Well, in addition to it being Proud-Not-To-Be-American Day for the denizens of The Great White North, today is also the 90th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party.
Yes, 90th. Is that all?? I had kind of assumed that it must be the centenary we were about to endure.
So, it took me rather by surprise that it's only been 90 years. I mean, what were they waiting for? Over 70 years after Marx and Engels first published their Communist Manifesto; nearly a decade after Lenin and Stalin got their act together to found the Russian Party, and getting on for four years after they fomented a successful revolution to take control of their country; more than two years after the creation of the Communist International, and after the landmark efflorescence of radical protest in China that was the May 4th Movement. The Chinese founders were dragging their feet a bit, if you ask me.
And they've remained significantly behind the historical curve all along. They didn't assume control of the government here until two decades after Stalin had begun to expose the hopeless impracticalities of the Communist ideal; and they're continuing now to pay lip-service to this discredited dogma two decades after the final collapse of the Soviet empire.
If I didn't 'feel the love' about the Founding of the Nation party a couple of years ago, I'm certainly not going to be celebrating the birth of this misguided and oppressive political system. It is my profoundest wish that the CCP will not see its 100th birthday. (I'm sure that wish is going to be disappointed - but let's all keep our fingers crossed, anyway.)
And how will this momentous event be celebrated here? Will there be fireworks and streamers and 'spontaneous jollity' out on the streets? I very much doubt it. There'll be some more-than-usually-DULL political speeches on TV all weekend; and maybe a craptacular or two in the evenings. And then it will all be forgotten. Thank heavens.
Well, except that we ought not to be forgetting. We ought to be reminding ourselves about this every day, and constantly asking ourselves, WHY are these guys still here?
3 comments:
They sure make some great sculptures and stage performances though, you have to admit! This is why I believe North Korea should open itself up to the world solely as a giant tourist attraction. Change nothing about it, apart from the nasty bits of course, so we can all go there and have a jolly but dumbfounded laugh at the whole spectacle.
Well, the DPRK is fairly 'open' to tourism - except that you can only enter the country via China or Russia, and Americans (and journalists, and a few other blacklisted groups) sometimes find it difficult to obtain visas.
I think Chinese tourists form the overwhelming majority of visitors to the DPRK. Some just go for the gambling or the golf (the largest foreigner hotel in Pyongyang has a Chinese-run casino in the basement), but I think for many of them it's like a Cultural Revolution theme park. The DPRK is just like China was 40 or 50-odd years ago; modern Chinese are glad to be so vividly reminded of how much their country has moved on in the last few decades.
Many aspects of the place are profoundly depressing. But the people are tremendously kind and friendly, and the 'Mass Games' displays are indeed a jaw-dropping spectacle.
I went a few years ago, and am considering another visit. Apart from anything else, it's such a wonderful change of pace from China - no pollution, no motorised traffic! Very, very restful.
I was kind of implying more of an exercise showing up how socialism doesn't work through ridicule but I guess if you've lived in China for as long as you have it could be considered a rest. I expect if I so much as pointed and chuckled a bit they'd throw me out on my ear.
I used to want to go myself but because of this reason you just get the same 'holiday' as everyone else, which I can see countless times on many an online video (I have a fair few of them archived). It would be a dream for me to escape their Big Brother glare and just wander about freely, seeing both the craziness of the whole damn place but also the sadness that goes alongside it. If I was going to find any kind of rest there it would be staring down the endless stretches of highway they have encroached on all sides by endless scrub-land and to feel so utterly alone in the most isolated place on the Earth. And go visit the lonesome girl in their deserted service-station and play table tennis, that would be nice too.
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