Hua Ren Joke

Someone sent me this joke:

My translation of this is:

Right now in Asia there are a few places where Chinese people are assembled,
these countries are:

Hong Kong...........: Where everything is allowed unless the law forbids it.

Singapore............: Where everything is forbidden unless the law allows it.

Taiwan.................: Where everything is allowed, including what the law forbids.

Mainland China....: Where everything is forbidden, including what the law allows.

Now starts my commentary and not anyone else's BEGIN

Of course, in old China there was never any law except what the Emperor declared. So this governing with laws is a new thing for Chinese, each of the above countries has its own way. The question is whether to be governed by law or by man.

Mainland China is now governed by the Communist Party and although there may be laws on the books, they don't matter if the Communist Party thinks otherwise. In this, Mainland China is similar to old China, they are now in the Communist Party Dynasty. Like the Emperors of old, what the Communist Party says is law. The current Emperor and Head of the Communist Party picks his successor to be the new Emperor and Head of the Communist Party. In old China, an Emperor may have many sons and he chose the one to be the new Emperor upon his death(It was not always the eldest). Similarly now, the Head of the Communist Party picks his successor and grooms him to be the next Emperor and Head of the Communist Party. Nowadays the Emperors of the current Communist Party Dynasty don't wait until they die before passing the position. (Mao Tse Tung is the exception, he held on to the very end as in the tradition of old China.)

So although Mainland China has laws, they are not as important as what the Emperor thinks. In many cases they are for show or economic niceities. Think of copyrights, freedom of expression, fair taxation, bribery, ... all have laws on the books but they mean nothing if not enforced.

Hong Kong was a British Colony for maybe 150 years and the British brough laws but the laws were mostly to promote trade/business. What else are colonies for? The Hong Kongese learned from the masters and anything to make a pound seems OK as long as there is no law against it.

Hong Kong reverted to China in 1999 and is slowly being absorbed.

Singapore is another one party state and another former British colony. The laws are for creating wealth and in more recent times to maintain the current one party state. In this sense, those in power have learned how to use laws for their own purposes. Justice, fairness, equality ... are just not their purposes.

We visited Singapore 15 years ago and at that time they were going to cane some teenages for graffiti. Chewing gum was illegal and you had to surrender it at the airport terminal! I remember they had just made wearing seat belts mandatory, our taxi driver drapped it across his shoulder for show but then refused to click it. Quiet rebellion.

Going back hundreds of years, Taiwan was China's colony and the purpose of colonies is to make money. So Taiwan's history during the Ming to Qing Dynasties reads like a wild wild west of uprisings, revolts, triads and intrigues. But with the surrender of Taiwan to Japan in 1895, Taiwan lived under a brutal but fair task master. There is sometimes a nostalgia for those old times.

When the Nationalists were routed from Mainland China in 1949 they took refuge on Taiwan. They brought with them all the corruption and terror that the Communists used against them to oust them from the mainland. Until the death of Chiang Kai-sek in 1975, Taiwan lived under Emperor Chiang in the old China mode. With his death, the Taiwanese made a gradual transition to a democratic state that they have now.

Because of it's recent history and governance by foreign forces, the Taiwanese attitude to government is to avoid it at all costs. So laws are massively not obeyed and therefore unenforceable. But you can't be a modern state without laws and Taiwan is moving(slowly) in that direction of enforcing laws for the good all.

END

(I'm not planning trips to China or Singapore.)