Alt Left: A Chinese View of Time

Rambo said: Deng Xiao Peng said he could see democracy happening in China in a relatively short period of time. He was asked, ” what do you think, another 25 or 50 years maybe?” To which he replied, ” I could see it happening in maybe a thousand years.” To the Chinese, 1,000 years is looked upon as a short time. You’re talking about a nearly 5,000 year old country that has never known freedom and democracy. That’s why when countries like the U.S. negotiate with them, that has to be kept in mind.

Nixon asked Chou En-Lai in 1971 what he thought about the French Revolution in 1790. His reply?

It’s too soon to tell.

Which is pretty similar to what Deng said. The Chinese always take the long view, unlike us dumb Americans. And that’s smart of them and dumb of us.

This is literally how the Chinese think. All stages of the past are completely blurred together, and all are together with the present. I’m not aware they talk much about the future. I know this because I did a lot of research on their forums. Absolutely fascinating people. People would be talking about their family lineage, as their ancestors are very important to them. In fact, their basic religion is probably some form of ancestor worship.

They would be talking about their family lineages and drift back and forth between the present day, the 20th Century and then back to the 16th-19th Centuries, making historical references all along the way. And of course there were all sorts of references to the old dynasties like the Shang Dynasty (probably the very first Chinese dynasty) and many others. And now we are going all the way back to Old Chinese thousands of years ago.

I don’t understand Chinese history so I can’t make sense of these dynasties, but the Chinese’ view of time was fascinating. The year 400 was yesterday, today is 1600, and tomorrow is the 19th Century. It’s as if the past, present, and future were all happening at the same time, which is actually an interesting philosophical way to look at time. This is in fact how I view Time.

 

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3 thoughts on “Alt Left: A Chinese View of Time”

  1. A REPOST FROM ANOTHER THREAD. THIS MAKES MORE SENSE HERE:

    The Chinese care nothing at all about freedom. And that’s perfectly okay with me. The previous U.S. presidents said China is bad because they are commie dictatorship. That’s bullshit. China isn’t bad because of that. They are “bad” simply because they are our adversary and a different race. Trump points this out. And Chinese people aren’t brainwashed, they simply have racial and national pride, something disappearing in the West.

    Quote from a Chinese user on Quora:

    “Why do some Chinese people hate democracy?
    Looking to stay inspired and creative?
    We don’t hate democracy.

    But we are laughing at your unrealastic idea of a democratic China.

    Let me give a brief answer.

    If you want an American democracy in China, let we count the electoral votes in China.

    China now has 1.4 billions population.

    If every ten millions people get a vote and each province at least one vote , there will be 130 votes and each of the 33 provinces get extra 2 votes.

    There are 156 votes by provincial population and 66 vetos for the Senate seats of all provinces. It sums up to 222 electoral college vetos.

    The minorities get at most 14 votes in Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Ningxia, while the elections will all be manipulated by ethnic Chinese. Who will care about those remote 14 votes if they have drumed for the rest 208 votes?

    The same as the regional difference. The east will get the majority will the west doesn’t deserve the electoral activities. Fewer cities and less economy are located in the west. As the president of China, he must prefer to exercising the lemonal socialism in the prosperous eastern coast rather than putting investment in the remote west.

    If you want the direct elections like HKers, the result will be cristally clear: the ethnic Chinese take up 92% population while the minorities live in the mountainous rural areas. I have not ever seen Trump or Hillary Clinton give a single speech in such a forbidden and remote place. Did they? In countryside?

    It is impossible to work your system in China just now. The minorities share over 10% seats in the current Chinese parliament. So they should get over 20 votes in elections instead of the poor overestimated 14 votes.

    I haven’t seen any major investment in the rural America by the federal goverment. Only thing I can see is that Monsanto manipulate the majority of the American grain agriculture. If the democracy could solve this problem, I would desperately love your democracy.

    Should you leave more than $1,000 in a checking account?
    As a student born and lived in China, actually, what you claim is wrong. We DO NOT hate democracy. No. What we hate, are the people who use this politic propoganda as a weapon to attack or attempt to destroy us. And that’s why sometimes we behave like we hate this word.

    In China, the communist party is listing DEMOCRACY as the second important thing they want to acheive, and if you’ve been to China , in any city ,any county, even any village, you WILL see propoganda like this:

    The 24 words are very popular in China, basically you can see them literally every where, just like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You can see them on the bridge, you can also see them on the crossroad, and you may even see them in the freaking toliet. And these 24 words are called “24-word-policy”, which means, everything the CCP do ,they should obey this 24 words.

    I don’t have to translate each and every word to you, just the first two of them. The 2nd one on the first row, that is, DEMOCRACY. And before that, the other word, which is the first one on the first row, means STRONG and RICH.

    So as you can see, what the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government want to acheive first, is to let the country be STRONG enough; and then, when we are strong enough, we can realize the democracy in the country.

    People in America or Japan are always confused with this. In their country ,the people there are basically rich, and satisfied on their daily life.They get good food, they get the best education on the world, and they have this steady strong and highly regulated society, so when they are rich, they find that democracy maybe a great way for the govenment.

    On the other hand, for people in China, that’s bullshit. We don’t have the steady society as Japan of America, and the good law for our people, we even don’t have enough monney. We have limited resources, and the resourcese are highly unbalanced. Everyone in China has to fight for their life, I mean , in a hard way. In this situation, acheiving democracy is not the first thing the Chinese people really need, getting rich is.

    What is policy? Policy is to do the RIGHT thing, not the GREAT thing. Chinese president and leadership is not as gooey and rommantic as president in America. President Obama, is such a idealism man. He has made so many GREAT things, even it’s not right. And the great thing create GREAT trouble.

    To support Japan, America pissed off China, and since the American government is not brave or motivated engouh to fight against China, now China has almost the entire South China Sea. The GREAT thing means to do fight for people in other countries, such as Russia, and Putin, well, to do GREAT things, they destroyed Russian economy, but the Putin is getting more and more support, and the Russian people hate America even more.

    To do the GREAT thing, the American government give the gay group human right to get married. As the government legalized gay marriage without enough legal protection, the Orlando things happened, and government still don’t have the guts to say, ‘the killer is terrorist’. Well, the law just allow them to get married, the other things, sorry ,nothing changed in America.

    What I write those things to tell you, my friend ,is that the government, no matter what the form it is, have to do the right thing first, not the great thing and say “we change the world by one law over and over and freaking over again”. To solve the problem, we have to claim it first. If we want to build democracy on poverty and unbalance, the first thing you will see is that some cracy president is elected and rob each and every rich guy in China and get their money to distribute to everyone.

    That’s… not looking good. I mean, really not good.”

  2. East Asians can be better understood by their gardens. Traditional Japan is perhaps the best model society IMO. Japan is Luxembourg; China is the Holy Roman Empire. Europe is best for the Earth and animals. East Asia has the most stable and civilized societies for humans.

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