Miao, Uyghur and Han Chinese get rich altogether

By keith K C Hui on February 10, 2021 • ( 0 )

An out-of-poverty Miao Chinese village in Guizhou has been modernized with new roads, houses, electricity facilities, and electronic connections. Photos from ChinaNews.comA out-of-poverty Miao Chinese village in Guizhou has been modernized with new roads, houses, electricity facilities, and electronic connections. Photos from ChinaNews.net.au

“Kung Hei Fat Choy!” (恭喜發財 spoken in Hong Kong Cantonese, i.e. Congratulations on making lots of money!) is the most common greeting during the Lunar New Year days among the Chinese people.

China’s poverty alleviation mission was declared accomplished in late 2020. The final 832 poverty-stricken counties have been delisted but measures will be taken to prevent them from “falling back into the clutches of destitution … focusing on those with unstable income or hovering just above the poverty line …” (Xinhua News 2020 Nov 26)

One of the major keys to this achievement is to educate the ethnic minorities comprehensively and structurally so as to learn, according to each person’s attributes, how to acquire the necessary skills and new technologies.

While the culture of the Han Chinese emphasizes hardworking on scoring good results at examinations one after one, and then excel (文承武尉 become prime minister if studying arts, become chief commander if studying martial), some ethnic minorities do not have this thought. The change, once it is determined to do so, involves generational socialization and school education.

The Miao group in Guizhou is a sample of success. New roads and new houses were built for the villagers. New schools with residential halls were set up so that children no longer needed to spend long time on travelling around. Bright students can get into universities, others, for example, are taught how to make use of new technologies to sublime their traditional art crafts in terms of both quality and quantity so as to sell more for income. The main point is not to give them welfare, but to enable them to achieve self-overcoming spirit, and self-striving ability.

The young Uyghurs in Xinjiang are going through a similar process to attain higher living standard.

Some Western countries have adopted an easy approach for the ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples — hand out welfare money and simultaneously leave them alone (in fact let them remain in poverty generation after generation). Gradually, the colored citizens in their white societies are labeled as school dropouts, gangsters, drug traffickers, welfare dependents etc, thus giving rise to racist problems.

Alongside the color problems in America, the recent childcare scandal in the Netherlands revealed the ingrained racism towards the non-white immigrants among the jealous Dutch bureaucrats (who deliberately accused as many as 26,000 subsidy applicants of fraud by taking advantage of their backwardness).

To get educated and then to get rich, it is the Chinese Creed. It is a hard learnt principle. Two HK dollars were all my parents had for the whole family after I was born and released from the midwives clinic. I had been a child labor during my summer school breaks. In the 1950-60s, my parents worked 362 days a year with three Lunar New Year days as the only holidays (no labor benefits of any kind). I was thankful that during that time there were no human rights advocates, so that my experience enabled me to understand Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch .

The US chooses to get rich by printing money, and China chooses to get rich by working hard. The Chinese nation, including the Miaos, the Uyghurs, the Hans and all other ethnic groups, has no fear of hardship and enmity from the West. If you get rich, we are not jealous, we instead congratulate you sincerely : “Gong Xi Fa Cai 恭喜發財” in Putonghua.

The opinions expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of China News.