Opinion | What kind of people are the Chinese?
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Take a sneak peek into the Chinese soul, and you will see that it is soaked in Confucian values, gentle on the outside and big-hearted on the inside. Since 1949, Communist teachings have stiffened the Chinese spine.
Lu Xun famously called the Chinese a sheet of loose sand, lacking cohesion and fragmented by family fealties. But a new collective consciousness has taken root in its psyche.
If England is nation of shopkeepers, then China is a nation of eaters. Indisputably, Chinese cuisine has conquered the world, though in an adulterated form. In the remotest towns of Canada, for example, you may not find a McDonald's or a KFC, but there is always a humble Chinese restaurant. If Canada has a common coast-to-coast presence, it is a pocket-friendly Chinese eatery.
Food and Confucius have tamed the Chinese, and gambling has domesticated them. They seek their thrills not from conquering Mt. Everest, but at the mahjong table. The Chinese are utterly safety-conscious. They religiously heed the filial Confucian injunction to protect their body, from the skin to the hairs, as they come from their parents. The body care-taker is duty-bound to preserve it. Now you know why Chinese are physically unadventurous. For centuries, the Confucian social hierarchy idolized the frail scholars and worshipped wimps. Aggression is totally absent from the Chinese genes. They were once dismissed by the Japanese as the Sick Man of East Asia. No longer. The Japanese insult has stunk the Chinese into a Spartan belief in fitness. Today, sport has been turned into a virtual religion. This is why the Olympics have taken on a mythical importance. It might have even altered the Chinese DNA. China's current super-heroes are sports heroes who are treated as demi-gods.
The Chinese are born unassertive. That's why they have been edged out as CEO's by their aggressive Indian peers. Modesty is prized as a social virtue. The Americans have totally misread the Chinese national character, wrongfully accusing them of innate aggressiveness. They have missed the mark by a million light years. China, though, has a new philosophy: Though genetically preprogrammed against provocative behaviour, if provoked, it will respond in kind. This explains the seemingly combative posture of its "wolf warrior" diplomats whose combativeness is actually a defense mechanism and must be understood against China's 100-year humiliation by foreign powers. It is not visible proof of Chinese aggression. National humiliation is seared into our collective memory, so powerful that it constitutes the basic mandate of the Chinese government--to see that China will never be humiliated again. History has taught them to be thin-skinned.
America, by contrast, has belligerence in its blood, bristling with guns, battleships, sanctions, tariffs and trade embargos. For China, trade is paramount, being the lifeblood of its economy. That is why keeping the sea lanes of the South China Sea open against possible US blockade is an unalterable priority. It has nothing to do with territorial ambition. It is survival, pure and simple.
The Chinese were once notorious rationalizers, symbolized by Lu Xun's fictional character Mr. Ah Q. who could bend with every blow and shrug off any insult. Forbearance was once the admired Chinese trait, and the Chinese character hangs in nearly every office as a piece of calligraphy. This national motto is fast fading. These days, China has embraced a diluted form of tit for tat--a far cry from unprovoked aggression.
I will let our Western friends into a little secret. The way to deal with the Chinese is not by a show of force, but by a sugarcoating of respect. If you give them an inch, they will give you a yard. Respect is the key that opens China's doors. Bullying is counterproductive and a no-no.
Despite the ubiquity of technology, China is still run on traditional values. Everywhere you go, moral exhortations scream from every wall and every bus stop.
America is guilty of another miscalculation: the Chinese people are at one with their government. If you antagonize their government, you antagonize the people. China is perhaps the only nation where there is a complete identification between the people and the government. US politicians who stoop low to demonize China, often refer to it pejoratively as "the Chinese communist party". Big mistake. It is strategically a dumb and dangerous thing to treat this inseparable whole as separate entities.
China has undergone another sea change. For centuries, its elites were nerdy scholars of moral texts. Today, they are replaced by action-oriented engineers and bold-thinking technocrats who play the long game and can move mountains. They have transformed China's landscape with jaw-dropping, world-wowing infrastructure, helping to lift 800 million people out of poverty. It is a massive miracle never before achieved in human history. Today's Chinese leaders are dreamers and builders without the slightest itch to dominate the world. China the aggressor exists only as a mythical creature in America's warped imagination. The hypothetical Chinese aggression is a pure American projection.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | The death of book stores and other heartbreaking changes in Hong Kong society
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