China: Prisoner of Its Past/Schell


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

Salon Magazine
[ A N A L Y S I S ] 

Prisoner of its past 

The recent eruption of anti-Americanism in China reflects a deep-seated
historical identity as "victim" that is holding back its emergence as a
major power. 

BY ORVILLE SCHELL 

June 8, 1999 -- As I watched the demonstrators in front of U.S. diplomatic
missions in China last month, after NATO's accidental bombing of the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade, I couldn't help but think back to my first
visit to the People's Republic in 1975. Then, under Mao Zedong, the
Cultural Revolution continued to hold sway, and almost every public surface
was emblazoned with revolutionary exhortations such as "Down with American
imperialism and its running dogs!" 

Now the Chinese were once again waving banners and chanting anti-U.S.
slogans, including "Blood debts must be paid with blood." The official
Chinese press accused the United States of "harbor[ing] deep prejudice and
hostility toward China" and of intentionally carrying out a "criminal act"
because the Chinese people had "made achievements that enemy forces in the
West could no longer tolerate." 

Students of Chinese history know that the country's humiliating experience
of victimization by foreign powers in the past translated directly into
support for Lenin's theories about imperialism. For me, being there at the
end of the Cultural Revolution was also an important reminder of just how
much of China's modern identity had been forged in opposition to the West. 

Official propaganda at the time was still so alienated from America that it
was hard to imagine how the Chinese Communist Party would ever feel
comfortable cooperating with foreign imperialists like me, let alone
becoming fully integrated into the global market system. After all,
historically speaking, America and the West were exploiters and oppressors
who had "cut up China like a melon," humiliated the Chinese race and soiled
China's once proud national escutcheon. 

Twenty years of reform have changed many things in China, but the
collective memory of "national humiliation" is one of the most resistant
parts of China's historical legacy. It will not be overcome simply by
increasing trade, by allowing students to study abroad or by more American
fast-food restaurants opening in Beijing. 

Like an afterglow that lingers on the screen long after a television set
has been turned off, images from its history keep haunting China. Each time
another country does something the party finds provocative -- especially in
relation to Taiwan, Tibet or sovereignty and human rights issues -- party
leaders proclaim the offending nation as having "wounded the feelings of
the Chinese people." To a Westerner, such an accusation sounds absurdly
childish. But actually it is a carefully chosen figure of speech that
resonates among Chinese precisely because it emotionally summons up China's
experience of being historically "wounded." 

In a similar vein, what the recent demonstrations and expressions of
indignation (and denial) about the Cox Report allegations suggest is that
China has still not transcended its old antagonistic attitudes about
foreign powers unfairly preying on it. In witnessing this latest new spasm
of anti-imperialist, or anti-American, sentiment, one is still left to
wonder: Why does China feel so wounded? With such ambiguous feelings toward
countries with which it is now ever more deeply involved economically, what
is its future in the world?
 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytas-06.10.99-00:17:19-17932