China Has Little To Celebrate

"Now we can buy anything and everything is different." - Elderly Beijingers recall China more than 70 years ago, when a week's wages could only get you 1kg of noodles. https://t.co/7gaaTWknhc pic.twitter.com/xDErH0uM5X

— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) 2019年10月1日

中国が７０周年を祝って、年寄りが過去を語るFBに流れきた動画をみた。当時は北京で餓死者が続出、誰も気に留める人もいなかった。我々は貧乏だったが情熱に燃えていたーーー現代はなんでも手に入るが、金金金の社会になったみたいな・・・ある意味共産党支配を承認している動画だった。ところが、現実は

The People’s Republic of China Was Born in ChainsThe Communist Party calls 1949 a liberation. But China was far freer beforehand.BY FRANK DIKÖTTEROCTOBER 1, 2019,

違うんですね。

Just what was China liberated from in 1949? It wasn’t the Japanese, defeated four years earlier by the Allies, including the Nationalists and their leader, Chiang Kai-shek. It wasn’t colonialism—all the foreign concessions in the country had been dissolved, some as early as 1929. The Republic of China was a sovereign state and a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Nor was it tyranny. In 1912, when China became Asia’s first republic, it had an electorate of 40 million people, or 10 percent of the population, a level of popular representation not reached by Japan until 1928 and India until 1935. Participatory politics, despite many setbacks, continued to thrive over the following decades. When the National Assembly met in May 1948, upwards of 1,400 delegates from all parts of China adopted a constitution that contained an elaborate bill of rights.

By the time Mao died in 1976, living standards for the population were lower than in 1949.

After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the party became more determined than ever not to give up its monopoly on power. The separation of powers was explicitly ruled out by Deng, including the idea of free elections.

　70年前の１９４９年、中国に解放されたっていうけど、日本はその４年前に敗戦しているし、列強による植民地支配もそのときすでになかった。専制政治から解放されたわけでもない。中国は１９１２年にはアジア初の共和国になっていて１９４８年には、中国各地から１４００人の代表が集まり、人権を保障する憲法まで採択していた。

　毛沢東が死んだときには、１９７６年は１９４９年より生活水準は低かった。鄧小平になって経済改革がおきたが、政治的不自由は継続したんだ、と。

Gordon Chang: China's Communist Party Has Little To Celebrate

Yu Ying-shih, the famed China historian, once told me the Soviet Union lasted 70 years, "the life span of the revolutionary generation." Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College  notes Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party remained in power 71 years and the Nationalist Party held on for 73 years in Taiwan.

米国からも締め付けられて、中国は経済的に停滞、しかも、習近平は毛沢東流の独裁政治を目指すから、大躍進政策や文化革命に匹敵するような悲劇がまちうけているかもしれない。香港も収集がつかなくなっていている。　ソ連は７０年しか続かなかった。メキシコの革命政権は７１年、台湾の国民党は７３年。革命世代の寿命というのはそんなものではないか、と。

ｔ