Ren Zhiqiang, a high profile real estate mogul in China, published a weibo (miniblog) at sina.com during the week long October 1 National Day holiday challenging the official stance that National Day celebrates the birth of a New China.
Ren questioned, “Did this day (October 1, 1949) declare that a new country emerged or that a new regime representing the same country was established?”
“From the perspective of traditional Chinese culture and international law, China is still the same China. … All that happened was the government of the Republic of China under the Nationalists [Kuomintang] controlled an increasingly smaller area, while the government of the People’s Republic of China, which the Chinese Communist Party led and which allegedly represented the interests of the masses of Chinese people, controlled most of mainland China. The Communist Party announced that it had replaced the Republic of China in governing China, and began to exercise national sovereignty.”
Ren continued that even to the present day, many people living in mainland China have the misunderstanding that October 1 represented the birth of a new country. They think that the homeland just had its 66th birthday. However, this ancient country of China has a history of thousands of years. All of the changes in this country from one dynasty to another are nothing but changes in rulers or in governments who say they represent China’s sovereignty. They are not changes of the actual nation. Therefore, “this holiday is not that of the birthday of a new country, but the establishment of a new regime.”
Ren’s weibo at sina.com was soon removed.
Source: BBC Chinese, October 2, 2015 http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/trad/china/2015/10/151002_china_renzhiqiang_weibo_reax