No one exceeds me in my admiration for the Chinese people. Just don't care much for the political culture and the leadership. No people are more patient and forebearing under abuse (Confucius and Mencius). Historically, the lack of communication has made them, IMO, largely incapable either of unified patriotism or successful rebellion. They lack a history of political discourse and debate. Any people, I suppose, may be considered capable of something as horrible as the Cultural Revolution. All peoples have been manipulated and misled at one time or another. Certainly Americans have been so misled in the former centuries.
I merely meant to state that IMO no one can made a reliable prediction of the political future of the Chinese. There is no stability. No trajectory. All Chinese history is a cycle of empire and prosperity, corruption and decay, peripheral rebellion or barbarian invasion, overthrow of the empire, interregnum, renewal of new dynasty imperial growth, and so on for thousands of years. Ideas of individual human freedom, communism, technology, world trade after the humiliation of Japanese conquest, have changed Chinese culture radically. The Parisian "doctor of mimeography" rising to become paramount leader led to enormous shocks.
Most Chinese upper party bureaucrats have never lived in or even visited a free state. Few of them know any valid Chinese or World history. They are old, and soon must die. The new generation of leaders, often privileged children of bureaucrats and party hacks, have studied at Stanford, Berkeley, or Paris. There will be awesome changes in the next few years. No one can predict with any certainty what will happen.
I, personally, have worked with hundreds of Chinese graduate students and young teachers, some of whom have returned to China to reengage and spend their lives. I have the greatest confidence in them, and with their fellow countrymen who also have returned. I have never counseled them to immigrate to the US (although if they tried I have done everything I could to help them for many years).
I am very hopeful for the future of humanity in China. |
