Positives to Remember from 2011--A China Post Editorial

This editorial discusses the influence of the Arab Spring on the Arab world and the Taiwanese movie industry.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/taiwan-issues/2012/01/02/327683/There-are.htm

There are a lot of positives to remember from 2011

Monday, January 2, 2012
The China Post news staff
In yesterday's editorial, The China Post outlined gloomy aspects for the global economy and Western governments in 2011. There were, however, also events and trends for optimism in 2011.

The past year turned out to be a bad year for dictators. The Arab Spring dethroned “strongmen” such as Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, posed existential challenges to authoritarian governments in Yemen, Syria and Bahrain and encouraged government-initiated political reforms in Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Equally important, the demonstrators in these countries put an end to incorrect ideas that Arab nations are incapable of democracy and that religious extremism is the best agent for change. The protesters at the “freedom squares” across the region braving security forces, tanks, tear gas, live bullets, state-sponsored thugs and sword-wielding camel riders, showed the world that true bravery lies in the risk and sacrifice of one's own (and only one's own) life for justice, not in the killing of innocent people as heralded by terrorists. While it was U.S. Special Forces that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011, it is these protesters that have put an end to the al-Qaida narrative. It is these freedom seekers, not U.S. President Barack Obama, who ensured bin-Laden died a footnote in history, not a martyr.

There are causes for optimism for the new democracies in the Middle East. The democratic process will not be smooth, not because of any democracy-deterring Arabic characteristics implied by some commentators, but simply because building nations from scratch is not supposed to be easy. Dictators such as Gadhafi had spent their lives instilling permanent disarray in their countries to prevent the formation of organizations strong enough to challenge them. It will not be easy for the new governments to form national unity. No doubt opportunists from old regimes will don new democratic clothes to seek power in the new nations and some might succeed. These, however, are not reasons for despair.

 

If history is any guide, democracies take time to build but given time they can be built. The Chinese people experienced decades of chaos after the fall of the Qing Empire a century ago, yet the Republic of China celebrated its centennial as a free and democratic nation.

Some Western commentators are concerned by the results of the recent Egyptian elections, which were won in general by Islamic organizations. Again, however, this is not reason to disapprove of the January revolution. Just because voters in Egypt opted for secular groups does not make the election less democratic. If anything, such commentators only reveal a fallacy in the West to regard democracy as a franchise owned by them.

Among the best news locally last year was the revival of Taiwanese movies. Last year was officially the best ever year for Taiwanese movies financially. As of Dec. 28, 2011, local films grossed a total of NT$7.5 billion in Taiwan. The popularity of local productions also helped increase viewership in regions outside Taipei. In the past, box office figures in the capital equaled roughly to that of all other regions combined. Last year, some local movies actually sold better in non-Taipei regions.

Taiwanese movies not only performed well at home. The 1990s period romantic comedy “You are the Apple of My Eye” (那些年，我們一起追的女孩) was expected to beat “Kung Fu Hustle” (功夫) to become the highest grossing Chinese-speaking movie in Hong Kong history in the last days of 2011. The film took the traditional Chinese-language movie powerhouse by storm and made its stars Michelle Chen (陳妍希) and Ko Chen-Tung (柯震東) instant idols in the Chinese city.

There are, however, worries for the current surge of Taiwanese movies, which focus overwhelming on populist themes and benefited from a public hungry for a Taiwanese film renaissance. As the success of “You are the Apple of My Eye” has shown, the Taiwan movie industry has the potential to compete in overseas markets. It, however, has to seize the moment to produce solid movies and to better train local film professionals. Overdependence on populist material may backfire once Taiwan's film revival becomes a reality instead of a vision.