What did we learn from the past?

Yesterday, Japan's PM visited a WWII memorial on Iwo Jima, a tiny island where many U.S and Japanese forces died during fierce battle.



In a speech, Koizumi said:

"Our country has never taken part or been involved in war after the end of the [World] war and has maintained peace"

"We will never let the lessons from the war fade away"

Learning from the past, a true Confucian way.

China has been reviving Confucianism lately. No doubt, the CCP have learnt from their past as well. They learnt that class struggles and mass campaigns against their own people end up counter-productive and would eventually undermine their own power. They learnt that creating a cult of personality such as Mao is a very, very dangerous thing and would eventually distabilise the Party. They learnt from USSR that too much and too swift democratic reforms will destroy themselves. They learnt from June 4, 1989 that allowing gradual democratic change would probably break them too.

So, if they can't use these things to control the population anymore, what's there left to do? The American thing of course: popular culture, fast cars, celebrities, cellphones, TV, computers, karaoke, clubs, playstations, nikes, capitalism, nationalism. Easy. All with Chinese characteristics of course.