all, it was a historic leap forward in Chinese political rights. The return of Hong Kong and Macau in 1997/1999 are also important chapters to close a 150 years old chapter that began with the Opium Wars.
It has taken more than a century for the Chinese revolution to mature - from the constant need for violent rapture from its reactionary forces - into a national consensus for social and economic progress and modernisation. That is a good thing. The real capstone would be progress towards rule of law, civil and political rights and democracy in the mainland. I hope that to result from a benigned and enlightened evolution and not a revolution.
Here is what I believe. It is the mission for every Chinese to live up to the best ideals of Chinese revolution and through our actions redeem the sacrifice of the millions of often young people whose misfortune was merely to be caught up in history.
To recognize and celebrate the Chinese journey of national and cultural renaissance? To me, there one best date: May-Fourth. Day of Chinese Renaissance.
* nation = an abstract sense of belonging which can comprise of more than one state or political entity;
** people = a collective national identification regardless of ethnicity, nationality or religion;
*** civilization = an identification with Chinese historical, linguistic and cultural heritage.
Congratulations for celebrating the true spirit of Double-tenth at the Memorial to Dr. Sun Yet-sen. I remember visiting Dr Sun Yat-Sen and President Chiang Kai-Shek's memorials as a teenager. They both paid homage to the most tumultous era of Chinese history, but I do feel that Dr Sun's was way more authentic, truthful, less propagandistic but also (being older) more dated and shabby.
Seizing upon our recent discussions on important aniversaries in Chinese history.
I certainly hope for the day when the whole China can celebrate the Chinese revolution (with a small "r" and "Chinese" rather than "China") a non-political celebration of Chinese progress as a nation*, a people** and and a civilization***: one born of intense love for the country, idealism, modernisation and rejunevation - but also immense sacrifice, suffering, disappointment and injustice.
One should, in fact date the Chinese revolution at least from Emperor Guang Xu's 100-day Reforms in 1898. Or even before to the many modernisation-reform movements began on commercial, education, industry and military affairs for many decades before that often from sponteneous progressive personal initiatives. The 1911 revolution itself followed many repeated but unsuccessful attempts to establish the Republic. The new political order did not survive but the revolution continued from a hundred blooms: some patriotic, some democratic, some nationalistic, some regionalistic, some militaristic but mostly opportunitistic, autocratic, egoistic and kleptocratic.
Also, one should remember that the Chinese revolution is not one taking place solely within China. Especially in the earlier days, the Chinese overseas diaspora was a bastion of progressive politics and activism. They offered funding, freedom for political and intellectual debate and safe haven for intellectuals and officials under persecution.
In China, there were countless false starts and failed attempts at a national government in the years that followed, including many led by Dr. Sun himself who died a frustrated and disapppointed man.
Dr Sun died but the Chinese revolution continued. The KMT inheriting Dr. Sun's moral prestige but more importantly established a relatively-more-capable military force gradually consolidated a national government with power over China. Although even as it unified China it created new fractures; even as China came together it was undermined in other ways; it came to embody the best but also the worst about Chinese. But through it all, the national yearning for progress and unity grew.
Through the 8 years Anti-Japanese war, the Chinese revolution rode on patriotism and nationalism as a strong unifying force. But the upheaval also catalysed the CCP victory over KMT in the mainland in 1949. As for "New China": why 1949? Why not 1959 when Tibet was taken into the fold? Or perhaps it is still an unfinished business with Taiwan..hence there is not a complete "New China" yet?
[Digressing a bit: why was the Anti-Japanese War counted from 7-7-1937? Should we in fact count from 18-9-1931 in Manchuria? or to 1919 over Japanese moves Shantung and Manchuria? or 1895 from the Sino-Japanese War which led to losing Korea and Taiwan?].
Under my definition, the Chinese revolution in fact continued - and often tragically - after 1949. There were important progress to celebrate under CCP, cheifly with the 1978/79 opening up and reform policy - because it was a leapforward in Chinese economic progress. More problematic but no less significant perhaps were the land reforms in the early years of the PRC which was a revolution on China's age old feudal class system. On hindsight, the democratisation movement in Taiwan in the 1980s-90s and continuing today deserves credit and historical adulation. After all, it was a historic leap forward in Chinese political rights. The return of Hong Kong and Macau in 1997/1999 are also important chapters to close a 150 years old chapter that began with the Opium Wars.
It has taken more than a century for the Chinese revolution to mature - from the constant need for violent rapture from its reactionary forces - into a national consensus for social and economic progress and modernisation. That is a good thing. The real capstone would be progress towards rule of law, civil and political rights and democracy in the mainland. I hope that to result from a benigned and enlightened evolution and not a revolution.
Here is what I believe. It is the mission for every Chinese to live up to the best ideals of Chinese revolution and through our actions redeem the sacrifice of the millions of often young people whose misfortune was merely to be caught up in history.
To recognize and celebrate the Chinese journey of national and cultural renaissance? To me, there one best date: May-Fourth. Day of Chinese Renaissance.
* nation = an abstract sense of belonging which can comprise of more than one state or political entity;
** people = a collective national identification regardless of ethnicity, nationality or religion;
*** civilization = an identification with Chinese historical, linguistic and cultural heritage.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
98th Double 10 Anniversary
Taipei has decided to cancel the anniversary celebration after the recent disastrous typhoon that killed couple of hundred peoples.
Unlike 9 days ago where my family and I were watching the National Parade and fireworks before the TV screen, I decided to take them out to visit Sun Yat Sen Muzium.
The history of Republican China matters more than the New China. From a subject of the Qing Dysnaty to a citizen of the Republic, never mind that it was more conceptual than real, the fact of the matter was the Chinese stepped into an era that demarcated itself from the imperial era.
Little is remembered that the Republican China at the inception was not run by the KMT and the flag hoisted in 1911 was different than what we know today.
Prior to 1949, before the era New China, there were epic historical event like the reawakening of May fourth movement and the heroic 8 years resistance against the Japanese agression and occupation.
Let's salute and pay respect to the many Chinese who gave their life for the Republic, whatever ideology that they may have, and many of them were simply young men and women who just wanted to have a nation free of domination, any form of domination both foreign and domestic, a country of peace, freedom, democracy and development, a Republic everyone owns and no one dominates.
Unlike 9 days ago where my family and I were watching the National Parade and fireworks before the TV screen, I decided to take them out to visit Sun Yat Sen Muzium.
The history of Republican China matters more than the New China. From a subject of the Qing Dysnaty to a citizen of the Republic, never mind that it was more conceptual than real, the fact of the matter was the Chinese stepped into an era that demarcated itself from the imperial era.
Little is remembered that the Republican China at the inception was not run by the KMT and the flag hoisted in 1911 was different than what we know today.
Prior to 1949, before the era New China, there were epic historical event like the reawakening of May fourth movement and the heroic 8 years resistance against the Japanese agression and occupation.
Let's salute and pay respect to the many Chinese who gave their life for the Republic, whatever ideology that they may have, and many of them were simply young men and women who just wanted to have a nation free of domination, any form of domination both foreign and domestic, a country of peace, freedom, democracy and development, a Republic everyone owns and no one dominates.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Kokang Incident
I had wanted to write something on this back in August. But most of which are out of the limelight now and I decided to give it a pass.
Suffice to say, with some googling, one can get to know about this tiny sino-burmese community and her history. The Chinese community particularly those in the mainland was very vocal when the Burmese junta went to eject the ruling force then and replaced it with its proxy.
What is of interest to me is how this once autonomous Burmese region is replicating everything China including the military parade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJA6JUVw6mM
Impressed? Puzzled?
Suffice to say, with some googling, one can get to know about this tiny sino-burmese community and her history. The Chinese community particularly those in the mainland was very vocal when the Burmese junta went to eject the ruling force then and replaced it with its proxy.
What is of interest to me is how this once autonomous Burmese region is replicating everything China including the military parade.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJA6JUVw6mM
Impressed? Puzzled?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Great Malaysian Nomination
Very difficult exercise.
I am trying to think hard if there is anyone who is inspiring and near flawless.
Most likely, it is a simple person, anonymous, who is kind hearted.
She maybe just a "kampong machik" or a "new village ah chim" who just want to raise a big and happy family; He maybe one who tend to the surao and educate the kampong kids or he maybe a shopkeeper who gave a small donation to the impoverished school so that the school kids have the chair or the school has a zink roof.
He maybe one who joined the MPAJA but was never recognised as a hero for fighting the Japanese. Instead he was subsequently gunned down during the emergency being member of the insurgency.
She maybe one who fought for a just society but detained without trial under the ISA.
History is written by the victors. Memory of the others is fading fast and forgotten. Since these name are forgotten, my nominee for the Great Malaysian go to the anonymous.
I am trying to think hard if there is anyone who is inspiring and near flawless.
Most likely, it is a simple person, anonymous, who is kind hearted.
She maybe just a "kampong machik" or a "new village ah chim" who just want to raise a big and happy family; He maybe one who tend to the surao and educate the kampong kids or he maybe a shopkeeper who gave a small donation to the impoverished school so that the school kids have the chair or the school has a zink roof.
He maybe one who joined the MPAJA but was never recognised as a hero for fighting the Japanese. Instead he was subsequently gunned down during the emergency being member of the insurgency.
She maybe one who fought for a just society but detained without trial under the ISA.
History is written by the victors. Memory of the others is fading fast and forgotten. Since these name are forgotten, my nominee for the Great Malaysian go to the anonymous.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Seige of Changchun 1948
Last week, I read this article on the New York Times and felt very emotional about the sufferings that the common people of Changchun went through. This should never be forgotten or censored out of history. We owe to the people who suffered that their lives, pains and deaths are not made meaningless.
Another reason for this blog to be banned in PRC.
CHANGCHUN, China — Unlike in other cities taken by the People’s Liberation Army during China’s civil war, there were no crowds to greet the victors as they made their triumphant march through the streets of this industrial city in the heart of Manchuria.
Even if relieved to learn that hostilities with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army had come to an end, most residents — the ones who had not died during the five-month siege — were simply too weak to go outdoors. “We were just lying in bed starving to death,” said Zhang Yinghua, now 86, as she recalled the famine that claimed the lives of her brother, her sister and most of her neighbors. “We couldn’t even crawl.”
In what China’s history books hail as one of the war’s decisive victories, Mao’s troops starved out the formidable Nationalist garrison that occupied Changchun with nary a shot fired. What the official story line does not reveal is that at least 160,000 civilians also died during the siege of the northeastern city, which lasted from June to October of 1948.
The People’s Republic of China basked in its 60th anniversary on Thursday with jaw-dropping pageantry, but there were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party’s rise to power — not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao’s drive to consolidate power.
“Changchun was like Hiroshima,” wrote Zhang Zhenglu, a lieutenant colonel in the People’s Liberation Army who documented the siege in "White Snow, Red Blood,” a book that was immediately banned after publication in 1989. “The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months.”
The 40,000 who survived did so by eating insects, leather belts and, in some cases, the bodies that littered the streets. By the time Communist troops took over the city, every leaf and blade of grass had been consumed during the final desperate months.
There are no monuments or markers recalling the events that decimated Changchun’s populace. Most young people have no knowledge of the darker aspects of the siege, and the survivors, now in their 70s and 80s, are reluctant to give voice to long-buried trauma. “I’ve always heard that Changchun was captured without bloodshed,” Li Jiaqi, a 17-year-old high school student, said as she sat on the steps in front of the city’s Liberation Memorial.
Chinese scholars have largely steered clear of the subject. Several historians, when asked about the episode, declined to be interviewed. Zhou Jiewen, a retired nuclear physicist in Changchun who has become a self-taught expert on the siege, explained that many key details, if widely disseminated, would tarnish the army’s reputation as defenders of the common man. Those include shooting civilians who tried to escape the city and ignoring the pleas of mothers holding aloft starving children on the other side of the barbed-wire barricades. “To cause so many civilians to die was a great blunder by the P.L.A. and tragedy unparalleled in the civil war,” Mr. Zhou said.
While history is often written by the victors, the Communist Party has never been shy about shaping the past to serve its central narrative. Textbooks portray the revolution as the inevitable outcome of a popular uprising; the patriotic films that have flooded television in recent months are not subtle in their glorification of Mao’s troops as munificent liberators. The unpleasant aspects of the revolution, including innocents caught in the cross-fire, are often omitted.
“The party has no use for objective history,” said Bao Pu, a Hong Kong publisher who infuriated party leaders last spring by printing the memoir of Zhao Ziyang, the deposed Communist Party leader who spent 15 years under house arrest after opposing the violent crackdown on democracy protesters in 1989. “The basic idea is that history can be rewritten and used as a tool of the state. But this requires constant censorship. And it has a destructive effect on society.”
Other unintended consequences of suppressing the truth are hard to quantify. Many Chinese, especially those who grew up during the tumultuous decades of war, famine and political persecution, carry psychic wounds that are seldom expressed, let alone healed.
Lung Ying-tai, a University of Hong Kong professor who studied the siege of Changchun, said nearly every elderly army officer she interviewed for her book about the civil war, “Big River, Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949,” broke down when recounting what he experienced. “It’s an unspeakable national trauma that has not once been opened up and gently treated for 60 years,” she said.
The book, which was published last month in Taiwan and promptly banned on the mainland, seeks to portray the horror of the civil war through the stories of those who survived. “There are not too many left who can clearly remember,” she said.
The elderly survivors who gather in Changchun’s Labor Park most days are not eager to tell their tales. But after some prompting, the details spill out. They describe babies too weak to cry, brides sold for a morsel of food and the milewide no man’s land where thousands perished in full view of troops under orders from Gen. Lin Biao to turn Changchun into a “dead city.”
In the first few months of the siege, food could be purchased, albeit at exorbitant prices. By the end of the summer, people were trading thick gold rings for a biscuit.
“At first we ate rotten sorghum, then corncobs and then the bark off the trees,” said Meng Qinghua, 85. “After a week of not eating you’d get very sleepy. Once that happened, you would start to die.”
The few airdrops of aid, delivered by American planes, were quickly gobbled up by Nationalist troops. When those stopped, the soldiers stole food from civilians at gunpoint. In the poorer quarters of the city, according to “White Snow, Red Blood,” 9 of 10 families were wiped out.
Although her family was relatively well off, Zhang Yinghua said there was nothing to be bought by the end of summer. They opened their pillows and consumed the corn husk filling. Later they boiled and ate leather.
Then 25, Ms. Zhang understood that swallowing such unpalatable matter was the only way to survive. “Every day we would eat a spoonful, just enough to maintain the flicker of life, but the children would not,” she said. When her 6-year-old sister and her 9-year-old brother finally died, her parents, barely able to stand, dragged their bodies to the street.
Some of those charged with enforcing the blockade have come to regret their participation. Wang Junru said he was 15 when the Communists forced him to join a militia for teenagers. Later, he joined 170,000 other soldiers ordered to drive back hungry civilians. “We were told they were the enemy and they had to die,” he said.
Whatever zeal he had for the revolution was extinguished by the 23 years he spent in a labor camp — punishment, he said, for insulting the relative of a party official when he was a college student. After his release, he spent the rest of his working life hauling logs.
Now 76 and embittered, he said young people should learn about what happened in Changchun — and during the rest of the civil war. “They only know the propaganda,” he said. “Maybe if they know how horrible war is, they can try to avoid it in the future.”
Another reason for this blog to be banned in PRC.
CHANGCHUN, China — Unlike in other cities taken by the People’s Liberation Army during China’s civil war, there were no crowds to greet the victors as they made their triumphant march through the streets of this industrial city in the heart of Manchuria.
Even if relieved to learn that hostilities with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army had come to an end, most residents — the ones who had not died during the five-month siege — were simply too weak to go outdoors. “We were just lying in bed starving to death,” said Zhang Yinghua, now 86, as she recalled the famine that claimed the lives of her brother, her sister and most of her neighbors. “We couldn’t even crawl.”
In what China’s history books hail as one of the war’s decisive victories, Mao’s troops starved out the formidable Nationalist garrison that occupied Changchun with nary a shot fired. What the official story line does not reveal is that at least 160,000 civilians also died during the siege of the northeastern city, which lasted from June to October of 1948.
The People’s Republic of China basked in its 60th anniversary on Thursday with jaw-dropping pageantry, but there were no solemn pauses for the lives lost during the Communist Party’s rise to power — not for the estimated tens of millions who died during the civil war, nor the millions of landlords, Nationalist sympathizers and other perceived enemies who were eradicated during Mao’s drive to consolidate power.
“Changchun was like Hiroshima,” wrote Zhang Zhenglu, a lieutenant colonel in the People’s Liberation Army who documented the siege in "White Snow, Red Blood,” a book that was immediately banned after publication in 1989. “The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months.”
The 40,000 who survived did so by eating insects, leather belts and, in some cases, the bodies that littered the streets. By the time Communist troops took over the city, every leaf and blade of grass had been consumed during the final desperate months.
There are no monuments or markers recalling the events that decimated Changchun’s populace. Most young people have no knowledge of the darker aspects of the siege, and the survivors, now in their 70s and 80s, are reluctant to give voice to long-buried trauma. “I’ve always heard that Changchun was captured without bloodshed,” Li Jiaqi, a 17-year-old high school student, said as she sat on the steps in front of the city’s Liberation Memorial.
Chinese scholars have largely steered clear of the subject. Several historians, when asked about the episode, declined to be interviewed. Zhou Jiewen, a retired nuclear physicist in Changchun who has become a self-taught expert on the siege, explained that many key details, if widely disseminated, would tarnish the army’s reputation as defenders of the common man. Those include shooting civilians who tried to escape the city and ignoring the pleas of mothers holding aloft starving children on the other side of the barbed-wire barricades. “To cause so many civilians to die was a great blunder by the P.L.A. and tragedy unparalleled in the civil war,” Mr. Zhou said.
While history is often written by the victors, the Communist Party has never been shy about shaping the past to serve its central narrative. Textbooks portray the revolution as the inevitable outcome of a popular uprising; the patriotic films that have flooded television in recent months are not subtle in their glorification of Mao’s troops as munificent liberators. The unpleasant aspects of the revolution, including innocents caught in the cross-fire, are often omitted.
“The party has no use for objective history,” said Bao Pu, a Hong Kong publisher who infuriated party leaders last spring by printing the memoir of Zhao Ziyang, the deposed Communist Party leader who spent 15 years under house arrest after opposing the violent crackdown on democracy protesters in 1989. “The basic idea is that history can be rewritten and used as a tool of the state. But this requires constant censorship. And it has a destructive effect on society.”
Other unintended consequences of suppressing the truth are hard to quantify. Many Chinese, especially those who grew up during the tumultuous decades of war, famine and political persecution, carry psychic wounds that are seldom expressed, let alone healed.
Lung Ying-tai, a University of Hong Kong professor who studied the siege of Changchun, said nearly every elderly army officer she interviewed for her book about the civil war, “Big River, Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949,” broke down when recounting what he experienced. “It’s an unspeakable national trauma that has not once been opened up and gently treated for 60 years,” she said.
The book, which was published last month in Taiwan and promptly banned on the mainland, seeks to portray the horror of the civil war through the stories of those who survived. “There are not too many left who can clearly remember,” she said.
The elderly survivors who gather in Changchun’s Labor Park most days are not eager to tell their tales. But after some prompting, the details spill out. They describe babies too weak to cry, brides sold for a morsel of food and the milewide no man’s land where thousands perished in full view of troops under orders from Gen. Lin Biao to turn Changchun into a “dead city.”
In the first few months of the siege, food could be purchased, albeit at exorbitant prices. By the end of the summer, people were trading thick gold rings for a biscuit.
“At first we ate rotten sorghum, then corncobs and then the bark off the trees,” said Meng Qinghua, 85. “After a week of not eating you’d get very sleepy. Once that happened, you would start to die.”
The few airdrops of aid, delivered by American planes, were quickly gobbled up by Nationalist troops. When those stopped, the soldiers stole food from civilians at gunpoint. In the poorer quarters of the city, according to “White Snow, Red Blood,” 9 of 10 families were wiped out.
Although her family was relatively well off, Zhang Yinghua said there was nothing to be bought by the end of summer. They opened their pillows and consumed the corn husk filling. Later they boiled and ate leather.
Then 25, Ms. Zhang understood that swallowing such unpalatable matter was the only way to survive. “Every day we would eat a spoonful, just enough to maintain the flicker of life, but the children would not,” she said. When her 6-year-old sister and her 9-year-old brother finally died, her parents, barely able to stand, dragged their bodies to the street.
Some of those charged with enforcing the blockade have come to regret their participation. Wang Junru said he was 15 when the Communists forced him to join a militia for teenagers. Later, he joined 170,000 other soldiers ordered to drive back hungry civilians. “We were told they were the enemy and they had to die,” he said.
Whatever zeal he had for the revolution was extinguished by the 23 years he spent in a labor camp — punishment, he said, for insulting the relative of a party official when he was a college student. After his release, he spent the rest of his working life hauling logs.
Now 76 and embittered, he said young people should learn about what happened in Changchun — and during the rest of the civil war. “They only know the propaganda,” he said. “Maybe if they know how horrible war is, they can try to avoid it in the future.”
Great Malaysians In History
Any interest to start a list of great Malaysians in history, as defined by persons (of all races) having outstanding contributions to humanity (wherever in the world)?
A Gentler and Kinder China
I read about Dr Wu maybe 10-15 years ago and had since had his name forgotten. This is rather embarrassing until you rekindled my faded memory.
1910 was a time Chinese wherever they were had no idea of citizenship. If they are born Chinese, they are Chinese nationals.
The call for service to the motherland who was so often besieged by war and conflict, poverty and disease then, was as patriotic as idealistic. Many forsaken their comfort, wealth to help their fellow countrymen even if they are so distant in the far north of China to a man who was born in the South Sea.
It is men and women like Dr Wu, who helped made China what it is today. In the words of Premier Wen who uttered the following words whilst paying respect to Mao Anqing, the eldest son of Mao Zedong who was killed in the Korea war: 中国现在强大了人民幸福了 (China is now strong and the peoples are happy).
These words sound too premature and not truly reflecting the reality. I am hoping one day that, like what Dr Wu’s great granddaughter has hoped, a stronger China can be a gentler China, a richer China can also be a kinder China. Only this China that blend hard- and soft power (钢柔并重) will be truly respected.
CCP administration should start looking at De (德) and Li (礼). This topic will warrant a long write up.
1910 was a time Chinese wherever they were had no idea of citizenship. If they are born Chinese, they are Chinese nationals.
The call for service to the motherland who was so often besieged by war and conflict, poverty and disease then, was as patriotic as idealistic. Many forsaken their comfort, wealth to help their fellow countrymen even if they are so distant in the far north of China to a man who was born in the South Sea.
It is men and women like Dr Wu, who helped made China what it is today. In the words of Premier Wen who uttered the following words whilst paying respect to Mao Anqing, the eldest son of Mao Zedong who was killed in the Korea war: 中国现在强大了人民幸福了 (China is now strong and the peoples are happy).
These words sound too premature and not truly reflecting the reality. I am hoping one day that, like what Dr Wu’s great granddaughter has hoped, a stronger China can be a gentler China, a richer China can also be a kinder China. Only this China that blend hard- and soft power (钢柔并重) will be truly respected.
CCP administration should start looking at De (德) and Li (礼). This topic will warrant a long write up.
Dr. Wu Lien Teh 伍连德
A Personal Account about a Malaysian-Chinese Doctor Honored for Fighting the Plague in Harbin in 1910. Dr Wu was born in Malaysia and was the first person of Chinese-descent to graduate in medicine from Cambridge University.From TIME Magazine Monday, Sep. 21, 2009 article: A Family Journey
By Ling Woo Liu
My great-grandfather, Dr. Wu Lien-Teh, was sitting down to dinner in Tianjin, a port city near Beijing, when he received a telegram. It was Dec. 19, 1910, and China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had alerted him to an outbreak of deadly pneumonic plague near the Russian border. A Cambridge-educated vice director of the Imperial Army Medical College, Wu, then just 31, was to report immediately to Beijing before heading to Harbin in China's remote northeast.
After a three-day train ride, he arrived in the frigid city to lead an international team of plague fighters. "As [we] entered the town, [we] could sense an air of tenseness and foreboding among the inhabitants," he wrote in his memoirs. "Everywhere there were guarded talks and whispers of fever, blood-spitting and sudden deaths, of corpses abandoned by roadsides and open fields." He introduced the practices of wearing face masks, cremating infected corpses and observing strict quarantine — methods used today to fight pandemics such as SARS and swine flu and even a small outbreak of pneumonic plague in Qinghai province in July. My great-grandfather implemented these measures despite -22ºF (-30ºC) temperatures, decrepit facilities, traditional preferences for land burials and — what he found most worrisome — the fatalism of local residents. His initiatives worked. Within four months, the outbreak was stamped out, but not before it took 60,000 lives.
In 1937, with Japan's full invasion of China, Wu returned to his native Malaysia and, since then, most of that side of my family has scattered to Singapore, Australia and the U.S., where I was born and raised. Yet last month, almost a full century later, I found myself making the same journey my great-grandfather made that winter. After flying to Beijing from my current home in Hong Kong, I headed to Harbin to attend the opening of the Wu Lien-teh Memorial Hospital and the 60th anniversary of another hospital affiliated with Harbin Medical University, one of several medical institutions founded by Wu. Some 700 government officials as well as doctors from China and abroad attended the elaborate, televised event. Walking around the Wu Lien-teh hospital and associated museum, and listening to trained docents shed light on my own family history, I was deeply moved. But I also wondered: Why, after so long, is China honoring my great-grandfather?
The answer, on reflection, lies as much with how China has changed since the People's Republic was founded 60 years ago as with Wu's vital work. Over the decades China has lurched from serial revolutions to social experiments to, now, the wildly successful pursuit of wealth. In the process, hundreds of millions of lives have been both upended and uplifted. My great-grandfather and his family were buffeted by some of those forces too (though with nowhere near the terrible consequences experienced by countless other Chinese). While his achievements have long been recognized by epidemiologists worldwide, they were largely forgotten in China after the communists took over. In the aftermath of "liberation," foreign links and laurels, once celebrated, became perilous liabilities. Wu's relatives, including my father, fled in 1949, in part because they feared that their overseas ties might hurt them in the new China.
Yet as the nation continually transforms itself, so does its idea of what is acceptable and what, indeed, constitutes a hero. At first, those touted as model citizens were chosen for their political pedigrees and correctness, and used as propaganda tools by the Communist Party. Of all the comrades who were lionized, a young soldier named Lei Feng, utterly loyal to the Party, came to epitomize the ultimate hero.
The Lei Fengs of yesterday are no longer relevant, however, to the vast majority of Chinese today. As China modernizes at speed, its icons are resembling those of other developed nations: athletes, pop stars, entrepreneurs. To some extent, that represents a normalization of Chinese society. But it also exposes, worry some of the country's leaders, a growing obsession with frivolity and materialism. Enter my great-grandfather — a nonpolitical, service-oriented figure with no history whatsoever with the Party and whose life's work transcends any ideology. "In today's society, people's outlook and values have big problems; people are focused on their individual interests and, frankly, on making money," said Gu Yingqi, China's former Vice Minister of Health, who attended the Harbin ceremonies. "Not only can we in the health field learn from Wu Lien-teh, everyone can learn from his international spirit and his care for others."
In Harbin, upon meeting me, one nursing student gushed, "She resembles Dr. Wu!" I didn't mind being recognized for being someone's relation rather than for being myself. Chinese authorities have resurrected my great-grandfather because they think his memory can help create a kinder, gentler society. That gives me profound happiness — and gives China, I believe, reason for hope.
Monday, October 5, 2009
大江大海1949 - A Book Recommendation
This Blog strongly recommend Ms Lung Ying-tai's (龍應台) latest book "大江大海1949" (Big River, Big Sea — Untold Stories of 1949). She wrote a famous letter to Hu Jintao, not too long ago, urging him to "please pursuade me with civility" (请您以文明说服我)
This book is a story of the "losers" of the Civil War. It is a personal story of the writer and the generation who experienced it.
It is a collection of stories from those who made it to Taiwan following the defeat of the Natonalist. They were those who were forcefully enscripted. They were those whose spouse, chidlren and parents who were left behind and never got to see other again. There were places that disappeared from the map. All these were the story, a personal story of a generation of Chinese, many of whom are still alive, that required to be written and understood.
Ms Long wrote a very moving book judging by the first chapter I have just completed reading. Her prose is beautiful and her thoughts is always humane.
Her intention of writing the book is simple. Without understanding, there is no empathy across the Strait and there is no reconciliation and the peace, if any, will be fragile, and surely, I must add, there is no basis for reunification.
It is unsual for me to write a book recommendation before I finish reading it. It is just so good that I must make it known here to share with you.
By the way, this book is apparently banned in the mainland. I am hoping that the mainland censor can see the big picture.
It is time for INCLUSIVENESS especially after 60 years.
Please see www.cw.com/tw/book/1949 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5DqjiDdEic&feature=channel for more information.
This book is a story of the "losers" of the Civil War. It is a personal story of the writer and the generation who experienced it.
It is a collection of stories from those who made it to Taiwan following the defeat of the Natonalist. They were those who were forcefully enscripted. They were those whose spouse, chidlren and parents who were left behind and never got to see other again. There were places that disappeared from the map. All these were the story, a personal story of a generation of Chinese, many of whom are still alive, that required to be written and understood.
Ms Long wrote a very moving book judging by the first chapter I have just completed reading. Her prose is beautiful and her thoughts is always humane.
Her intention of writing the book is simple. Without understanding, there is no empathy across the Strait and there is no reconciliation and the peace, if any, will be fragile, and surely, I must add, there is no basis for reunification.
It is unsual for me to write a book recommendation before I finish reading it. It is just so good that I must make it known here to share with you.
By the way, this book is apparently banned in the mainland. I am hoping that the mainland censor can see the big picture.
It is time for INCLUSIVENESS especially after 60 years.
Please see www.cw.com/tw/book/1949 or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5DqjiDdEic&feature=channel for more information.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
60 Years of the People's Republic
As I woke up to October 1st, 2009 this morning, I did so deeply conscious of the anniversary that is being celebrated in China, where huge celebrations are no doubt underway to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Bro, you made an astute point. If China points to 5000 years of splendid and uninterrupted history, why bother with 60 years? But then again, it is hard to escape historical programming of the Chinese logic - where anniversaries are always political rather than national. Successive emperors refer to the years of their reign as a way of marking time. Successive regimes use different symbolic characters "hau" (standards or "call-sign"?) as the manifestation of personal power over the state (later they come to symbolize the respective dynasties). In fact, in the ancient time, thats the first thing rebels change to signify taking charge. So the logic of celebrating the anniversary of the new government on 1 October 1949 is that of a political celebration rather than a national celebration. But in China, this logic is accepted. Likewise, it will also be a political celebration when Taiwan ROC (which sometimes still uses the anarchronistic min guo calendar) celebrates the Centennary of the 1911 revolution in 2 years time.
But I have no doubt in my mind that the real celebration is China's breathtaking renaissance as a nation. That is a celebration that takes place each and every day by hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese as they head for university, change a job, expecting to live to old age, make a phone call, experiencing a nation at peace, take a train, get on the internet, go shopping, go out when they feel like it, learn about the world, understanding the world of science not super-natural, think about a foreign holiday, having choices in life or simply fall in love or getting divorced; seemingly simple acts that represent social progress, economic prosperity and personal liberty that is unprecedented to the lao bai xing, the ordinary Chinese people.
Bro, you made an astute point. If China points to 5000 years of splendid and uninterrupted history, why bother with 60 years? But then again, it is hard to escape historical programming of the Chinese logic - where anniversaries are always political rather than national. Successive emperors refer to the years of their reign as a way of marking time. Successive regimes use different symbolic characters "hau" (standards or "call-sign"?) as the manifestation of personal power over the state (later they come to symbolize the respective dynasties). In fact, in the ancient time, thats the first thing rebels change to signify taking charge. So the logic of celebrating the anniversary of the new government on 1 October 1949 is that of a political celebration rather than a national celebration. But in China, this logic is accepted. Likewise, it will also be a political celebration when Taiwan ROC (which sometimes still uses the anarchronistic min guo calendar) celebrates the Centennary of the 1911 revolution in 2 years time.
But I have no doubt in my mind that the real celebration is China's breathtaking renaissance as a nation. That is a celebration that takes place each and every day by hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese as they head for university, change a job, expecting to live to old age, make a phone call, experiencing a nation at peace, take a train, get on the internet, go shopping, go out when they feel like it, learn about the world, understanding the world of science not super-natural, think about a foreign holiday, having choices in life or simply fall in love or getting divorced; seemingly simple acts that represent social progress, economic prosperity and personal liberty that is unprecedented to the lao bai xing, the ordinary Chinese people.
In my view, its is not usual for China to be a world power or to be wealthy and held in awe by the world. In fact, that has been the case throughout history for most of its existance. What is unusual is the level of progress that actually uplifted the lives of the Chinese people as individuals. So a bigger and more important celebration this year, in my view, is the 30th anniversary of the reform and opening up era.
While much of China's progress is new, and the uplifting of the common people is new but China's many demons are old and there are many. Life in China today is sometimes still fraught with injustice, corruption, ignorance, poverty and hardship, capricious officialdom and authoritarianism in its many guises. Everyday perils that bedevil the Chinese people like its many natural disasters since the dawn of history.
Yes, it is impressive for China to go through 200 years of industrial revolution within less than 50 years (1o years between 1870-1930, 5 years in the 1930s, 5 years in the 1950s and 30 years since 1979). But it would be far more impressive if it manages to compress the transformation from a medieval society to a modern society - what took Europe 400 years - within that same time. Well, the jury is still out. In many ways, China may need some time yet to be a modern nation. The process is still ongoing and, judging by the changes in the past 15 years, accelerating and mostly in a positive direction.
While much of China's progress is new, and the uplifting of the common people is new but China's many demons are old and there are many. Life in China today is sometimes still fraught with injustice, corruption, ignorance, poverty and hardship, capricious officialdom and authoritarianism in its many guises. Everyday perils that bedevil the Chinese people like its many natural disasters since the dawn of history.
Yes, it is impressive for China to go through 200 years of industrial revolution within less than 50 years (1o years between 1870-1930, 5 years in the 1930s, 5 years in the 1950s and 30 years since 1979). But it would be far more impressive if it manages to compress the transformation from a medieval society to a modern society - what took Europe 400 years - within that same time. Well, the jury is still out. In many ways, China may need some time yet to be a modern nation. The process is still ongoing and, judging by the changes in the past 15 years, accelerating and mostly in a positive direction.
Of course, much of the credit for the transformation goes to the ordinary Chinese people, whose resilience, tolerance for suffering and deprivation, resourcefulness, industry and intellect ... that are anything but ordinary.
However, the CCP can also claim a lot of credit for this because of - or in spite of - the changes it made to China in the first 30 years of its rule. One can never begrudge history. Without its yesterdays China may never have its today and what it can become tomorrow.
Perhaps it could be said that China would have succeeded anyhow, as unlikely as it may seem, under an Imperial Manchu government or as part of Imperial Japan or under any number of wanna-be overlords; or more likely - under KMT's Republic of China. It could even happen earlier or better or with less suffering and bloodshed. Equally, things could actually be even worse. China might not have risen by 2009 under any of those scenarios. Nothing come from nothing - so just may be - none of these will happen without the sufferings that the people have gone through. The real legacies even of mistakes may never be understood until many more years has passed. One will never know.
It is hard to imagine what it was like for the Chinese people in 1949. But I imagine that in people's hearts are wishes for "simple" things like: food, peace, functioning society, order, education and that their loved ones will be safe. One should not forget the fundamentals.
I imagine a set of parents and children being given a choice on September 30, 1949 that their grand-children and great-grand children will have a future like today - but the price is that everyone in that every one of them will have to go through the tragedies of the first 30 years. I suspect, exhausted by a fate their have no control over and out of self-sacrificing long term thinking they will probably grit their teeth and take it. But as practical minded Chinese, they would laugh at what people say about 2009 as fairy tales that could never happen.
There lies the irony of today's celebration. China has achieved the unimaginable but it still saddens me to think of how China had to sink even lower due to its own mistakes just to rise again.
The Man in the Glass – anonymous
When you get what you want in your struggles for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass,
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people might think you're a straight-shooting chum
And call you a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest
For he's with you clear to the end
And you've passed your most dangerous test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass,
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people might think you're a straight-shooting chum
And call you a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest
For he's with you clear to the end
And you've passed your most dangerous test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
[Note: I just wanted to find somewhere to keep this poem handy !!]
Happy Birthday PRC
Today marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of PRC! Happy Birthday!
It is debatable whether it is a birthday as such. It may be regarded as more of a winning party (in this case CCP) claiming power of a nation and not founding of a state. It is a day marking the official change of the government of the day.
Admittedly this was accomplished by a civil war and thus PRC could be seen as the second republic. With that we have Oct 1 for the 2nd republic and Oct 10 for the first republic.
Most Chinese may not be concerned with this but fellow Chinese living to the east of the Taiwan Strait and not at ease with the CCP may be.
I won't be too critical today because I am proud and have reasons to be happy of what had been achieved in the last 30 years following Deng's reform despite misgiving I have in many respects of CCP's governance.
Having said that, credit must be given to the Dengist CCP for having managed a 30 years of largely peaceful and increasing more developed China. Broadly between 1840s to 1970s, a period of 140 years, China was in a constant state of chaos (乱世) whether the cause was foreign or domestic. Only in the last 30 years that the real and meaningful changes are brought to the peoples.
Listening to the latest speech of the Premier on the eve of national day reception, I am optimistic that China by 2049 will be a different China. Wen spoke about the vision of a civilised, prosperous, harmonious, democratic, just China. A China that respects ethnic minority and religious practice. A China that is ruled by law.
China being a very large country, there are always signs pointing to different direction. Overall, I am pursuaded that CCP is on the right track. I say this with myself always warned of the fact that there was a generation of Chinese both overseas and mainland who were fooled by the words of Mao, and indeed of any politicians. This generation, if they still live, surely live with regret and anger on one side or they had already vanished.
I have chosen to tender the positive evidence. The recently concluded party meeting sees that the party leadership agreed on tougher party rules on party members requiring the officers to declare assets as well as disclosure of spouse and children's profession and etc. This is intended to
increase the CCP's transparency. Additionally and equally important is that the meeting has agreed to implement ways to increase intra-party democracy.
I was reading a piece of futurist predictionof what China will be in 2049, on the 100 anniversary.
Taiwan will be a federated state of China and the party in power is a splinter group from CCP.
These I regard as secondary. More importantly, by 2049 (I will be 76), what matter will be whether Chinese can live peacefully, comfortably, and with dignity.
By peacefully, I mean peace and safe from internal and external threats to life, liberty and property; comfortably, at the simplest level, I mean creature comfort in harmony with nature and keeping pace with technology; by dignity, I mean conducting oneself responsibly to and gaining not just acceptance but also respect and admiration from others.
Let's China not defined by history but by opportunity!
Happy National Day!
It is debatable whether it is a birthday as such. It may be regarded as more of a winning party (in this case CCP) claiming power of a nation and not founding of a state. It is a day marking the official change of the government of the day.
Admittedly this was accomplished by a civil war and thus PRC could be seen as the second republic. With that we have Oct 1 for the 2nd republic and Oct 10 for the first republic.
Most Chinese may not be concerned with this but fellow Chinese living to the east of the Taiwan Strait and not at ease with the CCP may be.
I won't be too critical today because I am proud and have reasons to be happy of what had been achieved in the last 30 years following Deng's reform despite misgiving I have in many respects of CCP's governance.
Having said that, credit must be given to the Dengist CCP for having managed a 30 years of largely peaceful and increasing more developed China. Broadly between 1840s to 1970s, a period of 140 years, China was in a constant state of chaos (乱世) whether the cause was foreign or domestic. Only in the last 30 years that the real and meaningful changes are brought to the peoples.
Listening to the latest speech of the Premier on the eve of national day reception, I am optimistic that China by 2049 will be a different China. Wen spoke about the vision of a civilised, prosperous, harmonious, democratic, just China. A China that respects ethnic minority and religious practice. A China that is ruled by law.
China being a very large country, there are always signs pointing to different direction. Overall, I am pursuaded that CCP is on the right track. I say this with myself always warned of the fact that there was a generation of Chinese both overseas and mainland who were fooled by the words of Mao, and indeed of any politicians. This generation, if they still live, surely live with regret and anger on one side or they had already vanished.
I have chosen to tender the positive evidence. The recently concluded party meeting sees that the party leadership agreed on tougher party rules on party members requiring the officers to declare assets as well as disclosure of spouse and children's profession and etc. This is intended to
increase the CCP's transparency. Additionally and equally important is that the meeting has agreed to implement ways to increase intra-party democracy.
I was reading a piece of futurist predictionof what China will be in 2049, on the 100 anniversary.
Taiwan will be a federated state of China and the party in power is a splinter group from CCP.
These I regard as secondary. More importantly, by 2049 (I will be 76), what matter will be whether Chinese can live peacefully, comfortably, and with dignity.
By peacefully, I mean peace and safe from internal and external threats to life, liberty and property; comfortably, at the simplest level, I mean creature comfort in harmony with nature and keeping pace with technology; by dignity, I mean conducting oneself responsibly to and gaining not just acceptance but also respect and admiration from others.
Let's China not defined by history but by opportunity!
Happy National Day!
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