Chinese Society Quotes

How can the reality of 600 million Chinese be ignored?

How can human rights be ever developed for the majority of Chinese people? The only way is to organize. To organize workers, peasants, merchants, industrialists, and students at the grassroots level.

When the British-Malaysian photographer Ian Teh first worked in China, more than a decade ago, he rendered it as a nation of people in Technicolor.

The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden.

Life and human society are the chief concern of Confucianism and, through it, the chief concern of the Chinese people.

The original communitarianism of Chinese Confucian society has degenerated into nepotism, a system of family linkages, and corruption, on the mainland. And remnants of the evils of the original system are still found in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Singapore.

The Chinese people have only family and clan groups; there is no national spirit. Consequently, in spite of four hundred million people gathered together in one China, we are, in fact, but a sheet of loose sand.

China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor.

In one aspect, my works record the history of the development of Chinese society. Concern about the situation of Chinese reality is one important theme of my works. I am trying to ask, 'How does our society develop? What are the problems in our society? Where is our direction leading?'

I find China such a fascinating and interesting country. Each time I come back something has changed and it's moved on in leaps and bounds.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

China is a vast, disparate country; there is no alternative to strong central power.

My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country's unique culture and folk customs.

I wish that every Chinese citizen can live a life of satisfaction, every peasant child can go to school and every person reaching a working age can have a job. I wish people wouldn't have to worry about medical care if they are sick, particularly those in rural areas. I believe that this is the dream of every Chinese person.

Remember, in China when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.

Managing China is a daunting task, and they've got smart people doing it.

If we all say the same thing, then I think the government has to listen. But because no one is saying it, I become singled out, even though what I'm saying is common sense. It's very essential values that we all have to protect. But in Chinese society, people are giving up on protecting these values.

Ordinary Chinese can actually make choices about their own lives which wasn’t possible 25 years ago.

Ordinary Chinese are also getting unprecedented access to information. More than half a billion Chinese now use the Internet.

China was the worst place I've ever been in my life.

When this government [Chiang Kaishek's] finally fell there was no one ready to teach the Chinese the human way of life.

There was a period of time when I was very political, when I was at the university. It was like the late '60s, early '70s and I was a dissident like everybody else I guess. Now I follow it but there's nothing that really grabs me. The most fascinating thing to me right now is China.

For all the social changes in China can be traced to their early beginnings in the days when the new tools or vehicles of commerce and locomotion first brought the Chinese people into unavoidable contact with the strange ways and novel goods of the Western peoples.

The reason why China forecasting has such a poor track record is that Westerners constantly invoke the model and experience of the West to explain China, and it is a false prophet. Until we start trying to understand China on its own terms, rather than as a Western-style nation in the making, we will continue to get it wrong.

The devotion that young Chinese feel to the Internet is driven by deep factors ranging from youth unemployment and income inequality to political repression and the demographic imbalance between men and women.