Yesterday's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will be the show to end all Olympics opening ceremonies. I pity the poor person in charge of designing the 2010 Vancouver show. Only in China could a show of such magnitude occur. The ceremony was certainly a spectacle that demonstrated to the world the enormity of Chinese history and culture.
And yet Westerners still compare the massive hordes of performers to the massive hordes of young Nazi soldiers at the 1936 Berlin Games. This article from the generally sensible Telegraph gives the impression that China is somehow the enemy of the West. Many Westerners still look at China today and see the China of Mao. They take the government's official Communist stance and equate it with Stalinism. If the West is to maintain its position of global dominance with a rising China, it must discard its misconceptions about China and engage it as the nation it is now, not as the nation it was in the 1970s.
China's "Communist" government knows full well that its policies have been straight-up Wild West capitalism, more extreme than those of any Western capitalist state. No one can truly claim that China's goal is a Communist dictatorship. Deng Xiaoping kept the communist label and Mao's god status solely for political reasons-to eliminate all that Mao had done would be political suicide at a time when the memory of the Cultural Revolution of the previous decade was fresh in the minds of the population. Deng would have gladly done away with the legacy of the man who had him and many of his allies purged from the government and thrown in prison. He knew communism didn't work. He knew full well that the new China would be all-out capitalist. China knows it isn't fooling any Chinese by calling itself communist. But it is certainly fooling plenty of Westerners.
Human rights certainly is a big problem in China. But anyone who says China has no intention of moving gradually toward a Western-style democracy has no idea how Chinese politics works. Much of the current generation of Chinese leaders has been educated in top Western universities. China is liberalizing, and it will only become more so as new generations of leaders take power. It is hypocritical to expect China to change overnight. In the past decades, individuals have received property and entrepreneurial rights, as well as an increased freedom to voice their opinions. Yes, dissent is still suppressed but you don't see masses of people being killed for criticizing the government. And the vast majority of Chinese are happy with their government right now. Without changes in official policies, the massive economic growth that has lifted countless millions of Chinese out of poverty would never have happened. And most Chinese would rather have money in their pockets before the right to free speech. Bringing your country prosperity is a far greater good than complete freedom. When Deng Xiaoping ordered the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, he did so to preserve order so that his economic plans would succeed. In China, economic growth comes before civil rights. And Western countries have followed much the same path. Look at Great Britain. It took centuries of gradual change from the Magna Carta to today for it to evolve into a liberal democracy. It certainly didn't change overnight. We can't credibly criticize China for not liberalizing because it is following the same path of gradual change that Western countries have.
Assuming that China's political elite is a static group solely concerned about preserving its own power is a huge error in analyzing Chinese politics. Even Mao Zedong himself was a different breed of Communist dictator. Stalin truly was concerned solely about his power and didn't care at all for his people or the communist ideology. Mao on the other hand was a true believer in the Marxist cause. His ideal of "continuous revolution" was meant to strive toward the ultimate goal of the egalitarian Communist state of Marx's theories. Of course he was concerned about power, it would be a lie to say otherwise, but Mao pursued his ideology because he wanted to bring prosperity back to China. He could have easily gone back to traditional imperial rule and crowned himself emperor if he wanted power. But he believed (albeit incorrectly) that Communism was the way to bring China into the modern world. And he was partially correct. Although millions died as the result of famines and political purges, by the end of his rule, China's population had increased dramatically, its industrial capacity had grown, the literacy rate was fast approaching that of Western nations, and China had secured its place as a world power. It is ignorant to say that China was worse off after his rule than before. China was pretty much stuck in the Middle Ages until Mao, and he dragged it with whatever force necessary into the modern world. He certainly committed his share of atrocities but looking at historical Western figures, we can't criticize him without hypocrisy.
China's political system is in many ways more geared toward success than those of most Western nations. Although corruption and connections play a huge part in Chinese politics, at its base, China's government is a huge meritocracy. You work your way up the ladder of power through hard work, education, and competence. As recent high-level convictions show, China is working on eliminating corruption, even going so far as using the death penalty for some senior officials. Only the most talented and intelligent can make it to the top. Looking at the backgrounds of senior Chinese officials, many are trained engineers, scientists, and economists-exactly the kind of people you need to run a country as large as China. Compare that to America, where we have lawyers making decisions about the economy, defense, education, healthcare, and scientific research. Which system would you pick to run a country?
China truly wants to join the global community as a partner, not as a ruler. The West remains frightened by the rise of a country with a strange language, strange culture, and strange politics. Our efforts to use our so called superiority to force China to conform to our standards (increase its currency value in order to rescue American manufacturers, take our side in sanctions against its allies, etc.) have only led to China playing by its own terms. The West has shown no signs of wanting to engage China as an equal, and so, China's policies continue to frustrate the West. China fully recognizes its power and the fear it puts into the West and it knows full well how to utilize that power. If the West does not change its attitude toward China, it will have no reason to cooperate with the West.
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