China’s Umbrella

I noticed the reports that on the day that marked the 20th anniversary of the June Fourth Massacre, the plain-clothes policemen used the umbrellas to shun the reporters in Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese government then declared that “today [June 4th, 2009] like any other day, stable.” But I would say: “Please, not like this. China is my cradle where I was born and grown up, and I feel sick to my stomach by watching this scene.” It shows me that the grip of tyranny is pervading in China. Those umbrellas remind me a Chinese idiom – “a monk under an umbrella”, which means “[to] defy laws human and divine” (wufa wutian in Chinese). How ironic it is, the Chinese government does defy laws human by persecuting “against innocent men [dissidents], whose only crime is that of being of a different opinion” (Voltaire, 1694 – 1780). The Chinese government does defy laws divine by restraining religious activities. The Chinese government blames that the instabilities, the implosions, and the revolutions in China are incurred by those laws human and divine it defies, not those wrongdoings by itself. But John Locke (1632 – 1704) said that “[s]uch revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur.”

These umbrellas show that the Chinese Communist does not want to govern by law. These umbrellas show that the Chinese Communist does not want to get China out of the rut that the society implodes during the social transition. These umbrellas show that the Chinese Communist does fear its own people to gain power. These umbrellas show that the Chinese Communist does feel its lack of stamina for its ruling with legitimacy. The Chinese Communist wishes that length begets forgetting for the June Fourth Massacre. But length usually begets loathing. Leonardo Bruni (1369 – 1444), the first modern historian and a leading civic humanist, once on learning and said that “[f]irst amongst such studies I place History: a subject which must not on any account be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the origins of our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of Kings.” When the Chinese Communist does not want to face its own history, others will.

I urge the Chinese government to reform its political system. Not only because few regimes are despotic now, but also because a truly Republic with Checks and Balances will have the resilience and stability.