Still angry after all these years

• Source: Global Times
• [11:44 April 20 2009]
• Comments

By Li Hongwei

In the post-Olympic autumn, a group of self-proclaimed marginalized intellectuals spent three days and nights at a farmhouse in a Beijing suburb discussing China’s destiny and criticizing its elite.

“China’s elite are mentally deranged,” one said. “We have to cure them before they lead this nation to disaster.”

The outspoken group of middle-aged men – known to the world as China’s angry nationalists – first came to prominence in 1996 with the publication of their pessimistic work China Can Say No. Now, their lengthy Beijing conversations have been compiled into a 300-page bestseller entitled Unhappy China.

Angry as ever, the group’s latest work pulls no punches in its attack on the country’s elite, who they say “misjudge China’s real problems, nag about trivia and worship the West as God”.

China’s great mission, they say, is to “weed out the wicked in the world and let the law-abiding live in peace, to build up its military, control more resources than it now has, and thus bring welfare to humanity”.

Song Qiang, who contributed a few chapters to the book, said: “The West calls us nationalists. But let me word it better: We are members of a heroic group with broader views. And I take pleasure in kicking the ass of the Chinese elite who are competing to occupy a place in the pantheon of democracy and liberty.”