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March 15, 2009Chinese Sphere: Rubber Stamp and Baseball
The Chinese government wrapped up its annual dual legislative sessions last week with 97.4% of the 2,898 representatives voting their approval for Premier Wen Jiabao’s work report that set an economic growth rate for 2009 of 8%. Although largely seen as rubber stamp parliaments, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has in recent years tried to play up their credentials as the voices of the people in response to citizens’ desires to have a greater say in public affairs. In the Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China’s leading commercial newspapers, an op-ed written by a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law criticizes the sub-optimal quality of the briefings given by government leaders. From these criticisms, one can get an idea of what these legislative sessions can be like:
1. Briefings focus on accomplishments foremost, then problems. Talk of accomplishments take up at least half of the time or more and avoid urgent, real-world issues that need to be resolved. …2. Paucity in thought, tedium in language. New political ideals proposed by the ruling party and the government are not further explored. Instead, briefings mechanically repeat the contents of the official press, turning working meetings into empty propaganda sessions. …
3. Repetitive speech, twisted logic. A briefing that can be done in half an hour often ends up taking two to three hours to complete. Because the briefing is devoid of any real content, the speaker must resort to employing repetition, meaningless words, and twisted logic. It is as if a briefing’s level of importance is related to its length. …
4. Extremely irresponsible secretaries. Leaders are busy people and some of their speeches need to be written by their secretaries. This is all understandable. However, judging by the text of their briefings, we can clearly see that some secretaries are not only irresponsible, but are flagrantly so. Some briefings are repetitions of past reports. Some are probably copied and pasted together on a computer. There are some reports that have tens of thousands of words, but only 3-4,000 of them are of any use.
Furthermore, these briefings all bear the name of government leaders or organizations. These types of reports are printed out and passed out to everyone for “study.” Isn’t this absurd and a disgrace to the leadership? Shouldn’t this kind of secretary be replaced?
In baseball-crazy Taiwan, fans were reeling last week after their national team’s 4-1 loss in the World Baseball Classic (WBC). With a past history of placing decently in the Olympics and other international baseball competitions, this defeat at the hands of their cross-Strait neighbor is especially humiliating because the Chinese government only started focusing on baseball a few years ago. This was not only Taiwan’s second straight loss to China following the Beijing Olympics, but it also made them the first team to be forced out of contention for the WBC championship.
An editorial in the Apple Daily, one of the highest circulating papers in Taiwan, states:
It would not be surprising if Taiwan lost to Japan or Korea, but to lose to China was a big surprise and disappointment, because we have already long recognized that Japan and Korea are stronger than us, and we have already long lost our resolve and will to beat them. Without the will to defeat stronger teams, we will lose to weaker ones, especially now that China is not the dabbler of the past. It is like the high jump – if we want to scale 1.8 meters, our goal should be to scale 2 meters. If we want to defeat China, than our goal should be to defeat Korea. If we want to defeat Korea, our goal should be to beat Japan. How can a team that was slapped together and lacking any chemistry hope to defeat one that is well-trained and disciplined?Taiwan’s baseball team is like the latter-Qing Dynasty’s Eight Banner Army -- its glory is a thing of the past. Its might and power has also faded. Taiwanese baseball has long been weakened by gambling, game-fixing, alcoholism, internal struggles, greed, sex, and organized crime. Players that grow up in this kind of culture are undisciplined, lackadaisical in training, and weak in their resolve to win.
From my own recent stint in the Taiwanese military, I would say that the island’s baseball travails could serve as an appropriate metaphor for its current cross-Strait situation.
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