Chinese Ironies

In 1897, Liang Ch'ao a thoughtful student of the barbarians (oops, I mean the non-Chinese) wrote an article called Chinese Progress in which he declared : 'I know that in less than a hundred years, all five continents will be under the rule of the people, and our China will not be able to continue unchanged ... as for the future, all will become democracies'. Perhaps Ch'ao was a bit too abrupt for in between came Chairman Mao who, on the one hand, had an avowed hostility towards things Western, and who, on the other hand, adopted Marxism, in its origins a very Western doctrine. And now finally Ch'ao's words have come true, though perhaps in not quite the way that he would have imagined. Sitting in Beijing, you can log on to the internet, and talk to your friend in Toronto about Jacques Derrida while drinking Coke. And most importantly, you can wake up the next morning and go for your lecture at Beijing's National Research Institute for Postmodern Studies.