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False internationalism and paradoxical Hanjianism
wchao37 Updated: 2003-11-29 20:35
Initial Prosperity and its identical twin Xiaokang Society are now within the reach of a great majority of our well-deserving people.
During these auspicious times, it is natural for friends and foes alike to sing praise to our successes in re-constructing our motherland. It is precisely at moments like these that we need to keep level-headed and remain eminently vigilant of the truism that one sugar-coated cyanide caplet is deadlier than a barrage of rattata machine-gun fire.
Hanjianism under the cloak of democratic internationalism as has apparently been developed today (e.g. in Taiwan province) is the caplet whose poisonous effect is so deadly that, if left untreated, will short-circuit our nation's modernization efforts.
Here, I believe we have to make a clear distinction between true internationalism and Hanjianism. The former sprouts forth from a noble heart but the latter can only stem from a despicable one.
Authentic internationalism has gone the way of the dinosaur. Not too long ago orthodox communists singing the Internationale used to believe that workers of all nations shared harsh circumstances and bleak economic prospects while working for the capitalists, and would therefore naturally congregate to form a mainstream political force. This was spelt out in "The Communist Manifesto" written in the Nineteenth Century.
This is no longer the case because heavy industries have lost their erstwhile preponderant position in national economies today, while high-tech information and new-material industries have arisen to take their place. As everyone knows, by the very nature of their work and disposition most computer programmers do very poorly in gregarious settings and you simply can't pull well-organized proletarian rabbits out of proverbial programming hats.
In Marx's time technology and social engineering had not advanced to the level that prosperity could trickle down to the masses from the top. The prevalence of abject poverty amongst the working classes in all nations provided fertile soil for them to share a feeling of belonging to a noble trans-national cause. At that stage the term "internationalism" was synonymous with altruism -- a rightfully noble sentiment.
Now technological innovations in high-tech assembly-line mass production have made it possible for the common masses to procure the basic amenities of a comfortable life so long as their governments adopt sound fiscal and social policies. The long dark shadow of traditional capitalist exploitation has been tempered with the equally long arm of judicial systems within which grievances could be redressed with expectations of fair equitability.
Ironically, it is against this background of improving living standards and judicial justice that Hanjianism has raised its ugly head in China and especially Taiwan during recent years. It would seem as if the more the mainlanders prosper, the more the Hongkong democrats and the Taiwan splittists want to disown their Chinese identities.
This is why the behavior is characterized here as "Paradoxical Hanjianism."
In the past, the Hanjians throughout Chinese history had raised hell only during inauspicious times. Some of them were ethnic Hans (like Wu Sangui in late Ming dynasty) while others were minority 'Hu Ren' like An Lushan and Gao Xienzi in Tang Dynasty.
These turncoats usually appeared towards the end of a dynastic cycle. For instance, rebel An Lushan nearly pulled the plug from under Tang Gao Tsung's reign in 755 A.D., while Wu Sangui actually helped the Manchus to establish their iron rule in Beijing before peasant rebel Li Zicheng could consolidate his victory over the Ming generals in the capital in 1644.
In contrast, Paradoxical Hanjianism in China is now in full throttle when the nation is enjoying unprecedented material prosperity and is in fact in the upswinging phase of her manifest destiny. It began in earnest after the end of the Cultural Revolution at the third plenum of the eleventh congress of the CCP in November, 1978, when their former Pollyannaish belief in a world of borderless proletarian commonality was shattered and replaced literally overnight by a fundamentally different system of commodity-oriented market economy based on pragmatic empiricism. A paradigm shift in strategic emphasis was forced upon China and she has adapted to the new realities very well since that moment.
Furthermore, I would say that Taiwan is actually not so much in danger of becoming independent as it is in danger of becoming the fifth island of the Japanese empire if Americans are tricked into fighting a war over Taiwan for the benefit of the Japanese. Independence is out of the question because of Taiwan's cultural history and geographical location. If the island does not revert back to Chinese control it will fall under the jurisdication of the Japanese. As for the Americans, If they can hardly control a small country like Iraq despite their unchallenged military prowess, how can she control a big nation like China even if she wins such a war?
By reason of geography alone, Japan would be the only beneficiary of a Sino-U.S. war over Taiwan. Have you ever wondered why Koizumi consistently wants to assist Bush by sending Japanese troops to Iraq to die? --- only a nation that has much to ask of America would want to do things which no other country would dare. To the Japanese neo-militarists, the price of such assistance is revival of Japanese militarism without hindrance from the Americans and the eventual Japanese control of Taiwan.
Now here's a tentative explanation for the phenomenon of Paradoxical Hanjianism:
This is akin to the mentality of the spoiled daughter of a rags-to-riches Beverly Hills billionaire, who wants to establish total 'independence' from her rich parents by turning to prostitution in the dark alleys of Seventy-seven Sunset Strip.
The richer the parents become, the more shamelessly the spoiled brat behaves simply to hurt her parents. She would rather call her pimp 'daddy' than to acknowledge that she is the biological child of her rich folks. This all happened after she had read some nihilist literature while in high school, just like the Hanjians in Hongkong and Taiwan began to disown their Chinese essence after reading a few Western works on 'democracy' and 'freedom' and considered themselves experts on the subject.
Why has this happened?
This has happened because of the unfortunate circumstances under which many sectors of the Chinese nation were brought up in the last half a century. Each sector of China's population -- in Hongkong, Taiwan and the Mainland -- was brought up with a fundamentally different perspective on life. The only common denominator they share is their mutual dislike for one another -- the other sectors always seemed ridiculous if you believe what the news media in your sector say day in and day out. That's why intercourse and san-tung (three links) is so important.
To the Hongkongers, their Northern Cousins were always stereotypical peasant-soldier revolutionaries, while the Taiwanese women were always nightclub performers who spoke no Cantonese and therefore very 'alien' to the fiercely local-minded Southerners.
To the Taiwanese, the Mainlanders were poor treebark-and-banana-peel consumers who always went to bed with empty stomachs, while the Hongkongers were always English-speaking pretenders who weren't even Chinese, let alone Taiwanese.
To the Mainlanders, the Hongkongers were filthy-rich capitalists who sucked blood from leftist workers, while the Taiwanese were all reactionaries waiting to be liberated.
It was easy under these circumstances to grow up in Hongkong and Taiwan developing a rabid phobia of being identified with the Mainlanders when they went abroad to study or work. Like Peter disowning Jesus after the Last Supper, they would disown their allegiance to the Mother of all Chinas because that's the way they were schooled, even though deep in their hearts they knew that kind of betrayal was unconscionable.
Many would say they are Chinese when asked by foreigners, but would always add without prompting that they are from Hongkong or Taiwan, as if that would put a respectable distance between themselves and the Motherland.
Things have now changed a little for the better in Hongkong after the retrocession in 1997, but is going the other way in Taiwan because Hanjian forces are still at work sculpting and chipping away at the character of our young people using filthy chisels. They are now emphasizing the teaching of Taiwanese history in lieu of Chinese history, as if warming a limb while keeping the rest of the body frozen will help to revive the unconscious, frostbitten man in an accident.
In the case of Hongkong, at times when it is considered politically correct to show their genuine feelings towards their motherland as in the case of Yang Liwei's recent visit to Hongkong in early November 2003, they try to atone for their guilty feelings of having disowned China in less auspicious times in the past (while under the sole influence of the Brits) by over-compensating with exaggerated enthusiasm.
That explains why the reception was so tumultuous that Yang Liwei said his heart never missed a beat in Outer Space but that he was genuinely moved by the enthusiastic crowd in Hongkong, so much so that even his heart had fluttered uncontrollably.
In the case of Taiwan, this never happened precisely because Paradoxical Hanjianism has now taken root under the cloak of democratic internationalism.
While the original purpose of democracy was to devise a system of government enabling the best talents in a community to solve day-to-day problems, it has now evolved in places like Taiwan to make disowning one's motherland a legal alternative. This is equivalent to kidnappers giving a child the chance to disown his parents once every few years, a choice that he should not have been given in the first place. In the meantime, the kidnappers empty the child's trust fund for college to use it to buy sophisticated, expensive weapons to ward off his parents when they come to fetch him.
It means that to the Taiwan government, the national interest of foreigners like the Americans is more important than that of their compatriots on the mainland. Touting 'democratic internationalism' as an excuse, they would make it easier for foreigners to procure residential papers in Taiwan than for pregnant mainlander women on the island to receive the same considerations.
They would rather throw away seven billion dollars buying useless mothballed American Kidd Class destroyers than to spend a small portion of that seven billion building more schools and playgrounds for the needy, disadvantaged children under their jurisdiction.
This is the abject abyss to which Paradoxical Hanjians have sunk at the beginning of the new millennium.
In the case of the mainlanders, after the Eleventh Party Congress in November 1978, suddenly Taiwan and Hongkong looked rather attractive as 'outside' sources of investment. Traders from these two capitalist enclaves were treated like VIPs with a big dollar sign as the reflected image on the cornea of the suddenly-enthusiastic host.
It was during these periods that so-called democratic parties flourished in both Hongkong and Taiwan. The former was represented by British-educated barrister Martin Lee and the latter by the TIers imprisoned in the 1979 Formosa Magazine affair. The lawyer who represented the TIers in court during that publicity stunt -- Chen Suibian -- is now the dog-headed chief of Taiwan and the woman who was an activist in that affair -- Annette Lu -- is now the big mama in his harem.
The rise of democratic internationalism as touted by these two groups mark the end of Shame and beginning of Paradoxical Hanjianism.
Superficially the kind of direct election espoused by the Hongkong democrats should be workable, and many of the July 1, 2003 demonstrators were amongst the British-educated elite in Hongkong -- including barristers and financiers who lost much in property values in their portfolios after the retrocession of Hongkong to Chinese rule -- and they had demonstrated because of those personal losses. They couldn't care less about country and honor -- to them, those were for the birds -- and given a choice they would not hesitate to become modern-day Wu Sanguis if that would help to increase the value of their portfolios. In practice, however, direct election does not work when so much of the old colonial rubbish still floats around in Hongkong harbor's murky waters.
They did not understand that the message they were sending to the world was not that they were grumbling about losses in property values and economic malaise that had little to do with the central Beijing government, but that they did not value highly enough the political unity of the entire Chinese nation. Their selfishness is surpassed only by their ignorance in world affairs, and they are simply waiting for their heads to be chopped off or their bodies to be dissected alive in the next Japanese invasion.
It is in this context that Hanjianism is presently not seen as unacceptable in some sectors of Chinese society at home or abroad. There is no shortage of Chinese on the Internet rooting for the belief that there is something called Good Treason as long as it brings material prosperity to themselves.
There are people at home or abroad who sincerely believed that selling out China to the Americans is good for the Chinese people. For example, they condone what Gao Zhan the Chinese woman at the American University in Washington D.C. (who was convicted of spying for Taiwan by the Mainland authorities in 2001 and then a few days ago by the Americans for sending sensitive electronic products to China) has been doing. They say she is free to earn money as she sees fit. They believe that China, as it exists to day, has no sustainable value as a government for the Chinese people. They even subscribe to the American propaganda piece that 'only the Americans could bring democracy to the world by knocking down all borders and inept governments.'
In other words, treason has become fashionable and Yueh Fei and Wen Tianxian are no longer patriotic role models as they have been for centuries. To these political dilettantes, everything is subjectable to second interpretations. To me, they should undergo DNA paternity testing first to ascertain whether their dads might not have been orangutans from Sumatra.
Below every pretty flower there is always some cow dung. In time of prosperity China is bound to see her share of naysayers.
The same people who chastise Yueh Fei for blind loyalty to the Sung emperor fault PLA fighter-pilot Wang Wei for 'meaningless' sacrifice over Hainan Island on April 1, 2001 --- somehow I see a Japanese black hand in many of these coordinated campaigns of defamation of the cream of our nation. Without these mighty role models as pillars of selfless heroism in our people, we would not have endured this long as a distinctive civilization and would have gone the way of the Sabines or Carthagians.
Many Hanjians nowadays suggest that China has adopted capitalism wholesale. So it is opportune to offer an explanation of what capitalism is and is not. Market mechanism is not the prerogative of capitalism: socialism with Chinese characteristics is a nicely-working system using the market mechanism as a tool. The Stalinist mold did not allow market mechanism because to the Soviets the tool itself was equivalent to capitalism, to which the Soviets could never subscribe, and that in a nutshell is the reason for their economic failure.
Just like most things in our imperfect world, each nation has something we can learn from and other aspects which we must avoid at all costs. The Hanjians in China are fawning all over the United States right now. Still, that does not mean that the U.S. is our implacable enemy and that we have nothing to learn from the Americans. At the least, we can learn their methods of converting some of our Hanjians like Gao Zhan and Katrina Leung into shameless double or triple agents.
Lastly, let me close out this discussion by talking about the two forces in America which are going to influence the growth prospects of Hanjianism in China. In the U.S., there are those who truly want to befriend the Chinese and only want to compete with us in trade. To this group, so long as it is not against their national interest to do so, they will let us live in peaceful co-existence.
But then there are those Americans who regard all Chinese people as remnant 'commies' and that the only good Chinese is a dead Chinese. This latter group is in retreat now because their ideas did not pass the mustard test in Iraq and Korea and few people in America would want to fight WWIII over Taiwan. The most they would do is sell the Taiwanese Hanjians mothballed weapons at hefty prices in order to take them as suckers for as long as possible before the Mother of all Chinas beckons to retrieve them into her fold.
| The above content represents the view of the author only. |
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