A guest post. Its views do not represent my own.
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A Lesson for China
by William R. Stimson

Every morning as I make breakfast, I listen to my Mandarin lesson. This morning, the sentence I learned was, ‘Taiwan is about the same size as Holland.’

It struck me there wasn’t just a Chinese lesson in this for me. Here was also a Chinese lesson for China. Not just in size is Taiwan comparable to The Netherlands.

The people, culture, and language of Taiwan are Chinese. Those of The Netherlands are Germanic.

Somehow, however, The Netherlands didn’t get absorbed into greater Germany, as did so many comparable areas with their distinctive local cultures and ways of speaking. It got to pursue a different course of development and came to play a unique and important role in history. Europe would be poorer without the little Netherlands, and so would the world.

Asia, and the world, would similarly be poorer without little Taiwan.

In ways that were unique and different from any other country, Taiwan – its business community that is – was able to make the early move into China and set in motion developments that later made China into a great economic power.

Nowadays, the economy of big China eclipses that of little Taiwan, but Taiwan’s usefulness to its big neighbor is far from ended. Taiwan will again play a unique role in what promises to be China’s next big crisis and perhaps most difficult transition.

Should it come as any surprise that freedom can sometimes happen in a small place easier than in a large one? When the U.S. became free it was little and England was big. However, now that the U.S. has become a big superpower, it is losing what was always most special about it. Being big isn’t as important as being free. Hence the importance of the small.

The Hindu elephant God named Ganesha represents, among other things, what is big and powerful. Always, at the feet of Ganesha there is a little mouse.

Thus, it can be seen that the Hindu religion recognizes that the power of the big is connected with the power of the small.

Taiwan is the little mouse at China’s feet. The reason Taiwan is so important to China is because it is small, independent, and free.

In the history of Europe and the world, small independent states have often played a role out of proportion to their size. Why is it proving so hard for Beijing to grasp that Taiwan’s value to China is in its independence from China and that it serves China better if it remains the way it is?

The answer is simple. Just as a small bird will grab whatever is at hand to weave its nest, even bits of trash and refuse, so China, in its frantic scramble to reinvent its identity, has snatched up an inappropriate aspect of its past and woven it into the nation’s new self-concept.

The notion of a so-called ‘One China’ that Beijing has wielded to bully Taiwan has to finally be seen for what it is – a euphemism for the brutal central dictatorship that for too long now has crippled so many prosperous and promising regions of China and forced them into a misguided cultural and economic stagnation.

The ‘one China’ notion needs to be discarded before it does more damage than it already has.

Taiwan’s politicians often act like a bunch of circus clowns. And that’s all they would be – were they not inventing from within Chinese culture a form of democracy that is as uniquely Chinese as the economic miracle their fathers invented before them, and then passed on to China.

Small Taiwan hasn’t stopped cooking. It’s just got something new on the stove right now. It’s more useful to big China and the world than ever. It would be a tragedy if China grew too big and too full of its new wealth and power to grasp this.

As the example of the U.S. illustrates today, big, arrogant and proud countries can be the slowest to learn – which is all the more reason why the small, independent, and free ones are so useful to have around.

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William R. Stimson is an American writer who lives in Taiwan. More of his writing can be found at www.billstimson.com.

Via Global Voices Online comes a link to photos of the world’s timeliest sandstorm…right in the middle of a speech by Pan Yue during a tree planting event. Who says nature doesn’t have a sense of humor?

A 10-part indie video series. Do not miss it. Repeat, do not miss it.

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All hail the Great Helmsman, the man who gave China its spine and pulled the broken country up by its bootstraps. Every time I pass by one of his ubiquitous portraits or statues, I stand up a little bit straighter and think about just how lucky China was to be the recipient of his magnanimous and beneficent rule. So, so lucky.

It was something I noticed within a few days of starting my first job in Asia, back in Hong Kong. One of my co-workers sent me an email that included a smiley, only it had distinct Chinese characteristics. Instead of the usual (for Westerners) smile of :-), it had the eyes on top and the mouth on the bottom: ^_^. I’ve since seen this countless times throughout Greater China.

My immediate thought was that this was meant to symbolize the shape of local people’s eyes, as opposed to rounder Western eyes. But according to this article, the difference between the two smileys is of much deeper significance, and in fact represents a difference between how Westerners and Asians express their emotions, and how we interpret the emotions of others. The article focuses on Japan, but I would guess the findings would apply to much of Asia.

Research has uncovered that culture is a determining factor when interpreting facial emotions. The study reveals that in cultures where emotional control is the standard, such as Japan, focus is placed on the eyes to interpret emotions. Whereas in cultures where emotion is openly expressed, such as the United States, the focus is on the mouth to interpret emotion.

Across two studies, using computerized icons and human images, the researchers compared how Japanese and American cultures interpreted images, which conveyed a range of emotions.

“These findings go against the popular theory that the facial expressions of basic emotions can be universally recognized,” said University of Alberta researcher Dr. Takahiko Masuda. “A person’s culture plays a very strong role in determining how they will perceive emotions and needs to be considered when interpreting facial expression”

These cultural differences are even noticeable in computer emoticons, which are used to convey a writer’s emotions over email and text messaging. Consistent with the research findings, the Japanese emoticons for happiness and sadness vary in terms of how the eyes are depicted, while American emoticons vary with the direction of the mouth. In the United States the emoticons : ) and : – ) denote a happy face, whereas the emoticons 🙁 or : – ( denote a sad face. However, Japanese tend to use the symbol (^_^) to indicate a happy face, and (;_;) to indicate a sad face.

So we in the West first look to people’s mouths to judge whether they are happy or sad, while the Japanese tend to look at their interlocutors’ eyes. Maybe this is why so many in the West have for centuries described Asians as “inscrutable” – because we can’t tell from their facial expressions how they feel, but only because we aren’t looking at the right part of the face. If we looked more closely at their eyes instead of their mouths, maybe we’d see they aren’t so inscrutable after all. Interesting idea.

Yes, it looks like it’s really here. Google scares me sometimes, but i am always in awe of the things they come up with. (Google Desktop literally changed the way I work. I.e., I don’t lose stuff anymore.)

Read this hard-hitting condemnation of Africa’s repeated lack of action over Robert Mugabe’s reign of terror in Zimbabwe.

Neighbours wring their hands while Zimbabwe burns

There isn’t much I can add to it, though I will highlight the following.

Doffing their race-laced caps to an old revolutionary, African nations have become complicit in the killing of a neighbouring people. Taking action against Mugabe would essentially mean siding with white Western leaders, apparently a sin worse than genocide. This African-style neo-racism means that a black despot goes on killing black people.

The simple fact is that African nations must stop being so blinkered and not protect a man because of something he did years ago, just because of what the newspaper terms “neo-racism”, which in some respects is a very apt description of the motivations of some African states in protecting Mugabe. Zimbabwe is on the verge of collapse – if those who have the power to isolate Mugabe do nothing then the millions that suffer under his regime will point to them, not those who lost their influence over their country decades previously.

It raises interesting questions of priorities.

SHANGHAI, China – Scientists in Shanghai are developing a nuclear-powered lunar rover for the country’s first unmanned mission to the moon in 2012, newspapers reported Monday.

The six-wheeled vehicle has been under development for four years at the Shanghai Aerospace System Engineering Institute, where a laboratory has been outfitted to replicate the lunar surface, the Shanghai Daily reported.

The 5-foot-high, 440-pound rover is designed to transmit video in real time, dig for and analyze soil samples, and produce three dimensional images of the lunar surface, the paper said. In photographs, the rover appeared similar to NASA’s unmanned Spirit and Opportunity Mars explorers that were launched in 2003 and are still operating.

However, unlike the rechargeable lithium ion batteries used by those rovers, the Chinese model will eventually run on a nuclear power source to ensure a constant energy supply, the report said.

This nuclear powered lunar explorer sounds really cool. It may advance the development of new technologies. Is it, however, worth the cost in terms of China’s day to day challenges, and could the money be better spent elsewhere? I’m just asking.

I was appalled when Bush a couple of years ago in his state of the union address – when we were already in the midst of the Iraqi quagmire – made a manned flight to Mars one of the nation’s top priorities. There’s a time and a place for everything.

Sinocidal recently rebutted various complaints made against them, by pointing out some far, far worse things one can find on the internet…..

Such as an official, English-language forum of a Chinese newspaper that likes to think of itself as the “window to China”. All I can say is (having read many other posts there) if that’s China I would prefer to close the window and pull the curtains closed!

Read on…….

Sinocidal – A word from our sponsors

Older members of the blog will also find references to an old “friend” – one is glad to see he has not changed his ways.

UPDATE: A thread on the Chinadaily BBS has many amusing comments you should read, many generally pointing to why Sinocidial is right that it is heavily populated by trolls and complete fools.

The gratuitous and uncensored swearing also supports my belief that the Chinadaily moderators are completely useless and should spend more time in making the forum a fun, safe place to post, rather than delete comments for their political comment.

A commenter in the Haidian thread below leaves a link to a most interesting article in the Economist on why China’s “peaceful rise” hasn’t managed to dampen the angst of its neighbors, or anybody else for that matter. It points out the many concrete successes China has achieved over the past ten years in foreign relations, settling many issues (like its conflicts with India) peacefully and with a great deal of tact. (Which is why I constantly heap praise on Hu for his foreign policy prowess.)

But alas, for all of this goodwill and diplomacy, China’s true friends are few and far between. Almost like America in the Age of Bush.

[I]f you scour the region for China’s firm friends it is hard to find them. Even Russia, where China’s president, Hu Jintao, was this week pressing the flesh, is a fair-weather friend – or rather sees China as a foul-weather insurance policy. India and Japan, China’s other big regional counterparts, both view it with suspicion at best and, at worst, paranoia. That leaves as China’s chums a scanty list of Neanderthal dictatorships such as Myanmar and North Korea. And even their friendship does not amount to much. Far from being a loyal client, Myanmar plays China off against India and its fellow members of ASEAN. And China’s relationship, famously ‘as close as lips and teeth’, with North Korea spawned a mouth ulcer last October when North Korea let off a nuclear weapon. North Korea’s cruel but cunning despot, Kim Jong Il, exploits China’s fear that, if his vile regime collapses, China might have a strong, American-allied democratic Korea on its border.

Why are China’s neighbours not always susceptible to its charms? Of course, any rapidly emerging big power is unsettling. Like America, China can still display a penchant for unilateralism that undermines all its careful diplomacy. As it overtakes America as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, its cavalier disregard of the global environment will become an ever-bigger issue in its foreign relations. More traditional fears also unsettle China’s neighbours. This month China’s annual budget called for another big increase (of nearly 18%) in military spending. Most analysts believe the published budget is understated – in which case, why trumpet such a big number? And why, without warning, blow up a satellite in space, as a Chinese missile did in January?

A perception therefore persists that China’s goodwill extends only so far as its interests are not affected. In its dispute with India, for example, it is the status quo power: it is happy with the present arrangements, so what has it to lose by talking for ever? In one crucial respect, however, it is far from a status quo power: its historically dubious and morally untenable claim on Taiwan. This is one big reason, other than merely acting the big-power part, for the military build-up, and could one day bring war with the real superpower.

A much better Taiwan policy is available to China. The ‘one country, two systems’formula promised to Hong Kong in 1997, which mirrored that offered to the Dalai Lama’s Tibet in 1951, was aimed in large measure at the more important goal to China of coaxing Taiwan back into the ‘motherland’. But China has sabotaged its own strategy. Like the long history of repression in Tibet, the farcical ‘re-election’ on March 25th of Hong Kong” British-trained, Chinese-adopted chief executive, Donald Tsang, by a committee dominated by China’s placemen shows how little China cares to lend substance to its promises of autonomy and democracy – even though Mr Tsang would probably have won a real election anyway.

Giving Hong Kongers the freedoms they have demanded, and talking to the Dalai Lama about the future of his homeland, would do more to impress China’s neighbours than a decade’s worth of state visits and free-trade agreements. Yet China will not yield on either front, sternly warning critics against infringing on its internal affairs.

This is one of those article where you want to quote every line and then debate it. So be sure to read it all. And then ask yourself why China’s leaders won’t get some of the more obvious points, like those in the final two paragraphs. No, I take that back – don’t ask yourself. Because you’ll only get a headache. It’s like asking yourself why Bush refuses to see that Karl Rove is bad for the country and bad for himself. It seems so obvious from our vantage point, and one can only wonder why it’s not obvious from theirs.

On a personal note, work reached the point of insanity this week, and I’ve been in the office all weekend. It will get better soon – there will be some new help in a week or so, and then in May I’ll be joined by a former colleague from Taiwan who will help lift a huge load off my shoulders. But until then, posts from me will continue to be rare, squeezed in whenever i can find a moment to myself, usually on the weekend. And when I do post, the writing will be on the slender side. For now.

Sinocidal certainly does.