[Vnbiz] China and India: Oh to be different and China Intelligentsia

[Pham Thi Thanh An]

Dear A. Tai, 

 

Thanks for posting the article. A very interesting Indian perspective. But
it looks to me that the author is somewhat underestimating China's efforts
to seek ways of embracing differences in managing an increasing complex
society, including managing its transitions to democracy. The attached
article "China's Intelligentsia" reveals a much deeper view of what is going
on inside China's closest circle of reforms (Vietnamese translation on top,
English version follows), and has lots of lessons that could be learnt for
Vietnam. 

 

The described China's high investment and reliance on academic and research
institutions as the laboratories for lots of innovative social reform ideas
based on the combination of the best essence of both Western-informed
ideology and the Confucious values are clearly signifying their emphasis on
a much more open approach to finding solutions to resolve the mounting
economic, social and political complexity they are confronted with in the
transitions to the market economy. Unquestionably, such a pragmatic approach
has helped them tremendously in obtaining many of the achievements the world
has acknowledged. Vietnam has certainly adopted a similar reform path, but I
guess there remain considerable rooms for improvements for our country
learning from its neighbour in terms of greater investments on academic and
research institutions. 

 

On Tibet, however, as I mentioned in my previous messages, I think Beijing
has pursued a deeply unwise policy in both religious, cultural and
socio-economic dimensions. First, its social-economic development policy's
failure to deservingly target the indigenous community whilst creating more
social injustice for them against the better-educated, better-connected and
thus better-benefited Han immigrants. Second, its arrogant denial of and
disengagement with Dalai Lama, the true spiritual leader of the profoundly
religious community there can never truly win the local people's heart, (and
given Dalai Lama's huge influence in the international arena, such position
puts itself in a very awkward position with many Western powers
unnecessarily).

 

To the extent that Tibet could be compared with Tay Nguyen a few years ago,
here I think China has quite a few things to learn from Vietnam in terms of
redefining its socio-economic development policy to the region, including,
for example, the corrective measures implemented in Tay Nguyen as I
described in my previous message, despite their remaining possible rooms for
continuing further improvements. Similarly, there are possible lessons for
China to learn from Vietnam with respect to the religious policy, especially
from the way the GOV recently engages with the once-exiled Buddist spiritual
leader, particularly with the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who, like Dalai
Lama, has always advocated for peace and non-violent approach in resolving
conflicts. 

 

In terms of India's self-pride of its democracy and its seeming
non-appreciation of social harmony as such, whilst I agree political
democracy might be a valid pride for Indians, I am not so sure if India's
short of social harmony should be a model for China in developing a better
and more equal society. 

 

In fact, India has been painly suffering from its own well-known problem of
caste system, where people in the society are divided into different
hierarchical stratifications based on their birth groups and something
similar to class. Some of the lowest castes in the society are even called
the "untouchables" (for high-caste people), if members of their families
once happened to have low-class jobs such as cleaners, cooks, etc. This
terrible social division structure, which was deepened tragically under the
British colonial regime from a much looser form of caste in pre-colonial
time, has remained a very dominating reality of today's modern Indian
society. 

 

This caste chapter of the "India in diversity" story could hardly be any
commendable example-setter. Not only it creates a system where social
injustice is legitimised. It also provides a tool for political mobilisation
throughout Indian post-independence history, which reinforces, rather than
breaks its vicious circle. I have many Indian friends and most of them feel
very hopeless of the caste system. One of them after his recent study on the
Indian caste structure reveals the fact that many Indian intellectuals label
their democracy as "votecracy". i.e, a system where democracy is used to get
caste-based votes. 

 

China has not always done right in maintaining both social harmony and
diversity. But it would be equally unright and misleading to base on such
unrightness to claim that social harmony and diversity are mutually
exclusive, even at times. The question is not what to select, and what to
drop in what circumstances, but how to maintain both to achieve the optimal
social results. To this extent, I think India has a long way to go to
embrace a more egalitarian value in its social structure that has
successfully been realised in East Asian countries where Mahayana Buddism is
developed. 

 

It is interesting to note also that recently a considerable number of Hindus
or Muslim Indians attracted by the religion's egalitarian values have
converted to Buddism, although I would assume Theravada Buddism as the
dominant branch of Buddism in India now. There is a lot to discuss more
around this religious topic, which I hope I will have the opportunity to
return to later on. 

 

Best regards,

 

 

Thanh An

email: thanhan2505 at gmail.com

 

  _____  

From: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com [mailto:vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com]
On Behalf Of Tai Phan
Sent: 24 March 2008 15:21
To: vnbiz at vietlinks.net
Subject: [Vnbiz] China and India: Oh to be different

 



Mar 19, 2008 


 

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  <http://www.atimes.com/images/f_images/spacer15.gif> 



China and India: Oh to be different
By Pallavi Aiyar 

China had it all planned out. Or so it seemed. With the Beijing Summer
Olympic Games only a few months away, the flashy sports stadiums, the
world's biggest airport and kilometers of extended subway lines combined to
serve as gleaming testaments to the country's dramatic material progress.
Efforts had even been made to transform Beijingers themselves for their
Olympic debut, from surly communists suspicious of foreign barbarians into
smiling, service-oriented folk welcoming "foreign friends" to their city in
English. 

But as the events of the past few days have shown with protests against
Chinese rule of Tibet spreading from Lhasa to parts of Gansu and Sichuan
provinces, Beijing has been caught unprepared in its ability to deal with
dissent. It is this inability, moreover, that will prove to be the country's
greatest vulnerability

 
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going forward; its Achilles' heel as it strives for great power status. 
As Beijing desires the Olympics to demonstrate, much in China has changed in
recent years, often at a dizzying pace. The successes in poverty reduction
are an awesome achievement. Beijing in 2008, with its slew of vertiginous
skyscrapers, flood of fancy cars and array of malls boasting the most
luxurious of luxury brands, is a far cry from the capital city of Mao Zedong
suits and bicycles in the not so distant past. 

However, while much has changed, China's response to the events in Tibet is
also indicative of how much remains unchanged. The official response to the
protests in Lhasa and elsewhere, the most serious in two decades, do not
indicate the discovery by Beijing of "Olympic-new" savvy ways of crisis
control. Instead, the Chinese people and the world have only been subjected
to the same old tired responses officialdom resorts to given any sign of
discontentment among the Tibetan population. 

This is a response that essentially amounts to a denial of any fundamental
problem. The elements are familiar: a scapegoating and vilification of the
Dalai Lama, a refusal to grant any legitimacy to Tibetan disaffection and an
insistence on the myth of elemental "harmony" among all "Chinese" people,
including Tibetans. 

This denial of legitimate differences is ultimately the greatest difference
between China and Asia's other major rising power, India. 

Indians who visit Chinese cities are invariably awestruck by the
infrastructure. They look at the silken-smooth multi-lane highways with
barely concealed envy, no doubt comparing them to the pot-holed clumps of
tar more familiar as roads back home. They marvel at the relatively orderly
flow of traffic on the broad avenues, unobstructed by stray cows. They
remark on the absence of slums and beggars on the streets. 

China has not only built cities that are almost impossibly modern from an
Indian point of view, it has also provided jobs and opportunities for upward
mobility for millions of migrant workers from the countryside. 

China's economic achievement over the past 30-odd years has in fact been
unparalleled historically. However, a point usually unrecognized by Indians
impressed by China's glitter is the fact that so is India's political feat. 

China's southern neighbor's democracy is almost unique among post-colonial
states not simply for its existence but its existence against all odds in a
country held together not by geography, language or ethnicity but by an
idea. This is an idea that asserts, even celebrates, the possibility of
multiple identities. In India, you can and are expected to be both many
things and one thing simultaneously. 

Your correspondent is thus a Delhite, an English speaker, half a Brahmin,
half a Tamilian, a Hindu culturally, an atheist by choice, a Muslim by
heritage. But the identity that threads these multiplicities together is at
once the most powerful and most amorphous: she is an Indian. 

India's great political achievement is thus in its having developed
mechanisms for negotiating large-scale diversity along with the inescapable
corollary of frequent and aggressive disagreement. The guiding and perhaps
lone consensus that forms the bedrock of that mechanism is that in a
democracy you don't really need to agree - except on the ground rules of how
you will disagree. 

In direct contradistinction to China, India's polity has flourished
precisely because of its ability to acknowledge difference. The very
survival of India as a country, given the scope of its bewildering
diversity, has been dependent on the possibility of dissent. 

India is a country of 22 official languages and over 200 recorded mother
tongues. In this "Hindu" country, there are more Muslims than in all of
Pakistan. The country's cultural inheritance includes fire-worshiping
Zorastrians and Tohra-reciting Jews. With no single language, ethnicity,
religion or food, India is quite simply, implausible; yet marvelously, it
isn't. It is a country without a language, without a center, lacking
singularity except in being singularly diverse. 

In China, regular lip service is also paid to the country's own,
considerable diversity. During the National People's Congress' annual
session, for example, delegates representing China's multiplicity of
minorities swish around the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in their
"ethnic" dresses. Beijing regularly talks of the religious freedoms enjoyed
by the country's Buddhists, Christians and Muslims. 

But in fact, the fundamental tenet of China's political philosophy is not
diversity but uniformity. This homogeneity does not only extend itself to
the tangible, such as architecture or the system of writing alone, but also
to thought. 

Even in the modern China of the 21st century where there are more Internet
users than even in the United States, those who disagree with mainstream,
officially sanctioned views outside of the parameters set by mainstream
officially sanctioned debate, more often than not find themselves branded as
dissidents - suspect, hunted, under threat. 

The insistence on "harmony" as the only reality and inability to admit
genuine differences in interest and opinions between the peoples of a
country of the size and complexity of China is ultimately the country's
greatest weakness. 

Talk of political reform in China continues to be bound by the "harmonious"
parameters set by Hu Jintao, the president. The idea is that everyone's
interests and opinions are to be balanced and resolved without conflict. 

Oppositional politics with the clash of argument remain anathema. Consensus
for the good of the whole nation is the way forward, we are told. 

To imagine that these pious prescriptions will be adequate to address
growing tensions within Chinese society as it evolves and changes is
foolhardy. The interests of the laid-off worker and multinational executive
are divergent, as are those of the real estate developer and the
city-dweller about to have her home destroyed to make way for a mall. 

These are conflicts that need to be acknowledged so that effective
mechanisms for their resolution can then be identified. 

As the recent protests have demonstrated, despite over 50 years of
suppression and "patriotic education", a strong strain of resentment against
Beijing's rule continues to simmer in Tibet. During this time period the
region's economy has benefited from Chinese-developed infrastructure,
literacy rates are also on the up and health care has improved. Nonetheless,
large swathes of dissatisfaction with Beijing's policies persist. 

For China's authorities to simply deny the reality of the problem, blame all
tension on an exiled leader and insist that the majority of Tibetans
couldn't be happier with the Communist Party's harmonious policies, is
self-defeating. 

Given this stance whether or not the Chinese authorities react with
"leniency" towards the protesters, the damage to their reputation
internationally is assured. 

Looking ahead to the Olympics and beyond, China would in fact do well to
look to India, the neighbor it usually scorns as poor and chaotic, to
understand the strength that acknowledging differences can provide. 

Harmony is a laudable goal, but sometimes a little dissent is the mark of a
truly healthy society. 

Pallavi Aiyar is the author of the forthcoming book, Smoke and Mirrors:
China Through Indian Eyes, (Harper Collins, April 2008.)

 

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