The Uber driver taking me to the railway station just now was a typical “China fan” from Pakistan that was deeply misled by the news on the “Chinese achievements”. He didn’t believe that the society and economy in Hong Kong had been crashed by the authoritarian laws imposed by the Chinese Communist Party; he believed that the economic crash in Hong Kong was manipulated by the British. He didn’t associate the crumbling economy in Mainland China to the anti-intellectual economic policies of the Communist Party either; preposterously, he believed that China’s economy was running on the “5D” while other economies were running on “3D”. I explicitly questioned whether he had ever lived in China. Then he listed all the “achievements” of China overtaking the West and his “evidence” was obviously overheard from the media, which nowadays always exaggerate the power and strength of China for diverse purposes.
I told him that I just completed my PhD in engineering and I was fully aware that all “great Chinese engineering projects” relied on technologies from the UK, the US and Japan. He argued with recalcitrance, “the British got their gunpowder technology by stealing it from China and the West stole their technologies from China, India etc. If the Chinese learn the technologies from the West, why should that be blamed?”
By saying this, I could see that his logic was utterly disconnected from the modern circumstances about which he had been arguing with me on the way. I told him that the Chinese products directly bought the most critical components and products from the US and Japan and assemble them into a Chinese product, advertising it as a “Chinese technology”; most top Chinese businesses would have gone bankruptcy without governmental subsidies because they spent most budgets on purchasing technologies and innovations from their US counterparts. No solid innovation, no effective profits.
Then the driver questioned why those Chinese corporations and the Chinese government still had so much money to let them continually purchase technologies from the West. I told him that ordinary Chinese people, except for the elites in the Communist Party, don’t have social welfare at all; a simple surgery at a public hospital can crash a middle-class family.
I also mentioned that the leaders of the Communist Party had all got their families and money immigrated to London, New York and Tokyo. If a country had been such “powerful”, its leaders shouldn’t have moved their families and assets to their rivals’ lands. I told him, “there are more families of the Communist Party elites just around you than in China! On the contrary, about 1 billion Chinese people earn £200 or less a month.”
To this point, he knew that the Russian leaders and the Kim’s family in the NK did the same to their families. However, he was confused or curious: since the Communist Party incited hatred against the West, why did they move their families and money to the West? He thought this mentality was “irrational” because the Communist Party should have seen that the money of the Russian oligarchies was seized by the UK and the US.
I explained to him that the elites in the Communist Party, though they want privileges and power in China, still prefer a democratic society where their freedom and assets are legally protected. The tax paid by the Chinese people were looted by these elites instead of returning to the public as social welfare, these Communist Party oligarchies hence had enough money to buy houses in Mayfair district as a means for immigration.
At this point, his facial expression indicated that he was overwhelmed by the information displaying a more realistic China as I told him. I said that about 200 people are unemployed or on the edge of unemployment; even PhD holders like me would struggle in job hunting in China, and the reason is that China can’t get the latest technologies from the West any more. He said he liked Xi. I told him that Xi wants the Chinese people to hate the West and believe the West has collapsed; meanwhile he wants technologies and investments from the West because China’s economy is crumbling without these; his families are living in the UK and the US.
The driver asked why he and his entourages were doing this self-contradiction. I exposited that he wants the Chinese people to stop admiring the democracy, freedom and products from the West; as most Chinese people were raised above the poverty line in the past 30 years, there have been more and more pursuits for freedom, citizen rights and better living standards among the public. As more people want the products imported from the West for a better quality and fundamental rights like the Western society, Xi and the Communist Party felt an imminent threat to their privileges in this country. As such, they want to keep Chinese people “stupid” and “boycotting” the democratic ideologies from the West; simultaneously, themselves still aim to enjoy their luxurious, liberal life in the West.
I clarified that it was not an idiosyncrasy of a communist regime like the one in China; it is a general practice among all dictatorships. For instance, the Iranian supreme leader has his daughter moved to the US; other Iranian leaders all have their families living in the West and their money saved in the West; Kim Jung En and his sister studied and lived in Switzerland and still have families living in Europe.
When I talked about this point, I could see that he started jumping out of the bubbles of his “China mirage”, which were formed by the information exaggerating China’s development and power on the Internet and the mainstream media.
Before I jumped off his car for my train, I mentioned Singapore and Taiwan with him. He had been to Singapore and highly praised the level of societal management there, “you can see how far this Chinese island has gone!” He admired Taiwan as well, but thought it has not developed “that far” like Singapore did under the Lee Kuan Yew administration. I reminded him that Lee visited Taiwan numerous times to learn how the Taiwanese government managed Taiwan, particularly under Chiang Ching-kuo’s administration.
I summarized the conversation, “Believe me, China without the Communist Party will be much more developed than it is today. When the businesses and their assets are protected by law, they will create amazing stuff like the Taiwanese and Singaporean have done!” We shook our hands and he wished me good luck.