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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters China's successes, Russia's failures
By Gamil Mattar*
China is not the only country in the world where the regime commemorates a revolution the basic principles of which it has already renounced. In most parts of the developing world, governments tend to celebrate national occasions that symbolise historical events as a way of obtaining much-needed political legitimacy. While many of those regimes have achievements of their own, which in principle earn them a legitimacy in their own right, they continue to identify with the past. Seeking justification of this sort, of course, imposes specific commitments and practices on rulers, which, ironically, may undermine their actual achievements and overall effectiveness.
In addition, clinging to a legitimacy that belongs to another era may not be an adequate response to the challenges of an emerging intelligentsia. In the case of China and certain Middle Eastern countries, new practices may be viewed as contradictory with the principles and values that underpinned the previous regime and its basis legitimacy. Current practices may be viewed as a departure from or betrayal of the past, possibly even a concrete manifestation of the ideological vacuum that characterises our political life today.
I believe that the contradiction reflects the prevailing political inertia, which prevents the political elite from forging a new framework or grand theory of their own. Political inertia impairs the elite's vision to such a degree that it perceives its own behaviour and the social, political and economic policies it adopts as reasonably well coordinated, integrated and sound.
Such political inertia is the product of a number of factors. Developments on the international scene are shaped by the excess power wielded by the United States, the only superpower in the world today, and its constant attempts to fashion the world in its own image. In several countries, particularly China, where achievements of the past are the basis of the current regime's legitimacy, the commemoration of past events is understandable and not necessarily a hypocritical reaction of the political elite or a reflection of its own inertia.
First-hand experience and a comparative study of such cases allows me to make this statement with confidence. With a number of Asian writers, I flew to China during the first decade of its revolution. John Gunther, the well-known traveller and author of a series called Inside... was my companion on the flight to Calcutta and Hong Kong, and on the train from Hong Kong to the port of Canton, from where we took a 10-hour flight in a primitive plane to the capital, Beijing. During the night I spent in Canton, I came to know Gunther closely. From his description of Canton, written 10 years before, the city seemed familiar, for little seemed to have changed. Gunther's account of life in Shanghai has remained vivid in my memory. I found the city, dubbed by Europeans "the harlot of the Orient", worthy of the title: it was teeming with such numerous and varied vices as are rarely to be found gathered in a single city.
China as a whole was a devastated society; its people were consumed by their addiction to opium. The narcotic had been the cause of the brutal war waged by the British Empire, which imposed the cultivation and trade of this narcotic on the Chinese after their defeat. On 7 October 1860, when the British and French forces invaded the imperial summer palace, famous for its beautiful architecture, lakes, gardens and invaluable treasures, the looting and sacking of the royal residence lasted from dusk to dawn. Lord Mountbatten, the commander of the campaign, was personally involved in the looting. The story has it that he locked himself up with the most precious objects in one of the palace rooms and set about dividing the booty between the Queen of England, the Emperor of France and other dignitaries. When the looting was done, the soldiers were to be seen strolling in the palace and its gardens, decked out in imperial jewellery. Other valuables, such as mirrors and chandeliers, were smashed.
When news of this barbarous activity reached Europe, reactions varied from anger and indignation, expressed by writers including Victor Hugo, to silence on the part of the majority.
Shanghai was chosen by the Europeans, Americans and Japanese as a symbol of their campaign to vilify China and degrade its civilisation. Shanghai was living testimony to the collapse of the Manchu Empire at the hands of the long-nosed invaders from Europe who plundered the riches of China and humiliated its people. The city was therefore divided into sectors: apartheid was instituted. Streets and squares in the foreign districts were washed with soap and water; Chinese and stray dogs were forbidden from walking there. Each foreign community had its own quarters, its police and schools. The Chinese quarters were no better than a pigsty. Anyone who was not used to the stench found it intolerable. It was a mixture of opium smoke, garlic, cheap spirits and human sweat seeping from the bodies of men who worked long days carrying men, women and children on their backs, or pulling them in carts. Gunther explains that every year garbage carts collected no less than 30,000 bodies of abandoned infants from the streets and alleys of Shanghai.
This was the condition of Shanghai, the great port of China, the pride of Western imperialism and the symbol of the white man's supremacy, on the eve of the Chinese Revolution. Shanghai is said to have been the last stronghold to fall to the revolutionaries. It took what seemed like forever to wash away the years of humiliation and scorn. Years of education were necessary to rehabilitate its population, restore its sense of dignity and pride and crush the gangs of opium traders and pimps.
I arrived in China before the cleansing operation had been completed. The Chinese population had been mobilised to implement three campaigns: a campaign against disease-bearing insects; a campaign against the birds that had devoured the wheat and rice crops, the staple food of the Chinese; and a third campaign, to become the world's second largest producer of steel, to beat Great Britain in this field. Results varied. The campaign against insects was considered an outright success, particularly given the plague flies represented in China before and immediately after the Revolution. The second campaign ended in the near total elimination of the birds in China. The entire population, old and young alike spent their days banging tins. Exhausted by lack of sleep, the birds fell to the ground and were whisked away in bags to the party headquarters. There, people who had caught the most were decorated; they wore their medals proudly to school or to their factories.
The third campaign, which drew world attention more than any other, was in some aspects absurd, as it aimed at producing more steel than Britain. The campaign was like many others: mainly symbolic, not to be taken seriously. Its aim was to mobilise the Chinese and initiate their rehabilitation by leading them a little way down the path of production.
The experiment exacted an enormous cost in human, economic and environmental terms. The energy needed to employ millions of Chinese in steel production required a tremendous volume of fuel, to keep the furnaces burning in schools, public parks, government buildings, streets and squares.
Apart from the three major campaigns, there were others: flower-planting drives, campaigns to ban the trade in opium, to treat addicts and to eradicate organised crime. In other words, during the first decade of Mao's rule, China was virtually a centre of rehabilitation, a classroom for learning and a battalion acquiring the rudiments of military discipline.
During the second decade, and as the Cultural Revolution got underway, control loosened, chaos spread and production ceased. The Cultural Revolution paved the way for the quasi-capitalist period, since it eliminated a political elite that had "gone bad" during the stabilisation period. The Cultural Revolution produced a "new elite", which led the Party through many peaceful changes. Furthermore, it succeeded in achieving a gradual yet steady growth rate in production for over 15 years, an achievement economists consider remarkable even in capitalist economies or economies that have switched to capitalism, as in eastern Europe.
The Chinese regime, therefore, has every right to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic without any fear of being accused of hypocrisy or seeking to appropriate a legitimacy they do not deserve. Any attempt to compare the Chinese with the Bolsheviks in Russia should first contemplate the achievements of each, particularly in terms of political organisation. While the political or rather party organisation in China succeeded in producing a flexible, educated leadership by bringing in younger cadres and introducing new methods of party action, the Communist Party in the Soviet Union failed to renew its leadership, and therefore waned away.
If Russia continues to decline further, the responsibility will remain largely with the leaders who inherited Lenin's teachings but succeeded neither in implementing nor in developing them. The Chinese, on the other hand, recognised that developing the political system and enhancing its efficiency were the vital prerequisites of a peaceful, successful transition from one socio-economic system to another -- even if the new system was in many ways opposed to the principles and teachings of the old.
The same problem -- an ineffective political system -- plagues the Arab world as well. Our political system is out of touch with the times. Neither the one-party nor the multiparty system has been a success. The alternative to an efficient political system is a military political system. The latter is slowly but surely asserting itself once again in more than one country in the world today. China may become one of those countries, if its ruling elite begins to show signs of weakness.
*The writer is the director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
