Is China made of Tofu residue?

Yunfei Ran

Jerry-built schools were collapsed in the earthquake last year, mine disasters happen all the time, problems of food safety penetrate into every area of our lives, the officials are corrupted unscrupulously and telling lies in public unblushingly, conflicts between the people and government get severer and severer; just as I said before, China has already been a society of mutually jeopardizing. The biting and bitten system in China possibly enables all the people to be both victimizer and suffer.  Accordingly, they are trapped in a Mobius circle in which they could not resist biting each other, rendering them upset, disappointed and even desperate.  These feelings seem ridiculous in the backdrop of the current economic crisis, and appear even more preposterous in the shouting for encouragement and positive while flaunty and vain promulgation by government, who has been cheating for decades from the perspective of people.

 

When everywhere is full of jerry-built constructions, when the system is so bad that people are barely ashamed of corruption, government of the country is already weak enough to be comparable to Tofu residue. The nature of the government’s weakness—Tofu residue—is certainly attributed to its poor tolerance for listening to different expressions, for accepting different opinions regarding political reform, and is also because of the severest attack on those expressing critiques and different opinions it succeeds through such laws like “Subversion of the National Security”. However, fancying this attack sufficient to hinder the people’s will/volition for freedom is obviously an underestimate of the confidence that people hold for defending their rights and dignity. Yesterday, some reporter asked the spokesman at Foreign Affairs Ministry, Qin Gang, about his opinion regarding China’s blocking of Youtube; whoever sees his response will learn the degree of their threatening in manner but cowardliness at heart reaches a ludicrous extent.

 

“Chinese government is never afraid of the internet, and we have three hundred million netizens and one hundred million bloggers.” The logic Qin Gang held appears so fake and ridiculous in front of the fact that tons of websites have been blocked or shut down and the so-called Gold Shield project was constructed to vague people’s right to know, and in addition, the resulting wasting of taxpayer’s money. Even incapable of making a decent lie, he was actually asking for an expected insult. Is Chinese government really not scared of the internet? Is it really not terrified with more truth revealed to the people? If it were, please call off the gold shield project, please respect and safeguard people’s right to know; can Chinese government make these? Anyone who knows and respects truth understands the fact that it’s impossible to assume the position of spokesman if he/she is unable to tell lies in public. A government who is really not scared of the internet will not at all let a spokesman to express the fact that it fearlessness; the more it fears the more it will keep up the appearance and say there is no fear. If China had any positive reputation left, it’s totally messed up with little remained by such public cheaters like the spokesman.

 

On the one hand the government alleges they don’t fear the internet, while on the other they suppresses expression of different opinions, seen by them as blocking of unhealthy information.  Are they really taking pains to block unhealthy information? All countries in the world are facing the same problem that internet might have adverse effects on teenagers, but do the means that they adopt resemble that of the Chinese government (by which they do one thing under the cover of another)? After the movement of eliminating porno and illegal publications in China, many porno webs are still accessible; whereas what really got shut down are those relating to expression of different opinions, which were either blocked or distorted—regulated—beyond recognition.

 

Elimination of porno has always been a mask under which the government attempts to purge of “illegal publications”; it is merely a gee-string for clearing away different opinions. Meanwhile, many times the so-called unhealthy information blocked by government is depicted for protecting teenagers, but actually the target is the adults’ right to know. In another word, they are doing the things on purpose such as encroachment of the demand of adults for diverse information as well as obstruction of the truth people need to know, under the cover that is alleged as protecting the healthy growth of teenagers.

The better the information proceeds without hindrance and the more affluent the information is, the more the people will know of truth, and the less easy it gets for the government to realize exploiting of and competing with people and for malfeasants to levy exorbitant taxes and corrupt everywhere; which is the primary reason for their suppressing different opinions. As a matter of fact, in order to protect the teenagers from unhealthy information, lots of democratic governments across the world have a good and feasible approach. It’s not something abstruse, nor is it of high technology; why could not the Chinese government take it and use it to partition the differing demands that adults and teenagers have for information? That is only when harnessing the cover of protecting teenagers could the government earn applause and support from those still innocent of the real reason (or masked by truth), thus enabling the government to realize its real goal at the basis of public support to some extent. 

 

The government easily blocks the “unhealthy” information, to demonstrate its deprivation of people’s right to know, and suppression of the validity of different opinions. Although protection of teenagers from unhealthy information is a technique question easy to handle, the problem is WHAT IS UNHEALTHY INFORMATION? And who gets right to interpret and define “unhealthy”, government? Government has no right to define what is unhealthy, unless it is authorized through passage of laws. Our government is a regime without constraint, meanwhile self-interest and aggressively competing with the people, any regulation the government sets up shows a strong propensity to benefit itself; thus if government is the judge of what is unhealthy information, it will be very dangerous. In reality, it is exactly because of the government being the judge of unhealthy information, it doesn’t publicize the news adverse to corrupted governors which would be blocked whenever discovered, and it keeps as state secret the accurate casualty of students in earthquake. Will a normal and civilized government take as state secret the casualty caused mainly by natural disaster? It can be only interpreted indirectly that the government admits the element of anthropogenic factor in the disaster, that’s why the casualty needs to be concealed as a secret. When a government pockets the mistakes it has committed as state secret, not allowing the people to know or criticize, the legitimacy of its governance will naturally and gradually decline until eventually disappear.

 

Criticism of government is seen as subversion of country is a way of arrogation and unscrupulousness in which the alternating forces (government) treat the iron pan (country). China’s history of several thousand years has shown that even though the governments and dynasties are replaced many times the country still exists, mirroring the actuality that we could change the government ( but, now, we should make it using the current civilized means—ballot ). The government is only a form of flowing soldiers; even if it goes off the stage and leaves away, the iron pan will still be here, thus taking criticism of government as subversion of country is ridiculous and contemptible. Taking blocking of the tunnels through which the people could touch truth and more information as consideration of national security, isn’t this country—China—made of Tofu residue and vulnerable to subversion?  In fact, it is nothing but the government that cannot stand subversion, cannot bear opposition and cannot tolerate democratic election uses the conception of “subversion of country” to replace that of “subversion of government”.  .