MCLC: Hu pushes back against Western culture (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: joe alvaro (jjalvaro at student.cityu.edu.hk)
Subject: Hu pushes back against Western culture (1)
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We must ask why that earlier anti-spiritual pollution campaign (1983)
didn't last. In the same way that adherence to social mores cannot be
legislated (e.g. Eight Honours and Eight Shames), neither can people be
programmed to love a particular culture, no matter who signs the decree.
It is no news that blaming 'the Other' for our problems promotes a sense
of self-righteousness. It is a common manipulative tactic of which
governments are rather fond and to which they often resort for their own
agendas.

China has its own brand of spiritual pollution and did not have to look to
the west to get it. Emblematic of this are representations of the new
'Chinese hero' in China's modern literature and cinema, products of the
CCP's own values.  Whereas once PLA soldiers triumphed over class enemies,
we now see moguls and businessmen as heroes. And, isn't getting rich
glorious? The new cinematic heroes, legitimized by the 'Three Represents',
are 'Entrepreneurs who inhabit the brave new world of luxury hotels, board
rooms, jet travel, golf courses and good-looking young females' (Wang
2003). I am sorry to say, but such representations (for which China is now
famous), are a direct mirror-image of CCP policies, and are completely in
keeping with the latest configurations of socialism 'with Chinese
characteristics'.  The evisceration of 'class struggle' from communism and
the legitmization of the 'bourgeois lifestyle' was China's own idea ­ so
stand up and take the responsibility for what you have wrought.

I suggest that Mr. Hu stop whining and learn to live with the consequences
of his own ideology.

Joe Alvaro