日中関係

Thank you for your sensible message.

I haven't seen a decent message at this forum for a long time. I agree with most of what you said. It is true that China was a poor country in the past and still is to a certain extent. I don't deny thatthere are still those who have barely enough to eat and wear. The most urgent thing now is for China to develop its economy quickly and open up its society so its citizens can have more air to breath (physically and psychologically).

However, allthings in this universe have reasons for their existence. The reason why China was poor back then is the reluctance of the government elite to reform. While all other countries were industrializing and modernizing their society, China still retained itsimperial and semi-feudal political system. It was not until when foreign powers forced numerous unequal treaties on us did we then wake up and smell the coffee.
Although China is still in many respects not quite modernized, I dare not deny the fact thatwe have made giant improvements over the last half century or just the past few decades. It is a fact that the living standard in China has risen dramatically since Deng's Open Door Policy in 1978. But of course, the road to equality and prosperity isstill long and harsh. I think that it will take at least 15 years before we can call ourselves wealthy.

We may have been criticizing how the government is doing and how the people are rude and things like that. However, have we really thoughtabout the immense difficulty of carrying out any kind of social, economic, and political re-engineering in such a huge country like China? Not only the territory is big, not only the diversity among different regions of China is big, not even thediversity of ethnic groups in different areas is large, but the mere phenomenon of having 1.2 billion people is enough to drive someone with even a 200 IQ crazy. Sometimes, we cannot compare countries which possess vastly different conditions to start with.Of course you would see the "differences" between China and the US in many respects, but one country has only been really modernizing for 20 years and the other one has been doing so for over 150 years. I'm not defending the Chinese reluctance andjustification for resisting or opposing reforms. I would like to see China strong and prosperous, but sometimes we cannot rush and must examine each issue to the finest detail before we can draw any conclusion. For example, the issue of "developing China's West"itself is enough to generate a few hundred Ph.D. papers. I'm not merely talking about political reform, but the research that has to be done about ethnicity, economic conditions, geographic conditions, logistics, strategic importance, and the model ofeconomic development is so immense that even hiring all Sinologists in this world would not be enough to close the file.