In memory of my mother who passed away 5 years ago

(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

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

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

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

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?

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)

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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. 

4. 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. 

5. 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. 

6. 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. 

7. 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.