Daniel Lak: The New China, Emerging from History's Humiliation
China's contemporary rise from insular poverty to emerging superpower has been meteoric.
In the late 1970s, when senior leader Deng Xiaoping famously proclaimed, "to be rich is glorious," much of the country was poor, ravaged by recent history. Illiteracy was rampant, and few had access to television, radio, books or ideas beyond the thoughts of the late Mao Zedong.
Today, it's safe to say Deng's aphorism is taken to heart by China's 1.3 billion people. Getting rich is all the rage. Chinese goods flood world markets. Students from around the globe study at universities in Beijing and Shanghai. China has arrived.
So has national pride.
The Chinese people are proud of their country's resurgence, and they cheer on its athletes and business executives alike.
Yet many in this vast land worry that the world doesn't respect them as it should.
"A particularly important element in the formation of China's modern identity has been the legacy of the country's 'humiliation' at the hands of foreigners," writes journalist and East Asia scholar Orville Schell in the New York Review of Books.
In Chinese schools, students learn about "100 years of humiliation" by Western powers, from the virtual takeover of Chinese trade by European countries and the U.S. in the 1800s to Japan's brutal invasion of the country before and during the Second World War.
For Canadians, this is ancient history, but Chinese civilization is thousands of years old, and recent centuries seem like yesterday, says Jan Wong, a former Beijing correspondent for the Globe and Mail.
"In Canada, our history is so short," Wong says. "We've never been really invaded or occupied. We don't know what it's like to lose control of our borders. We just don't get it."
After the Communist takeover in Beijing in 1949, the West recognized Taiwan's government as the legitimate representative of China. That, combined with Mao Zedong's zealous drive to mould a revolutionary society out of centuries of feudalism, helped isolate Asia's largest country for generations.
Those memories still smoulder in China and help explain why Western concerns about Tibet, human rights and even pollution in Beijing often raise hackles.
Pro-Tibet protests during the Olympic torch relay to Beijing were to many Chinese yet more foreign interference in their country's internal affairs, just like the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century.
Hosting the Olympics was a dream of China's elite for more than a century, according to sports historian Xu Guoqi of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, a chance to show the world that the country mattered.
"It would mean that China could finally put the 19th-century label 'sick man of Asia' behind it, " Xu told CBC.ca, "and demonstrate that it must be treated as a major international power."
Xu reaches into the subtle and nuanced world of Chinese calligraphy to explain how the Olympics are viewed across his country.
The games, he says, are a weiji, a word formed from two Chinese characters — wei for danger, ji for opportunity. Literally, weiji means crisis, but it also takes its definition from its two root words.
"There are dangers [in hosting the Games]," Xu says, "There's pollution, traffic, the threat of terrorism and the possibility of mismanagement. But there's also great opportunity for China to shine. That's weiji."
Westerners often misunderstand the subtleties and nuances of China, says Daniel Bell, a Canadian who teaches philosophy at Beijing's Tsinghua University, mistaking Chinese nationalism for blind obedience to authority.
"People here are aware of the problems their country faces, now and in the coming years," says Bell, author of China's New Confucianism, Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, "They are very self-critical, and many see the Olympics as a chance to show the world a friendly face, confident, not bullied by foreign powers, but not chauvinistically nationalist either."...
Read entire article at CBC
In the late 1970s, when senior leader Deng Xiaoping famously proclaimed, "to be rich is glorious," much of the country was poor, ravaged by recent history. Illiteracy was rampant, and few had access to television, radio, books or ideas beyond the thoughts of the late Mao Zedong.
Today, it's safe to say Deng's aphorism is taken to heart by China's 1.3 billion people. Getting rich is all the rage. Chinese goods flood world markets. Students from around the globe study at universities in Beijing and Shanghai. China has arrived.
So has national pride.
The Chinese people are proud of their country's resurgence, and they cheer on its athletes and business executives alike.
Yet many in this vast land worry that the world doesn't respect them as it should.
"A particularly important element in the formation of China's modern identity has been the legacy of the country's 'humiliation' at the hands of foreigners," writes journalist and East Asia scholar Orville Schell in the New York Review of Books.
In Chinese schools, students learn about "100 years of humiliation" by Western powers, from the virtual takeover of Chinese trade by European countries and the U.S. in the 1800s to Japan's brutal invasion of the country before and during the Second World War.
For Canadians, this is ancient history, but Chinese civilization is thousands of years old, and recent centuries seem like yesterday, says Jan Wong, a former Beijing correspondent for the Globe and Mail.
"In Canada, our history is so short," Wong says. "We've never been really invaded or occupied. We don't know what it's like to lose control of our borders. We just don't get it."
After the Communist takeover in Beijing in 1949, the West recognized Taiwan's government as the legitimate representative of China. That, combined with Mao Zedong's zealous drive to mould a revolutionary society out of centuries of feudalism, helped isolate Asia's largest country for generations.
Those memories still smoulder in China and help explain why Western concerns about Tibet, human rights and even pollution in Beijing often raise hackles.
Pro-Tibet protests during the Olympic torch relay to Beijing were to many Chinese yet more foreign interference in their country's internal affairs, just like the Opium Wars of the mid-19th century.
Hosting the Olympics was a dream of China's elite for more than a century, according to sports historian Xu Guoqi of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, a chance to show the world that the country mattered.
"It would mean that China could finally put the 19th-century label 'sick man of Asia' behind it, " Xu told CBC.ca, "and demonstrate that it must be treated as a major international power."
Xu reaches into the subtle and nuanced world of Chinese calligraphy to explain how the Olympics are viewed across his country.
The games, he says, are a weiji, a word formed from two Chinese characters — wei for danger, ji for opportunity. Literally, weiji means crisis, but it also takes its definition from its two root words.
"There are dangers [in hosting the Games]," Xu says, "There's pollution, traffic, the threat of terrorism and the possibility of mismanagement. But there's also great opportunity for China to shine. That's weiji."
Westerners often misunderstand the subtleties and nuances of China, says Daniel Bell, a Canadian who teaches philosophy at Beijing's Tsinghua University, mistaking Chinese nationalism for blind obedience to authority.
"People here are aware of the problems their country faces, now and in the coming years," says Bell, author of China's New Confucianism, Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society, "They are very self-critical, and many see the Olympics as a chance to show the world a friendly face, confident, not bullied by foreign powers, but not chauvinistically nationalist either."...