Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong, Back Packing Addict
One thing I know for sure, is that I respect the communist government for what they did for the Chinese people from 1949 to the early sixties. They fed the whole of China as best as they could for the first time, they put in infrastructure that allowed the country to move its products as well as natural resources, they were able to educate the masses and put in a national language so everyone in the country can communicate with each other outside of their home dialects. They simplified the Chinese characters so that literacy can be more accessible. Those things you learn in school, and when I went to India I learnt why those things are important.
When I went to India, I learnt a hard lesson. Democracy could starve you, make you live next to industrial waste, kill your children because the water ways are so polluted that all it is are open sewers. I was so cocky when I went. Having traveled to a lot of other third world countries, China, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala, Honduras, bad parts of Los Angeles where I thought I experienced “poverty”, India was going to be a piece of cake. Be damned with all the warnings that it was going to change me forever. I spent a large part of my trip hating the world and bemoaning the deaths of Gandhi, and even maybe Nehru, (although he lived into his 70s) because maybe this country will not be in the state it is today and wondering if my baptism into the catholic faith as a baby could possible give me some say in the Beautification (making a saint) of Mother Theresa. Not that she is successful but the fact she faced with such horrors even tried.
To say I spent a lot of time looking out of taxis and trains crying is an under estimation of the state of my emotional health. I will never be able to covey seeing children eating trampled dirt nor kids suffering from malnutrition outside temples, and sewers that will make you retch as you pass by for a good five minutes because the smell is so overpowering. Because what I saw in India was inhuman. I called up my parents in tears, and my father said that he was not surprised this was happening to me, and he was in fact waiting for this call to inform him I can’t cope. As he said, “When I landed in Calcutta, I do not wish on my worse enemies to live life that way.”
On my last day in India, I demanded the taxi driver let me off and I was going to walk into the slums. He let me off in an “Okay” part of town, my friend stayed in the cab, and I walked on ankle deep in trash and next to families drinking, washing and swimming next to industrial waste that I have no doubt in my mind is toxic. I took photos, and hung out with some kids for an hour and we went on the way. I felt better to have done it, realized even if people lived in such conditions there were still an ability of joy, friendship, family etc.
It all seems so dramatic, but if you were in a cab with me, where my tears were so infectious that not only did I make my friend, I managed to get the Bombay (Mumbai) hardened cab driver a little teary. You will know how affected I was. I just want to tell you that, because as India elects a new Prime Minster, and it seems such a functioning country, in that way. I just can’t stop thinking of the malnutrition little boys, the one who bought me a coke, the girl that gave me a bracelet, and the young woman who I sat in the middle of the night with, to hatch a plan that would ensure her not having to have an arranged marriage and get to the US. I try not to think of India at all.
I traveled across China in 1990, which was before the economic boom but under the shadow of Tiananmen. Nothing I ever saw there came even as close to some of wretched conditions I saw in India. In fact, China is well kept, and although people are poor, one thing that can be said about it, is that it’s functioning country, and grips of a strong government has improved the lives of the people. But I can’t help but think of the tricycle driver in Beijing who cried and told me what he saw on the night in June 4th, and his stories of the run up to that and know a man whose spirit and hopes were crushed.
So as my government is going on about “Chinese human rights” which is that their main concern is to feed, clothe and house every single person in China, and watch as India gets a new Prime Minster, I just want to acknowledge that concept. The democracy does not mean feeding everyone, and communism does not mean everyone is suffering in all ways.
I refuse to let go of my free speech, I continue to hate my government for infringing on my rights in Hong Kong. I personally know that I will leave this city one day because I do not want myself and definitely not my future children to live in a place without the basic premises of free speech, free press, and freedom of travel. I still want a democratic Hong Kong and China, I know that Totalitarian regimes are innately unstable, and without a change, China could topple, and the problems of civil war, famine will happen. But when the Chinese government talks of what their definition of “Human Rights” is, I actually agree with them. I know how if they give up on raising the standards of living of everyone in my country what actually could happen.
This idea I have been playing with for a long long time. The violence against the body versus the violence against the mind. Both are utterly wrong, preferable both should go, but when faced with the realities, of stench or blood, fear or food, if you have to choose for a nation, what would it be.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
I get where your coming from Yan and the Chinese position on human rights, that the individual is subordinate to the mass, is not totally without reason however wiil strong and consistant movement “Towards” some form of democracy throw China into civil war or riot? Just because what you have seen in a ‘democratic” India does not necessarily translate to the same things happening in China. China’s ‘democracy” does not have to be India’s or the western concept of democracy.
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See. I won’t put you on the spot, but I really think you’re very sharp at catching the “greyness” of things.
I think it’s very easy to see things as black or white. It’s comforting to look at the world that way. I commit this fallacy all the time. But in reality, very little is black and white. Democracy isn’t necessarily the shining pillar of human progression; but it’s the best system we can think of presently, open flaws and all. Communism is a beautiful idea, but doesn’t work in present forms. (Marx envisioned nothing like the Soviet or Chinese models). Communism also seeks to feed the poor, provide jobs for all, etc. Also very noble, from the perspective of the masses. But the system denies the human desire to own stuff, and say and do things that aren’t agreeable with the majority. True communism isn’t supposed to have an elite cadre of party officials calling the shots – it’s supposed to be rule by the masses. Mao, Deng and cohort sought to plant the seeds of true communism, and it worked well, for a while. (Same in the Soviet Union. For a while.) But then human nature took over – the lust for power, control, etc. Soviets are gone, and China’s government, while still communist, is morphing into a different sort of system altogether.
Long way for me to say that I like your post, and appreciate your sensitivity.
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Tom,
Mao and Deng were at odds with each other. Deng actively envisioned a completely different idea that Mao did. And, as Mao entered into senility and blindness in his old age, the Gang of Four tried to convince Mao that Deng was out to ruin the Chinese state. It almost worked. But, from the the Gang of Four’s perspective, Deng was out to destroy it. Deng was really trying to bring capitalism to the masses. His biggest change to Mao’s system was the ideas of ownership and profit in a communist system.
China has always been, since the mid-1900s, a mixture of democracy and socialism, which, in my view, makes it a ton different than communism. I can’t really see how China has practiced even Chinese ideas of Communism.
personally, I feel that China is putting itself in a strange position, and possibly a dangerous one. They are courting the United States for nuclear technology, even signing a promissory agreement to purchase technology only from theh United States. At the same time they have to convince North Korea that China is still its brother in arms and show signs of solidarity. At the same time, they are expanding their global aims throughout Asia, and becoming the net exporter of manufactured goods for the region. At the same time, they are propagandizing Hong Kong people and the Taiwan nation, and keeping them from realizing a truer form of democracy.
China is proving itself to be playing too many games, and honestly, I would say that China is beginning to suffer an identity crisis that will pull it in too many directions and result in either, a). a drastic crackdown and revolution, or b.) a solid and defining decision to be one thign, which will put Asia into a shaky few years. I realize that’s a little vague, and it seems pretty drastic, but I can’t see how being more than one thing to more than one country or regions is going to be healthy to China.
And, the other thing I want to know is, what do you tihnk of Wen Jiabao saying that China will never seek to practice hegemony over anyone? Like they aren’t doing that now?
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HK,
I remember reading something about the contention b/w Deng and Mao. Been a long time, though.
Interesting analysis of China.
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Tom,
Yes, and probably too over the top in some ways. I just see some areas where China is profoundly changing for the good, yet, the Central Government doesn’t recognize it. And can’t. To do so would be to become vulnerable when their aims suggest they need to be quite rigid and demanding in their requests and achievements.
The same can be said, in some extent, to the US. The US is confronting that “cost of war,” on a level that not many civilians have ever witnessed in a meaningful way. And suddenly, they don’t know what to do. Do they blame the government for “leading” them into the war? Or, do they blame themselves for supposedly electing the leadership who made this their campaign, in response to something quite horrific? Who wins this war? Who lost what? It’s quite confusing.
The things in China I’m vaguely speakign about are things like provincial government officials and citizens of China who are making claims for reparations of past ills against them, or for better working standards, and the fact that China itself is using the argument of globalization to defray those disagreements, and, as we have seen, in some cases putting those complaintants behind bars.
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Interesting post Yan, I suppose when you have been face to face with extreme poverty in India it is understandable why you would take that view. I agree that governments should ensure that all its people have basics such as food and shelter and health services and I guess with a country of China’s size some form of socialism may even be necessary to ensure those outcomes. I guess it’s easy to forget that when you live in a democracy and are well off in terms of material goods how fortunate you are. Whether that means it’s better to be poor in a democracy or under some other “system” i’m not sure, I’m just thankful that i’m not poor (relativelty speaking)! That’s why I struggle to agree with those who seem to take the view that life is survival of the fittest, afterall we’re all in this together aren’t we?
Freedom of speech and thought is important too, if only we could get a “system” or some leaders that could get the balance right! It’ll probably never happen though, everyone has their own ideology.
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I”m not too sure but I may be the only person, whose commented here, of even partial Indian descent. But I’m not here to back the flow and defend India with patriotic blindness (maybe somebody else will, who knows?). Quite the opposite, just like you I’ve seen the horrors and conditions that too many have to call life for no other reason than being born. The difference perhaps was that I was 12 at the time. The kind of thing that leaves a lasting memory perhaps, I know that the images and smells from those days have never left me and never will. It’s a place that both in my mind and physically I would never want to truly revisit.
I’m reminded of the idea that the words democracy and communism are just that: words. They represent complex political systems of course, but in the end it’s only really the results that matter I think. India (or at least in it’s current state) despite having openly embraced democracy and (at least in theory) free-speech and fair representation, chooses instead to brush it’s very apparent and very serious problems under the rug. It’s no surprise to anyone really that India is really a crap hole (from my personal experiences) .. The blind pursuit of foreign wealth at any cost is all that matters to those in power. Hell, even the illusion of anything else isn’t kept up anymore.
When I hear how the (western) media over here treats India my optimism drops down even farther. It’s never about India’s poor record of humans rights or it’s sick treatment of basic issues of equality. Nope. Sadly, just like India’s own government, we see (or are conditioned to see) India just the way they want to be seen. That is as a prosperous nation on the rise, one of the great economic powerhouses of Asia, and as a source of cheap and reliable labour.
I’ve never really thought about it until I read this post, just how strange it really is that India gets away with pretty much anything against it’s people, compared to the coverage something similar would get if it were to happen in China. Maybe it’s just me though that feels like this?
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