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COMMENTARY
April 23, 2005
In China's streets
I am still hoping for a democratic revolution in Canada but while I am waiting let me return to my more usual turf as a commentator on "world affairs". It appears to me that the Communist regime in China is beginning to crumble. I know that remark reeks of optimism and my reader should know that I have expected the Beijing regime to join the Soviet one on the trash heap of history for some time. This is because I do not share in the almost universal though seldom spoken journalistic and academic assumption that the Chinese are an inferior race. It is widely held that democracy could never work in China; that Chinese history conspires against this; that the Chinese culture is such (insert the word "Confucian" or delete to taste) that Western individualism will always be rejected by a people well trained to the yoke. The view that "the Communist Party is the only political force capable of holding modern China together" is as well-entrenched in journalistic clich? as the notion that China's dictatorship has found a miraculous way to accommodate modern capitalism. (This is not incidentally much different from the general media assumption that Canadians are an inferior race; a people only capable of being governed by their Liberal Party; in a country that can only be held together by Liberals; that we are a people who neither want nor need elections.) One must take a good look at Hong Kong and Taiwan to realize that this is all nonsense: the Chinese hunger for liberty and democracy expresses itself the moment it has a chance. In the case of Taiwan it has achieved a remarkable constitutional order unprecedented in Chinese history. One should also be aware of the social and religious currents seething beneath the surface of mainland Chinese life. And of the many indications the Chinese economy whose successes have been routinely overstated in the absence of hard statistical information is beginning to implode from its own structural flaws. The recent demonstrations against Japan may be the trigger to something larger. We have the first indications they are getting out of control as a government that was previously encouraging them tries to shut them down. Such demonstrations are a development of a traditional Chinese way to express rebellion. In plays and popular songs and ballads the behaviour of some ancient state or ruler could be satirized and pilloried to an audience aware that the ancient villain is being associated with some present power. No one could pretend to fondly remember the Japanese occupation of much of China before and during World War II. But the rage against Japan sixty years later is hard to explain without observing that this occupation has become a conventional symbol of tyranny. I become more and more convinced it is being used symbolically. The government in Beijing had been feeding the demonstrations with wild and selective government media revelations about the foibles and oversights of Japanese school history textbooks. But the chauvinism and xenophobia in Japanese school books is hardly a new story; foreigners have been moaning about it for generations. It was being pumped recently as a means to direct the anger of the oppressed masses away from the Communist government itself. This is the same device authoritarian Arab regimes have used -- letting steam out of their own oppressed masses by encouraging them to demonstrate against the United States and Israel. That the Communist strategy has backfired is indicated by the sudden cancellation of fresh protests in major cities and the deployment of huge numbers of soldiers in several provincial cities to begin intimidating the freely-assembling crowds. But as the Communists try to reign them in the target of anger becomes the Communists. One particularly alarming feature of the demonstrations from the government 's view is the appearance in them of retired People's Army officers and soldiers with reports that they are playing important organizing roles. Beijing has been trying to shrink its bloated military staffs as an easy way to make unavoidable budget cuts. These men are cashiered on tiny pensions and often face hardship. Tens of thousands of them wash up on the streets each year. As James Dunnigan has noticed these retired warriors could provide professional advice for a mass rebellion . My view has been that the butchery in Tiananmen Square in 1989 bought the Chinese Communists about one generation of domestic "peace". I expected the regime to collapse around 2010. But who knows? Perhaps a little sooner. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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