| Submit your comments on this article | |
| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| China in Ten Words | |
| 2011-12-08 | |
Mr. Yu argues that corruption infects every aspect of modern Chinese society, including the legal system. Historically, Chinese peasants with grievances could go to the capital and petition the emperor for redress. Today, Mr. Yu writes, millions--yes, millions--of desperate citizens flock to Beijing each year hoping to find an honest official who will dispense justice where the law has failed them at home. What will happen when they discover that their leaders at the national level are just as corrupt as those at the local level? ...As awful as the Cultural Revolution was, in Mr. Yu's telling its horrors sometimes pale next to those of the present day. The chapter on "bamboozle" describes how trickery, fraud and deceit have become a way of life in modern China. "There is a breakdown of social morality and a confusion in the value system of China today," he states. He writes, for example, about householders around the country who are evicted from their homes on the orders of unscrupulous, all-powerful local officials. Mr. Yu's portrait of contemporary Chinese society is deeply pessimistic. The competition is so intense that, for most people, he says, survival is "like war." He has few hopeful words to offer, other than to quote the ancient philosopher Mencius, who taught that human progress is built on man's desire to correct his mistakes. Meanwhile, he writes, "China's pain is mine." Mr. Yu, who lives in Beijing, made the decision not to publish "China in Ten Words" in his own country. Instead, it came out earlier this year in the other China--Taiwan--and, now, in the U.S. It will be interesting to see how he is received when, after his American book tour, he goes home again. | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #5 Sounds as though China is devolving into a time of war-lords. gromky, I think that you are overly optimistic. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2011-12-08 13:20 |
| #4 Today, Mr. Yu writes, millions--yes, millions--of desperate citizens flock to Beijing each year hoping to find an honest official who will dispense justice where the law has failed them at home Bet this would be news to most people living in Beijing. |
| Posted by: tipper 2011-12-08 12:58 |
| #3 Oh, B.S. He's just like those leftists who can say nothing good about America. China is better off today than it has been for 150 years, and tomorrow it will be better. And the next day, and the next day... |
| Posted by: gromky 2011-12-08 10:16 |
| #2 Historically, China was steadfastly cyclical in nature. This was the belief that all parts of China, even the emperor, existed in a pattern that reflected the seasons. From birth, emperors were raised for their particular season and its characteristics, and had no choice about fulfilling that particular role. If they tried to do otherwise, the bureaucracy would just not carry out its orders. The cycle began with the builder emperor, who would create a new China from scratch. His successor would be the maintainer emperor, who would make sure that everything that had been built was running smoothly. Then his successor was the degenerate emperor, who would retract most of the government into Peking, and let the country decay and fall apart. The four and last emperor of the cycle was the water emperor, who would tear down and destroy everything, like a flood. This would often mean the death of millions of Chinese. Not ironically, the last emperor was a degenerate emperor, so when Mao took over, everyone expected him to act as a water emperor. And he acted true to form, because orders contrary to that would just not be carried out, but when he would make a water emperor-style order, it would be carried out promptly and ruthlessly, without question. The Cultural Revolution was pure, undiluted water emperor. However, things since Mao are somewhat cloudy. Mao's successor, Hua Guofeng tried to continue on with Mao's purpose, whereas he should have been a builder emperor, so he was eventually displaced by Deng Xiaoping, whose turn to a market economy was what a builder emperor would do. An aged Deng was replaced by Jiang Zemin, but there begins a problem. China should have moved into a decay cycle, but Jiang managed to keep everything in the maintenance cycle. This problem has now been exacerbated by Jiang's successor, Hu Jintao, who seems to have been raised without indoctrination into the cyclical nature of China. But China is now dangerously in need of, and more than ready for, a degeneracy cycle, and the longer it is delayed the worse it will be. It is already happening in much of their economy, and will continue to happen, and get much worse, the longer they try and put off the inevitable. From the western point of view, this is quite dangerous, because what they consider a degeneracy cycle moving into a water cycle, we would probably see as a Chinese great depression, followed by either civil war or aggressive violent war. In other words, China right now, from our point of view, is like pre-hyperinflation Weimar Germany. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-12-08 09:56 |
| #1 Same old tears on a new background. "Money ruins everything." Oh, for the good old days when skittles, unicorn farts and a rifle butt to the temple or a summary execution was true prosperity and justice, and everyone knew it... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2011-12-08 09:28 |