Chinese New Year – A civilisation in celebration

1840 marked the beginning of the decline of a civilisation. Dynastic China was defeated by a token mobile naval force that travelled all the way from Europe. China was made to pay compensation for a war to repulse the illegal trade of opium in China. Can you believe it? A nation forcibly selling drugs to an ancient empire, defeated the empire by a small fleet of naval ships and rewarded with riches and concessions, including the island of Hongkong. That defeat opened the floodgate and let to the occupation of China by western powers, including Japan. China was broken up, cut into pieces to be shared by the foreigners. The Qing Dynasty, already lagging in industry and technology and an empty treasury, was made bankrupt in all fronts of the economy. Life for the Chinese people descended into the abyss. China was a country no longer a country, with foreigners calling the shot.

The next 100 years saw the dispersal of a large number of Chinese risking lives or being sold into slavery to eke a living abroad. Many travelled with only a singlet and a pair of cotton pants on them, without shoes, to find their rainbows. This early phase of the Chinese diaspora was mainly from the poorer and uneducated segment of the Chinese population, which was likely to be the whole population. They were poor and hapless and subjected to oppression and suppression by their countries of adoption. They were treated as outcasts, cheated, bullied, exploited, beaten, imprisoned or murdered like animals, no better than the slaves of Africa. There was no China to speak out for them or to defend their rights as citizens of a country.

While the diaspora continued to expand across the world, the motherland was in ruins and rightfully branded as the Sick Man of Asia by the Japanese. The latter despised the peasant Chinese and harboured the desire to conquer and colonise the Chinese mainland. With a weak and practically non existence China, the diaspora were easy prey and convenient victims everywhere they resided. They were regularly robbed, raped and murdered by the residents of the land. Plenty of crude and racist jokes were created at their expense.

With the passage of time, some became more successful but many could not bear to call themselves Chinese and were apologetic for being Chinese. It was so embarrassing to be Chinese. In some countries the Chinese language and culture were suppressed and made illegal. In the West, there were laws to institutionalise and legalise discrimination against the Chinese diaspora from better economic opportunities. They were simply despised and treated as sub humans.

More than 150 years have passed. 2014, the Chinese and the Chinese diaspora have risen as a civilisation of equals among the best western civilisations. Economically many are quite affluent in all corners of the world. The Greater China of PRC, Taiwan, Hongkong and Macau are as rich as the western nations. There are more rich people and millionaires and billionaires in communist China than anywhere else. The unthinkable truth that communist can be rich is a startling irony. The communist dollar, the renminbi, is more sought after and desired than the greenbacks. Can you believe that?

Greater China is giving the advanced western nations a run for their money in engineering, science and technology and in monetary wealth. Today, Chinese New Year is celebrated not only in Greater China and Southeast Asia but also in Europe and America. The colour of red and yellow lighted up the Eye in London and the Empire State Building in New York, America and in many western countries. This is totally unheard of and inconceiveable even 10 years ago.

The Chinese New Year Celebration of 2014 marks the revival of an ancient civilisation from the fringe of irrelevance. No longer will the Chinese civilisation be ridiculed by anyone, including 3^rd World impoverished countries. China and the Chinese diaspora is everywhere engaging in productive economic activities. For the Chinese civilisation to be respectable, both China and the Chinese diaspora must be doing well in all fields of endeavour, from economics, finance, to science and technology and the arts. The recognition of the Chinese diaspora would not attain the level it is today without the rise of a strong and respectable modern China. They would risk having their wealth and lives taken away by the natives of the land for no reason whatsoever, but mainly for having work too hard to acquire their wealth and success.

The Chinese in Greater China and the Chinese diaspora no longer need to apologise to the world for being Chinese. They have been accepted, at times reluctantly, by the people of the world as an equal among all the great civilisations. And they are living very well.

This is nothing about Chinese chauvinism or about China, but about a people that was dumped into the sewers of world civilisation, to be damned and forgotten, but picked themselves out from the slime to live again, minus the stench of poverty and ignorance. An old civilisation has renewed its lifespan to march into the future with greater confidence and certainty.

More important, China has proven that there is an alternative developmental model for developing states to emulate. Many populous countries could see themselves like an earlier China and could adopt/adapt the same formula for economic growth. China has also shown that a communist utopia is not really unachieveable but with some adaptation and the flexibility to accept capitalist principles in economic policies, a communist state can be rich and successful too.

30 years ago, our shops in Orchard Road and the night life districts were hoping for an European or American ship, or a Japanese one to land for more tourist dollars. Today they are hoping for more communists from China to land. These nouveau riche Chinese would not go to Chinatown to look at the slum or the night life of Bugis Street and cheap food, but would head to the most posh and upmarket joints in Orchard Road to grab the branded stuff available, the Cartiers, LVs, Pradas, and whatever that is expensive to the locals.

So too are the shops in London, Paris and New York and other big European cities, laying out the red carpets and eagerly waiting for the rich communist Chinese to spend their renminbi furiously like no tomorrow.

The Chinese New Year is quite different today and going forward. What changes would the Chinese civilisation bring about after being so successful in reverse engineering and copying whatever that they can copy from the developed West? They have closed the engineering and scientific gap with the Americans and are set to take off on their own to find their new frontiers in science and technology.

The little inscrutable Chinaman is a thing of the past.

Kopi level - Yellow