Over at Many-2-Many we have a fascinating post, called Fukuyama's Penguin, speculating on why Chinese isn't better-represented in online contributions.

This got me to singing:

Many too many have stood where I stand
Many more will stand here too,

Why isn't there more Chinese here? There are many reasons:

• Chinese people are busy using the Net, and lack free time to contribute.
  
• You think it's hard to learn Chinese when all you know is English? Try going the other way.
  
• The development of an industrial proleterait is conditioned by what other development? (The development of an industrial bourgeiosie.)
  

That last is false. The middle class does not precede the workers. China spent a century (and millions-upon-millions of spent wasted lives) learning precisely the opposite, that industrialization is not the end, just a stage on the way to something else.

And so millions-upon-millions of people are now on their way to that something else. You and I cannot imagine the lives they live, just off the 15th century, coming upon the 19th and seeing all around them the 21st.

There's a quote from my online novel The Chinese Century that is relevant here. It's an an imagined speech from Jiang Zemin, given near the top of Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower. NOTE: The following quote is fictional:

Without order the Great Leader had, not perpetual revolution, but anarchy and despair. Without order, the Dear Leader knew, demonstrators at Tienanmien promised the same horror.

But mere repression is not order, Jiang now told the luncheon crowd. Repression is like a lid on a pressure cooker. The disorder is beneath, perhaps stronger than ever. The heat must be turned down, the pressure allowed to dissipate, the reaction controlled. Controlled reaction, balanced reaction, is the heart of all creativity, he continued. Respect for law, respect for the boundaries, must be maintained. But once it is guaranteed miracles can occur. Jiang spread his arms wide to take in the hall, and the tower around him.

China spent the last century failing to balance the need for order and the imperative of change. Every system had been tried, and every system had failed. But there is no simple recipe, other than the fact that mutual respect, between rulers and ruled, must be maintained.

Jiang Zemin concluded his valedictory. “England had this balance in the 19th century of the Christian calendar, and that was the century of England. America had this balance in the 20th century, and that was the century of America. Now China has found this balance, and this will be the Century of China.”

But it takes time. Imagine how someone in China might be reading this, right now. She's sitting in an Internet Cafe, in a rabbit warren of a city, lost, confused, mostly tired. She only reads a rough translation of this, because that's all the Internet is capable of, and English is so very difficult to learn.

But she will learn it. She will master it long before you or I master Chinese.

So, patience. Just you wait. The Century of China has barely begun.