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A lie repeated often becomes truth
Lau Guan Kim Updated: 2004-04-14 09:39
It was time China rebutted the lies by the US press media's slanted reports.
A lie, repeated often enough, will end up as truth. Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda (1933-1945), invented the Big Lie theory; he exploited the German radio, press, cinema, and theatre to launch propaganda against the Jews and other groups, but ended up committing suicide after Germany's defeat.
He claimed the bigger the lie, the greater the likelihood that people would believe it.
Let us scrutinise the perception of each other by China and America.
Each nation sees human rights differently. For instance, so-called "Tiananmen Incident" is only a pinprick in relation to the more than four thousand years of unbroken Chinese civilization, a behemoth compared to the two hundred and thirty years of American history.
The concept of "anding" (stability) and "anning" (tranquility or peace) is central to China's more than 4000 years of recorded history. Before the onset of the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC), the turmoil and constant upheavals in the throe of the declining period of Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-256BC), comprising two significant sub-periods known to us as the "Spring and Autumn Period (chunqiu shidai 770-476BC) and the Warring States Period (zhanguo shidai, 475-221BC). These periods were the formative years of the China that we know today, for after the Spring and Autumn Period, there finally, in a Darwinian fashion of the survival of the strongest, we have seven states in the Warring States Period vying for supremacy, which finally one state Qin overcame all the other states to form a country under "Tianxia" (Under One Heaven), the first semblance of a Chinese nation under the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC).
Stability and tranquility were restored.
To the Chinese, what transpired in Tiananmen that year, if allowed free rein, would be a precursor to instability and insecurity. Stability is sacrosanct to many Chinese. But we do not know what the long-term would be in view that the development of a state has to be dynamic to adapt to changes in political expectation. Hence for the short-term squashing Tiananmen demonstration works like salve to immediate order and peaceful economic reforms.
No one can predict what the long-term would be, given China's long history of turmoil.
The Americans derisively label "rubber stamp" decisions of the Chinese parliament. US concept of democracy means that 49 persons must suffer the verdict of 51 persons. To the Chinese, there must be a consensus among the 100 persons, involving a compromise. Why should 49 persons suffer because of 51 persons? An example is the budgets freeze in 1996 by the Republicans controlling Congress that stymied the Democrat government of Mr Bill Clinton.
To the Americans, democracy is the right of the individual over the majority, whereas the Chinese, with a Confucian hierarchical tradition, it is the other way round.
Carping on the merits of capitalism and the demerits of communism brings to the fore the decry of what many in the US term as the monolithic and totalitarian Chinese by comparing the freedom of people in a pluralistic society.
But the Chinese see the US as a capitalist system with a political party split into a right-of-centre group controlled by the ultraconservative Republicans, and the left-of-centre group by the conservative Democrats.
In this view the Chinese see a parallel in their communist party.
An American fear is that China, as a unitary state, is too powerful and difficult to deal with. Already there was talk of a federalist China, but the Chinese are suspicious of the Americans, as they view this a ploy to weaken China.
One needs to view the warlord era of 1916-1927 to envisage what this means to China. The Chinese see their national unity as a bulwark against Western intellectual, cultural and political pollution.
For more than four thousand years, rulers receive the "mandate from heaven" (tianming) to govern the people. It is a sign of weakness to the Chinese if a leader goes to the people to ask for guidance. If a ruler can make China united, strong and stable, restore its pride after one hundred years of humiliation inflicted by the West and Japan, it has the heavenly mandate and the legitimacy that goes with it.
After a naval defeat by Japan in 1894, and the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, numerous Chinese intellectuals sought reforms and eventual restoration of pride to China.
Kang Youwei, Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek failed to unite China. Only one man succeeded. In October 1949, Mao Zedong announced to the world the Chinese people stood up. By 1950, foreigners were driven out and all vestiges of their imperialistic injustice, such as extraterritoriality, were eradicated.
To engage China in the manner the US is doing now is a retrogressive step to the past when the West dictated to China with impunity.
As to the path China should take, Mao Zedong wrote:
"Let the past serve the present, and foreign things serve China." (Gu wei jin yong, yang wei zhong yong)
| The above content represents the view of the author only. |
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