To love, live and die in the land I worship and love

[besotted]

I will spend more time there and when I retire, it will be in China and when I die I shall be buried in the land I worship and love

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/news/story/0,4574,352822,00.html?

China celebrates its 60th, and its newfound prominence on the global stage

Up to 200,000 people took part in the parade

(BEIJING) The People's Republic of China marked its 60th anniversary yesterday, staging a parade through the heart of Beijing to demonstrate the country's rising global influence.

President Hu Jintao, wearing a black suit similar to one worn by People's Republic founder Mao Zedong, joined former president Jiang Zemin and members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee on the rostrum of Tiananmen - the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It was there, on Oct 1, 1949, that Mao declared the Communist Party's victory in a civil war.

China was 'able and confident in playing its global role', Mr Hu said in a speech, in which he vowed that the country would seek 'peaceful reunification' with Taiwan. The island has been ruled for much of the past 60 years by the Nationalists, who fled there following their defeat at Mao's hands.

Hundreds of missiles and tanks and thousands of soldiers from the world's largest standing army paraded down Chang'an Avenue through Tiananmen Square following Mr Hu's speech. He had earlier reviewed the troops from an open-topped Red Flag limousine, yelling out 'Hello comrades' and 'Comrades, it's been hard on you'. Overhead, 151 military aircraft, including J-10 fighter jets, flew past in 12 formations.

Mr Hu and his fellow leaders are celebrating China's newfound prominence on the global stage. China now produces in a day the equivalent of a year's output five decades ago, and is poised to surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy by 2010.

The Communists, who lifted 300 million citizens from abject poverty and raised the country's international influence, must now meet increasing demands for domestic freedom and accountability.

The celebration 'is a show-off to beef up confidence in, and support to, the regime', said Huang Jing, visiting professor at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. 'Serious questions need to be asked how such a show of strength can translate into' transparency and tolerance for 'ethnic, cultural and religious diversity'.

About 80,000 children in Tiananmen Square spelled out the Chinese characters for 'national celebration' with red and gold placards to begin the celebration. Later, the placards read 'obey the Party's command' and 'serve the people'. The People's Liberation Army displayed 52 types of new weapons, including unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft with advance-warning radar. Five thousand soldiers marched through the square, past portraits of Mao and Sun Yat-sen, Republican China's first president after the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.

Among the new weapons, according to China Central Television, was a cruise missile called the Long Sword.

As a battery of Dongfeng (East Wind) intercontinental ballistic missiles on mobile carriers drove by, the CCTV commentator reminded viewers that China abided by a pledge never to make a first nuclear strike.

Up to 200,000 people took part in the parade, which included a flotilla of 60 vehicles bedecked with flowers and digital displays showcasing six decades of China's political, scientific, technological and economic achievements.

Among those were floats with portraits of Mao, Deng Xiaoping, a leader who died in 1997, as well as Mr Jiang and Mr Hu. Each were accompanied by recordings of their famous speeches, and thousands of marchers surrounding the floats carried banners trumpeting catchphrases such as 'implement and carry out scientific development'.

The celebration is an opportunity for the government to showcase its achievements to the country's 1.3 billion people. CCTV's broadcast of the event telecast preparations of the parade, complete with marching soldiers, jets and tanks, with the theme of Disney Co's Pirates of the Caribbean in the background. A commentator extolled the economic achievements of the People's Republic in the minutes before the parade began.

Police kept most of Beijing's 3.8 million private cars off of the roads yesterday, and restricted access to the city centre. South of Di'anmen Street, which bisects the inner city from east to west, police armed with machine guns blocked cars from heading towards Tiananmen Square yesterday morning. - Bloomberg

 

[besotted]

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/views/story/0,4574,352872,00.html?

The wonder that is modern China

How it changed within one generation from being poverty stricken to a global force

By ZHANG WEI-WEI

BEIJING is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic and the fanfare will undoubtedly irk those whose ideological inclinations do not tolerate a 'Communist country' being so self-righteous.

Yet, it is worthwhile to look at China objectively, to see what has enabled it to change within one generation from a poverty-stricken country to one of the world's largest economies.

Critics of China like to claim that despite its economic success, the country has no 'big ideas' to offer. But to this author, it is precisely big ideas that have shaped China's dramatic rise. Here are eight such ideas:

Seeking truth from facts

This is an ancient Chinese concept, as well as the credo of the late Deng Xiaoping, who believed that facts rather than ideological dogma - whether from the East or the West - should serve as the ultimate criterion for identifying truth. Beijing concluded from examining facts that neither the Soviet Communist model nor the Western democracy model really worked for a developing country in terms of achieving modernisation, and that democratisation usually follows modernisation rather than precedes it. Hence, Beijing decided in 1978 to explore its own path of development and to adopt a pragmatic, trial-and-error approach for its massive modernisation programme.

Primacy of people's livelihood

Beijing has embraced this old Chinese governance concept by highlighting poverty eradication as the most fundamental human right. This idea has paved the way for China's enormous success in lifting nearly 400 million individuals out of abject poverty within one generation, an unprecedented achievement in human history.

China has arguably corrected a historical neglect in the range of human rights advocated by the West, which since the Enlightenment have focused almost exclusively on civil and political rights. This idea may have lasting implications for the world's poor.

The importance of holistic thinking

Influenced by its philosophical tradition, China has pursued a holistic strategy for modernisation from the early 1980s to this day. This has enabled Beijing to establish a clear pattern of priorities and sequences at different stages of transformation, with easy reforms usually followed by more determined and difficult reforms - in contrast to the populist, short-term politics so prevalent in much of the world today.

Government as a necessary virtue

In China's long history, prosperous times were all associated with an enlightened, strong state. Contrary to the American view of state as a necessary evil, China's transformation has been led by an enlightened developmental state. And contrary to Mikhail Gorbachev, who abandoned his old state and then found his empire shattered, Deng Xiaoping reoriented China's old state from pursuing the Maoist utopia to promoting modernisation.

The Chinese state, however flawed, is capable of shaping national consensus on modernisation and pursuing hard strategic objectives, such as enforcing banking sector reforms, developing renewable energies and stimulating China's economy against the global downturn.

Good governance matters more than democratisation

China rejects the stereotypical dichotomy of democracy vs autocracy and holds that the nature of a state, including its legitimacy, has to be defined by its substance, ie by good governance, and tested by what it can deliver.

Notwithstanding its deficiencies in transparency and legal institutions, the Chinese state has presided over the world's fastest growing economy, and vastly improved living standards for its people.

Seventy six per cent of Chinese surveyed in 2008 felt optimistic about their future, topping the 17 major countries surveyed by Pew, a Washington-based research centre.

Performance legitimacy

Inspired by the Confucian tradition of meritocracy, Beijing practises, though not always successfully, performance legitimacy across the whole political stratum. Criteria such as performance in poverty eradication and, increasingly, cleaner environment are key factors in the promotion of officials. China's leaders are competent, sophisticated and well-tested at different levels of responsibility.

Selective learning and adaptation

China represents a secular culture where learning from others is prized. The Chinese have developed a remarkable capacity for selective learning and adaptation to new challenges, as shown by how quickly China has embraced the IT revolution and then excelled in it.

Harmony in diversity

Beijing has revived this old Confucian ideal for a large and complex society. Rejecting Western-style adversary politics, Beijing has worked hard to emphasise commonality of different group interests, to defuse social tensions associated with rapid change and to establish as fast as it can a social safety net for all.

China is still faced with serious challenges such as fighting corruption and reducing regional gaps. But China is likely to continue to evolve on the basis of these ideas, rather than by embracing Western liberal democracy, because these ideas have apparently worked and have blended reasonably well with common sense and China's unique political culture, the product of several millennia - including 20 or so dynasties, seven of which lasted longer than the whole of US history.

While China will continue to learn from the West for its own benefit, it may be time now for the West, to use Deng's famous phrase, to 'emancipate the mind' and learn a bit more about or even from China's big ideas, however extraneous they may appear, for its own benefit.

This is not only to avoid further ideology-driven misreading of this hugely important nation, a civilisation in itself, but also to enrich the world's collective wisdom in tackling challenges ranging from poverty eradication to climate change and the clash of civilisations. -- IHT

The writer is a professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and visiting professor at Tsinghua and Fudan universities in China. He was a senior English interpreter for Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders in the mid-1980s

 

[besotted]

中国，我爱你！我永远爱你！

 

[singveld]

what a singapore traitor.
dun you have a bit of shame , talking about these on forum. you are worse than pap dogs.

 

[littlefish]

If I understand the Chinese mentality correctly, while those who were born in China but emigrated overseas will be welcomed back warmly (ditto for those living in territories like Taiwan), those who have settled long ago in foreign lands like Singapore will be treated worse than angmos.

With China's rise, Singaporeans will have to behave like dogs to get some benefit from interacting with them, like what the PAP has to do now. If not, it is best to stay as far out of their reach as possible (or at least, keep them at an arm's length) unless you intend on becoming a PRC citizen.

They are nothing like the Japanese or British who will always look after their own kind first with no questions asked.

 

[Ash007]

If I understand the Chinese mentality correctly, while those who were born in China but emigrated overseas will be welcomed back warmly (ditto for those living in territories like Taiwan), those who have settled long ago in foreign lands like Singapore will be treated worse than angmos.

With China's rise, Singaporeans will have to behave like dogs to get some benefit from interacting with them, like what the PAP has to do now. If not, it is best to stay as far out of their reach as possible (or at least, keep them at an arm's length) unless you intend on becoming a PRC citizen.

They are nothing like the Japanese or British who will always look after their own kind first with no questions asked.

So by your logic, are you saying the current government policy of treating sinkies as third/fourth class citizen is to prepare us for this? Treat us like dogs now so we can get accustomed to being treated like dogs from china later? Interesting theory we have here. Maybe 66.66% of the population is right after all.