Collection of a Gangster's Words

WWhat is the biggest politics of lawyers?: On Tan Zuoren being accused of inciting subversion of the state (6)

2009-10-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

(to be posted)

Request for the presence of Wang Dan at court as witness: On Tan Zuoren being accused of inciting subversion of the state (5)

2009-10-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

(to be posted)

Government is meant to be subverted: On Tan Zuoren being accused of inciting subversion of the state (3)

2009-09-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

I seriously think “the crime of subverting the state” is pointless in the sense of legality and logicality; it is ludicrous enough to unify the concept of state/country and polity and make them a crime. I have discussed in my former article A country can never be subverted that why a country could not be overthrown by its own people, today I am going to talk about how government is meant to be subverted.

Country is a conception thrived not long ago, comprised in general of people, land and sovereignty, where the importance of people and land is self-evident. But where does the sovereignty come from? According to the principles of civilian and modern politics, sovereignty is exerted by the elected government for the people who hold the ballots; put it in another way, government is only the manager of public interests for people, or the temporary holder of the sovereignty. Country is like an iron pan whereas, on which, government can be likened to fluid soldier.

There has not been any everlasting government, or any unchangeable governance, since it is impossible for people to be always content with their government. If discontent with the government, what type of attitude should the people hold? One is tolerance, like what is occurring in China in which most people tolerate the behavior of the government; the other is intolerance, like what is occurring to the other small group of people in China. When it comes to the point where most people become intolerant, what means could be taken? The first means coming up is subversion by force, which is the major means of ancient China for dynasty replacement, and also what, ever appreciated by the current government, peasant uprising did. This means, however, brings about such enormous catastrophes to its people and country that are beyond the imagination and reach of us, thus it has withdrawn from the arena of humans today when modern civilian politics has become more and more pervaded.

The Chinese communist government has been in power for six years, but its anxiety of governing legality has never been relieved, but rather become more and more frightened, how come? It is because that they know their position was gained by guns and bloods instead of by elections, and they understand the threat from guns. They were appreciating guns, because by which they threw down the previous government, therefore arguing for the legality of guns is part of their permanent job. From Mao Zedong’s “regime coming from guns” to late 1980s, their insane exultation over peasant uprising of each dynasty was nothing but for eliminating their anxiety of illegal governance.

Why do they have such anxiety? It is because of the analysis and thinking of the common people as a result of this exploding information era in which the world has unprecedentedly opened and interacted, in which assorted comparisons are happening between different governments and institutions. Regarding Mao’s law of guns, while there are several governments in the world still using it, in general this type of violent revolution, or say, jungle rule has gradually discarded by modern civilian politics, since replacement of regime at the cost of holocaust is unaccepted by human intelligence presently.

The power of Chinese communist government comes from violence; although it has been 60 years, its legality is not fully convinced since violent replacement is not accepted by the mainstream civilian world and politics. For Chinese people, thanks to brainwashing and suppression for many decades, they have little idea of from where a regime of legality comes. They could, yet, touch the good and bad of a regime by themselves; only simply physical perception such like looking, listening, feeling and slightly thinking, rather than profound sensing, could tell the effect of a regime. If it comes to realization of the nature of the regime, of course more information and knowledge are needed.

The Chinese communist government knows, without question, the illegality of violent replacement, that’s why they extremely prettify violent revolution. The violent revolution is still documented in Chinese history textbooks where the civil war between communist and nationalist party and the killing of compatriots are described as revolution war, and where killing of the so-called reactionary nationalists is still being glorified. The reason for being such unashamed of killing compatriots and for uglifying the millions of compatriots killed by ourselves (including innocents), is to brainwash the people, rendering them to believe that advent of such violent regime is an inevitable product of history, of people’s choice, and of, ultimately, legality.

But they have never been calm down; they are frightened, on the one hand, and they are ruling the people using frightening, on the other. Besides, they draw on the means of creating enemies to cause mutual fighting between people, and to make people work for their unashamed party-related ideological fight (war and diplomacy). As a matter of fact, they are the same with us, all living in a world of growing globalization rather than in ancient jungle; and they are deeply aware of the illegality of their violence-resulted regime and their undemocratic and fettered governance. And due to deep awareness of its illegality, they have to take the means of suppressing and brainwashing to make the people submitted.

While there are still a handful of governments in the world that have not adopted democracy, more and more countries are moving towards democracy and freedom, in that democratic system has been proven to be one that is able to guarantee a relatively balanced achievement in justice, effectiveness and people’s freedom. This does not by any means mean democratic system is the best in the world, and in fact with respect to governance system there is no best but better. Government, due to its characteristic of being a deputy manager for public interests and national sovereignty and its nature of election by people, should be submitted to its people, and its power comes only from legal election. If a government does not come through by election, it could not represent its people; failure in representing its people indicates its power sourced from violence or stealing, and stolen regime is axiomatically illegal. It is well-known that history is trending towards the system of democracy and freedom; any person or any organization standing in the way is nothing more than a car before a speeding train.

A country can never be subverted: on Tan Zuoren being accused of inciting subversion of the state(2) (8/2/2009)

2009-09-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

Except reading the news about Tan right after getting up, I have noticed the speech spread online recently, The party in power should have its basic political ethics—talking of an old leader before the celebration of National Day for 60 years, delivered by Wan Li, one of the former high-level leaders in communist party. It is a sign that not all people have died in the party who dare speak of truth. Some of the retired high-level party leaders, such as Li Rui, Du Daozheng, Xie Tao, Li Shenzhi and Hu Jiwei etc., started with authentic ideals when they were youngsters and winded up speaking of authenticity when retired, but strayed away when in position.

This is, rather than blaming them for their cowardliness in not speaking up, but a description of basic facts while investigating their malfeasances during governance; they had too many anxieties that they had dispossessed the basic political ethics. It is of little difference of Wan Li; he dared not speak up while trapped in his anxieties. He is still welcome, however, when he releases the truth now. But concerning this common pattern of truth-at-both-ends, it is because of the ruling part that is not grounded on basic political ethics; not only does it clamp down on dissidents outside the party but also suppress differing voices within the party. Subversion of the state is a penalty intended by such a party lacking basic political ethics, and the clause documenting such penalty is typically a representation of evil law.

In fact, the crime of counterrevolution is the precursor of the crime of subversion of the state. The ruling party keeps messing the country up and they conceive of it as revolution; you stand out to fight against their messing-up and for your own rights, you are considered counterrevolutionary. Such crime is so encompassing and evil that most dissidents are sacredly breathless and soundless. And even if you had done nothing wrong, the ruling party could also accuse you using this crime, as is evidently demonstrated in many preposterous historical materials.

In 1990s, the authority posited that the crime of counterrevolution was too outdated and to some extent politically threatening, thus brought forward the crime of subverting the state “with times”. Conceiving of the critiquing of government as subversion of the state, as matter of fact, is tantamount to equaling the government to the state, and of no difference with taking the state as the domain of the government.

The crime of subversion of the state is ridiculous from the perspective of legal principle, and logistically irrational. COUNTRY and REGIME (including government) are virtually different conceptions; a country could never be subverted by its people—only when the country is entirely occupied by other races with its cultures eliminated is it considered subversion or extinction, of whose, however, the probability of occurrence is drastically low; that’s why that Ming dynasty was conquered by Qing, another people, is not accounted as subversion of China—while only a regime (government) can be switched.

Is Song dynasty’s erasing of Tang Dynasty subversion of the country? When Communist Party was forcing Nationalist Party out of China, is that subversion? No. That is only renaming of dynasty, while such bloody renaming doesn’t conform to the principles of the modern civilized society in which government is voted in and out. The principles of modern civilized society, put in another way, constitute that the government is supposed to be subverted; United States, for instance, subverts its government legally every 4 years, as is the case, by and large, of the other democratic countries. In essence, the country resembles an iron-forged pan while the government fluid soldier; the country can never be subverted by its people while the government is meant to be subverted. The best way of subversion, however, is peaceful subrogation based on ballot, rather than on bloody guns.

The crime of subverting the state is an evil tool by which the governors, most of time, use to loot public resources, as well as to threaten the ordinary people. That many local governors clamp down on dissents is not actually because of the dissents aimed at subversion but at shaking their authorities or reputations as the dissents might have criticized the corruption under their leads or pointed out the dire circumstances that their governed people are living in.

The local governors, however, are afraid of accusing them for normal crimes, which harms their reputation, thus they opt the crime of subversion to punish those who dare speak out and do good. Personally I think except for the case of Liu Xiaobo whose arrest for subversion was decided by the central government, in most cases “the crime of subversion of the state” was abused as a cover by local governors to suppress the punishers and their supporters into wordlessness, leaving the innocent people around believe that the arrested are really undertaking subversion of the state. This is where the real reason why the provincial commissioners and local governors keep utilizing this crime frequently. Even if the arrested were mischarged, it does not disadvantage the governors too much as it is for the country, rather than the private interests, that they have done so.

Using the charge of inciting subversion of the state, as a matter of fact, by local governors could bury the fact that it is for private gains, rather than for the public interests. In the case of Tan, this is particularly evident. The real reason that the local government persecutes Tan is because of his protestation against establishing of a combined ethylene plant and oil refinery in Peng Zhou (Peng Zhou Petro-Chemical, in short), Sichuan Province, and his investigation into the list of students killed in 5.12 earthquake as well as appeal to creation of student archive.

The things that Tan has been leading in have affected the political achievement and interests of local governments. The governors could not arrest or charge him of inciting subversion of the state due to these two activities, however, for its illogicality and illegality and public pressure as well. Yet, they succeeded in doing so by seizing the fact that Tan has expressed against centre government regarding1989 event as well done things in memorial of it. This is indeed taking advantage of the sensitivity to 1989 event of centre government by the local; even the criminals have been mischarged, the local government will not be too much blamed as it is for stabilization of whole society for the centre that the local government did it, rather than their local or personal interests. Consequently, in the case of Tan, they succeeded in suppressing local opponents, thus covered their own misdeeds, and will not be blamed.

If Liu Xiaobo and Tan Zuoren are charged of subversion of the state for speaking the truth, I would like to ask the government, what about Wan Li, one of our former leaders, whom expressed the same thoughts in The ruling party should construct its basic political ethics—a former leader speaks before the 60th national day? Is he facing the same charge? Following the evil law you enacted, Wan Li could not avoid the same fate. If nothing happens to Wan Li, whereas Liu and Tan are saddled with the crime of state subversion, should we interpret it as that the leaders of China do not need conform to our common laws?, the speech given by Wan Li should be read by all Chinese Communist Party members. The crime of subversion of the state, frankly speaking, is established by a ruling party without any basic political ethics, and must be eliminated.

Disaster will come down to us: on Tan Zuoren being accused of inciting subversion of the state (1) (8/1/2009)

2009-08-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday, from Miss Wang—Tan’s wife—I got the indictment to Tan Zuoren by People’s Procuratorate at Chengdu. I have read it throuhg several times and found it logically messed up, unreasonable and ridiculous! I, therefore, plan to diagnose this indictment meticulously, comment on every sentence and, if possible, write a series of commentary. Welcome to comment on this indictment, especially those professional in the area of law.

At the same time, I will update the news about Tan everyday on my Twitter, you are welcome too; the address of my Twitter will be attached to this article. Besides, I have made up my mind to break the former routine of composing one article every day, I will write intensively to discuss the case of Tan instead. Everything I know with respect to Tan will be shared with anyone enquiring or interviewing me; I will try all my best to cooperate, thanks.

I welcome you to write for supporting Tan, and I will put them together for everybody to read. In addition, I will glean to the greatest extent the articles written by and about Tan, and gather them in a place where we could be informed, and where we could also exchange ideas with time saved. I will also reproduce the articles that I think are informative or profound in understanding Tan’s case on my blog, for the convenience of the readers.

In a country, one with continuous disasters occurring at an amazingly high rate, and one also terrifying, every one of us is Tan Zuoren. Don’t think you are lucky enough to avoid them; as long as the institutions are unchanged, you will be ultimately troubled. The amazedness of China, or say, this insane country, lies in the fact that disasters will knock at your door voluntarily. You don’t even have the freedom of escaping as the disasters will haunt around you like nightmares and badger with you like vipers. In a country resembling a huge prison, now most of the jails have become overcrowded; many of our friends—Liu Xiaobo, Xu Zhiyong, Huang Qi, Guo Feixiong, Shi Tao, Hu Jia, Tan Zuoren etc.—are in there. For those living relatively freer like us outside the real jails, we should try to do something within our reach to help them unfettered. Although freedom outside the jails is also limited, it is definitely better than inside.

In a country with little freedom, the moments of fortune have got less and less left for us. Freedom is the consequence of fighting, freedom never comes by charity. You think you could escape the disaster as long as you stay away, the disaster might respond: no way, to get you, bystander, is easiest of all. You think you need only protect yourself; the disaster might respond: killing people like you is the most enjoyable, just like drinking coolest beer in summer. You might think you could just be free-riding those leading the fight; the disaster might respond: it gets easier and smoother to take you away once the bellwethers have been eliminated. In any case, said John Donne, “send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” as every one of us is interconnected. My friend in Beijing reinterprets this saying in another way: send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it is you that fuck it sounding. This is a critique to those malfeasants.

Postcard devlivering people's will (8/19/2009)

2009-08-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

No matter speaking of the verse “who delivers it from up cloud” by Li Qingzhao, or “a letter from a female stranger” by Zweig, they are both concerned with things romantic. The recent concerning gathering online and practical delivery of card in real life to right-defender, however, has little to do with romance, but a lot to do with freedom and democracy, dignity and rights.

Half a month ago, a slogan online “Jia Junpeng, you mother calls you back to eat” became flourishing almost all over the internet unreasonably, leaving many who research the internet stunned. Through further investigation, it is lately discovered the reason goes to imported online games; some of them could not be continuously played without governmental permit. This is a sign that the government has become more and more concerned about these online games with which the western values of freedom and democracy are bonded. Playing these games, they might possibly think, will render Chinese young players to be affected insensibly by the values and cultures hidden in the games. Such imperceptible “education” will make their propaganda of obscurantism less effective, thus challenging their target of brainwashing.

As known to all, most of Chinese youngsters surf online only for games, caring little about other things in reality than themselves. It seems that such things are too far for these obsessed young netizens to pay attention to as the harms brought about by power or continuous societal unjustness. They have no clue, however, that even you stay away from politics, it still comes to interfere with your life in other ways. In another word, you don’t care about catastrophe, it comes knocking your door voluntarily; nobody could avoid, which is the cruel reality of China. If you expect to sidestep like a hermit, it doesn’t work. I thus believe, the slogan “Jia Junpeng, you mother calls you back to eat” is a sort of protestation, implicit or even silent.

Due to the governmental oppression, latitude for Chinese traditional media to express has been unprecedentedly stifled. The governmental paws have also stretched out to the internet; things are happening all the time such like deletion, blocking, removal of the website or, even, arresting the dissidents. It gives rise to, as a consequence, other ways of obscure expressions; this is the actual setting for the pervasive slogan “Jia Junpeng, you mother calls you back to eat”. And only under such situation in which straightforwardness means danger could the reasonless prevalence of this slogan online be understood.

In the early morning of July 15, at the moment that Twitter user Amoiist (Guo Baofeng) was to be arrested, he sent out a message asking for help throughTwitter immediately: I have been arrested by Mawei police, SOS. While it is nothing new to hear about abusive arrests by Chinese police, such a terrifying call for help from a person distant away has never been encountered. That a compatriot cried out for help in an abysmal situation extremely touched many Twitter users who had been panicked but indignant at the same time. Thus proposed by some who know Guo Baofeng like Yue Han and Bei Feng etc., many people sent out over hundreds postcards to the imprisoned Gro Baofeng, in order to express support and comfort.

Coincidentally, the arrest came across the abovementioned flourishing slogan starting from July 16, which could be used as the expression for the jailed Guo Baofeng too. Subsequently, “Guo Baofeng, your mother calls you back to eat” became the central words of the postcard delivery activity. It is of great fortune that after 16 days of imprisonment, Mr. Guo was “called” for unsure reasons, and had relatively more freedom. To the netizens who have involved in postcard delivery, there could be no better comfort and encouragement than this. Naturally, netizens start thinking of many more rights-defenders imprisoned and have decided to carry on this postcard delivery activity.

People might get disappointed, as their postcards, even reaching the jails, might not reach their addressees. In the case above, said Guo Baofeng, there were so many postcards delivered to his jail that other correspondences were affected (in fact he did have the chance to see those cards in jail, he saw them after he got out through pictures taken online, which chocked him with sobs). This is, of course, an effrontery of the government, but it does not by any means indicate the fault of postcard delivery. That is because freedom of correspondence is the basic right of criminals; anybody including his/her family could write to him/her as being part the freedom. (Abridged)

As far as the checking of correspondences by jails are concerned, we could keep the evidence before sending out, such as delivering by express or registered letter. If in future the prisoners approve they didn’t receive the correspondences, we could sue the jails to defend and respect our laws. This is the point where the significance of postcards delivery lies in my opinion.

Concerning the initiative postcard delivery activity to imprisoned rights-defenders, human rights lawyer Tang Jingling said “postcard is a card of people’s will”, and asserted “democracy starts with postcard”. The two sentences he expressed actually pinpoint the meaningfulness of this activity which looks like an action art. “Postcard is a card of people’s will” (in Chinese, “postcard” and “people’s will card” share a similar pronunciation) is a harmonic tone easy to remember; “democracy starts with postcard” points out the fact that many, previously being silent, have expressed their opinions at the least cost and with almost zero risk, which is also a sign that we will no longer keep silence.

The life of human being is a life of expression; how could you prove your vigorous existence if you have no expression, nor attitude? Living in such an era has presented us with many helplessness and hopelessness, but we need to be aware that the process of pursuing democracy is like an engagement in a disaster film, in which we might not escape from death, we might die without a burial place. But all these just demonstrate that life is a process. Could there be a better process than combating for dignity and freedom? I think the quality of our living embodies in the process we continuously express our opinions; although so far most of time our words are insignificant, we should not be pessimistic and we should even enjoy this tough trip of effort. Thus the postcard delivery activity is part of our expression and effort. Let us use the postcards on hand to speak for the people who have suffered for standing out to combat for democracy and freedom, for dignity and rights. Such tiny expression of respect and support, representing in the postcard delivered, will let them know that they are not lonely on their tough road of progress.

The ears of the grain will smash his head

2009-07-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Some people perceive that the absurdness in the era of Chairman Mao is exaggerated by critics. The fact, however, is that the criticisms of Mao, either from the perspective of breadth and depth, of specifics in particular, or from individual empirical study, are far from enough. As to the absurdness in the absurd era, the most incisive castigation is not criticism based on contentless slogans, but on evidences sufficient to demonstrate its preposterousness.

While I don’t agree with many of Li Ao’s claims after Taiwan’s realization of democracy, I do think one of his words is conducive in comprehending the hardships in China after 1949, that is, “I prove you are an asshole instead of cursing you.” It is far more convincing to prove the falsehood and nonsense of the governmental ideology using facts based on detailed materials and empirical methods than simply infuriated words.

The Anti-right struggle in 1957 and the Great Leap Forward (GLF) in 1958 were the direct drivers of three years famine (which should actually be five years from 1958 to 1962); anti-right struggle had killed off the critics and thus paved the way for the lies in GLF in 1958. Once the rational voices had been erased, craziness started flooding; omnipresent making of iron and steel, national folk-song activity, bombastic amount of production etc., combining together, drove the whole society into insanity and fever collectively.

Concerning the national folk-song movement, there should be professional researches on, say, how the competition of folk songs and poetries was initiated and organized; a statistical collection of the authors that participated in; or the statistics of the publishers then as well as the total amount of printing (as complete as including mimeograph and letterpress). All these fundamental researches could provide good grounds for analyzing the role folk-song movement played in the propagandizing and fostering of GLF, as well as in apotheosizing of Mao (even could help make clearer the impact of such apotheosization on the cultural revolution, thereby contributing to restoration of the history. To my knowledge, however, it seems no such research comes out so far; our ambiguous perception of the government is due in part to such insufficient research.

People started to die in 1958 due to starvation, which deteriorated into famine in a large scale in 1959, but the government still kept lying, like the sing orioles and darting swallows. In China, fortunately, we have Mr. Yang Jishen’s book Tombstone exclusively documenting the great famine; outside China, we have Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine. The work done by Backer encompasses the relation and comparison of Mao’s famine with that of Ukraine under governance of Soviet Union, it also covers the situation in Tibetan-inhabited areas. All these are the places that the work of Mr. Yang is relatively weak at, it is recommended, therefore, to refer to both of them so as to grasp a complete picture.

In the years of 1958, especially 1950, the phenomenon of people killed by starvation became very normal, yet the government still exalted the prosperity and printed lots of eulogistic things. The book “1958 poetry”, which is similar to poet yearbook, is nothing but a collection of goose-raising pufferies that were prevalent across the whole country with many races taking part in.

Xu Chi wrote in the preview of 1958 Poetry (August, 1958, 5500 copies printed) that “Everywhere becomes the sea of poems. China has been a country of poems. The poems written by workers, peasants and soldiers are shining brightly. Many factories or plants have emerged with uncountable poems; everywhere turns into an area million-poem; and many military camps are one with million poems.”

“Almost in every county,” he went on, “from the local governors to the people, everyone gets down to writing; everywhere a folk-song fair is held. Competition of poems is so pervasive that all provinces have to do it through wireless radio. Poetries, collection of poems and journals of poems and songs, published in forms of mimeograph and letterpress, are countless. The poems are created on streets, sculptured on stones, posted in plants, building sites and furnaces. Handouts of poems are flying everywhere across the whole country.

“The advent of communes is a big event that calls the global attentions and praises, and also a spectacular theme of many poems.” Accordingly, we had a whole list of people who, then, were professional in singing the praises of the government, to name but a few, Guo Moruo, Li Jishen, Li Ying, Guo Xiaochuan, Yuan Shuipa, Yuan Ying, Zang Kejia, Li Guangtian, Deng Tuo, Guang Weiran, Chen Qitong, He Jingzhi, Li Ji and Xu Chi. Under such crazy circumstance, it is not stunning that such threatening poems like The ears of the grain will smash his head emerged, shown below, in the province of Gan Su in which the amount of death was only third to Sichuan and Henan,

The ears of the grain will smash his head
--Qing Guangyuan, Gan Su province
Streams of clearness flowing day and night,
Crops greening in commune,
Who dare say there is no harvesting of food,
The ears of the grain will smash his head.

Are they winning by amount?

2009-07-03T00:50:00.000-07:00

On July 1^st, as the Communist Party celebrates its eighty eight year’s birthday, the government proudly reveals that the party members of Communist have reached 75.931 million, 17 times that of 1949. The amount of people, as a matter of fact, doesn’t by any means represent the validity and legality of an association. In an environment in which one party predominates with little existence of equal competition, in which joining and withdrawing are constrained while the monopolized social resources by power are employed to attract membership, 76 million members out of 1.3 billion could not be an accomplishment that should be proud. Under the condition that there are no competitors—democratic parties in China are nothing but interest-derivatives or parasites of the communist party, rather than rivals, even taking account of them it would not make a big number in front of our total population—the ratio of party membership has barely reached one twentieth for the past sixty years. A party that alleges itself as the best of all in the world, one with the powerful backup of army and tax while without any competition or opposition, is unable to convert all our 1.3 billion people into membership, should it be a failure or not?

To be frank, the government does want to unify all people into party members, the problem, though, is that it is impossible if all were made members. That is because the party is where all the interests converge and where the dividing of loot takes place, the privileges of the party members would not be reflected had every person been part of the loot dividing. It is just like everyone being an official, there would not be any soldiers to serve, which could make the position of official meaningless. That is to say, they could not involve everyone into party member, since it would be too costly if all packed in and, one the one hand, it would get in peril the exploitation of interests by the party or the maximization of governors’ interests at all levels, on the other.

However, there could not be a small amount of people in the loot dividing group, otherwise the power of its competition looks insufficient. Even though with the backup of the authority over the army and tax, a stable victory could not be count on for them. As a result, the plan for dividing the loot should be gradually phased in; the scholars, capitalists and adult students joining in the party in recent years could be an embodiment of the plan. The way that the loot is divided resembles that the officials who commit crimes could only face disciplinary action within the party instead of being sentenced. But, of course, if you are involved in after bribed, you need to adapt yourself to the rules within the party: being a screw under the party constitution or replacing the human nature with party spirit so as to be tied up with the party on the road of dividing the loot.

In accordance with the principles of modernized parties, it is free to join in and withdraw any party, which is to say, if human rights were jeopardized because of admission to a party, especially jeopardy to personal freedom, such admission is tantamount to kidnapping by underground organizations. The current governmental party-admission process that one has to go through holds a pattern—fist up and swearing—that resembles that of old gangster organizations; two introducers needed have nothing different from the recommendation or introduction one needed in order to be admitted to the organizations. Moreover, there is no freedom to publicly quit the party, nor is there any chance the party members could not be loyal to the leaders. Thus, the current ruling party is not a real ruling party in some sense, it is rather a underground organization backed up by army. How could an organization, close to or even being underground organization, exercise a civilized polity and safeguard the interests of its people; except creating an illusion of peace through relying on lying and brainwashing, controlling the media and propaganda, threatening with force which leads to massive panic among the people, there is no real guarantee of the interests of people, let along the realization of freedom and democracy.

There are shared interests for an organization, but pursuit of such shared interests falls back on the organization’s validity, and such validity comes from its obedience to laws and adherence to equality and competition. The current Communist party is not officially registered, first of all, it doesn’t allow for competitions from other parties, second of all; all these are what monopolies do and against the Anti-trust laws. It is unacceptable for the communist party to lift the on ban political parties at present, but it should at least alter the way how members are admitted, such as promoting transparency, unleash the hurdle of quitting, otherwise there is still a long way for the communist party to go before becoming a modernized and civilized political party. Since such gulf still exists, there could not be civilized politics, without which its legitimacy of ruling will always be a dead hole unsatisfactory to its people. People unsatisfied, coupled with imbalance between societal majority and individuals in competing for interests, will put the interests of everyone in peril and jeopardize a stable development of our society. That building a utopia based on the structure of underground organization, with which to fool its people in order to loot their interests, is a malfeasance unforgivable.

If the freedom of quitting and entering is not deprived, now there must be such occurrences; but a party with members more than seventy million is scared of its members quitting publicly, does it make sense? Does the underlying reason involve being afraid of domino effect that could lead up to the eventual collapse? You certainly don’t need to worry, since you don’t have counterparts so far controlling adequate amount of interests that could be offered to your members. It is, however, getting less and less proud for the party members to acknowledge of the membership in the normal life now. There is a well-known saying: you are fucking a party member, you whole family is fucking party members in the sense that, because of acknowledging of the membership, it is tantamount to conceding the injustice of the party as well as relating themselves to many corrupt officials. To those members who controls little power, therefore, it is evident that they start feeling regretted.

In an animal world, there are of course many ways of living and competing; some win by amount and some by quality, but a balance has to be reached in the biological chain or in the biological world. To my limited biology knowledge, there is a strategy of surviving, which is based on unlimitedly proliferative amount to survival due to its poor life instinct or weak competence, such like rat and cockroach. If you think the amount is the kingcraft, thus you need to assign all of your people memberships, which is the most preeminent showing-off. But doing so is too costly and against you will of maximizing looting your people’s interests. That is to say, mimicking the rat or cockroach is too prohibitive to be possible. But you should know this is a world of human being rather than one filled with competing rats or cockroaches (even if it was, you are unable to convert other worlds into the same), any attempt of effort at proving its validity and legitimacy through amount is nothing but ignorant dream.

In memory of my mother who passed away 5 years ago

2009-06-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

(Translator: this aricle has nothing to do with the topic of politics as is usually written by Mr. Ran, but the great love hiden in the words of this article is too powful and moving for me to flip over, thus I translated it, sharing with all of you. Respected Mr. Ran wrote it in April, 2009.)

My dear mother, when you were still with us, every year from January to April I would recall my own birthday because you had forgot the day I was given birth to. Every year when I celebrate my birthday, I think of you, my mother, since it was that day you delivered me through which you suffered; I, thus, always talk to myself and remind myself of the deep affectionateness that you had to me. But since five years ago you left me, I have learned my own comprehension of the verse “April is the cruelest month” by the great poet Eliot. Because of the existence of the Swiping Day, April is a season of grief for Chinese; because you, my mother passed away in April, it is also my saddest spring.

The day in five years ago, my mother who led a life of hardship passed away, setting up a partition between us and you, our most important family member. Whenever recalling the hardship you had walked through, I, who am less inclined to tears, could not help crying. The days when you were with us have gone, them with poorness but filled up with warmth because of you; but they have been part of my life, improbable to be separated. Recalling your smiling face in the hardship in my childhood; recalling my every single birthday that you never forgot no matter how hard the days were; recalling the moment you taught me Tang poetry; all of these snapshots could be pictured as clearly as the time when I went through together with you. But, my mother, can they be back someday? Sometimes I become too sad to hold my rationality, figuring that however close the people are to us, they will eventually walk away; such inevitable grief, why is the part of the fate of us human beings.

My mother, owing to your passing-away, I have a deeper grasp of such type of relationships; I have a furthered love toward my families; and I have a better understanding of the bitterness between generations. As a consequence, I cherish more the moments that I could share with them, and I am aware that being a blood-related of mine, albeit accidentally, deserves cherishing for my whole life. No matter how close the family members are to each other, everyone loses one day after the day spent, which is the so-called living toward death. It is right because of living toward death, we should live in dignity; although we might have no less hardship, the blessed and interesting life is what deserves our effort. Previously, I was stricter with my family than warm to them, but since the day you left us, my mother, I started to realize they are so import to me. This is the last lesson that, my mother, you taught me through your own leaving.

Last year my friend Cai’s mother was dead at the age of 97, he asked me to compile a collection of memorial. I was tearing for the bitter life that Cai’s mother had experienced, which reminded me of missing you at times. My mother, the blessings you had granted me could hardly be returned, hardly even through my whole life. My mother, we have gone through a lot changes in these five years. The sweet and warm family you had witnessed when you were with us is still going on, your children and grandchildren are still happy and safe; this might be the only comfort for you. Your offspring live in this world with their own principles, straightforward and sincere, as were you with a kind and merciful heart; this might alleviate the worries you always had over us when you were alive.

My mother, the spring has come; the flowers growing up before your coffin must have expressed gratitude to you on behalf of us. Your son, whose is unable to kneel down before your coffin due to the distance partitioning us, has his heart already been with you.

Moving and touching for 20 years

2009-06-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the Memorial Day for the Tian Anmen Square event in 1989 (commonly referred to as June 4th), the Victoria Park in Hong Kong saw more than one hundred and fifty thousand people gather around—majorly people from Hong Kong and some from mainland. The gathering was for commemorating the spirit of June 4th, for consoling the dead and, more importantly, for demonstrating the Chinese people’s unshakable persistence in pursuing the freedom and democracy. Since 1989, the Victoria Park of Hong Kong holds candlelight celebration for June 4th every year, this celebration has gone through 20 years unceasingly development, having become an inalienable part of the spirit of Hong Kong society and the culture of the residents. Because of the thriving of the internet, the people who are interested in this activity can immediately access the live of the celebration. Through the internet, furthermore, they can participate in the celebration interactively. Such interaction protects the spirit of pursuing the democracy and freedom from being masked by the information-blocking project.

Before Hong Kong was recovered, the mainland dramatically depreciated Brain’s colonization of Hong Kong, to an extent of worthlessness. After its recovery, following the orientation of mainland media, the common people think of Hong Kong as a desert of culture, over commercialized. As a matter of fact, if you opened your eyes, if you pandered in your own mind, if you captured more information, you would not agree with the purposeful demonization of and wanton depreciation of Hong Kong by the government. While the colonization is a process of agony, commercialization accompanied by force could hardly be avoided for a society ruled by the “survival of the fittest”, a society of low civilization, or of half civilization and half jungle (the society refers to Hong Kong before occupied by Brain). It gets complicated to appraise this historic process. Seen from the angle of the legacy left and judged with objective facts, however, Hong Kong today still preserves certain facets of Brain’s civilization, especially that of institutions, which plays a key role. It is just because of the convention of legality and a resultant civil society left by the Brain, that Hong Kong people are still holding the possession of indomitability even though the society of Hong Kong has been encroached by the autarchy from mainland.

Led by Liu Shu, with attendance of many Hong Kong people, the “yellowbird movement” saved many suspects of the June 4th event chased by the government, and many salvagers were killed because of this movement. So brave! What’s more, the media of Hong Kong have carried off many works such as interviewing, protecting precious materials as well as uncovering the history in order to compete with the control over the truth of the June 4th by the Chinese government. Read the article, kid, be brave, written by the president of Apple Daily, one could not help tearing; hear what Liang Wendao said, “we protect our memory until the last one left”, how overwhelmingly unyielding and persistent are they! As to others, there are Li Yi, Lian Yizheng, Cui Shaoming and Kong Jiesheng etc. that unceasingly reflect on and unveil the truth of the June 4th, and criticize the retroaction of the government. People that are familiarized, like Dong Qiao and Tao Jie, are actually also condemning the totalitarianism and the mainland government. But their critiques are less known, since they are willfully blocked and suffocated by the mainland government. While the media in Hong Kong are very commercialized, their value and ethics of reporting are far beyond that could be imagined by the mainland media. Even the supplement of their newspaper, its quality and weight, is too far beyond to catch up with by the mainland media.

Once I wrote an article called Hong Kong is collapsing, in which I accentuated that, in order to control Hong Kong, how the mainland government racks its brain to penetrate into every corner of the society, attempting to massively “mainlandize” it from political, economic and societal aspects. In the process, due to incremental immigrants from mainland including students, many of them have experienced little of what the democracy and freedom are; they have assorted interested connections with the mainland; in addition, they are afraid that the mainland government would persecute their families who are still staying in the mainland. Thus, these people are predisposed to advocate the malicious actions of the mainland government; people like Cheng Yie, a student from mainland in Hong Kong University, are such pragmatists. If their ideas were naturally growing up they would be the result of a diverse society, the problem, though, is that they are probably intended plantation by the mainland government. At the meantime, because of the power of the mainland government over the economy, many merchants and officials in Hong Kong are controlled, harboring a great detriment to the democratic development in Hong Kong.

The god is still watching us: for our suffering country, concerning the holocaust in the Tian Anmen event, we are lucky to still have Hong Kong that can speak up that can be relied on. Owing to a powerful matrix (which refers to the mainland government), however, the prospects of Hong Kong is not that optimistic. Thus, not only are the media and scholars in Hong Kong responsible to remind the people there with increasing frequency that they are living under the threat of the matrix--such threat is like the process of slowly boiling frog—that they should be precautious. But also, the people in mainland who are struggling for the democracy and freedom should pay more attention to the developments in Hong Kong in that they are not only “them”, they are concerned with us and they are part of us: either from the perspective of the value of democracy and freedom or the current interests, the development of Hong Kong to the mainland and the way around are both getting more and more interlocked. Therefore, we should work with them together to defend and further towards the perfection of their current institutions of democracy and freedom, and, meanwhile, shedding the light of the democracy and freedom on the people in mainland.

Thanks to Hong Kong people for the 20-year’s remembering the painfulness of the June 4th, thanks for your persistence in commemorating; this is not only the blood-relationship, but also the adherence to the ideas of democracy and freedom. As being the mainland people encroached by the system of autocracy, the best we could do to reciprocate Hong Kong people is to bury the polity of autocracy together with them, in order that they are off the threat from the twenty-three evil laws (the day when the democracy is fulfilled, for the whole China, there will not be two systems, maybe something like the U.S. federal system). It’s is our common dream.

The crisis of the government’s credibility in the internet era

2009-06-02T21:36:00.001-07:00

In a society without good institutions, what are the consequences and jeopardy of the situation in which people distrust each other? It is not difficult for us to figure out: because of the mutual distrust, not only will the mutual trade costs increase, but also the quality of people’s lives will be affected and so are their esteems. The truth has become a type of scarce resources and justice has become rare in China, such that even the simpletons start worried about it. Because the governments at all levels are so used to lying, to being arrogant and opinionated, and also inert to change their bad habits that their first move during their incumbency was to bury the truth and be a “extinguisher” of the true information by all means. The consequence produced, however, is that the government is getting extremely discredited by its people, leading to the fact that the legitimacy of the mandates and regulations is drained out and the cost of administration increased. Furthermore, it triggers the malicious cycle of mutual distrust between the people and the government, which harbors more than a disaster to the society.

Confronting the current global economic crisis, China is badly hit due to its export-driven structure, thus the government targets at exploration of the domestic consumption through galvanizing the public zeal for consuming. The government keeps chanting the slogan, claiming that they have confidence in overcoming the current hardship. What is seen by the people, however, is still the darkness of the institutions, continuation of the corruption and the fact that all the stimulus packages will only advantage the minor privileged even though some people could not share the left-over. Because of an incomplete social security system, coupled with discredit of the government’s stimulus, the people have to lead a life by tightening their already tight belt. Recently there was a piece of news about several local governments in the provinces such like He Bei, Inner Mongolia and Shan Xi etc. issuing governmental bonds, but ending up with no deal reached at all. It is, said by some scholars, because the bonds are of low rate and fluid that no people want it, which sounds really reasonable to me. The deeper reason roots in, however, that the credibility that the government owns has been overused for their lies of the past decades; it is almost impossible to have the people believe the government and purchase the bonds at all means as happened 50 years ago.

As a matter of fact, the government has been veiling the truth and burying the rightness for as long as 60 years, but why do the people start to sense its intensity nowadays? It is because of internet that brings these unrighteous and veiled actions up above the table, making more people, both practically and psychologically, aware of the truth that they are living in country of little justice. Take the case s of Deng Yujiao and Hu Bin for example. Had they happened in the era controlled by the traditional media, they would have not reached as broad as they do now; they would not draw as much attention although they might cause a small stir. Not only because of the limitation of the speed, the tunnel, and the means of the traditional media as well as their limited impacts, but also the costs of paying attention to the cases of out-of-town were high, the normal people had little concern about the lives of others.

It is different now; the costs of concerning about these cases have become relatively lower, means like surfing online, texting, blogging and BBS etc. could expedite the reaching of information. Especially, people are angry at the government’s attempts to block, mask, obscure, and “mosaicize” the relevant information. Such hindrances, however, are diluted along with the development of internet—a gleaner of the people’s will. Due to the lack of righteousness and justice, the gulfs between dissimilar classes have enlarged gradually and the whole Chinese society is going through a series of rips (tearing-apart), a collapsing risk as referred to by Prof. Sun Li Ping. The case of Hu Bin is not only a representation that the credibility of Hang Zhou government is questioned or dismissed—nor is the case of Deng Yujiao—they are indicating the universal questions and distrusts over all local and the center government. In another word, that the credibility of the government at any level is questioned or dismissed will spread out rapidly and reach to people everywhere through the internet, drastically consolidating the distrust from the people to all governments.

If previously that the people felt obligated to trust the government is because of the fooling propaganda, now many people begin realizing the government is something that should be questioned and criticized instead of being trusted. That is to say, the public distrust to the government takes place progressively, now the credibility of the government is severely depleted. It is a huge mistake to expect the same thing to happen as did fifty years ago, during which the people accepted whatever the government fooled them. Furthermore, such refusal to accept occurs not only in the area of politics but also emerges in that of economy. Why does the premier Wen repetitively accentuate to the media that the government has confidence in overcoming this economic crisis and the people should too? We must be aware of some common sense, that is, in a society with little legality and justice the things that are frequently repeated are where the cruxes lie. It is because, in a society without substantial reforms toward democracy, the major means to maintain the public credibility is through repeated admonition. Such admonition, however, has been recurring for 60 years, exhibiting a heavy blend of falsehood and an obvious credibility crisis. In turn, it also precipitates the speed of the unstoppable collapse; the prospects of China do throw the people of vision into discomposure.

The freedom of press is the cornerstone of freedom

2009-05-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Ran Yunfei, 9th May

Concerning the natures of holidays, I haven’t deeply studied. But one intent of holidays is to commemorate the people or events that passed away in order to remind us of not forgetting them or to learn from their either spirits or sorrowfulness. Another purpose is to set a goal toward which the current society could make progress, just as in 1993 United Nations established 3 May to be the “World Press Freedom Day”. However, one of the common paradoxes is that usually what we talk about the most is usually what we know the lest. World Press Freedom Day is actually such a paradox that, that you declare it is because the freedom of freedom has not been fully-fledged. Thus we need to mark a day out as the day for press freedom in the hope of keeping the world awoke of the fact that many reporters are still faced up to the threat of imprisonment and death.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was pubilicized 60 years ago, China’s own constitution has also been part of it openly committing itself to the freedom of press and speech. But the degree of press freedom in China is so poor that it’s obvious to all. The recent evaluation of human rights covers 195 countries regarding the degree of press freedom, among which 70 enjoys such freedom and 61 partially. China is one of the remainder which dispossesses the freedom of press. Furthermore, in the list of 10 countries where blogs could not be posted freely, China ranks eight—winning this “honor” together with Cuba, North Korea and Myanmar. Along with the thriving of intent and the resulting growth of bloggers, according to statistics, among the people who are imprisoned due to unfreedom of press, bloggers account for 45%. The recent cases, such like Wang Shuai in Henan Province, Wu Baoquan in Inner Mongolia Province, Deng Yonggu in Sichuan Province as well as Peng Yongsheng in Hubei Province, are all that in which informants are imprisoned due to to reporting of government corruption and competition for interests with normal people. While these cases are a little different to some extent, they are all entitled fabricated “defaming government”. They ridiculously take government as something you could not criticize and, even worse, as an individual entity that when there is no litigant to sue, the procuratorial organ transgresses to bring in an indictment, playing a role of pawns for the government.

The news media are commonly referred as the fourth power in the West, exerting an indispensable function of monitor on the three other national mechanisms, namely, judicature, administration and legislation. The core of press freedom is comprised of, firstly, free competition of press, and, secondly, independence and objectivity, and, thirdly, freedom of speech. Without these three points, freedom of press is only a moon in the mirror or a flower reflected in the water. Currently all media in China are state owned (even though those relatively liberalized), news are gravely homogeneous and unified; one voice or one angle usually represents all reporting of news with, sometimes, advocacy of “main rhythm” (the rhythm of lord). Such situation could not nourish a real competition of press. In other words, the media across the whole China are Party-produced: the Department of Propaganda gives directive and indicative notification to the press almost every day before publishing, in order to kill the truth. Under such situation how could we hope for independence or objectivity? Without freedom of speech, for instance, the constraint on searching for privacy information in Xu Zhou (I am not against the protection of normal people’s privacy, but concerning the privacy of governors, we should protect the means by which normal people search for truth under the condition that their right of privacy is not encroached), and requirement of real-name-login-blogger, prohibition of unkind review as well as prohibition of mocking or making fun of the “fake justice” of the governors, all these are 100 percent constraints on the freedom of speech. Without such freedom of speech as the origin of freedom, any other forms of freedom including press freedom are only nouns written on paper.

The Chinese government is someone whose walk doesn’t conform to whose talk: if one hundredth of what the government has spoken well of praised itself after 1949 could be realized, China would be a paradise jealousy by all. But all these are just an unobtainable utopia. Every year, they exalt themselves unlimitedly, on one hand, and keep making empty promises for decades, on the other. It has far already institutionalized in China’s constitution that freedoms of speech, press, and publishing and others are protected, yet these legislated words have never been fulfilled. As a consequence, that even under the protection of constitution legislations like “National Plan on Human Rights Movement” are introduced will not be believed: it’s only another obvious bigger lie. Right in the middle of the days “National Plan on Human Rights Movement”, all sorts of events are being on stage in China in which human rights are encroached; even the particularly emphasized revealing of the names of deaths in last year’s earthquake has not shown any sign of revealing, instead the volunteer group led by Ai Weiwei are still going through hardship—hindered by the local governments—in collecting truth of the students killed in earthquake. When the government is encroaching human rights of us, one way of their performance resembles thieves crying “stop thief”; but there are high-ranking governors ashamedly claiming that China is the best country in terms of human rights protection. The history has told us that, unless achievement of the real freedom of press or unleash the prohibition of newspaper (TV, radio, internet and suchlike), the dawn of freedom will never come.

We are not scared of government anymore

2009-05-03T12:37:00.001-07:00

Yunfei Ran

The memorial anniversary for the dead in 12 May earthquake last year is coming up, and I started to read the book how we are now: dictation from the survived in 12 May earthquake (2009, Sichuan Art Publisher) authored by my friends Yin Bo and Wang Guoping and photographed by Chen Wei; with more suffering specifics read I could not help weeping again. In the course of the past year, the things of goodness and badness that I have experienced, seen, and heard are so sorrowful and unforgettable. I admit that in comparison to Tang Shan earthquake in 1976, the way this earthquake was dealt with shows gradual changes in both the society and the government. I strongly condemn, however, the government for hesitating to publicize the real amount of deaths and their names, and for not allowing the families of dead students to investigate the shoddy schools, which results in an ineffective investigation and eradiation of the element of man-made disaster. Since our government is not elected by the people, in many facets it lags far behind those highly politically civilized; covering up for the shoddy schools that caused many student deaths heightens our grief and indignation to a particular extent of intolerableness.

Both ridiculous and burlesque is the fact that government keeps the real number of victims and their names as national secret and holds it from the public. That parents whose kids were dead are not allowed to defend their rights through legal means in order to ascertain where the responsibility lies resembles trampling upon the laws; Mr. Huang Qi who helps parents defend their rights was jailed and no public trial has been conducted so far. As opposed to the Government’s shyness of releasing the names of student victims, a non-governmental investigation group led by Ai Weiwei has been working on it through their own effort, but they have encountered a variety of hindrances, threats, beating-up as well as illegal imprisonment from local governments. Another person who has taken pains to investigate the number of student deaths was put into jail already, and so far there has been no governmental statement regarding his imprisonment. On the one hand, many people have not got due aid; on the other, misreporting of the amount of relief materials has appeared to different degree in the process of post-disaster reconstruction (Mr. Deng Yonggu in Peng Xi was imprisoned due to revealing that local government falsely and illegally claimed relief materials). On the one hand, many problems exist in post-disaster reconstruction; on the other, however, the contributions of NGOs to reconstruction have been clamped down on. Simultaneously, concerns from people across the whole country about the truth have been also suppressed, detained and blocked, which harms the support for the people in disaster areas, but also counts against the effectiveness of monitoring the government in post-disaster reconstruction.

But the government, please note: even under your high pressure, still there been many overseas media, volunteers and NGO that break through layers of blockage and com to report the truth about the shocked areas and make practical contribution within their abilities. Undoubtedly those covering the true news encompass some worldwide well-known media, but they are reported in English that many Chinese are unable to read. Whereupon, a translation association online has organized a group to interpret the news regarding Sichuan’s earthquake. So far, they have translated 107 articles, and made their indispensable dedication to informing Chinese people of how overseas media have reported the earthquake. Yesterday I read one of their articles translated from Los Angeles Times named Parents hounded after child dies in China earthquake, in which voice from a parent—Wang Zhangting—from Mian zhu was mentioned. “They pressure us. They try to control us,” said Wang. “But even if they kill us, it doesn’t matter because…we are not scared of the government anymore.” His word upsets me. One of the old Chinese maxims says “people not sacred of death, why scaring them with death”, but it seems that the Communist Party doesn’t believe it who exalts scientific thought of development and its governing according to law every day. As a matter of fact, the efforts to defend the rights of their children and themselves have been underestimated by many governors: they failed to notice that the parents take their children’s lives as everything of their own. This is just like, regarding the fact that recently the Government has more and more suppressed the efforts of people legally defending their rights and put them into jail by illegal means, my friends Ding depicts it with on sentence “if we are not in the jail, we are on the way to it.” When people are in contempt of jails, when jails are gradually filled up with people, what is the use of them? It is the same with the Golden Shield project, one functioning as the “Great Wall” in preventing people from knowing truths; when more and more netizens start jumping over the wall, it will collapse naturally.

Several days in a dinner, I was indignant with the media of Sichuan including Chengdu at their nonfeasance or dys-feasance. In such a great disaster, we haven’t seen any medium standing out and daring to speak of truth, nor a media reporter worthy of being remembered, that even a claim of ashamedness on us Sichuan people is deserved. Formerly, I was proud of being a Sichuan person, but after this earthquake, I have seen the timidity of us and even impudence of some. Those persecuting the investigation group led by Ai Weiwei, for instance, are both timid and shameless (inarguably those behind them manipulating them are worse). We, Sichuan people, have not merely suffered from natural disasters but also from man-made poisons. What is worse is that when others come to help us, we don’t welcome them with gratitude but pay them with insult and beat who have come from a great distance, conscienceless! The word “victim” has been prohibited to appear in any media of Sichuan, the proposal by Chengdu Evening Newspaper to mourn for one minute in anniversary of the earthquake has been also turned down by Propaganda Department, such Sichuan people, such Sichuan governors, if we don’t criticize if we don’t combat, aren’t we willing to swallow the insults? If we keep silent, how could we give an answer to the compatriots killed in the disaster?

How is Schutzstaffel forged?

2009-04-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

The government started out with two sticks; one is the pen and the other gun; the latter kills off body and the former off thoughts. Besides, pens could produce words of mendacity, disguising and justifying the massive and indiscriminate killings caused by guns. The jungle government (by translator: referring to the current Chinese regime, meaning it came from peasant uprising) is also infatuated with the belief that regime comes from guns, and hitherto resists the ballot-based and peaceful completion. Therefore, it cares a lot about its private guarding team, Schutzstaffel, one that is maintained by the money from taxpayers; only because of doing so could the ruling group keep maximizing its interests.

In the devastating earthquake taking place in Wen Chuan, it seems the performance of army was overlooked, but all could sense, from the anger of Premier Wen in barely controlling the soldiers, the paradox that the party commanding the gun and the non-nationalized army. Therefore what he could only do was throw out a word to the army to vent his anger, saying that “it’s the people who are feeding you, do as you see fits”, and turn around. As a matter of fact, their performance was even worse. They did enter fast, but with little professional skills of rescuing; except for an immediate arrival, their performance was no better than local police, not to speak of local firemen. Of course, ordering the army to conduct rescue per se is tantamount to thinking light of professional techniques of rescuing. A country dispossessing an outstanding professional team of rescuing and meanwhile refusing international aid, the result was undeniably missing of golden time to salvage the suffers and causing more innocent deaths which would have been avoided had been a better team present on time.

As China spends not a small amount on military, the strength of Chinese army is hence exaggerated in the world, which greatly excites those nationalists. But how is the fact? Military expense does cost a lot; payment to officers and soldiers has been raised. But is the military strength really upgraded? I am afraid we cannot be too optimistic. In dealing with unarmed people, they are undoubtedly unrivaled in bravery, but when it comes down to “real swords and spears”, especially the modernized war, in which they need to resist enemies, I am afraid they are another form of shoddy construction. No matter how awful their performance is, they are praised and no media can criticize them. Looking at such a greenhouse-protected army, coupled with assorted unstoppable corruptions, how much you could count on them? If the war is exploded, it is no more than day-dreaming to depend on them to fight against Russia’s consistent crudity and North Korea’s kidnapping and the growing-up of Japan. I am not nationalist or nation-supremacist, nor do I advocate war. In contrary, I stand for negotiation, for peace, and I support any effort of peacefulness and justice for defending the interests of a country by any means of diplomacy. Even so, a well-trained and civilized force is still indispensable if the interests of a country are to be protected.

What is a civilized force? It’s one that embraces the taxpayers with great kindness, one that never points the bayonet to its own people. A civilized force does not come to being under the propaganda of party doctrine, or if the soldiers are prevented from accessing internet; nor could it be made by a tough physical training resulting in more brawn than brain. Training of the soldiers into those strong in the body but light in the head equates only with self-mutilation, which will ultimately jeopardize the government itself. Concerning the several battles happened after 1949, let’s lay aside, for the time being, the topic of justice, and look at the effects of these battles only; in which one did they win clean? Other than fiascos, only devastating victories were left. The army and popular morale accumulated through civil war has been far already exhausted; it is of great delusion to think of relying on Schutzstaffel and rejecting nationalization of the army as a means to keep ruling the country for ever.

The Wen Chuan earthquake was only a small test for the army, but problems have already been apparently noticed such as poor in fighting and training. Quality of the air plane, for instance, was so bad that one could not find any word for it. Especially the fallen plane, in view of those at the scene, it was like driving a tractor up to sky; how could it not fall down. In addition, one could get speechless on seeing the shoes of the soldiers; all were soaked in the rain of May that they had to use the donated sanitary towel as insole. It might be fine to rescue with such military outfit, but if they are faced up with real fighting, it will not be a small problem. Relying on such fooled soldiers—whose bodies are trained whereas brain deformed (meaning severely brainwashed)—to safeguard the country, we taxpayers cannot resist questioning. Nationalized army is the symbol of the civilized country, and is the cornerstone of a stable and safe society. A country whose army is not nationalized but only being Party-privatized Schutzstaffel will possibly deprive its people of being able to lead a life of happiness and dignity, which seem only day-dream for them.

Ran’s review of news week (103)

2009-04-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

Professor of Peking University Sun Dongdong:99% long time petitioners are mentally ill

http://news.163.com/09/0404/05/561IOQ950001124J.htmlThere may be no other comparable era like present China, where unreliable academicians, professors and experts are ubiquitous. Many experts have neither professional discipline nor academic consciousness, all they’re doing is making easily detected flawed defense for the strong and powerful authority without any consciousness of what academic disciple and objectiveness is. No doubt Sun Dongdong put forward such claim in an era where anyone who sings song of praise for the government can earn lots of candy. Many experts and professors have deteriorated to such a level to openly abuse their petty authority in the academia circle to speak for the evil interest group. You can’t see any rigorous academic definitions in Sun’s article. Where’s his source of data? Where’s his sampling survey? Even without any professional training, you can see the ridiculousness of his claim as long as you’re people with common sense. Then why dare he put forward such a claim that 99% long-time petitioners have mental problem, and should be sent to mental hospitals? That’s because the authority need him to come forward to speak for their evil stability, they need his conclusion to put out the fire for them, he has already had the conclusion in his mind even before any investigation, just waiting for a channel to express it. In terms of violating academic disciples, breaking the bottom line of humanitarianism, those are beyond his considerations.

Research indicates the ubiquitous existence of interrogation are largely due to system defect

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-03-26/051717483528.shtm Research is an obvious comparative rigorous way to judge something, but when it comes to something like interrogation, even many ordinary people know about officials defend for officials, judges take plaintiff and defender’s bribery. With some additional common sense, the non-independence of judicial system, injustice of judiciary system, combining with no balance and supervision among public security organs, procuratorial organs and people's courts but cooperation among each other through transaction of power, can you expect no interrogation under such a systematic design? Frankly speaking, you can reach such a conclusion that there will be absolute existence of interrogation in such a non-independent and injustice judicial system. Even faced to various suppressions, the media still exposes interrogation issues occasionally through all kinds of obstacles, which also demonstrate the ubiquitous existence of interrogation. We can say that it’s almost like day dreaming to extinct interrogation without the independence of public security and judicial system, and the transformation of administration’s superiority to judicial power. Everyone knows that interrogation issue can’t be solved without the reform of judicial system or even the political system. But the interest groups will never change before their final day comes, but when it comes it’ll be too later for them to change. This is where the tragedy of Chinese society lies in.

Beijing citizen runs for next president of People’s Republic of China

http://www.donews.us/show.php?tid=600I haven’t read Mr.Chen’s manifestos, nor do I have any idea of what he advocates for, thus I’m not sure I’ll support him or not. However, I definitely support his right for running this campaign, regardless of how tiny it is, how hopeless it is, this right should be expressed. Unexpressed truth isn’t the truth, nor will your rights be preserved unless they’re expressed, from this viewpoint I support Mr.Chen’s campaign. People like Yao Lifa from Hubei have successfully become the national people’s representatives through their own efforts, and have done whatever they can to speak for the people and defense for people’s right. Anyone who has read the book will see the impact and meaning of the career of Yao Lifa as a national people’s representative and his campaign process on Chinese society. This will be of extraordinary meaning for nurturing a civic society in China over a long period of time. Therefore I believe if Mr.Chen can continuously run his campaign publicly, and announce his manifestos, he’ll make his own contributions to the development of the society in China.

Hei Long Jiang: running three empty cotton reserves with 3 million RMB fiscal budget every year
http://bbs.cyol.com/redirect.php?fid=6&tid=165044&goto=nextnewsetPeople must still have in mind the empty food reserve in Dangtu, An Hui province last year, where the food department scalped the food while abused the funds for national food reserve, and late came with no end. The empty cotton reserves and scalp of cotton, then gains large amount of financial budget is just another version of Dangtu story. On one hand the government violates the market mechanism, on the other lack of control over each department’s bribery taken behaviors, which results in the empty food and cotton reserves and the falsification. When food and cotton crises come under planned economic regulation, there will no availability of food and cotton, by then the government will make more lies to cover the stories for those corrupted officials. This undemocratic government originated from the corrupted officials’ cruelty towards its people, but one day the legitimacy of the regime will lose completely due to their corruption. By that time, the empty food and cotton reserves will become oil over the fire which will destroy the ill society.
Wei Fang of Shan Dong Province announces red title document to require the officials to sell houses for real estate developers
http://house.focus.cn/news/2009-03-30/648412.htmlThe compliance among real estate developers and local officials is an uncontroversial truth. The local government’s performance has been heavily relying on the real estate, which is also the main source of corruption for officials. One another way the real estate developers also make use of every means to make the officials their compliance in order to gain their high profitability. The compliance between businessmen and government officials forces the consumers to the position of being kidnapped without any choice, the only difference is higher or lower ransom. When the economic crises fell on China, there’re various measures concerning real estate industry, and also ridiculous performance of the real estate developers and officials, but using the official document to order the officials to sell houses for the real estate developers is still rare. However, just this single example can demonstrate how ridiculous the compliance among businessmen and government officials has become.
Hong Kong media: the salary of PLA common soldiers and officers will increase 50%
http://bt.xinhuanet.com/2009-03/25/content_16061235.htm No supervision, no presence of media, no exposure or reflection of corruption, there’s lots to worry about the combat forces on the military under such circumstances. I have to admit they’ve got a system of methods to deal with those taxpayers who feed them, but when it comes to deal with outside world, it’s a different story, they’ve taken four wars after 1949: North Korea war as the United Nations, China Indonesia war, China Soviet Union war, China Vietnam war, the first won with disastrous loss, the last three are just fiasco. The military expenditure is increasing every year, and its salary has already higher than the local government’s payment, there must be some stories behind this 50% increase under such an economic crises time. The 50% growth for common soldiers and officials (people with high ranking also relatively increase) just another money the government prepays for the military to help them deprive more legal rights of taxpayers and preserve their robbed interest. There’s no public debate on the military salary increase, nor is there supervision over financial budget, when the people are experiencing the economic winter, they just arbitrarily increase their salary without any saying. The decision behind this salary increase must have some unspoken stories; however this will never buy an evil stability for them.
Chongqing official claims no fear of exposure(continued): denial of absence from work to attend birthday party
http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-04-01/051817523420.shtml.We can judge the phenomenon of the officials defend for each other in the government, the abuse of power by the officials have become a part of their heart and soul ,even such a small, local official dare to despise the media exposure. No democratic election, no real supervision, of course comes no fear of exposure. Can’t you see those dismissed a few days ago are just reinstated? This director Lei, hasn’t he seen the strong return of his example Zhang Zhiguo? With the role of such example, the officials are as energetic and fearless as those injected with chicken blood. Who cares about exposure? Dismissal is just another paid vacation; I can just be reinstated one day. You can see many outrageous officials behave like gangsters under such a social background. They’re so protected and loved by their superiors, which has testified one truth I’ve mentioned before: government only loves bad officials.

Book numbers control aiming at clamping down on thoughts

2009-04-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

The presses in democratic countries are mostly private owned, belonging to virtually commercial activities. Consequently and naturally, the book numbers are not under control, only a system of registration is adopted. That is to say, you don’t need an approval to publish a book, nor need you purchase book numbers from somewhere. Book numbers are not monopolized by anyone; you can access it without authorization or purchasing. While clauses such as the freedom of the press are documented in Chinese constitution, existing of the national Press and Publications Administration (PPA) is basically for violation of this clause. The so-called irregular publishers that have been investigated and turned down by PPA are actually those having published books whose thoughts are not aligned or in violation with the official ideology. In fact, such investigations are openly interferences of the freedom of speech and press.

The harms of book numbers control have been clearly depicted in an article by Dong Ding called Why should we lift the ban on book numbers? The institution of controlling book numbers is like the rules in any sector, severing or privileging the “big boss” of the sector like the national PPA. The effects of such controlling consist of 1) providing a room of rent-seeking for officials who take the reins of these book numbers—it is well known that many officials in charge of publishing have reaped benefits; 2) aggravating the burden on readers since expensive paying for books numbers will be part of cost and ultimately be shouldered by readers. In addition, due to the costly paying for book numbers, the books of small circulation are likely to lose the chance of being published, drastically devastating the cultural diversity as well as some unpopular researches. But what is more critical is that book numbers control has been the incinerator of diverse cultures, expressions and thoughts, leaving the press many times a tool of confusing right and wrong and a sycophant of the government.

None of the press in China is private owned, all of them are so-called communal publishers supervised by the government, causing this industry to be in a state of deformed development, and inflicting its socioeconomic benefit as well. Many problems of China’s economy in the backdrop of the unprecedented global economic crisis are created by our institutions. For instance, the stagnancy of book industry in which audience could barely afford to purchase, and the resultant low consumption in cultural products, are majorly ascribable to the supervision of book numbers which has been persistently fueling a series of high costs of publishing. If access to book numbers is unleashed, not only will the publishing industry be thriving, and cultural consumption be increasing, but also relevant industries will be galvanized, thus, in a sense, helping Chinese people weather though the current economic recession. Just as the system of controlling over book numbers hinders consumption and inflicts the publishing, there are also many other industries suffering because of the administrators in pursuit of their own interests. All these generate enormously negative impact on the economy and people’s lives.

We are surprised at the academic and ideological proliferation during the period of the republic of China, that were rendered by an education of liberation, multivariation, tolerance and an education not “partied” or “partinized” (it got a little severer after the War of Resistance, but not as bad as today that the Communist Party officials predominate almost everything). But another point, which we might not remember, free establishment of press and competition between publishers were also an important reason for the thriving academic and ideological achievement at the time. The authors then not only ran peer journals, such as Xin Yue (New Moon), Xian Dai (Modernity), Wen Xue (Literature), Wen Yi Zhen Xian (the Frontier of Literature and Art), but also opened many peer presses to an extent of countlessness, like Shui Mo Press publishing leftist books. As a result of peer presses and peer journals, the triggered competition and diversification furnished the audience with a large room of choices, and a colorful variety of literatures were achieved as well. Without the freedom of the press, no original thoughts could be given birth; without the naissance of original thoughts, it is of no difference with empty talk of paper to realize the so-called social progress or national rejuvenation, not to speak of acquisition of personal dignity.

The system of book numbers control was not initiated until 1990s, such system of administration has imposed great harm to this country both implicitly and explicitly. After 1949 the press in China had many forbidden regions where many volumes were taken as prohibited and reactionary books. Besides, hierarchical divisions existed in the tunnels to information and accesses to books. Before the Cultural Revolution, for instance, only could people in upper class touch yellow and gray books (said to include 1041 types), these were all for the reading of leaders and cadres, not for that of unqualified ordinary people. To read the interior version of these books, references and relations were needed to get into Xinhua bookstore. As Mr. Yu Haocheng has recalled, the year when Public Publishing House printed The Gulag Archipelago in original Russian (Архипелаг ГУЛаг) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, purchasers were required to write down their family, employer and address by high-ranking official Hu Qiaomu in charge of propaganda and news media at the time. It seems that nowadays there have been few interior published books, and it looks like a progress has been made. Actually it is not so; previously books divergent from the main-stream ideology could be distributed through such interior publishing, but today as long as it’s marked as a prohibited book there is no chance for it appearance. How can we hope a country to be resuscitated and to grow up if its clamping down on publishing to such an extent that good books cannot be published. In this country, people could not reflect freely, people could not speak freely, people’s expressions and works could not be freely published; they are derived of dignity, but also of creativeness. That no real vitality exists in this country is the inevitable consequence.

You are not fighting alone: to Tan Zuoren.

2009-04-04T11:46:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

I received a text in the morning of March 31 and knew that you were taken away by them (by translator: “them” refers to government). In a country of insecurity and with sometimes terror in air, while this was not out of my expectation, still I could not believe it and would rather think of it as a canard. Since such canards had happened many times—which represents friends’ care for you—I didn’t take the text serious at first sight. But after I asked your friends who have more associations with you, it was assured that you were really taken away this time; it was not a canard.

Having made sure of what happened to you, I was in my room along recalling our friendship of over ten years; I started to feel unwell. The liberality when you drink, the promises and loves you keep to your friends, the persistence, fortitude and braveness, “slow in speech but quick in action” of your working, are all that make your friends bear in mind forever. I have little idea of when you started to involve yourself in public activities; I didn’t further into your bright history as you didn’t mention. I only know that for many years you have been working with “Green River”, one of Sichuan’s renowned NGOs, and devoted yourself to many of Sichuan’s environmental activities. The love you have for your hometown makes you intolerable of anything harmful to the land on which you grow up. You were opposed to construction of hydropower station on the only water source for Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province), Bai Tiao River (if constructed Chengdu will be in endless trouble); you were against construction of Zi Pingpu hydropower in Du Jiangyan (a city close to Chengdu), especially after earthquake you took pains to accentuate, repetitively, the potential trouble that this reservoir harbors to both Chengdu and Du Jiangyan. All of these have less to do with your own interest, but more with your conscience.

Concerning constructing of Peng Zhou petro-chemical project (PZPC) on seismic belt, and the hidden problems it might bring to Chengdu, you are dreadfully worried. You are the most rational and most stubborn one in fighting against PZPC and also doing the most; when almost everyone were about to surrender, you were still running for solutions by all means. You were a bearded Quixote, persevering in your own investigation with effort even when some people who thought themselves smart satirized your struggling. You said, as being one of Chengdu people (you parents were from Hunan, you born in Chengdu), if not combating against the projects detrimental to Chengdu, you could hardly sleep and eat. You said, if we know they are going to harm us but we don’t oppose them, aren’t we Chengdu people coward? You kept petitioning the province congress for requiring public debate regarding advantages and disadvantages of the project; you continuously and rationally proposed relevant suggestions of middle point, but barely received attentions and replies. You went on spreading out the jeopardy of the project, and you even came up with the idea to wrap white cloth around head and attach white label to cars, to show the impression of weakness (rather than demonstration), in order to draw attentions from relevant parties. While the project is now under an accelerated way, Zuoren, you didn’t fail to live up to your conscience, you didn’t let your family down, especially your kids—it’s the duty of parents to fight for the right to subsistence and dignity of their offspring—and you didn’t disappoint the majority of Chengdu people who were in silence.

You were running a magazine called Wen Huan Ren with friends, issuing lots of articles concerning democracy and freedom, which the readers enjoyed a lot and, meanwhile, worried about you, but it had been around for years until not allowed to operate. You are a person more than taking action, you also write to express your opinions. After the earthquake, not only did you go up to the stricken area to help suffers and participate in many of post-disaster reconstructions, but also you wrote down and distribute what you had seen and heard, to let more of those that could not be there personally know about some of the hidden and masked truth. Zuoren, you were in danger, but you were still trying all your best to help others. Recall the night you received a phone call at Zi Pingpu dam from some sufferer in Bei Chuan, you drank liquor with tears, you marched along in darkness; wood and stones moved. Liu Shaokun from Guang Han (by translator: a city in Sichuan) was detained and investigated because of taking pictures in the stricken area with you, and posing them online, you approached those in charge and told them that “I took him there and took pictures together, I will be with him together to jail.” At last, that Liu shaokun could be freed has a lot to do with your care and endeavor. You are such a person with affection and faith, and responsibility.

You are a father of two kids, which makes you unbearably upset at the massive deaths of students due to shoddily-constructed schools. I also have one kid; when we were drinking we talked about we would choose to die had our kids encountered the same event. We understood deeply that the grief and helplessness of those parents were desperate to an extent of extremity. They were in need of consolation and care, but they needed just and truth more, the same feeling with that of ours as all being parents. Therefore, you brought up the idea to build up an archive of student deaths in the earthquake on May 12, and drafted a detailed documentation and were to put into practice. After you sent it to me with approval, I publicized it, and, consequently, lots of attention attracted. Perhaps it was because of this archive that brought you with disaster, but the archive was such a rational appeal! They should understand that the masked truths and hidden conflicts will break out sooner or later; instead they should try to address the problems as much as possible in a practical attitude. They should also be aware that suppression of all sorts of proper and legal efforts has no difference with placement of a powder-keg in front of themselves, which is something that a rational government should not do. The thought of stability as the top priority over anything else will end up dispossession of stability with “anything else” fragmented, the result of which is rather than a good thing to everyone.

Such conscience as Zuoren possesses, stems from his family education in addition to his own character and holding. His father, Tan Yinghua, was a prestigious historian at Sichuan University, and recognized in the research of Western History of Historical Science, Zang History and History of Tang Dynasty. His father was straight, and never changed his colors of being a scholar even though having encountered quite a few hardships. I was fortune to read two of his works, Proofreading of Reading, Eating and Goods in two Tang Dynasties, historical science and historians in 19 century, and amazed by his profoundness. Nurtured in such a family, although Zuoren’s work is on medical science, he has also touched upon writing of literature and history. Undeniably, the most important is that he inherited the spirit of his father, the awareness that intellectuals should shoulder his/her responsibility of being an intellectual.

Last June 4th, we were together donating blood to commemorate, you said with sadness, “next year, I could not donate anymore.” We were surprised and asked you why, you told us you have come to the last year of that one is able to donate—55, but your warm blood has been donated, in another way, to your beloved undertaking of freedom and democracy. A couple of days ago, a friend mentioned the pictures of us together on last June 4th were kept by you, we were about to take one from you and invite you to drink together; but expectedly you had already been “invited” by them into jail. Have you visited your parents’ tombs yet (by translator: a Chinese tradition usually in Tomb Sweeping day)? It’s hard to imagine the suffering you would bear, such a person of responsibility for both family and friends, if unable to sweep your parents’ tombs. It’s so sorrowful a thing that, close to the Tomb Sweeping days, one could not freely visit their parents’ tombs with family. We wish you come back early, then we could go sweep their tombs together, and let them be proud of what you have done for this country and this society; it’s also a type of gratitude I could and want to express to your father for benefiting from his knowledge.

Zuoren, you are suffering now, but you know that all your friends are helping you by all means; although our helps are limited, one thing you should know is that you are not fighting alone. The suppresser will never be a winner and terror could not be a final conqueror. We hope relevant parties don’t make another mistake and could cling to the spirit of seeking truth from facts, free Tan Zuoren as soon as possible. Never underestimate a heart in love and pursuit of freedom, not to mention thousands of millions of the same hearts.

Who is producing “Patriot” White Arsenic?

2009-04-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

Several pieces of reflection casually drafted down; perhaps a little humorous, but black.

1. From allergic to neurotic
When words of allergy are flooding and becoming hindrance to Chinese expressions, when websites concerning freedom of speech are blocked or shut down and the song of Cao Ni Ma (by translator: pronunciation of which means fuck you, but different Chinese characters, seen as netizen’s response to governmental movement to regulate internet) spreading out across China, the government is like a whole-body allergic patient. Everywhere is its mine area that you cannot touch. Once you do, its climax and scream will come up together, with the consequence that all sounds aimed at unveiling of truth will be repressed.

2. All demons are self-proved
When spokesmen like Qin Gang at Ministry of Foreign Affair take lying as homely food, you (by translator: here you means people like Qin Gang) will thus know why others are in any minute anxious of the advent of “anti-porno” movement (by translator: in China, the government usually take anti-porno as a cover under which many websites are shut down regarding expression of different opinions). Don’t say that the others are demonizing you, what they need do is only take out the mirror then the demon will be shown naturally; indeed no need for people to demonize you! Even if you are running hundreds of millions of China Central Televisions, truth cannot be defeated.

3. Big Chinese movies of SM.
When governors in a country are exclaiming unblushingly in public “why don not the people reveal their own properties” (by translator: in china, there has been great appeal to officials revealing their income), what is the cuteness of being ruled by these governors? Are we really unlimited servants with a common feature of being abused? It is actually true that the sadism government “reaches out to and be one with” the masochism civilians, together performing a drama of SM, the result of which is a mixture of bitterness and happiness. Yet, happy are those of governors and bitter are those of civilians.

4. To be an honored and patriotic dead man.
I once authored one article named love the country till crazy, precisely depicting the relation of government—people, companies—people being that of sadism and masochism (by translator: here companies probably referring to those exploiting the employee and those whose products are noxious). After deaths caused by toxic powder milk, there was actually someone advocating the companies by claiming that they are our national products however they are poisonous. In accordance with what he/she meant, if we want to suicide by using white arsenic we should use the brand “Patriot”, to express our unchanging love of country and be a 100% patriotic dead man.

5. Kidnapping is everywhere
It seems that the consumer’s association in Hubei province has seen clearly the underworld nature of the society (by translator: gangsterdom), thus could not help taking consumers as hostages to charge companies: complaints will be cleared off for whichever pays the Consumer’s Association. Both companies and consumers are twiddled by consumer’s association, and the ultimate victims are consumers without question. The question, though, is that who isn’t a consumer? I said China is a “mutually jeopardizing society”, it seems, accordingly, I should charge the usage of it for creation of this term.

6. Who’s afraid of whom on earth?
The government led by Chairman Mao said once that “Who’s afraid of whom on earth? It’s not people afraid of American Imperialist, it’s actually the converse.” Qin Gang stated that Chinese government is not afraid of the internet; And Lian Yue answered the internet is afraid of the government instead. The former—government—alleges not afraid but does actually be, which is called threatening in manner but cowardly at heart; the latter—internet—is said to be afraid but actually not, sufficiently sarcastic. And eventually we should resort to the poem of Lu You (by translator: one the greatest poets in South Song Dynasty): harsh of east wind, tenuous of joyfulness (by translator: east wind referred to the government, joyfulness to that of the people).

Chinese students are not machines

2009-03-30T22:46:00.001-07:00

(edited by UPIasia.com)

The problem of China’s education is so deep and broad that it would be difficult to document all its flaws. But to normal people and students, how could they have enough time to read those profound and lengthy articles? What Chinese want to know is how to spend the least money to get their children a relatively good education—being very practical, although they don’t expect free compulsory education for the time being—, while their children have a long-term interest and enjoyment in what they study. This request seems easy to fulfill, but in China, there is a huge hindrance coming from various aspects of society currently, with roots in the drawbacks of our education system.

The defects in our current education is obvious; that is, students are shaped to be exam machines, having too many exams. Millions of families, as well as the whole society, are overwhelmed by the exam-oriented education. Complaints can be heard from many families, and grumbling can also be heard among people within the education system, such as teachers, school principals, and educational officials. Everyone is discontent with the current exam-oriented education. It is unbelievable that it is so difficult to reform an education system that all are extremely unsatisfied with, pointing to the likely fact that those complaining have yet to effectively work together for their common interest. It is really strange!

This strangeness stems from a lack of alternatives to our current education system. There is no room for non-governmental education, meaning that there haven't been private schools that could effectively compete with public ones, from elementary schools to universities. Due to a lack of good competition, inequity has been pervasive in the education process, resulting in relatively fixated classes. An old Chinese saying illustrates this, saying, a dragon gives birth to a dragon, a phoenix to a phoenix, and a rat to a creature able to dig holes.

In the meantime, the system of the national unified college entrance exam, which decides the fate of students' lives, also contributes to the strangeness. The fundamental education surrounding the entrance exam, and the exam itself, offers an abnormal amount of pressure to students. Consequently, the situation gives an enormous mental burden to both students and their parents.

What gets attention when teachers praise students is their final grade instead of their progressive performance; what gets focused on when principals praise teachers is the proportion of students entering higher education and the percentage of those who passed and whether or not they reach the mark. And what is valued when education officials evaluate school principals is whether they are obedient on top of the above-mentioned achievement of reaching the mark, and also whether they can create an elegant outer semblance of their work—education for all-around development is shown on the outside, while exam-oriented attitudes remain inside—to win many honors, in order that both of them can get credit, and ultimately receive rewards and promotions.

It’s been long-recognized by people of good sense that this layered series of relationships, students-teachers-principals-education officials, makes the students the victims of the exam-oriented education system, because their right to learn happily is at risk. Students are at the base of this complex pyramid, and thus are the most pressured and suffer the most, with the potential for things to erupt at any time.

Concurrently, education in China means how much capital parents must invest in their children. Therefore, besides students, the family will also suffer from exam-oriented education. Many rich families can send their children abroad to receive “free” education—one reason for China’s reluctance to reform education—so that those who are left to suffer are the children of ordinary people. While it might be too strong to assert that the desires of the general public are considered “crap” by an unmonitored, unconstrained government, they have very limited usefulness due to the extreme impuissance of the people.

Education officials should consider the extent to which students suffer from exam-oriented education. But only blaming the officials does not reveal the whole root of the problem. Eight years ago, I wrote an article for the South Weekend (a famous review newspaper in China) entitled "China’s education system must be reformed," accentuating the necessity of reforming the education system. Without question, the current education system is no more than a sub-system of the political system; thus, substantial amelioration of the education system won’t be achieved unless the political system is moved towards freedom and democracy. Other than this, there is no way out.

Is China made of Tofu residue?

2009-03-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

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”. .

Public suggestion letter concerning prohibition of the phenomenon of the bullies in jail in China

2009-03-26T23:22:00.001-07:00

Yunfei Ran

By author: this is a proposal initiated by my friends concerning prohibition of the phenomena such like the previous occurrence in which a criminal was killed by a bullies in jail, I express my admiration to their advocacy and endeavor. Only when such efforts of small steps, such propels of drops and such persistent struggling from each of us happen will our society improves. Don’t count the promotion of our rights on the good will of the government which is barely under real supervision and constraint (the facts in the past decades have demonstrated they have no such good will), otherwise it is tantamount to following a entirely wrong direction. Before the establishment of a relatively complete system of democracy and freedom, the right of each should be pursued by every single person via struggling, whereas the “smart” thought of free-rider will have little benefit to us, our family and friends, and our society. Everyone can do whatever within his/her reach to propel the improvement of our society with the consideration of his/her own safety; the good things that benefit both him/her and the society, don’t entail a tremendous courage and wisdom that might cause dangers.

Why is it a gospel to the whole society that we should advance the development of human rights through everyone’s endeavor, perseverance and progress? That’s because the society doesn’t belong to any small portion of us, the country is not owned by any part; it is in contrast owned by all of us, thus we ought to make our own change as well as make an effort for the progress of our society and development of our country, which is in line with our self-interest and also not contrary to the society’s overall interest (the governors are no exception). Based on this, today we are signing up altogether on this suggestion letter concerning completely prohibition of the bullies phenomena in jail, a bit of corresponding effort in order to ameliorate the environment of our living, we wish you could support us. Because of a paralyzed system/institution, hardly could anyone claim that he/she is out of the danger of being jailed, even though he/she is now in a position of power. The goal that we advocate this suggestion letter is to respect our constitution that safeguards the freedom of human rights, in order that the people are prevented from unexpected misfortune such like the criminal that was killed in jail.

The following is the content of the suggestion, your signature is welcome and please forward and reproduce it elsewhere.

March 20, 2009

Public suggestion letter concerning prohibition of the bullies phenomena in jail in China

Unquestionably, in the past three decades, the situation of human rights in China has improved, which is a fact obvious to all; the progress we have made, however, could not be any excuses that prevents us from moving further forward, since we cannot float outside the mainstream of the current world civilization. Therefore, we hope our government could immediately get down to bettering the situation of the people in jail, and let them enjoy the standard of what our current laws guarantee for the ordinary people, and meanwhile gradually get close to the one that United Nations have set up for the imprisoned regarding their treatment.

February 12, 2009, Qiaoming Li was accidentally dead in the jail in Ji Ning, Yun Nan Province. In the first place, the jailers actually claimed to the public that Li was killed in a game called “peekaboo”! Thereafter, along with the persistent enquiry and unveiling by news media and netizens, Yun Nan province censorate and police got involved in the investigation, and finally made it clear that Li was beaten to death by some bully in the same room.

The event of “peekaboo” protrudes the problems of the judicial administration in the issue of the bullies in jail, which has long existed as one of our social blind spots. It becomes rapidly so hot a topic in the public affaire that even vice attorney general at the Supreme People’s Procuratorate says candidly: we have to admit that “the bullies in jail” has been there for a long time. National ministry of justice has revealed that in China there are some 2.3 million criminals under arrest, in reeducation through labor, and in jail as suspect (see: Around 1.56 Million Criminal in Chinese Jail, Hong Kong, accessed at www.takungpao.com, 01.20.2007), thus the threat of violence lurking long there will directly or indirectly inflict the human rights of these 2.3 million Chinese citizens at any time; the phenomenon of this encroachment of rights mirrors a severe shortage of human rights security system in China.

The phenomenon of the bullies in jail is the product under the system of old times in which human rights were disrespected, it has a long history. In the age of autocracy, one that without awareness of human rights, jails were taken as tools that the state use to punish and fight crimes, wherein the bullies in jail, seen as the power of blackness and terror, became part of means that jailers relied heavily on, because of the enormous and extensive psychological fear among the people generated by them.

Along with the popularity and development of human rights, comprehension of the societal functions of the prison has changed; the jail should neither only or mainly be the tool of punishing crimes, it is also supposed to be responsible for portioning between crimes and the healthy society and, more important, necessary to be taken as a special community in which remediation and education of criminals take place. Therefore whoever is in this community should also enjoy the rights of safety and personality that are kept from violation. The behaviors that the bullies in jail do are prohibited by Regulations of the Minimum Standard regarding Treatment of the Jailed, Declaration on Prohibition of Excruciation, International Agreement on Prohibition of Excruciation, and suchlike human rights literature and international laws by United Nations. China also passed and issued the Prison Laws of the Republic of China on 29^th December 1994, pronouncing that “personality of the criminals should not be insulted, their personal safety, legal property as well as that the rights of defending, stating, suing, informing and suchlike which are not legally disfranchised or limited should not be infringed.” In order to keep the jailers from encroaching them, the law also specifies some binding and warning regulations on jailers and judicial department. As early as in 1998, the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly issued a notice, requiring a complete ban on “the bullies in jail”.

To our disappointment, the notice has been issued for some 20 years, today the ugly historical vestiges of the bullies in jail has not disappeared, they are, instead, even more flourishing in some of our prisons, and even worse in the houses of detentions or prisons under administration of the public security. In many a prisons, they are working as a sub-regulation that is unscrupulously trampling on the rights of personality and safety of the criminals and suspects. For the past few years, individual cases uncovered by media and netizens have been still occurring in which criminals and suspects suffered beating and beating to death; right in the midst of drafting of this public letter, such abnormal deaths as “peekaboo” have successively happened in Hainan, Hunan and Shanxi provinces. In so short a time that this type of occurrence appears one after the other, it, on the one hand, proves that our government and media are resolved to meet the problem head on, and, on the other, tells as well how popular and normal the phenomenon has been.

In the houses of detention the imprisoned are mainly those have yet to be officially sentenced, they are not criminals, and meanwhile, even though those with officially sentence are supposed to be protected from the illegal punishment and excruciation. Because it is the minimum of human rights protected by our government, and it is also far already acknowledged by the current laws. “The bullies in jail” infringing on the imprisoned for long has not been checked so far, it is, indubitably, an ugly phenomenon with root in our system. It also slabs on the face of both the judicial system and the “public security organs, procuratorial organs and people’s courts”, and confronting the fact, we have to concede: the phenomenon of the bullies in jail has been an institutionalized stain of human rights in China.

On account of relating to special location and special people, the phenomenon of the bullies in jail has been overlooked long by media and society. Facing a succession of the tragedies, we should meet this stubborn and chronic illness head on. As a matter of fact, however, not only is the phenomenon of the bullies in jail a result of the passive nonfeasance of our law enforcement agency and judicial authority, but also a result of the attitude of acquiescence and blindness that the people hold in looking at it, which is also the deep-seated reason for the long existence of this negative legacy in history. Consequently, we, as the people, should also reflect on the existence of the problem, and immediately shouldering the collective responsibility that should have been there.

As citizens of the country, we are facing the chance of being put into jail—including the house of detention—for carefulness and unluckiness. This chance of reality resides objectively in the probability of criminal negligence, and also we might step into the gate of prison for defense of rights, petition, revelation of the crimes committed by state personnel, or for enjoymeng of the right of freedom bestowed by the 35^th item in national constitution, and countless suchlike. Therefore, the situation of human rights of the jailed stands together through thick and thin with that of the outsiders.

In 2003, after the event of Zhigang Sun, burning were the inquiring and scolding by net and media, and the tide of prohibition request rose as another fell down; the Law of Collecting and Sending back by Force was eventually abolished by the State Council. That unforgettable public affair became a milestone in the road of forwardness of legal institutions and human rights in China, which was not only the progress of the state, the government, the society and also of all the Chinese people. The furtherance of human rights is not solely steered by government; it ties up tightly with the positive cooperation of every single citizen. For this reason, we initiate this public suggestion letter concerning prohibition of the bullies in jail, as being the owners of the county, we require all undertake the responsibility and obligation to advance the progress of human rights:

1. We appeal to a thorough investigation by relevant department in the rooted crux of long existence of the phenomenon, meanwhile welcome media with free report;

2. We appeal to a system of health, civilized, humane administration of the prison: having the house of detention administrated by judicial organs which don’t undertake the function of investigation;

3. Re-discuss the necessity of establishing a house of detention in every county, in order for an appropriate redistribution of resources;

4. The right of being visited by families could not be hindered in the mist of investigation and detention, free the chance for organizations, NGOs to carry out relevant work of societal care and love, and to visit as well;

5. Allow the presence of layers during interrogation, and the record should be signed by lawyers which otherwise could not be used as valid evidence. Cases with absence of layers should be filmed and sound-recorded, as being basis for court hearing, which otherwise would be seen as flawed, thus invalid to be used as evidence.

6. Investigate into current cases of the jailed, and tackle the criminal and administrative responsibility that state personnel are involved in strictly in accordance with the law. We are convinced, a far ranging participation of the people will draw the attention of the state legislative branch; and the human rights of each of us will be further protected; while the tragedy of Qiaoming Li will not happen again.

Respected citizens:

You could support our movement by the following means:

1. Sign on this file with your real name or your usual pen name,
2. The format of signature: Name (city and occupation).
3. Signature email addresses：antiduomaomao@gmail.com
yubalaotou@gmail.com
laotouyuba@gmail.com
4. Distribute this file by any means

My blog blocked again

2009-03-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

My blog blocked again

Yunfei Ran

How many of my blogs were shut down and how many times were blocked by the government seem in need of a careful enumeration. Since I started at Park De-sci (http://www.de-sci.org/blogs/top.php), within three months my blog has already been blocked twice. It is reasonable to claim with confidence that I am probably setting another Guiness World Record concerning the times of being blocked by Chinese government, which can hardly be realized in a free speech environment. I have to, as a result, express my gratitude to those who shut down or block my blog. Freedom of speech, or expressing ideas in public, is a means of freedom at any time, and it is what we should strive for in a society short of freedom.

Before 1949, there was no internet or blog, but the supervision over news by the Nationalist Party was far looser than that of today. They might seal up your newspaper, but you could apply and register for a new one the next day, reflecting a passage in a Chinese Poem: “the wild fire is unable to burn out those growing along with spring wind.” But after 1949, the Chinese Communist Party, who once published lengthily and tediously on newspapers of Liberation Dailyand Xinhua Daily to fight for speech freedom, who once chanted hurrah for American democracy, knows that freedom of speech is adverse to totalitarianism, thus it kills the freedom of speech and throws pressure on news and journals in such an extreme and extensive way that the Nationalist Party could barely dream of then. Even today in 21^st century, the extent to which these dictators still attempt to close down and blockade the news adverse to their ruling, in order to exploit the maximum interests from the people, is startling.

Till now we have had no chance to run our own newspaper, nor do we have A chance to open our media, but we have to break through from the internet and persevere IN our effort and struggle. Now that we are encountering THE era of internet, we are supposed to make the most of it and live up to what it means to us. We are supposed to draw on such truth-propagating tools like internet, in order to make unremitting effort for our own interests and dignity, without any compromise. We should make the dictators understand clearly that they should never underestimate a heart with ardent love for freedom. Freedom is the best state of human beings, and also based on which the dignity of human beings is realized and secured. So as to obtain our freedom, one of our principles we persistently hold is to bring the facts and reasons after breaking through all levels of blockade and close-down. Now we have the internet, we have the blog; each of us could be a promulgator of information and truth, promptly and extensively disseminating all the news blocked by authorities, this is what everyone could be. If we become the promulgators of truth, the blockade of authorities will become ineffective and clumsy, and they will eventually lose all their legality as a consequence.

We should not be discouraged, nor should we deal with it—blocking of truth—with an attitude eager for quick success or instant benefit. Instead we should embrace such a posture like that of the constant dripping of water being able to wear down the stone, to further the progress of our society. Yesterday, I attended a small gathering of a NGO. Their effort of dribs and drabs is indeed moving that in future I will have to give a deeper explanation in particular on this topic. The effort we dedicate ourselves to the aims at realizing a society governed by the people, rather than ruled by those being being not really elected, and through governance by people, ultimately to achieve a state in which the people could enjoy what they have; to which, I keep my unchanging faith. I have no clue when China will be democratic, but I believe without a shadow of doubt that it will eventually get there. My creed is, even if we have to wait five hundred years to realize this dream, I will still devote my own effort to fighting for democracy and freedom.

The following are all my blog addresses, hope you could disseminate. I will update them every day, please pay attention.

De-sci Part: A pack of gangster’s talking, http://www.de-sci.org/blogs/tf

1510: A pack of gangster’s talking,http://www.my1510.cn/author.php?ranyunfei

Independent blog,http://ranyunfei.org.cn/

International Bullogger: A pack of gangster’s talking,http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/ranyunfei/

(these links are in Chinese)

Ran's Review of Newsweek (100)

2009-03-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

1. Mayor in Zhejiang fired for spending public funds on massages; local governors object to termination. http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-03-12/080317391284.shtml Bureaucrats shielding one another, nowadays, has become a state of transparency; frankly speaking, concerning these governors innocent of basic politics, what they are doing everyday is nothing but laying down coffins for the current regime, and overusing the little rationality kept by the current regime. Furthermore, many governors are presumptuous and aggressive, with an awareness of bureaucracy deep enough to take people as trivial as crap; consequently the conflicts between the regime and common people will get more and severer. Wasting of the money of tax payer such as misusing of public funds is an open fact now; yet some governors are actually expressing a grievance, including the previous event in which Gongcheng Liu covering up Jiaxiang Lin. All these things are what extremely irritate the people. If the government authority allows its governors to talk nonsense, it thus means they are taking advantage of the little-left credence that government possesses to pay for their own interest. This behavior equaling to kidnap and overuse the credibility of the government is something greatly impairing the rationality and legality of the regime, as well as, undeniably, something trampling on the public will.

2, National Industrial and Commercial Association claiming half profit of the real estate exploitation flowing in government in 9 cities, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-03-06/024015263210s.shtml Regarding the price of real estate stays high, there are many reasons, but the salient one is the collusion between government and land-agent and the resulting distortion of the estate market. The largest beneficiary of high price real estate is the government who monopolizes many factors including land, the second largest is land-agent, and ultimately all of costs are paid by consumers. I perceive the jeopardy induced by malformation of the real estate market will gradually unfold and come to be clear in the prevailing economic crisis. Under insubstantial supervision, the government, who monopolizes everything, being player as well as referee, competing with the people for profit, will undoubtedly bring about disastrous effect to the society. Many complain the price is too high, but the government will still sustain the running of real estate locally, alleging it for local fiscal revenue. It is actually the room created for rent-seeking for many governors, the main factor of official-merchant collusion. All in all, malformation of the real estate will continue fermenting, and will produce great negative impact on China’s economy.

3, NPC members from Shandong attacking the bureaucracy (official standard) in university, bolstering professors in charge of university //www.china.com.cn/news/txt/200903/07/content_17393432.htm Bad performance of education, corruption in colleges and universities with rampant bureaucracy has far already constituted a ruined state hard to clear up. The current school authorities take hold of too many interests, harming drastically those of teachers and students. A section chief in charge of scientific research, for instance, can be a least achieved tutor of Ph.D student, and can also be an official in school taking charge of a great amount of research fund and leading recklessly in research of garbage; this type of official being popular in school is one salient feature of our disappointing education. Flooding bureaucracy in universities, along with massive production of garbage published papers, relates to government’s intentional purchase of the schools in late 1990’s, but is rather more deeply relevant to the Party ruling schools and partied or “partinized” education in China. Generally speaking, without resolving the problem of how the Communist Party should retract its talons from schools, without reforming in education system, only bolstering managerial alteration will not succeed in checking the rampant bureaucracy in universities, which seems impossible. But I still appreciate the advocacy of professor managing the university by some representatives.

4, Briefing of People’s Political Consultative Conference (PPCC) showing absence are more of those committees in economics and literature and arts, http://news.dayoo.com/china/200903/11/53868_5452744.htm Some friends and media misunderstand this piece of news as that there were 301 committees refusing to participate in PPCC, activity similar to cheating as reckoned by them. Personally I think this is a one-side perception originated by them hoping for a reform in PPCC and NPC. Problems in NPC and PPCC have been so for quite a long time: first, Party members and governors are too many, almost becoming the majority; second, there has been no fair and transparent process of voting for representatives and committees, what has been done so far is more like rubber stamp that has little and substantive help to the people’s interest; third, both PPCC and NPC are temporary meeting without any full time members, nor, as a result, is there a long-run investigation of in-depth in some field, therefore no decent and rational proposal could be put forward, unlikely to enhance the people’s livelihood as a result. The only “benefit” the two conferences bring about is fooling the people and squandering the money from tax payers as inappropriate subsidies for government. These absent committees are not as clear and brave as imagined by us, hardly could they voluntarily reject to cooperate with the current authority.

5, governmental prodigality of medical care at public expense larger than recreational activities using public funds, http://zhouqiren.blog.sohu.com/35251320.html As a matter of fact, all people are tax payers, hence a national health care security should be something every single person could benefit from, but the government escapes the duty unnoticed, not responsible for the people without competitiveness, rendering them never beneficial of any welfare from medical care. But on the other hand, they have enjoyed intensely the privilege in medical welfare by dividing the people into various grades, making the practical benefit flooding everywhere brought about by “official standard”. For the time being, many ordinary people could not afford for medical care, as opposed to the fact that every year many governors squander the money in medical care at public expense; the huge contrast or inequity from both sides, further explicates the increasing gap and conflicts within our society. Therefore, I offer my high recommendation for this article authored by Qireng Zhou, so as to prove to all of us how governmental wasting of money from tax payers is astonishingly everywhere.

6, the supreme vice president of court: first check negative news when starting to work, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-03-10/115517376335.shtml I’d love to see our governors act like this vice president, rushing for negative news before working in order to explore the situation of the people. Of course, I think governors should embrace an attitude of solving the problems, instead of trying to closing down the news concerning people’s will. Otherwise, they might look into the negative news, with the will to kill it in the cradle, instead of actually get down to coping with the problem; in this case, rushing for negative news per se will also be a piece of “negative news”. It’s righteous to look at the negative news, but what’s more important is to have a just and legal system of institutions addressing people’s will, which could count on some single governor’s good will.

7, the first representative conference of Chinese Alliance of Grievance held in Hong Kong, http://www.bullogger.com/blogs/fayanl/archives/284359.aspx There are laws we don’t follow, there are petitioners put into jail; not only are petitioners willing to swarm into Bei Jing, but also inclined to safeguard their rights outside the border. People able to defend their rights overseas are those of capability and with tunnels, and people like them all complain about their limited room for help domestically, thus, clutching at straws, they choose to ask for help outside, in the hope of drawing government’s attention. Having had tried to petition for years, but encountered many insults, the relatives in the event of Fu Qing explosion in Fu Jian Province had to demonstrate in front of Chinese Embassy in Japan via the assistance of their friends in Japan. But the Chinese Embassy expressed such an extreme apathy that even the Japanese police felt incredible. The Alliance of Grievance in Hong Kong came to being under such condition, and this representative conference was carried out during the period of “harmonious” two conferences, manifesting the extent to which impairment of the people’s interest has become too grave to be ignored. Its own people, whose interest get impaired, could not defend their rights domestically, instead can only do it in the places like Hong Kong and Japan; this must greatly embody the so-called superiority of socialism chanted loudly and hollowly by the authority.

Xu Chang, March 16, 2009

Waving the red banner of Joseph Goebbels

2009-03-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

Yunfei Ran

( edited by UPI Asia)

Taking the lead from Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi party leader, the reports by People’s Daily of China concerning National People's Congress are stunning.

It can often feel as if the rhetoric of the Chinese governments at all levels is so repetitive, so insipid and so ceaselessly fake, that it has become intuitive for us to know this. And this intuition is right, since what we often hear and see is always the same voice with an unchanging accent.

Nowadays, the number of government employees has rapidly exploded—in 2005 proportion between officials and civilians was 26:1, some 305 times higher than during West Han Dynasty, 35 times higher than during the late Qing Dynasty, and still much higher than 67:1 during the initial stage of reform and 40:1 in 1995 (the trend of which continues unstoppably)—so that even small county officials have secretaries. What the sectaries draft for their officials' lecture is all unoriginal, a mixture of fakeness, hollowness, and worthlessness.

Chinese officials’ rhetoric covers a covers “prosperity and joy everywhere” and “a bright situation” to “having accomplished many a remarkable achievements” and“great victories”, followed by naked self-praisse and gooseflesh-raising complements. The speakers portray themselves as saviors of the taxpayers, confuses right and wrong to an extent that maks one bristle with anger. Offcials, however, continue to speak with equanimity and grace, without any ashamedness or self-reflection that one should have had; in contrast, they treat wrong as right, and pursue their own interests in this turbid society.

Drawing on falsehood and asymmetry of information to break the truth down into fabricated lies, to enormously impair the people’s interests without compensation or responsibility, in order to plunder the people’s interests by force or trickeries; these are the government's achievements via propaganda. Someone with basic logic could break through the traps of lies set by the government.

When they exalt the superiority of the socialist system, for instance, one could thus easily ask, if that is so why we could not be informed of how the state revenue is used; if that is so, why we as taxpayers have no right to know how the money is used; if that is so, why is the truth always kept from us through government control of the media; if that was so, why we as taxpayers pay for the operation of the media whose reporting focuses on self-praising and confusing right and wrong, why is the free flow of information not allowed, and why don't we let the truth emergy through a debate of different ideas; if that is so, why does the land belonging to peasants get confiscated by force and why do the polices come to help suppress the people; if that is so, why does China still feel indignant when we have so many “superiorities” and when these unbearable “superiorities” are keep multiplying with greater momentum?

People are so discontent with the nonsense said by Chinese officials who are paid with taxpayers’ money that the complaints can be heard everywhere. But there is little sign that they are about to change, so the speeches that reflcect truth and of humanity are still as rare as the air above Mount Qomolangma. This is because our system of institutions is one that keeps depriving of the people’s rights and indignity dominant, one whose rule takes the form of lies and forces. Lies keep the people from the truth and also the fact that their interests are impaired; act of force makes the people too afraidto stand up and defend their own rights. Both lies and force, upheld by the dictatorial system, support the maximization of interests in favor of the officials in power.

As for the average person, he is undoubtedly incapable of analyzing qualitatively and quantitatively to inform the society of how the government lies. Besides, due to the lack of institutes or people supporting those, in order to dig out the truth, are investigating in the tools that the government uses to propagandize, any antipathy against the government’s fake propaganda stays at the level of intuition, far from convincing. Fortunately because of growth of internet that the awakened people are able to look at the assorted lies from different angles, making it easier to identify the ugliness and falsehood in governmental propaganda.

For example, there has been a recent prevalence of comments online that the front-page of People’s Daily on the two National People's Congresses in the last 6 years seem almost identical; this shows directly that the government is waving the red banner of what Goebbels said: lies repeated a thousand times becomes a truth. The similarity between communism and fascism, both as freaks of human history, is really easy to find out! Let us see how the government will improvise and make its greatness, and let us await to see the tune that our leaders are composing will be!

March 19, 2009