Empire of Lies

by Guy Sorman

  Li Ang is just as outraged by Kristeva’s remarks in 2005 as she was in 1974. How could Kristeva not have realized that the “liberated” Chinese women she met at the time were acting on orders from the Communist Party, simply playing a part? In the seventeenth century, the Jesuits were equally blind; Kristeva was following in their footsteps, though, unlike them, she couldn’t claim to have built Western pavilions in the Summer Palace or translated a vast body of work in Chinese and Manchu. Li Ang can perhaps understand the Kristeva of 1974 being taken in. After all, she was not quite thirty, and she was under the sway of Roland Barthes and Philippe Sollers, both sympathizers with the Cultural Revolution. What she finds hard to swallow is that thirty years later, Kristeva allowed a second reprint of her work without changing a word. Did she still not know that Chinese women living in Taiwan were free?

  What next, I ask Li Ang? She seems to have run out of causes. I suggest that she raise her voice on behalf of Communist China’s millions of prostitutes. Mass prostitution is an unexplored feature of the new China—“the socialist China with Chinese characteristics,” to use Party jargon. Young girls fleeing the poverty of the countryside can make money in the city only by selling their bodies. They are taken in hand by the Triad, with the connivance of the police and Party cadres. Is this a socialist trait or a specifically Chinese one, one wonders? Li Ang promises to think about it.

  Taiwan is a hive of artistic activity. Li Ang, the best known of the Chinese novelists, is not alone. This country of 22 million has made significant contributions to Chinese literature, cinema, the fine arts, and cuisine. They are far more prolific than their 1.3 billion counterparts on the mainland. The Communist regime promotes grand shows to keep up the myth of a glorious, unchanging, immutable China. Contemporary artists can only survive at the fringes of society. A few prosper because of recognition from the West. Had Li Ang lived on the mainland twenty-five years ago, it is doubtful that she would have been able to publish The Butcher’s Wife. She might get away with it today, but afterward she would either keep quiet or be imprisoned. Had he not been living as an exile in France, Gao Xingjian could never have published his Nobel Prize-winning novels, or written the opera and theater productions that are staged in France and Taiwan. One of the many unfortunate consequences of tyranny is that it denies thousands of artists and potential artists the possibility of self-expression.

  While the Communist regime has kept down many Li Angs and Gao Xingjians, it has squandered enormous sums of money on theaters and halls that don’t produce anything. In 2005, the Shanghai Opera had nothing to offer except Broadway musicals. We will have to wait for the Beijing Opera to be completed before we learn what its schedule will be. Designed by Paul Andreu, it looks like a gigantic titanium UFO sitting next to the Forbidden City. The European cognoscenti, those great aficionados of Chinese culture, head straight for Beijing. They seem to have forgotten Taipei.

  Is Taiwan really Chinese?

  Is Taiwan less Chinese because it is democratic? Must it be tyrannized by an emperor, dictator, or commissar to become truly Chinese? Is China’s greatness dependent on its homogeneity? Does it have to be ruled by an iron hand in the velvet glove of Confucianism or Marxism? Will those who disagree with this image of China always be branded dissidents or secessionists?

  The Communist regime would like Westerners to believe that uniformity and tyranny are Chinese characteristics. The Party’s collusion with Western politicians and businessmen rests on a lie; Chinese leaders project themselves as the custodians of a culture that they have, in fact, done their best to destroy. Li Ang explains: “The authorities play on words, using interchangeably zhong guo and zhong hua, the two Chinese words for China.” Zhong guo refers to the Chinese state, and zhong hua to the Chinese civilization (hua means “essence”). In awe of the Great China, as they call it, Western businessmen and politicians venerate the state for fear of offending the civilization. This suits the Beijing leadership, which accuses the Taiwanese of betraying the Chinese civilization, when all they are doing is refusing to be the slaves of a state that they consider illegitimate.

  The Chinese themselves are not fooled. Whether in Beijing, Taipei, Paris, or San Francisco, Li Ang and any other Chinese are perfectly justified in asserting Chineseness while refusing to bow down to Beijing. In fact, an educated Li Ang in Taipei is more Chinese than the ignoramuses who rule in Beijing and fly into a rage whenever anyone questions their monopoly on Chinese civilization.

  We have to learn to distinguish between China the state and China the civilization. And within the Chinese civilization, we have to learn to tell the various nations apart, distinct by virtue of their history, language, or culture. China can be better compared with Europe as a whole than with a single country. Just as a Westerner may be French or Italian, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, so a Chinese may be Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, Muslim, or Christian, speaking Cantonese or Shanghai Chinese (the difference between Mandarin, the official language of the north, and Cantonese is like that between French and Italian). Li Ang is truly Chinese, since she speaks both Mandarin and Taiwanese and is an agnostic—though she believes in ghosts, like everyone else in Taiwan, especially in July. As she speaks English as well, she is also part of a cosmopolitan culture.

  Religion in democracy

  To the north of Taipei is the large port city of Keelung, in whose cemetery lie hundreds of sailors, sent in 1885 by Jules Ferry and Courbet to conquer Formosa. Master Chen, who lives in Keelung, explains to me why he gave up his pharmacy to open a temple. He realized that the clients in his modest locality needed spiritual solace more than medication. So, on the third floor of the building where his pharmacy used to be, he arranged a pantheon of Daoist gods and collection of ritual objects. Dressed in ceremonial robes that confer magical powers on him and give him great presence, Chen receives the faithful in distress, directs them to a suitable divinity, and suggests appropriate prayers. He has acquired this understanding and knowledge of rituals from his father. For every wish, whether for health, work, or love, there is a special formula. Master Chen tells me that he doesn’t take any money in advance. When devotees make a wish, they also make a pledge—in general, a gift—which they fulfill when the wish is granted. The master clarifies that he deals only with the living, redirecting families who come for funeral ceremonies to the Buddhists. Roles are neatly distributed between Daoists and Buddhists, then, but the entente with the shamans who abound in Taiwan is not so cordial. “They have no theological training,” Chen expostulates. Yet the Taiwanese value the services of these masters who can communicate with the dead in a trance, charlatans or not.

  I question Master Chen about compassion and the lack of it in Chinese society, an issue that has struck me, as it has many Westerners. I ask about the place of commiseration and charity in Daoism. My question catches him unawares. He takes his time answering. At last, he gives me what he considers a convincing example of the Daoist spirit of compassion: “Under the Tang dynasty, when China was ravaged by the plague, Taoist priests performed the exorcism rites without any compensation. The plague went away.” Didn’t the Tangs rule a thousand years ago? Master Chen thinks for a while before coming up with a more recent demonstration of Daoist compassion. In 2002, when SARS or atypical pneumonia threatened Taiwan, “Daoist priests once again invoked the gods for the common good, free of charge.”

  His answer is far from satisfying, no doubt because Chinese religions are not prompted by the impulses of the Christian West. In principle, one’s feelings and the Christian love of one’s neighbor govern Western behavior. Chinese religions set little store by feelings and love, both of which are ephemeral. They would rather abide by rules. In the West, to do good is to love; in China, it is to obey the rules. This could explain why cruelty has come to dominate social relationships in Communist China, where rituals have been destroyed and the quality of love is not valued.

  On the mainland, Western visitors are happy because religious freedom has been restor
ed after fifty years of repression. But when compared with what obtains in Taiwan, the extent to which this freedom is limited and controlled becomes obvious. A truly free China would be like Taiwan, with her masters, priests, and shamans. Almost all Taiwanese visit temples, pray, and invoke their gods. They do not make any important decisions without consulting the oracles, immortals, and shamans. Then there are the Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal churches where the faithful go with requests as practical as those of the Taoists. The gods have to compete with one another in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese address them with same familiarity as the Indians do their gods. Left to themselves, the Chinese are mystical—believers or superstitious, depending on the value judgments we make about their religions.

  Economic modernization has not sapped these religions. On the contrary, successful businessmen cherish the idea of building temples bigger and brighter than the old ones. As in ancient China, trade guilds are often housed in temples, which act as business and credit centers from which devotees set out to conquer world markets.

  Taiwan, like Japan, Korea, and the United States, has shown that it is not progress but anticlericalism that destroys religion. The religiousness of the Taiwanese brings them closer to the Americans than to Communist China. Like the Americans, they communicate directly with the gods. The shaman in Taiwan is what the preacher is in America.

  The Western traveler determined not to see the gods can find support with Confucians, who exist even in Taiwan and look down on popular superstitions. One such gentleman, the Taiwanese ambassador to a European country—Confucians are generally high officials—asked me to visit a dog temple in northern Taiwan. “Can you believe it, these people actually worship a dozen pet dogs that they have turned into gods,” he sneered. I went to the shrine, which faces the sea. I saw devotees burning incense sticks before the idol of a dog. It is the tradition to write your wish on a piece of paper and then rub it against the bronze statue, each part of the dog’s body fulfilling a different kind of wish. The ears are rubbed for health, the mouth for a house, and so on. Yet it is not so much the statue but the thought behind it that makes the temple for loyalty and dogs special. The story goes that the statue is of a dog that followed his master, a drowning fisherman, to his watery grave.

  It is possible to read China’s history as an endless conflict between Daoist rebels and Confucian bureaucrats. It is also truly amazing that not a drop of blood was shed in the name of religious beliefs. The peaceful coexistence of several worldviews is the starting point of political pluralism.

  How a democracy is born

  Ma Ying-jeou has decided to give me a lecture on democracy in China. One visit to the mayor’s office in Taipei is enough to tell you, in case you don’t know, that his name means “horse” in Chinese. It is crammed with every possible kind of horse artifact: paintings, sculptures, horse-shaped table legs, tapestries. The mayor owes his election, for the most part, to female voters. The sixty-year-old Ma has the reputation of being Taiwan’s most attractive politician. And he does not take kindly to being interrupted.

  Ma launches into the diversity of democratic models in the different Chinas. He breaks up democracy into three constituent elements: freedom, the rule of law, and universal suffrage. In none of the countries of the Chinese sphere can the three be found together. Hong Kong, for example, has the rule of law that the British established. In spite of its transfer to Communist China in 1997, the freedoms of speech and of the press remain inviolable, as does the right to do business. But the Hong Kong government is not elected. It is appointed by Beijing. The assembly—half of which is elected through universal suffrage—is only a consultative body. So Hong Kong is not a full democracy.

  Singapore is another British legacy. The rule of law exists there, too. But both the right to do business and freedom of the press are limited. Though the government is elected by universal suffrage, the conditions are such that there can be no opposition. A single party has been at the helm of affairs since the state’s creation in 1963. Democracy in China is always relative, Ma says.

  Where does Taiwan figure on this scale? All political offices, local and national, are elective. The party once in power, the Kuomintang, has lost its monopoly. Elections are by no means free of corruption, but they are nonetheless closely contested. On the economic front, there is complete freedom. What about the press? Ma, who brooks no questions, says: “It is too free!” Does the rule of law exist in Taiwan? Not yet. Deception, corruption, and feudal relationships prevail. Traditional solidarities—the clan, the family—count far more than the law. For Ma, these are not specifically Chinese traits, but a lapse on the part of the authorities. Since assuming the mayoralty, he has done everything to correct it. People obey the traffic rules because the police are vigilant and the fines are stiff. Ma concludes that the Chinese are no different from anyone else. They won’t cross the street on a red light if they know they’ll get caught. It has nothing to do with Chinese culture.

  As for mainland China, there are no elections, no freedom, and no rule of law. So there are as many variations as there are Chinas. Democracy, or its absence, assumes different forms. This rules out the theory of cultural determinism. The democratic reflex does not come naturally, Ma adds; it has to be learned.

  Conventional wisdom, one would say, if Ma hadn’t been Chinese. China has a different conception of order, in which the individual’s behavior is subordinated to the leadership’s morality. It is enough for the sovereign to be just for society to become harmonious. Classical China, the existence of which is not certain, forms the ideal for a group of sinophiles who see in it an alternative to Western order. According to this Orientalist scheme of things, in the West order is imposed from the outside, but in China it is internalized. It could be an interesting philosophical debate, but few would participate in it in today’s China. Ma Ying-jeou has acquired the reputation of an honest politician trying to weed out corruption. He can’t conceive of any order outside the Western framework of the rule of law. This is a universal construct, irrespective of where it originated. One could even claim that the notion of law has always been present in China because penal laws were decreed by the emperor in the past. What really matters, Ma says, is that China has been in sustained contact with the West for over a hundred years, so necessarily she has to be part of a community shaped by the West. There is no realistic alternative to this model.

  Is Ma Ying-jeou the harbinger of democracy? I had met him in 1986. At the time, he was a young secretary of the Kuomintang. Now he has become its president. He has forgotten the previous interview, but I have preserved my notes. In 1986, all the attention was on Taiwan’s economic miracle. Democracy was a secondary issue. What made Taiwan interesting was that it had succeeded in overcoming poverty while mainland China stagnated. Taiwan did not use any magic formula; it relied on the time-tested methods of private ownership, openness to the global market, freedom to do business, a moderate tax rate, and a stable currency. My analysis followed that of the agronomist René Dumont. The founder of the ecological movement in France, he had just completed a book on agrarian reforms in Taiwan (thirty years late). In his book, he said that the Third World would do well to emulate the Taiwanese example. The agrarian reform imposed by the Americans and implemented by the Kuomintang was of liberal inspiration. The large estates were confiscated, but their owners were well compensated and they took to industrial enterprise. The land so released was handed over to peasants who had to buy it on credit. Thus, they learned to appreciate the economic value of land and to cultivate it on rational lines. This policy, extolled by Dumont, contributed significantly to Taiwan’s economic, agricultural, and industrial development. It was implemented at the same time as the collectivization of land and the mass murder of landowners in Communist China. The liberal Taiwanese model has won international acclaim—except, of course, in mainland China, which continues to reject private ownership, especially of land.

  When I first met him, Ma Ying-jeou had just r
eturned from the United States. He would preface all his sentences with “Dr. Sun Yat-sen says,” very much like Confucians who quoted their master and Maoists who quoted The Little Red Book. He said that there was only one truth, based on the somewhat ambiguous thoughts of the Kuomintang’s founder. Repelled by Mao Zedong’s army from mainland China, the Kuomintang fell back to Taiwan, imposing its dictatorship on the local population—90 percent of whom were of Chinese origin, their forefathers having immigrated several generations ago. There were several revolts against the occupiers, but they were brutally suppressed. The last revolt took place in 1979 in Kaohsiung. Though the Kuomintang has been the dominant party, it was never the only party, for its basic creed has always been republican. Thus in 2000, the opposition candidate from the Popular Democratic Party defeated his Kuomintang rival to be elected president of the Republic. Since then, the once dominant Kuomintang has converted into a democratic party. Ma, who successfully ran for the post of mayor of Taipei, is likely to be the next presidential candidate. The Republic of China has accepted the simple principle of the changeover of political power between parties.

  Will this happen in mainland China? Will Beijing see a Ma Ying-jeou emerge from a new generation of reconverted communists? Will he stand against a liberal opponent in a fair election under the watchful eye of a free press? Can what happened south of the Formosa Strait be replicated north of it?

  How dictatorships come to an end: the Taiwanese precedent

  It is pleasing to think that mainland China will move to democracy as Taiwan has, in the culmination of a natural process leading to greater economic and political freedom. This gives history a sense of direction, reassuring to Westerners. In anticipation of such a happy transition, engagement with Communist China becomes morally correct. It was through sustained trade that democracy came to Taiwan and Korea. The same argument was advanced for the Soviet Union. Trade, we were told, would bring down the Berlin Wall. This did not happen, either in the erstwhile Soviet Union or in the countries of Central Europe. It was American military pressure that finally brought down the dictatorships. There is little likelihood that Taiwan’s experience will be reproduced in Communist China. There is no comparison between the authoritarianism of the Taiwanese regime and the totalitarianism on the mainland. An authoritarian system has the potential to move toward democracy: Pinochet’s Chile, Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan, and South Korea are all cases in point. A totalitarian regime (Nazi, Soviet, Baathist) is rigid and will crumble only under external economic or military pressure.