800 words for 3000 years 

(29 Mar) Why can’t Chinese achieve the same scientific and democratic modernization as the West?

There are many reasons, I could go on for days. For starters, it is the nation’s obedience and deep-rooted depravity, as verified by Chinese writer Lu Xun. Secondly, it is the 2000-year system based on the dark emperor system of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s legalism. Thirdly, Chinese pictographs are only suitable for the imagination, whereas English is based on Latin, pictographs cannot cultivate rational logical thinking.

Most importantly: Western civilization originated in Greece 3000 years ago, around the same period as China’s Spring and Autumn period. However, the original intention of Western Greek culture aimed to “seek truth” from the very beginning.Under the starry nights of Athens, Socrates and Plato would explore the logic and philosophy over a question. In contrast, Confucius, Mencius and their students wasted too much time on ‘benevolence’, the concept of kindness.

After the period of Ancient Greece and Rome, the West experienced religious dictatorship from Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, but they quickly broke through the reactionary and proceeded to Renaissance. Adversely, in China: the ‘benevolence’ in Confucian ethics was soon permanently suppressed by Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s legalist scholar Shang Yang’s cruel legalism.

The ethical Chinese culture was once based on morality, and it slowly became something that scholar-officials recite. In reality, the scholar-officials were people who palace maidens and eunuchs kissed up and snitched to. Nowadays, the TV dramas that Chinese like to watch, other than the anti-Japanese dramas, are the palace dramas with a crowd of scheming wives and concubines fighting for the Emperor’s love, which shapes the national’s intelligence today.

Of course, there’s a place called Taiwan, where democracy has been achieved. But after they achieved liberal democracy like in the West, they call themselves Taiwanese, not Chinese.

The so-called 3000-year-old culture is blatantly in a rotten state in the 21st century. History gave Chinese a chance in the May Fourth Movement 100 years ago, along with Sun Yat-sen and Hu Shih, but they wasted the chance themselves. Examples like the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, ideological emancipation, advocating truth etc. I’ve criticized them so many times before that I don’t need to repeat myself again.

In short, after 150 years, they still choose the way Lenin and Mao Zedong ruled, they still want an Emperor. I could only congratulate them: It’s like a student who repeated their grades many times won’t expect to be admitted to Oxbridge, unless they send piles of money to these universities.

How did 3000 years of development, on top of the challenges of the 21st century, created this global pandemic? It doesn’t take 10 million words to discuss from scratch.

This 800-word column, without regret, could make Qian Mu, Hu Shih, and even today’s Liu Xiaobo and Ren Zhiqiang all shut up.

Source: Apple Daily 

https://hk.lifestyle.appledaily.com/lifestyle/columnist/陶傑/daily/article/20200329/20889416/