Statue of Democracy & Freedom

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I see the Hong Kong police broke up a pro-Democracy demonstration today. THe marchers carried a copy of the Goddess of Democracy & Freedom. The march was of course in memory of those killed at the Tiananmen Square protests.

I think about what a great gift our own Statue of Liberty was. You know what we ought to do? We ought to build a huge copper Goddess of Democracy & Freedom and present it to China when they establish a democratic government.

That would be a grand gesture to the Chinese people.

2

On the plus side, we may have plenty of time.

3

We could line the inside with the toxic drywall China exported to us.

4

Fill it with toys containing lead.

5

Moving thread from IMHO to MPSIMS.

6

They’ll just want another one an hour later.

Seriously, though, I like this idea.

7

Something tells me we’ve got a looooooong time to wait, and something really big is going to have to happen before we see that kind of change. China is not moving inevitably towards democracy. They are moving further and further away from it.

8

You may be right, as I (sadly) have not yet been to China.
However, I have noticed that many large cities - notably Shanghai - are becoming more and more “westernized” in terms of money, living standards, technology, fashions, architecture, tourism etc.

Having lived in Berlin back when it was West Berlin/East Berlin - I can tell you that once certain groups of people start tasting freedoms in oppressed societies, it is very difficult to put those worms back in the can. I can remember the mood of East Berlin before the fall of the Wall - and there were lots of pissed off young East Germans who were getting more and more vocal. Western television, music, fashions, books - it was all starting to seep through into the collective consciousness. Nobody saw the collapse coming as fast as it did - but having spent many weekends hanging out with East German friends, I was less surprised than many political pundits.

So, just by watching many of the travel specials, and documentaries, and reports on some of the major cities in China, I can well imagine that young Chinese living there are soon going to be in a position to push the proverbial envelope more and more. After all - when your brightest (and richest) citizens start to flex their muscle, political ideology often starts to bend. My guess is that the “old guard” from Mao are starting to die off in droves, and the lines have been blurred somewhat since then.

I doubt we need to rush to build that Statue of Democracy, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some rough sketches and get a few price quotes.

9

In the part of China I live in, I look around and see a multiparty democracy and often vigorous political debate, sometimes quite critical of the government. We’re having municipal elections at the end of this year, and the opposition party is expected to make a strong showing in certain parts of the country. Two years from now, citizens will be going to the polls to select the nation’s leader.

Of course, I live in the *Republic of *China, AKA Taiwan. If you want to rub the PRC’s nose in it, why don’t you give that statue to us?

10

Touche.
You are quite right - Taiwan has been the thorn in mainland China for decades, and has brazenly thumbed their noses, at great personal risk!
As I have mentioned several times on these boards, a good friend of mine in college was from Taiwan and I learned a lot from her. (Chinese not one of them, although I tried…)
Assuming democracy does indeed come to mainland China in our lifetime, it will be in no small measure due to the balls of Taiwan who stood strong and have had many threats and imminent dangers.
I propose a Statue of Democracy first be built in Taiwan - and instead of a torch, just the middle finger pointed upwards toward mainland China.
Should things go well in mainland, the finger could be replaced by a hand - reaching out to the same, identical statue on the mainland with another hand reaching out.
Thanks, Koxinga, for bringing up what should have been mentioned earlier!

11

Western prosperity =/= Western values.

Indeed, the feeling I get is that in general the Chinese believe that an authoritarian government is actually better equipped to generate wealth than a democracy because they have tighter control of monetary policy and can invest massive amount of money in public works without too much red tape. Autocrats get stuff done. The common belief is that the Communist party and it’s amazing wealth-generating skills are entirely responsible for China’s current boom, and that continued prosperity relies on maintaining the political status quo. Indeed, most people believe that China’s political system is what allowed it to avoid the worst of the current economic crisis, while America’s messy and inefficient political system left us screwed.

People are looking towards places like Singapore as the model for development, and right now economic development matters more to people than ideals.

Democracy is largely seen as an system that is unsuited for China’s size, diversity, and economic status. Many say it’s something that can only work in an already well developed country, and that it’s wrong for the United States to try to force it on others when China has clearly found a formula that works for them. The example they like to point to is India. If India wasn’t mucking around with democracy, they argue, it could have eliminated the crushing poverty that exists alongside any prosperity a long time ago.

Anyway, things are still tighter than they were pre-1989. College students, especially, are often very nationalist and defensive. Dissidents are still be shut away in record numbers. Internet controls get tighter and tighter almost every month. Civil rights have declined significantly in a number of ways. There are some bright spots- journalism is somewhat free, as long as you do not question the authority of the government. But nothing that really matters has changed much. The same political structures that came up with the cultural revolution are still there, they’ve just found a more palatable form.

Anyway, I’d argue that change will probably happen fairly soon, but it’s more likely to be catastrophic and dangerous than a gentle glide into democracy.

12

The Communist Party is pretty much clinging on to the phenomenal economic growth in recent decades as its source of legitimacy. People are willing to put up with an authoritarian regime for now in exchange for prosperity. However, this kind of growth is clearly not sustainable in the long term, and I shudder to think what is going to happen then. And I agree with the post above, it ain’t gonna be pretty.

You can see this happening in a smaller scale in Hong Kong. When the times are good, people mostly keep quiet and mind their own business, but the approval rating of the government tanked and there were massive demonstrations on the streets during the last economic downturn and the SAR crisis in 2003 that eventually led to the fall of the government at the time. More or less the same thing is unfolding right now, which also happens to coincide with another economic downturn…

13

I am with Even Sven. We lack the values to choose anymore. I was watching a three part series last night that is very old on Utube. I would never post it here because of all the athiests. I’m a big fan of Bishop Fulton Sheen and he has some 40 year old videos on communism and war from when he was on tv in the 60’s. He nailed it back then and it was the disintegration of moral code that brings on violence and social ills. He is a wonderful speaker and if you like history he is your man.

14

I don’t know if it’s so much a matter of adhering to one particular moral code or another, but the masses need something to hold onto to tell them that there’s some meaning to be found in belonging to their society and that their government plays an important role in that. A national mythology, if you want to think of it that way. My view is that China has been reeling from the loss of its national mythology for over a century now, and it’s likely to get the wind knocked out of it yet again when consumerism is found to yield only so much emptiness, and the Communist Party can’t guarantee even that.

15

Well, there’s a difference between “consumerism” and “isn’t it great that we aren’t starving to death any more? And the aquaduct. And the roads, that goes without saying…”

16

That’s not the premise of the Communist Party’s current claim to legitimacy. The myth now is not “stick with us and you’ll survive”: nobody’s had to worry about mass starvation for two generations now. No, today it’s, “stick with us and you’ll all grow rich!”

17

even sven, I’ve been trying to be really civil and polite with you lately, but you keep barfing up these stupid-ass comments that betray your ignorance about China and they just make my head hurt. Just when I think that maybe, possibly you and I might see eye-to-eye on something, you say something so cliched and inaccurate that all I can do is shake my head. Global Times, to name just one, is a state-run publication that that often takes a critical tone with the government. College students are nationalist and defensive because the Western media LIES about China almost every chance it gets. Officials have been making quite a few surprising strides in the civil rights sphere recently, from overturning the ban on HIV positive foreigners coming to China to outlawing evidence and confessions that were coerced. Did you miss all of that or did you simply just choose to ignore it because it didn’t support your preconceived notion about China being a racist, polluted, sleazy shithole?

Now this is where you, in true cliched Sinophobe form, accuse me of being in the pay of the Chinese. You’ve already done it once, why not do it again?

18

Everything I said is true.

Has the political structure- as in how you gain and stay in power- of the Communist Party changed significantly since the 1970s? No. The average age of politburo members is 65 years old. It’s the same structure. Plenty of the same people. If they wanted to, tomorrow, there is nothing legal in place to keep them from putting the whole country under martial law. It’s still absolute power. Perhaps it’s more cuddly and friendly, but it’s still the same power structure.

Have Internet controls increased? Yes. Significantly so. The latest hit to Internet freedom is that they are requiring all cybercafe users to register with their ID cards. QQ, China’s most popular instant messaging service, requires you to register with a real ID card. Right now there are talks about requiring popular message boards to collect identifying information on their users. I will grant you that after a year without Internet, they finally let Xinjiang get connected again. Excuse me for not hailing their commitment to free speech.

Has China stopped throwing even mild mannered activists in jail on arbitrary charges? No. No. No. No. And where the hell even is Gao Zhisheng?

Okay, so they finally made confessions under torture illegal. I’ll be impressed when it actually stops happening. On paper China has free speech, freedom of assembly, fair compensation to landowners who lose their land, etc. I’ll believe it when I see it.

My school just held a conference by Beijing scientists who are pushing the (scientifically unsound) theory that Chinese people evolved in isolation from the homo erectus and do not share a common lineage with the rest of humanity. That’s right- government scientists have come to my school to tell my students that they are a different fucking species than the rest of the planet.

But yeah, it’s all western media lies that are turning the current batch of college students are so blindly nationalist that my students had never even heard of the events in Tienanmen Square in 1989. All those Western media lies!

I only accuse you of being a paid Internet shill because China actually does pay Internet shills to hang out on message boards posting nationalist comments.

I ask you again, please don’t take these things personally. On a personal level, it’s no secret that my personality and Chinese culture simply aren’t a good match. This isn’t a personal thing or a slight against Chinese culture- I bet you would quite legitimately HATE life in West Africa, which I think is just the bee’s knees. While I know a lot of people get offended that not everyone thinks China is heaven on Earth, there is no reason to bring that into a political debate. I have nothing against Chinese people or Chinese culture. I wish them the best. I do question some political decisions- which you have no reason to get worked up about since you are not the one making these decisions and I’m not critisizing you or anyone you know personally.

I don’t go on freak-out mode when my students ask legit questions about Iraq, the economic crisis or health care in America. I acknowledge that no nation is perfect and America makes tons of mistakes. Please don’t go on freak-out mode when people ask legit questions about Chinese policy.

19

Has the political structure- as in how you gain and stay in power- of the Communist Party changed significantly since the 1970s? No

I’m afraid it has. If you can’t see the difference between the Chinese political climate of the 1960’s and 1970’s and the Chinese political climate in 2010, then you’re either blind or stupid. Why don’t you read a book written by Sidney Shapiro, Israel Epstein, or Sidney Rittenberg and then compare the China they describe to the China of right now.

*Have Internet controls increased? Yes. Significantly so. The latest hit to Internet freedom is that they are requiring all cybercafe users to register with their ID cards. QQ, China’s most popular instant messaging service, requires you to register with a real ID card. Right now there are talks about requiring popular message boards to collect identifying information on their users. I will grant you that after a year without Internet, they finally let Xinjiang get connected again. Excuse me for not hailing their commitment to free speech. *

How awful. Now we might actually know who those fenqing Internet vigilantes are.

That’s right- government scientists have come to my school to tell my students that they are a different fucking species than the rest of the planet.

Bullshit. Yes, I’m calling bullshit on that one. The only proof of this is your word, nothing else. Can you even speak enough Chinese to understand what these people said, if this even happened?

But yeah, it’s all western media lies that are turning the current batch of college students are so blindly nationalist that my students had never even heard of the events in Tienanmen Square in 1989. All those Western media lies!

Oh yeah, that classic bloody shirt :rolleyes: China bashers will never get sick of waving that one, will you? As if China was the only country in the world to have ever done anything like that. By the by, there must be something wrong with your students, because plenty of mine know about it. Hell, one of them was even shocked that I knew about it.

But no, it isn’t anything about Tiananmen that are turning your students into nationalists…it’s just Western lies about Tibet and Xinjiang mostly, which are out of control and blatant. I tend to get defensive and jump down the throats of people who accuse Americans of being racists and warmongers who destroyed Iraq, I’m not surprised Chinese people do the same to people like you who accuse them of being racists who detroyed Tibet. When you insult people and treat them arrogantly they tend to get angry. This is common sense.

*I only accuse you of being a paid Internet shill because China actually does pay Internet shills to hang out on message boards posting nationalist comments. *

Or, perhaps, because you and so many others just can’t accept the fact that someone might actually…I dunno…not think China is all that bad? If you think I’m getting paid for anything I say then you’re a complete idiot. I wish I was!

I have nothing against Chinese people or Chinese culture. I wish them the best.

You know, you keep saying this, even sven…you keep saying “I have nothing against the Chinese people,” but then you turn around and call them racists, or you infer that they’re turning into bitter nationalists, or that they’re stupid enough to believe dumb propaganda. It’s like saying, “I have nothing against Mexicans! I wish them well…they’re just lazy and they come here illegally.” Your backhanded “I wish them well” (after typing out a laundry list of things you don’t like about them) speak pretty loudly about your true feelings for them.

I was trying to remember a single post of yours where you actually said something good about China, but I couldn’t recall a single one. I feel sorry that your prejudice about this country prevented you from seeing it for how it really is.

20

Maybe they cancelled my classes last Thursday for some other reason, and gave me this excuse instead. But that seems unlikely.

Since my school doesn’t get a ton of special events, there has been a lot of buzz about the “scientists from Beijing” coming here with their skulls- so much so that my morning classes were cancelled last week. From what I understand, the talk was presented in a debate format, with the Beijing scientists debating with our school’s anthropology department. The students were impressed that the Beijing scientists had skulls while our anthropology department just had models. So it wasn’t entirely a “this is how it is” thing, but it left a deep impression on my students that these scientists came all the way from Beijing to discuss their theories in our school. Many of them have been challenging me to prove that we share a common ancestor, but I haven’t found a good refutation yet.

My Chinese isn’t that bad- I got Intermediate High on the official US government Language Proficiency Interview. Could be better, but not bad. Despite having different views than you, I’m not a completely clueless idiot.