Change of heart

Almost a quarter of a century ago, while researching my family history - research that culminated in the book Ancestors: 900 Years in the Life of a Chinese Family - I had the opportunity to meet an old revolutionary, Lu Dingyi. Before the Cultural Revolution, he was one of the most powerful men in China. The former head of the Propaganda Department, culture minister, vice-premier and Politburo member was a native of Wuxi , my ancestral hometown near Shanghai.

Like many communist leaders, Lu had his ups and downs. While in the Yanan communist base camp in the 1940s, Lu was close to Mao Zedong . He would also become one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution, only to be rehabilitated after Mao's death.

I met him on June 30, 1984. From him, I learned the history of Wuxi, where my family had lived for hundreds of years, as well as of early communist activities there, including those involving members of my clan who had joined the party.

For example, there was Qin Qi, a labour organiser and the most important of seven communists executed in Wuxi in 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek launched his massacre of communist in Shanghai. Qin's head was hung from the city wall as a warning to others not to join the communists. I do not know how we were related, as his name has been struck from the family genealogy.

At the end of our discussion of ancient history, I turned to modern politics and asked Lu how he thought China's political system might evolve. The Chinese government has always insisted that China is a unitary state, with all power concentrated in the central government. Local powers were all conferred by the centre.

But China, I thought, was too big a country to be governed as a unitary state. Never in history had more than a billion people ever been governed by one central government. With Deng Xiaoping having proposed the concept of 'one country, two systems', scholars were also discussing the ideas of a federation or even a confederation.

I mentioned that many scholars in the west were studying such concepts as federalism or a confederate system and asked Lu to what extent they could be applicable to China, especially for the resolution of such issues as Tibet , Xinjiang and Taiwan. 'Let them study,' he responded airily. 'We won't change.'