In Yu Hua’s book, he somehow denied the “splendid” progress that the Chinese government has made so far. The economic miracle represents no longer the prosperity of the country, but the broken piece. Yu Hua insists that nowadays, the society is no longer socialism but more of paradox, “we find ourselves in a reality full of contradictions: conservative here, radical there; the concentration of political power on this side, the unfettering of economic interests on that; dogmatism on the one hand, anarchism on the other; toeing the line here, tossing away the rule book there. Over the past twenty years our development has been uneven rather than comprehensive, and this lopsided development is compromising the health of our society.”() This inevitable result is the “copycat”. What copycat originally came form is simply because of the lack of financial ability to buy the branded products, thereby, copycat fulfills the demands from mostly the middle classes wants of quality life. But in Yu Hua’s eyes it is very different. In my opinion, it represents the exinanition of people’s minds. The inequalities triggers the distortion of our minds, phenomenon such as the “hatred of the rich” is becoming more and more common. These are some of the dark sides that the government prevents us to see. One of the major disadvantages for the economic boost is the uneven development of the spiritual civilization. Moral believes are lost and people believe that the money is the king- a more and more materialized society. Some scholars once criticize China for having cities like Europe and country sides like Africa. Precisely, I would say. There are more and more people getting richer due to the reform and opening up, however, the majority of people are suffering from the poor. The rich could give their children higher educations and create more wealth, but the poor are more to become what we called the “grassroots”. The cycle is circulating from generations to generations; in the extreme cases the poor will always stay poor. By denying the “fact”, the government could still deceit themselves that the situation is not worse than ever; but once they do admit the fact, there could only be two possible reasons, one is that the government has already reformed, the other could only be the situation whereas the country suffers from permanent irreparable. Either people or the government tends to believe in the fantasies they’ve created for themselves.
The ten words that Yu Hua chooses to describe ten perspectives of China are all positive words in the eyes of the public; yet, Yu Hua tends to use these words in a rather negative ways. Instead of talking about the “good communism”, he chooses to reveal the cancer inside of our society. “The Chinese style of Socialism” is the main theme which the government tries to leads us, whereas in Yu Hua’s book, “socialism” becomes an ironic word. Obviously, no authority wishes to see this; but you may also ask, why is it possible to achieve the freedom of speech in most of the Western countries? That is the same question that the students of June 4 ask themselves and the authorities, why couldn’t we? In my own perspective, the complexity of the Chinese political and economic issues could not be explained in just a few words; the roots are too wide and too deep. Even though we are all informed about the corruptions and the political scandals of many major officers, we could not just dismiss them all. The insider problems that Yu Hua mentions in his book are more than worrying, the outside instabilities are worse. For example, the recent riot responded to the “Diaoyu Islands”, originated from patriotic events, the scene exaggerated into vandalism acts. Yu Hua’s book could possibility become the last straw