10/12/2014

Why do I Support Umbrella Movement as a Chinese

Why do I Support Umbrella Movement as a Chinese

No one is able to predict what will happen to Hong Kong after this so called Umbrella Revolution, and other than stating it is by far not an actual revolution, I would like to make four statements regarding this matter. 

1. Democracy can be bad sometimes. But dictatorship is not a good thing. 

It is probably better to replace good and bad with rich and poor, but sometimes moral plays a big role in our lives too so I have chosen a more generic wording as my conclusion. Anyway, I would not gave written the first sentence if I was writing in Chinese as that is a mostly accepted fact among the people of this fast growing country. Other than those uneducated Falungong members, it can be easily told that even with democracy, countries in South East Asia, South America, most of African countries, and Indian (yes Indian, one of the favourite examples of some Chinese government supporters  although most of them haven't really been there and studied how that giant country runs) are not really as "good" as their western mentors. People there are happy but it seems almost impossible to get rid of problems like corruption and the lack of living resource, ie they are poor. 

But in the other hand, it doesn't mean that dictatorship can be a good thing to have. It's funny that there are kind of two words to describe dictatorship in Chinese: one is "ruling alone" and is used as a negative word to refer to the old emperors and kings and modern dictators like Adolf Hitler (but not friends of the Party like the Kims, and the Party itself of course), and even the old enemy Guomin Party; and the other is "dedicated in governing", which is not surprisingly, to refer to the party itself. The latter is always used with the phrase "people's democracy" as it is stated in the Law that "China is a country that is lead by the PRC and it is dictated by people's democracy". It sounds pretty much bullshit but anyway, under the dictatorship of PRC, China has become what it is in 30 years, from a totally fucked up country that was destroyed by the same party that was under mostly Mao's control. 

Regardless the case of Singapore, the favourite example of anti-democracy of the Chinese government, China's case itself already proved that democracy is not the only way leads to being rich and civilised. Sure some Chinese people are suffering from smog and other shitty stuff, but education and medical expenses are affordable comparing with a lot of western countries, which may sound surprising to a lot of Chinese since in general it is believed that China is going really bad in these fields. It is going to be a long and possibly arguable topic about public expense in China, but anyway, denying the achievements China had doesn't make any sense. Most Chinese just live their daily life in a similar way that the people in New York and Sydney do, they are normal people like us and also getting richer. 

This sounds a bit weird. Didn't I try to state that we cannot really say dictatorship is a good thing? How come the Chinese people are still doing pretty good? The answer is simple: what is making China rich is not dictatorship. Here comes my 2nd statement: it's the culture. 

2. Culture determines how good or bad a country can be. 

When I say culture, I mean all the historical aspects of a country, or "everything that makes the people of the country as they are". It sounds like a meaningless loop but my point is that it is exactly how the world works. People give too much credit to things like democracy or the power of "being dedicated in governing" if you are from media of PRC. It doesn't really matter that much. A good theory should explain why things are like what they currently are. A better solution is able to predict future in some degree. Bad theories, in the other hand, always try to find excuse for exceptions, like how Falungong explains why there are so much corruption in Indian and how the Chinese government explain why North Korea is one of the worst countries in the world. 

Let's see this culture thing. Counties in North America and Western Europe are rich, because the people there believes equality, democracy, science, capitalism, freedom of trading, contract. They kept expanding and spread it and the whole world is under the influence of the western culture. They work not that hard but work smart. They enjoy their lives and keep a good balance between life and work. They have accumulated a huge number of fortune and intelligential properties, and set an example to all the world that how good a country can be. They made mistakes like slavery and invasion, but they corrected themselves and keep involving. Thus, democracy is the result, not the reason.

It applies to almost all the other places. In Asia there's no such thing as equality, people respect power of authority, and sometimes the force that disobey the authority. In the other hand, people also work very hard and instead of live a happy life themselves, they would do almost anything for their children, but in return the children must always respect their authority. This explains why China, Japan, and Korea have so many things in common: they are revived upon ashes and became developed (well for China, at least the big cities) in a relatively short time. It's not about democracy or dictatorship. As long as the dictator is not as bad as Mao and the Kims, these Asian countries will do a good job in economy. The real difference is that how the culture adapted. The Chinese believes their culture is still the best, so without the spirit of equality they may not be able to do a lot to the poor class, but they can gather the fortune people made together to make leap in fields like space ship or nuclear weapon, while the Japanese are more willing to accept the advantage of other culture (they accepted the Chinese culture thousand years ago anyway) and made Japan more like the western countries, while Korea is sort of sit in the middle. But they are all catching up, and made a difference with countries in South East Asia and South America.

I don't want to say too much about all the cultures but in general, democracy is always the result but not the reason of the "good" aspects of different cultures. Then why I'm still saying that I support the movement in Hong Kong, as I stated in the title?

3. Culture can be changed little by little. And the best time to change it, is now.

The brain washed Chinese may argue that it has to be at the "right time" to make a chance, like Indian changed their culture to sort of western but still has serious corruption problem. Actually, the reason of the corruption in Indian is exactly that they are not really adapted their culture. The people are still willing to live a poor and happy life, which comes from ignorance and misunderstand of how the world works, like the strong believe in some religions. The westerners have already realized that even God loves them, they still need to take care of themselves but the traditional Indians keep believing that the true meaning of live is afterlife.

The good thing about Hong Kong is that unlike the mainland, Hong Kong was colony of UK for a hundred years. It has its own problems but its culture evolved to the right direction. However, China is rising fast in the past 35 years and it keeps trying to say that dictatorship can be a good thing and even the solution of the problems caused by democracy. It's a dangerous assumption, because the reason of the rising of China, as I said, was not dictatorship. It's the hard working Chinese people. So I'm very glad to see the Hong Kong youths are standing against the dictatorship. Even they may hate the normal Chinese people like myself at this sensitive moment, it's still a good thing, because the culture they want to evolve to is able to guild them to the right path due to its nature of equality and reasoning.

4. Last but not least, it's not very hard to see this movement is not likely to lead to anywhere. But it's a good signal to the Chinese government, that they need to evolve as well. Everyone knows China cannot be growing as how it is so it needs to change at a certain time, maybe not now, but it will not be as late as 50 years later. It is politics. And it's why Umbrella Movement as a Chinese.

PS: About political correctness

I don't believe race is a matter, but I do believe cultures are quite different, which means an American born Chinese would be more similar with another American rather than a Chinese. You can't choose your race and it's totally fine since it's not important at all, and it's possible you adapt to a different culture. I don't think I'm 100% political correct, but I don't care anyway. Some people would say "you can't say cultures are good or bad, they are just different", well I'd quote something from Book of Mormon the musical:

If you don't believe what we say
Try live in here a couple of days
Watch your friends and family die
Hasa diga eebowai!

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