China’s recent military exercises over Taiwan have inspired a volley of ‘cannonball counting’ articles by the Western media. Dare I say another round of them? But, what if their weapons were invisible? How could you quantify the unseen? Indeed, their most dangerous weapon remains hidden… It is China’s victim mentality. This is the notion that, because China has been oppressed by other nations for centuries, it may now avenge itself on the international stage – in whatever manner it may deem necessary for restoring justice and global position.
A victim mentality justifies the mercilessness and brutality of its adherents, because their evil oppressors cease to be human in their eyes. As sub-humans, these oppressors are no longer seen to have rights. Furthermore, as those who define themselves as harshly and unjustly oppressed, the victims cease to recognise a moral obligation to conduct themselves in a manner that is either humane or civil.
Yet, two wrongs cannot make a right. Self-defence is one thing, revenge is another.
Today, China harbours a potent and persuasive victim mentality. Since 1991, the Communist Party has mandated, from kindergarten onwards, the teaching of a questionable version of Chinese history that encourages an oppressed psychology and a desire for revenge, as payback for China’s humiliation at the hands of other nations over the 189 years prior to the Communist Party’s inception in 1949. This worldview encourages the Chinese nation to salve their shame by bullying other countries as their scapegoats. Add the fact that China is a military giant, an economic powerhouse, and an aggressor in international affairs, and you’ve got stiff liquor.
In his 2012 book No Enemies, No Hatred, the now-deceased 2008 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo asserted that China’s supremacist ideology is built on an historical self-image of vanity arising from the conviction that China once ruled all under heaven, a concept known as Tianxia. Additionally, many Chinese people are driven by a hidden fear of their own inferiority – one that can only be quenched by the submission of the rest of the world. Xiaobo noted that feelings of inferiority and blame are producing pent-up hatred and the worship of violence in the service of autocratic goals. But, Westerners only talk about China’s tangible threats. We never talk about its most dangerous weapon – its intangible power, the dangerous ideas that it plants into the minds of its citizens.
Since 1994, the Chinese government has decreed that an understanding of its national victim mentality ideology becomes a requirement for passing school and university year levels. It was taught to every student. It still is. Additionally, it was declared that public servants, the military, and teachers, amongst other occupations, would be required to regularly attend refresher courses on this subject. They still are.
What’s the biggest problem with all of this?
The problem is that ideas residing in the minds of people are not completely controllable. Once they are ‘out’, the state loses a certain amount of influence over what people do with them. It is very difficult to manipulate directly and precisely what people ultimately decide to think, feel, and believe in the hidden and inaccessible vault of their hearts. For some, the unaccountable rage of a victim mentality may only grow to the size of a pot plant. For others, it will become a whole forest.
Where have we seen this dangerous mix of victim mentality and power in the recent past?
Napoleon and Hitler headed up the greatest expansionist threats witnessed in the modern era. Furthermore, the supporters of each were fuelled by a victim mentality. Napoleon’s supporters burned with a hatred of the conservatives of France, whom they regarded as the morally subhuman despots of the common man. Hitler’s were maddened by a fanatical suspicion of the Jews, whom they accused of doing everything from robbing the German economy blind to causing the nation’s defeat in the first world war.
Fast forward to 2050. China has not yet achieved its pledge of 2049 world dominance, to the degree that many of its people demand. Meanwhile, innumerable silent yet fertile victim mentality resentments have been growing in the minds of most of its citizens for over 25 years. Perhaps underground organisations are forming to discuss how to employ ‘swifter’ methods to attain China’s desperately desired position in the world: the one they’ve toiled and strained for during such a long struggle, the one they were repeatedly promised, the one they trained their children to sacrifice their working lives for. Perhaps there is a tinder box atmosphere in the country, as hundreds of millions secretly gnash their teeth at the chance to snatch up this proximate nirvana. Perhaps the Chinese skies are charged with the dry expectancy of an imminent lightning bolt of explosive impulsiveness, such that their famous ‘infinite supply of Chinese patience’ becomes finally ready to crack open.
All that it would take is just one extremist ‘pied piper’ who could unite these salivators into a tight mob; who could run just a step ahead of them as he lead them ever onwards and into a delusion that, by imperceptibly slight degrees, extended them further and further into brutality than they ever thought they would go; who could seem so controllable to his political puppet masters, yet turn on and overthrow them to put himself in charge. See Napoleon and Hitler.
Amongst a population that will approach two billion by 2050, is it utterly impossible that such a person could exist? Inconceivable? Dismissible?
Hardly.
Yet, despite all of this, we only talk of the tangible dangers. It may one day be too late to stop the powerful tide of revenge lust in the Middle Kingdom. Therefore, now is the time to attack, by written argument and political activism, the very idea of a morally unaccountable victim mentality, in all its forms and wherever it may exist, and to make sure that this message is ‘Voiced’ to as many as possible – even those in China.
