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From Mexicans to Chinese; from bilingualism to 'democracy'
wchao37  Updated: 2004-04-13 09:46

The Chinese government has made a grave mistake in its bilingual policy. We need to have serious discussions on the topic of the feasibility as well as the pros and cons of fostering bilingualism in China.

The U.S. experience with the Hispanics is something we can learn from.

The Americans are going towards a bilingual society willy-nilly as the words and actions of Clinton and Bush have suggested, and as the statistics of the explosive growth of the Mexican population have indicated. The Mexicans by and large do not identify themselves with mainstream Americans whether they were born inside or outside the United States.

Unlike the blacks who went to the American continent in the previous four hundred years as slaves, robbed of personal dignity and their original cultures in Western Africa, the Mexicans have maintained theirs and the Hispanic vote is crucial to the success of local politicians in pivotal states like California. What's more important is the fact that electoral votes from such states are essential for the nomination of national candidates from either party.

The population of Mexicans in America have reached a critical mass at which point politicians have to cater to their wishes and enact laws favoring their group if they want to be successful in their political campaigns, even if the enactment of such laws are not in the larger interest of mainstream Americans.

The granting of driver's licenses to illegal immigrants is such a case in point. Without such a license, an illegal immigrant will find it very difficult to find any decent job or even live normally in the Southwest. With the enactment of laws granting such licenses, illegals are encouraged to enter into those states bordering Mexico. That's how the Mexican population in America has expanded exponentially in the last five years.

It is a vicious cycle in which the more laws you enact favoring the Mexicans the more illegals will arrive; the more illegals arrive the worse shape the economy will be in because of back-breaking fiscal burdens in the education and health sectors.

The politicians have to do this in order to win an election. Yet the more these politicians win the more they have to give in to the special interests of the Mexican lobby. Sooner or later they will have a Mexican-born governor in a major state such as California. The legislation of more laws favoring the Latinos, including that of the use of Spanish in officialdom, will eventually come to pass.

It is not a matter of 'if' but rather one of 'when.' The whole situation will thus spiral down until the entire state will become a province of Mexico in the long run due to demographic changes alone.

The Mexicans are very united and they assist their own kind within their own ethnicity -- in contrast with the overseas Chinese who are rather disunited politically. You have groups from Mainland China, Taiwan Island, Hong Kong and even Southeast China such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos each speaking to its own members only and form groups which hardly ever talk to one another or co-coordinate their activities, let alone adopt a united political platform in dealing with issues affecting their common interests.

This is due to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding China's modern semi-colonial history, with particular areas falling under the influence of different foreigners (Brits in Hong Kong and Japanese in Taiwan) and hence emphasizing entirely different sets of values and priorities.

That's why the calls from the Chinese mainland government to the Taiwanese residents to work for the unification of China have essentially fallen on deaf ears.

That's why the admonition from the Chinese government to the Hong Kong residents to ratify Article 23 of the Basic Law against sedition was proactively rejected by a big demonstration of Hongkong Chinese organized and financed by the International Black Hand.

That's why Yie Jiu Tiao (Marshall Yie Jianying's Nine Proposals in 1979) and subsequent calls by Premier Zhou Enlai's widow Deng Yuncao to the Taiwan compatriots had gone essentially unheeded although the both the proposals and the motivation behind them were entirely propitious and provident.

That's why Chen Suibian's votes have actually increased in absolute numbers compared to the last election even though he had made a mess of the island's economy and wasted too much money buying mothballed American ships and advanced weapons instead of providing for the welfare of Taiwan's people..

And that's why the ordinary people's political will can easily be manipulated through bestowing special favors. For example, by catering to the special interests and needs of the Kejia group of residents who had traditionally been in the KMT's camp, Chen was able to wrestle a large number of those votes from these Kejia residents who are ignorant of what their votes meant for the whole of the Chinese nation, and can only see their own interests five inches away.

Finally, the impotence of the KMT cannot be over-emphasized. From an absolute majority controlling all reins of power on the island, it has foolishly listened to its American advisors who persuaded them to go for 'democratic elections.'

Through the betrayal of the KMT's interests by such people as James Soong who at the critical moment following Chiang Jinguo's death supported the Hanjian Lee Tenghui to be the next leader on the island, the KMT lost its control over the military and all the party's assets.

These bookworms who actually believed that there is such a thing as democracy in the world didn't really understand politics, which is a game only possessors of the dirtiest minds can win as the present instance with the Chen-Lu shooting fabrication is showing us.

It is time for China to step back from the edge of the precipice by forsaking its priority on English in its educative processes and to stop the rise of bilingualism in its track, and to reject Western democracy outright as a possible form of government in our nation's future.

The above content represents the view of the author only.
 
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