What about China?
Written By Jane Chan
China’s History, and What it Means for Us
Mention China, and many of us will wince in response. ‘It’s complicated.’ When someone asks where we’re from, many will take a second to decide between China and Hong Kong, and decide on the latter. We feel shame for China and what it seems to stand for: exploitation, censorship, authoritarianism.
As the streets continuing filling up with protestors, increasingly violent and radical, our fatigue against their actions against the MTR, or even (god forbid!) Starbucks, has led us to question: to what extent is their actions and beliefs merited or justified? How should we separate prejudice against mainlanders from legitimate concerns? And is China that bad? The answer lies in their justifications, grounded in history.
The China of the 21st century is drastically different from China under Chairman Mao Zedong.
As Hong Kongers, many of our predecessors are painfully aware of this. In the 20th century, many of our families illegally emigrated from China as refugees, perhaps swimming across our bordering rivers, trekking across the countryside, or escaping gunfire. Some of them were escaping persecution from the Communist party, who wanted to purge the country of the bourgeois classes. Some of them were merely seeking a better future in the wealthier Hong Kong. It is undeniable that our history bears the painful scars of what the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution did to family, friends, and livelihoods. China under Mao was horrendous - that much is undeniable. But at the same time, these historical wounds occurred more than half a century ago.
Since the Communist Party’s founding in 1949, more time has passed without Mao than with him. In the meantime, many of our families have benefitted from China under Deng Xiaoping, or Hu Jintao, or Xi Jinping, as Hong Kong was declared as a Special Economic Zone, and foreign investment started flooding in. It is important to separate the China of the past, and the China of the now. The CCP has changed - the word ‘communist’ in its name is merely a courtesy, as it is undeniable that China is a socialist, even debatably capitalist, country. The problem is not its economic system, but instead, its authoritarianism. Yet, to what extent is that justified?
The question of unity.
In antiquity, China was an incredibly prosperous country - even more so than the West. Boasting sophisticated printing technology, and a culture which stemmed millennia, even modern Chinese take pride in the old China - albeit perpetuated by Beijing’s propaganda about our illustrious history. Their tactics are to use the decline of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ as the reasoning for hatred against the West. This view is somewhat valid.
In the 17-19th century, the West began to take interest in Asia. As individuals, such as Commodore Perry, used gunboat diplomacy to force unfavourable trade deals on countries such as Japan, some became aggressively militaristic in response, adopting Western military tactics and economic systems in order to catch up. Others, such as India, capitulated to the imperialists, becoming a puppet state and a part of the Commonwealth. China was no exception to this. Not only were they humiliated by German concessions in the Shandong province, or the West essentially owning the Bund in Shanghai - the dominating part of their skyline. They were also facing threats from their own Asian neighbours.
As an increasingly militaristic Japan became dominant in the 1930’s, their expansion into Manchuria, the Eastern section of China, had commenced. The resulting Sino-Japanese war led to humiliation on behalf of the GMD (Guo Ming Dang) under General Chiang Kai-Shek, who would eventually found and lead a dictatorial Taiwan. Semi-colonies were established in China; their reputation tainted by the humiliation of foreign occupation. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was one of humiliation for China. Hence, the remaining reminders of this humiliating past, in the form of Taiwan and Hong Kong, remain a sore spot - and for valid reasons.
It should remain a fact that the West’s history of colonisation and exploitation should be condemned. Yet, what remains controversial is what China has decided on doing in response to this history of humiliation: is it justified that, in order to redeem itself against its subjugation to the West, it brutally oppresses minorities in Tibet to better its image and maintain its near-paranoid concern about national unity? Is it justified that they, in the future, brutally takeover Hong Kong and Taiwan to diminish the last vestiges of colonialism?
The answer to the former is no. Oppression of any minorities should not be tolerated, and a mere bettering of their quality of life would lead to an automatic appreciation of China itself, solving issues concerning loyalty or national unity. Waging a form of economic warfare, where investment into dissenting peoples, should be the wisest response. The answer to the latter is less simple. It seems inevitable that, in the future, Taiwan and Hong Kong become part of China once more. Yet, the justification of this form of unity depends on the method by which we become consumed by the mainland. If by brutal methods, then the answer is no. If by consent, via. Hong Kongers resigning to what seems to be our future, or an agreement to hold our freedoms in place, then the answer is - perhaps.
The legacy of China remains a complicated one.
It is true that they censor their people, limit their freedom of speech, and have corroded their judicial system to act as a slave to the state. Yet it is important to separate the people in China, from the Chinese government. People are people, and they work, feel, live, for the same motivations as us. The only difference is that they have faced the tradeoff between security and censorship, and have chosen the former. Our decision is yet to come. Hong Konger’s qualms and protests against censorship should not cloud the humanity of Chinese people, and we should not degrade ourselves to merely generalise of who they are, what they do, and what they believe in.
It is also important to note that China has also experienced exponential economic growth. When the CCP was admitted to the United Nations and World Trade Organisation, the West bet on the hope that China would eventually develop into a liberal, benevolent government, who would be strong enough to tolerate a democracy. As I travel to Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Zhongshan, Shenzhen, I see reason to dream. In these cities is a depiction of China in a future of wealth and prosperity, even as swathes of extreme poverty still persist in rural areas.
So is it possible that China could liberalise in the future, if only their economic growth continues to increase? The answer remains uncertain, but there is hope: economic wealth and democracy typically go hand-in-hand. The role of Hong Kong’s protests play in China’s story is still unknown, but we will find out soon.