Understanding the Complexities of Modern China

Ecuador is currently undergoing a bit of a tumultuous transitional period. Transition into what, I am not entirely sure about, but it is nonetheless a transition. It started last September with the 30-S riots. It is the fourth major political upheaval the country has seen in the past 16 years. And the fourth Coup d´Etat as well. Yes. It was a Coup d´Etat. I will firmly maintain that it was a Coup d´Etat - it did not start as one, but the President turned it into one. I´m not a fan of the President. His methods are questionable, and he surrounds himself with a bunch of sniveling weasels that really are the problem with the government. I think that he has good intentions, but also remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions - and with that in mind, the whole country is being led down into mouth of Erebus itself. Also, the man has an attitude problem that often gets him into trouble. I don´t particularly agree with his political ideologies (I don´t particularly agree with most political ideologies in fact) but I´m not that militant about disproving their validity as a lot of people I know are.

That being said, I am most certainly am not in favor of all the stuff going on right now. A journalist and the newspaper he wrote for were just sued for $45 million and 3 years in prison, and found guilty, by the president for defamation of character and disrespect for the office of the presidency because the journalist wrote a piece criticizing the government. The event echoes the feeling of experiencing 30-S from my house - information filtered through the national channels that were suddenly all overridden by the one government-controlled channel, who cried against the rebels curtailing their "freedom of speech" when they cut the wires that allowed them to override all the other channels. Part of me is kind of scared. Rumors are flying around about the government monitoring Facebook posts and blogs and even emails for stuff that could be potentially volatile. But then, part of me reminds me that, well, this isn´t exactly a first-world country, and judging by other rumors, I doubt they can really take in such a huge scope. That being said, it still feels like it is the death of free speech here. And that in itself is tragic.

However, I get mad when people start comparing what is going on here with China´s (and by China, I mean the part of China known as The People´s Republic of China) recent (the last 100 years, which in the scope of Chinese history is very recent) history. Today I read a comment on Facebook about how what is happening here is even worse than what happened in China. There was also someone else back in October that made a careless remark about Mao Zedong and how he seems tame in comparison to the President. This makes me mad because that comment was made out of ignorance of the complexities of the rise of the modern PRC. Yes, freedom of speech is dying here, but it is nothing, and I do mean NOTHING in comparison to what happened in the 50´s, 60´s and 70´s in China. I love China, don´t get me wrong, there are many many good things about it, but that being said, it has gone through one hell of a transformation to get where it is, and is still continuing on that path. We cannot even begin to really understand what it was like for the people of the time to go through ages such as The Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. We cannot even begin to understand what it was like to recover from that, to be reborn from that, to carry those traumas in our modern personal and cultural identities. We cannot even begin to understand the mindframe of Chinese culture. So radically different than our own Western standard, but just as immensely rich and complex. All it takes is to stand in Confucius´s tomb, or the Longmen Grottoes or any other of the many cultural landmarks traumatized by these periods and stare at the 2000-year-old decapitated Buddhas and 1000-year-old graffitied grave markers and feel the weight of that destruction, feel the weight of the decisions behind that destruction, and the people behind those decisions. All it takes is to talk to the ordinary Chinese middle-aged guy who cannot stomach Xiao Baicai (Little Chinese Cabbage) because that is all he ate for 2 years during his childhood. All it takes is to stare at the way parents cherish their one child as they play among the spring peonies.

I am not saying that the PRC´s tumultuous modern history didn´t have its good aspects too. It did. In a bizarre way, it opened up a lot of opportunities for a lot of the Chinese population that would have not had access to them otherwise. But the opening of these opportunities came at a huge cost, one we cannot even begin to fathom. It is a complex issue - the rise of modern China. Full of ups and downs. And it is weighty and huge.

So no, our problems are not in any way comparable to China´s, just as China´s problems are not in any way comparable to ours. It feels like a 10-year-old child comparing their problems to and claiming to understand the problems faced by a 60-year-old adult. So, at the risk of sounding a little crass, to all of you making careless remarks about this issue: get your ignorant asses to a Chinese History course and get some perspective.

Categories: China, pet peeves, politics