By Kim Heung-sook
Scores of Chinese living in Korea got together in a small church in Seoul last Sunday. The meeting wasn't for a premature celebration of the Double Ten Day or the Xinhai Revolution anniversary that fell on Friday, but a prayer session for Park Kyong-jo, a Korean maritime police inspector believed to have been killed by Chinese fishermen who had been fishing in Korean waters 10 days before.
``I can't tell how sorry I am. I feel terrible, especially because this incident comes on the heels of the melamine scandal,'' a participant said, referring to the nearly worldwide scare about melamine-contaminated baby formula and snacks produced and sold by Chinese companies. The attendants held a moment of silence and collected some 1.6 million won in consolation money to be delivered to the bereaved family as a token of their regret and sympathy.
One of life's absurdities is that innocent people sometimes have to feel the pang of conscience for wrongs they didn't commit. In many cases, including this one, it is the race and nationality that force the innocent to share the guilty feeling. In other occasions, it is gender, age, school or religious connections, whatever ties that bind them with the wrongdoers.
As I appreciated the Chinese residents' efforts to console Park's family and Koreans in general, I came to think about numerous other Chinese who may feel the same way about the melamine contamination and similar happenings that have marred the image of their fatherland recently. Then I realized that, owing to the goodwill of the blameless majority, I could hope for a great China despite her latest problems.
Coincidentally, I received a copy of ``Red Road,'' a book on the ``Long March'' of the Red Army of 1934 from its author, Prof. Sonn Hochul of Sogang University in Seoul. The political scientist abstains from making any judgment on the present-day China, only focusing on his own long march of 13,800 kilometers that largely covered the 10,000-kilometer Long March. However, he can't keep me from finding sentences in his book that back my hopes for China.
``The Long March is the key to understanding modern history of China in that it has made possible everything from the People's Republic of China system and China's development of today, to 'Pax Sinica' which is highly likely to come. China has introduced the market economy and is growing rapidly, but continues to claim that it is 'a socialist state with Chinese characteristics.' Only through the Long March, can we comprehend why China, even after adopting the market economy, holds to socialism instead of capitalism, or why China maintains the single-party rule by Communists,'' Sonn says.
The professor says he was deeply impressed by the Chinese socialism he found in ``Dialogue with 800 Million People'' authored by the noted journalist-scholar Li Young-hee in 1976. ``I was charmed by the socialist experiments of China in which the people form the core, not like the bureaucratic socialism of the Soviet Union,'' Sonn writes.
He quotes Li's argument that socialism is more inefficient than capitalism as people are motivated by capitalistic profit-making, that there is no reason why doctors won't work harder to save patients from pain than making more money, and that the spirit of Chinese socialism is creating such a society. Li later confessed that he had underestimated the selfish nature of humans and viewed that harmonizing human nature and socialist ideals was crucial, according to Sonn.
In my opinion, China has yet to give up the crucial task Li mentioned; China still reveres Mao Zedong, the leader of the 1934 march for all his failures, including the 1958 ``Great Leap Forward'' aimed at turning the agrarian China into an industrialized country, and the 1966 ``Cultural Revolution'' to eradicate the liberal bourgeoisie.
With the 74th anniversary of the start of the Long March approaching, it may be the right time for China to remember the spirit of the 368-day pilgrimage and the great ideals from which their nation was born in 1949. Such a remembrance can't come at a better time as the capitalist world is staggering amid a financial tsunami.
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