I
shared a news report I got on Facebook by George Yeo on April 21, from "Mothership" entitled “COVID-19 putting China in position of political advantage.
They may just emerge as a big winner while the rest of the world struggles to
contain the outbreak.” In this article, which first appeared on Brunswick on
Apr. 16, George Yeo, a Brunswick
Geopolitical Principal and former Singapore Cabinet member for Health
(1994–97), Trade and Industry (1999–2004) and Foreign Affairs (2004–11) and a non-executive Advisor to "Mothership". In it, he says “The Chinese authorities made 'serious mistakes' in their initial response to COVID-19 between Dec.
2019 and Jan. 2020. However, the Chinese central government took the right call
on the most critical decision -- locking down Wuhan, which saved the country
and bought the world a few weeks. It was unfortunately not put to good use.
China's uniquely centralized system has allowed it to bring down the number of
new cases, while the rest of the world now struggles with the fallout. This has
placed China in a position of political advantage and to emerge as a winner
from the crisis, provided it does not overplay its hand.”
A
few stateside friends commented on my shared post, one positively, one not so; he said he didn’t
think communism was good, to which I replied “But it saved a billion people in China and has lessened their dependence on other nations commercial needs. Poverty is greatly reduced, and wages in
coastal cities are higher than Taiwan." I asked if he didn't wish the US could have helped
its people the way China has.” He
replied “No. Don't forget about China's communism. It is a huge blemish on whatever
accomplishment fulfilled” to which I replied “Communism is good. It is good for a
central government to care for the needs of all its people.”
That
was when I got comments from a recent Facebook friend, Neil, who, while not a man
freed from US propaganda, is otherwise progressive in liking my pro-worker
shares. He chimed in with two irrelevant articles condemning China, first from
Amnesty International July 9, 2018, entitled “Third Anniversary of the lawyers
crackdown in China: Where are the human rights lawyers, and saying “It’s
already been three years since China launched a crackdown on human rights
lawyers and activists across the country. Starting on 9 July 2015, nearly 250
targeted individuals were questioned or detained by state security agents.”
Another, a two month old report from The Guardian entitled “Doctor who blew
whistle over coronavirus has died, hospital says. Early reports of death of Li
Wen-Liang were retracted, only for doctor to succumb to disease later in day.”
Neil’s point, though irrelevant to my initial, was that China did not care for
its own people’s freedom of speech or health.
I
pointed out that statements like this: "This is just the kind of arbitrary
and unreasonable behavior you get in a system where there are no limits on
power and the authorities can simply do whatever they please" show the
prejudiced slant on China's system from AI. Surely you can't have the multitude
of divergent opinion in a one party state. Do you want to see the chaos that
has caused 50k deaths from COVID-19, 20k from the common flu, opioid addiction,
white supremacists with a privileged ruling class for a society of s billion people?!?
There are ways to influence local level policy in China but the chaos of
corrupt government capitalism, or the advocacy of such, is not how to safeguard
the progress China has made. When Amnesty international investigates the
corrupt foundation of Taiwan and other capitalist police states there will be a
blue moon. It is a "pro-democracy" NGO, anti-China and any nation on
the road to socialism, anarcho-syndicalism, or communism. That this doctor's
family has condemned how his unfortunate death has been used in Taiwan and
other anti-China states. He is a hero to the Chinese people, and to me, not a
toy to manipulate in Western media. He didn’t care what I said
I
wondered if, as a US citizen, perhaps he had not suffered enough through
neo-liberal politics and pointed out the absence of social medicine and
education in the US and other ruling class dominated stated, the 99% under
class. He not only didn’t care what he said but he went off on a defensive
tangent saying my comment on AI, “though different your references (those,
fabulously ignorant) perfectly mirrors that of the right wing Israeli
government and its sycophants: a shared, irrational hatred...I could say a lot
a more... (E.g., local Chinese officials take their orders from Communist
Central and are blamed whenever those are mistaken or objected to by the public...well
documented) He not only called my references “fabulously ignorant” but compared
my criticism of AI accusations of China to Israel’s!
“Not
suffered enough?” he asked rhetorically as if insulted. “Oh my...I was a militant union steel worker.
I have lived in a barrio for 28 years. I am (was) a simple tradesman. My S.S.
does not cover my rent. I stand in food lines. My Medicaid will soon be
threatened. I am an advanced cancer patient on chemotherapy...” for which I do
have sympathy
But
then he calls me a hypocrite for posting an Earth Day cartoon by Robert Crumb.
“You post a comic by Crumb which waters "decentralization". Do you
really believe that? You refuse to speak to political oppression in China...I
might infer a middle class socialist fake with "self-esteem
issues"...Or the simple inability to be honest. Don't reply...I am not
interested.” Okay. This guy wants to fight so I put on my gloves.
“You
silly human being,” I wrote jokingly. “Are you unable to deal with an opinion different
from your own? I strongly suggest that you double your efforts to clean up your
own backyard before you start working on others backyards who you have never
visited. What you refuse to understand is what is necessarily right in one
system of government is not necessarily right in another. Robert crumb is
completely right in saying that decentralization would improve the lives of
people in the United States because the central government in the United States
is not interested in the welfare of the common people. In China, on the other
hand, the central government is obliged to care for the 1 billion people under
its auspices if not for the sake of deferring any insurrection then for the
altruistic Chinese concept of social development which has existed in their
society for over five thousand years. You can't take one idea and say that it's
true for every government.
“Having
some states lock down and some not lock down is like having a peeing section in
a swimming pool.” I saw this cute meme supporting my viewpoint and IM’d him
hoping to draw the conversation away from public posting. “That’s why,” I said,
“You need to be decentralized until there's a reason to come together under one
umbrella. It takes a civil war for that to happen. Are you willing to
participate or do you just want to criticize other people's points of view?
China already had it civil war the good guys won. America had the civil war and
everything was the same after as it was before. They need another one don't you
think so?”
He
hadn’t read it until three hours later, after changing his mind about me not
replying to him because he was not interested. “Well, I will contradict myself
and reply...I refuse to deal with a person whose opinion is founded on ignorant
illusions (the last, a simplistic view about Chinese history based on the
dubious Marxian theory of the "Asiatic mode of production"...which he
borrowed from bourgeois observers) or bad faith mendacity....But most of all,
one who ignores the repression of free speech (which Marx, if challenged, would
have not ignored...) Done...” he short shifted me again. But I wasn’t finished,
whether he looked, as I now see he did, or didn’t.
“You’re
confusing free expression of thoughts with something else, I said. “Can you
count how many times the West has tried to subvert China? Have you heard of the
CIA in Tibet? Have you heard of the non-government organizations representing
America tearing apart Hong Kong? Have you heard about the last Western colony
on Chinese soil called Taiwan? Have you heard about the Northwest Chinese
education of Muslim called concentration camps by Western media? And by the way
have you heard of a little virus called COVID-19 that the West claims was
manufactured or originated in a city called Wuhan? How many times do you want
the West to sabotage the revolution in China?”
I
had hit on Hong Kong subterfuge from Western NGO’s and that got Neil agitated
enough to send another biased article from ESSF with the Democracy Now take on
the "attack on democracy" referring to the chaos that resulted from the Hong Kong government’s attempt to fix a
loophole preventing them from prosecuting a murderer from Taiwan by extraditing
him to China, an article on impractical altruism typical of anarchists “Not
Dogma: A Left Case for Hong Kong Self-Determination from April 3 2020, by LI Promise, another ignorant
take on the clueless Hong Kong upper class bourgeois.That I had seen before.
“Our
principles of left internationalism and anti-discrimination aim toward the
ever-increasing capacity of ordinary people to collectively think for
themselves and democratically determine their own lives with others. The left
must struggle alongside the masses in the collective struggle for
self-determination, not to reify national borders or set up layers of
exclusion, but to witness a basic reality of democratic thinking that would
stimulate and guide our internationalist commitments for a more equitable
society for all.” Isn’t that altruism for you?”
I
replied and reminded him I live in Taiwan and have been to Hong Kong enough to
know how arrogant most people there are towards working class Chinese, African
and Islamic day laborers.
I
will not unfriend Neil though he insulted me a few times; I have sympathy for a
working man, on chemotherapy no less, but he shouldn’t leave this earth afraid
of China gaining dominance over neo-liberal capitalism; he should be proud that
our side won.
Copyright © 2020 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved
