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AuthorBorn and bred in Hong Kong and educated by a Catholic English school, the author immigrated to Canada and established Canada’s first national Chinese language television station. He later worked in China in the broadcast and telecommunications technologies industry for many years, experiencing that country’s meteoric rise. Archives
October 2022
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What is China? (21/8/2019)17/5/2022 (24/8/2019)
(19,300 views on Quora) It appears people from all over the world, including some from China, are confused about China. Practically all the media in the West have been marinating our minds with their version of China, which is a horrible, smog-choked, authoritarian hell-hole where godless people cheat and steal and where brutal communist goons try to take over the world by conquest, depriving everyone of freedom. I was born in Hong Kong when it was still a colony, baptized Catholic at birth and educated by Catholic Irish brothers in a rather elitist English boy's school (La Salle College). The first part of my adult life was spent in Canada. I worked in the mainstream media business. I know a bit about what mainstream means. I have also witnessed China's largely unsuccessful attempts to battle this deluge of disinformation and false narratives over the years. Being from Hong Kong, we were not taught modern Chinese history at school. Most of us opted out of history anyways and took science courses instead. Even after Hong Kong's sovereignty returned to China in 1997, the population of the self-administered city protested when the government proposed to include modern Chinese history in school curriculum. Learn something about China? God forbid! Both my parents were staunch anti-communists. My father was actually an ex-communist. He was a renegade from Yan'an. I experienced in person the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in Hong Kong. People were writing slogans everywhere, some protests were quite violent, and a well known radio performer was killed by a home-made fire-bomb. Sounds familiar? My mother was a career teacher in Hong Kong. I've been to the Hong Kong Teacher's Association. It's a viper's nest fomenting venom on all things from China. No real investigation of the truth is allowed; forget about having balanced views. What do you think will come out of impressionable young minds if not ignorance and extremism? Ironically, these teachers are all holding government jobs. There is not enough room to enumerate all the organizations, government or otherwise, that continue to utilize public funds and take advantage of government inaction to incite social instability. Despite all that, I have kept myself apolitical* because I refuse to have an entrenched opinion on a subject I do not understand. Unfortunately, for some people, their minds are made up, do not confuse them with facts. While in Canada in the early '80s and working in television, I made friends with officials from both the Taiwan representative's office and the Chinese embassy. Interestingly, I once spoke one-on-one with Chiang Hsiao-yen (pinyin: Jiang Xiaoyan; 蒋孝严), the grandson of Chiang Kai-shek, without knowing who he was. His name at the time was Zhang Xiaoyan (章孝严). He was in charge of overseas Chinese affairs for the government of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. He even gave me his phone number and address and invited me to visit him in Taiwan. Chiang Hsiao-yen was an illegitimate child of Chiang Kai-shek's son Chiang Ching-kuo (pinyin: Jiang Jingguo; 蒋经国). Years later, his Chiang lineage was verified and he adopted the Chiang family name. He actually returned to his grandfather's hometown in mainland China and paid tribute to his ancestors.** I would only learn about Chiang Hsiao-yen's story many years later. Without knowing or caring about the differences between the KMT (Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party) and the CPC (Communist Party of China), I hired a Taiwanese as the TV station's news director. Her husband was in fact a KMT legislator. I was friends with them for a long time and trusted that they would not make a fool out of me. On the other hand, I was probably guilty of being politically insensitive. Meanwhile, I was also friends with the Chinese embassy's cultural attaché who did not speak English and, given China's lack of resources at the time, had a hard time understanding the Canadian society. He was an older gentleman who was a journalist for Xinhua News Agency prior to 1949. The official's name was Kang Chongru (康崇儒), which means 'worship Confucian teachings.' His name betrays his bourgeoisie family origins and probably got him into no small troubles during the Cultural Revolution. Once Mr. Kang complained to me that he couldn't even watch a Taiwanese movie at the cinema because he was so obviously a Chinese official and that would have been inappropriate. Without understanding the ramifications, I went directly to the Taiwanese office and borrowed maybe ten movies in 16mm reels and delivered them in person to the embassy in Ottawa. I told the Taiwanese officials that their mainland compatriots wanted to watch their movies, and they happily assented. They were not such bitter enemies after all. This was the first time I realized why China had such a hard time telling its side of the story. They didn't really have qualified people to fight a very difficult battle, and they didn't trust anybody else to help them, probably because they had trusted the wrong people and no longer knew who to trust. In 2011, which was the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Communist Party of China, I wanted to read something about the CPC to educate myself on the subject. I used to fly quite a bit in China during those days, and I went through many airport bookstores. There were thousands upon thousands of titles on how to make a fortune, but not a single book on the CPC. In utter exasperation, I went to Beijing Xinhua Bookstore where they dug out some dust covered books from storage. I got one from the late 70's, one from the seventieth anniversary in 1991 and a contemporary version. This was during an anniversary year. I wondered if China had given up trying to tell a more accurate story of itself.*** When I returned to Toronto recently, I was surprised to discover the existence of strident anti-China and anti-communist groups. The Falungong group with their dance troupe and multilingual free newspapers seems to have unlimited funds. From a bystander's point of view, they may even have more presence than China on the street. When the Confucius Institute sponsored Mandarin classes for the Toronto Education Board, so that any student wanting to learn Mandarin can do so for free, anti-China groups made a big stink about insidious communist messages hidden in the Mandarin lessons to corrupt Canadian children's innocent minds. With not a single person, organization, or media to stand up and speak on behalf of common sense, the Confucius Institute quietly withdrew their sponsorship. Have you ever heard anything as asinine as this? Is it possible that a country as powerful as present day China cannot even give away free Mandarin lessons (which my daughter would have loved to take)? It is a failure they need to acknowledge or their foreign relations with Western countries will never improve. We need to have a more accurate story of China. I went to China to live and work from the end of the '90s until recently. Bit by bit, my eyes were opened to the dishonest nature of the mainstream media's narrative on China. For most of the people who have not been to China or learned anything about China outside of their normal channels of information--or disinformation--they will fall victim to the millions of seemingly innocent little lies. Rather than arguing the veracity or falsity of what we read and watch every day, which will be tedious and may take forever, I will share the following excerpts from a documentary film about China, which was made by a non-Chinese Western organization. I will disclose who made this documentary at the end of the excerpts. "… to understand China, three facts must never be forgotten. China is History; China is Land; China is People. Chinese history goes back for more than four thousand years … … more than four thousand years ago, the Chinese empire was already in existence, and more important, so was the Chinese civilization, a civilization of art and learning and peace. China is also Land… this vast area consists of China Proper, and for outer provinces, to the north is Manchuria… next to Manchuria are Mongolia and Sinkiang (Xinjiang)… To the west is Tibet. … of every five persons on the face of the earth, one is a Chinese, and since one-fifth of all the human beings in the world are Chinese, we should know what sort of people they are. Well, in all their four thousand years of continuous history, they have never waged a war of conquest. They are that sort of people. They developed the art of printing from movable type. They invented the mariner’s compass, without which no ocean could be crossed. They were among the first astronomers and their observation of the stars and planets made possible the accurate measuring and recording of time. They are that sort of people. And why do we call our dishes china? Because the Chinese invented the art of making porcelain. And as we all know, they invented gunpowder, not as weapons of war, but as fireworks to celebrate their holidays and religious festivals. And it was one of China’s great philosophers who five hundred years before the birth of Christ gave mankind these words: “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” (Confucius's Golden Rule: 'You should not do unto others what you do not wish others to do unto you.') They are that sort of people, enriching the world in which we live. Why are the Chinese, when … in all their four thousand years of history have never waged an aggressive war been forced to fight…? The people of China, the people who wouldn’t surrender; the people determined to fight for their freedom, their good earth; people who can't be beaten … in the struggle that is as old as China herself; the struggle of freedom against slavery, civilization against barbarism, good against evil. upon their victory depends the future of mankind, and we must have it ..." These are excerpts from a documentary film directed by Frank Capra, the director of "It's a Wonderful Life" and many other Rockwellian films of Americana. If he had lied, we would never watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on Christmas Eve again. The film was produced by the War Department Signal Corps, Army Service Forces, United States Department of Defense. The title of the film is "The Battle of China" of the series "Why We Fight?" These are the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend America and the world from fascism. Could they have lied? It appears America knows about China, after all. China herself couldn't have said it better. Ask yourself why you do not know the truth when the truth is known all along. Is it possible all your media and all your journalists practicing the freedom of the press do not know? Is it possible that we prefer to believe the lies because the lies fit our prejudices? If we accept hypocrisy and lies when it suits us, shouldn't we expect hypocrisy and lies to be exercised on us? It's called "blowback." Why do you think we have democratically elected leaders and representatives of the people who don't give a rat's ass about telling the truth? We have met the enemy and he is us. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair (on mainstream journalists and editors) "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santayana "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell * To this day, I have no political attachments. I'm neither liberal nor conservative. Maybe I'm both because both have merits. I'm not pro-China and I'm not pro-America. I know both countries and both cultures very well. Maybe I'm pro-truth. I know what I'm against. I'm against self-serving liars and hypocrites. ** Ironies of ironies. Chiang Kai-shek's ancestral home and family burial grounds in mainland China are protected by his enemy the PRC, while all of Chiang's statues in Taiwan have been defiled, decapitated and unceremoniously removed by the current ROC government dominated by the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were inveterate enemies, but they both agreed that Taiwan is a part of China. *** History books in China about the Communist Party of China are officially sanctioned books which do not go into great details and are rather concise accounts. Reading about the same event described by books from three different eras can help a critical reader understand the changing views of the times, even if they are official. A famous motto in China is "march forward with the times." Being inquisitive and critical in nature, I also read books from Taiwan and from Western scholars. Archives are gradually being made available to the public, and real historians can always study actual documents to better understand historical events. I tend to give greater credence to books that reference and quote from archives. Personal accounts are also useful, especially from diaries not meant for public scrutiny, such as the diaries of Joseph Stilwell and Chiang Kai-shek. They do provide a glimpse into the mind of decision makers involved in historical events. Caveat: links to Wikipedia are for casual reference only. One should be aware that Wikipedia articles are not always accurate or without bias. Readers who are interested in the subject should conduct more in-depth research. Comments: Garwin Kim Sing: A great answer. It’s an intractable problem though. For as long as very few non-Chinese reporters can read or write Chinese and very few ambassadors of China can command the respect and credibility of a western audience, I doubt if China can increase its soft power in the world in the face of western media conglomerates. I wonder what Madam Chiang Kai-Shek would do? Wenhong You: "… to understand China, three facts must never be forgotten. China is History; China is Land; China is People. Chinese history goes back for more than four thousand years …” As soon as I saw those words, I knew which documentary film you were talking about. I have watched it so many times, often with tears in my eyes at just how beautifully this American-made film portrayed China. Also, loved the fact that the film’s theme song is “The March of the Volunteers,” which a few years later would become the national anthem for that fifth of humanity. Aeo C: “They didn't really have qualified people to fight a very difficult battle, and they didn't trust anybody else to help them.” This really is a sharp observation.
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