Political scientist specialised in peace and conflict research. Professor and Head of the Global Changes Center at the Faculty of Philosophy, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia – and TFF Associate
Here I am, back from China—or more precisely, back from another planet, another dimension of space and time. For days, and even now as I write these words, I remind myself not to fall under the influence of those first powerful impressions from my initial encounter with such a magnificent country.
China is too vast and too complex to grasp or understand through reading or just one visit. Even during my stay, impressions were rushing in so fast that I thought I was gathering material for many columns. Now, knowing that my next column coincides with the October 7th—the beginning of the bloody drama that turned into a genocide, which the sacred watches with eyes wide shut—I must shorten the story.
Those who have read Pearl S. Buck will recall that the title of this column is borrowed from her first book about China (a family saga influenced by the intertwining of Eastern and Western influences). But the China of Pearl S. Buck and the China of today are countries difficult to connect. Today’s China deserves a completely different approach and a deep respect for all that it has achieved through the strength and will of its hardworking people.
It’s difficult to capture everything in one column, as the numerous impressions are still fermenting. I’ll try to briefly summarize the most important things I observed and learned.
Let me start from the end: as we were leaving, a Chinese colleague saw us off in front of the hotel. Everyone thanked him for the flawless international conference on peace in the 21st century (with representatives from over 80 countries and 140 institutions). I personally told him that the most touching thing I would take with me was the respect and care for the elderly, which I saw at every turn (perhaps because I’m ageing, and it has become a personal preoccupation of mine). His response was: “You see, we are communists, and the name of our ideology comes from ‘commune’ (community). The community is what matters to every individual. It is in the community that young people grow up and are raised in a way that they later give back to the elderly, and thus the cycle continues.”
I almost cried again (yes, there were moments there when I found myself in a deep emotional state, as if memories were returning from times when we, too, respected and loved ourselves and the world). Then I consoled myself: I’m a communist too, even though my commune (Yugoslavia) was destroyed, and now they promise me individualism. The point is that China is building a society/community with the belief that the community is the foundation from which good and happy people grow—not the other way around. The West believes in the individual and his primacy; perhaps the virtuous and brave will fight to create a community, but the individual remains an individual.
This strongest impression of mine comes from visiting residential complexes (both urban and rural), where you can see how closely knit people are. Next to kindergartens and schoolyards, there are facilities for the elderly to socialize and spend their day. I haven’t seen such lively and smiling faces in decades. In one room, they were making decorative items (the Chinese aesthetic and love for beauty is indescribable), in another they were practicing calligraphy, in a third they were singing, the fourth housed a library, and in the fifth, they were playing cards, and so on.
The Chinese cities I visited (three “smaller” ones, each with a population equivalent to five Macedonias) have enormous boulevards and skyscrapers similar to those in Dubai, yet they feel like a collection of small botanical gardens. If you thought Switzerland or Germany were the cleanest places in the world, then you haven’t been to China. Every single detail is interwoven with care for nature and respect for aesthetics. People are always smiling and ready to help, even if you’re a stranger (as if you’ve fallen from Mars).
That attitude of modesty, unobtrusiveness, kindness, and calmness both surprises and “unsettles” you, especially if you come from a disorganized country where everyone is a wolf to everyone else, where hate and distrust run deep.
The conference addressed the serious questions of global peace, but through their actions, the Chinese hosts showed us how they understand and cultivate inner, or as we might say, positive peace: through hard work, development, care for one another, opportunities for youth, and respect for the elderly. This country has found a magical formula blending ancient civilizations, philosophies (of peace), and architecture with cutting-edge technology that is truly mind-blowing.
As a leftist, the second (and most important) thing that moved me was their attitude toward the recent past, which they celebrate as a 75-year struggle to build a modern Chinese state. There’s no hiding the fact that they started from dire poverty, hunger, underdevelopment, and post-war suffering. On the contrary, each new achievement, successful company, or factory (where workers only oversee hyper-modern robotic machines) highlights the period of hard work. It’s difficult to understand such respect for labor if you live in a country where the “cool” and successful people are outlaws, illiterates, scammers, and smugglers.
As someone older, it felt as if I could hear the echoes of an old song from “that time when we were China (or America)”: Long Live Labor (from the original “da nam živi, živi rad”). Companies in China also serve as small museums, where people are reminded daily of where they started, where they have arrived, and what they are striving toward.
There is a wealthy upper class in China—it’s not a classless society—but the fact that in less than 30 years, they have created a middle class and prosperity for over 400 million people (roughly the entire population of the EU, rich and poor included) is an achievement in itself. Yet, China doesn’t impose its wisdom, doesn’t blackmail, and doesn’t demand that others adopt its model. However, I read a slogan somewhere: “We hold the key to realizing the Chinese dream.” I understood that as a counterpart to the story, we’re still spinning about the “American dream”: you know, from those comic books where we learned about Disney’s Uncle Scrooge, who became a millionaire from a quarter—and a miser who revelled in his success.
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I’ve reached the end of the column, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I saw and experienced. China is a country that deserves to be studied, yet we lack strategic or cultural centres to research the multipolar world, other civilizations, and their worldviews. We behave like experimental mice, convinced that the Western cage is the ultimate happiness. And China? Even if we choose to ignore it, China is already in another time dimension—one we don’t even know how to dream about.
What I do know, however, is that we have friends there, with smiling faces and open hands for cooperation. All those phrases about “malign and malicious influences” that fact-checkers will inevitably slap onto my column are, in fact, deeply malicious—toward China, which is being wrongfully cast as an enemy.
On a personal level, my encounter with China broke open the hardened shell around my heart and memories of a bygone era, one where we too were good people, who desired peace at home and abroad, who knew what poverty was, who fought for a better tomorrow, and who stood in solidarity with Palestine and the oppressed, rather than siding with imperialists. This encounter with communist China took me back decades and reopened a reservoir of emotions for a country that once marched forward. A country that once was—and now is no more. On its remains, we are building a selfish world based on idleness, with no respect for the young or the old, and least for ourselves.
Happy Birthday, PR China! You have arrived “where no one has gone before”, to borrow a phrase from the famous series Star Trek, which takes place in the 24th century—a time with no wars, no hunger, no money, and no poverty of spirit or body.
