Get Ready for Takeoff
By Tom Plate
Beverly Hills, Calif. ― Imagine that you felt you were in a closet most of your life, with the door only slightly ajar, a big heavy foot on the other side keeping it from swinging open and letting you escape to see what the rest of the world was like.
And then suddenly the big oaf on the other side of the door keels over, the door swings open and there it is, arrayed before you, in all its intimidating glory: the real world. This is one's sense of China today, the opening day of her first-ever Olympics.
The big oaf, of course, was Mao Tse-tung, who died in 1976. Ever since his demise, the sum total of China's good news perceptively exceeded the sum total of her bad news: Several hundred million people have escaped from the closed door of poverty, the Chinese economy has soared and important social, political and media changes are underway.
But genetics die hard, and China, in effect, gyrates around a contradictory double helix.
The first helix is the Communist coding, the second is the capitalist economic reforms.
The first starts with Mao. Much like Fidel Castro, as it were, he was the necessary revolutionary spark that fired up the new nation; but, also like Fidel, he proved that revolutionaries do not make (to say the least) the best nation-builders.
You won't find many Chinese on the mainland who will say this openly, but in their hearts they must know it is true. China, representing more than a fifth of the planet's population, was held back for too long, and the culprits, official Chinese history notwithstanding, were not just the Western imperialists.
Having emerged from the closet, the eyes of the Chinese were at first blinded by the sudden light. But over the years, oh so gradually, their eyes began to adjust to the insistent reality, and they started seeing things in focus and in better proportion. Basically, they were poor.
Before long, they started off-loading as much of the Communist economic system as they could without imperiling the Communist political state, and picked up as much of capitalist methodology as they could get away with without being arrested or declared counter-revolutionaries.
But even if their economic system began to reflect the instincts of Adam Smith, their political system was still impregnated with Mao's genes. This odd-couple combination has created both synergies and tensions.
On the plus side, it has driven China's development forward at breakneck speed. Another way of thinking about China today is to envision the world's most populated economy as one huge Boeing 747 at takeoff. It lumbers at first, then struggles like an old mule to gain sufficient ground speed as the prelude to liftoff.
But the Beijing control tower has cleared the runway. Nothing and no one will be in the way. There will be no impediments on the road to development. Get on the plane, get rich, or get out of the way.
Once finally airborne, China, the aircraft, must at all times maintain a minimum ground speed. Every seat is taken; the luggage compartment is bloated to overflowing, and the crew is at times testy because the plane is so packed. No matter: the plane must keep going forward.
For the Beijing control tower, this means whatever instructions it issues to the captain, the one order that cannot be given is to slow down. Should China slow down, it will crash.
This is the China you will be seeing on your TV screens starting this weekend. It's up in the air, it's flying high, it cannot slow down, but if it does ― look out below. It's her shining moment ― out of the political closet, into the sunlight, now for all to see.
By and large, you'll probably only be able to see what she wants you to see: the agreeable over the disagreeable; the winners over the losers; and the grand new boulevards over the cracks in the surface streets.
But all countries put their best foot forward for this hoopla event, even those with a darker side to hide. After all, South Korea itself, now a democracy, was at the tail end of decades of military dictatorship when it put on the 1988 Olympics. Before that you had the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and, notoriously, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
This is a big moment on the international stage not just for China but Asia at large. We can only hope that the airliner proceeds apace without encountering an Olympic-size turbulence. It will be quite a noisy crash and letdown if it does.
Veteran journalist Tom Plate, the founder of the UCLA's Asia Media and Asia Pacific Arts online magazines, is now on sabbatical to write a book on Asia. He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com.