Liu’s Little Limbo
By Chip Tsao | published Dec 23, 2010
Apart from the big global crowd who went ape over this year’s Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, there were a few worldly wise men who managed to keep a cool head about the news, yet hardly qualify as sympathizers of Beijing.
An intellectual friend of mine told me he had been invited to add his signature to support the widely-circulated Charter 08 drafted by Liu before his arrest. After going through the manifesto, he bluntly refused. The reason: Liu had raised a more interesting point during an interview with Open Monthly, a Hong Kong-based China-watch magazine in the 1990s, when he said he believed China should become a Western colony for 300 years, before its people learn the basic laws of freedom and democracy. That interesting thought is missing in the now widely-acclaimed Chinese human rights charter.
It is difficult to imagine, without the elementary episode of Western colonialism, how we Chinese could handle democracy where fair-play is the core value, starting from the very primitive lesson of all vehicles getting used to stopping at traffic lights turning red, the existence of an independent ICAC, and producing melamine-free milk powder, all consolidated in Hong Kong under British colonial rule.
The Taiwanese have been lucky to embrace democracy of a cruder type. Gunshots were fired in election campaigns and TV coverage of election news is ludicrously emotionally biased, because Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese, not the British, for a pitifully short period of 50 years. Their former president was almost shot by a magic bullet while campaigning, then locked up on corruption charges: a cheap version of Dallas 1963, copied from their US mentor, and a replica of South Korea in the 1990s. These second-rate dramas are enough to make the Taiwanese go hog wild, thinking that they are a more dignified breed of Chinese living on the other side of the Strait of Taiwan.
Calling for China to make up this missing lesson is a better idea, although Liu did not specify. First among all, Western colonialism is now a matter of the past. Few EU countries, including Portugal, Belgium and Holland, would have the appetite to come back to the Far East with the Bible and rule a 1.3 billion population who live in a post-Chairman Mao total moral anarchy, like they did to Macau, the Congo and Indonesia some two hundred years ago. The UK has been castrated of the thought of imperialism by liberals. Some in the United States, like Sarah Palin, would be tempted by Liu’s offer, but they lack the skill given what Iraq looks like now. Liu’s “I-have-a-dream” manifesto should have a more realistic and imaginative opening chapter, telling us how he thinks China should be packaged and auctioned. He would have won my friend’s, or I am tempted to say my, signature as well, had he elaborated his point a bit further.
Apart from the big global crowd who went ape over this year’s Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, there were a few worldly wise men who managed to keep a cool head about the news, yet hardly qualify as sympathizers of Beijing.
An intellectual friend of mine told me he had been invited to add his signature to support the widely-circulated Charter 08 drafted by Liu before his arrest. After going through the manifesto, he bluntly refused. The reason: Liu had raised a more interesting point during an interview with Open Monthly, a Hong Kong-based China-watch magazine in the 1990s, when he said he believed China should become a Western colony for 300 years, before its people learn the basic laws of freedom and democracy. That interesting thought is missing in the now widely-acclaimed Chinese human rights charter.
It is difficult to imagine, without the elementary episode of Western colonialism, how we Chinese could handle democracy where fair-play is the core value, starting from the very primitive lesson of all vehicles getting used to stopping at traffic lights turning red, the existence of an independent ICAC, and producing melamine-free milk powder, all consolidated in Hong Kong under British colonial rule.
The Taiwanese have been lucky to embrace democracy of a cruder type. Gunshots were fired in election campaigns and TV coverage of election news is ludicrously emotionally biased, because Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese, not the British, for a pitifully short period of 50 years. Their former president was almost shot by a magic bullet while campaigning, then locked up on corruption charges: a cheap version of Dallas 1963, copied from their US mentor, and a replica of South Korea in the 1990s. These second-rate dramas are enough to make the Taiwanese go hog wild, thinking that they are a more dignified breed of Chinese living on the other side of the Strait of Taiwan.
Calling for China to make up this missing lesson is a better idea, although Liu did not specify. First among all, Western colonialism is now a matter of the past. Few EU countries, including Portugal, Belgium and Holland, would have the appetite to come back to the Far East with the Bible and rule a 1.3 billion population who live in a post-Chairman Mao total moral anarchy, like they did to Macau, the Congo and Indonesia some two hundred years ago. The UK has been castrated of the thought of imperialism by liberals. Some in the United States, like Sarah Palin, would be tempted by Liu’s offer, but they lack the skill given what Iraq looks like now. Liu’s “I-have-a-dream” manifesto should have a more realistic and imaginative opening chapter, telling us how he thinks China should be packaged and auctioned. He would have won my friend’s, or I am tempted to say my, signature as well, had he elaborated his point a bit further.
Labels: Politically Incorrect, 陶傑
posted by Gemini Saga at 12:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home