Posted on 07/08/2009 4:45:55 PM PDT by Flavius
Only 20 hits? Hmmm....
I agree with you on the double standards, prejudices and superiority complex, which exist among Chinese people at different levels and also can be found in other countries especially those being or used to be significant powers.
As to the ethnic minority preferential policy I mentioned,there is a post discussing about the widely hated “Two restraints, one leniency “ policy implemented by CCP from 1984 which to some extent helps to understand the background from the Han Chinese side of the bloody clash in Shaoguan.
The post about “Two restraints, one leniency “ policy:
http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/07/08/two-restraints-one-leniency-a-backfiring-minority-policy-on-all/
The situation in xinjiang is very complicated and intricate. From what I know, the notions of Uighur people are quite divided with different attitudes toward independence movement. Though having read a lot from various origins and conversation with friends from xinjiang, I find myself yet to tell what is really happening in this vast subtle region.
Away from the point, “reunite” China just came out of the fameous idiom “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide” at the beginning of the novel “Romance of Three Kingdoms”. Though call it to unite the country or conquering an empire has nothing to do with the fate of the ordinary people at that time. Heroical and legendary era and significant to Chinese culture as it was, 98.3% of contemporary Chinese people died during the chaos and war according to the history record.
Further away from the point, I used to think American DW players love Lu Bu most because I found on every staff involved with three kingdoms theme for example red clif, you may funnily get some DW fans eagerly asking where was Lu Bu.
If the Uighurs had all these wonderful privileges, they wouldn't be working at the lowest of migrant worker wages a thousand miles away in Guangdong province, would they? Guangdong bosses brought Uighurs in to work at wages even lower than they normally pay Chinese migrant workers (which is pretty darned low). Meanwhile the Party trucked millions of Chinese workers into East Turkistan to build the infrastructure so they can import millions of additional Chinese settlers. The choice areas are reserved for the Han, whereas the remote locales are returned to the Uighurs.
This isn't about affirmative action. It's about freedom from wholesale Chinese theft of hundreds of thousands of square miles of Uighur lands and colonial oppression - it's about nationhood and self-determination. The kind of self-determination that over 100 countries received in the 20th century. It's about reversing a Chinese land grab from 1946, a time when the European powers were *setting free* territories they had ruled for hundreds of years.
The situation in xinjiang is very complicated and intricate. From what I know, the notions of Uighur people are quite divided with different attitudes toward independence movement. Though having read a lot from various origins and conversation with friends from xinjiang, I find myself yet to tell what is really happening in this vast subtle region.
Here's my guess - if these friends are Uighur, and the views are critical of the government, up to the point of demanding independence, you can be sure that they are telling the truth, since they have nothing to gain (and everything to lose) by championing a cause the Chinese government considers treasonous - and an offense requiring the death penalty in some cases. On the other hand, if your Uighur friends are telling you they don't favor independence, they might be sincere, but they might also be telling you something that they don't actually feel - something that's safe - because the pro-government view definitely won't get them tortured or killed by the Chinese government.
Heroical and legendary era and significant to Chinese culture as it was, 98.3% of contemporary Chinese people died during the chaos and war according to the history record.
One Han dynasty census listed the total number of people in the empire as 57m people around the time of the birth of Christ. A 98.3% reduction would bring the headcount to around 1m people. That number is simply not credible. China would have been extinguished and overrun by the nomadic tribes on its borders.
My guess is that this aspect of the court historical record is a little exaggerated (as is much of Chinese history, with respect to details with a larger political significance*, especially in regard to the benefits and the legitimacy of empire) in favor of the continuation of the sitting dynasty. A lot of Chinese history is a little too neat - a little too digested into homilies, as if to say "look at what happens if you do this". I see the hand of political correctness and imperial propaganda in this number, the object of which is to produce a narrative of carnage and senseless destruction, when the empire reverts to its component kingdoms, in order to dragoon unwilling subjects into accepting the "benevolent" rule of the Emperor. In other words, a stereotypical ("the usual suspects") construct similar to the Good Emperor, Bad Eunuch theme that runs through much of Chinese court history.
Further away from the point, I used to think American DW players love Lu Bu most because I found on every staff involved with three kingdoms theme for example red clif, you may funnily get some DW fans eagerly asking where was Lu Bu.
I'm not actually a Dynasty Warriors aficionado. My introduction to the Three Kingdoms was via a Chinese TV series broadcast (and thankfully subtitled in English) on the International Cable Channel in the mid-90's. I saw a few episodes, found the basic story fascinating and fast-paced, and then went on to read the lyrical (and long) English translation by CH Brewitt-Taylor. My favorite character is, of course, Zhuge Liang, who is portrayed in the novel as the one person most responsible for keeping David (the Shu Kingdom) alive against the various Goliaths arrayed against it.
* In the West, we say, with a touch of cynicism, that "history is written by the winners", in order to remind ourselves to be critical of our assumptions and to view history from the perspective of each of the different participants. I don't think the Chinese (or very many non-Western countries, for that matter) are even close to being this introspective. When I mention the issue of East Turkistan, Chinese commentators invariably bring up the fact that Europeans have displaced Native Americans in the Americas. When I point out that Chinese settlers have been doing to the natives of Northeast Asia for thousands of years what Europeans did for only a few hundred years, and that this kind of thing is not only supposed to have stopped in the 20th century - the principal of national self-determination by ethnicities who want it is the basis of the restoration of Japanese-held Manchuria to China after WWII (as well as the decolonization of Asia and Africa), they invariably say: "But that's different, and it was so long ago", unconscious of the irony.
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