My Take | Why are Westerners so keen on calling China a colonial power?
- In a case of projecting for most Westerners, imperialism is the worst historical version of themselves with all their genocides, exploitation, slavery, racism, criminalities, wars and occupations
Contemporary China has generated the most amount of wealth in the shortest period of time for more people than any country or empire in human history. I believe this is a statistical fact. However, to what extent the Chinese communist leaders can take credit for the achievement since the country’s economic openings in the late 1970s is in dispute.
Nevertheless, the communists must have done something right. Otherwise, the country would have been in ruin, rather than being the largest or second-largest economy in the world, depending on how you measure it.
On a much smaller scale and within a much longer time frame, though some Brits and pro-British Hongkongers never fail to remind us at every opportunity, Hong Kong went from being “a fishing village” and “a barren rock” to becoming one of the world’s richest cities during the 156 years of colonial rule.
To what extent the British imperialists could take credit, I think it’s fair to say, is or should be a matter of dispute. However, they surely had done something right, otherwise the city would have been in ruin, rather than being so rich.
(At this point, someone will inevitably jump up and scream according to what I call the Mao law of internet debate about China: “Don’t you know how many millions and millions of Chinese people Mao Zedong killed?” Sure, but remind me how many millions and millions of colonised people the British imperialists killed and enslaved in the names of their kings and queens? Let’s just skip all that for now.)