Asia Times reports on General Liu Yazhou’s and Professor Hu Xingdou’s call for political reform. General Liu’s words that the secret of America’s success is “its long-surviving rule of law and the [democratic] system behind it” have become a recent hot topic of discussion.
Liu’s prediction is contained in an article in the latest issue of the Phoenix Weekly, a publication of the pro-Beijing Phoenix TV based in Hong Kong. Perhaps because of the boldness of Liu’s remarks on such a sensitive topic, the article was published with an Editor’s Note that it was based on an exclusive interview with Liu and published without him seeing the final version.
The article starts with Liu’s harsh criticisms of “money worship” prevailing in China. Liu says that now the whole Chinese nation, from top to bottom, worships the strength of money while neglecting soft power such as culture and ideology. “Having more money does not mean the increase of soft power … A nation that worships the strength of money is a backward and foolish one, both in terms of its internal governance and international expansion,” Liu said.
[…] Without democracy, it is impossible for China to continue on a long-lasting upward trajectory, Liu said. “A system is bound to fall, if it fails to let its citizens breathe freely and enable them to maximally realize their creativity, and if it fails to send those to the leadership who can best represent this system and the people.”
Blogger Yang Hengjun writes his personal thoughts on China’s drive westward on his blog, translated by China Media Project:
Just to be clear, please note that for General Liu to employ such words in a discussion of military strategy and a westward push is beyond reproach. I’m simply seizing on this as an opportunity, because I want to talk a bit about our country’s mode of development, about my own perspective on our country and its people, and about the strange circle from which we seem unable, as a collective nation capable of “gathering forces to achieve great things”, to find any escape.
