Well, Good For China...
Who could conceivably find fault with such sentiments as were expressed on the top of Mount Everest with banners proclaiming "Welcome the whole world to this great Beijing Olympic Games", and summiteers, three Tibetans, two Han Chinese, emitting shouts in a unitary paean of "Long live Tibet. Long live Beijing." It's heart-warming to know that there is such an abundance of goodwill, despite the world's denunciations of China as a human-rights-abusing tyrant.But China's will to succeed at everything she sets her collective determination at, represents an indomitable agenda for success. She is proud of her successes, and has every right to be. Warts included. No, no pride in the warts, just that they're an inescapable portion of the stride to advancement. For no country, no matter how noble they strive to be in their universal outlook, their liberal pronouncements, can achieve attainment of perfection.
Simply because all societies are comprised of human beings, and humankind itself is so fraught with frailties. We are so supremely, unhappily our own worst enemies. For all our good intentions, we fail to live up to our own standards of conduct and behaviours. Let alone our propensity to unreasonableness and unwillingness to recognize reality. Which is no reason not to continue to attempt to become better at what we strive to do to earn our own respect for ourselves.
As for China, that great, vast country peopled by so many different ethnicities, speaking so many languages, worshipping a panoply of gods and/or none, it has come very far in the past handful of decades from what it was. In solving the dilemma of providing sufficient food for its teeming population. In providing a very modicum of medical care for all its inhabitants. In finally overcoming its strident and strict dedication to soul-less Communism and discovering a serendipitous middle way.
And that middle way, a combination of Communism and the acceptability of capitalistic free markets, has aided the Middle Kingdom considerably in achieving its current status as a provider for its people. And the envy of other countries through its mounting economic successes. The current ambassador from China to Canada, Lu Shumin, is no stranger to the West, for he was educated in Canada, and lived for many years in Canada before joining the Chinese diplomatic community.
He knows the vast voyage China had to undertake to begin to join the privileged countries of the West in feeding its population an adequate diet, and providing them with reasonable accommodation and health care, let alone opportunities for economic and social advancement. According to Lu Shumin, "The lives of one-fifth of the world's population have taken a different course, for the better, which is by far the largest scale of human progress the world has ever seen."
He writes also of present-day tensions between the government of China and Tibet, describing Tibet "in the old days" as a place where a mere 2% of children attended school as opposed to the current situation where 98% do. The Tibetan language and literature, he claims, are taught throughout the education system. "Tibet has leap-frogged from a mediaeval theocratic serfdom into a modern society."
There's little doubt that the lives of ordinary Tibetans have been materially improved. It's a human misfortune to be perceived as being enslaved to an order not of one's own determination. To be forcibly bereft of one's cultural and traditional and religious underpinnings. It's also a human need to feel free, to be an integral portion of one's indigenous society.
Ethnic groups, gathered up unwillingly to become part of a larger, socially and traditionally unrelated collective do tend to agitate for autonomy, then independence, and finally a state of their very own. And that's a human reality. As opposed to a political agenda wedded to the notion that it's a fair exchange to take a peoples' freedom and offer them materialism, however beneficial that may be.
China remains baffled and disappointed by the world's failure to understand just how hard she has worked to satisfy all the reasonable demands of her various constituent parts.
Labels: Conflict, Political Realities, World News
posted by Pieface @ Friday, May 09, 2008
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