Friday, November 07, 2003
REPRESSION in CHINA and the MUSLIM WORLD
Instapundit is linking to a number of items in the blogosphere critical of the Chinese government’s actions toward free speech on the net, while there’s been a recent flow of commentary remarking on the risks inherent in the world’s increasing engagement with China’s “superheated” economy, like this one and this one. It’s enough to get one concerned about the “yellow peril”
Regular readers will know that I’ve been engaged with China in some way for over 25 years, and friends, colleagues and competitors know that currently a good deal of my law practice is focused on China. All of which makes me humble about striking out with bold assertions regarding what’s right or wrong with China and what’s good or bad about China’s role as a developing society and economy. The reality of China is so big and complex, and the changes that have been happening there during my life as an observer of China are so sweeping, that it’s difficult for me to make straight-forward statements that aren’t bogged down with a multitude of caveats. Nevertheless, I can say that as a matter of principle, repression of free speech in China is wrong. I know the sincere pain that this causes to supporters of the current order who do support free expression in their hearts, but also hold a deep dread of the harm that could come with a collapse of public order if the current regime were to vanish.
Ultimately, I’m hopeful that positive change will continue in China. Why am I optimistic about China and not so about the Islamic world, the other great culture pressing itself onto the world stage? First, although the repression of free expression that continues in China is wrong and painful, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown signs that it can and will change over time to tolerate increasing freedom. Anyone who remembers the horror of the Cultural Revolution and yet sees today’s China knows this. Second, regardless of the thin veneer of Marxist cant that one still finds in official ideology, the fact is that the core of communist faith is steadily eroding at all levels. Neither of these things – or analogies to them – is seen in the Muslim world. The trend in the Muslim world is negative: individual freedom has been decreasing over the last 50 years, and the underlying foundation of irrational religious fervor that drives the theft of freedom is stronger than ever in the Middle East and elsewhere.
With the exceptions of brief periods when the absolutist and totalitarian “legalist” mentality of Qin Shihang have been ascendant, the Chinese people have often expressed a culture of ideological flexibility that is able to adapt and give rise to social structures in which individuals can live comfortably and prosper. Yes, as I’ve written before, the hierarchical nature of Confucian moral precepts and Confucianism's tendancy toward a static world-view are problematic. But there are elements of the rich soil of thousands of years of Chinese culture that reformers can work with to create a modern, open society. Not so those who have Islam to deal with as the raw material for change. In Islam, one has a primitive world-view of submission and terror. The Chinese have always been able to find sly and creative ways for the individual to prosper and grow, regardless of the cultural “superstructure” fashionable at any particular time.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:48 AM
