It takes me a while to realise that: I hate my cousin. But it takes me years to say this out loud to my friends and eventually to confess it to my parents.

When I use the word « hate », I mean I don’t wish anything best to this person. It may sound mental, but it’s a kind of feeling that if her life’s successful, it would prove my life’s wrong. Perhaps this is my most deeply rooted bias.

But now, I summon up curage to recognise this fact that: I don’t like her.

I’m sharing my story, because I want you to have a glimpse on what’s real Chinese family like. As Tolstoy said, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. My unhappy family represents one type of Chinese characteristic unhappiness : the ideological conflict.

I always think in my mind that I wouldn’t dislike her that much if she hadn’t worked for the Chinese communist party. I would be more tolerant to her if she hadn’t believed and defended the propaganda made up by that totalitarian regime. In normal life, she would just be a boring person in my eyes, not my type, that’s all. She doesn’t worth my attention at all.

But due to the fact that we’re family, my father and her mother forced us to be looked like close sisters. She took it granted to meddle in my life since I never speak up for myself in that depressive Chinese feudalistic family culture. I was abused by the violence in the name of « for your own good » since the moment I didn’t even have a memory. [When you’re dragged into a war you’re not prepared, you’re the underdog at the start.If you never realise it’s a war you need to fight for your life, you’re already devoured.] For your own good, repeat this phrase to your Chinese friend, they’ll explain to you why. It took me almost ten years to get out of this shit, it’s too traumatising to recall, so I save my words on this side point.

My real point is as follows:

Well, to understand family ideological conflict, I have to give you a crash course on Chinese working system. When I say, someone works for the Chinese communist party, I mean he is either working for public institution or state-owned enterprise. Public institution means jurisdiction, administration, execution plus army, state-owned enterprise is literally how the name tells. One thing different from your understanding of SOE in China is that one major task for those state companies is political task. And employee in state enterprise could all of a sudden be sent to work for public institution, they use the jargon « borrow », like I was borrowed from this unit to that unit because as a whole it’s communist system. That’s why you see CEO of one enterprise overnight become a minister, that can happen in China. If you read the book Red Roulette by Desmond Shum published in 2021, you’ll know how this system functions at the highest level.

So my cousin works in one district level SOE, her mother works in the same district-level public institution, her father works in national level SOE. That’s in my eyes a family 100% work for Chinese Communist Party.

There are some features that you can tell them apart from common Chinese.

1. They use Huawei
2. They call Xijinping « Xi DaDa »
3. They watch CCTV everyday
4. They check XUEXIQiangguo Application as a daily basis as they have quota on it (episode 16 if you wanna get more info)
5. Often time, they prefer to speak dialect than mandarin
6. They are basically xenophobe, a chauvinist inside
7. They believe foreign force theory

I’ve been mean to read this book for a long time, but due to the censorship in China and busy life, I’ve never had the chance. Then this year, I stumbled across this book when my office was planning to move place and clearing the bookshelf, a colleague from Russia handed this book to me, said « it’s a really nice one, do you wanna keep it ?» Do you see, every elements in the scene is interesting.

The reading is intriguing and the ideas inspiring. I feel inclined to agree on the point that the world’s civilizations are going to head for a unification, as I am a Chinese, it’s probably conveyed in my DNA as ancient memory loaded by repeated trials and success. Sometimes, I felt the author is quite cynical and pessimistic as typical historian in my stereotype. However, one thing I am sure is that Mr. Harari’s major area is definitely not Chinese civilisation because I can tell his narration is accurate but text-book like, which means he’s not so into it, therefore the telling is flat.

Hereby, somehow, I just wanna fill this gap as a Chinese reader, who finished reading the original text, and who has been living in modern China for over 30 years. I’m just a common higher education graduate, and I just feel I have broader perspective to offer on the issue he’s discussing in the book. And I’m please to be rectified by any intellectual who’s specialised in this area.

But again, I haven’t seen any recognised-Chinese hold kinda optimistic view in my knowledge. So I made my step as nobody, but simply a Chinese myself.

My writing was triggered by this paragraph in the book:

Thus European right-wing parties which oppose muslim immigration usually take care to avoid racial terminology.Instead, they tend to argue that western culture, as it has evolved in Europe, is characterised by democratic values, tolerance, and gender quality, whereas Muslin culture, which evolved in the middle east, is characterised by hierarchical politics, fanaticism, and misogyny.

It may sound out of thin air, but I get my following idea from what I’ve just read.

I think, the biggest difference between China and the rest of the world is that China is not a religious country. Most Chinese will feel comfortable to say to your face« I don’t believe in God, I’m atheist » not only because of the short ruling of Communist Party of China over 70 years, moreover, before communist, before Qing Dynasty, before Ming Dynasty, over the 3000 year imperial ruling, we worship « heaven » which is not a human-like God, it’s natural law.

We wish the mother nature always be our side, let us go with the wind. That’s why you hear a lot of Chinese wish good luck every year. Luck, « yun » . We beg the heaven when there is drought or flood because we thought we did sth wrong and mother nature was angry. We wanna the luck back, we wanna it be our side. See we’re actually very of scientific respect at the burgeoning era.

Do you think China will become democracy?Recently, more than one asked me this question. By answering them, I find my own belief as well. But before answering this question, I need make it clear for someone who bought the saying that China is democratic. I don’t know how far away you live, or how stupid you are. But I use my Chinese nationality and my 30 years life swear to God, there is no such thing as democracy in current china since the establishment of the Chinese government by Chinese communist party. It’s in a state quo better than North Korea, but worse than Russia, and right this moment closing to Russia, period.

One thing interesting is that all the people who asked me the question are young in their 20s. They are the Z generation in Europe and I’m the millennia from mainland China, and surprisingly, we get along very-well. And recently I got some feedback and I just realised that I’m probably a unique Chinese. Unique in the way of my thinking, which surprised a lot of my foreign friends. But I promise you I’m not the only one. It’s my chance that I become the representative to talk to you. And it’s your chance as well to hear the voice of the new generation of Chinese rising for sure because we outnumber the old generation in China in terms of energy, intelligence, experience, and life span.

I found a lot of you western people really has truly limited experience or zero experience on China. You really don’t know us, American might be better, but the channel of your way to know China already biased you a lot. Because most of your Channel were led by Communist party whether you noticed it or not.