From a college student forum
China has long been called a land of ritual and propriety. For thousands of years, under the influence of traditional ideas such as the “Doctrine of the Mean,” “harmony is precious,” “hold compassion in your heart, take tolerance as the foundation,” and “a gentleman uses words, not fists,” and mixed up with factional struggles and ideological disputes, our nation’s foreign policy has, generally speaking, been too soft, too tolerant, and too out of step with what suits the actual stage of world development. As a result, the international position we occupy has always made people feel it is “too weak,” “too spineless.” Therefore, it is now very necessary for us, on the basis of clearly recognizing the characteristics of the present era and the nature of the world’s various peoples at this stage, to carry out a thorough reflection on and adjustment of our nation’s traditional diplomatic thinking and foreign policy. Then, with a set of diplomatic strategies and principles that fit the reality of world development, we can completely shake off the awkward situation of having spent a whole century being passive and pushed around, in a way utterly unworthy of a major power.
As mentioned above, looking over more than a hundred years of our country’s history of international dealings and the starting points of its foreign policy, for most periods it has been excessively “benevolent, kind, magnanimous, generous.” In the face of outside humiliation, we have been completely on the defensive; if we could not hold the line, we endured it; if we could no longer endure it, we simply “swallowed” it. All the while ignoring the cruel reality that the world we live in has always been a society where “the weak are prey to the strong.” Looking at our current foreign policy, are we perhaps a bit too rigid, too naive in the way we view the responsibility of safeguarding world peace, and too pedantic, too mechanical in the way we treat peaceful coexistence and the fulfillment of international obligations, while neglecting the rights of our own nation? It seems as if we are applying rules meant for how nations might get along in a future world of human unity to the society of today. Because of this, our diplomacy in today’s world appears so ill-suited and so passive; we Chinese live so tired in this world; and our nation runs into so many suffocating, infuriating, upsetting things. In fact, it is just like how “honest people always suffer in troubled times.” In today’s world, which is still one of “the weak are prey to the strong” and “mutual deception,” no matter how big your nation is or how large your population is, if you are overly tolerant, kind, weak, and easy to talk to, then your nation is bound to get bloodied in this “evil” world of fierce competition among peoples. In the end, the one who gets hurt will always be you; there will always be other peoples who get used to “pointing fingers” at you; and there will always be some countries and politicians who think your nation “doesn’t know its place,” who take you for a fool. This is the reality of “power politics” in today’s world.
Actually, relations among the world’s peoples are just like relations between people. When the stage of development of human society and the level of mankind’s spiritual civilization are still far from the requirements of a future world of great unity, some “global slogans” are in fact only advocacy and ideals. If you fail to grasp the proper limits in carrying them out, and one-sidedly insist on doing things in the nicest possible way, that is extremely pedantic and miscalculated, and in the end the one who suffers is sure to be yourself. This is just like social life today: in real society, if someone does not guard against bad people and does not strike back when meeting bad people, or if a society does not understand the need to impose necessary punishment on bad people, then he is certainly a fool, and he will certainly reap the bitter fruit himself. Moreover, such weakness objectively encourages and helps evil forces grow, fostering disaster by tolerating rot. (I have always thought: being harsh toward truly bad people is not much of a problem; after all, a bad person is still a bad person. Take corrupt elements: don’t you just want to embezzle and grab? Fine, then not only should you fail to get what you want, you should be ruined, reduced to poverty for life, made to suffer the hardships of want, made to endure the prison punishment you deserve, even pay with your life. Who told you not to be a decent person and to choose to be evil instead? If you are not “harsh” toward bad people, then in reality you are harming the broad masses of decent common people, you are “spoiling” bad people.) Relations among the world’s peoples are the same as relations between people. In the present era, the world has by no means developed to the point where we can sing “The Internationale,” hang out a sign saying “world citizen,” and live together in peace. Some countries are still very bad; some peoples still believe deep down that their own nation is the finest in the world and still think about ruling the world. Under such circumstances, whoever is excessively righteous and excessively tolerant is a fool, a complete idiot, and that nation and state will certainly always be at a disadvantage in international dealings, always in the position of being “dealt with” and “fixed up” by others. Even if that country may be large and its population many, others will still think: “He’s easy to talk to,” “you can’t beat a fart out of him with a pole,” “this country talks about benevolence, it won’t really do anything to us.” Thus, for them, people like the U.S., Britain, France, Japan, and Russia are not to be offended, but offending spineless China is no big deal. At worst you will just write some editorials and publish a few pieces of “verbal condemnation.” They’ll even have their own governments stop the common people from demonstrating for us. Mess with him—he has no temper at all, nothing to be afraid of, no real price to pay. As time goes on, that is how we get treated like weaklings (and the anger in the common people’s bellies grows bigger and bigger). Like honest people in society, we end up always in the position of being bullied. On some trivial matters, they may perhaps help us, this “beggar gang chief of the Third World,” make some noise; in diplomatic etiquette they may make you feel they are quite friendly. But once it comes to major matters and questions of principle, they stop taking us seriously, and dare to confront us: “So what if your country is big? As long as you have no backbone, I’ll dare to push you around.” Look at the Japanese prime minister stubbornly insisting on visiting Yasukuni Shrine; look at Japan’s hardline stance on the Diaoyu Islands and on the war of aggression against China; look at the Philippines and Vietnam nibbling away at our Nansha Islands, Indonesia’s brutality toward ethnic Chinese; then look at the U.S. government’s interference in our internal affairs, all the way to the bombing of our embassy and the reconnaissance plane incident; and then the shouting by some European countries over so-called “Tibetan independence” and “East Turkestan”; some American countries making a fuss over the Taiwan issue at the UN year after year; and the ungrateful acts of certain “Zhongshan wolves” that the Chinese people fattened through enormous national sacrifice, and so on. If these things had not happened to China or to Chinese people, but to the United States or Russia and the like, would the other side still dare? You Japanese dare to go plant your national flag on the Diaoyu Islands—then why don’t you go plant it on the “Northern Territories”? Our embassy was bombed “by mistake,” and that was that—but if it had been the Russian embassy, would America have dared? If you ask me, before the U.S. took military action against Yugoslavia, the first thing it may well have done was mark the Russian embassy on the map so as not to bomb it by mistake. And then look at NATO, this European gendarme—why does it have no spell to chant over Chechnya? Why ask to act as mediator? Why not swagger straight in and be done with it? Oh! Because that is Russia! It is no longer Yugoslavia?
Therefore, let alone a country as large as China—even any country or people, in conducting itself, cannot be without backbone, and cannot live by swallowing its anger and relying on diplomatic rhetoric. Truly, “when it’s time to act, act.” To use an old slogan: “If others do not offend me, I will not offend them; if others offend me, I will certainly offend them.” To put it more concretely: “We do not want to bully anyone, but if anyone wants to bully us, he had better think it over carefully.” The “harshness” I speak of is actually only on this level. Of course, some may say, “To do that you need strength; what use is empty talk?” Indeed, in today’s world strength is what speaks. Therefore I also believe that the development of our country’s military forces absolutely must not blindly follow the world trend of “reduction.” We must keep our own wits about us, and especially judging from this year’s situation, we have been all the more warned and forced not to do foolish things in developing armaments. Today’s “arms reduction,” for those developed countries, cuts off only the tail, while for other developing countries it cuts off the head. Therefore, in this world that in essence is neither reasonable nor peaceful, we absolutely must not again make, in a certain sense, the same mistake as “using broadswords and spears against foreign devils’ guns and cannon.” Especially now, reality has already made it clear to us: those developed “descendants of pirates” have hardly changed their overbearing bad habits in the slightest (what has changed is only that they dress a little more decently, there are no skulls on their flags, and the robbers no longer look like one-eyed bandits). They still always want to bully other peoples, still always want to conquer this world by force and even spiritually, to make it speak with one voice. The end of the “Cold War” has only made them even more arrogant, not more restrained (which shows how disappointing human civilization still is, how little hope there is in its level of refinement). Toward those socialist countries that were not their allies and were once Cold War opponents, they are revising, taking over, and accepting surrender with the posture of victors in the “Cold War”; naturally, “refusal” is not allowed. Therefore, as for us, perhaps the next target, we cannot but develop our armaments—especially those high-tech weapons capable of deciding victory or defeat in war. The reason we must do this is not to bully others, and still less to seek world hegemony like some countries and world organizations, but so that we will not be bullied by others—never again!
In addition, we should also see that even if our strength is not yet sufficient, we should still speak with our backs straight. Besides, we really have spoken that way before. We truly should not, and have no reason to, have stood up fifty years ago when we were poor and blank, only to kneel down again fifty years later after becoming prosperous.
If the degree of “harshness” goes one step further, then it means we must be a people that dares to love and dare to hate, not a spineless people: “When a friend comes, there is good wine; when an enemy comes, there is the hunting gun”; “to friends be as warm as spring, to enemies as cruel and merciless as severe winter.” Toward friends, if they respect our Chinese nation by one foot, we may repay them by one yard. But toward enemies, toward those who hate us, despise us, and seek to split our nation; toward those who have harmed our nation and still refuse to admit their wrong to this day—we will never let them off! Just as Israel’s “Mossad” (intelligence organization) hunted down and severely punished Nazi fugitives who cruelly persecuted Jews during World War II, let them get what they deserve. Like the Koreans toward the Japanese, never forget the nation’s deep blood hatred for generations. Like the countless patriots in Chinese history, “rather be jade shattered than tile preserved,” “though poor, one’s will is not short.” Only such a people can be said to “stand on its own among the nations.” Only such a national character can win the admiration of the world and keep others from looking down on it.
Let me add a few words off the topic. Actually, we Chinese are not a people with absolutely no temper, not a spineless people. But regrettably, our people are accustomed to venting the “harsh” side on our own compatriots, using that harshness in civil war and in “fighting among ourselves.” Things like “better give it to friendly foreign states than to domestic slaves,” things like “before resisting foreign aggression, one must first pacify the interior”—there is probably no other people in the world as ferocious and so unable to let go when it comes to internal consumption as we are. For the interests of parties, for ideological disputes, national interests can be trampled and sacrificed at will. Look at Taiwan’s former president Lee Teng-hui, who openly praised the Japanese prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Perhaps the reason he has consistently “lived on the breath of foreigners,” betraying his own side and openly engaging in selling out the nation for glory, is that he has never acknowledged himself as a “Chinese,” and even harbors deep hatred for the Chinese people who caused his elder brother’s death in war. But what is hard to understand is that there are actually still so many Taiwanese flattering and bootlicking him. For the sake of a bit of food, can one even abandon one’s ancestors?
And then there is “silver-bullet diplomacy.” Like “the snipe and the clam fighting while the fisherman profits,” it only benefits foreigners. Whether the money is from the mainland or Taiwan, in the end it is all the blood and sweat of us Chinese, is it not? And more tragic still is that not only do we spend money, we also lose face and make spectacles of ourselves. Perhaps even the beneficiaries in countries like Nicaragua, counting fistful after fistful of banknotes, will, when we turn our backs, glance at us with utter contempt and then spit out a line: “Bah! What a filthy damn people this is!”
And then there are “war reparations.” In order to court and ingratiate themselves with neighboring countries, the two parties competed to refuse “war reparations” from that aggressor country that brought enormous national disaster upon the Chinese nation. I do not know whether this is true or false. But if it is true, what right did you have to make such a decision? Did you ask those victims who were slaughtered, raped, separated from their wives and children, and had their families destroyed in the war?
On both sides of the Strait, things are always on the verge of swords drawn and bows bent, with military exercises without end. But why is it so calm around the Diaoyu Islands? Where did the soldiers on both sides, so eager to show off force, go? They let unarmed Hong Kong compatriots go die for the country.
Both sides spend huge sums making large numbers of films about the “civil war.” What is the point? Haven’t the seeds of hatred being planted in children’s hearts on both sides already been enough?
It should be said: in the world, Chinese are undoubtedly one of the smartest races. Yet it is precisely when the smartest race does stupid things and acts foolishly that it becomes all the more tragic, contemptible, hateful, and loathsome! Please remember this: only when Chinese people have completely ended this “fighting among ourselves” can this nation truly be said, in the real sense, to “stand on its own among the nations.” Otherwise, on this point alone, it is hard for this nation to win anyone’s respect.
Actually, changing this way of “being weak to outsiders and vicious at home,” this “fighting among ourselves,” is not difficult at all. As long as everyone simply removes the “party” from “put the interests of party and state first,” that would do it. Truly, sometimes I often think: if one day the “loose sand” of the Chinese people were really cemented into one whole by the “cement” of the “national spirit” and the “spirit of the people,” then our Chinese nation would surely become unstoppable. But what chills my heart is that all I can see now is confusion.
I am often proud and honored by our nation’s intelligence, talent, and ancient civilization; but I am also often ashamed and mortified by our nation’s deep-rooted and omnipresent bad traits. What difference is there whether a sick lion wakes up or not?
China has long been called a land of ritual and propriety. For thousands of years, under the influence of traditional ideas such as the “Doctrine of the Mean,” “harmony is precious,” “hold compassion in your heart, take tolerance as the foundation,” and “a gentleman uses words, not fists,” and mixed up with factional struggles and ideological disputes, our nation’s foreign policy has, generally speaking, been too soft, too tolerant, and too out of step with what suits the actual stage of world development. As a result, the international position we occupy has always made people feel it is “too weak,” “too spineless.” Therefore, it is now very necessary for us, on the basis of clearly recognizing the characteristics of the present era and the nature of the world’s various peoples at this stage, to carry out a thorough reflection on and adjustment of our nation’s traditional diplomatic thinking and foreign policy. Then, with a set of diplomatic strategies and principles that fit the reality of world development, we can completely shake off the awkward situation of having spent a whole century being passive and pushed around, in a way utterly unworthy of a major power.
As mentioned above, looking over more than a hundred years of our country’s history of international dealings and the starting points of its foreign policy, for most periods it has been excessively “benevolent, kind, magnanimous, generous.” In the face of outside humiliation, we have been completely on the defensive; if we could not hold the line, we endured it; if we could no longer endure it, we simply “swallowed” it. All the while ignoring the cruel reality that the world we live in has always been a society where “the weak are prey to the strong.” Looking at our current foreign policy, are we perhaps a bit too rigid, too naive in the way we view the responsibility of safeguarding world peace, and too pedantic, too mechanical in the way we treat peaceful coexistence and the fulfillment of international obligations, while neglecting the rights of our own nation? It seems as if we are applying rules meant for how nations might get along in a future world of human unity to the society of today. Because of this, our diplomacy in today’s world appears so ill-suited and so passive; we Chinese live so tired in this world; and our nation runs into so many suffocating, infuriating, upsetting things. In fact, it is just like how “honest people always suffer in troubled times.” In today’s world, which is still one of “the weak are prey to the strong” and “mutual deception,” no matter how big your nation is or how large your population is, if you are overly tolerant, kind, weak, and easy to talk to, then your nation is bound to get bloodied in this “evil” world of fierce competition among peoples. In the end, the one who gets hurt will always be you; there will always be other peoples who get used to “pointing fingers” at you; and there will always be some countries and politicians who think your nation “doesn’t know its place,” who take you for a fool. This is the reality of “power politics” in today’s world.
Actually, relations among the world’s peoples are just like relations between people. When the stage of development of human society and the level of mankind’s spiritual civilization are still far from the requirements of a future world of great unity, some “global slogans” are in fact only advocacy and ideals. If you fail to grasp the proper limits in carrying them out, and one-sidedly insist on doing things in the nicest possible way, that is extremely pedantic and miscalculated, and in the end the one who suffers is sure to be yourself. This is just like social life today: in real society, if someone does not guard against bad people and does not strike back when meeting bad people, or if a society does not understand the need to impose necessary punishment on bad people, then he is certainly a fool, and he will certainly reap the bitter fruit himself. Moreover, such weakness objectively encourages and helps evil forces grow, fostering disaster by tolerating rot. (I have always thought: being harsh toward truly bad people is not much of a problem; after all, a bad person is still a bad person. Take corrupt elements: don’t you just want to embezzle and grab? Fine, then not only should you fail to get what you want, you should be ruined, reduced to poverty for life, made to suffer the hardships of want, made to endure the prison punishment you deserve, even pay with your life. Who told you not to be a decent person and to choose to be evil instead? If you are not “harsh” toward bad people, then in reality you are harming the broad masses of decent common people, you are “spoiling” bad people.) Relations among the world’s peoples are the same as relations between people. In the present era, the world has by no means developed to the point where we can sing “The Internationale,” hang out a sign saying “world citizen,” and live together in peace. Some countries are still very bad; some peoples still believe deep down that their own nation is the finest in the world and still think about ruling the world. Under such circumstances, whoever is excessively righteous and excessively tolerant is a fool, a complete idiot, and that nation and state will certainly always be at a disadvantage in international dealings, always in the position of being “dealt with” and “fixed up” by others. Even if that country may be large and its population many, others will still think: “He’s easy to talk to,” “you can’t beat a fart out of him with a pole,” “this country talks about benevolence, it won’t really do anything to us.” Thus, for them, people like the U.S., Britain, France, Japan, and Russia are not to be offended, but offending spineless China is no big deal. At worst you will just write some editorials and publish a few pieces of “verbal condemnation.” They’ll even have their own governments stop the common people from demonstrating for us. Mess with him—he has no temper at all, nothing to be afraid of, no real price to pay. As time goes on, that is how we get treated like weaklings (and the anger in the common people’s bellies grows bigger and bigger). Like honest people in society, we end up always in the position of being bullied. On some trivial matters, they may perhaps help us, this “beggar gang chief of the Third World,” make some noise; in diplomatic etiquette they may make you feel they are quite friendly. But once it comes to major matters and questions of principle, they stop taking us seriously, and dare to confront us: “So what if your country is big? As long as you have no backbone, I’ll dare to push you around.” Look at the Japanese prime minister stubbornly insisting on visiting Yasukuni Shrine; look at Japan’s hardline stance on the Diaoyu Islands and on the war of aggression against China; look at the Philippines and Vietnam nibbling away at our Nansha Islands, Indonesia’s brutality toward ethnic Chinese; then look at the U.S. government’s interference in our internal affairs, all the way to the bombing of our embassy and the reconnaissance plane incident; and then the shouting by some European countries over so-called “Tibetan independence” and “East Turkestan”; some American countries making a fuss over the Taiwan issue at the UN year after year; and the ungrateful acts of certain “Zhongshan wolves” that the Chinese people fattened through enormous national sacrifice, and so on. If these things had not happened to China or to Chinese people, but to the United States or Russia and the like, would the other side still dare? You Japanese dare to go plant your national flag on the Diaoyu Islands—then why don’t you go plant it on the “Northern Territories”? Our embassy was bombed “by mistake,” and that was that—but if it had been the Russian embassy, would America have dared? If you ask me, before the U.S. took military action against Yugoslavia, the first thing it may well have done was mark the Russian embassy on the map so as not to bomb it by mistake. And then look at NATO, this European gendarme—why does it have no spell to chant over Chechnya? Why ask to act as mediator? Why not swagger straight in and be done with it? Oh! Because that is Russia! It is no longer Yugoslavia?
Therefore, let alone a country as large as China—even any country or people, in conducting itself, cannot be without backbone, and cannot live by swallowing its anger and relying on diplomatic rhetoric. Truly, “when it’s time to act, act.” To use an old slogan: “If others do not offend me, I will not offend them; if others offend me, I will certainly offend them.” To put it more concretely: “We do not want to bully anyone, but if anyone wants to bully us, he had better think it over carefully.” The “harshness” I speak of is actually only on this level. Of course, some may say, “To do that you need strength; what use is empty talk?” Indeed, in today’s world strength is what speaks. Therefore I also believe that the development of our country’s military forces absolutely must not blindly follow the world trend of “reduction.” We must keep our own wits about us, and especially judging from this year’s situation, we have been all the more warned and forced not to do foolish things in developing armaments. Today’s “arms reduction,” for those developed countries, cuts off only the tail, while for other developing countries it cuts off the head. Therefore, in this world that in essence is neither reasonable nor peaceful, we absolutely must not again make, in a certain sense, the same mistake as “using broadswords and spears against foreign devils’ guns and cannon.” Especially now, reality has already made it clear to us: those developed “descendants of pirates” have hardly changed their overbearing bad habits in the slightest (what has changed is only that they dress a little more decently, there are no skulls on their flags, and the robbers no longer look like one-eyed bandits). They still always want to bully other peoples, still always want to conquer this world by force and even spiritually, to make it speak with one voice. The end of the “Cold War” has only made them even more arrogant, not more restrained (which shows how disappointing human civilization still is, how little hope there is in its level of refinement). Toward those socialist countries that were not their allies and were once Cold War opponents, they are revising, taking over, and accepting surrender with the posture of victors in the “Cold War”; naturally, “refusal” is not allowed. Therefore, as for us, perhaps the next target, we cannot but develop our armaments—especially those high-tech weapons capable of deciding victory or defeat in war. The reason we must do this is not to bully others, and still less to seek world hegemony like some countries and world organizations, but so that we will not be bullied by others—never again!
In addition, we should also see that even if our strength is not yet sufficient, we should still speak with our backs straight. Besides, we really have spoken that way before. We truly should not, and have no reason to, have stood up fifty years ago when we were poor and blank, only to kneel down again fifty years later after becoming prosperous.
If the degree of “harshness” goes one step further, then it means we must be a people that dares to love and dare to hate, not a spineless people: “When a friend comes, there is good wine; when an enemy comes, there is the hunting gun”; “to friends be as warm as spring, to enemies as cruel and merciless as severe winter.” Toward friends, if they respect our Chinese nation by one foot, we may repay them by one yard. But toward enemies, toward those who hate us, despise us, and seek to split our nation; toward those who have harmed our nation and still refuse to admit their wrong to this day—we will never let them off! Just as Israel’s “Mossad” (intelligence organization) hunted down and severely punished Nazi fugitives who cruelly persecuted Jews during World War II, let them get what they deserve. Like the Koreans toward the Japanese, never forget the nation’s deep blood hatred for generations. Like the countless patriots in Chinese history, “rather be jade shattered than tile preserved,” “though poor, one’s will is not short.” Only such a people can be said to “stand on its own among the nations.” Only such a national character can win the admiration of the world and keep others from looking down on it.
Let me add a few words off the topic. Actually, we Chinese are not a people with absolutely no temper, not a spineless people. But regrettably, our people are accustomed to venting the “harsh” side on our own compatriots, using that harshness in civil war and in “fighting among ourselves.” Things like “better give it to friendly foreign states than to domestic slaves,” things like “before resisting foreign aggression, one must first pacify the interior”—there is probably no other people in the world as ferocious and so unable to let go when it comes to internal consumption as we are. For the interests of parties, for ideological disputes, national interests can be trampled and sacrificed at will. Look at Taiwan’s former president Lee Teng-hui, who openly praised the Japanese prime minister’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Perhaps the reason he has consistently “lived on the breath of foreigners,” betraying his own side and openly engaging in selling out the nation for glory, is that he has never acknowledged himself as a “Chinese,” and even harbors deep hatred for the Chinese people who caused his elder brother’s death in war. But what is hard to understand is that there are actually still so many Taiwanese flattering and bootlicking him. For the sake of a bit of food, can one even abandon one’s ancestors?
And then there is “silver-bullet diplomacy.” Like “the snipe and the clam fighting while the fisherman profits,” it only benefits foreigners. Whether the money is from the mainland or Taiwan, in the end it is all the blood and sweat of us Chinese, is it not? And more tragic still is that not only do we spend money, we also lose face and make spectacles of ourselves. Perhaps even the beneficiaries in countries like Nicaragua, counting fistful after fistful of banknotes, will, when we turn our backs, glance at us with utter contempt and then spit out a line: “Bah! What a filthy damn people this is!”
And then there are “war reparations.” In order to court and ingratiate themselves with neighboring countries, the two parties competed to refuse “war reparations” from that aggressor country that brought enormous national disaster upon the Chinese nation. I do not know whether this is true or false. But if it is true, what right did you have to make such a decision? Did you ask those victims who were slaughtered, raped, separated from their wives and children, and had their families destroyed in the war?
On both sides of the Strait, things are always on the verge of swords drawn and bows bent, with military exercises without end. But why is it so calm around the Diaoyu Islands? Where did the soldiers on both sides, so eager to show off force, go? They let unarmed Hong Kong compatriots go die for the country.
Both sides spend huge sums making large numbers of films about the “civil war.” What is the point? Haven’t the seeds of hatred being planted in children’s hearts on both sides already been enough?
It should be said: in the world, Chinese are undoubtedly one of the smartest races. Yet it is precisely when the smartest race does stupid things and acts foolishly that it becomes all the more tragic, contemptible, hateful, and loathsome! Please remember this: only when Chinese people have completely ended this “fighting among ourselves” can this nation truly be said, in the real sense, to “stand on its own among the nations.” Otherwise, on this point alone, it is hard for this nation to win anyone’s respect.
Actually, changing this way of “being weak to outsiders and vicious at home,” this “fighting among ourselves,” is not difficult at all. As long as everyone simply removes the “party” from “put the interests of party and state first,” that would do it. Truly, sometimes I often think: if one day the “loose sand” of the Chinese people were really cemented into one whole by the “cement” of the “national spirit” and the “spirit of the people,” then our Chinese nation would surely become unstoppable. But what chills my heart is that all I can see now is confusion.
I am often proud and honored by our nation’s intelligence, talent, and ancient civilization; but I am also often ashamed and mortified by our nation’s deep-rooted and omnipresent bad traits. What difference is there whether a sick lion wakes up or not?
