What can i say about china?

What can I say about China? Maybe that it has taught me that trying to be objective is pretty futile.

First of all it must be said that I arrived in China with some history- or rather I didn't as my first encounter with china was its border police, who searched my bag and confiscated my 'penguin history of modern china' for reasons that i will explain in another post, along with my totally 'legitimate' version of a national geographic map of china. 'legitmate' in the sense that it does not show any borders seperating china from tibet, taiwan or East Turkistan (also known as china's Xinjiang province). , and so actually in my opinion quite illegitimate, but when in rome one should not piss on hadrians' wall.

Incase you don't know, tibet was, until the 1950s, largely cut off from the rest of the world, mostly because it was surrounded by the himilayas. Through a mixture of threats of force, actual force, twisted ideology and a knack for convulted logic that would impress even henry kissinger, china moved its troops in and forced the dalai llama to escape to India. Since then it has been systematically destroing tibetans' language, religion, environment and way of life in a search for what Hitler would have called 'lebensraum', as well as timber, gold, water and numerous other resources (all the gold, silver and bronze for the 2008 beijing olympics came from tibet.).

They justified it by asserting that the Dalai Llama was at the head of a feudal and oppressive regime and the people of tibet, with the help of the great peoples' republic, must be liberated (hence why those of you at soas still see the Spartacist League's mad posters denouncing the dalai llama in support of china). As the process for finding the new Llamas involves being in tibet, yet the Dalai Llama is in India and the Panchen Llama is either in Chinese custody or dead, tibetan buddhism as it is has been for centuries will die along with the current incarnation of the Dalai Llama.

Taiwan is a less well known victim of the 'one china' policy. The people that Mao's red army beat to control chinafrom 1949 were the nationalists, under the bloody tyrant Chiang Kai Shek. When he realised the game was up he moved what was left of his government and army to Taiwan, where they were safe and had the backing of America, and had a good shot at massacring a few thousand native taiwanese in the process, in what is a largely unknown episode of history in the west.

At first , in the context of the cold war, many western nations and the UN refused to recognise the new rulers of china, and remained (with stunning blindness to actual facts) with diplomatic ties with Chiang's KMT. When, from the 50s-70s, countries and the UN began to recognise the CCP's china, taiwan was conviniently bundled in with the new china, even though it has its own government, borders, army and language. only 23 countries now have official diplomatic ties with taiwan and the US is not one of them, even though they are about to sell 66 fighter jets to a country that they doesn't officially exist. but we always knew that capitalism is bigger than god. in the current asian games being held in china (in the city I am now in infact, guangzhou) the taiwanese team has been renamed 'chinese taipei', and there is fuck all the taiwanese can do about it.

so i knew about these things before i came. i knew china did not have free press, that its super economic growth was really ruining the environemnt on a massive scale. I also knew from various brief encounters with chinese people in the UK (at my secondary school, letters from my chinese cousin, working in a chinese takeaway for 8 years, ) that chinese young people seemed totally apolitical with strong consumerist tendancies and a strange addiction to kitchy toys, cartoons and boy bands. I also knew, however, that half my blood was chinese, that china is one of the oldest and most culture rich societies in the world and that chinese people, whatever else they are, are determined, strong and hard working.

so what i am basically saying is that i am in no way claiming to be objective here, but at first i really did try. Confucious, whose teachings later became confucianism, was around in a time of huge upheavel, destrution and bad governance in china. He advocated, as far as i can explain, harmony and respect within the family unit and the self, which then lead to harmony and respect in wider society. he emphasised five specific relationships

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Relationships -

father/son, husband/wife, friend/friend and so on, with each, with the exception of friend/friend, there was a heirachical relationship but one with mutual respect. so, for example, a good confucious son had a duty to do whatever his father told him to, but the father in turn must be wise in what he told his son to do. when this is reflected on wider sioceity, it means that people should unquestionably follow their rulers, and the rulers should be benevolent and just. he also advocated a kind of non-interference in things, letting events take a harmonious path whether they seemed right or not.

when the CCCP first came to power they wanted to get rid of all religions, confuncionism included (even though it isn't strickty a religion, more of a philosophy), but in the last 20 years or so the government have realised that a kind of pseudo confuncionism, twisted neatly to fit in the CCCP's shifting ideology, could infact be useful in pacifying its people with a vague nod to philosophy and shared chinese cultural identity whilst also using the word harmony in such a way to mean 'not rocking the boat'. hence the key message at the beijing olympics was 'harmony', and talking about tibet or whatever was definitiely not harmonious, and therefore against chinese wisdom.

Imagine this pervading philosophy in today's china, added to the fact that the generation who hold the most social and financial power, say 35-55 year olds, went to school at the time of the cultural revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_revolution#1966

and if they were taught anything at that time, it was to do as the party said on fear of death.

And now the party is telling them to MAKE MONEY and BUY THINGS with beautifully subtle propoganda, so that the engine of the massive chinese economy can keep growing, eating everything in its path.

What does this manifest into as i travelled about china? Huge new infrastructure projects (there are many many new train lines and toll-motorways being built, all elevated about 2o metres off the ground, and the huge concrete pillars are everywhere), thick layers of smog over cities big and small (in Hangzhou it seemed a perpetual dusk), advertising in every nook and cranny, strange recorded voices coming out of loud speakers in tourist areas saying things like 'please be civilised for the benefit of everyone' and 'one small thought leads to a great leap forward for society'.

On the other hand of course part of what i am saying is inevitably coming from a western set of ethics that can't really know what it is like to be hungry for years and years and how one would react when there is suddenly an opportunity to change. I know this but i also have seen what this brand of capitalism looks like 20 years down the line, and, crucially, whether it makes people happy.

But of course when talking to anyone, like almost anywhere in the world, you learn and the person is lovely and everything is fine, but as a nation, well, can't say i have pride to be from china.