“Seen in this way, it represents a challenge of the grassroots to the elite, of popular to the official, of the weak to the strong... ...More than twenty years have passed since Tiananmen protests of 1989, and from today's perspective their greatest impact has been the lack of progress in reforming the political system. It's fair to say political reform was taking place in the 1980s, even if its pace was slower than that of economic reform. After Tiananmen, however, political reform ground to a halt, while economy began breakneck development. Because of this pradox we find ourselves in a reality full of contradictions: conservative here, radical there; the concentration of political power on this side, the unfettering of economic interests on that; dogmatism on the one hand, anarchism on hte other; toeing the line here, tossing away the rule book there. Over the past twenty years our development has been uneven rather than comprehensive, and this lopsided development is compromising the health of our society. It seems to me that the emergence - and unstoppable momentum - of the copycat phenomenon is an inevitable consequence of this lopsided development. The ubiquity and sharpness of social contradictions have provoked confusion in people's value systems and worldview, thus giving birth to the copycat effect, when all kinds of social emotions accumulate over time and find only limited channels of release, transmuted constantly into seemingly farcical acts of rebellion that have certain anti-authoritarian, anti-mainstream, and anti-monopoly elements. The force and scale of copycatting demonstrate that the whole nation has taken to it as a form of performance art.” CopingInflammationContradiction QuotesChina In Ten WordsMoral BankruptcyUneven DevelopmentAwry ValuesCopycatting Author:Yu Hua
“As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the eney was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.” EconomicsSocialismMao ZedongChina In Ten WordsDeng Xiaoping Author:Yu Hua
“As times change and social mechanisms evolve, it seems to me, different survival instincts come into play. In social terms the Cultural Revolution was a simple era whereas today's society is complex and chaotic. One of Mao Zedong's remarks sums up a basic characteristic of the Cultural Revolution. 'We should support whatever the enemy opposes,' he said. 'and oppose whatever the enemy supports.' The Cultural Revolution was an era when everything was painted in black and white, when the enemy was always wrong and we were always right; nobody had the courage to suggest that the enemy might sometimes be right and we might be sometimes be wrong. Deng Xiaoping, in turn, said something that captures the zeitgeist of our current age: 'A cat that catches the mouse is a good cat, no matter whether it is black or white.' In so saying, he overturned Mao's system of values and pointed out a fact long evident in Chinese society: right and wrong often coexist in a single phenomenon and interact in a dynamic of mutual displacement. At the same time, his comment put an end to the argument about where socialism and capitalism belong in China's economic development. So China moved from Mao Zedong's monochrome era of politics-in-command to Deng Xiaoping's polychrome era of economics above all.” EconomicsSocialismMao ZedongChina In Ten WordsDeng Xiaoping Author:Yu Hua
“What has made us move from one extreme to the other? Coutness answers ould probably be offered, but I doubt that such a cascade of responses will really provide clear explanation. One point, however, is clear: when society undergoes a drastic shift, an extremely repressed era soon becomes a very lax one. It's like being on a swing: the higher you soar on one side, the higher you rise on the other. China's high speed economic growth seems to have changed everything in the blink of an eye, rather like a long jump that let us leap from an era of material shortages into an era of extravagance and waste, from an era where instincts are repressed into an era of impulsive self-indulgence. A quick jump seems to be all it took to cross a span of thirty years.” China In Ten WordsChina In Thirty Years Author:Yu Hua
“What has made us move from one extreme to the other? Countless answers could probably be offered, but I doubt that such a cascade of responses will really provide clear explanation. One point, however, is clear: when society undergoes a drastic shift, an extremely repressed era soon becomes a very lax one. It's like being on a swing: the higher you soar on one side, the higher you rise on the other. China's high speed economic growth seems to have changed everything in the blink of an eye, rather like a long jump that let us leap from an era of material shortages into an era of extravagance and waste, from an era where instincts are repressed into an era of impulsive self-indulgence. A quick jump seems to be all it took to cross a span of thirty years.” China In Ten WordsChina In Thirty Years Author:Yu Hua