The Fire is in Europe and Aftermath is in China
By Samir Atallah
As the world watches the war of crushing identities in Ukraine, China is preparing itself for a war, or similar wars that are fiercer or of longer duration. In such cases, one relies more on expressive texts than on analysis.
The Ukraine war, which some of us thought would not happen, prompted us to return to the speech of Chinese President Xi Jinping last July in Tiananmen Square in the centenary of the Communist Party, when he said that China had long been humiliated by the foreigner and “the Chinese people were subjected to too much pain, the Chinese war was kindled in the dark.”
He promised with a full mouth that Taiwan would be reunited with the mainland, and that the Communist Party would “reunite all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation, at home and abroad, for the sake of national renewal.”
“The Chinese people will not be satisfied with the holy sermons of those who think they can lecture us,” he said. “Outsiders who think they can subdue, persecute and threaten us will find themselves in front of a great wall of steel built by 1.4 billion Chinese,” he added.
Immediately to Ukraine: Taiwanese do not believe they are Chinese as much as Ukrainians refuse to be Russian. And they may fight for it as the Ukrainians fight. Many Chinese descendants do not want to see themselves as such. Hong Kong people prefer to be “Hong Kong”, as do Uyghurs and Tibetans, while Singaporeans, Malaysians, and San Francisco Chinese see themselves as such.
The Arabs were the only group that strongly objected to Samuel Huntington’s book “The Clash of Civilizations”, and did not enthusiastically accept Amin Maalouf’s book “Killer Identities.” But since the publication of the two books, Iran ignited – as Huntington expected – a sectarian, sectarian and national conflict, and a bloody conflict of identities took place in Syria after Lebanon, not to mention the Myanmar war.
The identity element in the Ukraine war is declared. You have to write the name “Kyiv” in Russian and “Kiev” in Ukrainian. In Spain, the names of cities are written in Spanish and Catalan with a difference of funny letters. And insisting on a unified writing may shed blood and ignite the war of secession more than it is now.
European unity did not end the separatist spirit. Nor did it end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of all nationalities to their homes. Now the ferocious war in Ukraine is awakening contiguous and antagonistic nationalist sentiments on a scale that may continue to expand until its end is no longer visible.
