Sovereignty, Sovereign, and Sovereigntist

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10) Amen.

On the Christmas Day, 2009, the Chinese Communist once again “defies laws human and divine” (wufa wutian in Chinese) – its verdict was guilty for one of a few Chinese dissidents who dared to think and to speak out on his appeal for Human Rights and Civil Rights in China, and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. Furthermore, it also continues to denounce the concerns from the international society on this trial as a challenge to the China’s sovereignty.

Ironically, when the Chinese Communist regards RenQuan (“Human Right” in English) and MinQuan (“Civil Right” in English) as BoLaiPin (“exotic” in English; and a label has its magic power to kill any brilliant Human Reasons in China), it never regards ZhuQuan (“sovereignty” in English) a BoLaiPin. Sovereignty was first introduced by Jean Bodin (1530 – 1596); yet he rejected the idea that a sovereign can disobey divine law and natural law.

In the Age of Enlightenment, the meaning of the sovereignty was the idea of the social contract. Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) regarded Sovereignty as a Covenant between people and sovereign; yet, John Locke (1632 – 1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778, the main drafter of the Polish Constitution of May 3rd, 1791) were the proponents that Sovereignty is a Social Contract between citizens, and the people is the legitimate sovereign; thus, the people render power to the government. In his The Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke pointed out that when the authority, “[who] acted contrary to their [people’s] trust”, violates the people’s rights, people “should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.” When there is no RenQuan and MinQuan, but only ZhuQuan in China, the Chinese Communist is indeed a sovereign, not the Chinese people. Should the Chinese people be the very legitimate sovereign in this People’s Republic, don’t you feel the charge of “subversion” is absurd because “the ends for which government was at first erected” is the very right (such as, through a fair election) exercised by the sovereign?

It sadly amused me that when I heard the Chinese Communist mentioned its “sovereignty” recently, for it acted like sovereigntist, a synonym of separatist. But the Chinese Communist won’t allow anyone to use sovereigntist to refer those separatists related to China. I wonder what the Chinese Communist want to separate itself from the international society as a sovereigntist to defend its sovereignty? It appears to me that the Chinese Communist wants to separate itself from the RenQuan and MinQuan in the international society, but only to preserve its ZhuQuan (means sovereign’s power in China) so that it can be above the people forever. How can the Chinese Communist convince me that, being a sovereigntist, it is better than other sovereigntists, if it cannot allow its own people to have RenQuan and MinQuan, given other sovereigntists can? How can the Chinese Communist convince me that, been copied the ruling system from the former Soviet Union upon its ethno-territorial republics, the troubled autonomous regions in China won’t fall apart, given the Chinese Communist will collapse?

China has lacked sons and daughters who can think for a long history. Yet, the Chinese people keep forsaking their best sons and daughters who dare to think; the Chinese political eunuchs, those who lost their thinking ability, keep persecuting the political slaves, those who have been divested their natural right to think and to speak out freely; the Chinese Communist keep jailing the best sons and daughters in the Chinese history for imposing the political tranquility. However, Rousseau wrote in his The Social Contract:

It will be said that the despot assures his subjects civil tranquility. Granted; but what do they gain, if the wars his ambition brings down upon them, his insatiable avidity, and the vexatious conduct of his ministers press harder on them than their own dissentions would have done? What do they gain, if the very tranquility they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquility is found also in dungeons [where those Chinese conscientious dissidents are in]; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? …

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (Luke 11:52) Amen.

Liberty is to Faction What Air is to Fire

“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire” is a notion of James Madison (1751 – 1836, the Father of the Constitution in America, his presidency, 1809 – 1817).

In order to persuade the New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, which is based on the Separation of Powers, the federalists wrote and published eighty-five essays in 1787 – 1788. In his Federalist Papers No. 10, Madison analyzed “the conflicts of rival parties” because he observed “that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.” He wrote:

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed…

Thus, Madison asserted that “The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.”

In today’s China, the Chinese Communist does not regard dissidents as a faction, but criminals – “whose only crime is that of being of a different opinion” (Voltaire, 1694 – 1780). It wants to eliminate these factions “to whom they [the Chinese Communists] are not very favorably inclined.” (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 – 1526). It forbids its exiled conscientious dissidents to return to China. It persecutes, prosecutes, arrests and jails its domestic conscientious dissidents. It silences the victims at the social unrests. Yet, on Tuesday, the Chinese Communist said that “only those who break the law will be punished by the law.” The truth is, in China, the law sides with the law maker – the Chinese Communist; and the judge benches with the robe giver – the Chinese Communist. It is a typical supremacist’s fallacy when this political party supremacist spokeswoman accuses the “external forces … to meddle in China’s internal affairs”, it was the same accusation of the race supremacist judge on being “provoked by these outside influences” in the movie Mississippi Burning, 1988.

The totalitarianism makes the Chinese Communist Party a political leviathan; and makes it easily to practice Thrasymachus (around 459 BC – 400 BC) justice – “justice is the advantage of the stronger.” I don’t know what kind of Scientific Development Concept (Kexue Fazhan Guan in Chinese) in the Chinese Communist. How come only the Marxist’s Scientific Socialism is a science, but the modern Western political science is not? How come only the Chinese is the East, but the Greek was not? Ever heard “the Greek East and the Latin West”? Apparently, it is not because of the difference between the Eastern and the Western, as the Chinese Communist often emphasized. It is imperiousness, and by imposing “what we’ve got here is [a] failure to communicate” (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), the Chinese Communist even does not allow the other factions to “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” (Immanuel Kant, 1724 -1804) It is hegemony, and the Chinese Communist indeed is the hegemon who dominates all domestic affaires. It is supremacy, and the Chinese Communist indeed is the supremacist who is above all other factions. It is slavery, and the Chinese Communist indeed is the master who oppresses the political slaves.

Many Chinese know the Confucianism’s “[to] stay out of trouble for self-preservation” (“ming-zhe bao-shen” in Chinese). To them, “perhaps it would be better to pass them [troubles] over in silence, ‘not stirring up the hornets’ nest’ and ‘not laying a finger on the stinkweed.’” (Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 – 1526) But “life is trouble, only death is not.” (Zorba the Greek, 1964) Madison acknowledged the trouble of factions, but protected it with liberty “which is essential to political life”; the Chinese Communist hates the trouble of dissidents and wants the CAUSE [liberty] of faction to be removed by administering with terror, thus, remaining “the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests” as its “one world, one dream”.

Many Chinese don’t know of Mercedes Sosa (1935 – 2009), “the voice for the voiceless”, an Argentine singer who died in October. Sosa was arrested and exiled by a military regime in Argentina, but she made herself come back, partly because that military regime made a Thrasymachus mistake: when the stronger does not benefit itself from its decision, or, when the weaker unify together to prevent the stronger to benefit itself, then the stronger is not the true stronger – it lost both the trust by the Argentine and the Falklands War (1982) to Britain. How can a righteous person tolerate the Chinese Communist playing Thrasymachus justice forever? “Anyone’s guilty who watches this happen and pretends it isn’t. … Maybe we all are.” (Mississippi Burning, 1988)

Mercantilism in China

This week, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 2009, a Chinese diplomat was mad at an American envoy after he learned that China would not get money from America, for this American envoy said that “I don’t envision public funds, certainly not from the United States, going to China.” By this, this negotiator from China acted like a sophist and retorted that “I don’t want to say the gentleman [the US envoy] is ignorant. He is very well educated but he lacks common sense or extremely irresponsible. I would ask him or any person who is interested in the climate change issues between China and United States to read the joint statement when President Obama visited China three weeks ago.”

It appears to me that this Chinese diplomat is either lacking education or is not a well self-taught pundit. “[T]he joint statement when President Obama visited China three weeks ago” is at most a consensus between US and China; it is far from being a common sense. In Mathematical Logic, a consensus could be “union”, or “intersection”, or “complement” to a common sense, but they are not necessary identical. In the Enlightenment, the enlightened persons were referred as the “public”, while the un-enlightened persons were referred as the “people”; thus a common sense among the “people” was obviously not the same as the one of the “public”. In Mercantilism (the European economic policies from the 16th to 18th century), the common sense on “wealth” was very different from the concept of Adam Smith (1723 – 1790, founder of the classical liberalism).

Mercantilist regarded the gold bullion or currency reserves as wealth. It encouraged to export its manufactured products to other nations, but limited to import the goods from the others, except the raw materials. It believed the trade between nations is a “zero sum game”. Adam Smith was a leading thinker of against Mercantilism. In his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith observed that the Mercantilism was:

That wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value. In consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we have money we can more readily obtain whatever else we have occasion for, than by means of any other commodity. The great affair, we always find, is to get money. When that is obtained, there is no difficulty in making any subsequent purchase. In consequence of its being the measure of value, we estimate that of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for. We say of a rich man that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man that he is worth very little money. A frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money; and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it. To grow rich is to get money; and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.

The Mercantilism lost its mainstream status because of its stagflation, not just because of Smith’s opposing.

Now, China accuses other nation “extremely irresponsible”, that won’t make China to get rid of the name of “irresponsible” nation on the climate change issues. The world knows that China is one of these nations who are reluctant to take part in this calling for reducing emissions. China regards this calling as a “zero sum game”, especially when it would not get reparation pays. China claimed that it is not a rich country, except it is not the richest country; China accused the old developed countries of taking too few responsibilities, ignoring it is the emissions-most country; China wishes India will stick the same ground with it, but India eventually responds more responsibly.

The Mercantilism in China is regarded an improving sign by those “Yodas” in America, these “Yodas” believe they have the abilities to manage China. But be aware of that Mercantilism once fueled the colonialism and that brought many wars