Lock-Down Celebration of Unity
Homing pigeons, kites and model airplanes have been banned from the skies over China, for security reasons. People who live in the apartment blocks along the celebratory route for National Day in recognition of 60 years of Communist China, are instructed to remain in their apartments where they may watch the celebrations on television. Beijing Airport was shut down to ensure nothing would interfere with the military salute flypast. Shop keepers near Tienanmen Square have obeyed instructions to close up shop for several days. Hotel rooms facing the boulevard and parade route have not been rented out, facing the street.This is China's National Pride Day, and nothing must go amiss. No protests, no surprises other than what Beijing has deemed appropriate for this celebration. Where five thousand military personnel, and highly-prized, new high-tech weapons will be on proud display, along with tens of thousands of spectacular fireworks displays especially commissioned for that grand occasion. To which only the invited may attend. To witness the hundred-thousand marchers, 60 floats and other extravaganzas that no other country can put on quite as magnificently as the Chinese.
Slogans that have been given official approval include "Long live the great unity of all nationalities of China!" Brightly coloured banners flutter on every street and alleyway, from shops and homes, in recognition of the celebration. The Chinese are a proud nation, and so they should be, with their fabulous heritage and history. They are proud now, but for the first 30 years of the Communist regime they were cowering in fear of the relentless drive to install the brutality of faceless surrender to the Communist state's iron-fisted reform, that ended up sacrificing tens of millions of lives to a failed experiment.
Now, the last 30 years has seen China prosper beyond imagination, becoming an industrial leader of the world community, with the third largest share of the global economy. It took China 30 years to accomplish what European countries managed to do in 300 years as they entered the industrial economy. State-sponsored education is a priority, and China ranks first in the world for its vast university-level population. This huge country has 130 cities with populations over one million people. The suffering and misery of the past is shared now by a mere 80-million, living under the poverty line. A mind-boggling figure, but proportionately, out of a 1.3-billion population.
Its grand advance has not been without costs. Environmental pollution and industrial detritus and pollution deleteriously affects the lives and health of many of China's people. China's insistence on its inviolable right to territories not initially hers, acquired through empire-building, affecting Tibetans and Turkic Uighurs has left a legacy of violent oppression of non-Han Chinese who desperately search a return to autonomy and self-rule. As factory-to-the-world, China has been responsible, in part, of ruining production and industries elsewhere in the world.
Because of its burgeoning population and agricultural needs it has set up shop in places like Africa, where its own agricultural workers grow crops for export back to China, through nation-to-nation 'rental land' agreements. Its huge demand of energy sources has it scouring the world for fossil fuels, making friends with world-class human-rights-abusing regimes. China has an unenviable reputation for low-paid employment, employing people in less-than-ideal working conditions.
But the vast and growing middle class that has grown out of a pitiably once-starving population, is pleased with its urban existence, despite the problems related to environmentally-induced respiratory disease among the people. And those Chinese, unable to attend the celebrations are complacent about their good fortune, and happy to watch the goings-on on their new flat-screen television sets.
Labels: China, Economy, Human Relations, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 01, 2009
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