"Liberty guiding the people" by Delacroix
This article is very personal and I just want to explain how my personal opinion about this has evolved during my time in China
When I first arrived to China in 2006, I experienced the mindset differences between Hong Kong and the mainland. Generally speaking, Hong Kong people are very considerate with each other, care about community problems and are engaged to resolved them. My impression at that time was that the mainland was far behind Hong Kong on these issues. A five minute walk in Beijing is enough to realize that Chinese people have embraced individualism: traffic is anarchic, some people throw rubbish from the 20th floor, pollution is extremely severe, somebody could even die on a crowded street without people even looking at. (I am of course making an exaggerated caricature of China, which is not intended to offend anybody). At that time, I had the impression that Chinese people do no care much about each other, in comparison with Hong Kong or European people. And democracy is just about caring about the community, nothing else. So, at that time I though that China still needed to continue evolving quite a lot before reaching a level of social awareness that makes democracy possible.
But then something happened that made me change completely my image of China, something that made me very proud of my Chinese co-citizens, something that made me realize the depth of the social changes in China. In 2007, a massive case of child slavery in Chinese factories was discovered. Some years before nobody would have cared much about that. But this time there was a strong public opinion, saying very clearly that that was wrong, showing that Chinese people cared about those children. A public opinion that says what is right and what is wrong is a necessary condition for democracy. It is not possible to have democracy without a social aware public opinion. And that day, for the first time in modern history, China showed the world that it does have an spontaneously driven public opinion.
But this was not just an isolated happening: On March 12th 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province took 68.000 lives. And the reaction of China, as a society, was exemplar. My colleagues in Shenzhen organized a donation campaign. I saw people donating as much as one month’s full salary! People rushed to the supermarkets to buy Sichuan products! Everybody talked about donating money… This was the first time in Chinese history that such a huge wave of solidarity happened. In 1976 there was an even more destructive earthquake than this but nobody really do much to help victims. This made me even more proud of being, in a certain way, part of China.
I do not mean at all that Chinese society has traditionally been individualist and that it is changing now due to the western influence. Quite the contrary, China has traditional being a very supportive society (Confucian thinking praises solidarity) but this social awareness was neutralized as a result of passing from being poor to be reach in only 30 years, and now those traditional Chinese civic values are coming back, first in the big cities, and later in the country side.
Is China ready for Democracy? My opinion is that many people in big cities are. China is running at a vertiginous speed toward a social awareness that will eventually enable democracy. But due to the size and complexity of the country, it needs just some time. I hope we will see political reforms in the needs decades.
For my impressions about Hong Kong democracy, see: Good Morning Hong Kong Democracy I and II.
Image: “Liberty guiding the people” by Delacroix
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