Ma Ying-jeou, Lost in Tradition

Shortly before the beginning of Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou‘s second term in office, his support and satisfaction rates are at new historical lows, between 15 to 22 per cent. More than 60 per cent of the public have no confidence in Ma’s coming four years of administration, reports Singapore’s Morning News (Lianhe Zaobao).

“These opinion polls aren’t like anything during the past four years”, Zaobao quotes the head of Taiwan National University’s Department of Political Science, Wang Yeh-lih (王業立). “Ma Ying-jeou’s biggest problem is that the decision-making circles are too small, that communication between the government and the [KMT] party is poor, and that the relapse in public opinion was underestimated.”

During the past three months since his re-election, efforts to resolve an ongoing beef-imports dispute with the U.S., oil and electricity price hikes and stock exchange taxes, hadn’t been able to please either farmers, nor workers, nor business people, and had left people boiling with resentment (民怨沸腾), writes Zaobao. Hikes in oil and electricity prices had added to living costs, in terms of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and all kinds of basic necessities, and stealth price increases in all kinds of products.

Ma Ying-jeou’s traditionally wooden communication skills haven’t been helpful during the recent wave of resentment. The Taipei Times people, of course, loves his exchanges with normal people, but not for the reasons Ma thinks they should:

On May 4, during a visit by the president to National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, a student told Ma in reference to a recent increase in retail prices that he does not feel full now after eating one biandang, or lunchbox. The student said typical lunchboxes these days tend to contain less vegetables even though their prices have remained the same. In response, Ma asked: “You don’t feel full? So now you need to eat one more biandang? Or do you endure being hungry?”

To make things worse, the discussion became distorted in that Ma was later quoted as saying that “Just eat another biandang and you’ll be full” (再吃一个便当就饱了), writes Zaobao.

Ma’s idea of a presidency is traditional – he certainly wants to be seen as a leader who understands what is going on in peoples’ daily lives, but his benchmark – former president Chiang Ching-kuo, who certainly was progressive at his times – when compared to his father Chiang Kai-shek -, is outdated. And each of Ma’s attempts to look like a leader of historic scale is happily ridiculed, whenever opportunites arise. They seem to arise often.

From the early 1980s on, Ma had worked for Chiang Ching-kuo, in several functions. In an interview which was part of a Chiang Ching-kuo documentary, Ma remembered one of Chiang’s last public appearances. Chiang was wheelchair-bound by then, he attended a Constitution Commemorative Conference in 1987, and as he was scurried off the stage, probably to spare him the spectacle that accompanied his exit, civil-rights advocates and democracy activists were standing – but not out of respect. They shouted, and waved posters with their demands. It appeared to be an unpleasant scene indeed – and next in the documentary’s picture was modern-day Ma, worry lines and disgust in his face, telling how ungrateful the activists had been:

It was as if [Chiang] was saying, “I have made all these efforts to promote Taiwan’s democratic reforms. How can they do this to me?”^*)
好像就聽到，他嘴裡在說，他說我這幾年來，大力推動台灣的民主改革，他們怎麼還會這樣子對我呢？

But to compare Chiang Ching-kuo and Ma would be unjustified for a number of reasons. On the one hand, Ma has never been something like a secret-police director. But on the other, he doesn’t have Chiang’s merits either. What are Ma’s achievements? What should people reciprocate for? Or, in the words in which he reportedly complained to his sister, after getting a lot of stick for his administration’s management after the Morakot typhoon: “good people weren’t rewarded” (好人沒好報).

Nanfang Shuo (南方朔), a moderate critic of Ma Ying-jeou, believes that much of the public’s unease stems from an awareness that Ma is free from pressure as he faces no further elections. Reforms and decisions could therefore be taken arbitrarily (or autocratically – 独断独行).

In fact, even if one only follows Ma Ying-jeou’s presidential fortunes loosely (as JR does), it is easy to see that Ma is rarely in tune with the public in general, or even in individual chats. During the presidential election campaign, his opponent Tsai Ing-wen (herself not necessarily a folksy type of politician either), came across as fairly presidential (an observation by Nanfang Shuo in October last year), and to beat Ma in terms of communication skills was hardly a daunting challenge either.

All the same, Ma was re-elected – and the public now seems to complain that they got exactly the president they had gotten to know during his first term.

It’s not all the president’s fault. Certainly not in a democracy, where people have choices.

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Note

^*) I can’t find the documentary online, but I seem to remember that Ma basically used the same words to describe his impressions there, as in this quote.

Related

» The Lame leading the Blind, June 3, 2011
» No Shanzhai Chiang, May 20, 2009

The Weeks before June 4 – Role Allocations

« An explanation of this 1989 series

» Previous post in this series

I won’t be able to describe Wu Renhua‘s entire document on the 1989 movement, at least not during this spring. I never planned to achieve such an ambitious goal anyway, but in the process of reading and roughly regiving the document’s content, I do feel some regret that I don’t have as much time for this as I would like to have. It might be a different story if I was more familiar with the weeks when a civil society in Beijing seemed to develop, and all the people and organizations involved. But in fact, the series on this blog is a process of making myself more familiar with the weeks prior to what we often narrow down to that one bloody night in June, 1989.

Wu’s document is a who-is-who, and a collection of locations in Beijing. Rather than trying to go through every day recorded in his tweeted today-in-history collection, I’m adding to a project, as suggested by C. A. Yeung a few weeks ago.

This also means that I may be dwelling on events in early May 1989 even in a few weeks, when the actual day in the year 2012 will be June 4. And in that case, I will simply continue this series with the events in May 1989, as described by Wu, in another batch of posts next year.

But at least every few days, I will keep adding posts to this series, until June.

We must restitute to past generations what they once possessed, just as every present tense is in its possession: the abundance of a possible future, the uncertainty, the freedom, the finiteness, the inconsistency (…), Thomas Nipperdey, a German historian, once wrote.

That’s what commemoration is probably about. Before the bloodbath and the great dispair, there had been weeks of frustration, hope, and self-determination. If history came out of the gun barrels (as certain people appear to suggest), there would be nothing to read, nothing to remember, and nothing to expect.

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Main Link: 八九天安门事件大记 (Major Daily Events, Tiananmen 1989), by Wu Renhua.

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Sunday, April 23, 1989

In the morning, Zhao Ziyang meets with Hu Qili and Rui Xingwen, and emphasizes his three opinions on how to handle the students’ protests, and that “the news-related public opinion must be in accordance with the guiding principle of correct reporting”. In the afternoon, he leaves for North Korea by special train, as scheduled. Li Peng, Qiao Shi, and Tian Jiyun, see him off at Beijing Train Station. At about 14 h, the People’s University Doctoral Candidates’ Declaration emerges. It states full support for the Seven Demands, and all patriotic movements from all students and people of all walks of life in society; calls a complete student (and doctorate candidates’) strike; demands the resignation of the collective leadership’s and collective mistaken decision-makers’ collective resignations [or be obliged to resign] (Li-Peng language), later referred to as “collective responsibility” (Li-Peng language); strongly demands all cadres in the party, government and army who are older than 75 to resign; to oppose violence, to protect human rights, and the military forces should not take part and interfere in state affairs; CCP activities should not be paoid for by the state; and censorship to be removed, press freedom be established, and private press, radio and television be allowed; anti-corruption commissions be established, corruption on all party levels be investigated and removed, and business activities of cadres’ relatives be examined, and the results be reported to the public. Science and Technology Daily, under deputy chief editor Sun Changjiang (孙长江), is the first press publication to break into the censored field of covering the movement’s activities, which is commended by the students and from all walks of life. A number of young professors at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (北京科技大学) and other universities announce a strike; some university posters call for a general university strike or for “we won’t attend class unless we achieve our goals”, and some call for a nation-wide general strike. Between ten a.m. and around eight p.m. or after, students at Beijing University and Tsinghua University unsuccessfully try to take control of their respective universities’ broadcasting stations. Shen Tong (沈彤)¹⁾ takes a different approach – he runs a broadcasting system of his own from his dormitory, near the San Jiao Di (explanation for San Jiao Di here, underneath the list of the seven demands). Liu Gang (刘刚) is an organizer of a Universities’ Interim Committee (高校临时委员会), to be renamed Independent (or autonomous) Federation of Students from Universities in Beijing (北京市高等院校学生自治联合会), at which delegates of a number of Beijing Universities – if not all universities – are to participate. In the afternoon, Liu and Dai Zizhong (龚自忠) sees Wu Renhua at Wu’s place at the University of Political Science and Law. Wu hasn’t known them personally before. Liu asks Wu to attend the students’ assembly scheduled for that evening, at Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park²⁾. Wu Renhua declines, because participation in the Yuanmingyuan assembly or meeting wouldn’t correspond with his role as a professor. If he played such a role, this would also provide a handle for the authorities. Liu Gang, in search for a candidate to chair the conference, approaches Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) [the student who hit his own head with his megaphone, during Guo Haifeng's, Zhang Zhiyong's and Zhou Yongjun's kneeling petition at the entrance of the Great Hall of the People a day earlier], but Pu doesn’t believe that he has the abilities it takes to become chairman. Probably more crucially, he points out that his parents by adoption, who live in a rural area, are relatively old people who depend on him³⁾.

The Yuanmingyuan conference meets in the evening, with delegates from Beiing’s twenty-one university. Each university dispatches ten delegates. Zhou Yongjun (周勇军),  of the University of Political Science and Law, and one of the three kneeling petitioners on the previous day, is elected chairman. Wang Dan, Wu’er Kaixi, Ma Shaofang, and Zang Kai (臧凯) become standing-commission members.

According to what are believed to be Li Peng’s diaries, the CCP Politbureau Standing Committee holds a meeting at eleven a.m.. Li Tieying, in his capactiy as national education commission’s director, calls Li Peng to inform him that the mood at all universities in Beijing is very emotional, that student strikes are brewing, and that he hopes that Zhao listens to / reads the reports. Beijing Municipal Party secretary Li Ximing calls Zhao Ziyang on the phone and asks him to put his trip to North Korea off. Zhao tells the national education commission’s director Li Tieying see this post, footnote 3 that he had already authorized Li Peng to chair the standing commission’s work and to report to him.

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Notes

¹⁾ According to this online story, Shen was extremely lucky after the Tian An Men crackdown:

Fortunately for Shen, he had already been accepted to Brandeis University and had been issued a passport to study in the U.S. Six days after Tiananmen he went undisguised to the airport and boarded a flight for the United States though the state security police had put him on their most wanted list. Some have taken this as a sign that even many in China’s military had secretly been in sympathy with the democracy movement.

²⁾ Yuanmingyuan or Yuanming Park (the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, 圆明园) belongs to Beijing’s Haidian District. It is also referred to as the Old Summer Palace. The actual palace was destroyed in the Second Opium War.

³⁾ Wu Renhua writes in his document that he doesn’t remember having warned Pu Zhiqiang against chairing the Yuanming Park meeting in principle, but he does remember that he did warn Pu to mind his safety, for the sake of his adoptive parents.

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Related

» April 23, 1989, Under the Jacaranda, April 23, 2012

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Confucianism and Soft Power: Internationally Inclusive and Exclusive Concepts

Oskar Weggel, a German sinologist, once suggested that many Chinese people found questions about their religious affiliation similarly strange as Europeans would find questions about their blood type.¹⁾ That’s not to say that there are no committed Buddhists, Confucians, or Taoists in China.

When it comes to Wang Zhicheng (王志成), a Humanities professor at Zhejiang University,  I believe that he is a Confucian – but I may be wrong. He may just be very familiar with Confucianism. While Wang apparently sees China’s role in an international philosophical dialogue (or a second axial age) based on Confucianism, and be it only for its – former – fundamental role in state control over society, his blog in general suggests that his interest goes far beyond Confucianism.

On the other hand, Kang Xiaoguang (康晓光), of Beijing’s People’s University (Renmin University), is a Confucian, or a New Confucian (新儒家). I’m not using the term Neo-Confucian here, because that would refer to a much older concept.²⁾ Even “New Confucianism” has been around since the Republican days, according to Wikipedia – but maybe the Confucian revival struggles of these days can be seen as a stage within the same process. And while classical Confucian influence certainly went beyond statecraft (Taoist and Confucian views of what makes a good painting are different from each other, for example), Kang Xiaoguang’s interest in Confucianism stems from his search for a concept or an ideology which can rule China. (In English here, if it is an accurate source.)³⁾

Kang isn’t a metaphysical thinker. In fact, he is more of an economist. But he either tried, or is still trying, to think up a comprehensive state doctrine.

There seems to be a totalitarian temptation in these ways of thoughts. Hegel was pretty comprehensive believer in state power. But that was long ago, and Hegel described what he saw in an existing state, rather than drafting a state on his own.

In terms of internationally effective soft power – but that may be a concept Kang may not be too interested in, anyway⁴⁾ -, his concept doesn’t look convincing either. Quite differently, Wang Zhicheng is putting his view of Confucianism – or Confucianness – in a global context.

To me, Wang’s approach looks more promising, in the light of international relations. It doesn’t belittle China’s potentially leading global ideational role. Of course, it doesn’t solve the country’s civil-society issues (which Kang describes in pretty gloomy terms) either. But Wang’s approach seems to contribute to solving both China’s domestic, and international issues.

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Notes

¹⁾ Oskar Weggel, “China”, Munich, 2002 (1981), page 202

²⁾

Emerging around 1100 CE, this movement was in many ways backward-looking. It sought to recover a “purer” form of Confucianism to replace the mixture of Buddhist and Taoist elements that had crept in over the centuries (mostly from “foreign” sources in India).
In contrast to Buddhists and Taoists, neo-Confucians did not believe in dual universe – the touchable word of “matter” and the spiritual world beyond. For this reason, Neo-Confucians usually rejected ideas associated with such mystical notions as reincarnation and karma.

“World History”, Fred N. Grayson and contributing authors, 2006, Hoboken, NJ, page 146.

³⁾ I can’t warrant for the accuracy of either the Chinese, or the English source, but Kang published a book about Benevolent Government (仁政) with a huge preface, which seems to be based on the Chinese source linked in the post above. Kang had been criticized for rejecting democracy for China, in an interview with Singapore’s United Morning News (Lianhe Zaobao). The publication of the interview, in November 2004, and roughly quoted by Kang by his own memory, had carried the headline “Scholar Kang Xiaoguang: Chinese democratization is a choice that would bring calamity upon China”  (学者康晓光： 中国民主化祸国殃民，唯一选择), and, in his view, a rather truncated account of what he had said. Kang found himself criticized for his points in the interview, and what he wrote and said soon after, still in 2004, about Confucianization as a political alternative, was  a reaction to his critics.

⁴⁾

[..] Chinese discourse, unlike Nye’s exclusive focus on the efficacy of soft power in achieving foreign policy goals, frequently refers to a domestic context, evincing a mission for domestic purposes, although the domestic context is not the primary focus of Chinese interlocutors,

Li Minjiang wrote in an article for the Chinese Journal of International Politics, first published online on October 28, 2008.

Tsewang Norbu was Right about the first “Dialog” accompanying the “China Cultural Year 2012″, and this is Why…

Ironically, the prelude to the cultural dialogue program for the Year of Chinese Culture in Germany is opened with Helmut Schmidt in Berliner Kommandantenhaus which is jointly organized by the Bertelsmann, Bosch and Koerber Foundation. The Ex-Federal-Chancellor is one of those weighty admirers of the Chinese economic miracle of the last 3 decades and is unfortunately also the most prominent representative of cultural relativism when it comes to criticism of China. He, therefore, acts as an apologist for the totalitarian rule of the Chinese communist regime and not as an advocate of the forbidden artists or oppressed peoples.

Tsewang Norbu,  cofounder of Association of Tibetans in Germany und Member of the Executive Board of Tibet Initiative Deutschland e.V., in a statement about the opening “dialog” accompanying the China Cultural Year 2012 in Germany (his statement in German here).

I would like to explain in some more detail why I believe that the three men on stage, Gu Xuewu, Helmut Schmidt, and Frank Sieren, proved Tsewang Norbu’s criticism correct. Their approach wasn’t complicated, but it was [update/completion: but it was cheap]. At the core, Gu and Schmidt put two concepts side by side: human rights and human responsibilities. The latter one isn’t entirely new, either; it was first brought up by a InterAction Council, with Malcolm Fraser, Helmut Schmidt and other retired politicians, in the 1980s. It was renewed and recommended to the United Nations in 1997.

A podcast of the Gu-Schmidt-Sieren talk in Berlin (in German), on January 31 this year, can be found here.

In that “dialog”, Gu was apparently the first participant to address the issue of human responsibilities. Asked by Sieren “what separates China and Germany”, Gu said that

what separates China and Germany seems to be a different idea of what people should do – that’s to say, in my view, an idea of more human rights or more human duties – this is a difference (was China und Deutschland trennt, scheint mir die unterschiedliche Vorstellung zu sein, was die Menschen tun sollen. Das heißt aus meiner Sicht, die Vorstellung von mehr Menschenrechten oder mehr Menschenpflichten – das ist ein Trennungspunkt).

Gu then linked the concept of human duties or responsibilities with Confucianism – as a concept of what people needed to do for society, for a collective, family, danwei, or the nation, rather than to make demands.

I’m not trying to judge if the “responsibilities” approach as described by Gu would indeed be Confucian. The interesting bit in my view was that neither Schmidt nor Sieren disagreed when Gu suggested that

somehow, a compromise needs to be found, a balance between human rights and human duties. As long as this balance isn’t there, I see a big problem for an understanding between Germans and Chinese people (es muss irgendwie ein Kompromiss gefunden werden, eine Balance zwischen den Menschenrechten und den Menschenpflichten. So lange diese Balance nicht da ist, gibt es aus meiner Sicht ein großes Problem für das Verständnis zwischen den Deutschen und den Chinesen).

Gu saw no such balance – neither in Germany, where human rights were “overemphasized”, nor in China, where collective duties were “overemphasized”.

Gu and Schmidt didn’t disagree with each other – if there was a “dialog”, it was one with little or no potential for genuine arguments, and indeed, there were no arguments.

A benevolent look at this kind of search for a “balance” between rights and responsibilities might suggest that there is an underlying, fundamental misunderstanding at work, of what human rights actually are.

After all, human rights do determine one fundamental duty: a duty to respect not only one’s own human rights, but others’ human rights, too. That requires no second, complementary charter of “responsibilities”. In fact, much of the catalog of duties as listed by Schmidt and the “Action Council” reads like a mirror of the Human Rights Declaration – and even if these duties, rather than the rights according to the UNDHR, were used as a standard, the West and China would be just as far apart from each other.

However, a “charter of responsibilities” can help to make human rights look relative – as long as these responsibilities (and their dependence on human rights) aren’t explained in some detail. Gu, Schmidt, and Sieren certainly spared themselves and their audience the effort to explore that side of the “responsibility” concept. Such a try could have turned out to become pretty unharmonious – and the job of the dialog was, apparently, to create “a positive atmosphere”.

Provided that you invite the right people, and shun trouble-makers like Tsewang Norbu at such events, you can have a beautiful, festive “dialog” – but you might as well spend your evening humming an infinite loop of “molihua”.

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Related

» Helmut Schmidt and the Korean War, March 1, 2012

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Why Taiwan is no Model for China’s Political System

Broadcasting to China and to the world: Radio Taiwan International Tainan Shortwave Broadcasting Site (RTI QSL card)

I had a discussion with an (apparently) Taiwanese commenter on a Peking Duck thread during the past two days. Having a discussion is quite different from reading, or from revisiting your own brain’s lobes, and can lead thoughts into quite different directions. Both his, and my comments, could stand as blog posts in their own right respectively, but obviously, I can’t simply copy and paste someone else’s comments from someone else’s blog. The Taiwaner’s views can be found here and here. The following is a re-mix of what I wrote in the same thread. It’s basically about why Taiwan may or not be a model for China’s future political development. The following is also more decided than many of my usual posts, as frequently happens when its the result of an argument, rather than of mere reflection.

China probably isn’t going to become a democracy at all, and will feel “threatened” by the mere fact that democracy is a more attractive concept to most other nations.

Within China, fear of the outside world will continue to perpetuate dictatorship – but obviously, I hope that the brave people within China who continue to believe that their country can do better will prove me wrong.

But there are great differences between the Taiwanese “model”, and the Chinese “copy”.

One difference is that Confucianism isn’t the Chinese model. There have been and there still are academics who advocate the great tradition (i. e. political, rather than just popular, Confucianism). But the party is far from adopting Confucianism. They’ve cherry-picked some of its most stifling aspects, like “harmony” – but even Mao liked to use the classics for creating slogans of his own. No party document refers to classical values, but each document refers to Leninism, Marxism, Maoism, Dengism and the “Three Represents”.

There is another decisive factor which makes China and Taiwan very different. Chinese people fear the world. The Taiwanese, if anything, fear China. A climate of fear perpetuates dictatorship. I think we have seen (comparatively sophisticated) beginnings of such a climate in America, after 2001, and they still seem to continue to exist in parts of American legislation – but there, such trends haven’t continued to reinforce [each other]. Provided that efforts within civil society towards liberalisation are to continue in America, the 9-11 streak will abate.

I think the only time when the Chinese public made genuine moves toward the rest of the world was in the 1980s, and possibly at times during the 1990s and early this century. Especially if democracy continues to stumble forward in the rest of the world (in a number of Arab countries, for example), China’s leaders will continue to create fears, and make use of them.

The climate among urban Chinese, including some people who I know quite well, doesn’t make me think that GDP or purchasing power per person will be the defining metric here. It isn’t an irrelevant factor in my view, but it’s not always a pivotal one either. Within Arabia, I think it’s possible that, despite a much lower GDP per capita than Saudi Arabia, Syria is a more likely democracy than its rich neighbor to the south, and that Taiwan, even if its GDP per capita was lower than China’s, would be a more likely democracy than China.

China is a country where many mortifications are felt. The roots for many of these can be found inside China as it is today, rather than abroad – but it is abroad where most Chinese people, even otherwise liberal-minded, seem to seek fault.

I’m sure the CCP has nothing against Confucianism as a popular tradition, as long as it works the way you describe in your previous comment – if it’s conducive to perpetuating the powers that be should be alright. But that doesn’t elevate Confucianism to a guiding ideology within the party. You won’t find references to Confucianism in CCP documents, as far as they are published, to the end that Confucianism would be part of what they build their organization on. That would be everything from Leninism to the “Three Represents”, i. e. the ruling dynasty’s heritage to date.
It may be hard to think that Chinese rulers may not put Confucianism first, and what Chinese scholars put forward in that regard, even very palpable constitutional drafts as the one by Jiang Qing, or Zhang Xianglong‘s concept of “special Confucian zones” [might suggest that they expect to have an actual say in China's future design],  but the CCP is a very particular brotherhood, and I think there are Confucians who are too convinced of the “naturally guiding role” of Confucianism to understand the relativeness (if not irrelevance), in Beijing’s view, of their ideas.

It seems to me that the last time Chiang Kai-shek undertook a genuine ideological effort to control peoples’ minds, and not just their behavior, was his “New-Life movement”. His rule on Taiwan was authoritarian, but I see no totalitarian ambition there. That authoritarian rule weakened has a lot to do with the vanishing ambition to “regain the mainland”, simply because that goal was becoming unrealistic. Taiwan counted in CKS’ books as a military base, not as something worth in itself to possess. Sure – Chiang Ching-kuo kept referring to the “recovery of the mainland” even in his last speeches, but these were somewhat ironic (and melancholic, I feel) scenes, just the more as Chiang was by then wheelchair-bound. All that stuff about getting the mainland back had become an empty slogan, waiting to be replaced by something else.

1987 Double-Ten Military Parade (click picture for source)

The meaning of Taiwan had begun to change, even among KMT loyalists from China. That’s one important factor which loosened the KMT’s grip in the first place. The CCP has no reason to follow that example. Another factor was that Taiwan is quite different from China. To keep myself from going from length to length, I’ll just drop the “yellow” and “blue culture” buzzwords for now. If they are of any use, and if they are relevant categories when it comes to Taiwan, I’d categorize Taiwan as rather “blue”.

Context here. The thread contains arguments far beyond this topic, and Richard‘s (Peking Duck)  post’s original intention wasn’t Taiwan-related either.

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Related

» Lee Teng-hui’s New Central Plains, October 18, 2011
» Causes of Democratization, Wikipedia, as of Dec 4, 2011

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The BoZhu Interviews: “I’ve Become more Aware of How Easily People Adapt to new Circumstances” -

FOARP about Democracy, Arguments between Memory and Ego, and the End of Reform in China

FOARP (Fear of a Red Planet) is a blogger from Britain who lives and works in Poland. He has also lived in China and Japan, and his first long-distance flight took him to Taiwan, ten years ago. The following interview is all about the past ten years.
His blog’s homepage can be found here.

The interview -

Q:  Most foreign China blogs seem to get started at the beginning of an expat’s stay there, or at some time during their stay. Your first post says, “It’s Good to be Back”, in October 2007, after your return to Britain. Why the delay?

A: Until 2006 I had never even looked at a blog, much less comment on one. I guess like a lot of people I saw such things as a giant time waster (which they are) and as inconsequential (which they may or may not be). The change happened after I started working for Foxconn, where my job consisted of periods of intense activity interspersed with the occasional period of inactivity, in which I turned to reading/commenting on blogs as a way of fighting the boredom.

Q:  Not too long after your return to Europe, you became an expat again, a Briton in Poland. How did you get there? Had you been there before? Do you speak Polish? And does life in Poland have an effect on how you view the world?

A: Actually I left the UK back at the end of 2009, when I travelled to Japan and worked for a patent firm there. I came to Poland at the start of this year to work in-house for a Finnish MNC where I get to use my Chinese, my knowledge of intellectual property, and get to travel a lot. Coming to Poland for the job interview was my first time in the country. My Polish classes are funded by the company – at the moment I can speak some Polish, ale niezbyt dobrze.

I would say that both my experiences in Japan and my experiences in Poland have affected my view on the world. Working in Japan taught me a lot about people, some good, some bad. I made some very good friends, but also worked incredibly long hours, alongside people who basically sacrificed their personal lives on the altar of work. Poland is almost the polar opposite. Perhaps it is the communist inheritance with its emphasis on work-to-rule, but the Polish draw a very solid line between their personal lives and their work lives and clearly distinguish between them.

Living in both these places also put a different perspective on my experiences in China. Japan obviously has many cultural similarities with China (although I think the idea of a genuine ‘Confucian’ world is an incredibly dangerous oversimplification). However, Japan’s cultural inheritance has not cursed it to eternal dictatorship.  Poland’s story as a country which has emerged from dictatorship is also obviously relevant.

Q:  Relevant in which ways?

A: Poland managed to successfully ditch communism without harming economic growth, or even ever suffering a real recession, and without excessive bloodshed after the end of the martial law period. It hasn’t had the same exposition that East Germany experienced due to the activities of the Gauck commission though. Perhaps the ideal post-communist liberation would be economically Polish and politically East German, but then East Germany had the rest of Germany to assist it.

Of course, the experience of Taiwan is perhaps more to the point.

Q: When did you decide to go to China? Did you study the language, along with law, before going there?

A: I graduated with a degree in Physics and Astrophysics and no idea of how I was going to use it to find a job back in the summer of 2001. The one thing I was certain of, however, was that I wanted to see the world and to learn a language that would be useful. It was basically a toss-up between Russian and Chinese, and Chinese won.

Before I arrived in Taiwan in November 2001 I had studied Chinese for about 3 weeks but that was about the limit. Firstly in Taiwan, and then later at a university in Nanjing, I taught English and used the money from that to pay for my studies. It was only after studying Chinese for a few years that I felt confident enough to take on a job in the patenting department at Foxconn at the start of ’06, which was also my first introduction to patenting. After working there for about 18 months I decided that I wanted to try to get some qualifications related to patenting, and so returned to the UK where I studied my master’s in intellectual property as well as a diploma in law. The job market being as it was in ’09, I ended up going back overseas after graduating.

Q:  Did life in China have an effect on how you view the world?

A: Since I was 21 when I went to Taiwan, and 22 when I arrived in Nanjing, it’s kind of hard for me to distinguish between the changes that naturally occur after 21 and the effect that China had. Compared to most of the people I knew back home, though, I would say that I’ve become more cynical, and more aware of how easily people adapt to new circumstances and get used to them.

Some experiences which I had in China which had a big effect on me:

• SARS – my interesting life in China was converted in a very short time into something approaching semi-apocalyptic within a few days of the government switching from cover-up to over-reaction.
• My boss in Nanjing’s attempted murder of his secretary, his subsequent suicide, and the response of party authorities to it.
• Learning the language – a great confidence-booster and something I will use the rest of my life.
• The sight of the hundreds of new recruits who showed up from the countryside every day at the gate underneath my office windows at Foxconn.
• The expat community – put simply, my fellow expats included some really clever, smart people, as well as some real scum-bags. The real shock was discovering that the two were not as mutually exclusive as I had previously thought.
• A friend of mine crying when she described the poverty of her home town. It had never occurred to me before that that people could be that ashamed of a poor background.

Reading the above it sounds like I had a really bad time in China, actually I had a ball, it’s just that I also had to take the rough with the smooth – and in China there’s a lot of both.

Q:  I guess if there was something that would boost my confidence, it would be earning a degree in Physics and in Astrophysics… One of the purposes of your blog, as stated in October 2007, was to keep your Chinese polished. How closely do you follow Chinese and non-Chinese blogs on China respectively? Do you (as a reader) or they (as bloggers) focus on certain, recurring kinds of news and topics?

A: I try to keep up my Chinese by watching the occasional soap-opera and reading news articles, as well as the stuff I translate at work. Chinese bloggers who I follow have dwindled – Song Qiang and Wang Xiaofeng only post about once a month. On the English language side, blogs I’ll look at at least once a day include the Peking Duck, China Geeks, China Law Blog, Imagethief (when he posts) and, of course, Just Recently’s Beautiful Blog.

As a reader I’m not so interested in the business/legal side of things – outside of work, anyway. Politics and history are the things I like to read the most. A couple of new (to me, anyway) blogs I’ve been getting into recently: Sinostand, Seeing Red In China, and Roll, Roll, Run. Why not any with a more positive spin on the Chinese government?  Well, I simply don’t believe such a spin reflects the truth.

Q:  Have you seen big changes in your own blog or blogs, and in the Chinese, or foreign “China blogosphere” since you started blogging yourself?

A: The biggest change happened between 2006 and 2008, with the introduction of comprehensive blocking. Put simply, this destroyed the expat blogosphere in China, since the humorous complaining that had made up 90% of what was posted about life in China became impossible to access without a proxy, thus preventing people finding them by accident the way people did with websites like Talk Talk China. These blogs fed off comments, so without them they withered and died.The growth of the nationalist movement since 2008 and its effect on the Chinese internet has been well enough described elsewhere that I don’t need to go into it.

In my own blog, I’ve found out that the best use for it is as a sort of log book of what I thought about something in particular at a particular time. Nietzsche said something about how, when your memory and your ego argue, it is your memory that eventually gives way. I like to use my blog as a way of counteracting the temptation to unconsciously re-write what you really thought about something at the time. You see this a lot when you ask people if they supported the Iraq war – my friends accuse me of it.

Q:  In your view, has China changed since you started blogging? Has Britain? Has the world? How so?

A: The biggest change in China has been the ditching of reform – combined with the predicted slow-down this could spell big trouble. Or it might not.For the UK, the economic crisis has had a big effect, but I believe in the long term there will be some positive outcome from it. I’m hoping that the crisis in the Eurozone will teach people that they are much better off having their own economic destiny in their own hands, and not decided for them by Frankfurt, Brussels, or Athens. The death of the idea that continuous borrowing on the never-never is an acceptable way of running the country is also something I hope the current crisis will bring about.

For the world in general, I see two changes this year. The first is the re-emergence of democratisation as an engine of change. From 9/11 until this year it seemed that democracy was on the retreat in Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. The Arab Spring will, I hope, change this. The second is the all-enveloping economic crisis has also had an effect, destroying confidence in many of our financial institutions.

Q:  Besides a return to, let’s say, the subsidiarity principle within the EU –is that what you mean? –, would you like to see a smaller role for organizations such as the IMF or the World Bank, too? If so, why?

A: I’m afraid it rather revolves around the current dispute between Mr. Cameron and Mrs. Merkel. Mrs. Merkel’s solution is more Europe, Mr. Cameron’s solution is less. The UK at least signed on to the European Economic Community after a referendum in which it was promised that the EEC would be a trade union first and foremost, you could argue that things have developed from there, but there was never really any mandate given for this change. My hope is that whichever way things go, some reference is made to the people of Europe and what they actually want, preferably through a referendum.

The IMF and the World Bank have something of a mixed record, but a lender capable of imposing conditions is certainly something that is necessary at the moment.

Q:  Have you ever stopped reading blogs because you felt they were becoming boring, or because they angered you?

A: Never because they angered me – I even still read Hidden Harmonies. Some blogs that used to be good have gone downhill however – Danwei being an example.

Q:  What’s the worst online article or post you have ever read about China (that you remember)? And what’s the worst online article about Britain that you remember?

A: China – well, there’s so many. It’s really a toss-up between Shaun Rein’s “Real poverty is pretty much gone” piece, his piece proposing that the Nobel prize be given to Deng Xiaoping, and Paul V. Kane’s piece suggesting that the US sell-out Taiwan in the NYT last week.

Britain? Well, there was a lot of stupid rubbish written in the US about “imperial decline” after the 2007 Iranian hostage crisis, but that’s the only thing that comes to mind. I guess you can also include the nonsense Mark Stein used to peddle about Europe (and Britain in particular) turning into “Eurabia” because of Muslim immigration – something with no statistical basis.

Q:  That’s to say, you don’t believe in that life-cycle – rise, decline and fall of empires?

A: Well, very few countries admit to being empires any more, do they? But any theory of history based on things being cyclical overcomplicates the point – things change, except when they don’t, and that’s it.

Q:  An interview about your blog wouldn’t be complete without a question about your online brawl with Chris Devonshire-Ellis. In November 2008, you wrote a post stating that Chris Devonshire-Ellis wasn’t a lawyer, and that it annoyed you that he was treated as an expert by people who ought to know better. Were you the first blogger to make that statement? Wang Jianshuo, a Chinese blogger, wrote in December 2009 that he had previously run into Mr. Devonshire-Ellis, too (also online, and not in real life). Did you expect what followed – i. e. this kind of correspondence? This followed almost two and a half years after your actual post, and it probably caused you some trouble. Would you have written the post anyway, knowing the aftermath? Why, or why not?

A: Actually someone left a comment on a thread on Wang Jianshuo’s blog outing him as early as 2006, and people knew about it before even that. It’s just that he had managed to silence them through intimidating tactics such as those Wang Jianshuo (and also Ryan McLaughlin) describe on their blogs. People were also discussing his disreputable tactics – particularly giving out that he was a legal professional when he had not even finished his A-levels – on various defunct expat blogs back in 2006, which is where I first heard of him. I checked out his story myself after I got back to the UK, and after hearing from some more people who had been hassled by him, I decided to write a post on him to encourage those who were being hassled to stand up to him by showing that there was actually nothing, legally speaking, that he could do to stop them telling the truth about him.

Do I regret outing him? Absolutely not! Yes, the old boy certainly knows how to hold a grudge, but as far as I’m concerned, he can go and whistle for all I care. I’m in the right, and he’s in the wrong. It’s that simple.

Even having my real identity outed by him, to me, was not such a problem. For years I had been planning to out myself  but the correct moment never seemed to present itself. He solved the problem for me. The negative consequences of being outed have so far been precisely zero.

I would, however, like to give a shout-out to everyone who wrote comments on my blog supporting me.

Q:  Your most beautiful post, you said when it was your turn in a blog-nomination-snowball initiative in August this year, was one about Taiwan. At the same time, it seems, you like to tease Taiwanese nationalists, once in a while. Why is that? Does your sympathy for Taiwanese (or expat-Taiwanese feelings) depend on the way they are expressed?

A: When I lived in Taiwan I had a lot of sympathy for the pan-greens. I still do. It’s just that sympathy does not extend to uncritically swallowing scare-stories about a KMT-CCP conspiracy to annex Taiwan to China over the heads of the Taiwanese electorate without evidence. It’s also striking how Taiwanese independence is the lens through which some of these bloggers see everything. They’ve become far more committed to Taiwanese independence than the average Taiwanese person, and far more committed to the pan-greens than the average Taiwanese voter, a commitment not unlike certain US officials and the former South Vietnam – which is why my first post on this was entitled “Taiwan Expats and the Saigon Syndrome“.

Also having followed the last ten years, it’s become obvious that for some people war is always just around the corner, and they always write accordingly. The Chinese invasion is always in the next election year, the KMT is always trying to fix a deal (for which there’s no evidence) , the CCP is always carrying forward its plans etc. etc. etc. Sure, “the boy who cried wolf” and all that, but there’s a difference between warning people to maintain vigilance, and essentially trying to sell scare stories on the basis of rumours.

The goal of demonising the KMT is to de-legitimise them as a political party. Any vote they win is put down to dirty tricks. Their manifesto is portrayed as a tissue of lies. The idea that, by de-legitimising one half of Taiwan’s democratic balance, they are also delegitimising Taiwan’s political system, does not seem to occur to the purveyors  of such propaganda. It does not matter that propaganda from the other side has the same effect.

I’ve kind of mellowed on the Taiwan blogs, though, firstly because the DPP has changed it’s policies over the past few years – particularly since Tsai Ing-wen become leader – and a lot of the blogs have followed their lead. I’m certain that the CCP will try to paint her as an extremist – it’s what they do to everyone – but this is neither here nor there. I just hope that, if she loses, she, or someone like her, gets another chance.

Q:  Is there an unasked question you’d like to reply to?

A: I’ve been asked a lot how I ever could have worked for Foxconn. The answer is that I joined them before the major scandals came out. Actually, for me, it was quite a positive experience. I know I’ve been critical of people who have worked for outlets like Global Times and it may look like I’m applying a double-standard, but to me it does not seem that way.

Q: Foarp, thanks a lot for this interview.

The interview was conducted by an exchange of e-mails.

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Related

All BoZhu Interviews

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Zhou Youguang: don’t Blame Confucianism – make it Work

Zhou Youguang (周有光) is the man who “invented” the hanyu pinyin – those pronounciation helpers not only used by foreigners who learn Chinese, but also by Chinese elementary school students, before they learn the simplified characters. The following was posted on his blog some five months ago – thoughts about how to make Confucianism work in our times.

Every country’s culture includes modern and traditional culture. Modern culture is  mainly about internationally shared natural and social sciences; traditional culture is mainly a nationality’s culture, history, philosophy, and religion. Our universities’ curricula are mostly modern culture, with a small share of traditional culture, which reflects the degree to which our country has entered globalization, and retained particular national features. Every culture, knowingly or not, carries out modernization.

每个国家的文化都包含现代文化和传统文化。现代文化主要是国际共同的自然科学和社会科学，传统文化主要是本民族的文史哲和宗教。我国的大学课程大部分是现代文化，小部分是传统文化，这反映我国进入全球化的程度和保持民族特色的现状。每一传统文化都在自觉或不自觉中进行现代化。

Confucianism maintained imperial rule, and built a stable and prosperous feudal society. During the second millenium, it produced great and correct accomplishments. Confucianism wasn’t there to serve post-feudal times. To blame Confucianism for not being able to serve democracy or science is no adequate historic viewpoint. The Fourth-May era attacked Confucianism, which made as much sense as to criticize Confucius for not understanding English. At that time, there was no English language. To make Confucianism work for the post-feudal times isn’t Confucius’ responsibility; how to make Confucianism modern is the responsibility of current generations.

儒学的历史任务是维护帝王政权，建设稳定而繁荣的封建社会。在二千年中做出了伟大的、光荣的、正确的成绩。儒学不是为后封建时代服务的，责备它不能为民主和科学服务，不符合历史观点。五四时期打孔家店，好比责备孔夫子不懂英语，那时英语还没有产生呢。叫儒学为后封建时代服务，责任不在孔夫子，而在今天的一代：如何使儒学现代化。

Modernizing Confucianism should include

1. Removing feudalism, building up modernity
2. removing conservatism, building up creativity – for example, “I narrate, but I don’t innovate” must change into “I narrate and innovate”¹⁾
3. removing dissimulation, building up practicality; sayings such as “man and nature are one, sage inside, king outside” will find it difficult to reach modern young people – both its shape and content needs reform. Our forefathers didn’t know what nature is, and easily put the two together. Today’s people have at least elementary scientific understanding, and man and nature don’t fit together. There’s a five-year old poet in India, his anthology is titled “Let me touch the Sky”, and he may welcome people and nature sitting together. Old  bottles may be filled with new wine, but if the artwork on the bottle disgusts people, there will be no people who want to try its good taste. Imperial thoughts have turned into swearwords – who would still want to be called a king? You call yourself a sage, and other people will want to scoff [at you], too! What’s hard to understand for modern youth will hardly play a role in modern society.

儒学现代化的原则应当包含：1、除去封建性、建立现代性：例如“君为臣纲”要改为“官为民仆”。2、除去保守性、建立创造性：例如“述而不作”要改为“述而又作”。3、除去玄虚性、建立实用性：例如“天人合一、内圣外王”这个说法难于为现代青年所接受，形式和内容都要改革。古人不懂什么是天，不妨把天和人配对。今人对天至少有了初步的科学理解，天和人配不成对了。印度有一个五岁的小诗人，他的诗集叫做《让我摸摸天》，他会欢迎把天和人排排坐。旧瓶可以装新酒，可是如果旧瓶上贴着使人恶心的广告，就不会有人来尝这美味。帝王思想已经成为骂人话，谁还愿意自己称王？自称圣人别人也要嗤之以鼻！难于为现代青年所理解，就难于在现代社会发生作用。
Confucianist content needs to be explored one by one, and should be seen in three different categories:

1. What has guiding meaning for modernity, such as “to know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge” is to be kept
2. what’s correct in principle, but not in specific cases, needs to be changed, such as “Parents can’t do wrong” should be put “天下有不是之父母”.²⁾ Parents have their faults, may be an reassuring figure of speech. [Update, Oct 27: for the source of the original quote and a discussion, see commenting thread.]
3. What’s not in correspondence with modern requirements should be abandoned, such as “Women and ordinary people are hard to handle”.³⁾

儒学内容要逐项研究，分为三部分：1、对现代有指导意义的，从之。如“知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也”。2、原理对、具体不对，改之。如“天下无不是之父母”要改为“天下有不是之父母”，父母有错，好言劝说。3、不合现代要求的，弃之。如“唯女子与小人为难养也。”

There are people who say that illiterate people were in need of being converted to religious Confucianism, studied people needed Confucian were in need of Confucian dissimulation, and young people were in need of Confucian practical wisdom – but these three [rationales] exclude each other, and might as well go their own ways respectively. Isn’t that an essential phenomenon of transition?

有人说：文盲群众需要儒学宗教化，书斋学者需要儒学玄虚化，现代青年需要儒学常识化，三者并行不悖，不妨各行其是。这是过渡时期的必然现象吗？

Ever since the Han dynasty, Confucians have made thorough studies of chapters, sections, sentences and phrases in ancient writings, and added explanatory notes, added footnotes to the Five Classics, to Confucius and to Mencius. Genuine development and innovation was very rare, but many wise sayings were left behind, having universal and perpetual meaning. Future development should bring Confucius spirit “as the most timeous sage [or saint]⁴“  into play, and turn the ancient, feudalism-serving Confucianism into a modern, “post-feudal” Confucianism.

汉代以来，儒家大都钻研章句训诂之学，给五经和孔孟做注解，很少有实质性的发展和创新，但是留下许多至理名言，有普遍和久远的意义。今后发展，应当发挥“孔子圣之时者也”的精神，使为封建服务的古代儒学变成为“后”封建服务的现代儒学。

Zhou Youguang isn’t the only blogging academic who explores Confucianism and modernity – Wang Zhicheng would be one of many others -, but Zhou is arguably the oldest blogging academic  who is pursuing this interest in particular, and reform more in general. He turned 105 in January this year.

Underneath the “notes” section, I’ve listed some posts which may or not be “related” to this topic.

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Notes

¹⁾ 子曰：“述而不作，信而好古，窃比于我老彭。” Confucius said, “I transmit but do not innovate; I am truthful in what I say and devoted to antiquity. I venture to compare myself to your Old P’eng.” (Analects, 7:1 / 论语述而篇第七章1) Also: “I transmit but do not create. In believing in and loving the ancients, I dare to compare myself with our old Peng.”
²⁾ I’m exceeding my time limit, seeking for a proper translation of “天下有不是之父母” – maybe a reader can help out here.
³⁾ In full: “子曰：唯女子与小人为难养也，近之则不孙，远之则怨” – Confucius said: “Only women and non-gentleman are difficult to handle. Be close to them and they lack humility, stay away from them and they complain.” (Analects, chapter 17, 25.)
⁴⁾ In full (according to a blogger’s translation):
孟子曰：“伯夷，圣之清者也；伊尹，圣之任者也；柳下惠，圣之和者也；孔子，圣之时者也。孔子之谓集大成。集大成也者，金声而玉振之也。金声也者，始条理也；玉振之也者，终条理也。始条理者，智之事也；终条理者，圣之事也。智，譬则巧也；圣，譬则力也。由射于百步之外也，其至，尔力也；其中，非尔力也。”
Mencius said, ‘Bo Yi among the sages was the pure one; Yi Yin was the one most inclined to take office; Hui of Liu Xia was the accommodating one; and Confucius was the timeous one. In Confucius we have what is called a complete concert. A complete concert is when the large bell proclaims the commencement of the music, and the ringing stone proclaims its close. The metal sound commences the blended harmony of all the instruments, and the winding up with the stone terminates that blended harmony. The commencing that harmony is the work of wisdom. The terminating it is the work of sageness. As a comparison for wisdom, we may liken it to skill, and as a comparison for sageness, we may liken it to strength – as in the case of shooting at a mark a hundred paces distant. That you reach it is owing to your strength, but that you hit the mark is not owing to your strength.’

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Related

» At 105, now a Government Critic, NPR, October 19, 2011
» Lee Teng-hui’s New Central Plains, Oct 18, 2011
» Confucius relegated, April 27, 2011
» Neither Law, nor Order, April 21, 2011
» Does Confucius matter outside Asia, Dec 12, 2010
» Not Father, but Son, The Guardian, Febr 21, 2008

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Lee Teng-hui’s new Central Plains: “The Rising Winds and Scudding Clouds of Modern Thought”

The following is a quotation from “Taiwan’s Position”  (台湾的主张), a book written by former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), first published on June 11, 1999, pages 36 – 38.

The book was sold in Hong Kong and in many places outside China, and somewhat surprisingly, Hong Kong bookshops had copies with simplified characters (简体字) on offer – the way they are usually written in China (minus Hong Kong and Macau, where traditional characters prevail), and in Singapore. Traditional characters are standard in Taiwan.

Links and highlighting within the following blockquote added during translation – JR.

Although I received Japanese education from an early age and loved Japanese culture, I did a lot of desultory reading of Chinese literature, too. The May 4th movement in particular, and the rising winds and scudding clouds of modern thought, left a deep impression on me.

虽然我自幼接受日本教育，受过日本文化的熏陶，但对中国文学与思想，也曾多所涉猎。特别是五四运动之后，风起云涌的现代思潮，更对我有很深的影响。

Chinese people have always been proud of their long history. But it is hard to deny that under its long-lasting feudal system, traditional culture was twisted, and produced chronic social ills.

中国人一向以拥有悠久的历史而自傲。然而不容否认的是，中国长期处于封建体制之下，传统文化受到扭曲，也使社会产生了许多积习难改的弊病。

In 1928, Hu Shih published “Virtue” [or Norm, 名教 - JR] in the New Moon Magazine, a painful criticism of China’s blind worship for catch phrases and slogans. He pointed out that Chinese people didn’t believe in religion, but held a superstitious belief in their own singularity, in having a long tradition of virtue, and that they correspondingly “idolized everything that had been written”. Therefore, they paid no attention to reality and sought for inner fulfillment through slogans, with the result that not only problems remained unsolved, but that values became confused, too. So he urged those in power : Government isn’t about catch phrases and slogans – once something needs to be done, go and do it.¹⁾

一九二八年，胡适在《新月杂志》上发表的〈名教〉，就对中国社会迷信标语、口号的现象痛加批判。他指出，中国人不信仰宗教，却迷信自己独有、且具有悠久传 统的“名教”，即“崇拜所写文字的宗教”。因此，做事不重实际，只以口号、标语来求心理的满足，结果不但没能解决问题，反而造成价值的颠倒错乱。他因而奉劝当时的主政者：“治国不在口号标语，顾力行何如耳”。

Lu Xun‘s “True Story of Ah Q” and other of his stories, in a taunting way, ridiculed the Chinese culture of loving face, and struck a chord with many people. He believed that whenever a thing crops up, and Chinese people can’t think  of a way to solve the problem, they only seek to placate themselves and to save face – that had made Chinese society come to a standstill and was the main reason for its inability to make headway.

鲁迅的《阿q正传》等著作，以嘲讽的手法，深刻描绘中国人爱面子的文化，也引起许多人的共鸣。他认为，中国人遇事不思解决，只求自我安慰、保住面子的心态，是使中国社会陷于停滞，无法进步的主要原因。

In his research of ancient history, Guo Moruo criticized the harm that stemmed from the feudalist system, and encouraged young people to rise to reforms. In his “Book of Ten Criticisms”, “Bronze Age”, and other books, by assessing pre-Qin personalities and thoughts, he praised early Confucian [scholar] Mencius and the importance Mencius attached to people-oriented thought. He denounced Han Fei’s “legalist”, “monarch-oriented” views and and Qin Shi-huang’s “totalitarianism”²⁾, etc., advocated the idea of “the people as the foundation”³⁾, believing that only if China freed itself of tradition’s constraints, reason to hope for development would be there.

而郭沫若以考古及历史研究的角度，批判封建制度之害，更鼓励了许多年轻人，起而改革。他的《十批判书》与《青铜时代》等书，借着对先秦人物与思想的评论， 如推崇早期儒家孔孟的重视民本思想，贬斥韩非的“法术”、“君主本位”，和秦始皇的“极权主义”等，宣扬“以民为本”的思想，认为中国只有摆脱传统的束 缚，才有发展的希望。

These theorists, who criticized the social ills of Chinese tradition, had a resounding effect among knowledgeable young people. I was only 29 years old at the time, but I had also read these books carefully, and explored the issues of Chinese culture. I believe that China’s greatest problem is that its feudal system brought development to a halt. It really looks like the soy vat referred to by Bo Yang, distorting peoples’ words and deeds.

这些批判中国传统社会弊病的论着，在知识青年群中，引起很大的回响。当时才二十几岁的我，也曾经详加研读这些书，并深加思索中国文化的问题。我认为，中国最大的问题，是在封建制度下所导致的发展停滞。就像作家柏杨所说的“大酱缸”，使人的思想言行产生扭曲。

Up until today, I admire these thinkers’ views. It’s a pity that China’s social development still hasn’t reached a mature stage. Therefore, even as the Chinese thoroughly criticize the society and the system, they haven’t been able to produce feasible methods to solve problems. Even if young people generally hold revolutionary ideals, they are still unable to grasp a direction or method with certainty.

直到今天，我仍然对当时那些思想家的看法，相当佩服。可惜的是，当时中国社会的发展，尚未进入成熟阶段。因此，尽管他们对社会与制度有很深刻的批判，却无法提出可行的解决方法。而一般年轻人虽然也怀抱革命的理想，却仍无法掌握确实的方向与作法。

From this perspective, it can be said that Taiwan’s successes stem from the actual implementation of these reformist currents of thought. Over the years, on the foundation of stable economic and social development, we have gradually freed ourselves from the shackles of tradition, set out anew, and concerning political reform and social transformation, we have been very successful. Obviously, to reach the ideal status may require still more efforts. But we believe that the direction we have taken is correct. What we have done has also brought new hope for the restructuring of Chinese culture.

就此一角度而言，今天台湾所缔造的成就，也可以说是当年这些改革思潮具体实践的成果。这些年来，我们在经济和社会稳定发展的基础上，逐渐摆脱传统的束缚， 重新出发，在政治改革和社会改造方面，都取得了很大的成就。当然，要达到理想的境界，可能还需要更多的努力。但是，我相信，我们的方向是正确的。而我们所 做的这一切，也都为中国文化的再造，带来了新的希望。

My active advocacy for  the “reform of heart and soul” in recent years is based on my hope to make society leave the old framework, applying new thought, face a new era, stir new vigor, from a transformation of peoples’ hearts. This goes deeper than political reform, and it is a more difficult transformation project, but we are confident that we will, based on the existing foundations of freedom and openness, achieve the building of a new Central Plain.⁴

近年来，我积极倡导“心灵改革”，就是希望从人心的改造做起，让我们的社会走出旧有的框架，用新的思维，面对新的时代，并激发出新的活力。这是一个比政治 改革更加深入、也更为艰巨的改造工程，但是我们有信心，可以在社会自由开放的既有基础上，完成建立“文化新中原”的目标。

A trial is scheduled to begin at Taipei District Court on Friday. Lee is accused of embezzling state funds. The charges reportedly date back to a period around 1994.

"Taiwan's Position", page 226: 李登辉是从《蒋经国学校》学会如何当一名政治家的 ("Lee Teng-hui learned from the "Chiang Ching-kuo school" how to be a politician").

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Notes

¹⁾In full: 為政者不在多言，顧力行何如耳, or 为治者不在多言，顾力行何如耳. Once something needs to be done, go and do it isn’t a very faithful translation.

²⁾ I’m not sure if “totalitarianism” is the adequate translation of 极权主义 – it may also be something like “despotism”. However, totalitarianism seems to be the term most frequently offered by dictionaries.

³ or “the people at the center”, “people-oriented”

⁴ Zhongyuan (中原, the central plains) is a term charged with a Chinese sense of mission and civilization – in that context, it may appear surprising that Lee, a “splittist element”, would use the term at all. The way Henan party secretary Xu Guangchun (徐光春) referred to the central plains may give you an idea: The history of Henan Province constitutes half of the Chinese history. Two years earlier, Xu had apparently given a talk in Hong Kong, with a similar message.  But this wasn’t necessarily what Lee had on mind, in 1996.
From “Taiwanisation – Its Origin and Politics”, George Tsai Woei, Peter Yu Kien-hong, Singapore, 2001, page 19 – 20 (footnotes omitted):

Another anecdote should also be mentioned here. In 1996, Lee Teng-hui declared his ambition to “manage the great Taiwan, and to construct a new Central Plain”. As is known, Central Plain (zhong-yuan) was, and still is, a term usually reserved to describe cultural China. To “manage the big Taiwan” is something easily understood, but to construct a new “Central Plain” is very controversial, to say the least. Some argued that Lee’s aim was to help rebuild China as a “new” central plain, but with his foot firmly on Taiwan. But others rebutted that what really was in Lee’s minds was to build Taiwan as a new Central Plain so that there was no need to unify, or have connections, with the “old” central plain, China.

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Related

» Who’s afraid of an ICAC, July 2, 2011
» Taiwan’s Unbelievable Justice, September 12, 2009
» “Always in My Heart”, Olin Lecture, June 9, 1995
» Audio archive: CBS coverage on Olin lecture, June 9, 1995
» “Guo Moruo worships Confucius”, A Glossary, HK, 1995, p. 346
» Lee Teng-hui, Wikipedia

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