Yesterday was the 70^th anniversary of the starting of the month-long Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking/Nanjing, the Capital City of the Republic of China at that time. The massacre had an estimated death toll of around 300,000 people, some surrendered soldiers, most civilians, children and women making a very significant part of the total. This atrocity, as always, never ceases its tremendous power to arouse a very strong indignant feeling among most Chinese, few exceptions. No matter how reasonable or cool you might be, going through all those documents and photos only serves to reinforce this strong feeling of rage!

Rage, a very strong feeling of anger, usually reveals someone’s very strong, sometimes an uncontrollable desire to take revenge on people who have ignited this largely unhealthy state of mind. So, on days like yesterday, you would read huge pieces of comments from ordinary Chinese on the internet, mostly in their extreme language, to lash out at the Japanese, indiscriminately, as if the Japanese are only one person, one mind, and forever the same mentality, past and present. Anyone who ever tries to make a fact-of-matter analysis would surely be inviting personal attack, mostly character attack. So, my feeling is that most Chinese internet surfers are in no way a gathering of sensible minds.

As a Chinese, I am by no means for the atrocity. It’s simply an act against humanity. We all should unite to let our voices heard, to let those in power feel ‘people power’, as Al Gore put it when he was relating the on-going global environmental movement, to tell the world that we don’t ever want this happen to us anymore. Voices can and should be heard in more than one way. In a democratic society, you can vote to express your feelings; you can write an essay to elaborate your opinion; and you can also set up a citizens’ group to actually start doing something to make a difference…… In China, all that simply does not exist. So, here I would like to take advantage of this little piece of "the land of freedom" to make my points on this historic event.

Anyone who have ever read Iris Chang’s (张纯如) book “The Rape of Nanking” would surely be shocked by the horrible atrocity the Japanese military did in late 1937, when the Japanese army started a campaign against the Chinese military. After series of fierce battle, the Japanese finally took control of Nanking. Because of the unexpected heavy casualties suffered during the campaign, they started to take revenge on civilians. That’s how the massacre got started, and the final situation and the sufferings people of Nanking had experienced were the major focus of the book. What I want to do here is to ask a question: how come such an atrocity took place in the first place?!

As you all know, over the past 2000 years, except the later 300 years or so, China, as a country or a political entity, never really fell too much behind other countries or civilizations. In fact, it maintained some sort of a lead in quite a significant portion of that time span. When it comes to agricultural civilization, China indeed made its contribution. Yet, China’s ‘prosperity’ has a very distinctive or peculiar ‘characteristics’ ---- a periodic ‘prosperity’. Nothing accidental, in fact, these ‘prosperities’ corresponded very well to the changes of who was on the throne, namely, which family name became the most prominent “SURNAME” of the country, or in a more realistic sense, the big family called China. At the early stages of the founding of each of these big families, the founders knew very well how tough it was to build a stable, prosperous, and harmonious family. Usually they worked very hard, treated people well...... During these early stages of each Dynasty, relatively open-minded and enlightened emperors, coupled with the wisdom of many talented individuals, helped to build a peaceful, prosperous stable ‘family country’. Because of its sheer size, nobody really dare or want to challenge this giant when it largely solved its own problems. As a consequence, external environment was generally pretty stable too.

Usually 2, 3, sometimes, 4 & 5 generations later, the one in power, having no idea of what ‘hardship’ or ‘difficulty’ was, either became an idiot himself or absolutely an incapable ruler. If he was an idiot, then hard time and sufferings of common people began, for the simple reason that his power was never challenged, checked or counter-balanced. They usually lived an extremely extravagant life style, unimaginably wasteful public spending, and of course, very high and intolerable tax burden surely followed. The lives of the most majority started to turn into hell, while most officials, using their unchecked power, stepped up suppressing peasants, collecting their own wealth with whatever means available to them. With all these, one day those peasants decided that there was no way to carry on their lives anymore. Living only meant a few more months or years of sufferings, picking up weapons or uprising against the ‘family boss’ might mean to die sooner, but it might also represent a chance to be the boss himself later. This very simple logic can also be applied to all “Dynasties” throughout Chinese history. “History repeats itself” become a “universal law” in China!

Before the industrial revolution, this self-fulfilling dynasty reshuffle "mechanism" seemed to work ok, although by no means a well running system at all. Industrial revolution changed all that, especially after the “Opium War” in 1840, when merely 2000 British soldiers easily crushed the “Chinese Army”, largely armed with crude weapons which passed from generation to generation for more than a thousand years. Facing such a humiliating defeat, the government or the family boss simply refused to accept the fact, and still called these apparently more sophisticated civilization as “夷技”, a derogative term used to describe the technology developed by non-Chinese, and continued to cheat themselves, as well as their ‘subjects’ that only Chinese civilization was the best. Never bother to be modest and learn from others. The consequence was all that we have already known: repeated humiliation, repeated defeats, Japanese invasion… and the follow-up occupation of then the most developed part of China served only to strike another heavy blow to the stupid, and also very much a Big-Ego-Minded regime. How come could all these have happened? Simple enough! Because the “family boss” controlled everything! Ordinary people are nothing but some more personal belongings of the “Big Boss”. You say of the right of freedom, the right to life, or an inborn right to pursue happiness? Never heard of it!

So, my point is that we shouldn’t blame too much on the Japanese, especially ordinary Japanese people living in today’s generally free, well-educated, and also, probably, much more enlightened society. To prevent history from repeating itself again in the future, the most urgent thing for the government to do now is to carry out meaningful reform of the system. Without an upside-down overhaul of this ugly backward political system, Chinese people will never be able to live an honorable life. And the Japanese might never invade China anymore, willingly or unwillingly, present or future, Chinese people, in my view, are still the second class “citizens” of the world, for the simple reason that they do not enjoy the basic human rights many other peoples have been enjoying for many years already. Another bad thing about all these "official" commemorating of the Rape of Nanking is that it might give this government another chance to serve its own purposes: misleading the mass one more time, diverting attention from those really serious domestic problems: economic inequality, institutional prejudices, crimes, environmental pollution, education and health problems as well as the urgently-needed very basic social security network….. When China one day does abandon its notorious political system, not only will Chinese people go through a reborn process or resurrection, the whole world would have a better and safer place to live in too. Only then can we proclaim that the long sufferings of Chinese people have finally come to an end!