MCLC: politics, literature, and culture (4)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Thomas Pickering <thomaspickering919 at gmail.com>
Subject: politics, literature, and culture (4)
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I did not make myself very clear the first time around so I’ll try again.
I’m the last person to hum my way past the political situation in China or
to argue that one can eliminate politics from modern (or ancient, for that
matter) Chinese literature and culture. But politics ought not to be the
core focus of dialogue in a place like this. And, when it is, snarkiness
and snide comments attaching negative meaning and motives to every
government worker and government action do nothing to advance the
conversation.

 
An occasional positive spin would not be such a bad thing, and some
perspective helps. When I first started paying serious attention to China,
some years before the Cultural Revolution, I reckon the 800 pound State
gorilla referenced by A. E. Clark weighed well over a thousand pounds.
Things have gotten better.

 
That is not to say everything is rosy --far from it. Actions taken against
Mr. Zhou Wangyan by Communist Party hacks working within the Party’s
internal disciplinary organization, as described by Gillian Wong (AP,
March 10, 2014, “In China, Brutality Yields Confession of Graft”) are
horrific and are to be condemned. Sooner, rather than later, they will be.
Even in the face of such an awful experience, though, Mr. Zhou remains
positive:  “I still believe that the Communist Chinese Party is a good
ruling party,” he said. “I also believe that not too far in the future,
there will be a place in the People’s Republic of China in which we can
speak freely, a place where my terrible case will receive a fair and just
response.”

 
I wish I could be as sanguine; I am hopeful for the future but believe
change will take longer than any of us would like or Mr. Zhou may expect.
Nevertheless, I prefer Mr. Zhou’s outlook to the nay-sayers who have
populated this list lately.

 
Regarding my second topic, I have re-read Wang Lixiong’s excerpts and find
his syntax resembles statements regularly issued by Eldridge Cleaver full
of racial hatred, ethnic rage and encouragement to violence. The parallel
to Black Panthers holds. No reputable sociologists in the 1960s that I
know of countenanced the equivalent of Wang’s solution to the problems:
opposing Han chauvinism with Uighur chauvinism.

 
Finally, let us sidestep the gorilla’s dance for the nonce, and focus more
on the latest set of challenging new film productions, new novels and
poetry, and the wealth of new information to spring from a myriad of
conferences and seminars relating to modern Chinese literature and culture.

 
Thomas Pickering