Multiculturalism, China, Child, and the Severed Vocal Cords.
In a recent discussion in this space, a commenter offered the opinion that I must be a supporter of multiculturalism, on the grounds that I recently adopted a daughter from Canton. Perhaps his point was that I ought to be a supporter, or that I was a supporter without realizing it, or somesuch. In my imagination, I heard the gentleman’s remark in that ‘Gotcha!’ tone of voice which is the sum and summit of what passes for reasoned discourse among the Left. (I admit the gentleman bears no responsibility for my imagination, and I make no claim that my imagination is not overactive, for otherwise I would be writing whodunits and not space opera.)
I need not say that I did not regard the act of adopting a Chinese daughter, making her American and therefore no longer Chinese, to be an act that reflects to the glory of the Middle Kingdom. Now that she is safely out of reach of the Chinese officials, I need keep my motive secret no longer: I want her to grow up and be governor of California! (I would say President, but then there is that pesky native-birth requirement).
Yes, I had other motives also, some personal, some religious, and so on. Rather than reciting them, let me quote from an article from the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/opinion/19iht-edmirsky.html?_r=1
Beijing does not engage in arguments. It simply bullies to discourage others. Zhang Zhixin, a young Chinese woman, was executed in 1975 for “opposing the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao, opposing Mao Zedong thought, opposing the revolutionary proletarian line and piling offense upon offense.” To ensure that Ms. Zhang could not cry out at her execution, her vocal cords were cut.
Mr. Liu’s indictment came on International Human Rights Day ….
Sadly, China now gets a free American pass on the abridgment of its fundamental human rights. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested that human rights must now take a back seat behind other more important considerations, and President Obama canceled a visit to the White House by the Dalai Lama after Beijing warned that it would imperil the president’s trip to China.
Liu Xiaobo remains clear-eyed. Before his latest arrest he observed, “In the game of ban and response to ban, the people’s space for expression increases millimeter by millimeter. The more the people advance, the more the authorities retreat…."
My comment: Liu Xiaobo was one of the names people were speculating might win the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, for his valiant activism in favor of freedom, democracy, and reform in China. Instead President Obama won the once-prestigious award. I was in China when the award was announced. The English-language newspaper headline read that the grant of the Nobel Peace Prize award to Obama was not a joke, but was sober fact.
One of the more eye-opening conversations I had in China was with a young man (who spoke better English than most of my neighbors) talking of his marriage and his daughter. When he went to apply for the marriage license, he was surprised to learn that he had to get permission from a wrinkled old "Granny" in the next office. Going into the office, Granny showed him the document where he was to swear loyalty to the China One-Child policy. The penalties for breaking faith with the One-Child policy included the loss of free medical care for himself and his family, and being fired from his government job.
He and his wife lived, as most urban Chinese at the time did, separately, he in the men’s dorm and she in the woman’s dorm, and met for their love, comfort, and family life on the weekends.
When time came to have a child, he and his wife applied, in due course, for permission. Permission was denied on the grounds that the child quota for that year for that reason was used up. He was to wait and apply next year. He asked "Granny" what he should do in the meanwhile. He was advised to send his wife home to her mother, so he would not be tempted to have a child out of turn.
The state was basically telling him when and under what conditions he could consummate his marriage with his wife. I had read about such things in science fiction stories, dystopias by Orwell and Huxley, or stories about Martians or Klendathu who live in hives and live as the leaders dictate, but I had never actually seen it for real, and on a personal level.
I saw the orphanage from which my daughter came. Do not think of some nightmarish place out of a Dickens tale: it was clean, well-appointed, and the staff seemed competent and caring. And yet it was the saddest place I ever saw in my admittedly sheltered life. I put my head into a room with eighteen little cribs in it, and there were the little ones, some of them asleep. One child had his foot sticking out through the crib bars, and no mother to tuck it back in. Another boy, perhaps autistic, was crying and rocking himself back and forth.
No one was around, my escort was elsewhere, so I slipped into the room and tucked the dangling foot back in, and picked up the crying boy in my arms to comfort and shush him. How I wish I could have done more.
You see, not all of these children were orphaned because the parents were dead or missing. Many of them were abandoned, especially the girls, or children with birth defects. There is no love to spare in China for the crippled, or the members of the weaker sex. If you only have one child, and he (and this time I mean the masculine ‘he’ not the generic ‘he’) must carry on your family name, all your hopes rest on him and nowhere else.
And he will have no aunts, no uncles, no brothers and sisters, no cousins, because his parents were both single children also. The extended family which plays so central a role in Chinese history, culture, and philosophy, the respect owed elder brothers and so on: all that is ended.
(The inhumanity of the One-Child policy confirmed my previous conclusion that the Catholic prohibition against contraception (until the 1930’s, it was a universally Christian prohibition, reaching back to the 4th Century) no matter what its drawbacks, has at least this one longterm merit: no practicing Catholic country could fall into the China trap. Without contraception it is not feasible to have the state to dictate the intimate relations of man and wife. I know of those who prize contraception because it allows (so the argument goes) for the freedom of women. Be that as it may, the women in Red China are not free. I wonder if contraception, like abortion, is more often used as a tool to allow a man greater power over his woman than nature allows, than used to free women from misogynistic dominion. But this topic must be left for another day.)
A friend once asked me why, out of all the millions of Chinese inhabiting the most populous nation on Earth, no one could be found to adopt these children? Instead it was couples from Spain, from America, and from Denmark that I saw there. I could think of no good answer to my friends’ question.
Someone not so friendly once asked me why we Republican are all racists, and why we Christians are all hypocrites. I could think of no polite response to my non-friend’s non-question, so I held my peace.
I should mention that the group of parents I traveled with in China, each and every one, was a Christian. (No surprise there: We were organized through a charity called Christian World Adoption). Each one I talked to, if they were not Conservatives, did a passing good impersonation of one.
I should also mention the group I was with were all parents adopting from the ‘special needs’ list, adopting child who either had a disability, a birth defect, or were too old to be put up for adoption through normal channels. So we were basically there to get the children that no one wanted. Even among unwanted orphans there are those who are unwanted.
When I showed my daughter for her first family Christmas back here in the states that scene from Rankin and Bass’ RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER where the winged lion gathers on a lonely island those misfit toys who will never have a home, she had an odd look on her face.
She is not unwanted now, my daughter.
Let me conclude by mentioning that the Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen was in the news when I returned stateside, discussing policies that are darling among the Left, or at least treated as worthy of discussion. More than one of the speakers said that the best way to prevent catastrophic man-caused global warming was to enforce worldwide a one-child policy as presently holds sway in China.
Perhaps now that their junk science has been publicly revealed to be the fraud some thinkers from the first had named it, we can assume the motive of the Warmers to move us all into the Red Chinese way of life is multiculturalism, the belief that no culture and no way of life differs in any significant respect from any other.
(I should hasten to add that Communism is a European invention as Marx was a German Jew, and that the true culture of China, seeped in the traditions of Confucius, Lao Tzu, and (imported from India) Buddha, is and always has been the enemy of the Leftwing revolutionary movement, hence the Cultural Revolution et cetera.)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
