WHICH PATH FOR CHINA?

CCTV headquarters building in Beijing. Architect:
Rem Koolhaas. Many landmark Chinese buildings, such as the
"bird's nest" Olympic stadium and the 128-story Shanghai Tower,
are still designed by western architects—but maybe not for long.

China is a nation that’s never less than fascinating. I first visited in 1994, and have spent my summers here more or less yearly since 2000, when my wife and I bought a house in Suzhou, the region where she grew up.

In the ensuing nineteen years, I’ve written many, many thousands of words about China, whether for newspapers, for my syndicated column, or for my blog. Yet each time I return to the People’s Republic, I find a whole new China to talk about.

If there’s one thing that’s stood out in my last few visits—since America’s Great Recession, perhaps not coincidentally—is that the Chinese no longer view the West as its smarter big brother. After a century of humiliation at the hands of the West, after enduring Second World War atrocities by the Japanese, China closed its doors and turned turned its back on the world. Communism salvaged the nation’s sense of sovereignty, but ironically, it also further afflicted China by unnaturally suppressing the nation’s ancient mercantile instincts for thirty years.

One of the less nauseating images of Japan's
atrocities again the Chinese during the Nanjing Massacre,
which began December 13, 1937. During the next two months,
between 100,000 and 300,000 Chinese died at the hands of
Japanese soldiers, including uncounted women and children.

Only after the Opening in 1978 was the genie once again released from the bottle. In the scant thirty-eight years since—a mere heartbeat in the long history of this culture—China has regained its confidence, and perhaps, its sense of innate cultural superiority.

This wouldn’t trouble me in the least if China was not such a profoundly homogeneous nation, and also one that has not lost its equally ancient xenophobia, nor its incredible tenacity in holding a grudge. I’m speaking, of course, about China’s relationship with Japan—a nation that has undeniably inflicted unspeakable suffering on the Chinese people. Yet China had no monopoly on suffering during the Second World War. The United States was not occupied by Imperial Japan as China was, but given the course of the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans certainly had reason to hold a grudge. Yet within five years of the war’s end, Japan was under reconstruction, and within ten the antagonism of the war years was largely left behind.

Propaganda poster from the time of the Cultural Revolution,
which turned China's most learned citizens into political enemies
to be persecuted.

Not so China. Every Chinese grade school history book from the immediate postwar era to this very moment makes certain to instill in young Chinese students a hatred of the Japanese. This, not surprisingly, explains the instant indignation of young Chinese in the long running skirmish over some seemingly worthless islands in the South China Sea and any number of other conflicts we in the West may find trivial. 

As a frequent visitor to the People’s Republic, one thing that’s always in the back of my mind is the speed at which things can change there. In all the time I’ve spent there, I’ve seldom met a Chinese person who has been less than generous and hospitable—it’s an innate cultural trait. Yet it’s also true that it would only take a single edict from Beijing to change this benevolent attitude toward foreigners, much as Mao’s bizarre initiation of the Cultural Revolution sparked mayhem against China’s own most learned people.

Xi Jinping: One Belt, One Road, One Leader for the
foreseeable future. Which path will China choose?

In view of the near-certainty that China will draw abreast of the United States as a world superpower in the near future, one can only hope that the Buddhist cultural traits of kindness and generosity will continue to outweigh the periodic fevers of nationalism that wreak such destruction there,  just as they do everywhere else on earth.