At a time when China’s role in world affairs is growing, it is suffering from schizophrenia. Sometimes China wants to be a highly evolved person like the Buddha. Sometimes it wants to be a bull in the china shop. Whether China finally emerges as an evolved person or a rowdy bull, or whether a lab in Shanghai produces a man-bull chimera out of the Chinese nation will not only determine the future of China and its role in the world but will also have implications for the future of the world itself.
On the surface, China is emerging as a big power. In the next decade it will have new cities and more ring roads in old cities. It will have more sophisticated weapons, satellites, anti-satellite missiles, dollars and euros in the treasury and control over natural resources in Africa, Asia and Latin America. China supplies nuclear power and sophisticated aircrafts to Pakistan knowing well Pakistan’s role in manufacturing terrorism. It protects North Korea knowing well the repressive nature of its regime. As a result, it demonstrates its nuisance potential to India, South Korea and Japan, and reminds them rather sharply that despite growing trade and investments, it cannot be a trusted partner of its neighbours in shaping a peaceful and prosperous Asia.
China’s pursuit of power, its sponsorship of rogue regimes in Pakistan and North Korea, and its support for dictators in Africa are a testament to an insecure mindset. Just as England and Germany were insecure about each other in the years leading to the First World War, China exhibits its deep sense of insecurity and inferiority complex by muscle-flexing and gathering goons around it. Such an insecure mindset originates from a belief that human nature is evil and untrustworthy. Thus, the Chinese affection for weapons and despots is at its core - a psychological problem derived from a negative understanding of the nature of man.
It will be a mistake to read China’s personality by what we see on the surface. There is a vibrant philosophical discourse, which argues in favour of another basis for the concept of China. Prof Zhou Tingyang questions loyalty to the nation and advocates the world as a basic unit for governance. Hu Jiaqi, an author and a business leader, questions a society driven by power and warns of extinction of mankind in the pursuit of power over principles. The Green Herald magazine argues that life should not be judged by success and failure. It proposes that right or wrong should be the way to measure thought and action. There are sociologists and political theorists who are in favour of ‘moral democracy’ against Chinese communism and Western corrupt democracy. At this stage, much of this is merely discussion but it is a discussion that is growing fast, and more and more theories are being added to the boiling philosophical pot. The most significant aspect of the new debate is the positive hypothesis about the nature of man.
Interestingly, the Chinese government which cracks down on the innocuous Falon Gong movement tolerates the new philosophical discourse, which is much more subversive than a cult. The Chinese government also tolerates the new environmental activism and at times changes policies in response to its demands. After degrading the Yellow River for years, it has initiated a process of restoring it through the Yellow River Commission in partnership with the European Union, welcoming European environmental experts to operate out of the Yellow River Commission headquarters. China has also set up goals for carbon emissions for its provinces and cities. What we witness is not a stray view of an odd author but the emergence of a new thought process, reflected in debate as well as action, with subtle support of the ruling party leadership.
China is also determined to come up as a global leader in knowledge and innovation. It has grown vegetables on a satellite in lower geo-synchronous orbits. It has produced a chimera from the cells of a man and a rabbit, in a lab in Shanghai. The Beijing Genomics Institute is ahead of the curve, written by Dr Craig Venter, who mapped Human Genome Code and produced synthetic genome capable of self-replication. At the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), Dr Yang Huangming is involved in mapping genomes of all major races on the planet earth. BGI has developed what The Economist describes as a new and effective way of cloning the human being and is in the process of determining genetic differentiation between intelligent and less intelligent persons.
If you fast forward the experiments at BGI, in a few decades you are looking at the possibility of China consciously producing and cloning intelligent human beings. Interestingly, the main research facilities of Beijing Genomics Institute are not in Beijing. They are in Shenzen and Hong Kong. Along with philosophical discourse and environmental activism, free scientific inquiry also has subtle patronage in the party hierarchy. The world should not be shocked if China cooperates with Taiwan in some of the critical research. A trade pact in 2010 was not offered on a whim.
It is difficult to be two Chinas at one time. The muscle-flexing China needs despots as its friends and missiles on its shores. The knowledge-pursing China needs civilised nations as its real friends, and partners in its research endeavours. The muscle-flexing China judges life by success and failure and its elite by the number of their properties and balance in bank accounts. The knowledge-pursuing China needs to judge life by right and wrong and its elite by the number of followers in the world for their values and approaches to global governance. The muscle-flexing China is insecure and worried that human nature is evil. The knowledge-pursuing China is confident, knowing that human nature is good. China cannot be a bull and a seer at the same time, despite the competence of Shanghai labs in blending man-animal genes.
While China deals with its own psychology, it is important for the rest of the world to realise that China’s real problem is schizophrenia. It would be stupid to treat China as a bull in a china shop, threaten or isolate it and in the process allow it to be a full bull than the half one it is now. It would be naïve to treat China as the new sage merely by reading tea leaves. Which China will finally emerge is a big question that will affect the whole world. But only the Chinese people can provide answer to this question.
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