Ideology and Social Movements in Modern China

Introduction

Nowadays, many overly naïve people believe that it is namely the specific form of political governing in every particular country, which defines its citizens’ existential mode. However, when we adopt a historical approach towards analysing the actual essence of political ideologies, it will appear these ideologies closely relate to the racial characteristics of groups of people, with which we associate these political doctrines in the first place. For example, even before the rise of National-Socialism in Germany, Germans were being commonly perceived as industrious, over-sentimental, and cruel individuals – the Nazi period in German history had simply strengthened this popular image of Germans. The same can be said about Arabs and the people of Middle Eastern origin – throughout their history, they did not practice any other forms of political governing, but despotic tyranny. This is the reason that despite the fact that such countries as Iraq or Iran even today continue to be officially referred to as “people’s republics”, they are being strongly associated with the total absence of democracy, regardless of how hard Western nations try to infuse Iraqis and Iranians with the ideas of political tolerance. On the other hand, despite the fact that Britain is officially a monarchy, it continues to remain one of the most democratic countries in the world – people’s biological makeup defines their socio-political behaviour more then any other factors, despite the fact that hawks of political correctness strive to convince us in otherwise. This thesis will serve us as the ideological foundation, upon which we will base this paper’s main argument – Ideology and social movements in modern China simply reflect the existential essence of Chinese as “people stuck in time”, which is exactly the reason why Communism in this country remains an absolutely credible political ideology up until today.

Main text

When we take a closer look at pre-Communist Chinese recent history (1850-1949), it will appear that during the course of this period, Chinese people were searching for the ideology that would instil them with the sense of belonging to one nation. The so-called “Opium Wars” (1839 – 1842, 1856 -1860) illustrate this thesis better then anything else. During the course of these wars, Britain was able to defend its right to practice a drug trade in China and to turn this country’s ruling elite into a conglomerate of warring factions, despite the fact that it only had five thousands soldiers in its possession, throughout the duration of this conflict, as opposed to Chinese force of at least a hundred thousand strong. Some historians now suggest that Chinese people’s addiction to imported opium was the main contributing factor to this nation’s inability to effectively oppose European and Japanese imperialism, up until 1949, when China’s Communists had taken over a political power in this country. We can agree with such claim only to a certain extent – as history shows, Chinese people had simply never knew what the concept of national solidarity stands for, until very recent times, when the Communist rule in China had created preconditions for Chinese citizens to begin considering themselves as belonging to a unified Chinese nation. For example, the reason why Taiping Rebellion of 1851 was being defeated is because rebels’ anti-imperialistic sentiment had a spontaneous nature. They were protesting against their country being turned into the world’s biggest drug market by British, yet their discontent with Chinese contemporary reality was not based on solid ideological foundation. While sensing it, rebellion’s leader Hong Xiuquan had proclaimed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus, yet this did not help him to unite rebels’ various factions around his authority, because he strived to appeal to Chinese people’s sense of individualism, without understanding that they simply did not possess it. Partially, this explains the fact that China’s last ruling dynasty Qing lasted from 1644 to 1912. During the course of this period, not a single event of socio-political importance had taken place in China, which could have resulted in Chinese society changing its essence from feudal to industrial. In its turn, this explains the ease, with which Western colonial powers were able to fully subject China, within a context of pursuing their geopolitical agenda.

This provides us with the insight into the true role of Communist doctrine, within a context of discussing contemporary socio-political developments in this country. In his book “Red Star Over China”, Edgar Snow suggests that it is utterly inappropriate to refer to Chinese version of Communism, as being solemnly inspired by abstract considerations of building classless society, on the part of Chinese “promoters of workers’ cause”: “Why hadn’t the Red Army taken big cities? Did this prove that this wasn’t a genuine proletarian-led movement? How it was possible to speak of “communism” or “socialism” in China, where over 80 per cent of population was still agrarian, where industrialism was in infant garments – if not in infantile paralysis?” (Snow, p. 37). Before we answer this question, we will need to define the essence of Communism as ideology that actively opposes the concept of biological evolution, by placing the concept of “people’s equality” into the very core of its assumptions on the subject of what defines the essence of social and political processes in every particular society. According to the laws of thermo-dynamics, the achievement of “equality” is only possible at the expense of establishing a state of energetic balance in society, when further scientific and cultural progress becomes impossible, by definition, as equality unable the free flow of energy. In other words, equality implies the existence energetic stalemate in society; it is nothing but the euphemism for the notion of entropy and chaos. As we have mentioned earlier, Chinese society has traditionally been existentially stagnant – even today, the majority on Chinese people in country’s rural areas live as they used to thousands of years ago, they are simply incapable of expanding their mind outside of pursuing with their daily routine. Therefore, it is not simply an accident that it were namely Chinese peasants that had accepted Communism as very natural worldview. Whereas White people have traditionally been individualists (which explains why Communism could never take roots in industrialized Western countries), the majority of Chinese people are closely associated with communal form of existence. Therefore, the adoption of Communism simply corresponded to the inner workings of their mind – they never viewed it as abstract political philosophy, but as the very practical instrument of becoming infused with the notion of national solidarity, the absence of which prior to 1948, has been the main contributing factor to China’s inability to effectively oppose European and Japanese colonialism. Mao Tse Tung was well aware of the fact that, in order for China to become an active player on the arena of international politics, it would have to become a fully unified nation first and he had rightly concluded that ideology of Communism (as unifying factor) suited the best to Chinese mentality, as people who rarely bother to logically analyse the socio-political doctrines, designed in the West, but who nevertheless are quite capable of utilizing them for the purpose of achieving very pragmatic results. In his article “Cultures of Reason”, Bruce Bower provides us with the insight on particularities of Chinese mentality: “In a variety of reasoning tasks, East Asians take a “holistic” approach. They make little use of categories and formal logic and instead focus on relations among objects and the context in which they interact. These populations also tend to accept or even search for contradictory perspectives on the same issue. In short, they direct their attention into a complex, conflict-strewn environment… People in the United States, on the other hand, adopt an “analytic” perspective. They look for the traits of objects while largely ignoring their context” (Bower, p. 57). This is why the Chinese version Communism continues to remain alive and well today and why this will continue to be the case in the future. Apparently, it never occurs to Chinese people that the fact that the prominent members of Chinese Communist Party openly admit of being millionaires contradict the very essence of Communist ideological doctrine – they could not care less about maintaining the “ideological purity” of Marxism, which they have adopted to serve very practical purposes. This is also the reason why those Western political observes who predict the ideological demise of Communism in China, can be best referred to as not very intelligent individuals. Apparently, they are simply incapable of realising a simple fact that Chinese mentality is fundamentally different from the mentality of White people, simply because the majority of Chinese are being deprived of the sense of perceptional idealism, which is the main psychological trait of White people. Communism is being viewed by Chinese rulers as the instrument of maintaining a high degree of uniformity among citizens, without which their sense of “communalism” would regress back to the tribal level. In his article “A Freespirit’s Observations On Taiwanese/Oriental Life/Mentality”, Winston Wu makes a very good observation of what corresponds to the essence of Asian mentality, as whole: “Most White people don’t see the other side of Asians and Orientals, which is the repressive controlling instinct and mentality that seeks to perpetually condemn, “fix” and correct those who are different from a set standard of Asian culture. The reason is because Asians don’t try to change White people, but other Asians who don’t fit the mold of how Asians are “supposed” to be. Instead, they view Whites as a foreign species to maintain a good “face” to – bowing and smiling gently to feign fake politeness” (Wu 2007). Whatever the illogical it might sound, it is the oppressiveness of Communist doctrine, which corresponds to its vitality in China. Whereas in Russia, Communism has been forcibly imposed upon citizens, majority of which used to perceive it as something unnatural, in China, Communism does not show the signs of its weakening. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 did not gain any popular support among ordinary Chinese citizens, while being simply a reflection of Westernised young people’s subconscious longing to distance themselves from their own cultural traditions, which is why it was being crushed in swift and effective manner, without triggering any further protests across the country. Nowadays, the membership in Chinese Communist Party continues to increase. In her article “Made in China: Communism Rules”, Hannah Beech points out to the fact that it is far too early to suggest that it is only the matter of time, before communist ideology looses its appeal in the eyes of Chinese citizens: “China’s government has recently been trumpeting the fact that an increasing number of young Chinese are joining the Communist Party. By the end of last year, 65 million Chinese were party members, and nearly half of them were under the age of 45. Recruitment has been particularly successful on university campuses, particularly at Beijing’s top schools like Peking University and Qinghua University” (Beech 2001). Chinese society can be compared to society of ants – millions and millions of ants act in accordance to society’s needs, when the deaths of single ants have no significance whatsoever. It is only when these ants work on behalf of their communal interests that their existence makes sense, but once being left outside of their ant house on their own, they begin running around without any particular purpose. When together, ants act in accordance with the specific roles that were ascribed to them since their birth, as if they were being governed by a collective “super-mind”. But such “super-mind” does not exist physically – ants simply become socially conscious, when together. Communism is nothing but the tool of keeping Chinese together, because only when they are together that they have a chance in international competition for Earth’ natural resources. This is why it makes no sense applying Western social concepts to describe the essence of political processes within Chinese society. “Yellow” race represent the “dead end” of human evolution, because it became fully specialised, which means that Chinese people can only advance for as long as they maintain close contacts with representatives of leading race. It is not simply a coincidence that the amazing progress of Chinese economy in recent years is closely associated with manufacturing of industrial products by Western companies for Western markets, when Chinese workers are being utilized as cheap substitutes for robots.

Bibliography

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