Tuesday, 30 September 2014

HK vs China: a clash of minds and culture

Hello again everyone. I had been wanting to write a long, more thoughtful article about the situation in Hong Kong, I realized my rather hasty post last night amounted to little more than a big middle finger to Chinese government in Beijing and it was written with a lot of anger but not a lot of thought. This morning I stumbled upon my HK friend's latest Facebook post on the issue- it is extremely thoughtful and I will first let you read it before I respond to it:
"So I was talking to some of my friends who live in China, surprisingly they don't think that China's human right problem and blocking the media whenever its anything against China is an issue. Its sad for them because they can't access most of the foreign websites and social networks such as Facebook. YouTube and Instagram (China blocked it too 2 days ago due to the protest in HK), but they really don't see it is a problem AT ALL.I asked them why didn't they protest about it (Zero human rights in China), they said they didnt have to ,because China has everything they needed, its the best, treating the people well etc.. and they think that HK people are now asking for too much, China is already being 'nice' to HK. They think HK people have nothing else better to do but to protest for 'silly thing'.

One of my friend said : 'if not China's help in HK, HK is already dead (economy wise)" I really didn't agree with it but I didn't argue with her. Because they have been raised like this and have been brain washed Whatever you say wont change their mind. I don't deny HK is part of China, but I mean sometimes when you do something you think its a 'help' for someone, maybe they don't like/want your help. its just like some parents would plan everything for their children, they may not like it to be done that way, then you shouldn't force them to accept what you think is 'good' for them. Although I am in UK, I am watching the news about the protest in HK these days, support all of my friends who attend the protest. Peace." 

I can fully understand and appreciate his frustration with his friends in China - I have worked with people from China before and I recognize this attitude. There are a few reasons why people in China would react like that to the protests in HK. Firstly, there is Maslow's hierarchy of needs: less than a generation ago, before the economic reforms in the 1980s, China was an extremely poor country. Thus for them to now have a roof over their heads, three decent meals a day, a job to go to, their children to be educated, enough clothes to wear - there is this sense of, "what more do you want? Why are you so demanding? Why can't you be grateful for what you have already? Why do you want to make so much trouble for everyone by protesting like that?" In China, their basic needs (physiological, safety, love/belonging) are met and they haven't gotten round to thinking about higher order needs (esteem and self-actualization). 

HKers are quite different - having been quite used to economic prosperity for many decades, they are more than ready to think about higher order needs: freedom of speech, democracy, freedom of expression, social equality and other such needs. Now for someone in China who is just concerned about putting enough food on the table for his family, he simply cannot understand why HKers would have this obsession with democracy. Why? Democracy isn't going to fill your stomach when you are hungry, democracy isn't going to quench your thirst when you are thirsty, democracy isn't going to keep you warm on a very cold winter's night - so why do you clamour for something so... abstract and profound?  
HK police attacking protestors with pepper spray

By that token, so many mainland Chinese people are rather unsophisticated and childlike - think about it. I am not calling them stupid per se, just intellectually backward and immature in their ways. I've worked with these people, I should know.  They are not bad or evil people, just brainwashed and shockingly ignorant. A very young child can understand what it means to feel hungry, thirsty or cold - but only a well educated adult can understand the difference between living in a democratic society and a society where you have no say over who rules over you. A child is quite happy to do as s/he is told: when the mother says, "do your homework" or "go to bed now" - the child (in most cases) would gladly do as s/he is told as that is what they are programmed to do by our culture. Whereas as adults, we are far more used to making our own decisions when it comes to anything and everything. When confronted with something illogical or unjust, we ask questions and protest - and that is exactly what the people of HK are doing now. 

In any case, there is a far simpler explanation as to why people from China have reacted like this to the protests in HK - they are taking it personally. There is a huge HK vs China divide, with many HKers being very angry with the influx of Chinese migrants flooding into Hong Kong, creating all kinds of social problems with their appalling anti-social behaviour. Let's not pretend that we're all Chinese and all from the same big happy Chinese family - far from it. So Chinese people in China are unable to see how the protests in Hong Kong could be the catalyst for a move toward democracy in China - no, they don't even understand what the implications of democracy can be, so they are at best baffled by what is going on in Hong Kong (if they even manage to get hold of reliable news reports in China). 
The HK police attacking protesters with tear gas.

What does this mean for the authorities in Beijing then? It means that their worst fears - that similar protests would spread to other big Chinese cities like Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Xiamen - are highly unlikely given the mindset of the vast majority of Chinese citizens who are nothing like your average HKers. They just have to sit tight, exercise restraint and wait for the protest movement to run out of momentum - it is now the will of the HK protesters to continue, they are testing the patience of the Beijing government and the Beijing government has little to gain by staging a repeat of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre in Hong Kong. And so whilst tensions and emotions run high on the streets of Hong Kong day after day, it looks like Beijing is playing for a stalemate - there might be some conciliatory gesture that won't matter to much, but the authorities in Beijing at not going to back down because they don't want to 'lose face'. Certainly, they would be most afraid that any response to the protests would only encourage the protesters to ask for more - so they are not going to budge much at all. Not for now at least even as the protests rages on. 

Still, you have got to admire the sheer guts and determination of the protesters in Hong Kong. Sigh, this will never happen in Singaporeans - Singaporeans just don't have the balls that these HKers have.  It does remind me of the Bersih protests in Malaysia (in 2007, 2011 and 2012) - there was so much hope, so much momentum in the movement, so many Malaysians came onto the street in protest and then guess what? Hardly anything changed, Malaysia went back to business as normal after all that. That was very disappointing to say the least. Would the current HK protests go the same way? Or would the protesters acutally triumph and achieve real change, at least in Hong Kong's future?

In part 2, I am going to be comparing the situations in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. These three countries are actually far more different than you think when it comes to their political situation. Stay tuned, akan datang. 

18 comments:

  1. I do not agree that just because a person is immature or childlike if he chooses greater economic benefits over greater human rights. While I agree with the rights you listed, human rights is an abstract concept that cannot be empirically proven, and even in liberal democracies there are differing ideas as to the exact limit on a person's rights. Hence, due to the ambiguity over the issue, not everyone will be convinced of such an idea. Even the most sophisticated people believed in Nazism(Heidegger) or Communism(Bernard Shaw). Just because a person in China makes the utilitarian calculation that taking care of his son is preferable to political activism or greater economic benefits is worth reduced human rights, even if the belief is a wrong or that the trade off is unnecessary, it does not make him childlike or immature; it simply makes him human.

    I don't think that China will send in the military in this situation, but neither do I think that the protest will be self sustaining without openly heinous actions by the police that galvanizes the population. I don't think there is sufficient socio-economic grievance that would lead to the protest surpassing a needed threshold that would allow it to have real impact as it did during the Arab Spring.

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    1. Methinks you are being very diplomatic about the PRCs here - but it is your right to do so. I can see how Alan (my HK friend, whose quote sparked off this post) got frustrated with his PRC friends and being a British-Chinese person from Singapore, sure I can see Alan's POV but his PRC friends simply cannot.

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    2. If I were face to face with a PRC and went through the same talk as your friend, I would say and argue to the PRC's face the his ideas are wrong and possibly immoral. So I don't think I would be very diplomatic in that sense. However there is a difference between being wrong and being immature or childlike and I don't think its fair to assume the latter.

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    3. I am drawing a link between being wrong and being immature/childlike and yes, there is some assumption on my part but that is based on my understanding after having worked with PRCs over the years and being able to converse with them in Mandarin. Can I make an assumption that based on the spelling of your surname, that you don't speak Mandarin and thus have not had the opportunity to have in-depth conversations with PRCs in China on the issue?

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    4. Well, you would be half right, I am a mixed race(Chinese/Indian). And I while I'm not proficient at chinese, I know enough for a basic conversation. You are correct that I have not had an in depth conversation with a PRC. However I'm not sure if that is totally relevant. I'm just saying that its not fair to generalize the character of an entire demographic based on interactions with a relative few. And I don't think its fair to even make a statement about someone's mental character,let alone an entire population, without proper psychological test, especially on disagreement on fundamental issues such as human rights.
      I don't doubt that there are PRCs who may seem childlike and immature, and I may indeed come to the opinion. But I would not treat my opinion as an objective fact.

      I disagree with the link between being wrong and being immature. The world is a complex place where causation and facts are not so easily interpreted and not everything can be verified in a totally objective manner. This leaves room for disagreement on almost any issue.

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    5. Well Raymund, whilst you are right to point out that it is not fair to make such a generalization based on my experiences, I must stress to you that it's more than just a few. I have worked for a long time with these people over the years - more so in the past than at present, but trust me, I have had PRC colleagues over the years and I got along with some very well, argued with others but all in all, I got to understand them and their mindsets pretty darn well. So it's something I am rushing to judgement on based on a 20 mins chat - it's far deeper than that. Like I said, they're not bad or evil - at one stage, one of my very best friends at work was a PRC in fact and we hung out together all the time (and my Mandarin became so much better thanks to her).

      So whilst I am unable to get to know all 1.3 billion PRCs in China, I am saying that the wide range of PRCs I have had to work with has given me insight into different kinds of PRCs - we're talking about the full spectrum from those scholars who are super bright and have gone to top universities in the UK/US to those who really don't speak more than 5 words in English and dropped out of secondary school. Oh yes and everything in between. And they're all so different. And they fight amongst themselves and I get to witness all that up close and personal. That's why I say, I know these people, I understand their society, I've worked with them, lived amongst them.

      I do accept though that you are certainly entitled to your opinion between the link between being wrong and being immature or childlike - what is your theory then? My friend Alan used the word 'brainwashed' - do you think that is a better word to describe the situation then?

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    7. I think that you could use brainwashed to describe particular people, but I would hesitate before using it as a general term for a group of people, especially when different people may define brainwashed in different ways. There are many reasons why people generate particular beliefs, and consequently such beliefs may be wrong for just as many reasons. I think it has to be looked at in a case by case basis. A person may acquire the wrong belief by being brainwashed through an active process of indoctrination. However another person may be one who does attempt to utilize his critical thinking, but he may still end up with the same wrong belief as the prior person. Some factors may be because he has a flaw in his logic, he has not seen enough evidence to convince him, or that he simply has a fundamentally different value system. And this may include countless other combination of factors which influences the way a person forms a belief, factors that gives him certain biases or causes him to emphasize different kinds of priorities(Genes, culture, upbringing).

      Having differing, intractable beliefs is especially frequent when it comes to abstract, philosophical issues, where there aren't really any knock-down arguments for any position. And such issues often comes down to people having fundamental values that they have already formed. It is very difficult to demonstrate an absolute right or wrong in such a situation, hence it is not necessary to be brainwashed to have such beliefs as it can be very difficult to prove to a person the rightness of certain ideas. In such cases it may be more a case of the problem being simply too complex an issue and not because of any particular mental deficit or inhibition.

      Everyone has different factors that causes them to form beliefs that could be wrong, I doubt everyone who was ever wrong was brainwashed. I don't think you can use a single word to describe the situation, and I think that using a any single thing to describe it is overly reductionist, as there may be a multitude of factors interacting with each other.

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  2. > I asked them why didn't they protest about it (Zero human rights in China), they said they didnt have to ,because China has everything they needed, its the best, treating the people well etc.. and they think that HK people are now asking for too much, China is already being 'nice' to HK. They think HK people have nothing else better to do but to protest for 'silly thing'.

    Actually a lot of Singaporeans (up to 60% of valid PAP votes at the last General Elections) think the same way as the PRCs above. Just replace "China" with "Singapore PAP government", "HK people" with "opposition supporters", and it is the same story all over in Singapore.

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    1. That is so true - but the remarkable difference is that between Singaporeans and HKers. Singaporeans are far more like the mainland Chinese people - but Singaporeans have enjoyed the prosperity and relative freedom that HKers have, so how come they end up as brainwashed as the PRCs? Go figure.

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    2. Hey please don't leave us high and dry lol. I think a lot of Singaporeans are either too selfish or too timid (yes balls are badly needed here indeed). For example in my company, most of my colleagues will not speak up. I really stick out like a sore thumb and not in a good way lol.

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    3. Well AC, Winking Doll did say it's the 60.14% lah, it's not 100% of all Singaporeans who are like that. Likewise in HK, yes the protests are very big - but there are also HKers who are not supportive of the protest movement.,

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    4. The thing is I wonder a lot about why so many Singaporeans are so passive? Is it because they are materialistic and as long as the economy is going well then it is fine? Or is it just the culture here? Is it the education system or the way parents educate their kids? Or is it the government's hard-handed ways? Btw I am a Singaporean and sorry for asking for so many questions lol

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    5. Parents, culture, education system, all of the above...

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    6. Singaporeans are a very practical lot. In the end, it all boils down to money. They did not get to be third richest in the world by holding up ideals like human rights and freedom. Sure, it'd be nice to have ideals, but ideals do not put food on the table. They believe the PAP does.

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    7. IMHO, the difference between Hong Kong and Singapore arises from 2 major legal acts :

      1. Internal Security Act

      In Singapore, it evolved from the British's Regulations Ordinance into Malayan ISA and finally into Singapore ISA. The most conspicuous feature of the Act is it gave those currently in-power to detain without trial anyone deemed to be acting in a manner that is prejudicial to the security of Singapore. The detention may be reviewed every 2 years but the review is done by representatives of those currently in-power and the review does not have to give any reason for its decision nor can its decision be challenged. Interested readers can Google for themselves on how the Singapore ISA has been actually used -- e.g. try searching for "Operation ColdStore" and "Operation Spectrum".
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Security_Act_%28Singapore%29

      Hong Kong also had a "State of Emergency Act" under the British rule. It was used only 4 times -- 1956, 1966, 1967 and 1981 (but only the HK police was involved in the 1981 situation).
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency#Hong_Kong

      Fortunately for Hong Kong, the British seems to have learned from history before the 1997 handover of Hong Kong. UK removed the remnants of the equivalent emergency act before returning HK to China. Of course China wanted to impose some form security act, in the form of Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23. However, thanks the global politics at that time (this was before the global financial crisis of 2008 and the severe downturn of USA and European economies) and China's wish to continue wooing Macau and Taiwan, China (via the Chief Executive of Hong Kong then) backed down and withdrew the legislation, without specifying a timeline for its re-introduction.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law_Article_23

      2. Press freedom

      Apparently, up to the 1960's there was a healthy and lively variety of press/prints providing competing "alternative" views. All these came to a grind when Newspaper and Printing Presses Act of 1974 was introduced. 1974! So Singapore has at least 2 generations who grew up without a wide variety of competing "alternative" views -- what do you think that does to the population's "critical thinking"? Couple controlling the media with ISA's powers (e.g. "The detainee is to be informed of the grounds of detention as soon as possible, unless their disclosure is against the national interest"), anyone can disappear from the face of Singapore without trace anytime.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_of_Singapore

      Hong Kong on the other hand has a long history of loose regulations over the establishment of newspapers and freedom of press. Even in the current riot, there are multiple perspectives available widely.

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      > You know I was warned by my readers to expect to be at least detained for questioning when I tried to enter Singapore last year as a tourist because of my blogging activities

      Guess what? I had been advised by trusted sources to avoid Singapore too (at least until a certain Leegal suit blows over). I am heeding their advice -- after all, these are folks who have a much better understanding of the workings of the PAP-led government than I do AND I had already found anomalies on my blog (back in July-2014) prior to my changing its password.

      Just FYI, given that you're a foreign citizen, under Singapore's ISA, you do not even have a right to demand for a 2 yearly review, etc. <-- I just found that from reading the above wikipedia article.

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  3. https://www.facebook.com/FabricationsAboutThePAP/photos/a.245735922149090.70599.213440582045291/729158420473502/?type=1&theater

    From the photo, Britian rule Hong Kong for 150 years and nobody made any noise at all.

    But when they hand it over to China, they introduce democracy.

    I am not against democracy but don't you find it strange that they introduce democracy when they hand it over to China. There is no such thing as democracy when Britian rule Hong Kong.

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    1. It's not about democracy per se, it is about who gets to rule over you and make decisions. The HK people were happy enough under the British before 1997 as HK was (and still is) a LOT richer than China. But now the HK people don't want Beijing to further control their lives as they want HK to remain the way it is rather than become further integrated into China.

      The bottom line is this: the HK people deserve to have a say in their future and when Beijing breaks a promise like that, they should be held accountable. If you want to use this as an excuse to bitch and moan about the British, your punchline came 17 years too late as people have been talking about this way back in 1997 already.

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