Great Minds Bring Change to China

By Lee Keun-yeop

I don't think I am a Sinologist. I entirely depend on my memory for the development of this column. Now the fever of the Beijing Summer Olympics is over.

Late last month, China's third manned spacecraft, Shenzhou-7, successfully finished its mission amid America's worst financial crisis after six years of war in Iraq in which the superpower can't claim victory yet over the tiny Mesopotamian state.

Sorry to say, I reflect on the pre-WWII China: the half colonized China, the meagerly paid labor forces, circus girls twisting their bodies like snakes for their daily bread, and the misery to which the majority of the populace was reduced.

I also remember the Chinese leaders at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 1949, the Great Leap Forward movement in the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. In those tumultuous days, who could imagine the China of today?

On my way home aboard an airliner some 15 years ago I randomly picked up a copy of Asiaweek. In it I saw a picture of Vietnam's late President Ho Chi Minh. In the caption Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai said, ``President Ho Chi Minh is politically more mature than I.'' Zhou's reverence of Ho goes back to 1921.

In 1921 a young Deng Xiaoping landed on French soil six months after Zhou. Both men worked at Renault auto shops. They got in contact with a political leader from Vietnam by the name of Nguyen Ai Quoc, which was one of a dozen alias of Ho Chi Minh.

Charles Penn writes, ``Long before Mao, Stalin, Gandhi and Nehru were heard of outside their orbits, Ho had become known to a wide European circle.''

In another page I saw a picture of the Chinese leaders at a conference. I found a man who I thought was sitting next to Mao Zedong and Zhou, who was standing. It was Deng. He was that short.

Maybe it was at the conference that Deng boldly opposed Mao's idea of expanding the people's communes. Deng maintained that socialism was no match for capitalism in order to cope with imperialism.

His theory came from deep human understanding, with his famous remark, ``Whether it is a white cat or a black cat, what does it matter so long as it catches mice.''

In the last stages of the Chinese civil war in Zhejiang Province in 1949, Deng's corps were surrounded by the Kuomintang (Nationalist) army. Deng with an unwavering will and extraordinary tactics managed to break the encirclement and sent back the army to Taiwan. He came to enjoy Mao's trust as such.

I know that American media still disapprove of the 1989 Tiananmen incident. Once again Deng's unwavering will to keep law and order drove him to crack down on the student revolt. Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew later said, ``If Deng Xiaoping had not cracked down on the students riot then, China today would be divided into more than five states.''

In 1948 Dr. Chen San Jiang, a nuclear physicist, returned to China from France. He is regarded as the father of China's nuclear bomb development. In 1956, Dr. Chen Xu San, an authority in aerodynamics, came to China from the United States. He is regarded as the father of China's missile development.

In 1970 Dr. Yang Chen Ning, a Nobel prize winner in theoretical physics and professor at New York State University came to China. In the early 1990s I met Dr. Yang. I asked him what motivated him to go to China.

He humbly said, ``I missed my parents in mainland China. I wanted to see them.'' Then a man accompanying him thrust into my hand a small piece of paper, on which was written ``patriotism'' in Chinese letters. Yes, Chinese patriotism made them go to China.

The above-mentioned scholars had enjoyed a higher standard of living and high esteem in Western countries. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller invited Dr. Yang to Stoney Brooke campus from the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute with annual pay of $30,000, an amount more than his own income at the time.

Yet, these scholars quit the secure lives and went to their fatherland, which was undergoing great difficulties.

We have witnessed amazing economic progress and unbelievable changes in China during the last three decades of experimentation, innovation and an opening policy. Time seems to be on the side of China.

Yesterday's miserable ``circus girls" brought today's gold medals in gymnastics and diving. I imagined Deng's image looming over the Bird's Nest stadium Beijing. During the Shenzhou 7's orbital flight I saw Dr. Chen Xu San taking rest in bed at his advanced age on CCTV 4.

I don't think it is the Red Guards from the Sichuan province but great minds with vision and insight that have brought great change to China. His name is Deng Xiaoping. I do not think that it would be White Guards from somewhere but a great mind with insight and vision that will bring changes to America.

I don't hesitate to say it is Barack Obama, with his ``Changes we can truly believe in.''

The United States under the Bush administration went into a unilateral war against Iraq without U.N. authorization, which America often took advantage of as in the case of the Vietnam War. Against U.S. illegitimate action, the rest of the world has a few options to take advantage of to deter U.S. expansionism. The recent U.S. financial crisis could be one of them.

February 10 this year in Springfield, Illinois, Sen. Obama expressed his desire to restore the essential decency of American people by putting an end to the Iraq War.

The Democratic presidential candidate's ``restoring the essential decency of the American people'' is the ``first principle'' in philosophic terms. We need great minds, not Red Guards nor White Guards.

Dr. Lee Keun-yeop taught philosophy concerning education at Yonsei University, Seoul. He is a Vietnamologist and a founding member of the Korean Association for East Europe and Balkan Studies. He is a regular contributor to The Korea Times. He can be reached at kylee300110@hanmail.net.