Drawing on a dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Eitaro Ogawa in WiLL magazine, this article examines China’s uniqueness, its failure to realize democracy, the imperial examination system, the post-Xinhai election, and the role of communism as a unifying “religion.”

June 8, 2020
China’s uniqueness may become a major theme for humanity as a whole……while, on the other hand, it is also the country where democracy will be realized last of all.
This is extremely interesting.
The monthly magazines I refer to are must-reading not only for the Japanese people, but for people all over the world.
After all, although they are filled with genuine articles like this one, they cost only 950 yen.
The following is a continuation of a special dialogue between Masayuki Takayama and Eitaro Ogawa, published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine WiLL under the title, “Designate China, the War-Criminal Nation of the Wuhan Virus, as a Terrorist State.”
Masayuki Takayama is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
Eitaro Ogawa, for a book in which he criticized the Asahi Shimbun in the most natural and justified way, was, unbelievably, sued by the Asahi Shimbun, which is supposed to be an organ of speech, for a large amount of damages, in other words, subjected to a harassment lawsuit.
Even while suffering great financial loss, he has continued to write essays without flinching in the slightest.
He is one of the prides among graduates of the Faculty of Letters at Osaka University.
Democracy in China.
Ogawa
China’s uniqueness may become a major theme for humanity as a whole.
The political scientist Francis Fukuyama has argued that it was China, 2,000 years ago, that first realized a meritocratic bureaucracy, rather than hereditary rule based on blood relations.
On the other hand, it is also the country where democracy will be realized last of all.
This is extremely interesting.
Takayama
The Manchu Qing dynasty lost the Sino-Japanese War and realized that the imperial examination system it had long maintained was the problem.
Since they were Manchus, such a tradition did not matter to them.
They immediately sent students abroad, telling them to learn from Japan, and treated the achievements of study in Japan as equivalent to passing the imperial examinations.
They even abolished the imperial examination system itself.
The person who carried this out was Empress Dowager Cixi, who is unpopular among the Han Chinese.
The Han Chinese who came to know civilization through those who had studied in Japan learned democracy and compassion.
In fact, after the Xinhai Revolution, they even held a general election.
Among the 400 million people, voting rights were given to male taxpayers aged 21 or over who had graduated from elementary school.
The number of voters who cast ballots was 43 million.
The first step toward parliamentary democracy was shown, but there was no second election.
Sun Yat-sen based himself in Guangdong, the Beiyang warlords split into three factions, and they began killing one another.
The reason, compassion, and democracy taught by the Japanese disappeared in just two years.
Perhaps the Han Chinese are not suited to progress, or to what one might call self-improvement.
Ogawa
Since then, democracy has never been realized in mainland China, and it remains under dictatorial rule even now.
Takayama
There is something about the Chinese that resembles the Arabs.
Originally, the Arabs lived in tribal societies and were unable to take unified collective action.
Because they were fragmented, they were easily defeated by the Persians and others.
Then the Prophet Muhammad appeared, and a unity of Islam beyond tribal divisions was born.
At once, they even defeated Persia, which had ruled the Middle East for more than ten centuries.
However, the Islamic world expanded too far, lost its identity as a collective body, and in the end returned to tribal divisions and became weak again.
China is the same.
Because its various peoples are fragmented, they cannot join forces and fight together.
Then there appeared a “religion” comparable to Islam, namely communism, and it united the people.
But when wealthy classes have increased this much, as with Alibaba and the like, the legitimacy of the “religion” called communism begins to waver.
I think China may follow the same path as the Arabs.
This article continues.