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Way back when we were little guerillas in college, we
learned that the best way to fill up space in a term paper
was to use lots of direct quotes. They require very little
thinking. Plus they usually entail lots of blank lines in
between each quote and citation. Good space fillers. Well,
here they are again for an encore presentation.
"Keeping foreigners out of certain business areas,
playing them off against one another, threatening to deny
business opportunities to those whose governments harass
Beijing--none of these are new policies of the Chinese
government. Rather, they are part of highly evolved and
generally successful traditions."
-Burnstein & de Keijzer, Big Dragon: China's
Future
"It's astonishing that today's Chinese, heirs to one
of the world's greatest civilizations, should find
themselves embracing a hollow form of nationalism--one
devoid of ideals and inspiring principles--that is little
more than racist passion"
-Lucian Pye, Professor Emeritus, MIT
"Western hostile forces have not for a moment
abandoned their plot to 'Westernize' and divide our
country."
-Jiang Zemin, President, P.R. China
"Outsiders should be wary of imagining they can have
much influence over a place like China. That is a mistake
that Americans seem especially prone to make."
-Newsweek magazine
"That which works we'll call socialism, and that which
fails we'll call capitalism."
"Black cat, white cat, so long as it catches
mice."
-Deng Xiao Ping
"Wild drinking, disturbance, gambling, drug-taking,
lecherous acts, prostitution, obscene and superstitious
painting, calligraphy, and videotape recordings
disseminating and projecting are strictly forbidden.
Guns, bullets, explosives, poisonous and radiative
items (including inflammable chemical items) are not allowed
inside the hotel.
The use of electric stoves, irons, ovens and other
electronic equipment is not allowed. Copymachines, telex,
and other office facilities can not be installed without
approval.
Raising birds, poultry, and livestock is forbidden
within the room."
-The Wall Street Journal quoting signs seen in a
hotel in western China
'If we want to progress and not regress, we must have
new ideas of our own all the time, or at least new ideas
from the outside. With all these scruples, misgivings, and
petty rules, this horror of offending our ancestors, this
dread of behaving like barbarians, this perpetual sense of
treading on thin ice, this constant fear and trembling, how
can we ever do anything worthwhile?"
-Lu Hsun (1881-1936), Novelist
"When my wife was teaching in Taiwan, whenever she
started lecturing to her students about morality or personal
values, they would immediately raise a protest: 'We don't
want to learn about how to live, we want to learn how to get
high marks on our examinations.' But this is nothing
compared to children on the Chinese mainland, who grow up
learning how to fight with each other, subject each other to
psychological torture in 'struggle' sessions, cheat and
swindle, and betray their parents and friends. Is this the
purpose of an education? I tremble to think what will happen
when this generation grows up."
"Chinese people are notorious for quarreling and
squabbling among themselves. A Japanese person all by
himself is no better than a pig, but three Japanese together
are as awesome as a dragon. The Japanese people's ability to
cooperate makes them almost invincible, and in neither
commerce or war can the Chinese ever dream of competing with
them."
"Chinese people's inability to cooperate, and their
predilection for bickering among themselves, are
deep-rooted, harmful traits. These behavior patterns cannot
be traced to any inherent flaws in the Chinese national
character, but rather are symptoms of an infection spread by
the virus of traditional Chinese culture, that causes us to
act in ways we can neither control nor conceal."
"Thus it is often said that Chinese are addicted to
bragging, boasting, lying, equivocating, and worst of all,
slandering others. For years Chinese have been going on
about the supreme greatness of China, and making extravagant
claims about how Chinese culture can make the world a better
place to live in. But because these daydreams never come
true, all of this is pure rubbish."
"Because Chinese people are incapable of independent
thought, they have developed bad taste and poor judgment:
they muddle the distinctions between right and wrong; and
they have no permanent standards of behavior. I repeat: we
must examine Chinese culture if we want to explain what is
wrong with China today."
"Chinese people go overboard with their patriotism, to
the point where even the most trivial act is a matter of
patriotism. As a result of 'loving their country' so much,
they have literally loved China to death. They ought to stop
loving China so much. China doesn't need that much love. Or
if Chinese have some energy left over, they ought to spend
it loving themselves, making themselves better people. True
patriotism begins with loving and respecting
yourself."
"It is this constant suspicion of other people's
motives that has made Chinese people as spineless as a 'bowl
of sand', to borrow a phrase from Sun Yat-sen."
-Bo Yang, The Ugly Chinaman And The Crisis Of
Chinese Culture
"A great people, the most numerous people on earth, a
race in which the patient, laborious and industrious
capacity of the individual has, for thousands of years,
compensated for the collective lack of cohesion and method,
and has constructed a very unique and very profound
civilization;...a state older than history, always bent on
independence, constantly striving toward centralization,
instinctively withdrawn into itself and disdainful of
foreigners, but aware and proud, unchangeable,
perpetual--such is eternal China."
-Charles De Gaulle
"Those who deal with China should realize that today
it is a frontier country, looking into the future while
remaining rooted in the past. In any frontier society,
nothing is certain and everything is possible."
-Franz Schurmann, World Business
"I always say to our ministers: 'Go less to karaoke
and learn more history and literature.'"
-Jiang Zemin, President, P.R. China
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