What is China？
A sadly and publicly acknowledged fact, the stunning lack of honesty and social responsibility forms the central theme of the characteristics of the Chinese people. Yet few have the answer as to what contributed to this notorious trait. What has made the word Chinese or China such a nuisance in public eyes? To find a plausible answer for question of this nature requires one to have a careful study and analysis of the psyche underlined the Chinese mentality. One needs to first understand the basis of the Chinese culture in order to correctly interpret the undesirable behaviors commonly existed among majority of the Chinese population. Failing to do so may inadvertently subject us to a life long struggle of surmise, so much so that, after a period of time, the notion of Chinese, both in racial and cultural sense, has degenerated into a derogatory word to describe the undesirable and annoying behaviors or the attitudes of certain type of people. For example, when questioning a person’s honesty, people will say “Don’t be Chinese” “Do not act like a Chinese” or “Do not play Chinese game with me”. “Chinese” has become an eloquent adjective suitable for depicting a common perversity of human mentality.
From the very beginning in its long history, most Chinese people have never been introduced with the concept of nationhood or social identity in a realistic sense. The idea of society and the duty and responsibility associated with it exist only among the educated elite class, whereas the illiterate majority has no feeling to these things whatsoever. They were taught not to think but only to obey most of the times. Average Chinese are therefore more aware of the importance of family and close relatives than that of a group or social class; they could not conceive the notion of nation or society because they lack the ability and courage to make sacrifice. Chinese culture, thus, was above all else a phenomenon based on blood ties and kinship rather than a social mechanism derived from rationality, such as the case with Western ones. This explains well why Chinese tend to be overly concerned with the well-being of their direct relatives while showing indifference towards the suffering of the people that are not related in blood. In other words, China has not been able to evolve into a civilized society in which every one, regardless of his origin, is entitled with certain basic human rights. China, to the large part, still cherishes itself in a clan oriented society. That is why, especially looking from a Western perspective, China is not a nation but only a land inhabited by a group of people who shares the common life habits but bears no common social identity. Undoubtedly, this blood based view of moral value gives the birth to the mentality of selfishness and callousness which has thus far been the decisive force hampering the moral and material progress in Chinese society.
Foreigners were constantly shocked by the inhuman and cruel treatment of prisoners or animals to which the Chinese show very little sympathy. Astonishing loss of human lives, quite often in millions, as the results of man made or natural disasters also manifests Chinese people’s callousness towards the value of human life. China and Chinese have often been regarded as a phenomenon shrouded with a mysterious shadow. Indeed, how can one make a rational connection between their indifference toward human decency and the stubborn and hysterical claim of moral righteousness of their traditional culture? Since the immemorial, China was entitled with the notion of the “most populous country” on this earth, as if China were the auspicious candidate selected by God. However, a careful and thorough analysis shows otherwise. This bloody title must be attributed not to the blessings of the Lord, but rather to the irresponsible birth policy of the Chinese government and the incredible breeding habit of the Chinese people. It is hard for Japanese to feel guilty about the fate of the Chinese they had slaughtered in WWII, since they never viewed them as human beings in the first place. After all, why should foreigners consider Chinese as human beings if the Chinese treat their own people like the scum of earth? Who is to blame?
Chinese ruling class knew perfectly well the fatal and incurable weakness of the Chinese mentality and had benefited greatly by capitalizing on this infamous characteristics. Fear and greed have been the effective methods in manipulating the minds of Chinese who were, otherwise, deemed as “a pile of loosed sands”. Chinese know virtually no politic in a modern sense since their incompetent minds could not grasp the essence of the political science, namely, the notion of fair-play and straightforwardness. The things Chinese called politics are nothing but an art of intrigues and treacheries.
China was never a society governed by law because law abiding behavior did not fit into the inner nature of the Chinese mentality. Chinese are always inclined to find a short cut, dishonesty to most Chinese is therefore not weakness but strength for it allows one to get the results without having bore the means. They do not understand the fact that achievement must go hand in hand with hard work and sacrifice. You can’t have one without the other, and there is no short cut. Chinese are inclined to take but not to give. They have to come to a sense that the truth of life depends not on how much you can take but on how much you can give to the society and fellow human beings.
Chinese like to indulge themselves to the dark side of the human psychology: that is to glorify the weakness and to envy those who have strength and power. This mentality is a typical mentality of slavery. This mentality reflects people’s desperate attempt to reach the equilibrium of inner peace and the tragic failure in succeeding. Given the fact that China was ruled by Manchu and Mongols for many centuries, the slavery mentality has already replaced the grace and honor of ancient Han culture. This fact lead most sinologists as well as Chinese scholars to wonder whether today’s China and Chinese people have anything to do with the “real China” in the past. One scholar was so disappointed on what he saw on Chinese people mentality that he took a bold to make a remark that: when it comes to cultural authenticity, Japan, not China, is the genuine “China” or the so called celestial kingdom. There is even a doubt whether current Chinese and ancient Chinese share the same racial origin. I won’t be surprise to know that ancient Chinese belonged to some sort of Caucasian origin. As matter of fact, many archaeological findings seem to support this hypnosis.
Indeed, in this world nothing could be more vague and preposterous than the notion of China or Chinese. Apparently, no one really knows what it really stands for. Given the geographical diversity, one cannot correctly come up with a concrete definition of real “Chinese” simply because they all vary from each other in some ways. For example, the Cantonese definitely believe they are different from the rest of the Chinese, especially those from the northern regions. Consequently, the idea that China as a unified country and Chinese as a unified people is nothing but a bunch of lies to fool the undeveloped minds.
Few can deny the pleasure of derogating a pathetic phenomenon like the Chinese. We do not feel sorry for our animosity toward China simply because we can’t help. Neither do we need any justification for why we hold this kind of view. Righteous resentment does not require moral justification. It demands moral courage. It is an insult to human decency if people remain silent on the Chinese situation, knowing that it might deteriorate and slowly transform into a world wide spread epidemic if a decisive solution is not available.
As people pointed out, for evilness to flourish, the only thing necessary is for the good people to remain silent. However, our conscience tells us we can not remain indifferent toward the Chinese tragedy. Civilized people will use everything possible to stop the decaying of human decency as the result of Chinese expansion. If Chinese are unable to derive anything valuable from its history, the nature and people will once again educate this ailing creature a lesson of truth and decency. Even this lesson has to be conducted in a rather crude manner, it is nevertheless worthy of doing. If necessary, I shall not hesitate to use my sword to help the Chinese reaching to a sense. Alas, Chinese will soon find themselves shivering in the fateful lightening of the swift sword of the Almighty.
It has always been a difficult task to come up with a precise description of what China really stands for. Even the most seasoned experts on culture and civilization are having difficulties in correctly interpreting the Chinese phenomenon. China and what happened in China have always been an enigma, an unsolved mystery defying human intelligence. For China possesses many faces, the China as a civilization of ancient history, the China of unspeakable crime and disaster, the China of lies and treacheries. China reminds people the legendary monster of multiple heads with each head symbolizes the different aspect of human suffering and tragedy.
Both praising China as rising star and predicting its quick demise, tend to forget the fatal part of the equation. There seems to be no win-win situation no matter how China evolves. If China fails to succeed in its modernization process, and its corrupt government subsequently being toppled down, the world will face a huge flood of refugees fleeting away from that country. If so, a quarantine of nuclear war appears to be the only feasible solution to stop its contagious effect. In the other scenario, however unlikely it might sound, China somehow manages to develop into a sophisticated industrialized nation, the world market will be flooded with cheap Chinese products which will intensify world competition and create huge surplus in industrial goods. This will inevitably lead to a world wide economic crisis to which human beings are ready to resort violence as the only way out. In the meanwhile, a industrialized China would also be a biggest polluter mankind had ever witnessed. Explicitly, no matter which way China heads to, it is destined to be a source of disaster.
The sad reality is that no one can afford the luxury of ignoring the existence and the fate of an entity of this proportion. The future of mankind and world peace, to a great extent, depends on how China evolves itself. Whether or not China will be able to transform into a responsible and civilized society or it continues its old path as a trash can of hazardous elements is crucial.
Any study of Chinese people would be incomplete without the careful analysis of the sentiment of its learned minds. The overseas Chinese always make a big fuss on the issue of returning back after their study as if they are the invaluable gifts for others. This mentality can only be explained as a symptom of lack of decency and refinement. Most Chinese have never been able to learn the meaning of a decent and respectful life. Just like mentioned before, average Chinese do not know how to live a productive life for the best interest of themselves and society. Subconsciously, Chinese view their life as a show put up to gain recognition from others. By so doing, one can satisfy the petty desire of “Saving one’s face”. Face saving is an essential ingredient of the Chinese psyche, and it has become the insurmountable obstacle prevent the Chinese from learning the truth and living a meaningful life. This condemnable habit gives the birth to a character of callousness and selfishness which is, along with others, one of the major causes for China’s backwardness. Chinese do not have the courage to pursue what they believe is the right thing to do. First, they may not have the ability to distinguish right from wrong because of their greed occupied minds, and secondly, even they are capable of doing so, they lack of courage to put the truth into action. Chinese culture endowed itself with abundant bookish and romantic wisdoms and moral teachings, yet when it comes to practice it has always been a dwarf of meagerness.
Chinese constantly forget the fact that the society needs them as much as they need the society. No one owes you anything; you are not entitled with any prestige or respect unless you earn them with your hard work. Chinese are used to having thing for cheap and free; they always dream for magic or good fortune because they do not want to spend effort. In one word, they want to have everything for nothing. Few Chinese understand the fact that, prestige and achievement go hand in hand with hard work and sacrifice; you can’t have one without the other. To put it simple, to make a living, one has to take, to make a life, one has to give.
Growing up in a poor environment and lacking of proper education, most Chinese are not acquainted with good manner and basic human courtesy. Spitting and littering in public places are commonly practiced rituals among most Chinese, even the educated ones. What they have been taught through out their juvenile life is how to lie and take from others but not how to share with others what you have. Whether you go back to China or not is absolutely an individual issue. Do not make it a big deal because no one really gives a crap. No one cares. No one will give a freak as to whether you are going to stay or go! We wish you all get out of here and never return, so we will have a decent place to live.
We must admit that China has always been a nation of abundance. As the result of an unrestrained birth policy, China is an unlimited source of cheap labor. This supply also includes the educated labor which, despite its education level, bears no fundamental difference from the average Chinese coolies.
China’s mass produced cheap commodities lower the standard of commercial trustworthiness of the place wherever they land. Due to the obsolete technology and poor management, energy consumption per unit of China made product is much higher than that of the advanced industrial nations such as Japan or US. Therefore, even with the high exporting quantities, China is actually losing resources as it increases production. In the mean while, China has done a great job in polluting the environment, making China the world’s most undesirable place to live. Chinese are suffering severely from the utmost evilness of the capitalist society, namely the destruction of environment and dehumanization of people’s mind. Corresponding to their greedy nature, Chinese has no problem in embracing the dark side of the capitalism: the greed for profit and disregard of human dignity. However, they find no interest in adopting the proper legal system which serves as the custodian for the stability for the whole capitalistic system. Foreigners are bewildered by the stark comparison between Chinese people’s overly toned enthusiasm in Western technologies and products and their apathy in Western managerial culture that emphasizes straightforwardness and honesty. One person made an inspirational remark which I think can be used to precisely illustrate the hideous reality of this so called Chinese capitalism: Capitalism without law is like Christianity without the notion of hell, at end everyone will perish. Indeed, made in China has become a synonym of low quality, cheap, fake, and a violation of intellectual rights.
Ill planned and duplicated investment easily results in over capacity. This problem can not be effectively exposed and addressed because it is the direct result of the bureaucratic interference in economic activities backed by the Chinese government. It is quite common thing for a Chinese to have both power and wealth. In fact, in China, political power has always been associated with wealth. The matrimony between these two evils inevitably gives birth to bigger devil of corruption and crime which had always been the incurable disease suffered by China through out its long history. To conceal the devastated situation of unemployment, poverty, and appalling erosion of nation’s resources, Chinese government fabricated numbers and data to portray a rosy picture of an economic prosperity. The goal of this scheme is nothing but to seduce more foreign investment into this black hole. So next time when hearing the high growth rate published by the Chinese government, one should have a second thought on those hyped up data. One should not forget the price we have to pay for the seemingly prosperity of this pseudo-capitalism that the Chinese try to lure us into.
Lacking of noble characteristics such as risk taking and adventure, Chinese people’s life appears humdrum and deficient of excitement. Chinese are generally risk averted, so much so that there is little desire to make life better. Virtually none of the modern industrial equipments and scientific discoveries could find its Chinese origin. However, the Chinese have never been hesitated to steal from other’s intellectual property. Ironically, despite the exhausted and hysterical claim of moral superiority, Chinese obsess with material gain far more than Westerners do, and show very little or no interest in living a balanced and meaningful life. Most Chinese find themselves unacquainted with the notions such as “spirituality“ “freedom of worship“ and “mental health” because their minds were unable to set foot into any higher level of existences. Their minds are simply too busy and preoccupied with cupidity and pitiful desires of animal instincts like sex or food. Of course, Chinese could always boast the richness of their cuisine because they had spent more time than others on this basic physiological need of human beings. This might be the only thing that the Chinese could brag about. No place inhabited by Chinese one could not find Chinese restaurants and eating places which often stand next by the smelly public toilets. Indeed, feeding from one end and quickly defecating from the other like a hog vividly exemplify what Chinese people’s life is all about.
China was well known through out of history for its devotion towards knowledge and learning. However, to fully grasp the true picture of Chinese education one has to look into something deeper than what meets the eye. In China, education does not play the role it supposes to play: improving the overall quality of its people. In fact, it does quite the opposite. Most people agree that education ought to be one of the most important public resources that people should have access to. This is not the case in China. Judging from the average education level and moral standard as result of it, China proudly cling itself to the championship of the contest for the most backward and ignorant nation on this earth. It is an ironic and inexplicable thing to see that China could allow millions of its young people remained illiterate, and deprived them of the opportunity to receive decent education, while boasting academic achievement at few elite schools. China could win umpteenth medals in Olympic Games, while denying its people the right to have decent physical education. In Chinese minds, education is not about seeking truth or improving quality of life but a symbol of prestige and status. Chinese intellectuals demand respect from others not because what they have contributed to the wellbeing of others but simply because of their possession of certain knowledge. In fact, most of them are just a bunch of useless eaters who know how to take exams and care little about truth and integrity. Once again, in China, the purpose of education is not to help society to improve its overall quality but only to serve the ruling class and the wealthy minority. The government departments in China usually proudly labeled themselves as people’s this or people’s that, but none of them really serves the best interest of people. They only serve for the best interest of themselves and their own clans.
Chinese educational system, to a large extent, has been a matter of failure and disgrace. It has failed to serve what education supposes to serve: the society. It had failed to provide society with many useful individuals. It only created a group of gold diggers who were eagerly to take advantage of what the society could offer but cared nothing of what they could give back in return. China could produce large number of highly trained technical personnel, but not many qualified managerial experts who can run the shows. To serve a company and society, however, technical skills are not enough; it demands leadership of courage and integrity of which most Chinese people are having such a stunning deficit. As Arthur Smith, a famous Western missionary said a century ago: What Chinese people lack the most is not wisdom and intelligence, but a genuine character of courage and integrity. This evaluation, though hundred years old, is still a valid one today in correctly diagnosing the very cause of the Chinese syndrome. The wrongful usage of public resources such as education inadvertently thwarted the social and moral development of the Chinese society.
As a foreigner who is relatively familiar with Chinese affairs, I can tell that most Chinese top institutes are nothing more than the preschools for Western universities. Most Chinese college graduates feel no sense of guilt to go aboard and work for foreign countries, knowing the fact that they owed their education primarily to the sacrifice of the Chinese people. With destruction and gradual fade away of traditional cultural value; most Chinese people, including the educated ones, are left wandering on the corner of mental avenues like lost dogs. Cults and superstitions of all sorts, conjured up with Western Christianity, find great market in China where people are suffering severely from such a spiritual malnutrition that they will take anything that seems promising. Unfortunately, no spiritual package will solve the problem Chinese facing if the Chinese continue to deny the reality and do not allow their mind to be fully developed. Chinese people are so indulged themselves in the superstitious magic that they fail to act as the helmsmen of their own life. Most Chinese, even those Western educated ones, failed to grasp the essence of Western civilization. Chinese are used to entertaining the idea that Westerners must be the close kin to themselves, without knowing the core value of Western culture, unlike Chinese, rests in the habit of conquering and the relentless pursuit of change. Chinese are so ignorant and crass to assume others must behave and think like they do. Alas, nothing could be far from truth than this smattering of others enjoyed by the uncouth Chinese. Of course, the Chinese could well stew their mind in their own juice by relishing the dream of being the center of the universe. Unfortunately, Chinese will not find their fortune by breaking a fortune cookie because the world belongs to the movers and shakers who like to beg for no one and have the absolute control of their fate. In the world where the course of history was written by the power of blood and iron, Chinese have no place to stay. As the old saying goes, you lead, follow or get out of the way. Free riders and gold diggers like the Chinese do not deserve any respect from decent people.