By Deauwand Myers
China has a long and rich history. Technologically, scholarly, and governing-wise, China was 500 years ahead of most of the ancient world. Single-sheet paper, mechanical clocks, gunpowder, guns, fireworks, and long works of literature were all invented or perfected there.
With such a glorious past, it's understandable why President Xi and his Chinese Communist Party, not to mention some Chinese citizens, have grown nationalistic and aggressive in geopolitics. Not unlike Korea, China has experienced the stinging humiliation of being conquered, invaded, occupied, or coerced by foreign powers. The Mongolians, Muslims from the west, the British, the Portuguese, and most recently, Imperial Japan all brutalized, occupied, or annexed China. These, along with the shame of decades of most of China living in abject, bone-crushing poverty, have left a lasting, bitter taste in the governing elite and China's body politic writ large.
In psychology, there's a term that's useful to us here. It is called horizontal violence: the abused re-perpetrate abuse on others. This would explain why, under the ruthless will of President Xi, China claims all of the South China Sea, builds military bases on artificial islands to reify this absurd and illegal claim, bullies smaller Asian countries to acquiesce to these claims, coerces much of the world, even the United States, not to recognize Taiwan as an independent country (a ridiculous arrangement, as Taiwan has been self-ruled for well over half a century, and the CCP has never done so), and is committing cultural and literal genocide of its Muslim minority population in China's northwest.
One of the many problems with authoritarian regimes is the cult of personality. What this means is all matters of the state take on the personality of said state's supreme ruler. Xi has basically made himself a re-imagined Mao Zedong. And like every tin pot dictator, his ego is both huge and exceedingly fragile. Witness how an innocent joke saying Xi resembles the American children's cartoon bear, Winnie the Pooh, has been deemed an act of disobedience against the state. The term "Winnie the Pooh" is literally banned and erased by China's legions of censors across all social media platforms. I'll forgive you if you think I'm joking. But Google it for yourself. It's completely childish and a bit frightening, but these are the many, many perils of living under dictatorial governments.
As such, any criticism of China's gross violations of human rights, any objection to their behavior, both internally and internationally, any critique of their form of government, is an affront, and not just to China as a nation, but to Xi personally. But then, as stated at a CCP plenary conference not long ago, Xi is the core of China's communist ideology. President Xi is the state. The two are inextricably connected.
Not unlike North Korea, China responds in oddly overdramatic English to any slight it perceives from the international community. U.S. President Biden held a virtual pro-democracy summit with all democratic countries, including Taiwan, to which Russia and China loudly protested. China went on to hold its own democracy summit, if you can believe it, and even claimed it was a democracy itself in several national publications. So laughable and ridiculous was this, the comment section was inundated with sarcastic comments from fellow Chinese citizens who were like, "yeah…um, no." There were so many sarcastic comments, the entire comment sections in these publications were shut down.
The dirty, little secret about autocrats is this: they don't believe the hype they are selling. They know their rule and their form of government is illegitimate, and the amount of misery and death they deploy to maintain power produces in them the same emotion their citizens feel: fear.
Each time their legitimacy is questioned, as with the United States' decision to boycott the Beijing Olympics by not sending a diplomatic delegation there, Beijing angrily and/or childishly protested. China's foreign affairs spokesman went so far as to say "well, you weren't invited anyway." This is some elementary school behavior.
It would be funny if it weren't so deadly serious, and outside of catastrophic war, the international community has not come up with effective ways to challenge rogue regimes and their most evil of impulses. Russia annexes Crimea, and we basically did nothing. China separates Muslim children from their parents, who are sent to concentration camps wherein they are sexually abused, tortured, brainwashed, or worse by the hundreds of thousands in a brutally efficient manner, and again, no serious repercussions.
China has the second largest economy in the world. They have nuclear weapons and are producing more of them. They have a rapidly modernizing military, and in President Xi, a leader willing to deploy said military. But the international community has to disregard China's sensitivity, call a thing a thing, and act accordingly.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.
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With such a glorious past, it's understandable why President Xi and his Chinese Communist Party, not to mention some Chinese citizens, have grown nationalistic and aggressive in geopolitics. Not unlike Korea, China has experienced the stinging humiliation of being conquered, invaded, occupied, or coerced by foreign powers. The Mongolians, Muslims from the west, the British, the Portuguese, and most recently, Imperial Japan all brutalized, occupied, or annexed China. These, along with the shame of decades of most of China living in abject, bone-crushing poverty, have left a lasting, bitter taste in the governing elite and China's body politic writ large.
In psychology, there's a term that's useful to us here. It is called horizontal violence: the abused re-perpetrate abuse on others. This would explain why, under the ruthless will of President Xi, China claims all of the South China Sea, builds military bases on artificial islands to reify this absurd and illegal claim, bullies smaller Asian countries to acquiesce to these claims, coerces much of the world, even the United States, not to recognize Taiwan as an independent country (a ridiculous arrangement, as Taiwan has been self-ruled for well over half a century, and the CCP has never done so), and is committing cultural and literal genocide of its Muslim minority population in China's northwest.
One of the many problems with authoritarian regimes is the cult of personality. What this means is all matters of the state take on the personality of said state's supreme ruler. Xi has basically made himself a re-imagined Mao Zedong. And like every tin pot dictator, his ego is both huge and exceedingly fragile. Witness how an innocent joke saying Xi resembles the American children's cartoon bear, Winnie the Pooh, has been deemed an act of disobedience against the state. The term "Winnie the Pooh" is literally banned and erased by China's legions of censors across all social media platforms. I'll forgive you if you think I'm joking. But Google it for yourself. It's completely childish and a bit frightening, but these are the many, many perils of living under dictatorial governments.
As such, any criticism of China's gross violations of human rights, any objection to their behavior, both internally and internationally, any critique of their form of government, is an affront, and not just to China as a nation, but to Xi personally. But then, as stated at a CCP plenary conference not long ago, Xi is the core of China's communist ideology. President Xi is the state. The two are inextricably connected.
Not unlike North Korea, China responds in oddly overdramatic English to any slight it perceives from the international community. U.S. President Biden held a virtual pro-democracy summit with all democratic countries, including Taiwan, to which Russia and China loudly protested. China went on to hold its own democracy summit, if you can believe it, and even claimed it was a democracy itself in several national publications. So laughable and ridiculous was this, the comment section was inundated with sarcastic comments from fellow Chinese citizens who were like, "yeah…um, no." There were so many sarcastic comments, the entire comment sections in these publications were shut down.
The dirty, little secret about autocrats is this: they don't believe the hype they are selling. They know their rule and their form of government is illegitimate, and the amount of misery and death they deploy to maintain power produces in them the same emotion their citizens feel: fear.
Each time their legitimacy is questioned, as with the United States' decision to boycott the Beijing Olympics by not sending a diplomatic delegation there, Beijing angrily and/or childishly protested. China's foreign affairs spokesman went so far as to say "well, you weren't invited anyway." This is some elementary school behavior.
It would be funny if it weren't so deadly serious, and outside of catastrophic war, the international community has not come up with effective ways to challenge rogue regimes and their most evil of impulses. Russia annexes Crimea, and we basically did nothing. China separates Muslim children from their parents, who are sent to concentration camps wherein they are sexually abused, tortured, brainwashed, or worse by the hundreds of thousands in a brutally efficient manner, and again, no serious repercussions.
China has the second largest economy in the world. They have nuclear weapons and are producing more of them. They have a rapidly modernizing military, and in President Xi, a leader willing to deploy said military. But the international community has to disregard China's sensitivity, call a thing a thing, and act accordingly.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.
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