PERSONAL STATEMENT

“In the light of the fact that contemporary China is still split between mainland dictatorship and island democracy, as the incumbent leader of KMT (Nationalist Party) and prospective future president of Taiwan, how do you intend to “break the ice” from the current stymie of the cross-strait dialogue? Furthermore, with regard to the ultimate strategic doctrine of ROC (Republic of China) in terms of national security, are you in the position to emulate the CCP (Chinese Community Party) in the 1930s’ who carved out a safe haven within the Yanan Liberation Area＊, or the Shu Kingdom in the late Three Kingdom period (220-280 A.D.) who was obliged to resort to their last stronghold in the Southwest after a series of abortive Northern Expeditions initiated by the preeminent military strategist and statesman, Zhuge Liang※? If the KMT is still to inherit its precursor Dr. Sun Yat-sun and Mr. Chiang Kai-shek’s unfulfilled legacy, namely, the establishment of a united and democratic republic of China, shouldn’t KMT begin to reevaluate its current limitation in its membership enrollment and consider recruitments of compatriots outside of Taiwan’s civil jurisdiction? Lastly, if KMT still affirms its national identity as “Chinese” and aspires to liberate 1.3 billion fellow nationals, how does it manage to carry out its incremental modus operandi against CCP in a world of realpolitik?”

＊ CCP’s historical maneuver in the 1930s’ after the epic journey, the Long March, to the Yanan Liberation Area has won them both time and strength during the Japanese occupation of China. They’re to reinvigorate themselves with both manpower and political influence in the entire course of their sojourn and eventually take over whole China with sweeping dynamism in the following decade.
※ The Shu Kingdom in the late Three Kingdom period was a celebrated and mighty potentate in both Chinese history and national consciousness. Nevertheless, being one of the tripartite contenders and failed to unite the country, they subsequently succumbed to the Northern invaders of Wei kingdom thereby expired their short-lived legacy.

----------------------------------------------------------

Such is the question I have kindly imposed upon the generous nature of Mr. Ma Ying-jeou on March 20th, 2006 in the hall of NYU Silver Center, where a jubilant crowd of Chinese youths greeted and engaged with a rosy-cheeked and sunny spirited Mr. Ma, who attended the event, “a Rendezvous of Ma Ying-jeou and Youth of New York” as part of his tour of U.S. I had brought up two historic inferences in the hope that Mr. Ma might relate current status quo (a term he stresses too often) with past experiences of disparate consequences. However, having overlooked the essentials of the query, Mr. Ma merely hedged about a response to the last portion of the question which was embued with a dash of naivete and sentimentalism. In the face of an increasingly obstreperous and arbitrary CCP who only dictates based on the principle of Machtpolitik, all of Mr. Ma’s good will and intention might’ve appeared a bit lacklustered, and the last resort and his central theme of campeign slogan are compled to nothing other than the fulfillment of a modus vivendi (a term he also stresses too often).

I have all the good wishes for Mr. Ma, and frankly find him to be the most sutiable candidate for the next presidency of ROC. However, this, is only in the context of current affair, and neither Mr. Ma nor any other statesman in China right now is titanic enough to alter the course of our collective destiny, to wit, to make a difference! This is why we hear and read from the media that an accentuation and reiteration of maintaining the current status quo has been canonized as our de facto code of conduct; thus all the inertia, all the indifference, all the halfheartedness, all the banality of lip-service that is rampant at this stage of our time. Being a young man and a contrarian of my days and peers, I naturally feel that it is a duty as well as a moral obligation to which I am abided by and ardently aspired to in order to ameliorate our common lot and help China elevate to a new status of nationhood.

Being a Chinese in the 21th century is profoundly mind-boggling, cumbersome, paradoxical, abstruse, sorrowful, grandiose, etc, etc. This dilemma has been a central obsession to me ever since I came to the U.S. at the age of twelve, and it continue haunts me which oftentimes had led me ruminating on such an ontological conundrum for hours to come. I am sensative, attentive, and inquisitive to history and world events in the global arena not only because I wish to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the world at large, but it is also my aspiration that I shall one day contribute in the Cause of man’s progression.

As to the effect for such solemn goal, I have rather taken an alternative route to arrive at this eschatological query, but in the virtue of 21th century post-modern pluralism and that all roads lead to Rome, it is plausibly still, profitable. For twenty-one years I was under an impression that an artist qua aritst is what’s to become of me. It wasn’t until my senior year in college in the department of Fine Arts, painting for years up until my age of adulthood that an transcendental cognition starts to slowly formulate in my head. It didn’t come to me as in an Epiphony, but such gradualism of deliberation does finally reach to a comprehensive conclusion, to wit, the essence of an artist is ingenuity and creativity, and one no longer needs canvas and brush if one is to come to such reckoning.

Since then I started to pick my pen instead of the brush to continue this artistic gestation. Over the course of a few years’ span, I have written quite a substential amount of essays and treatises in both English and Chinese as a means to expound my ideals regarding China’s future and her position in the world. The latest job I have undertaken is a deliberate act of will to further my sophistication in this field, namely, to work at a local Chinese radio station as an assistant director, whose main occupation included general administration, news anchor, DJ, and host of on-air talk. It is a great venue and opportunity in which I am obliged to keep updated with daily current events and extract magisterial opinion from the Chinese World Journal and New York Times as part of my morning routine, and then elucidating them in concision to the general Chinese community so they’ll be informed with quality news broadcasting and weighty subject matter to ponder upon. My experience there has offered me a first-hand insight on the general moral landscape among the Chinese diaspora community, whose opinion serves as an epitome of the Chinese mass at large. I must admit my poignant political position and avant-garde stance on China has often times entails vehement critcism and outright antagonism. In my weekly two-hour program titled, Vanguard Report, I have devised it primarily for the Cause of a Free China by inviting artists, musicials, poets, writers, and political activists to speak on my show admist the backdrop and interim of cutting-edge and alternative music from East and West. The show has received mixed response from the audience but with a consensus that the host is the neo-enfant terrible of China in the 21th century who is unrelenting in his cause for Freedom and unyielding in his stance against bigotry and autocracy.

This is why I find myself standing there in the hall of NYU Silver Center addressing Mr. Ma with such a solipsistic diction all because of my adamant conviction. A few months before I had abortively tried to apply for membership in the KMT (thus brought me to question KMT’s structural limitation); Twelve years before that my family was compeled to relocate to the U.S. in a spur of rush because my artist-father had befriended the U.S. diplomats in Shanghai for quite an extensive period, and their intimate artistic association seems to be trespassing the line of “national security” in the eyes of CCP intelligence bureau. Just a few years before that, The world witnessed the calamity of the Tiananmen Square Insident on June 4th, 1989; just a decade earlier, China under Deng Xiaoping’s revisionist policy had opened her door after thirty years of Mao’s apocalyptical reign of terror whose catastrophic legacy is to reach an exponential proportion that we still deeply felt today; The story goes on and on in my personal memory as well as our collective consciousness, and I am awefully troubled by the past and present historical events of grave consequences. It used to creep up on my canvas in a cynical, pessimistic, or utterly desperate manner. Now I would like to address this unresolved issue head-on.

It is a popular wisdom that people say China is now at a crossroad. Some sees oportunity, some optimism, some skepticism, and so on. However, I see China makes its cross via me. I see myself as the bridge between China and the West, the Oriental and the Occidental; the ancient and the modern; I see an underlying purpose for myself to arrive at the New World at the age of twelve, who have acquired the intrinsic values of both civilizations, languages, culture and art. As I have come to the the age of maturity in such a timely manner with the advent of 21th century Huntingtonian New World Order, I am aspired to foster democratic transformation of China; successful reconciliation between the Taiwan Strait; closer ties and cooperation between China and the West; proper resolution of appeals from the minorities such as the Tibetans, Uigurs, and Mongolians. Most importantly, I am aspired to witness a spiritual sublimation of the Chinese nation as a whole and see the Chinese civilization embark into the threshold of a new epoch. It is my wish to see a Fukuyama’s dialectic history of China to end in the not so distant future.