April 25, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    I've lived in the United States since 1951, becoming a citizen in 1973, and only in the last few months have I felt decidedly uncomfortable as an ethnic Chinese in America. The attacks on China in all the media of the West that I know of—New York Times, New Yorker, Economist, BBC World News, Jim Lehrer's Newshour, and even our student newspapers—are venomous. As for the politicians, they—whether of the Left or Right—are united in an orgy of self-righteousness, gleefully casting the first stone as though they themselves knew no sin. I am appalled by their ignorance of history, of the actual conditions in Tibet and China. I especially despise pundits of the Left who not so long ago embraced Mao's totalitarian China and yet could speak now as though nothing has changed, as though China is not making slow but gradual progress toward a more open society, improving significantly meanwhile the material well-being of its people, including those of Tibet.

    Chinese leaders are called autocrats, Chinese society authoritarian and certainly undemocratic. The Chinese government is supposed to be wily and nefarious, yet it seems helpless in the face of this onslaught. It is helpless because, in part, the words used in the onslaught are all invented by the West—democracy, freedom, human rights, and such like. When the Chinese use them, they can be accused of being either naive or hypocritical. What if the Chinese use their own words, such as "harmony," "prosperity," and "peace," rather than ones borrowed from the West? And what if the Chinese leaders call their society "traditional," or, better still, "Confucian" rather than "democratic"? Remember that in the eighteenth century, European thinkers were in full-throated praise of the Chinese government, which they deemed rational and Confucian, as distinct from European governments, which they deemed irrational, superstitious, and despotic. Enlightenment thinkers would never have praised the China of their time if it allowed something like the Falung Gong movement to flourish, for they would have seen it as an anti-science, anti-rational cult. Today, however, Western pundits, even of the Left, have become imperialists. They would love to see the Falung Gong cult poison China and so stop its headlong path to science and modernization, just as, in the nineteenth century, their forbears promoted the unimpeded spread of opium so that the Chinese people could remain drugged and backward.

    In my cynical mood, I think there is only one way for China to redeem itself in Western eyes—invade Myanmar! Rid the country of its evil rulers, set up a Green Zone in Rangoon, and promote democracy even if this should take a hundred years! The cost to China would be enormous—half a trillion yuan, 4,000 dead and 25,000 wounded soldiers. To the Burmese themselves, the cost would be 80,000 dead and countless number wounded. But this happy turn of events is just my fantasy. It can never happen. Why? Well, the sad truth is: China, unlike the United States, is not a democracy.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu